Bulwark Takes - 3: Was Trump Right About Striking Iran? (w/ Eric Edelman) | Bulwark on Sunday

Episode Date: June 22, 2025

This week on Bulwark on Sunday, Bill Kristol and Eric Edelman break down the Iran strike, the decision to bypass Congress, and what it reveals about America's foreign policy and future.

Just in time for the live Boer work Sunday, we had a couple of technical problems. I was about ready to summarize everything Eric has to say, but instead you can say it in his own words. Eric, thank you for surviving the technical problems and for joining me today on this eventful day. Eric, of course, you all know, former Undersecretary of Defense, distinguished Foreign Service career, ambassador to two nations, served in the White House, and has written many times for the book, and he and our friend Elliot Cohen,

co-host Shields of the Republic, excellent show, which I'm hoping you'll, you did an excellent one late last week, before the US strike, and you hopefully will do another one early this week to give us a longer and more scholarly version of what we're gonna talk about today. But I thought today would really be helpful, I mean, you and I have talked on the phone

many times in the last 36, 48 hours, but really get people just a sense of what to look for, what's most striking, so it's the headlines, people have to, obviously all these things will have to be developed so much more in the weeks and months to come. But anyway, Eric, thanks for joining me today. Always good to be with you, Bill. It was a look this is a

amazing what happened? Let's do this. What is it a big? Is it a big deal? You've even you were in government 40 years, you saw a lot of big events and momentous ones. This is pretty big. Yeah, you know, as former President Biden might have said, it's a big effing deal. Look, this was an amazing demonstration of the American military's global reach and its ability to synchronize military activities across a variety of domains, you know, air, sea, space,

cyber, electronic warfare. I mean, it was really a pretty impressive display. It was the first operational use of the GBU-57, a 15,000 pound bomb, known as the massive ordnance penetrator that we actually began developing late in the Bush 43 administration for precisely this purpose, to go after deep and buried targets that were difficult to get to from other conventional munitions.

And obviously if you don't want to use a nuclear weapon, which is I don't think ever advisable if you can avoid it. You know, it was exactly created for this purpose. I think there's some ancillary, you know, benefits here to this. One is that I think it shows that the president's willing to use military power to defend American interests. That's got to be something that President Putin, President Xi take into count Kim Jong-un. As said, it shows the reach of our military and the effectiveness of our military tools.

By the way, we shouldn't be resting on our laurels. We've got plenty to do in terms of funding the military. I would add that I think the current big, beautiful bill, which has $150 billion plus up for the military, totally unsatisfactory in terms of how it funds the military. But this clearly did some damage to the Iranian nuclear facilities. How much, we still don't know.

We'll have to wait for the bomb damage assessment to come, but first blush looks like it certainly did some pretty significant damage. Whether it obliterated them, as the president said in his speech last night, I think that's a different story we'll have to wait on. With all the obvious caveats, this is we're one day in and it's one event and things could reverse wildly and go in unanticipated directions. You know, I was in government with you in 1991 at the beginning of the first Gulf War, which actually went very well, but at the end of the day, you know, left to dominant power and maybe laid the foundation for future troubles in the Middle East, unfortunately,

and anyway, it didn't help President Bush politically. I'm thinking about how many of these things bounce and so people say, oh, Trump's going to be reelected. Oh, Trump, there was majority opposition attacking around. People need to understand, or need to understand, but people might wish to understand how dynamic war situations are, both in the war itself, I think, but also in the politics of it at home and internationally. You've already mentioned Xi and Putin.

Most of the analysis is pretending they don't exist. Iran is a pretty good body of both of them. Iran, we know the Iranian drones being used by Russia. So far, with all those caveats, so far, that doesn't seem to be the axis of evil. What do we call it these days? The axis of upheaval? The bad axis. The bad axis. The axis of the bad grads. A bad day for the bad axis, right? I think in that respect.

And for the US military, you should have been in the Defense Department. Some of us have been so worried, and I remain very worried, about the Texas Secretary of Defense, about the politicization of the military, about a lot of things that happened. You were a very critical critic of the firing of a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who you knew and know, and who was very well regarded. Political firing is not a good idea. Having said that, it seems to me as a layman that, I don't know, the U.S. military did

a pretty good job here, and the Defense Department did a pretty good job of at least keeping things quiet and so forth, right? Well, two things. One, to the prior point about the, you know, whatever axis you wanna call it. You know, this is a demonstration that, President Putin, you know, is not all that anxious to, you know, come to the defense of some of his putative

