Breaking History - Eli Lake and Andrew Sullivan Debate the Iran War

Episode Date: March 19, 2026

This week I joined The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan, who has generously agreed to let us share the conversation here. Andrew and I go way back, and few people are as willing as he is to really go toe-to-toe over our disagreements—especially on Israel and America’s role in the world. In our discussion, we cover a broad range of history and politics: from the Iran-Contra affair to the Oslo Accords, and the Second Intifada to Iraq, Iran, Hamas, and the current war in Gaza—along with my bar mitzvah speech about nuclear proliferation and early Zionist influences. Of course we bring it to the present day, debating the political, strategic, and moral stakes shaping Washington’s arguments about the war in Iran today.  Take a listen, and you can find Andrew’s Substack here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Uh, where are my gloves? Come on, heat. Any day now? Winter is hard, but your groceries don't have to be. This winter, stay warm. Tap the banner to order your groceries online at voila.ca. Enjoy in-store prices without leaving your home. You'll find the same regular prices online as in-store.

Many promotions are available both in-store and online, though some may vary. Welcome back listeners. This is Eli, and I'm. I am here to tell you that this is a special programming as we prepare our next big series for breaking history. What you're about to hear is a conversation slash debate with my old friend Andrew Sullivan. He needs no introduction. He is one of the great writers of our era. And Andrew and I have a pretty deep disagreement about the current Iran War.

So this is an opportunity to hear me put through my paces, so to speak, as I jab and paris. with Andrew Sullivan, who's very good at this kind of thing. And we will see you soon enough as we prepare more bonus content and work on the next season of Breaking History. So enjoy. Hi there, everyone. Welcome to another discast. This one coming to you in the...

Well, who knows? I don't know where we are in this war. I think we are 12 days in. We're speaking on Wednesday, maybe 11 or 12, something like that. Yeah. Be two weeks by the time you're hearing this. And so some of the things that we're going to talk about today may be moot by the time you hear this because things happen fast. But with any luck, we're not going to be talking about the specific nitty gritty of what might happen the next couple of days.

And more about how we got here, what this tells us about where we are, what the future is, et cetera, et cetera. Thank you for subscribing. If you haven't subscribed, please do. because if you don't, this conversation is going to peter out at some point when you most want it not to. At least that is the instructions given. To Chris Bodena, who will edit this with that in mind. We have some great guests coming up. We have Derek Thompson coming on to talk about abundance.

We have Matt Goodwin, who just ran for Parliament in the UK on the reform ticket, talking about the political earthquake in the United Kingdom. Jonah Goldberg is coming on. We're going to talk about conservatism, how we've seen it evolve over the last time over our last couple of decades and our lifetime. Tom Holland is coming on to talk about the Christian roots of liberalism. Tiffany Jenkins is coming on to talk about privacy, the public-private distinction, which to my mind is intensely important to liberal democracy, and she's going to talk about that too. And Adrian Waldrich, my old friend from Oxford, actually, has written a terrific book on The Lost Genius. of liberalism. Adrian is one of the smartest people I've ever met in my life. And it sounds like a

very invigorating book. Everything Adrian does is invigorating. He's also an absolute trip. So I'm really psyched to have an all friend of mine on the podcast. I always like that. It's nice to have people on that you know. Speaking of which, on the question of Israel and the war is, Iran and the United States and Trump and all the other issues, it's a pretty tense, difficult time. I think we're all on edge. I think whenever something like this happens, especially when no one was really, well, a lot of people were not expecting it. It was a surprise to a lot of people on Saturday morning a couple of weeks ago. And there's a lot of anger and polarization and tension. It looks like the polling, I mean, it's hard to tell, really, but it's certainly not, it's certainly one of the

least popular ones that we've ever started. The question of Israel is hovering over it. This has given people like Nick Fuentes and Candice Owens a pretty astonishing little PR opportunity. So, and I needed to talk to someone I wouldn't get too upset with. Because to be truth, be honest, I am upset about this. I can't keep me. my emotions that under control. I mean, they're under control, but I also don't feel like a writer should disguise if he's enraged. And I think that's roughly how I felt the last couple of weeks and how a lot of other people are feeling. But so who to talk to?

Well, Eli Lake has been my friend for a hell of a long time, and he's a completely lovely person and a mensch, hilarious, funny, a whole bunch of interests that you wouldn't believe. he will send me occasional AI songs that he's created that are amusing in their way. He has an incredible mastery of history. And he's, he had a, he's a podcast, the podcast is still going on, right? Yes, Dena, we're taking a, we're taking a little bit of a hiatus, but we're going to do it in seasons. So the next one will be like five or six chapters of a big theme that we'll next. out soon. Oh, good. Yeah. I mean, if he knows so much, he's read so much. Thank you. It's true. Yeah. It makes him nerve-wracking interview because he's, and also the subject, he's, I mean, I've

taken an interest in this topic because I, this part of my job, but for Eli's been following this stuff like a hawk from, well, in more ways than one. From the gecko. He's the former national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and news. week. He's a former columnist for Bloomberg View. And now he's a reporter for the free press, a contributing editor of a commentary magazine, and the host of his own podcast of re-education. That's what. And it's called Breaking History now. It's called Breaking History. It was re-education before. Okay. Yes. Well, it's not the same as the Restis History, which is Tom Hawley. Yes, it's very good. But here's the other one that's really amazing. Hardcore history

with Dan Carlin is the OG. It is the OG. And Chris has got me. Chris was one of, he got me onto that quite early when we were doing our road trips. He'd sit me down and I'd be listening to all about Sulla. Incredible. Oh, yeah, the five-partner on the fall of the Republic of Rome is. And that's when I was writing about the fall of the Republic. It's, you know, it's also that period is, it's a lot going on. Yeah.

Rome is an incredibly complex society. and lots of stuff is happening at once. And now we even better understand how climate was also crucial in all of this. How, in fact, the Roman Empire was really benefited from a period of mild fertile climate in the Mediterranean, which ended roughly in the 4th or 5th centuries when we had this hideous shift. So climate change does work. We're now getting off. That's where we're supposed to stop.

Anyway, it's nice to see. Thanks to see you, Andrew. Thanks for having. time we saw each other, we was at the Louis CK concert here in town. Yes. After which I had a urinary emergency. I just thought I remember. Anyway, I decided not to take a pee after the show because the lines were so long.

And then we couldn't find a car. And then we were halfway to a fucking Virginia. But at the time, I couldn't find a restaurant. So I had to, I shouldn't confess to a crime on the air. But anyway, somebody, some thing took a, oh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, a pounding from my bladder. Anyway, Eli, we're going to briefly talk about your bio because you've been here before, but tell me about your parents.

Well, my mother, who is still alive, taught French and Spanish in high school, but she was also constantly educating herself. Where? Well, she got a master's, and that's what's I think called a master's plus 60. But she applied one year for, I think I may have shared this before,

a Rockefeller grant, where she studied in the Pyrenees with the Basques and learned the Basque language. Where did she grow up, though? She grew up in Philadelphia like I did. Okay. So to my father. So we're, we, um, and I guess that would make me second generation because their parents emigrated

from Ukraine. From Ukraine. The pale of settlement was known. The pale, the border labs. Yes. And Lake at one point was Lackernick, but it was shortened in the emigration process. As it, as is. Have you ever thought of going back to Lackernick, that would be kind of like a pretty hard core?

Eli Lake is a great writer's name. It is a good name. So I kind of, I'm stuck with it. It's great. It's really simple. Yes. It's got three syllables. You'll always remember it. Eli is a very. Right. And it's like, you hear it and you're like, oh, Jewish first name, wasp, second name. No, you think, oh, no, they obviously fix that. Yeah.

Maybe what? John Stewart, yeah, maybe not. Right. Not related to the Scottish, Scottish monarchs. No. In any way, as far as one can tell. When did you first think about as a kid? really, what were the first things that you were told about Israel? I'm just curious as to the

environment in which you grew up, because I do think that some of the things that are not working in our nationalist is that we don't fully understand the full context of where people are coming from. And they come from very different places, and they're going to arrive at different conclusions on that. So I just want to get a better sense of what were you taught? How did you grow up to think of this? It's a foreign country. It's a long way away. how did that come up in your childhood and adolescence and education? Well, I, my parents were on the left, and we grew up in a neighborhood in Philadelphia called Germantown, which was, there were many co-ops. There was, and it was very nice.

Like, all the parents would get together, and they would put on, like, Halloween shows. And I did not go to a traditional, we didn't belong to a traditional synagogue. I belong to, we were secular humanists, which is a version, a kind of God optional version of Judaism. God optional version? Yeah, my bar mitzvah was not traditional in any way. You would kind of give a presentation a talk. And so I gave a talk on Jewish perspectives on nuclear proliferation. What?

Yes, at 13. And I was, it was very left, and you know, you have like a mentor. Oh, they just said, scratch the record, right? Yeah. So what have you been taught up to the age of 13 that has you able to give a lecture about Israel and non-proliferation? Well, it wasn't Israel and non-proliferation. Oh, he used a non-pliferation. It was like, you know, I was parroting at the time, dove-ish talking points about the need for direct negotiations with the Kremlin.

So, you know, this would have been 1985. Wow, you were right before. Peace Nick Kami in the middle of the Cold War. But at the same time, I went to a summer camp called Camp Galil, which you could probably guess from the name, was part of the labor Zionist tradition. So this is something that... Tell me about the name. Galil is for the land, for the, for the Galil in Israel. Okay.

Okay. So these are, these are, this is a part of something called Habo Nymdra. They still exist. It's a, these are Kibbutz model camps in America. where there is a strong emphasis on, of course, a kind of Zionism, but it's the Zionism of, you know, David Ben-Gurion and not, you know, one of my personal heroes, Monarch and Began. So it's not the revisionist Zionism.

It's a, and it's teaching, in the words of Hitchens, teaching Jews to be farmers. Something like that. No, no, it's true, actually. So that we all had, I mean, I'll just to give you an example, there were two things that were very much emphasized, not just Israel Zionism, but also collectivism. So if you're, you know, I don't know if you went to sleepaway camp when you were a kid. Okay.

So when you go to sleepaway camp, your parents send care packages. But this became known as Kupah, which was shared with the rest of the buck. So nobody, so your parents sending you, you know, cookies or candy or whatever was not your personal property. put into a collective pool? For your bunk. So, you know, and, and the bunks were, you know, there was Bonim, which is builders, or Khotrim, or rowers. It was all emphasis on the idea of workers and physical labor. Why is this in a foreign language? Uh, that's Hebrew, yeah. You're in Philadelphia. Correct. The camp, but we didn't speak Hebrew in the camp. But it just, it was the name of the camp. It was, okay. It's part of the labor Zionist movement. And it's, and it's, it's a, and that's still

going on in the 80s? Yes, I think it might still be going on now. I don't know if it still exists now, but I know that, and weirdly, I didn't, kind of getting back to the theme of my bar mitzvah, I became completely freaked out by the day after in threads. You must remember. Yeah, there was a lot of people were scared. So I was, convinced there was going to be some nuclear holoca, I mean, I was, I was, you know, and so I couldn't stop talking about it. I was, for that reason, unpopular in the camp. And, but, but, but, but, let's go swing on a rope. Well, Eli wants to talk about the, the, nor, I mean, and Proliferation Treaty in the mean one.

There's a little gathering over there for the NPT people. Right. There's of one, right. So, yeah, so this was, and then looking back at it, it was, I would say there were all kinds of levels of indoctrination, but not just Zionism is a very left-wing indoctrination, so that we had, you know, I mean, we had an activity one day. I remember it was stock market day where we were told the camp is being taken over by a corporation and you all get shares in the camp.

And they set up a stock thing. And, of course, all the values of the shares crashed. And we were told, speaking of Kupah, I should say, that was what you could redeem your certificates for at the end. And, you know, these are, these are like nine, ten, eleven, twelve-year-old. They were indoctrinating you in the evils of capitalism. So then, yes, and then at one point, it's all worth nothing. And then there are breakout discussion groups and say, what have we learned? Anyway, that's a real thing.

