Bulwark Takes - Tom Nichols: There Are 500 Ways This War Goes Wrong

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

In this emergency episode of The Mona Charen Show, Tom Nichols lays out the tremendous risks Trump has taken with Iran war.Go to https://Quince.com/MONA for free shipping and 365-day returns. That's a full year to wear it and love it. And you will.

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Welcome, everyone, to a special edition of the Mona Charned Show. I am delighted because of the news events to welcome Tom Nichols, formerly of the Naval War College, currently an Atlantic contributor, to discuss the war and the challenges we face. Tom, I must have devoured dozens of articles over the weekend, and yours really stood out for the clarity of its thinking. So thank you for it. And one of the things that struck me was that you were saying, and I think it should be said, first off, that it could go well, right? I mean, there is a chance that all the pieces will fall into place and that a vicious, horrible regime will be eliminated and that in its place we will get more democratic leaning or at least more...

Something better. Something better. And so that is one possible outcome. But as you pointed out in the piece, that nobody seems to have weighed the chances of the less desirable outcomes. So why don't you go through that for us, if you would? What are the things that you're worried about that can go wrong? The matrix here or the axis is, you know, best case, least probable to kind of worst case, most probable.

And I think the best case is improbable but possible the way, and I actually stole this from somebody else on the internet. I said the president being a recreational gambler myself, the president is trying to draw to an inside straight. you know which look can happen it happened poker players of you know you're sitting there and all you need is that nine of hearts and and you know by god there it is and you get lucky but but that's as people would you know as the saint goes it can happen but that's not the way to bet um so for all these things to go right um i think the first thing that it would be really necessary is that the military and security forces have to start defecting and not just running away, but defecting two rebel groups if they can find them. See, that's part of the problem is there is no opposition. Yes,

there's no opposition. I mean, that I so. No organized opposition. No, of course. I mean, we saw hundreds of thousands of Iranians pour into the streets in January. It was it was sad, but inspiring at the same time. You know, they desperately want to be rid of this horrible regime. But as you point out in your piece, I mean, and, you know, so Trump is saying to them, listen, here you go. I'm bombing your leaders. I'm bombing, you know, the missiles, et cetera, although he's given conflicting war aims several times, even in the last 48 hours. But still, he's saying, he did say in that eight-minute talk, you know, so go ahead, seize power for yourselves, Iranians. This is this is your opportunity.

And so one thing that is really, you know, that jumps out is, of course, you can't just seize power from people with guns if you don't have guns. And so however much those hundreds and thousands or millions of Iranians may want to be rid of this regime and a bombing campaign that takes out buildings and missiles and whatever and even that can decapitate the regime, take out Kamani. and no tears for him. But still, that doesn't give to the people any opportunity to actually take power from the people with guns, right? No. And in a way, you know, as much as Donald Trump hated Barack Obama, it seems like he's adopted Obama's strategy in Libya, which is no boots on the – although today he said, well, I won't say no boots on the ground. Of course, you never know with Trump. You never know.

You know, I always give props to my colleague, David Graham, who was the first person to really note that in an article, he wrote some time ago where he said, Donald Trump, remember that when you ask him a hypothetical, he never says no. Right. Right. Mr. President, are we going to colonize the moons of Jupiter? Well, we're looking at it. Very strongly.

Very strongly. We're looking at it. So it's his way of saying, I don't know how to answer the question, and I don't want to talk about it. But he's basically saying what Obama said. We're going to strip the regime of its security and military forces, right? We're going to leave it kind of just naked and exposed to its enemies. And then they will carry it forward and terror apart. Okay.

Libya is a country of seven and a half million people with a lot of forces spread out over a very, you know, a sizable amount of territory. but right next to a big ocean that we, you know, the Mediterranean that NATO kind of owns. But there were rebel groups on the ground with weapons headed for various government installations. And what we did was basically just clear their path. Nothing like that exists in Iran. Right. So I don't know when the part that, you know, look, I think we all, let me just stop for a moment and say, at this point we're committed cars off the

David from and I were talking about this earlier today cars off the rail the cars off the cliff you have to hope for that you know our men and women stay safe that they you know complete their objectives but when Trump says you must surrender you lay down your weapons surrendered home

yeah who is he talking about I mean, is he think Eisenhower is going to, like, go to the head of the IRGC, the new head of the IRGC and say, you know, slap him with a glove and say, hand over your saber and your pistol? It doesn't make any sense. Right. And so I don't know what he thinks he's doing. Well, it's about nuclear weapons. It's about missiles. It's about 40 years of being terrible to us and hurting American soldiers.