allies. When Putin was asked about all this, it was before the US strike, of course, but he said, well, Israel is practically a Russian country. There are two million Russian citizens living in Israel, so I can't join in and fight against them. So that mean, I can't join in and fight against them. So, you know, that's one thing. On the Pentagon, look, I think all the concerns about Secretary Hegseth remain. I mean, I know that nothing that's happened here has changed my view of any of that. I would say, however, that this was a demonstration of the professionalism of the US military and

their enormous skill. I would say in the press conference this morning that General Cain, the new Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, acquitted himself extremely well. He did an extraordinary job, I thought, of walking know all the details of the operation, the timeline, the number of aircraft, some of the deception that was involved in order to maintain tactical surprise. And you know it did I thought a very commendable and open job and oh by the way said what you and I said just a few minutes ago which is we think we did some damage but until we really get the bomb damage assessment over the next several days we're going to have to wait and see and now what's going to happen is

I will say one thing about bomb damage assessment and I'm only sorry that our colleague Adam Kinzinger couldn't join us today because he might have a different view. But my view is that from being inside government, pilots almost always believe after a bombing mission that they have hit the target and destroyed it. It's just natural that they react that way. But you really do need to take a look in the aftermath and see exactly what has been accomplished.

You can see from some of the overhead satellite photography that's already available that the GBU-57s made some very pinpoint entry points into the facility at Fordow, which is the major issue that was before us. But you still don't know exactly how much damage was done down below. I suspect considerable, but we don't know. And so now the effort will be to collect all sorts of different kinds of intelligence, you know, measurement and signature intelligence, communications intelligence, signals intelligence, perhaps some human intelligence that the Israelis have that will be shared with us as a partner. And all of that has to be put together to get, you know, a real sense of how much damage was done.

I would add that the work that was done on the Ishfahan plant is also very important. It's not only a plant where the yellow cake is turned into UF6 gas for injection into the centrifuges to enrich uranium. It's also the place where uranium metal was recovered by the Iranians, which would have to be used in fashioning an actual warhead. So essentially, I think some good work was done yesterday. Now we'll have to see, as you said, how will Iranians react, what are their options,

and what comes next. And whenever you undertake military action, there are all sorts of unforeseen potential consequences, there are all sorts of dangers, but there are also, of course, dangers of inaction. And I think a lot of times we tend to only focus on what are the dangers of action and not on the dangers of inaction. And that's a problem, for instance, that our former colleague in government, Dennis Ross,

describes in his new book on statecraft in a very interesting chapter on the Obama administration in which he served that the Obama administration over learning some of the lessons of the Iraq war perhaps, you know, failed to understand the significant consequences of inaction in Syria, which turned out to be very serious. I mean, not just because, you know, unleashed a horrible civil war, which allowed the Russians and the Iranians to intervene, but also because it set off a wave of refugees throughout the region that destabilized European politics, helped give rise to populist nationalist movements all around Europe.

So, you know, it's, yeah, the inaction is a choice to what your global superpower, obviously other countries don't have to make these choices in a way, but I think for me, I wanted to ask you about the last nine days and Israel's action, there's so many things to talk about, but for me, one thing that's striking, yeah, is the degree to which Trump wanted

to avoid foreign wars, he sort of wanted to avoid foreign entanglements, at least some of his supporters did. That was kind of the theory of America First. For me, and I wrote this, I think on Thursday and Friday, in not very short waves, I was a little under the weather, in warning shots, but I think America First is kind of finished in the sense that, maybe overstating it, but the notion that we just stay out of things seems a little hard to sustain now.

People can like or dislike this military strike. They can say you should have had more, this has been a diplomacy more of a chance. Very few people are saying Trump should have just ignored what was happening between Israel and Iran. And so when you think about it, that is the theory of America first. The theory of America first is two countries

fighting 10,000 miles or 100,000 miles away, neither in a way that doesn't directly threaten our homeland. It doesn't threaten you that much. Honestly, we could deter them probably from threatening our interests too much. Right. It was America first point of view. Why do we have those interests all over the Middle East anyway? So I feel like it, it, it opens the door to a more serious debate, maybe about what America's role in the world should be, as opposed to sort of whether we need to have a role in the world. Maybe Iran will see where the debate goes.