Good God. Yeah, no, I mean, and it's interesting as you go back and you really, realize that there's a lot of, I mean, you know, summer camp is, can be quite political, not just for, not just for Zionist Jews. But as I said, it was the Kibbutz model. Right. And you wouldn't call yourself a red diaper baby. You were more like a peacock, hippie baby. Yeah, I mean, but we, I mean, I grew up where we had people, we had neighbors who would, who went to Nicaragua and stayed with Sandinistas and came back and told us about, you know, the civil war in Nicaragua and the evils of the contras and things like that.

So, well, I was embedded in the New Republic writing about why the contras need to be supported. Yes. You are not in the same position as I was. No, I mean, I was definitely. Although, actually, no, I'm like, I wasn't for the contrary. I remember that it was one of the very earliest things at New Republic. I was like, I don't agree with this. But everyone else did.

In retrospect, I do agree with the contras, but okay. Right. Like, I'm going back. Well, you can imagine, 1985, the New Republic, it's not. It was actually this scandal that the New Republic came out. and door stage to the contras. If you...

Right. It was like, at the time, you could see cartoons in the Washington Post of people being directed to the contrasection of a restaurant

and the anti-controsection of the restaurant. That was the, that was the polarization of that period. So here's the question. It's just a very basic, quick cut to the chase.

How then does a Peasnick, hippie, become such a ferocious defender of the state of Israel and a defender of war, the wars that you believe are necessary to defend the state of Israel. How did that transition happen? I'm just curious as to when that began to happen, when you began to... Well, I think it's a process.

I mean, one thing I noticed in the early 90s when I was an undergraduate was that I came into college, identified as very much on the left. I mean, you could dig this up if you went through the Trinity newspaper, the tripod archives. I wrote a column once called Why I'm a Socialist. There's nothing like, it's so weird. There's so many people, so many neocons who once wrote essays like that. Sure. Well, I think I'm one of the last though. Well, the last. It was a tradition, though. The younger, like my friend Matt Contenetti never went through this space. I've talked about it. Like, he never went through like, okay. But it's also, some of it's of age. I mean,

I'm 53. So I actually have a memory of what it was like to live in a world with the Soviet Union, to understand the ideological conflict and to be around people who still had, who believed in the idealism of socialism. And then I think a big part of it was kind of living through the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. So that kind of cured you of the naive leftism.

I want to say that there's a difference, though, because being raised kind of on the Jewish left, I should say, one constant vigilance about the refused next thing, Jews were not allowed to leave the Soviet Union. Natanzi was a hero in my household. Deservedly so. Absolutely. He's one of the great figures in my view of the 20th century. And then I think there was also this sense about Israel where you really begin to see it, I think, after the 67 war, particularly the European left. But then by the 90s when I'm in college, I become uncomfortable with the direction of things. Although it was not nearly as pronounced as it is today about where if you wanted to, be a good standing member of the left, you kind of had to be anti-Zionist or against

Zionism. But I also, in the 90s... Wouldn't it be more expressed as support for the Palestinians than anti-Zionism? I mean, I think the bulk of it didn't want to... Okay. Wanted a two-state solution, I would say. That was the framework. Once we have the beginning of this two-state solution, I supported it in the 90s, like as many people did. The two-state solution was proposed in 1947. I mean, it's a lot of... older than... Well, sure, no, arguably was proposed in the Peel Commission before that even. But my point is, is that once you had renewed emphasis on it after the Madrid conference and then obviously Oslo, like everybody, I don't, I mean, it was a weird thing, because I come to Washington

in 94, at the end of 94. So, I mean, I'm sure you remember this. I was not writing about it at the time, but like, everybody was pretty much, I mean, who were the holdouts? There were a few, I guess, but, you know, you had APAC briefing conservative think tanks on the importance of the Oslob, you know, solution. Well, I just remember a moment in the New Republic where Charles Kavanaugh wrote a column saying, this is why the Palestinians will never agree, this, that, and the other. And the day before it went to press, they did. He had to write a column, just scrambling. I just remember that particular moment. Charles was right the first time.

seems, but we can get into that. I mean, we're not. But there was, and you could tell, honestly, that Marty at the time was also you could feel just horrified at the idea of peace in the Middle East. It's like this is, well, no, I'm being a little facetious there, obviously. But the idea that this might be settled in some two-state solution really unnerved, I think a lot of Israel supporters at that point. I don't know about, well, okay, you know, it's hard for me to say because.

Well, I just heard them say this. I wasn't, you were there at the New Republic. I listened to the conversations and this was, there was. 9-11 was my kind of, I'm like a post-9-11 New Republic, so I don't, I was, in that period, I was not, I wasn't in that world. I was covering, I was a newsletter reporter covering, but in general, the majority of liberal Jews was psyched about the Oslo. Oh, totally. And it was a huge breakthrough. And it was the last time, I think any of us felt any serious hope for the place.

But there was a. faction quite clearly quite deep that saw so so iran especially as as the future enemy correct well rabine the uh the the great you know the martyr i could say of of oslo was absolutely ringing the alarm about iran and its proxies in lebanon and its and humas and osseh i mean is islamic jihad And these were organizations that were also against the peace process on, you could say, the behest of Iran. And he, because for obvious reason, Iran was a real rival to Israel in the region. It actually has the potential to be a real, you know, it's a big country, it's got a big economy, it's a serious player. If they are dedicated to hostility towards Israel, it's a problem for Israel.

Well, yeah, I would slightly say it as well, yeah, I would slightly say it as, we're going to get into our disagreement soon. But I would say the problem with, because in this period, officially Saudi Arabia was also against the recognition of any Jewish state and in a serious way. Not in, I mean, in theory it is now. But, I mean, we know that there's enormous cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia. There's a kind of secret alliance. But in that period of the 1990s, this was still the aftermath of what are known as the three nose after the 16th.

war from all of the Arab states. No peace, no recognition. There's another one, which is not occurring to me right now. I feel embarrassed. But there was a sense, let's say, in the mid-90s, late-90s, that the threats to Israel were coming from Iraq, Iran, and Iran's proxy. So when you go back and see that document, the Clean Break document, which was a sort of neoconservative document from 96. Let's discuss, yes. Well, I say let's discuss, because there you have it. You have this grand strategy. Let me finish. Okay.

Let's just explain what this is. A grand strategy from Israel that we have the problem of Iraq, which we need to get rid of because Saddam is, but we mainly have the problem of Iran. That's the third, but Syria was another place they wanted to deal with. And so they came up with a strategy of absolutely fuck the Oslo Accords, that they're non-starter, assume that they're not going to work. Now we need to aggressively clean break for Moslow. That was the context.

That's what they meant by clean break in order to really create a more resilient Israel that was strategically much more secure, militarily much more secure, and could do what it wanted in the occupied territories. And that was its core dynamic because they also wanted to populate the occupied territories to take them over at some point. I have to go back. I have not read the Clean Break memo for many years, but I remember writing about it because it was a big story in the aftermath of the Iraq War. And the argument was, and you see it now revived by people like Dave Smith, the comedian podcaster, that this was the roadmap and lo and behold, look, all these countries were taken out. To which I have to say, it doesn't, like, that's kind of ridiculous because the Iraq War was a lot of, explicitly about the failure of Saddam Hussein to comply with all of the previous UN Security Council resolutions having to do with disarming after the first Gulf War, as you know.

I don't think anybody's saying that this document was every government official in America referred to it every time they made a decision. No, no, no. No, no one's saying that. Neither am I saying there's some grand plot here. I'm just saying it's quite obvious from the 90s onwards that there was. So it's not an Israeli document. It's a U.S. document.

It's a think tank document. It's the project for a new American century. Yes. And some of those people. Is that Israeli or is that American? Oh, come on. Can you not tell the difference? It's Americans who have a view of the Middle East that are defense intellectuals or

policy intellectuals. And some of those people like David Wormser or Paul Wolfowitz went into the next administration. But that does not, you know, every time this, brings up just to give you a sense. At the same time that Project for a New American Sensory was writing, you know, issued the Clean Break memo, Dick Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton, and he was part of a group of in business interests called USA Engage. And his, and that thing, that organization had a policy prescription that said, let's lift

every sanction on all of these countries because more American investment will ultimately lead over time to liberal democracies. Now, Dick Cheney ended up overseeing policies that were the opposite of that in many ways. So I don't know what, you know, it's very kind of date and time specific. I think it was a reflection of the undeniable connection between authoritarian regimes and the support of terrorism as a tool of state craft. And I think it was addressing those things. Again, I have not read it in a long time. No, I'm not trying to really want. I'm just trying to say that there was a faction, it's called it a faction,

that clearly saw the possibility of a settlement of the Palestine situation as a threat. They did all they could to undermine the peace process and Oslo, and wanted a strategy whereby, as I said, Israel would eventually knock out all of its regional rivals and become supreme. I would counter on that as well because one of the, I mean, the Israeli prime minister for two years in the 90s, Benjamin Nanyahu, who emerges after a wave of terrorist attacks following the assassination of Rabin and you have the Likud government, you know, is somebody who's on the Israeli right and the Israeli right is sort of skeptical of Oslo, but he ends up as prime minister, even though I know you're going to mention he said something that was recorded to some supporters at one point. in like 2001 or something. But he ends up signing the Y River Accord. What was that he said?

What he said is we can move the American public or something. However I want, they're just a potty in my hands. Listen. Why would he say such a thing? Politicians say all kinds of things of different constituencies. I don't believe, by the way, and we'll get into this, that Israel can do that. And I think there's plenty of examples of recent and, you know, recent history and lots of recent history of Israel not getting one at once.

we can we can kind of list them including under trump but the point is is that he as prime minister signs the white river accords and is still very much within the oslo paradigm and so that when he is he loses the election in 99 to ahud barak barak has a an oslo peace process that he then tries to kind of finish the deal and so when you're talking about enemies of peace or people who wanted to get rid of it i mean i think we have to then also count Yasser Arafat in that equation, who does not ever give a counteroffer in, you know, as Ehud Barak gives, according to Bill Clinton and almost everybody with the exception of Rob Malley, who was a junior guy in that, in the peace team, the most attractive offer that Israel could possibly give. And even if you want to

say, well, that's still not good enough, but there was no counteroffer at the second camp, David talks from Arafat. And then what's worse is that then this is followed by what's known as the second Intifada, of which I don't, we can debate about, I don't, I don't want to get into whether it was planned, but it was certainly, Arafat did not use his influence to try to rein it in. I think you can say there are plenty of factions, more dominant actually on the Palestinian side than on the Israeli side that didn't want a two-state solution to work. Right. Let's just, that's be track about that. of the chairman of the Palestinian Authority and the person...

And I don't think Netanyahu ever, ever, even at the start of his career thought a Tuesday solution was where he personally wanted Israel to go. But look, there are differences of opinion within Israel on this. Yeah, well, okay, what I'm saying is that Arafat was attacked by Sharon in the post-Barrac elections for his agreement to kind of, I guess, codicels or addendums to the Oslo, agreement, known as the Y River Accords. He was painted as somebody who was not a true opponent of the two-state solution, as Sharon was Mr. Security. And that had a residence with Israeli voters

during this horrific period known as the Second Intifada in the aftermath or the ashes of Oslo. Now, do I think that Netanyahu desperately wants a two-state solution and understands that issue the way. Of course he doesn't. He doesn't agree with it. He doesn't think it's particularly important. His entire party doesn't. Correct. However, there, but I would also, I would also point out that much like Trump, Netanyahu is also ideologically quite flexible. So when Americans elected Obama that made the peace kind of revoked the peace negotiations or two-state solution a priority, you got pretty much a compliant. Are you kidding me? I'm not kidding you.

I'm 100% serious. We haven't even gone to Iran yet. Before Obama takes office in that interregnum, Netanyahu takes the opportunity to bomb the crap out of Gaza just to make sure that the atmosphere as poison as possible. Then they spend the next. I'm sorry. I sat there, Eli, they did all they could to prevent, prevent any movements on. You think he did it because Obama was elected? Do you think he did it because there was yet another rocket war that was launched?

by Hamas. Come on. It was in the middle of war. Because the commitment to settling the West Bank, to occupying it, annexing it, and making it part of Israel, is fundamental to Benjamin Nishinyahu. And any two-state solution would prevent that. He has been dedicated. He said so himself to killing the two-state solution his entire political career. Okay. So when...