and terrorism and those are all, look, if you're going to argue that Iran should be right at the top of the list, you know, in the in the axis of evil of regimes to be overthrown, that's an easy case to make. But how are you actually doing this with what this is right now? And I don't think anybody in this administration can answer that question. So to go back to how it goes right and how it goes wrong. Okay. So somehow these guys find.

somebody to surrender to, or they say, this army detachment or this security force, we are now the government. The Mullahs don't tell us what to do. And not just acting on their own, by the way, there was a news report yesterday that said, well, that the military is coming apart. And the Iranian government said some military units are isolated. That's a very different matter. When military units are saying we no longer support the Islamic Republic. You know, we are now the, you know, fifth people's revolutionary anti-whatever. That's a different matter. But let's say that happens. Then yeah, at some point that government or pieces of it reach out and the Americans say, fine, we're going to take the foot off the or boot off your throat. You're going to agree to the

following things, including no more mass repression. We know you're not going to be a Jeffersonian democracy overnight, but we're watching you. Don't make us come back here. Okay, maybe that could work. I don't think they've put any infrastructure into place to do it. That takes a long time. And I'll just remind people of something I said in the piece. Somebody I quoted in the piece, Ambassador Barbara Bodine was one of our first. It's such a great quote, isn't it? It's a great quote. That's what I was looking for right before we started. Yeah, that's a great quote. Where she says, they're embarking on reconstruction and she gave an interview later that they used to joke with each other that, look, this is about Iraq. About Iraq, yes. And she was the investor to Iraq. And she said, look,

there's 500 ways to do this wrong and only two or three ways to do it right. And what I didn't count on was that we were going to do all 500 ways first. You know, And that was with, I think, a considerably more competent administration. I mean, I think Donald Romsle is one of the worst secretaries of defense in history. I miss him right now. Oh, my God. Yeah, we should get to what Hegseth said this morning. But before we do.

And the way, I'm sorry, the way it goes bad, you asked one as there's a, there's a whole bunch of ways it goes bad. The country fractures. You get little mini dictatorships or little military junta's all over the country. being set up. The people who take over and keep the government together in Tehran are worse or just as bad as Kamenei. You know, you have foreign powers getting involved in this and this turns into a major regional war in every direction. There are 500 ways to do it wrong. And I don't think they've thought any of that through. So, right. So, yeah, I mean, it's undertaking a war like this. requires tremendous planning, good judgment, sober consideration of all the things that can

possibly go wrong, all the things that this administration signally lacks, to put it as mildly as possible. Judiciousness, intellectual agility, the ability to know when things are going wrong or when they're going right. This is now, this is just, we're going to just bum the hell out of everything and then we're going to see what happens. Yeah, I mean, that's so. So let's talk about that. The history of trying to change regimes by bombing is one we ought to be familiar with. Anybody who's lived through the latter parts of the 20th and into the 21st century knows that we've done this a few times and the results have not been great. So after the first Gulf War, I think you mentioned this in your piece, George H.W. Bush having chased Saddam out of Kuwait, then sort of announces to the Iraqis, go for it, guys, you know, overthrow him. He's terrible. And, you know, some of the groups in Iraq attempted to do that. And that went badly. And Saddam crushed them, crushed them. And, you know, tens of thousands of people died.

So, Damir had genocide on our hands. with the Kurds and the marsh Arabs. I mean, that was... Yes, yes, it was ugly, horrible. Okay, now one instance where you could say, okay, it worked was in Kosovo under the Clinton administration. So, you know, the Serbs were committing

ethnic cleansing against the Albanians. We, you know, intervened with NATO to bomb the Serbs and make them stop. They did. But it wasn't just a bombing campaign. We then sent in a NATO-led peacekeeping force. It's still there as far as I know. So, you know.

K-4 or say, call it on the ground forever for. Yeah. And Koso is a tiny little country. And we didn't go directly. You know, it's interesting you bring up Kosovo, which an example I didn't use because it's kind of an weird outlier. The goal in the Kosovo war was to head off, was a very specific. goal of heading off a genocide. Yeah.

Right? This was after Rwanda, you know, after the Mahars and Sherbrinza, places like it, we said, okay, that the West led by Clinton, you know, one of the few things, you got to give him some credit for in his foreign policy, said, we're not going to wait one more time. This time we're going to act ahead of time because we had plenty of warning that the Serbs we're going to be up to no good in Kosovo. So we said, the demand was, take your forces out of Kosovo, get out and leave this area, even though you claim it as your own.