We'll see what all of Trump's supporters do. But for now, Trump is the guy who, you know, here's what I want to ask you also, who following on Israeli action, which he may not have entirely wanted, he was seen two weeks ago, I think we might have bet that he was going to go with that Witkoff peace plan and give Iran sort of a way, you know, a path that I think we would have felt was not a good one in terms of not really curbing their nuclear program enough sort of an updated Obama JCPOA, we all wrote a talk about that, right? It's funny, what you know, this is how events right one event,

the Sanyahu is action, with or without Trump's collusion or green light or yellow light, then the way the war went with Israel's amazing success, then Fordow becoming this kind of big thing question, would we finish the job as much as one can with one set of wave of strikes and then Trump pulling the trigger on that really does. It's just two weeks, you know, the world can change in two weeks due to not know not know one person exactly planning to change it, you know, but a series of events. But But again, the US being so hard for us to get out of our system, for better or worse, I would say for better, the notion that there's

a big conflict in the world, we sort of need to be thinking about what we should do, we might decide on inaction as you said, but we are not going to walk away. Yeah I think that's right. I think the president last week, I'm losing track of the days because there's just some people. We're speaking midday on Sunday, on Sunday the 22nd. But a couple of days ago when some of the splits inside MAGA started to manifest themselves with Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon and others coming out,

raising questions about whether the president should do this before he actually struck, the president said, I'm the one who invented America First. No one ever used that term before. And I get to decide what it means. Well, I mean, the reality of course is that America First was a very powerful movement in the 1930s against US intervention in the war in Europe.

But America First had a sizable contingent of folks who even in the 30s were not opposed to the war in the Pacific. They were Asia first, and there's an element of that in Trumpism today as well. But as you say, even that, of course, implies some US involvement in the Indo-Pacific and the reality, inescapable reality, I think, which we pointed to in the National Defense Strategy Commission that I co-chaired with former representative Jane Harman and which reported out last summer.

We made the point that all of these theaters, Europe, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific are linked to one another because of the intensifying cooperation and relationship among Russia, Iran, the PRC, and North Korea. Now, some of that may be fraying a little bit because of these decisions that both Bibi Netanyahu and Donald Trump have made, and that might be all to the good. But again, we'll have to see how it all plays out. There've been all sorts of aircraft landing in

Iran from the PRC. We don't know what's in those aircraft, whether it's ballistic missile components or what have you to allow them to reconstitute some of their ballistic missile production. A lot can happen from here on in, but I think as you say, it's extremely hard to see how the United States stays out of it. Oh, by the way, we're talking about a regime. A lot of people say, well, this is between Israel and Iran. This is a regime whose founding ethos was death to America and death to Israel.

On its ballistic missiles, they have painted an Iranian revolutionary slogan, which is, America can't do a damn thing about this. Well, President Trump yesterday actually proved that that wasn't right. Yeah, that's nice. You know, one other thing is I want to talk to the president of the future for a few minutes, but you're a historian. And the reverse, you and I have talked often about the irony of history, the cunning of reason, whatever those phrases of Hegel and so forth are. Things just go in funny directions. And I mean, if you were told also after October 7th, 2023, so that's only, that's less than two years ago,

a little over a year and a half ago, after the worst defeat, you know, the worst slaughter of Israelis, of Jews actually, since half a century, the worst failure of Israeli intelligence, Israeli government that's very, it was already unpopular and now has suffered this failure, then a kind of grueling and pretty brutal war in Gaza that wasn't necessarily going very well. Israel was doing a lot of damage to Hamas, but from their point of view,

not much, you know, a lot of criticism from around the world, including the US, and then if you had said, okay, Israel has this Hezbollah plan that they've been working on for years, and they're gonna be able to execute that pretty amazingly. And suddenly this huge deterrent that Hezbollah is supposed to provide for Iran, right there on the border doesn't happen. Then out of nowhere revolution in Syria in December,

I guess it was of last year. And that's another Iranian proxy and safe harbor to some degree goes away. And then there's a guy who decides to, he can do what he did over the last eight days. Trump decides to ignore Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson and a lot of others and support him. I don't know, it's a real, the degree to which those events were not predictable,

I don't think, maybe some genius saw that coming, but in October of 2023, it's a good lesson, you know, that these things do not go in one direction, right? And individual decisions make a huge difference, and some of them are not even decisions, just events, maybe slightly fluke-ish events, I don't know. Some of them plant events, the destruction as well is pretty impressive, but some of them still maybe slightly flukish like the Syrian civil war.

I don't know. But, you know, it's again, I think, a reminder that, you know, so much of this is interconnected, but it's not always easy to see ahead of time how things are connected. So yes, I mean, I think Hamas clearly was a element of Iran's strategy of surrounding Israel with a ring of fire of proxies. And their plan was essentially to use those proxies, ultimately, and then their own forces to destroy Israel. But what's happened, I mean, if you want to talk about Hegel's to use those proxies ultimately, and then their own forces to destroy Israel.