So let's not talk about him being compliant with Obama. Okay, when Obama is elected... First of all, I think... Let me just let me just sort of say this, because this is where my... and patience began to really run dry with Israelis. Obama comes in after this catastrophe of Iraq War and wants to, with great public support, reorient us to get us slightly balanced in the Middle East.

And the Israelis do everything they can to destroy that president and that presidency. Oh, come on. They absolutely did. I saw it with my own eyes. Absolutely not. I 100% disagree. The first term of Obama,

You have Netanyahu. When does a foreign country's president, prime minister, come to the U.S. Congress to rally the Congress against the sitting president of the United States? Okay. You're now in the second. Okay. You're mixing apples and oranges, Andrews. So let's just talk about two different things. We started talking about Oslo. And we started talking about a two-state solution. And the historical record supports this. You could look up his Bar-I-Lan University speech, which was given under the pressure of the Obama administration. And you can all. also see that he agreed to a settlement freeze in order to get Mahmoud Abbas to come to the table. All of that is true. Mahmoudabas, by the way, never really came to the table. But let's leaving aside. Now then you're talking about the second term, and you're talking about an Iran deal, which he absolutely was trying to sabotage,

because he saw it as a disaster for Israeli security. And those are, I think, two very different things. I do not think it was a matter of Israel trying to destroy Obama's presidency. I think it was Israel saying that, or Netanyahu, and I think it was Netanyahu clearly looking at what was being negotiated without Israel at the table and saying that this is a death warrant for us. Use the term sabotage. When does an ally sabotage another ally? Under what conditions? You did.

But didn't you first use it? No. Okay. Maybe check the table. Okay. I would say he opposed. In fact, in fact, we all assume that happened. Okay. He did try and sabotage it. And I'm just asking. So we're talking about the Iran deal now. Yes, we're talking about JCPOA. We're talking about the successful achievement of Iran agreeing not to be in danger to us with respect to nuclear weapons.

Now, clearly, Nanyahu was terrified that there might be a more balanced American approach to the Middle East in which we might actually be. able to balance the Sunnis and the Shiites. And we wouldn't, our entire Middle East and policy, wouldn't be entirely premised on ending the two-state solution in Israel. No. No. What Israel and not just Israel, but many good faith patriotic American critics of this particular deal argued was that you went into these negotiations trying to neutralize. an ill-begotten an illegal nuclear program, an industrial-sized nuclear program, and you ended up with a deal where Iran was able to keep its ill-begotten nuclear program in exchange for a promise not to build weapons. And that itself was hardly a guarantee that they wouldn't. You're trusting

the word of a revolutionary regime. There were all sorts of a revolutionary regime. There were all sorts of, again, that lies constantly and violates all kinds of other diplomatic agreements. And so the idea that you would allow them to keep their mass banks of centrifuges, you have provisions in them from when they can upgrade their centrifuges. And not only that, you lift the limits after 15 years or 10 years in some cases to the amount of low enriched uranium they can have, which gives them an advance. I know it wasn't good enough for Israel, but certainly good enough for the United States. I don't think it was good enough for anybody. Well, I think it was. I'm saying, and also, by the way, in the process, that deal throws out, you know, the understanding that other American allies who wanted nuclear energy, like the United Arab Emirates, the old deal was that you can have nuclear energy, but you cannot enrich your own uranium.

And here we are making a special exemption for the leading sponsor of terrorism in the world that, by the way, right after, I want to just make this very clear. We would never make an exemption for the NPT for anybody, would we? Well, Israel isn't signed in the NPGA. Oh, that's the, that's, that's, that's, that's your rhetorical slide of hand. What a rhetorical slide of hand? These people are, have an illicit nuclear bomb, yes. They didn't sign the nuclear nonproliferation. From our point of view, the belief, I mean, you wrote your bomb, it's for essay on the nonproliferation,

here is one of the biggest violators of the nonproliferation. And you can say they're not a violator because they didn't sign it, but that's a completely Well, there's another important distinction. They developed a nuclear bomb. Yes, thank God. Against American desires and will. Well, that's debatable. And also, let me just do with it.

Under the law, the United States is not allowed to sell arms to people who have illicit nuclear weapons. Okay. Then we had another law passed to make that an exemption. Now, I just... There is, for the record. There is an understanding. How on earth? Have we had any...

This is a brilliant achievement. that illicitly nuclear-armed Israel never gets calls on it in this country, ever. Yes, there's a reason for that. What's the reason for that? Well, it goes back to the Nixon administration and the aftermath of the Six-Day War, which is when Israel, most people, believe, mastered. It's, I always like to say, Israel went nuclear somewhere between Sergeant Pepper and the White album.

But there was an agreement. Those are dates that Eli knows very well. Anyway, I'm wearing a John and Yoko. Right now, he is wearing a t-shirt of John and Yoko, for God's sake, in their in bed in Paris space. Yes, okay. I am wearing a t-shirt that says grumpy daddy. We're now both grumpy daddies. Yes.

I'm getting grumpy. But under Richard Dixon, there was an agreement with a secret agreement between Nixon and Nixon. Golda Mayer, who was the Prime Minister, that Israel would never announce publicly that it had a nuclear program. But of course, everybody, I mean, the Americans knew there's a series of how the world came to know, but like, you know, probably Israel's Arab neighbors understood by the 73 war. And the world knew because of Mordecai Venei, who was the defector who talked, I think, to the Times of London and gave an interview saying he worked on the nuclear weapons program. My point here is that it was in America's interest at that point once Israel had the nuke,

that Israel would not be, what is it, declared nuclear power at that point. Why? Because then you avoid the potential for an open arms race in the Middle East. Oh, surprise, surprise. Yes. You mean, if someone in a region acquires a nuclear weapon, the people in the- Israel has a long-standing, my point. In the region, like, Jesus Christ, only one country has a nuclear weapon.

and they can do what the fuck they want because they have a veto of what we need to do, obviously. Someone has to get a balance of this. Okay. Isn't that the entire argument of non-proliferation? No. So Israel went ahead unilaterally. Correct. Unilaterally altered tremendously the balance of power in the Middle East.

Yes. By getting a nuclear weapon. And then ask the United States to make sure no one else ever in the region ever gets one to balance them. Well, no. Why the fuck would we do that? United States. No, Israel acquired a nuclear weapon because all of its neighbors since its inception have tried to destroy it and said so openly. And so when it's developing a nuclear weapon, literally all of its neighbors, ironically not Iran, because it has good relationships with

Shah, the Muhammad Shah, the father of resapalavi. But the point is that, of course they developed a nuclear weapon because they needed to have the ultimate kind of deterrent. But in Instead of having a situation where Israel was an open and declared nuclear power, what you had is the sort of understanding that it would not acknowledge that it had nuclear weapons because then that was sort of the best they can do. And that, by the way, hell. And you haven't given an answer to this. No, I have given you an answer. There's absolutely no reason. Hold on.

Go back to the first thing I said. The reason that Israel developed is because from its inception, the state of Israel was the, all of its neighbors have pledged to try to destroy it. Sure. Sure. Okay. Okay. So that's why. Yes, but by the same argument, why can't Iran have a nuclear weapon?

Because no one's pledging to try to destroy Iran, including Israel. I'm sorry, we don't know what anybody will do. The whole point, the whole point, the whole point, the whole point, the whole point, you can't possibly think that there's a similar weapon. The whole point of having a nuclear weapon is mutually assured destruction. We tolerate the Chinese communist having a weapon. We had Stalin having a nuclear weapon. Because we understood that even. We would rather they didn't.

Yes, of course. But actually, I'm not sure it would have been a great thing if only one country in the world had nuclear weapons forever. I think it would be a very destabilizing thing. Well, I think it would be great. But I think if you have only one country in a volatile region like the Middle East that is nuclear arms, all the other countries are going to feel extremely vulnerable.

And it is entirely reasonable for them to take extra measures to make sure. or they aren't the only way to be protected when you have a threatening nuclear power that is talking about, by the way, the way that Israelis talk about what they're going to do to the regime, is to get your own nuclear weapon. And it's perfectly, and for the United States point, from the United States point of view, there are two possible options for stability in that region. One is to allow someone else to get a nuke, to balance it out.

Or the other is to do the unthinkable, which says, tell Israel, if you don't get rid of this nuclear weapon, we're withdrawing our support for you. Okay, except, no, except, first of all, it doesn't work that way. But why doesn't it work that way? Israel's not a satrapy of America. I mean, that's the first thing. It has its own national interest. Why are we giving it?

Why do we? Well, I'm glad you brought that up. I mean, we can talk about this in another segment, but I'm at, I'm, when we actually get to the Iran war, so maybe, you know, you can, you can, you can pause it here for the non-paying listeners, I guess. But the point is, I would agree at this point that I would end the subsidy. I would completely change the dynamics of the relationship. I would like it all paid back. What? I like it all paid back.

I think Israel is paying it back, Andrew. With interest. I mean, Israel absolutely is paying it back. This is like an insane. When you think of Trump, this is insane to me. You think of Israel as a boat anchor? Israel is the best ally militarily that America has right now. It is absolutely.

Think of Trump for a second. Okay. Trump is basically breaking up NATO because they're not doing their fair share, right? And he's demanding payback for all of it. With Israel, it's like, how much more money can I give you? What is, why? Why is there such a difference between his relationship to a NATO-Alo like Germany, say, or Poland, who have to cough up their own money to do all this?

And he actually almost breaks up NATO for that principle. But when it comes to Israel, it's like, how much money do you need? Right. So, first of all, I'm not entirely sure that I would say that I agreed with you that. I agreed with you that his reckless and insane brief and hopefully, hopefully brief and no more fixation with Greenland was, you know, an embarrassment as an American. So, I mean, I remember you wrote very passionately about that. But I would just say that the, and you're putting me. in a weird position because I don't think that Trump is necessarily trying to destroy NATO. I think

what Trump is trying to say is you are counting on America to defend Ukraine from Russia when Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a direct security challenge to you and you're not footing the bill. And there are deeper questions here, Andrew, about the readiness of European militaries even and the ability for Europe to project power in a situation, even on its own continent, that from a hard power analysis is a problem. Then I'm saying now let's compare it to Israel. First of all, you have to look at the fact that Israel in the last 20 or so years has become a leader in just because it encompasses so many things, what's called defense tech innovation. So in that respect, I'll just give you one example. As I'm sure you've followed in the Iran war,

right now, we are facing a kind of terrible math problem. It's cheaper to make ballistic missiles than it is to produce interceptors for our missile defense systems, and the cupboard is bare, and we cannot help defend Ukraine and Israel and Saudi now and Qatar and the Gulf states and also have enough interceptors for any eventual problem we might have in the Pacific with China. All of that is a problem that defense nerds have been writing about now for the last few years, but everybody should know it's a serious issue. Well, Israel has developed a technology known as the iron beam, which shoots out missiles with a laser, which is far more cost efficient. That is an Israeli technology that will, the first person in line is America to use for, now Trump has a lot of

bad ideas. I think one of his good ideas is something he calls Golden Dome, which is this missile defense for America. If you could have missile defense for America that used Israeli laser technology like Iron Beam, then that's an example of how Israel is paying back with its enormous innovation and the alliance between Israel and the United States. And that's just one of several kinds of innovations that Israel has done that will keep America's military at the leading edge and with the qualitative and quantitative advantage over its rivals. So you're saying they're more important than NATO allies? The NATO allies that actually sent their own troops to die for... First of all, I'm sure Israel would have sent its troops to die if they were asked,

but of course for reasons that we both understand, they were not sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. But the point is that... But my point is that my point, Eli, is this, that Trump is prepared for the countries that have sent their own sons and daughters to die in coercion forces, countries that have been allied wars with the United States. He's still prepared to say, you're still not paying enough. You're still not doing your fair share. And it is not even... even at any point imaginable that he could ever say such a thing to the Israelis. Well, actually, we have an example of that because Netanyahu publicly said he'd like to

phase out the military aid and Trump objected to it. Now, let's get to why. Why would Trump this country, why every rule break for this one place? Why would Trump object to it? Now, without getting into kind of conspiratorial reasons for that. I think there is one reason for it, which I don't think, by the way, is a good one because we are fundamentally in agreement that Israel should give up the subsidy. That's, that is my position. I'm not talking about that substantive question. I'm talking about double standards. Okay, I'm giving you, which I'm telling you understand why, unless I'm making some bizarre exception. I'm not making a bizarre exception. The vast majority of money that Israel spends through that subsidy is spent on American

armaments. Also, so what? Well, so what? I can pay for it themselves. Sure. Why have we been paying it for them for so long when we don't do that for anybody else? I think that we pay for it. Why did Chuck Schumer say, I am, my job is Senate Majority Leader of the United States, and my job is to get aid to Israel. He's been just outright, that's his number one, one of his number one jobs. And you know it is. Okay. Until very recently, Israel was,

in a very precarious position where it was, again, before the Abraham Accords, you could argue, I mean, the subsidy really starts in earnest as part of the Camp David Accords from at the end of the 1970s. I don't want to get any further as the subsidy point. Wait, wait a second. Because we both agree on the substance. But you have to be able to explain. You're asking why there is because there is by, because the United States has treaty level agreements with Israel and Egypt, Egypt, Egypt, gets originally one billion Israel, it's all gone up in recent years, but I'm saying that that was originally baked into the pretty remarkable peace agreement that was negotiated the one great accomplishment of the Carter administration, you know, only six years after the 1973 war.