It was not a demand of all of you must lay down your arms, you know, across Serbia. What we did was we bombed buildings that were more supporting and government supporting buildings, but we then kind of stepped back. And that didn't happen overnight. Eventually, the Serbian people were tired of Milosevic. They handed him over to us. I mean, we didn't actually kill him. He died in prison.

Yeah, yeah. Just a different thing. Here, it's a, you know, I think Trump is, you know, like that. I can't think of that character in David Copperfield. So something will turn up. Something will, you know. Mr. McCawber, I never actually read it. They can't, they can't, they can't.

they didn't want it you know one of the rumsfeld's biggest mistake one of many mistakes but one of his biggest was that he wouldn't allow people to talk about what do we do when this war on a rock is over he's like that's not our problem we go in when we you know mission accomplished we prove what a small transformed force can do compared to heggseth rumsfeld was churchill i mean yeah you know these guys have not thought about anything beyond this and apparently they don't any talk about what do we do they think they're of this This is the point I'm trying to make. They think that they're avoiding Rumsfeld's mistake.

They're saying, we won't get in and do nation building. That was the mistake. We'll just leave it all there for other people. Well, that is not a great, because somebody's going to have to do it. Higset, in a press conference on Monday morning, seemed to say that the reason this is not going to be a repeat of Iraq is because we were too nice in the past. And no more Mr. Nice Guy. said, Max, let's see, no stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy

building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win and we don't waste time or lies blah, blah, blah, blah. Now, you know, that is, that sounds like Biff, you know, from back to the future, you know, just the bully boy trying to look and sound tough. He's such an unsexual. He's such an unsurious figure. He's like a cartoon version of a bad secretary. I don't know. What do you think? This tells you that he probably, I mean, from everything we've seen over the past three days, he probably was sidelined in most of this, which, you know, on the one hand, you say, yeah, the grown-up, Dan Cain and, you know, other people, Rubio, a lot of other grown-ups were probably running this. But he's the Secretary of Defense. He's supposed to be one of the president's chief advisors.

and instead what he is is one of the president's chief cheerleaders. Yeah. And he goes on no stupid rules of engagement. Well, that, you know. And by the way, why is that even relevant if they're only bombing from the air? I mean, you know, rules of engagement are much more about like hand-to-hand or on-the-ground combat. Do you fire or do you not fire? I mean, they do apply to that.

They do apply to targeting and other things. Yeah, targeting. Right. So we should target more like women and children. Orphanages or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

You know, and it's also just a stupid comment because the military never operates without rules of engagement. That this is just, Hegset. That's ridiculous. You know, like, yeah, sure, we're going to send up a bunch of strike aircrafts say, all right, boys, weapons is odd, do whatever. Knock yourselves out, fellas. That's not, that's not how any of this works.

And it shows you over and over again that Pete Heggseth still has the mentality, you know, of a company commander of like a first lieutenant or a captain, you know, who's in charge of a platoon or a company saying, all right, you know, we're going to get out there. And yet, even on the ground, if you really want to think about problems of rules of engagement in situations like this, if we send in ground forces, which president has ruled out, you're still going to have to know, do we shoot at civilians? Do we shoot at children? I mean, in Somalia, the enemy in Somalia,

warlords purposely armed children to create a rules of engagement conflict that shattered some of our people over there. There were people who opened up because they had to. It was kill or be killed. I mean, in one, there's a documentary some years ago about some of the people who fought in Mokendishu, and they had to open up on kids with a 50 caliber. Basically, that just turns children to, you know, anybody into just disintegrates them. but it was either that or be shot.

It was to save their own lives. And some of these guys came home with real problems and real moral injury. Moral injury from it. So when, Hanks says, are we no rules of engagement? That's easy for you to say sitting in the Pentagon. Yeah. Everybody in combat, all these, I mean, I taught these, you know, I've never served in combat. I taught hundreds of military officers.

The idea of saying to them, you have no rules of engagement. 99.99% of those officers would say, well, then you better think some up because I have to give orders down the line to people who have to give orders, the people have to pull triggers, and no rules of engagement is not a thing. Yeah. Let me ask you about something else that is worrying, and I'd love to hear what you think about this, because there doesn't seem to be a clear plan for what to do when You know, the bombing is over or, you know, so as you said in the piece, I think at one point, you know, repressive regimes are very good at enduring pain because they're not the ones. The leaders aren't the ones who are suffering. They inflicted on their people. This is a regime that just killed between 30 and 40,000 of its people simply for the crime of protesting in the streets. They're not loath to inflict pain on their own people. But so they could endure a huge amount of suffering and, and bombing and destruction and hang on to power. And, you know, this administration keeps saying, and if they're not going to put boots on the ground and therefore effect true regime change by, you know, being there.