But what's happened, I mean, if you wanna talk about Hegel's cunning of reason, what happened is the Israelis, whatever, I mean, there's a lot of criticism, I agree, one might have about the Gaza campaign, particularly in the more recent weeks and months. But having said that, Hamas has been destroyed as a organized military force. The Israelis then who always were more concerned,

I mean, part of the reason they were surprised on October 7th was they were much more focused on the North rather than the South. They mistakenly thought that they had a modus vivendi with Hamas, that turned out to be a serious misjudgment but they then turned to their long-standing plans to deal with Hezbollah and as you say kind of eviscerated Hezbollah. They then essentially destroyed in October after Iran for the second time launched a major ballistic missile and

cruise missile and drone attack against Israel. They destroyed Iran's advanced integrated air and missile defense. Not all of the air defense, by the way, but basically the Russian S-400 systems that had been provided to Iran. Because Russia was preoccupied elsewhere in Ukraine, it had already withdrawn a lot of its equipment from Syria and and now that the Iranians were also you know in engaged in essentially a long-distance no quasi war with Israel they were not as paying as much attention to Syria either so in a sense it wasn't complete I mean it struck all of us as out of the blue for Assad to fall, but it wasn't really out of

the blue. It was connected to all of this. All of it in some created a moment of opportunity that Bibi Netanyahu decided he couldn't pass up and had to take, combined with the fact that, and I think this is important because there's a lot of discussion about how there is no intelligence. You know, Tucker Carlson said that Iran was planning to make a bomb. In fact, there is. And, you know, I would refer people to The Economist, which had a very good look indirectly at the new intelligence based on briefings the Israelis have provided to allied

intelligence services about an effort that clearly appears to have been underway to create a group inside the SPND, the nuclear program for Iran, to have a capability to race to a bomb and it included secreting away some of the 60% highly enriched uranium from the IAEA in order to, you know, be the feedstock for that weapon. So there is some intelligence how, you know, how you know complete it is I suspect it's fragmentary and but it was enough, I think, to convince Netanyahu that there was no point in waiting around for this. And I think that's fair.

As the IAEA reported at the end of last month when it reported to the Board of Governors, Iran had over 400 kilos of highly enriched uranium at 60%, which is essentially a step from bomb grade. And there's no other country in the world that has amassed that much highly enriched uranium that is not a nuclear weapons power. And when you add that to the fact that Iran had this arsenal of 2,000 ballistic missiles, there's no country in the world with 2, 2000 ballistic missiles that's not a nuclear power. And so, you know, hard not to feel compelled to connect the dots. Yeah, that's very interesting. You know, I was even trying to remember why it's I think, in retrospect, people will say that there's Iranian barrages against Israel, I guess there

were two, right? That we all focus at the time, or I did at least, the Biden administration had helped Israel stop them, and that was good, and not good, depending on your point of view, good from my point of view, and they didn't succeed much, they didn't do much damage in Israel, and so forth, but I suppose, well, the provocation for that was that Israel had attacked Iranian personnel or assets,

if I'm not mistaken, in Lebanon, right? Not Israel had not attacked Iran first, so to speak, at that point, I think the attack was on Iran, Iranians not on Iran. And Iran took that as inappropriate to blow up as I recall some Iranian senior officials who were working with the with the with Hezbollah and, and attacked Israel. But I suppose that opened up the the the the what they learned from that attack and from stopping that attack. Maybe it was quite important actually in giving them confidence that they could go

ahead and do what they did in this past week, don't you think? Yes, I mean, so the Israelis had had attacked IRGC personnel both in Lebanon and in Syria, part of Iran's proxy network. And Iran did use that as the occasion for firing, you know, barrage, the largest ballistic missile attacks on another country in history. We shouldn't, you know, neglect that. I think the Israelis did learn some things from that. They certainly learned some things from their retaliation in October.

Yeah, I guess that was the key, right? Yeah, but they wouldn't have had the opportunity or excuse if you want to be more, you know, Machiavellian about it, to retaliate without the Iranians deciding they had to show strength and attack Israel, right? So it's- Yeah, man, the retaliation in April at the instance of the Biden administration was fairly limited. And basically just a calling card took out a radar around the times and basically said, you know, we can hit you. So don't don't do this again. The second time they went out and they essentially used their F-35s to, which have a stealth

capability, to go in and take out all of these high-end Russian supplied air and missile defense radars. So they cleared essentially a path for them to be able to do what they did 10 days ago, which was start this campaign to degrade and destroy Iran's capability, not just on the nuclear side, but also on the ballistic missile side. And they did it by going after the command and control of the Iranian forces.