So that was part of, as you know, being a former citizen of the United Kingdom, that often subject of the United Kingdom that oftentimes one of the tools of diplomacy, especially for getting peace agreements, is a bit of a bribe. I believe it was it called King George's Calvary is the name of it. Like, we just... Yeah, because we do

nothing else for Israel. We don't really and so we have to bribe them. I understand. To go to peace. Oh, come on. Not bribe them. It was part of the agreement. You just called it a bribe. Well, I'm saying it's part of the terms of the peace agreement. Again, it's look, Israel... I'm trying to give you in the agreement.

Those are to get a good deal. Let's put it that way. We can not only do they do they do they do they have. I feel like I'm not really throwing my back in because I don't support the subsidy. So it's like in a way I agree with you. That's why I'm happy to move on. But I also think that like there's and then again, the investment if you will pays off and that we have this remarkable ally that has developed all these technologies that are

incredibly valuable against our rivals. We've heard that sales pitch many, many times. What have you heard that sales pitch? That's a serious argument. I just gave you a very specific example of it. And I think it's a completely legitimate argument. I agree. And you say that they're doing more better work in advancing military technology than, say, Germany or Britain.

I would say they are at this point. And I don't, frankly, I don't specifically know the answer to that. But anyway, we're not that far apart. I just think that most Americans looking at all this, and this is what's been happening last few years, I've just been going to say, wait a minute. So many of these things are sort of an exception in this case. And you and I are used to, they're not. They're beginning to figure this out.

They're like, well, why are we paying for their defense? We're not paying for NATO. We don't pay them. In fact, we're asking more from them. Anyway, I'm just saying that that's part of what's going on. Two more. Two more. Two more points.

Two more points. The cost of deploying U.S. forces in countries like Korea, Japan, Germany, etc. is a kind of a subsidy, and that is, and contributes to the defense of those countries, and yet it has never spoken about in those terms. So this, I also would say, is part of America being a superpower. Don't you think? Okay, it's part of being a superpower, okay? It's a different arrangement to have, you know, our forces garrisoned in Germany than it is

to simply pay for part of the Israeli defense budget. But I'm just saying it is, this is what, you know, to quote James Brown, to be the boss, that this is a part of being a global power. And again, a lot of it, almost all of it is spent on American stuff. So that affects our economy. It's good for our, to have the, you know, if you're building. They can pay for it. Yeah. Well, we are an agreement in the end that they can pay for it. Okay. But it's interesting. What are the odds of them paying for it in the next 10 years? I hope that it, as I would say, the demonstration of the two air forces working kind of as co-equal allies in the war, at least, is an example of why it should end as soon as humanly possible. I would like to have it end as soon as possible because Israel is, is at this point a full ally.

And then the other side of it. But one one more thing that I think I think I think that. Eli, this is my podcast, not yours. Fair enough. But can I just make one more point on this? I'm going to move. Just one more thing to think about, and then I'll move on very quickly. For those who do not like Israel's policy, when you eliminate a subsidy like that, and Israel is no longer dependent on, I think, a quarter or more of its defense budget being part of an American subsidy, that also provides less visibility and less influence into Israel as a matter, of course.

So there is a double-edged sword there that you also purchase. a degree of influence and also visibility into Israeli military planning. It's a, it's a, you bring up the next topic. Okay. So the benefit is we have all this influence in Israel. Correct. Well, so. So this superpower that is primarily responsible for this country's survival,

existence in, in many ways. I mean, not entirely, but it's, it's an underwriter. Okay. I think we can say that. And over the years, it's asked some things of the state of Israel that did a Kyiv, right? Yeah. So obviously the nuclear stuff was not something the United States wanted. Well, that was before there was any subsidy whatsoever.

I know. I know I'm just talking about another relationship here. Okay. I'm talking about whether we have any influence there. Yeah. So we obviously were a key underwriter of their existence when they just told us to go, fuck ourselves and got themselves a nuclear bomb. And certainly we're not willing to give it up afterwards. The other question that we had was we understand you defended yourselves in 67 and 73.

And in many ways, many of us admired that defense. But what's happened is that you now occupy a bunch of territory that if you stay there, it means there will never be a two-state solution. and therefore do not change the demographics of it to make it so that there are more Jews and so that eventually you'll claim it as your own because that is only going to fuel desperation on the part of the Palestinians. It's going to give the sense that they have no chance whatsoever. It's going to make the more violent, terroristic. And it's also against the Geneva Conventions that we understand that we do not seize land

and then populate it with your people so that you will get a majority so you'll be able to control the area now. We've asked, we've asked that again and again and again and again and again and again and again. And every single time they have told us go fuck yourself, go fuck yourself, go fuck us. No, they haven't. Yes, they have. First of all, the Israeli government participated in... How many settles are there now on the West? I don't know.

You tell me. Was it 500,000? I don't know. Why would you care? I don't know everything about Israel. I know a lot about Israel. Oh, but you don't know anything about the West Bank because no one ever talks about the West Bank. People talk about it all the time.

They do not. Absolutely. How much have we talked about it since this war with Iran started? Not at all. But in fact, it's a grand opportunity. We're talking about it. Okay, it's a war with Iran. So this is the other thing.

My point is this. We have no influence. That's not true. If the only influence we have is so pathetic than on none of the major issues in which we have disagreements Netanyahu imposed a settlement freeze at Obama's request in his first term. He imposed a settlement freeze at Obama's request just to restart the negotiations. Settlement freeze? Yes.

Why are there any settlements there at all? Oh, I'm glad you mentioned that because they removed all the settlements from Gaza and then Hamas takes over. I mean, you have to look at this from the perspective. I was talking about West Bank who just changed the subject. And they also dismantled five settlements in that process known as disengagement under Sharon. After him, Ehud Olmert gets to the point where he can offer at the end of the Bush administration, another offer of a kind of final two-state solution, and Abbas is either too weak or too ornery, and that is rejected. Then there is this experience in the Israeli polity, which I think you have to account for, which is that every time they've withdrawn from territory, like Gaza, or for that matter, southern Lebanon, which happened, southern Lebanon, of course, happens at the end of the 1990s in 2000,

and then Gaza happens in 2005, 2006. And when that happens, or 2005, rather, what replaces it? Fanatics, armed fanatics. As those who've lost, as those who told people on behalf of Iran. You're going to radicalize them even further. No, no, no.

This is when they leave. This is when they leave. So they get out of Gaza. It's briefly under the control of the Palestinian. authority. Palestinian Authority loses a legislative election to Hamas. Hamas then says that they're going to take over Gaza. They do, and they turn it into a military staging ground, taking the entire population of Gaza hostage, and launch a series of wars with Israel. Ditto for southern Lebanon with Hezbollah.

That is an argument, say this is on the West Bank, to keep it under, it's not an argument to actually add population to it. Well, when you say adding population to it. I mean, deliberately, I mean, I'm just listening to the people in the actual cabinet of the current prime minister. And again, no, you're not going to say that they don't, I don't agree with them. No, they are the government of Israel. Okay. And they are speaking for the government of Israel.

And they say our goal is greater Israel, get rid of these Palestinians, get rid of these Arabs entirely. And they are engaging in a policy of unbelievable harassment, violence, intimidation. against people from their own lands in the West Bank. And it's, of course, it's something that any person in the world would say stop doing this. My point is if we have all this influence, we've asked them to stop. How is it there now four times as many people there as there were when this whole process started? And is now completely unstoppable. And the government itself says it's deliberate. It will never stop. We will continue until we have a majority. And then these other people can just go somewhere else. Well, there is a formula.

that is originally under Oslo, and conceivably, if you had a Palestinian leadership that was interested in actually ending the conflict, that there would be the equivalent of land swaps because you would have areas that were majority Jewish, and then you would have other parts of pre-67 Israel, and it could be negotiated. But you know, the current settlement are designed specifically in those places which are not that. The second point I would make is that what Sharon proved in the mid-2000s, was that Israel was capable of completely withdrawing, again, five settlements in the West Bank and every settlement in Gaza. And so that if there was a peace offer, I think it would be very painful. It certainly couldn't happen under this current political arrangement. But the good news about Israel is that they have

lots of elections and things can turn. Now, my view is... The point is... Every day. I want to level set here. I think that Smotrick and Ben-Gavir are Judeo-fascists, and that frightens me. And I want to be totally open with you because we're not just having a kind of formal debate where I'm supposed to be taking this line, you're taking another side. So I want to concede that when Netanyahu initially decided that he would allow himself to run with political parties inspired by the late Merkahana, I was completely against. it and I also thought it was a violation of the principles of the Likud party and or the

Likud coalition I should say that was founded by Monarchum Began. Monarchum Began would leave the Knesset when Kahana for his two years as a member of Knesset spoke as a kind of protest because he did not believe in that kind of thing. Now, I would like for at a certain point and I think it's quite possible that you could see any number of scenarios. In 2021, I think is the year when we saw the kind of. of unity government that included the first Arab party, Mansour Abbas, that actually was part of the ruling coalition. So it's quite possible that you could see another majority in its Fekkafta electoral

system, and you would see, you know, Gavir and Smotrick and that crowd out on their ass, which would be great. That would be great. Let me in the spirit of that to do things. I need to say that I'm with you. All right. There is no question to my mind that Israel is the most functioning good place in the Middle East to be and to live. And I, and there is no question in my mind that it is an astonishing, staggering achievement. And nor any question my mind that, that they technologically help us in terms of the military. Good. Or that, for the most part, the intelligence too. Oh, that's where I'm going to, that's okay. I don't trust these people any further than I can throw them. So yes.

Insofar as they tell us the intelligence they have and probably withhold other intelligence they have, sure, but they're not going to ever act in our interests and never have. And I despise Hamas. I do think the Palestinian leadership has been remarkably stupid and counterproductive. Okay, great. All those things. And I also believe, as you know, it's our own Oslo process right here. But what happened on October 7th was an absolutely horrifying thing. I said so at the time. I was genuinely, personally, horrified by it. And I, although I've never, I've always grew up, brought to be a believer and a friend of Israel. It is the last 20 years that I've just had enough, right?

So I'm in this relationship. I'm done, right? And I think a lot of us here are done. The polling will tell you, I'm not the only one who's sick to death of this stuff, the way they're treating. And the settlement stuff really is to me, by first. far the most important because it is not much to ask, just don't add to them. And they just refuse. And yes, when, in addition to that, we've seen them publicly define the purpose of this

in terms of what Gavir and Smartreish have been saying, it is truly disgusting. And it becomes very difficult for us to support another country and call them Western when they are engaged in that kind of rhetoric and that kind of ethnic cleansing campaign. It's just, and when I see that there's nothing we've been able to do to get that to stop that, that's when I'm like, okay. So, I mean, let's not, let's not we hash Gaza for fuck's sake. Okay. Because we did that two years ago.