Then one of the goals that this administration has outlined again and again and again, which is preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. is not guaranteed at all because if they absorb this punishment and manage to hold on to power and Trump say gets tired of it after a while, you know, he likes these quick and, you know, sharp military actions that are easy and don't involve long commitments, he might get tired of it and say, okay, mission accomplished, it's done, we've achieved everything. And then what's left on the ground is a regime that's still in power and that learns of the lesson, oh, North Korea didn't get, you know, this kind of punishment. They've got a bomb. So we have to rush even more single-mindedly toward getting a nuclear weapon so that this can never happen to us again.

Or at the very least, yeah, I mean, they'll look at, they're going to look at two examples around them, Libya and North Korea and say, you know, Libya, you probably should have killed a lot more people a lot faster. before the Allies came in. Remember, the reason we went in was Qaddafi was basically threatening to kill everybody in Tripoli. Yeah. I'm sorry, Benghazi. Benghazi. And he was going to say, we're going to pull you out of your closets. We're going to shoot you in the street.

Well, you know, basically he was because Gaddafi wasn't the brightest guy in the world, gave us this big advance notice of genocidal intent. And so we had to, you know, go in. But the North Koreans, when Libya was ripped to pieces, the North Korean said, see, we're not that guy. That's why we did what we did. And I think that's not a reason not to take down the government in Iran, but it's a reason to be there and do this as a major project rather than trying to do it as like a Venezuela only bigger. And this is the part that really worries me. He really thinks that, you know, this will be Venezuela times 90 million people.

And it's not that. Now, again, could it all fall into place? Sure. But, you know, they're not, they've killed the top 40 leaders in Iran. There isn't some Darcy Rodriguez waiting now, you know, in the wings to say, okay, you can go home now. I'll take care of this. They're still fighting. Wars only even going on for two and a half days.

So I think the president needs to tell the American people, because we're in it now. He needs to tell the American people and the Congress of the United States, here are the things that I consider to be essential for success. He can't just say, we're going to keep doing this until some people show up and take over the government. That's not really, first of all, that's not really, I know Pete Higgseth will say this is very woke, but killing people until you get to somebody, until basically you can get to somebody that makes you say, please stop killing people. It's not a particularly moral approach to war. It's not how we do it. It's not how we did it. I mean, even in World War II, we said unconditional surrender.

And at the end, when the Japanese said, one condition, the emperor, we said, okay, you know, because two nuclear bombs later, we said, we still gave them. We said, all right, you can keep the emperor. And, you know, the answer in places like Germany and Japan was, we're going to, now we're going to show up and we're going to administer these countries and bring some peace and security here. Simply saying, we're just going to create a wasteland and then people figure it out is not a plan. Again, I keep thinking, now that we're in it, we hope it goes well. Hope's not a strategy. Well, it's March, but it's still really cold, at least around here.

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We have one ally in this war, and that's Israel. And, you know, it's hard to think of another undertaking the U.S. has done that didn't involve allies. Can you talk a little bit about what that means for us geopolitically? Well, first of all, the charge that the Americans are just the, you know, the sort of equal or maybe junior partners of the Israelis, you know, that charge that's always, is thrown at us around the world. You know, I was looking pretty good right now because, you know,

the Israelis went in. Twice now we've attacked Iran with the Israelis going in and then saying the water's fine, come on in. And that, I mean, that's one of the things I object to. We're going to go to war.

We go to war for our reasons. We go to not BB Netanyahu's reasons. You know, Netanyahu wanted a war of regime change last year. 20 years ago. Oh, I mean, really, I'm going to try to be fair in that in Yahoo and say, we all wanted a war of regime change. We just weren't willing to embark on it, given the amount of risk and blood that it would involve.

Correct. Let's put it this way. We all wanted regime change, whether we were willing to do it militarily was another matter. It was another matter. We haven't even discussed. You know, like we should have been arming, you know, in opposition. We should have been. And certainly, you know, the other thing is this administration is cut off voice of America and all those other. Wasn't that a brilliant decision? Let's cut off our Farsi service before we do this. Farsi service. Yeah. I mean, you know, so that possibly they could have coordinated, the opposition could have a voice where they could coordinate. But no, we got rid of that.