And they've also, I think this is less, has not been acknowledged enough. You know, you hear people say that you can't destroy the knowledge of nuclear weapons, even if you destroy the program. And of course, that's true, you know, at some level, which is that the physics of this are well known. It's not a secret, really really how to build a nuclear weapon. That said, it requires some real engineering skill and Israel has not only sort of eviscerated

the senior leadership of the IRGC and the Artesh, the regular Iranian military, but also the scientific leadership of the nuclear program. They have already been conducting a campaign for years of killing Iranian nuclear scientists and 2020 it's believed that Mossad was behind the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was sort of the Oppenheimer of the Iranian nuclear program. But they've also, you know, they stole his archive, the Israelis exfiltrated that in 2018.

And in one of the strikes, I believe actually before this latest round began, back in October, they also hit the headquarters and the files that had all the backups for the stuff that they had taken. So they've done a lot to set the Iranians back in their ability to reconstitute. Doesn't mean they can't. It just means the timeline for reconstitution is going to be a lot longer. Yeah, that's so interesting. One of these things leads to another and in ways that people don't see. Maybe they saw, they did see some of the implications of what they were doing, obviously, but did

they see that they would have this kind of opportunity? And anyway, I was worried Trump would, I mean, two months ago, right? Two months ago, very cool meeting in the Oval Office, Trump surprises and so now, I mean, the world's full of, the Trump people now say this was all a deep Machiavellian plot, which I'm a little dubious about, but at the end of the day, though, he made the decision and I personally congratulate him

for it, I mean, it wasn't inevitable. I don't think, I thought he would rather, I think he wrote this Wednesday or Thursday, but I don't know, it was 50-50 in most people's minds whether he would actually go ahead or just leave things alone. It wasn't just, you know, from his point of view, things were okay if left alone. If Israel hadn't been able to get to Fordo, but there was still a lot of damage to the

Iranian program. We were out of it. What's not to like for his, in a way? Had he given them still be a peacemaker, he seems to really, it's a lot clearer to me why he made this decision, honestly, given what we know about him and his views about things, but he, he, he did. Well, I think, first of all, it's been clear and,

and you know, Secretary Hegseth and JD Vance have been accentuating that today. He's always preferred a diplomatic solution to this. I think he believed he had a path to that. I think he charged Steve Witkoff with sort of pursuing that. And that was, I think, the background for the meeting with Bibi that, as you pointed out, Bibi only found out about this opening of negotiations shortly before their meeting in the Oval.

Clearly it was an uncomfortable meeting. The Israelis, I think, have understandable skepticism about Iranian negotiating on this front because the Iranians have a history of serial prevarication about their nuclear program and undeclared facilities and then not coming completely clean. They've never come completely clean about the Amat plan, which was this earlier plan for nuclear weapons program that they suspended or halted as the National Intelligence Estimate of 2007 said in the wake of our invasion of Iraq, by the

way, which doesn't get enough credit for that. But I think what he found was, although Steve Woodcoff, by all accounts, we haven't seen what he presented to the Iranians, but from the press accounts, he presented what he called an elegant solution, which seemed to entail some limited ability for Iran for a brief period to continue enriching, then having to stop enriching and having to get their enriched uranium for nuclear power power from an international consortium that would not be physically located in Iran, which would make it difficult for them therefore to have all the elements of the fuel cycle on site.

And the Iranians basically have never responded to that or been unwilling to respond to that and unwilling to give up quote their right to enrich. I think the final straw from what I can gather is that he had a phone call with Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, who's quite anxious to end all this. He finds, I think, this very unsettling for a whole host of reasons, you know, demonstration of Israeli military power, which he doesn't let care for because he thinks of Turkey as a regional superpower.

Fear about Iran collapsing and letting loose a whole wave of Iranian refugees into Turkey has just been dealing, hopefully now reached the point where you can get the Syrian, four million Syrian refugees out of Turkey and back into Syria. He's got a lot of reasons not to, you know, want this to go on very long. He met with Arakshi in Istanbul, the Iranian foreign minister, you know, on Thursday. And there was this effort to, you know, get a negotiation.

And Trump, apparently, according to reporting, was willing to send the vice president, willing to go himself to meet with President Peshechkin. And the Iranians reportedly could not get a sign off from the Supreme Leader because he was in a bunker fearful for his life because of Israeli strikes and maybe the president's threats. And as a result, I think the president drew the conclusion, look, they're not serious. They're never going to negotiate. We have a window of opportunity.