We've done that before. Two years ago, we had that conversation. Let's get to where we're on. Let's say that nonetheless, I do think that Israel owes us one for that, just to a great extent. without the United States fucking arms, the bombs that we gave them. Fair. Or diplomatic cover, all the other shit.

I would just, I'd shave a little bit here, which is to say, and then you're not doing this, okay. But one of the lazy memes that has come out, I'm not going to die in another war for Israel, which I have a lot of problems with. Because what the Israelis, certainly, we gave them the arms that they needed. And...

Oh, more than they needed. Well, and under Biden, we withheld some arms in order to try to get them to do certain things. But the Israelis... How much immigrants do you have in that? Zero. But the Israelis fought a war, and the Israelis are flying

with American Air Force, you know, side by side. It's not a matter of, oh, go attack this country for us. It is very much of, I think, a joint project. And that's why when we saw what was happening in Gaza, many of us felt personally and Americans, complicit because the enmeshment was such that even though we were not at war, we were funding and the war and giving the weapons and we had no say over it. And for many of us, I know we disagree about this, but for many of us, it was absolutely unconsciousable in its impact upon civilians.

And I'm not going to have that argument again, but I'm just trying to tell you that's how we see it. Okay, but you would also argue that the war was started by Hamas. Of course. And waged in such a way where I would almost say that these civilian casualties were inevitable. Nothing is inevitable. But if you... No, that word. We're not going to...

We're not going to do. But I don't agree. The way... Would you agree the way of war? The world agrees, Eli. Just for a minute, just ask yourself why no one agrees with you. Anywhere in the fucking world. And the only reason you can say that is...

The Indian Prime Minister just... came to Israel in a very, very, I mean, I could go through the list of areas in which... Oh, I'm not saying they don't cooperate with or say nice things about Israel. I just did. Other people can... But owning what they did there is, is, is, is, it's a, it's a horrible war. It's the end of our relationship with Israel. It will, I think we'll see that. End of our relationship with Israel? The American relationship. I'm a patriotic American. I hope that that doesn't happen. But you can, as a patriotic American, silly way. As someone who loves, our country. I hope that we continue to have this fruitful partnership with this.

We, I mean, I supported Israel's war against Gaza until it became quite obviously just complete saturation massacre. And we couldn't stop it then. But nonetheless, I felt United States did its part. So then we get to the point where there's some remaining issues about the possibility of Iran's nukes. Okay, that's another legitimate question, Israel has that we as their partners and support. So we then go the extra mile, join with them in strikes

upon these nuclear facilities to remove that threat, which we are told by the president himself has been removed, that it's been obliterated. So at that point, I'm like, well, there we go, we're done, thanks.

What else do they want? We've got the West Bank, we've got destruction of Gaza, we've got, embassy moved to Jerusalem we've got structural control the girl around heights we're putting like

the embassy move to Jerusalem in that bucket I don't understand it as things that Israel has gotten from us in the last 10 years

but I don't understand why is that okay I'm just saying these are this what when Westchap first took flight

in 1996 the vibes were a bit different people thought denim on denim was peak fashion inline skates were everywhere and two out of three

women rocked the Rachel while those things stayed in the 90s one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us

at westjet.com slash 30 years. Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything. Like packing a spare stick. I like to be prepared. That's why I remember 988, Canada's suicide crisis hubline. It's good to know just in case. Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a train responder anytime.

988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in Canada. So what did we get back? What did we get back? Okay. This is the fundamental. That's the fundamental. That's the one I'm saying. Can you see that after...

Iran? Can you just see that, here's the point I'm sorry me, after all those things that we've given them, including support in Gaza, including all this aid, including getting rid of the nucleus, that even that was not enough. Oh, please. Even then. Oh, please. Okay. I think you're... What more has that to be done.

Okay. Let's take a step back. I fundamentally disagree with you that disarming and defanging Iran and hopefully resulting in a regime change in Iran is exclusively an Israeli interest. It is an American interest 100%. And when you listed your, when you're explaining, you know, that this is Israel's war, I found myself thinking to myself that you are leaving out lots of other people, including the American interest as to why that it is totally unacceptable to have an Iran and this particular regime with nuclear weapons. But they don't have nuclear weapons.

We were just told they were obliterated. Let's slow down. That's my point. Let's slow down. Can we just let's let's let. No, they're just so done, but this is such a crucial. I'm not overly willing to address that. The American people want to know how this happened.

Okay, so let's separate a couple of things. I agree with your critique of the lack of any kind of process domestically, including going to Congress. And it's a little bit more complicated because I'm going to say that that is a norm that has eroded before Trump. Of course. Under Obama, I might add, as well as others. So, but I think it was a mistake that you had 16 different reasons as to why we're doing the war and that different Trump would say something different every day.

I mean, this starts with, why do you think he says something different every day? That's my question. Okay, well, this is a deeper question. And I want to get back to our debate, but I'm happy to give you my explanation. Well, surely he must have some idea why he's doing this. I think it goes back to the fact that as a young man, Donald Trump, it was personal, friends with and taken in with the flim flam of Norman Vincent Peel. You know who he is. The power of positive thinking. This is something that Trump, before he's a politician, and he's just a developer,

is this idea that if you believe it, if you wish hard enough, it is a reality. And I get into this in a podcast I did. This is the, this is the, because this is the, the man is a bullshitter. Tell me why you think he went to war. Oh, okay. So let's get to the war part, but I'm saying if you want to know why his explanation keeps changing, it's because he is a classic kind of bullshitter. He presents a panorama of a reality he wants you to believe. Okay. That is partly true and partly false and what, and serves whatever he wants it to be in the moment. Which, of course, is that incredibly good in wartime. Well, it's bad in wartime. I'm agreeing with you as bad in wartime. But my point is that that is his personality. But my point is,

no less, sure. But what's the real reason he went to war? After we've gotten rid of the nukes. What was the point? Okay, because first of all, the Iranians... Let's say you are giving the speech. You're a president right now. You're doing this the right way. You're actually telling the American people before the fact, afterwards with the bull capital. Fair enough. Before the fact, we obliterated the nuclear. You can't retract that. We've said that very much on the record. We've obliterated the nuclear arms.

This is why we have to go into an open-ended regime-change war with Iran. This is what's happened since we got rid of those nukes that has made me believe we need to do it. Okay. Well, I think the person who came closest to this was Marco Rubio. And what Marco Rubio said, which was not quoted when he was talking to the reporters and so forth, was that there were, I think there was a belief during the 12-day war and Operation Midnight Hammer, which I might add, the reason there was no risk to those B-2 bombers is because the Israelis had taken out all of the air defense systems. Let's just be straight with that. But the, that there was a

belief that this was, the regime would be demoralized. They could never get back to where they were before. We'd taken out enough of the program. They wouldn't try to restart. And instead, what they were doing is rapidly building up their missile capabilities and stockpiles so that they would have what the phrase from Rubio was a conventional weapon shield in order to protect their new to to eventually make the race for a nuclear weapon so that was the art and so there was a gamble I guess in June that such a demonstration of force would demoralize them and that's why he was I think trying to get a sort of agreement with them no nuclear deal no nuclear ever nothing nothing nothing and the They, Iranians themselves miscalculated, and they said, no, we have an inherent right to enrichment.

We can do all this. And it didn't work out. And that is why we went to war. Because he believed that... So we went to war because of their conventional, their conventional arms, they could rebuild sufficiently at some point to protect a potential future nuclear program. That would make them invulnerable because of the math problem we discussed earlier about interceptors and so forth. Well, they didn't make that argument, obviously, in advance. In fact, it's only been...

No, they made a bunch of different arguments. And it's only been one of many arguments they've made subsequently. So I just have to say... Well, you get no, I mean, I'm agreeing with you. Yes, I know. But then we have to ask themselves, so how did it happen? Especially when we're talking about a Middle East regime change war, which is not nothing in American political history.

No. It has an actual lineage. It has probably one of the most decisive moments in American history in the 21st century when we went to war with Iraq, which is probably been written about, thought about more. Sure. I mean, it forced me to rethink my whole worldview. It really did allow me to be more humble in the face of what I thought I knew, more cautious in the way that one throws, ones to wait around in the world. Since then, we also had the experience of Libya, which was another catastrophe. And this is bipartisan. Obama, I did not give Obama an inch on this stuff either.

Eli, I'm not, I'm an equal opportunity basher on this stuff. It's a big deal. It's a big deal. I agree. Now, someone in that administration didn't think it was a big deal. I want to stress with you that I agree with you that this is a big deal. So then we have to ask us. It is a violation of the War Powers Act that we developed after Vietnam. And it is, oh, no, I should say the violation of the spirit of the war power sector. I want to say that. You could, I mean, yes. Okay.

And I think objectively speaking, the idea this is a strike as opposed to a war. I mean. Agreed. Agreed. It's ludicrous. Okay. So I'm in agreement with that. So you can understand why some of us are mad that this has sprung on us in a way that we thought

would be resolved. What I vigorously objected to. What I am saying is this is not about an imminent nuclear threat. There is no imminent nuclear threat. And here's my other point. that without that imminent nucleotet, you would never have persuaded the American people. You would never have persuaded the American Congress. You would have never have gotten support for this.

Well, you don't have it anyway. I'm not entirely sure, but let's... So here's my suspicion. Okay. These people know they can't win that. They also look and they see where the polling is going. They know this is their last chance. Well, okay.

So they then go into a serious attempt to persuade the President of the United States. This is... You're talking about Israel. Yes. Hasn't done enough. There's all this stuff. This is where I'm going to part with. And we know that we know that Netanyahu visited him again and again and again. We know that from every report, this was the key objective of the Israeli government to get us into this second war after the 12-day war to obliterate their conventional threat.

So. Okay. So I just fundamentally. And there was never a point in which we were told that. The implication here is that Trump was a. not strong enough or didn't have his own reasons to resist the misled? What are you talking about? Do you really think misled? Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner are ever going to be honest brokers with Iran? I don't think Iran was willing to negotiate.

Do you think there was ever a chance they would not recommend going to war? All right. What does that have to do with anything? I would say that your argument that it was Israel discounts the following. One, Iran is an enemy of the United States. It has killed Americans. It has killed Americans and has been a belligerent against the United States since its founding as the Islamic Republic and the 79 Islamic Revolution. That's number one.

We haven't gone to war every year. Correct. Number two. In the sense that there was an opportunity now that Iran's proxy network that it had established in the Middle East, which also not in America's interest, and I'll get to this, also not in our other. Gulf allies' interests, was wrecked by Israel in the sense that it still hadn't rebuilt its air defenses, in the sense that it was in the process of rapidly acquiring lots of conventional missiles to be its conventional shield, but had not yet finished that. This was an opportunity to knock out an adversary when it was going to be far less costly than if we had waited.

Okay, let's just take that point for a minute. That's still against international law under any circumstances. Okay. What? Huh? Thank you. Thank you for that, just that acknowledgement that you don't give a fuck about it. International law is meaningless in these contexts. And that also goes, that also goes, by the way, if you want to get into international law, I am happy to get into international law. But I wouldn't, to go to the entire, I want to look at the entire board, okay. Iran, as a regime, has lived entirely outside of and, you know, in contravention of international law by every measure of how it uses to fight. So I have a problem right now with international law as we understand it

because it is requiring in many ways for kind of, let's just call them, you know, good guy citizen countries to play by rules where its adversaries are clearly violating them. And this is a constant problem. It's a constant problem that we can see it with. you know, it's not as high stakes, but you look at China's behavior with its manipulation of its currency and its manipulation of its exports and so forth and what it means for them to be in the world trade organization. That is an example of how we are asking everybody else to play by a set of rules, but this other country, which doesn't exactly play by those rules,

you know, gets away with it. And then or look at Russia's invasion of Ukraine and so forth. Because we make some, we also understand. the broader benefits of some structure of international order and international order, that we have some respect for boundaries for nation states, or we will be in complete chaos. In other words, you might have a short-term interest in violating them, but we know that the long-term consequences of those violations is the collapse of all order, and therefore you do so with great, great reluctance. I would argue that we're in a League of Nations moment right now, where you have effectively

the end of international law and meaningful sense. Listen, when... You've already agreed. We've already agreed that Iran's nuclear capacity have been pretty much wasted. Certainly would take a long time to reconstitute that the only thing they're doing, how dare they, as a sovereign country,

arm themselves conventionally to protect themselves from these countries that are invading and bombing them. And secondly, we're not talking about just any old... I don't like preemptive, out of the blue, preemptive, Wars of aggression, brutal aggression, which have no immediate threat, no justification onto international law, not having been thought through. I'm not with any understanding of whether it will do more good than harm. Okay, but what do you do when you have an adversary like Iran that painstakingly over two generations built up effectively an alternative state inside of Lebanon? It deprived, it destroyed Lebanese sovereignty with Hezbollah, and the same organization then was used to drop up.