It may be happening and we don't know it, but this is a time where the CIA with, you know, bringing in satellite phones and, you know, the kind of things, kind of the mischief that we did back during the Cold War in Eastern Europe. copy, back in those days when sending copiers could be a really destructive thing to do. You know, fax machines for those of you that are old enough to remember. You know, those things could really help. And here, we've just said, rise up. Take the guns from the cops.

But the other, I think, really stunning part of this is, what have we done to prepare our allies for what might come later? Like if this war, if we win this war, it's going to take a lot of people to help because there are going to be a lot of other people that are willing to help. Like, I don't know, say China, you know, there was no, there's been no depth of thinking about this. And having Israel as your sole ally, you know, what did you mean about China? I'm not sure I understood that. Well, if, you know, if Iran needs a new friend for reconstruction and it's not going to be us. Oh, oh, I see. Do we want to, you know, the Chinese are always willing to help and without any conditions about democracy and other than others.

Exactly. And plus, they get, they get some of their big chunk, apparently, of their oil from Iran. In terms of having Israel as your only ally, the good part of that is Israelis are amazingly military, militarily capable. The bad part is, you know, again, it looks like the United States and Israel basically dictating to the Middle East. without the help of a lot of other people. I guess, you know, for those of us old enough to remember Gulf One especially, which was the entire war, I mean, even East Block nations, I mean, I think there was a Czechoslovak, back when there was a Czechoslovakia. I think there was a Czechoslovakian chemical defense battalion that was sent to just,

you know, not to fight, but in case something bad happened. I mean, it was all hands on deck. second time around 40 countries supported us, but only four, but it was still four of us, Britain, the United States, Poland, and Australia, you know. Sent troops. Sent troops and fought and fought well. But despite what Trump now says about them, yeah, insulting them and saying they didn't fight with us, they've never fought.

They hung back in their barracks while we did the fighting. What a jackass. He's, well, but he's a child. I mean, he's just a child, and that's the kind of thing you say when you don't know anything, and you, you know, you're just trying to get that USA chant going. So, you know, the war, we can probably handle the war with just one ally, but diplomatically, and especially post-war, that's a very tough situation to be in, especially when your one ally, again, is the one that, you know, causes you, causes you

the the most angst about how that's perceived, a difficult ally, even under good circumstances, you know, B, B, BNNNNYau is not the easiest guy to talk to. I worry, too, that this combination of Trump and Netanyahu, these are two guys that just don't, they both have reasons, their own reasons for going to war for themselves. But also, these are not guys that like to admit a mistake or change, you know, these are, these are doubled down kind of guys. And this is, you know, some of the, you know, some of the guy. Sometimes, you know, again, you can see my nostalgia for Bush 41 here, you know, sometimes you have to reassess, re-evaluate, make sure that your military operations are staying on track with your strategic goals.

And I don't know what our strategic goals are. So I don't know if we're on track or not. Right. I mean, nobody knows what our strategic goals are. And I feel like I'm not as old as Trump, but I'm about 10 years younger. and I lived through a lot of the things that were formative in his brain. So, like, people kept asking, like, where did this thing about people are sending us their mental patients and, you know, all this? And he kept saying, Cuba.

I knew where it came from. You know, it was from 1980, Mariel Boatlift, right? Similarly, I think, you know, a lot of his MAGA people, his MAGA supporters who are, you know, very down on these Forever Wars and so on. When Trump gets up there and starts reciting all of the insults and crimes of the Iranian regime, to them that must seem like ancient history. But for Trump, and we know how his fragile ego is so much a part of his decision-making. And I think he is still burning up about the hostage thing from 1979, you know, that he feels the insults. insult, the indignity that Americans were held hostage, something that was so long ago that

most of the people who are voting now, I don't think you were even alive, when these events took place. Now, it is true that Iran has committed terrible crimes against us and has targeted us and they chant death to America. And they've been a menace around the world. And they've certainly killed many, many, many of their own people and other people. And they have destabilized the Middle East, they are responsible for Hamas. You know, no Iran funding Hamas, no October 7th. But for all that that is the case and for all that lots of us have been hoping and praying and thinking that nothing better could happen in the Middle East than for this regime to fall to a better regime, this crowd does not seem to be the ones to do it. But you've said all that.