Let's just deal with this now. That's my reading. Yeah, that sounds right. And I mean, it's not the first time that a nation has, well, that they missed a chance perhaps to get a peace deal that would have been to their advantage. And now they may still have another chance, of course, to cut a deal. I mean, Trump says he wants to have a deal, otherwise he's going to attack again or something like that. And maybe, I mean, he will or his successor would accept stuff

they couldn't accept even a week ago, having seen the damage that has been done. Our friend Elliott Abrams has a piece, and if you've seen it yet this morning, I think a national review, where he quotes a great length Khomeini's famous statement from 1988 that you mentioned to me on the phone actually yesterday,

the- Poisoned chalice. The bitter chalice or poisoned chalice that he had to when he stopped the war with Iraq. And it was, it's interesting that we thought I'd never read the actual long statement. And it's, I mean, it's perfectly sensible that it was quite the right word, because it's a lot of, you know, messianic rhetoric and so forth. But we're just sort of, I didn't want to do this. I

wanted to fight as long as we could. It's now become clear that we just can't accomplish anything. And we're hurting ourselves so badly by continuing this war. God knows that there are a huge amount of death and destruction over eight years. And so I'm drinking the poison chalice and accepting that the war will end. I don't know. It's not inconceivable that we could be back in a situation in two months with some kind of negotiations and people like us worrying that we're not being stringent enough on inspection regime and all this. But I suppose the beginning, the main point to say is that the beginning point would be so much,

with Iran so much further from, we think, pretty certain I would think though, from nuclear weapons capability and then two weeks that if negotiations, that if we, they got to the negotiating table two or three weeks ago. Yeah, I think that the, you know, the Supreme Leader has very unpalatable choices right now. He can drink from the poison chalice The extreme leader has very unpalatable choices right now.

He can drink from the poison chalice and hope to just escape and fight another day. There are some people who think that actually if they reached any kind of agreement that would be threatening to the regime. There could be hardliners in the regime who would not accept that this time around. That's a possibility. I think there are a lot of possibilities that come from that particular branch that the Iranians might take. They might decide because Iran has been, for many years, focused on a culture of resistance to American hegemony

and to Israel's, you know, military power in the region. You can imagine them doing some, you know, trying to take some actions, you know, to strike back. But I'm struck by the fact that almost every turn, whether it's hitting some of the facilities that we have in the region, we have 40,000 troops spread out in a variety of different bases in Iraq, in Syria, in Kuwait, in Saudi Arabia, in Qatar, in the UAE, in Oman, Bahrain. These places right now are locked down and pretty well defended. The Israelis have done a lot to degrade Iran's military ballistic missile capabilities, particularly launch capabilities.

They could launch some volleys at these places, but not be guaranteed of success. Moreover, you know, Qatar and Oman have been very important, you know, sort of go-betweens for the Iranians in the West. I don't think they want to jeopardize those relationships. And they've just invested a lot diplomatically and politically in improving their relationships with the Saudis and the Emiratis, who lobbied the president in favor of diplomacy and against a military strike just a few weeks ago when he was visiting the region. And I'm not sure they want to jeopardize

those relationships either. The other option they have of course is the proxy network, but that as we've just discussed is kind of in shreds. I mean, you still have the Houthis, although the Houthis have been kind of quiet since the Israelis launched an attack against the chief of staff, their military chief of staff, who I don't think has been heard from since. It's not clear whether they killed him or whether maybe they just wounded him or whether

he's just gone to ground. Any one of those things is possible, I suppose. The popular mobilization forces in Iraq, the Shia militias who have periodically carried out attacks against US bases, they're having actually over the last week launched about six or seven, I think drones against Al-Assad, against one of our bases in Syria, against our consulate in Erbil, all of which were intercepted. There's also the energy of the Gulf, right? They could mine the Gulf and try and close out the Gulf to shipping.

Problem is then they can't get their own oil out to market. And the Saudis and Emiratis have built pipelines that they can use as alternatives. Almost anything that they do would have some very big downside risks for them and they will have to calculate very carefully. By the way, since they're having so much trouble communicating with the Supreme Leader, how rapidly any of this happens is another question, you know, could happen, I suppose, quickly, but maybe

not. And then finally, the other thing they have, there's cyber and there's terrorism. And cyber is something that, you know, I think we might want to be concerned about because the Doge cuts to CISA have, you know, and the fact that we have no NSA or cyber con commander right now because of changes that the administration has made. So we have some vulnerabilities. That's something I think to worry about. On the other hand, you know, unless they take credit for it, it won't be immediately clear

that they did it. And if they do take credit for it, they open themselves up to pretty serious, both cyber and kinetic retaliation by the United States, which they may not want to undergo. And then finally, they've got terrorism, which is already the status quo. I mean, Iran, before 9-11, it killed more Americans through acts of terrorism than any other country in the world Through its proxy Hezbollah in in Lebanon and They've been waging a terrorist campaign against us since 1979 So, you know how that would actually differ from the status quo

Not clear to me Yeah, but to get back to your original point, I mean, in a way this business full circle, I think it's not like we couldn't, it's not like once we've attacked, I've always been amused by this aspect of these debates, once we've attacked, it's like their turn to play a card and we don't get to do anything. It's like, of course, we've continued that deterrence.