Our interests of the United States, there's plenty of things Iran does horribly in the region, right? A lot of it. Our interest in that compared to our interest, say, in what's happening in Eurasia or what's happening in the Pacific, is minimal. And yet we are, look, where we're talking, is a lot less. I would argue, I think you've got it all wrong. Because once you're taking care of, once you're taking care of, once Israel is basically has complete military hegemony over the Middle East at this point, it has regional supremacy. It's major rival doesn't have any nukes anymore. It is, it is, it's reeling.

That's the moment you said, you said, it's precisely because of that weakness that we chose to strike. And striking, again, illegal against national law, we also did something we, we didn't, the Israelis did. that violates our law, violates all international law, which is to assassinate the entire leadership of another country. Yes. When has anybody else done that? Well, not quite like that. In the last 50 years.

The Soviet Union sent Spetsas and killed or kidnapped the leader of Afghanistan before they invaded. Okay. But that's nothing like this. This is one of the greatest war crimes. Oh, please. In terms of international law. It's a geopolitical mitzvah.

I know you. That's what you. would think. Of course, I don't understand how you can sit here and say, are you really, if the United States. If you think it's a war crime that they killed. Yes. Oh, come on. Yes. Yes. Yes. Because if the principle now is, we cannot object and will not object to any power going into any other country and assassinating their entire leadership, we have no standing now to say we're against that under international law. I feel like Thomas More, and you break down all these laws. we wait till it comes back at you.

Okay. And I would counter... If another country came in, assassinated, our top leadership... Yes. You think we... Again, it's such a contest violation. You are making a category error.

You're making a category error because you're pretending that the leadership of the Islamic Republic is somehow, like any other nation-stated, isn't. We have court documents that they have had attempted to not only assassinate President Trump, they attempted to assassinate Massia Linearjad. And they have, by the way, done it in Europe and America. They have sent their

agents. This is a revolution pretending to be a country. So in my view, ideally, there would be some sort of international body in which, I don't know. I mean, I'm just spitballing here where, you know, you could say, for the following reasons, this regime has relinquents. the benefits of the sovereignty that we would afford to other nation states because of its actual behavior, whether it is hollowing out the sovereignty of Lebanon, whether it is aiding and assisting the survival of Bashar Assad when he is in the middle of using chemical weapons against his own civilians, whether it is, frankly, the great threat to the Republic of Letters by issuing a fatwa against Salman Rushdie. Everything this regime does to me says that they have relinquished

any of those benefits of sovereignty. It would have been nice if there was some way that we could have made that case before the United Nations or something like that and explained that this is a special kind of operation or special example, a special case or something along those lines. But it is not the same as simply going

and taking out the top leadership of Belgium and you know it. Iran is a revolutionary. It's not a status quo power. I'm sorry. International law does not make those distinctions. Well, then that is a weakness right now of international. law and I would go back to Emmanuel Kant. Probably if we hadn't gotten involved in Iran in the 50s in the first place, I'm glad you brought that up. I would like to counter that as well. I'm not going to go about

that. I'm just going to say the amount of damage this country is done to the country of Iran is really incalculable over the years. The damage has been done by, no, no, I'm sorry, the damage was done by Ayatollah Ruhola Khomeini when he stole a popular revolution and turned. And turned his country into a medieval theocratic police state. And in so doing, the first victims, of course, were the Iranians themselves and the rest of the region. And frankly, the rest of the world, if you count their forays into assassination of domestic opposite opponents, whether they were Kurdish leaders in Austria or Germany, or the former prime minister in Paris, you can go through the list from its very beginning.

You're not going to get me to defend the activities or nature of the Iranian regime. If you care about international law, what do you do about a state that is committed to its violating and undermining it? And spreading an Islamic revolution. You make sure that you are defended well against it, that so far as it does have a risk of a nuclear thing of getting,

or ICBMs that could reach us, it can't, and you contain it. That's what we did with the Soviet Union. That's what we've done with a million other disgusting regimes. And one of the things we found out in Iraq is that sometimes containing a regime may be preferable to unboxing it and blowing it up and seeing what happens next. So those are the concerns I have. The other concern I have is that obviously once the nuclear capacity had been removed and the ICBMs are way off, the threat to America is over. The threat to Israel is not in many ways for the conventional reasons. So Netanyahu then makes an extra effort to ask for more after the 20-25 bombings.

And they're lobbying very hard for this. Lindsay Graham is shuttling back and forth from his home base in Israel, occasionally visiting South Carolina. Come on, it's fucking weird. The dude is popping up there like he's having a fucking heart attack. I don't understand, Andrew. I don't understand. You and I have a very, you and I have a disagreement, I think, about America. America's national interest, which is to be expected in a vibrant democracy. People can have

disagreements about what the interest is. This is the sound of me lighting my second joint here. Okay. You and I have a disagreement. What I resent, and I caught a little bit of it there from you, but you hear it all the time from everybody from John Mears Shimer to Tucker Carlson, is that somehow only one side of that debate is really interested in American interest, and the other side has placed a country ahead of the national interest. whereas my argument has always been that, A, the U.S.-Israel Alliance is very much in America's national interest, and that Iran and getting rid of the Iranian regime when there is a golden opportunity to do so is also in the American national interest. I accept, by the way, that people disagree with me, but I don't accuse you of somehow being disloyal as an American in some way.

I did not forget disloyalty because you specifically in your piece said that. I completely understand that you think that this is the interest of the United States as much as Israel. And why can't Lindsay Graham? Lindsay Graham also thinks that. Why can't he? Okay. I can also objectively say simply as a matter of geography that it is much, that the Israel has a much greater interest in what happens in Iran than the United States. As I would say the same thing about Germany and Ukraine, for example.

Okay. No, we are a long, long, long way away. Okay. And we spend an awful amount of money and $3 billion a day, it seems like at this point. Okay. So we're having an argument then not so much about. Okay, I want to just get to something that didn't come. I want to make a point.

It's very important. It's very important. It's complicated. It's not just Israel that has an interest in ending the Islamic Republic. No, of course not. Okay, it's millions. The world does. A million's of Iran.

Okay, thank you. The whole world. In terms of domestic politics and international politics, I don't want to let the Saudis off the hook because they were neutral publicly. But then we found out that Muhammad bin Salman, the crown prince, had been pushing Trump as well. Okay. So, and if you look at, let's put it all on the table here, you look at the interests of the Trump family as well as the Whitkoff family and others. The opinions of Gulf Nation shakes and so forth would, would I think be quite influential. And they're all

privately saying, go ahead and do it. So it's not just Israel that's saying it. That's internationally. And then domestically, I just think that you're looking at, I think a lot of Americans would just simply say, yeah, I remember the hostage crisis. I remember Kobar Towers. I remember the Marine Barracks. I remember the IEDs. I mean, there are so many things that the Iranians have done over the years that I think they would say, yeah, of course it's in our interest and then, you know, all of your fancy notions and so forth. So I just want to push back on this idea that it was just Israel. No, it wasn't just Israel. But as I, but then I will, but then I will, I will grant a kernel of truth. But it was Israel. It was Israel in the front. In the leading the charge,

to accomplish something that Nanyahu said he's been trying to accomplish for 40 years. You can't, they wanted this, they lobbied for it, they have every right to lobby for it. This is nothing illegitimate here. My worry is that you could lobby for it, but then it just happened. And we don't disagree about this. The fact that it was just now, but here's the thing. It's because of this very close alliance that at some point, this is what they have told us, this is true, that the Israelis said we got this phenomenal intelligence about the leadership,

we're going to go for it. And what Rubio and Trump both independently said and what other reports are. But you're basing this on what Tucker says Trump said to him. And then Trump himself publicly said later. No, no, no. Yes. Okay. All right.

All right. Let's just. No, I'm basically. This is also on The New York Times and Washington Post. No, no, the New York Times quoted Tucker as saying after he spoke to him, he said this. I don't think anybody doubts that Nanyahu tried to get the United States to go to this war, right? Of course not. Sure.

He wasn't the only one, but he was incredibly important. I think he was in and out of the White House all the time. The point is this, and this is the critical moment. We're going to kill all these people. At that moment, whether you like it or not, you're in the war. I don't think, by the way, that that does not, I'm just telling you, that this explanation, and I understand that Rubio set a version of it and then walked it back and so forth, I just don't think that that's what happened. And I'm saying this is not just an argument, but I'm saying it's a

matter of accuracy. This is the same guy that basically did, did they send an armada to the Persian goal? Did they tell? I'm not too about the fact, yes, they've been, they wanted, they were also having these negotiations, whatever, and this was, we were all told this was a about, you know, leverage and pressure and blah, blah, blah. No, we were not told that. Trump was telling us that. Trump was telling us a little, look, you can't. No, no, I'm sorry, this starts, okay, let's, all right, let you go and then I'll go.

Okay. But here's the critical thing. Yeah. When they got this intelligence and they were going to do this, could we have said, no, you can't do that? Because that will bring us into the war and we're not ready for that. Absolutely. Why did we not?

Because Trump supported it. He thought it was great. Okay. So let me explain what I think happened. Okay. Do you think the Israelis would ever ask us if that's okay? Let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, first of all, the fact that they said, we've got this intelligence, they shared it and they said we want to go would tell me that yes, they were giving them lots of lead time given they found out about it, I guess like eight days before and they shared it immediately and the CIA confirmed it. And so sure, this is not a, we have a secret thing. They've got the Intel eight days before. The meeting? Yes, they came upon that there was going to be this meeting on that Saturday, March 1st.

So they had time to prepare us for this? They did. They absolutely did. They shared it through the intelligence channel. Oh, no, I mean, you know. Oh, oh, sure. Oh, okay. The schmucks called the American people.

Oh, go. On the American people side, that is. Who cares? No, no, it's not who cares. I'm with you. I think they should have prepared us more. But I just want to go back a little bit. I just can't imagine this ever happening in another scenario.

I just, okay. I just have a very hard time imagining it. Let me. Let me. The Britain says, we're going to attack so and so. And you say, well, what? And you say, we're going to do it. Oh, all right.

And we'll be involved. We'll take your leave. We'll follow you. That's not what happened. That's, okay, let me explain. Trump opens the door to military participation at the end of 2025 when the bazaarie merchants go out the streets and we begin to see another uprising throughout the country against the mullahs. Now, he does something, which I think was a result of him not having a real policymaking process

when it comes to national security matters. Anything. Okay, which is to say, I think what he did is he saw the, you know, very compelling scenes from Iran, which we all saw then, and said in a series of messages over the course of like one and a half weeks, help is on the way. seize your institutions, tiles the time to rise up. If any of them,

if you kill anyone, there's going to be consequences, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. He put the American, America's prestige behind the idea of the treatment of the Iranians who were in the streets demonstrating. Very unusually

for him. Fair enough. He normally likes the other side in those countries. Okay, fine. In Tiananmen Square, he was on the side of the tank. I'll, this is, these are, there's a matter of history, you're right, I think he was, but the point is, is that in this particular case, so I don't believe a, I don't believe a word of it myself. Okay, fine, you don't believe a word of it, but I'm just saying that's what happened and you would agree with that, okay? Yeah. All right. So, what was the response from the regime? They, they slaughtered most estimates are 30,000. By the way, let me just, in the interest of, of honesty, I don't know what the number is, because it's very difficult to get, but we know it was several thousand at the very least. and probably, oh, it was a lot in 48 hours. It was a horrifying toll. Let's put it this way.