want to talk to you now about legalities. Other presidents have used the military without getting congressional approval, but they've usually sought some kind of authorization or they've had international allies. I mean, even Reagan, when he went into little Grenada, remember, he had a little coalition of the neighboring countries involved. Didn't the organization of American States ask us to go in? Yes. Yes, or something like that. And there was like the prime minister of Dominica or something. I remember her, you know, at the White House. She was great. She had a beautiful accent. Anyway, this president has been destroying the rule of law at home. And so it does seem, even though it is a bit dicey, once you're in a war, once our troops are, once our troops are committed

and are under fire, it's a little bit dicey to then to have the Congress say, you know, no, stop, or, you know, we need to authorize this, or we're going to cut off funds for the war, which they, of course, have the constitutional authority to do. But so as a matter of legalities, they didn't observe any of them. What do you think the Congress should do now, now that the bullets are flying? Well, first, I think Trump did this specifically to show his contempt for the legal restrictions on the president's power to make war. And I'm conflicted about that because back in, I've been working on a piece, back in 1990, I was an advisor to a U.S. senator who wanted to invoke a Republican who said, hey, if we invoke the War Powers Act, doesn't that help Bush? It gives him cover and legit.

I said, no, War Powers Act is a terrible piece of legislation. legislation, please don't do it. My little part of history, I may have averted a small Republican rebellion on the War Powers Act in 1990. But on the other hand, that doesn't mean that the president has completely unlimited powers to go to war at will. You know, that is not, I think, getting some kind of fig leaf from the Congress, even if it's these, these a these janky a UMFs that i think are you know don't make much sense and give people the opportunity to say like john carey did to say well i was for it before i was against it kind of you know uh hair splitting nonetheless you have to go to congress and say here is my goal this is

what i want tell you know and i want your approval as the representatives of the american people and okay that somebody's got to do that and then that actually gives you a stronger hand overseas that's why Bush did it in 2002. He turned to Iraq and said, no one's going to stop me here. Yeah. So that would have been the way to do it. He chose not to because, as you say, he has contempt for Congress and the law. So what now?

But does, yeah, does Congress risk its image if it seems to be, I don't know, putting the brakes on the president when we are under fire? Well, considering that most Americans are not in favor of this war, I would argue that it's Congress reflecting the will of the American people to at least slow things down and ask questions about this to say, you need to come to us and, you know, I'm sure that they file, I haven't seen it, but I'm sure that the Bush, excuse me, the Trump administration filed the requisite 48-hour paperwork, right? Under the war powers resolution, he has 48 hours to inform Congress and then they have to. to consult and do all the things they've got to do. But to say, before we vote on continuing this war, you need to come to us as the representatives of American people. And again, just tell us what you're doing. I mean, that's part of the, but it's not just that Bush, I've got, we've got the old wars on my brain. It's not just that Trump went ahead and did this without Congress. It's that he refuses to explain what he's doing. to Congress or to the American people.

So, you know, Congress, it may well be that Congress would say, all right, if your goal is these three things, you know, nuclear weapons, missiles, and a better regime, and you lay out a plan and you have Dan Cain and come in here and tell us how that works and all that, we might actually approve of this. But instead, their attitude is everyone who is not them. And this is just one more piece of, excuse me, of how Trump makes policy. Everyone who is not them, everyone who is not a MAGA loyalist inside the White House is the enemy. And the assumption is that whoever you are, no matter what it is, whether immigration, foreign policy, tariffs, whatever, you are the enemy and you will say no to us because you hate us so much.

And that's just not a, you can't run a war that way. I mean, a war has to be run with the support of the people, its legislature, you know, coherence and unity in the executive. And this is basically Trump and a handful of guys saying we're going to go to war on Iran against one of the biggest wars we've ever gone into since the 20th century. And by the way, not only did he not consult Congress, he clearly is just giving the finger to his own constituency. see. His base is not behind him on this. So, you know, who, how, how does he sustain this without any of that support? You know, one of the things about him that we've seen consistently is his kind of simple, simple-minded belief that things are easy. It's easy. You just, you just apply force, you know, And if that doesn't work, apply more force.

You know, he, he ran for president 2016 constantly claiming that the only reason we didn't have, you know, a great trade policy and a great immigration policy and a great economy was because people were too stupid to do what was so easy, you know, and he was the answer. I alone can fix it. And, you know, when it comes to something like this, I'm afraid that he might think this is easy. We just, you know, bomb them from the air. I think that's where he is now, Mona. I think that's already his, you know, and it doesn't help that the, that the fights he's picked before this were, you know, blowing up Venezuelan fishing boats.