And I think in fact, and this is your point about Putin, but I think it's very, very true about the Iranians themselves, how many can think about doing these things, but what does he think Trump's gonna do next if some Americans get killed on a base somewhere by Iranian proxies? I think, and I actually, even myself, whereas in 2019 was it that we,

some of us criticized Trump for not doing enough when there was, Iranians did go after US forces in the region. Now I kind of think he would, and at least they would have to think he might. So I think the degree to which this showing of strength may change the dynamics for everyone's thinking that moving forward is really something

one has to ponder and it doesn't solve all the problems, God knows, but it does something they would have to they would have to weigh. I do. And look at the other point you make, I'll just close on this maybe and get your reactions how many is in a tough position? I mean on the one hand the people who were skeptics maybe of the nuclear program who let's say are the more moderate side of their of the republic, they are thinking of this nuclear program and the public, of course itself, which has always been not so friendly to the Islamic regime and its nuclear intentions, necessarily. So we spent, you know, zillions of dollars and went through

international isolation and pretty rough sanctions for decades. For what? For what? I mean, so I think the degree of popular, I mean, the popular demonstrations, obviously, as recently as 2022, 2023, pretty serious ones. Could those become again? I think so. Could they find more support among elites from within the regime this time?

Maybe ironically from those on the right, so to speak, the more the right wing types who would say, what are we doing? We need to have, we can't just be accepting this humiliation. So you could get, I mean, the degree to which there won't be support for the status quo, that could lead to all kinds of directions. It could lead to a nasty nationalist military hunter, could lead to a helpful, hopeful, friendly kind of, let's go back to being pro-Western, like before 79. I mean, who knows? But I think the degree of the Trump people keep saying they don't want regime change. I wish they would just say, instead of them do but I think the degree of the Trump people keep saying they don't want regime change.

I wish they would just say, instead of them do say this, the point of this was not regime change. The attention is not necessarily regime change, but you don't have to say you wouldn't prefer if it were changed for the better. But anyway, I do think people are underestimating perhaps a little bit how this level of military defeat, it doesn't necessarily change the regime, it doesn't necessarily change policies of the regime, but it's pretty big. It's a pretty big variable to introduce, I guess I would say. Yeah, I would say just two things on that. I mean one is, to your point,

the estimates I've seen are that the Iranians have spent half a trillion dollars on the nuclear program over 40 years. And given where Iran is economically right now, if you're an average Iranian citizen, and you've just seen essentially, half a trillion dollars just go up in smoke, and you're wondering about why your own economic situation is so crappy.

You see this show up in Iranian protests when they've broken out in 2018 and 19 and 2023. You see signs saying, why are we spending money on Palestine? Why are we spending money in Syria? It's basically a nice expression of Iran first. Now, some of that Iran first sentiment, I think right now, because the country's under attack, is more focused on Israel, understandably. I think once the dust settles, there will be recriminations about this, not just the ridiculous spending on a nuclear program that they didn't need, but recriminations about

the massive counterintelligence problem that's been exposed, that they are so penetrated by Israeli intelligence. I think that's going to be an issue, intra-elite issue, maybe with some public overtones. And the balance between the population and the regime will have shifted somewhat because the instruments of Coercive power that the regime has have been weakened I mean leadership of the IRGC and there the Israelis have now recently hit a few other targets that

Go more to the internal security side and the more that that happens you know until this wraps up the more that that happens until this wraps up, the more that balance shifts. And the regime, the facile comparisons to 2003, I think are not well articulated or placed here. Nobody's talking about invading Iran and imposing regime change on Iran with US boots

on the ground. I think the only issue is, you know, will Iranians rise up as they have historically in the past? I mean, this happened in Iranian history. This is not like, you know, some, you know, fantasy happened in 1906. It happened in 1922. It happened in 1979 more recently. And you've seen these expressions of popular antipathy to the regime in the late 90s and

then again several times in the last five, six years. So I'm not predicting that that's going to happen, but it could well happen as the balance shifts. And whether that's for the good or for ill, it's hard to know because there's so many variables. shifts and whether that's for the good or for real, it's hard to know because there's so many variables, but It's something that we all should be watching out for to see what happens And I think it's something that again would then test the proposition if we care about whether it's for good or for ill Again, not that we're going to invade or put fruits on the ground