It was a horrifying toll. It was kind of unprecedented, even for this brutal regime. It also suggests, by the way, that they have total, a monopoly of force of arms. That kind of level of decimation, not that word, the killing of so many people. Yeah, but a slaughter. So quickly, it just means that they got. So what I would glean from that if I had to have a brain is actually, no, this regime is still fucking in charge here. Okay. It's going to be very

hard to get rid of it. Okay. I'm not disagreeing with you that I think as a sort of a fair point. But anyway, the point is that you had the president on making a promise repeatedly in this period. No response. He tried to then gloss it over saying we stopped the hanging

of 800 and some odd people, but he lost face. Now, we've covered Trump now. We were in the Trump era. He lost face. I don't think anybody, I don't think anybody's lost face. They killed a bunch of people when he told the regime not to. Well, I, yeah, I, yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't buy that. I don't think he could

care less whether these is or not. Well, I'm not asking what it is hard. I'm not asking what he said, don't do it. They did. Okay. Okay. And so then we have these negotiations. Suddenly it's all about, you know, their nuclear weapons. It all looks, you know, who knows what the hell is going on here. But what the reality was is that he made a promised before any he could do anything about it because again we didn't have the assets in place to back up the threat that is what happened so we didn't have the assets so back at what Trump to back up the threat that if you kill the protesters I'm targeting you which is essentially what he said okay so his bluff was called is what you're saying his bluff was called and he did not

have he did not have the hardware he didn't he didn't have the assets in place Okay, so he sends the assets there and then starts the negotiations over, I mean, we're told it's over nuclear missiles and support for terrorism. And then it depends on every day, it's about something else. They're not going very well. And one issue I'm interested in because neither of us can know what actually happened in things. But one thing it does concern is they didn't, Wittkov and Kushner did not seem to have real experts with them. I've read a couple of pieces that said they just genuinely misunderstood a nuclear facility that they thought could possibly eventually at some point lead to nuclear bombs and could not. And they didn't have the expertise with them to be able to do that. And of course, of course, this is very quick.

I mean, I think these issues can get insanely complex, right? I mean, God knows. But anyway, regardless. Regardless, there was a negotiation. They're not going that well. There was a negotiation. Now, a cynical interpretation could mean that the negotiations were ruse and a cover to put the assets in place, which took some time. I think that might be true.

I don't know. But then there's this other part of it, which is that what the Israelis showed, and we have to go back to June of 2025. Initially, Trump did give the Israelis a green light, but the first message from the Trump administration was, we're neutral, we're not in this, do not attack any Americans. That was Rubio's statement. Trump doesn't say anything for 12 hours. Then you get the results of that first red wedding is what the Israelis called it from Game of Thrones, where they took out 40 top generals within the first hours of the stray. And Trump thought that was the coolest thing in the world.

And some have described this in my reporting as America's first FOMO war, which is that he wanted the glory of what he saw as a successful military operation, which is exactly what he got. So yes, the Israelis would, you know, wanted Trump to use the bunker buster technology that only the United States has to get the facilities in Fordo and Isfahan that are deeply buried under the earth. And Trump was happy to do it because he said, wait a second, and the way I describe it in my upcoming piece for commentary, which would be out in a couple days, is that the Israelis were offering him an opportunity to place a large bet on a fixed fight, which is that they had achieved. a level of intelligence penetration of Iran, which I think we can say real-world events, not just and even before the June 25 war, has shown that the Israelis have accomplished something that I don't know there's any parallel in the history of modern espionage.

I suppose when... It still doesn't make them safe, does it? Well, they've been studying Iran. All of Hamas is decimated. They're destroying half the southern Lebanon. They've decimated the nuisance, but they're still vulnerable to... Or you could say they're fighting a fanatic revolutionary kind of movement, which is, which is, which, which, which, which greets death as a kind of noble end to life. Because if, you know, I mean, there's all kinds of explanations for it. I would say it's somewhat ideological.

And whereas we're only fighting for death and destruction. And because these are weaker than us, you're quoting HECS here, I suppose. Yes. Okay. But we are justifying this war on the grounds that we can screw over someone. than us because we can. And that is also what the damage is doing to. I don't know. I'm just telling you what the Secretary of Defense is saying and how it is being heard across the world. I believe that the Secretary of Defense is high on his own supply and that it is he shouldn't

necessarily, he should not be talking about war serious business. But let's, he shouldn't be defense secretary. I'm not going to call him war secretary. He should not be defense secretary. It's an absolute farce. Sure. I want to get back to, though, what I think my understanding of what happened is that after the Israelis demonstrated in the June 25 war, Trump said, oh my God, that is so cool. We have a chance to take out these enemies of America once and for all, and that it was not this pushing Trump reluctantly to do Israel a favor. It was rather, let's take advantage of this opportunity. You guys know what the hell you're doing. We, neither of us can know for sure. And one day, we'll find out a little bit more, but I don't think we're that far apart.

Okay. I'm not, I'm not saying, how that would be very different than you've done Israel another favor. Israel's doing America a favor, or at least in Trump's size, Israel is doing America an enormous favor because it has, it has wired this country for sound in a way that gives a kind of advantage. And that, because if you would have just said, and I didn't know this, let me put it like this, if you just said, here's the plan, We want to knock off the regime, but we're not going to have any ground trips and we're going to do it by the air. I would say that's insane. You can't do that. You have to have a ground force to manage the chaos.

How do you know what's going on? I think the only way that you could get around is saying is that there's things that you do not understand about the level of penetration that Israel has of the regime and Iranian society and that will actually make this possible to pull off. I can absolutely believe. Okay. So let me just say that. That's where I'm out. Okay. I think all that could, is almost certainly part of the truth, right? Okay.

Of course, the Israelis are also really good at working people. And could know entirely how to appeal to Trump. They've probably done a million studies of this. Their masses, if they can penetrate the entire regime of Iran, they've penetrated this administration as well. They know exactly what makes this guy tick. They've almost certainly got a strategy for getting him to do what they want to do. And all I'm saying is that then you also have the sheer serendipity of luck timing. You know, this happens suddenly.

History is like that. You suddenly, they're going to meet in eight days' time. That changes that. That's how the three works. So it's a mess. It's a mix of these things. But it is a function partly of, let me put this way, it's a function of partly Israel's pressure, Saudi pressure,

Israel persuasion of Trump. Look how cool we are. Israel. But then here's the thing. It starts with this moment. So I think Rubio what Rubio said when he said, no, no, no, Israel didn't determine this war, determine the timing of this war. Yeah. And that's what I was saying too. Yes. That's what I'm not. That is, but that matters too. that because if the timing means you don't get to explain the rationale, in fact, by virtue of the nature of the initial crime, the initial assassination of the entire leadership, we couldn't tell

people that in advance. The whole point was it was surprise, right? So you could not. So that just simply meant we were in whether we liked it or not. And we couldn't tell anyone, and we couldn't tell anyone in advance. No, the president could have given a speech in January that said, right now we are conducting negotiations that I hope work, but I have my doubts, to finally and thoroughly disarm an enemy of the United States for nearly 50 years.

And let me explain to you what we are concerned about. Right now, we have an opportunity. Iran does not have functional proxy networks throughout the Middle East as it did three years ago. It is rebuilding its conventional missiles, but we believe that if it gets past a certain point, it will be too costly to use military force to stop them from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

And that is an unacceptable outcome for us, and therefore we are asking Congress to give us the authorization we hope not to use to go to war. He could have said that without getting into any of that special intelligence. And he wouldn't have gotten the authorization. And maybe you're right, maybe he would. He would look to that and said, what the fuck you're talking about?

Maybe he wouldn't have. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. don't know. Well, it was only, I think it was 216, 219 in the House anyway, the war powers resolution. It was very close. Which they won, but okay. I know, but I'm just saying it was close in as much as you can imagine if they'd be given

a chance to think about this. They would have said no. So anyway, let's put it through, whether by luck design, by the way, by the way, a similar thing happened in Libya. There was a vote in Libya and Obama went anyway. In some ways, that's even a more grievous violation.

Okay, and let me, so now that is mad at that too. Okay. You've got to give me credit. I went after Obama. So let me. Very hard on the year. Let me, let me now. And let's, now we're in the war now.

Let's, I just want to. Okay. I want to, because we've been talking about. Remind me, I want to get back to a note of comedy when we're done this point. I mean, give me a comedy now. Give him comedy. A comedy with a tea, not a tea. Oh, common tea.

Oh, and then forget that. Okay. So here we, he'll, let me, let me just, let's talk about the war itself. Okay. Let me tell you how I, what the thoughts go through my head. Okay. One thought is, I pray, I pray to God that some good comes of this. It's possible. I think it's unlikely, but I haven't, when my Iranian friend texts me and says, I've just lost all hope and everything, everything I've fought for is destroyed. And he's a, you know, Green Revolution liberal, because he fears that this actually has hurt his cause. Now, others feel otherwise. And, but, My said to him, you never know and things can happen.

And I didn't, at 1989, no one expected. But so I feel that. I then also feel awful. I see civilian, inevitably civilian collateral damage. I don't think we're doing it deliberately, but if you're hitting police stations, if you're hitting, you're going to hit schools. Schools have been hit.

Hospitals didn't hit that awful first day, tragedy in which 150 schoolgirls will kill. It's probably the worst accident in terms of us in decades. And and I feel at the same time that this is going on as people are now experiencing increased prices, this is not good. This feels very destabilizing. It's it's not yet in any way clarifying. My fear is, my hope is that the miraculous happens, and it may, and I pray for it. My fear is that this entrenches the regime actually, de-legitimizes us, especially in our alliance with Israel, especially in the wake of Gaza. The alliance with Israel has different meaning now that they have, the idea of it has fresh from this image, and that it will actually empower

the worst elements in Israel that will see. even more swing to the hard right there and the whole region spiraling. That's where I'm at. Now, the oil price stuff, I mean, in some ways, American people, I think this is sort of going to be interesting. On the one hand,

Americans don't like Iran, the regime, nor should they. So there's some element in fuck them, right? At the same time, the Iraq situation is very fresh in people's minds. and Joe Rogan is having the kind of response Joe Rogan would have, and he's not the only one. All right. Can I address some of those? And yeah, just one last thing. And then, of course, the American public, however, if there's one thing,

they don't really care about the Constitution very much, but they do care about the price of gas. Sure. And so that seems to be, we don't know. We talk from day to day what could be happening when this airs, but it doesn't look good on any of those fronts. Okay. I would just say it's far too soon to know. But a couple points I would make. I think when Trump muses about boots on the ground, what he really means is slippers on the ground, meaning special operators. I don't think, I think that the reason that the Iraq war became unpopular, I mean, there were two things. One is we didn't find the weapons of mass destruction that were promised. In this particular case, I don't think there's any.

doubt that Iran intended to build a weapon of mass destruction, the ultimate one. The second point is that it really more than not, the more than the pre-war intelligence being wrong, it was that American soldiers and not and and were just volunteers were training police officers in Karbala. They were manning checkpoints in Baghdad and Basra. And this, is the thing that was so frustrating, was that the bulk of the war were Americans who were sitting ducks for a vicious insurgency that combined the poisonous extremism of al-Qaeda and later ISIS with the cruel efficiency and expertise of the remnants of the Bathurst State. And that added to that, the Iranian-backed fanatic insurgency on the Shia's

was a nightmare for most Iraqis and a powerless and horrible environment for any soldier. So that was where the war really became a failure. What the hell were we doing? We weren't equipped to do it. It's not what we thought we were going to do. We thought we were going to liberate and get out. I think there is zero chance that Donald Trump will in any circumstance commit Americans to nation-building or peacekeeping. So that's the first thing.

Now that itself opens up a can of possibilities that we just don't know, but yeah, we have to be honest. There could be a, it could be another, it could be a Syrian civil war except in a much larger country. You know, I would imagine that the CIA and the Mossad are competent enough to secure the enriched uranium that is buried underneath Isfahan and Fordo, or I think mainly Isfahan, and get rid of it and make sure that. they don't have, I think it's 20% enriched uranium that they still have a stockpull. They can have to get through the sort of rubbleized remains or something to get to it. So what about handheld anti-aircraft rockets? What about any number of conventional weapons that in the hands of a terrorist group at an airport would be an absolute disaster?