You know, a one and done over Iran, a one and done strike into Nigeria. So he's sitting there going, you know, hey, hey, oh. how hard can this be you know well pretty pretty hard and as you say back in 2016 everything was easy and then he gets into this you know hey who knew health care was so complicated well yeah yeah everyone everybody you know except you know that one of the one of the one of the most maddening things about trump aside from all his vulgarity and crudeness and ignorance is that is this i mean it's kind of funny but it's just it's also endlessly annoying he thinks that if he had thought of it or thought about it until that moment. No one had. Right with that little verbal

tick of, you know, aerial bombing, I call it, you know, or healthcare, I call it. Oh, is that what you are? Groceries. I call them groceries. I call them groceries. Yes. Oh, that's interesting, Mr. President. You know, I don't know that anybody's ever used that word, but I'm glad you finally discovered it. And it's just so weird. And it shows you what a, what a narcissistic bubble just wraps this guy's head, you know, grocery. I call them groceries because other people on, because no one else, everyone else on this planet is like a cardboard cutout of a human being that doesn't actually have speech or thoughts.

So, you know. Oh, gosh. I mean, that's funny when you're talking about groceries. It's not funny when you're talking about a major war in the Middle East. Yeah. We are at the mercy of a, of a man who has sort of the mentality of a 12-year-old boy and the understanding of a maybe five-year-old, you know.

Certainly the impulse control of a small toddler, that's for sure. Yeah. And so that is why it is a really, really worrisome moment. What do you think is the, well, it's so hard to say. say. But what do you think is the most likely outcome? I'll go first. I think the most likely outcome here, which is bad, is that Trump wanting this to be over quickly so that he can declare victory does find somebody in Iran that he can, you know, make a deal with. And this person who is a bad person who is part of the existing power structure makes promises that he doesn't mean in order

to end the war. And we get a continuation of the Islamic Republic under another name. But this time they are, they've learned their lesson and they are going to, you know, get a bomb fast. I agree with all of that except the bomb part. You know, one of the things that's amazing about the Iranian diplomacy was how clever they were of having all the benefits of having a nuclear bomb

without the risk of ever building one. That was a very clever game they played. They said, oh, we're not building a bomb. All the pieces are right here. And we certainly have enough uranium to do it. But we would never do it. But we could.

And so don't, you know, so I think that I think in this case, I mean, because remember, BB's been saying for 20 years, they're a week from a bomb. So I think if they're smart, whoever takes over now is remotely smart, I think it's exactly as you say, they're going to say, yes, you win, we're not going to do any of this stuff. They won't do anything obvious with nuclear weapons because they're going to have to reconstruct a lot of stuff.

I mean, that's just going to keep them busy. And at the very least, Trump will have taken the nuclear program and pushed it back. at great cost, diplomatically and financially in the United States, he will have pushed that back. I don't know, however many years will intelligence analysts will be arguing about that for a long time, about how close they were or not. But I completely share your, first let me say that anybody who says they know what's going to happen next is making it up. I share your probabilistic judgment that Trump eventually gets tired of this. He's not getting a bump in the polls.

That's really important. There's no rally around the flag here. you know one of the dark side uh downsides rather of people having made up their minds about donald trump is that his polls tend to be immune to big events either way when he screws up he doesn't take a major hit but when he tries to do something like this he doesn't get a bump and that's going to bother him and i think you're right i think after why he's going to say okay fine i found a guy we made a deal you know kind of that mafia way i you know uh we i met a guy we gifts for exchange promises were made uh You know, we're going to move up.

And that keeps the country of Iran together, along with something like this functioning central government, which will then send, you know, messages out everywhere saying, no, the government still exists, country's still in one piece, don't get any funny ideas. That, I think, is the most likely thing. It's also possible that something like a government remains in Tehran, but not in other parts.

You know, I mean, what, what happens in Mashat or Shiraz or, you know, so many other cities? It's a big country. So do you then get, you know, kind of, yeah, it's fine. I mean, what, you know, do you get internal conflict and civil conflict and internecine violence that then invites participation from other nations or us? You know, I don't think, I think Trump will lose interest in that because his attention span for these things is so small. And I think the more the longer we're involved, the more people are going to, that his polls will actually get worse. And I think he'll leave the Iranian opposition hanging out to dry. I hope I'm wrong.

This is where I have to say. And I'm not saying that just to be, you know, as a kind of a hand wave. I genuinely hope I'm wrong about this. And I genuinely hope that of all the stupid things Donald Trump's ever done that he can pull this off because millions of lives are now riding on it. whether we would have chosen it or not, we're in it. So if he can do this, great. But I also thank Congress to go back to your earlier question, Mona. Congress now needs to be involved.