But are we not going to use diplomatic and economic leverage? On one for one side or the other it's's sort of, again, I think the notion, I do think Trump has made it very hard to sort of say, well, okay, we did bomb once, but now we're just going to pretend, you know, we're going back to focusing entirely on rounding up, you know, undocumented immigrants, or allegedly undocumented immigrants on the streets of LA. And there's, we have no actual things to do in the world, you know, that's become a little harder to sustain, I think. It also raises interesting questions,

but we'll not get to now, but Ukraine and stuff, and then sort of the kind of, whoa, that's not our fight, Russia's Ukraine's not our fight. Why is Israel Iran our fight, and Russia Ukraine's not our fight? Some of these are really, maybe they're reasons, you could say, Iran's had more responsibility

for the deaths of Americans directly than Putin, I suppose, but though they're pretty good allies. So anyway, many, many fit doors to be opened here for questioning and for decisions over the next days, weeks, months, years, and you and Ellie Coe will be covering all this at Shields in our public and we'll keep on discussing it everywhere else on and we'll keep on discussing it everywhere else on this website. And then in our print, I keep saying print publications. What is the alternative to video? Anyway, it's print, even though it's not printed, if you know what I mean. Digital.

Digital publications, yes. So very important, but a very big moment and a very, and I think somewhat encouraging one, I've got to say, don't you think? Well, so far, but as we said at the outset, you know, once military force starts being used, you know, there, it's not a direct line, it's not necessarily linear. And so we'll have, well, you know, we'll have to see how the Iranians respond, what the next moves are. We'll have to see how the Iranians respond, what the next moves are. But, I mean, a lot has been accomplished

in the last 10 days, and I don't think people should gainsay that. I would wanna make one maybe closing comment, which is, we've heard a lot of discussion coming from both the right and the left about the president's authorities and constitution. And I certainly think the administration erred in not notifying the Gang of Eight,

which has been the traditional way that you notify presidential use of force. That is to say the leaders of Congress in both parties and the leaders of the communities of jurisdiction over national security affairs. But having said that, the idea that somehow this is some great constitutional breach when there was no vote to support either Bill Clinton's operations in Bosnia or Kosovo, which went on for way longer than this.

We don't know how long this is gonna go on, but I mean, those were quite, I mean, Kosovo was 90 days. There was no congressional vote to authorize the use of military force in Libya under the Obama administration. And so the idea that this is some unique violation of constitutional standards and the congressional right to declare war is, honestly, given the fact that the uncontested

power of the purse that clearly is vested in the Congress by the Constitution has been allowed to be usurped by the executive branch with hardly a whimper from the Congress. The idea that they're going to make a stand on something that is as contested as this is and as easily shown to be consistent with past presidential practice, I think is foolish. Yeah, I know. I very much agree. Just as a practical matter, I think that's going to fade away. Assuming this is a what-off or close to a what-off, there might be follow-up attacks, but nothing. You know, if we're talking about a pretty precise air campaign. I mean, Bill Clinton bombed the Saddam's plants in the middle of his impeachment. Republicans to their credit mostly said, okay, we support this for now. If it sets back Saddam's

nuclear ambitions, they went ahead and impeached him a week later. Anyway, I mean, it seems like that's a reasonably healthy model of letting the president some discretion, but also not letting it change everything you think about his own administration, right? So yeah, I mean, you know, there are justifiable concerns. I saw Charlie Sykes this morning in his newsletter was raising concerns about how the president might use this and he might, in which case I think all of us have to be vigilant and call out, you know, any misuse or abuse of presidential power, think all of us have to be vigilant and call out any misuse or abuse of presidential power, as many of us have been doing for the last five months

in a variety of other areas. But I also think that when he does something right, we should also say, look, this was probably the right call. And in this instance, I think it was the right call. Well said. A good note to end on. And Eric, thank you for joining me today. And this quick analysis, less than 24 hours, but I think a judicious analysis

and not a simply, you know, for a headline kind of thing, but a judicious analysis of what happened, I guess, less than 24, I'm sorry to believe, less than 24 hours ago. So thanks for joining me and look forward to everything you and Elliott discussed on Shield of the Republic and many further conversations and contributions for you. Great to be with you, Bill, as always.

Thank you all for joining us on the Bulldog on Sunday.