So there's a lot of risk here. I go back to the fact that I've heard, and I've heard, and I've, I would imagine that, again, the Mossad has the country under an MRI. So if that can be translated into preventing those outcomes, I would hope that it would be. But again, it's an unknown. So I'm just being on saying, I see that's a possibility and I cannot say. But as for regional stability, I think I differ with you in an important way. The source of regional instability was a revolutionary regime in Tehran. It was the state policy since its inception to support an Islamic revolution throughout the Middle East. And it was adaptable enough that they could support Sunnis and

Shia. And that is a source of instability. We have an opportunity. Obviously, Apocosalcibility is the creation of a brand new state in 1948, which completely convulsed the entire region. Andrew. Andrew. Andrew. No, let me. finished that we're still grappling with. It's not like this is the only revolutionary moment. Zionism is a revolutionary moment. In 1948. I'm talking about we're in 2026. I know. I'm just saying that by 1979, which is the year of the Egypt-Israel peace. Okay. And it's followed by Jordan, the Abraham Accords, the status quo Sunni powers have made their peace with Israel. it's Iran that is the axis of resistance.

Iran is the center of that. If you remove that, that is a golden ticket for America to finally get out of the Middle East and then focus on the Pacific. If you get that, then I also think, and this is one of the reasons to get back to why I'm in favor. And by the way, you can look it up everybody on Google. I wrote about it. I think a dozen years ago for The Daily Beast, when nobody said it, I wrote a piece quoting pro-Israel defense experts saying it's time to end the subsidy. So I think it was one of the

first in the pro-Israel Zionism camp to raise this at least recently. No, you're good on that. We're at one. We're at one with process. Okay, okay, fine. Okay, we're good. Okay. But I think, to make the deeper point, Israel then, your right becomes the regional hegemon, okay? Because the balance to it, Iran, the revolutionary regime is no longer there. I don't think that Israeli hegemony in the Middle East is bad for peace, is bad for any of these things. I think Iranian regional hegemony or competition for regional hegemony is terrible for those things. So if you have a chance to finally knock it out and put in something in place, and finally, I just would say, I've been covering

the Iranian movement as I see it to get their country back, the democratic opposition for nearly 30 years now, and I've been writing about it for 25 years. And I would just say that there is a long tradition in Iran that goes back to the end of the 19th century of a demand. They still have a constitution. By the way, it's still the Islamic, the constitution is still technically the original one. And I think that there is an opportunity. It's not Iraq. Iraq is a fake country that was made after World War I. Iran has been around for, you know, since the Khammedit Persian Empire, the bad guys of Herodotus. And they have, I think the Iranian people do not want to live under these people.

I think they are the first victims of this regime. So I understand that you call it a crime, but that's why I actually think it's an act of liberation if it ends as I hope it does, which is in a color revolution. And I don't think it's out of the question. Well, we'll see. My thoughts just about that Iraq war and the Iran war is that the Iraq war was, you know, the process was correct, but it was built upon a false premise. Absolutely. You could say the process was right and it was strategically a blunder.

But also the premise was wrong. The WMD issue was wrong. Exactly. So this, and so we went to war in a way that wasn't kosher. You know what I mean? This time we went to war without even being asked. Last time, once we broke a country, we felt obliged as a responsible actor on the world's stage not to let it just completely collapse and walk out. Sure.

Now we're fine with that. Now we've adopted the idea that we can go in and break a country and just let it go. But see, when you say now we think we can go in and break a country, I would argue that this country is absolutely broken. Well, sure. You could have said that about Iraq too. Well, I mean, that's one of the reasons why I'm not as guilty as you are about Iraq. Saddam was a broken system, but boy, the chaos and it. disorder and violence and satarian murders that can well one point by the way in my favor and i'm just

saying how much of that was iran if if if if a hundred thousand iranians die in the next year or so because of this it would be a terrible tragedy well i know but it's okay for you well i mean i think you have to distinguish between that's why i think that's why i think that's why i think i're dc commanders versus iran fruit vendors and we should acknowledge that we now have confirmation that a terrible strike, an accidental strike, something like 132, I mean, I don't know the exact number of schoolchildren were killed in an errant Tomahawk strike. It's a terrible tragedy. War is serious. It should be memed, as the White House did recently. I agree with that. It's, and there's something about that even... Is there a point of which the character and justifications of the people

conducting the war make it illegitimate? Even if you think the cause is a good one? really think that this is such an historic moment, Andrew, that if we can, if we can say Islamic Revolution 1979 to 2026 are our rest in pieces, that is such a bigger accomplishment that in some ways it doesn't matter the personality or the process because that will be part of his legacy, because that's how we judge presidents. Oh, I could give a shit about his legacy, to be honest with you. I'm just, I am. No, it's. I am desperate not to see another human catastrophe unfold in the Middle East because we intervened militarily without thinking things through, without either the right process, and with a president

and a defense secretary who are out of their fucking minds, as far as I can see. And I do not want to go to war under any circumstances with a commander-in-chief who literally and not a single thing he says at any moment can be believed whose judgment in that war seemed to be affected by the last person he spoke to, who has offered a million different rationales

who is and whose defense secretary is articulating rhetorically an almost barbaric idea of war that robs us of the moral authority might have.

What you say if you're going to war to liberate a people is that of course we're targeting only their their leadership, make that absolutely clean. Of course, up front, we're horrified civilians will be hurt. We want to let you know, you know, there are ways in which you present a war like that. Bush did it. He made it very clear, we're not going to war with you, the Iraqi people. We're not going to war with Islam. Here you have these religious Christian fundamentalists talking about bringing death and destruction. And at some point, you are, as I feel the same way about Israel and Gavir and Smutrich, at some point,

you are who you are, who is representing you. And this man, Hegstack, is representing all of us. And what he's saying is objectively evil, in my view. Even if you believe this is a good war, you do not celebrate violence for its own sake. You do not say it is a great thing when the strong pummel the weak. I mean, that's the other thing. The other. the challenge I think of American politics to make sure that the Trump years in this regard. When you're talking about, because I agree with you that that is a norm. That I would like, I would, I do not want that to become repeated over time. I think your point is well taken that eventually you are who your representatives are in a democracy.

Yes. And I, I don't want. By the way, doesn't democratic peace theory seem quaint at this point? I'm just saying, like, everything that's happened with all these Democrats, you know, people, with various, it's kind of interesting. What, what, Democratic, democracy that no two democracies will ever get in a war. Oh, that, oh. You know what I'm just sort of like?

You're like, a tanky shorthand for our, our normally American listeners. Oh, no, no, no. It was a dated neoliberal 90s foreign policy. It was so inside our inside. The other thing is that, you know, the other thing I try and tell myself is that,

look, I was, I was educated by the new republic in America. I mean, look, in American politics. And I've lived and briefed this topic. I went through the Iraq. I mean, you and I, we're not like most people. Most people have got lives to live. There's a very long way away from where they are. Right. The only people that are really interested in cracking crazy evangelicals for all sorts of truly scary reasons. I can I say, I'm actually more optimistic on this. And this, I think you may disagree. I disagree when you're saying you've generally, like Israel's lost American, like the

American people. And I think that's one of your arguments making that. I'm not entirely sure I agree. First of all, this is not describing in any way you, and I think that you have to distinguish in any time you're making it. So there's plenty of very severe critics of Israel who do not necessarily fall into this category. However, there is a political grammar on the left which makes the Israel cause very similar to Black Lives Matter, transgender ideology nonsense. sense. And I think that these tend to burn very brightly and then they somewhat dissipate. Who's talking about abolishing prisons seriously today? I mean, I know the left does, but I'm saying it's not, it's not, people understand that's a ridiculous kind of thing. And I think the idea of abolishing Israel, and I know you're not saying that. I'm not, I'm just saying,

which has kind of gotten a little bit of a moment on the left and the right. I see, I just, I just think it's going to go, it's going to turn in, all that energy is going to go against ice and for illegal immigration. I mean, so that's the first thing. But the second thing is this. I actually think that there's a real opportunity to, I think Israel has a great opportunity to kind of demonstrate that it can be, for now at least, to keep the peace in the region in such a way that everybody can ignore it.

I'm just saying. I don't even know how to respond to that. And with the governments of, I mean, I think, I think the Gulf monarchies are going to go along with it. That's how it looks. We'll see. The thing about wars and the chaos that they unleash is that they're very unpredictable. And there is also the danger of this spiraling very badly out of control and throwing the world economy into a crisis. But you don't think that Iran has been at war with? No, I don't think that's a rhetorical device. I do think there is such a thing as you.

could say that Israel's been at war with its neighbors for the last 40 years. And it has been in some way. But look, I'm just saying, no, I don't think. And I think now, of all times, it is the least threatening. And that's the time by your own confession, you choose to attack. And that is just, just difficult to swallow. You don't think that's just strategic? It is, but it's also, it violates a certain sense. Here's what my feeling is that a lot of people who voted for Trump really voted that not to have a war like this. and they also voted to lower prices. And they voted not have crazy workness. That's roughly what they were thinking.

Yeah. And the first two, they've really fucked. And so my silver lining domestically is that we could, that this could lead to a real wave in the elections. And we could. Oh, you mean for the midterms? For the midterms. And therefore there's some hope in rescuing us from

I think what you and I don't completely disagree about the way that Trump is taking the worst developments and tendencies of the modern presidency and making them infinitely more dangerous and more I wouldn't say infinitely. He's by a level of he's doing more degree. Yes. Sure. The difference of magnitude. Eli, thank you very much.

Oh, we've had this. It's been fun. I think it's a fruitful combo. Who knows? The readers will judge and believe it, I think every now and again they write in on this topic

and not often. I hope that in my hope you have any idea. In five years I can invite you to like Tehran and oh.

It's amazing. I've been once. I have Iranian friends. Look, the dish, as you know, we're very, we during the Green Revolution, the dish fused itself with the communications

the Twitter stream of the Green Revolution. We were part of it. We breathed it. We lived it day and night. You know there's been at least five or six uprising since the Green River. I do know that. And because you make friends in that. Of course.

And now they have an Air Force. And now they have an Air Force, Andrew. Is that great? But when those very people are weeping with me, I have mixed feelings, Eli. And look, I pray that their tears are not. This is still on the podcast. So this is like super bonus. Okay, so let me, let me, let me, there is at least in place.

Trump said it, BB is saying it all the time now. You look at the Israelis are hitting, all the instruments of local pressure at the provincial level. We've seen all right. Hold on, hold on, wait a second. And we've also been, the message has been, stay home. It's far too dangerous and we'll give you the signal to come out into the streets. Now, I'm seeing an air campaign directed at layers of the regime authority, of a revolutionary regime.

I think it's mixed. I think obviously it's mixed. It's, that is going to, that it is both things to feel at the same time. First of all, you are feeling you are under attack by a foreign power. And that is not going to make you say, yay, you're going to have an instant defensive response to that. You're also going to have some response as a patriot to a foreign country coming into your country. Then you're also going to hope that this might get rid of this fucking awful place. But then you're also afraid of what might happen if everything falls apart.

That's the other part. And look, I'm several Iranian leaders of civil society. The other thing is... In Iran asked for air strikes. You saw it a lot. Sure. I'm not saying Iran. Some wouldn't like it.

I'm just saying it's a whole bunch of emotions that could go a whole lot of different directions. Which is to say, it depends on how it's going to end. And if it ends with something better, I'm not saying it's going to be a green revolution again, a color revolution. I'm saying if it ends with something better. I will be delighted as you.

It will not in any way retroactively justify the way it was started. And we must guard against that. idea. If the ends always justify the means, we are screwed. They do not always justify the means, but they have to be factored in when judging the means. Of course. Of course. Of course. Thank you so much for listening. Jonah Goldberg, Tom Holland, Tiffany Jenkins, Derek Thompson, Jeff Tubin, Adrian Woldrich coming up. I hope you have a great weekend. I'll be snoozing, I hope. And we'll see you all next week. God bless.