And it can't just be a blank check to say, listen, just go do whatever you want in Iran. And don't, you know, here, here, have all the money you want. Go do whatever you want. And, you know, best of luck. We hope it works out. Okay. Yeah. Just one more little moment on the nuclear threat.

because, you know, Trump says over and over and over again, you know, this horrible regime, terror sponsoring regime will never have a nuclear weapon. And that's his main goal. And it's a worthy goal. But in my opinion, the only way to prevent the Iranians from wanting a nuclear weapon is if there were a real change of government, a change of who runs. the place, who has the power? And unless that's going to be small D Democrats, the evil regimes that prevail there are always going to want nuclear weapons. So I just don't think there's a way

other than by a genuine democratic change to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon by bombing them from the air. Preventing them from getting a nuclear weapon is not only a worthy goal. It's one I would have supported military action for it. If you had If the president or anybody had put intelligence in front of the American people, I said, listen, in the next 72 hours, these guys are going to test a weapon. And that can't happen. You know, back in around 2010, I want to say, 2008 maybe, when the North Koreans were going to test a three-stage missile, noted hawks like Ashton Carter, you know, who was not a hawk.

these Democratic, you know, and Bill Perry came out and said, destroy it on the launch pad if you have to. Blow it up on the launch pad so they can't. Remember they? And I was shocked. I was like, whoa. You know, these guys are old school Democrats. But their argument was this is one of the last chances to, they don't let them get the telemetry or the intelligence or the ability to build this thing. And if it means war, then it means war.

But it probably won't that if you just do this one thing, take out the, if some, So I would have said, great, 72 hours, 48 hours a week, whatever it is. They're about to go nuclear, hit that site, flatten it, turn it to glass, whatever you have to do. This is not that. No. And I suspect this regime will say, this next regime, wherever they are, will say, yeah, you know, the North Koreans are laughing at us because this happened, just the same way they did the Libyans, that if you'd have had nuclear weapons, this wouldn't have happened to you. But I suspect they're going to play this game a little longer to say, to play K Trump, to say, you win.

Oh, yeah. No, never again. You know, and then they'll start doing what they do. And it's just going to take them longer. But they don't have to. They can say that publicly and then privately, secretly be working on it. Except that the Israelis and the Americans, a lot of other people will be watching pretty closely, you know, about whether they're even going to try and restart that program.

But again, just like with Saddam Hussein before him. and before the Ayatollah, people lose interest. Governments lose interest. They get lazy. They just kind of, you know, figured the next day is going to be like the day before,

which was why the sanctions regime was coming apart in Iraq. Yeah. So, you know, there's, again, a million ways that this can go wrong. And now we just have to hope that it doesn't go wrong. But it can't go on like this. It can't just be Donald Trump every now and then

popping up, throwing a hat on over his bad hair day, and giving a stupid speech, you know, to a camera and then disappearing again into his bunker. I mean, that's this whole business of launching a major war from a blanket fort, you know, Mar-a-Lago is bananas. I'm sorry, I went back and looked at previous uses of force, and I found a clip. I mean, Ronald Reagan went on TV to talk about a won and done strike on Libya in 86. Not even like a major, you know, I remember the strikes. And it wasn't a big major attack on Libya. He sent in a flight.

They tried to kill Gaddafi. They blew up some stuff in Tripoli and they came home. And Ronald Reagan felt the need to go on television in the Oval Office behind his desk and say, I am here to report to you on what I just did. Now, that's the least Donald Trump. owes us instead of these, you know, ready for Fox and OANN and campaign clips or, you know, Pete Hegseth, you know, uke-ooking at 8 o'clock in the morning about, you know, how lethal we are. That's not an explanation.

And it's certainly not showing the appropriate respect for the American people or their representatives. And we will see whether the American people agree with those of us who participated in the no kings rallies to say, this is, this is, this is, where we've come. This is what we've got now. We've got a major war can be undertaken by the whim of one man. And that is the exact opposite of what the founders intended. They didn't want that kind of kingly power, whatever Clarence Thomas says to the contrary notwithstanding. And so this is a challenge for us at home very much, just as much as it is internationally. We,

We didn't want a king. We've got one. A mad, violent king. Yeah. And Waitel, he starts to try to use the powers of being a war president at home. Yes, yes. Where dissent will be considered unpatriotic and harming the troops. And so we'll have to crack down on that. Okay.

Tom Nichols. Well, happy Monday. Thank you so much. Always good to talk to you even under these circumstances. Thanks. Thanks, Mona. Thanks for having me.