Morning Joe - Morning Joe: Trump to decide on U.S. role in Israel-Iran conflict in two weeks

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says President Trump will decide “within the next two weeks” whether to strike Iran, as indirect diplomatic talks continue.

Regarding the ongoing situation in Iran, I know there has been a lot of speculation amongst all of you in the media regarding the president's decision making and whether or not the United States will be directly involved. In light of that news, I have a message directly from the president, and I quote, based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks." That's a quote directly from the president for all of you today. White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt yesterday announcing the president will decide

within two weeks if the U.S. will directly attack Iran. And we're going to bring you the latest on the conflict in the Middle East, which has now reached its second week. Also ahead, an appeals court is allowing the president to maintain control over the California National Guard. We're going to dig into that decision, as well as the ruling from a different court against the administration on another issue tied to immigration. Also ahead. The New Jersey homecoming yesterday for the last living American hostage in Gaza who was freed last month.

We'll have more of that ahead on this Friday morning. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Friday, June 20th. With us, we have managing editor at the Bulwark, Sam Stein. Communist and associate editor for the Washington Post, David Ignatius, back with us again. Writer at large for the New York Times, Elizabeth Buhmiller, and former chief of staff at the CIA and Department of Defense Jeremy Bash is with us this morning. Good to have you all. David Ignatius, two weeks, two weeks. Where have I heard that before? I mean it is it actually is it is Donald Trump's standard

unit of time for telling you... To make a decision. When his health care proposal is coming out, when he's going to hold Vladimir Putin accountable, and if you're Bibi Netanyahu, you have to be worried that he says the decision is going to be made in two weeks. And yet, if you're Iran, you don't really trust that, do you? I mean, he still has the mole's guessing going, well, is he just trying to lull us into a false sense of security here?

Is a strike coming? Or is this Donald Trump kicking the can down the road? So Joe, you're right. Two weeks is the standard increment of Trump time. But what happened yesterday was that Trump stepped back very clearly from his threat to bomb the Iranian enrichment facility at Fordow, and he did give diplomacy two weeks to operate. I'm told by knowledgeable officials the following. First, negotiation has been Trump's preference from the beginning.

That is how he wanted to get out of this crisis, going back months to when he first discussed with Prime Minister Netanyahu in February what was ahead. Second, indirect contacts between the United States and Iran and direct contacts have continued through this period of tension. Messages have been exchanged. And I'm told that the Iranian position has softened slightly on some issues, which makes Trump think that being tough and threatening bombing had some effect. So we're now heading into a period where the positions still have some fundamental disagreements. How you finesse the Iranian insistence that they have a right to enrich uranium with the

American insistence that any pathway to a nuclear weapon must be stopped is going to be hard to resolve, but not impossible. When you look at the history of diplomatic negotiations, this is the kind of problem that smart diplomats can solve in ways that allow an outcome. So I think these two weeks will be crucial. I would note one final thing. The extra time gives both Israelis and Americans more time to prepare military options, both the bunker busting bomb, but also covert military

operations on the ground that would achieve the same goal. So just a final thought. The Iranians have not trusted Trump to deliver. That's one reason these negotiations have not succeeded. Somehow, if Trump wants to succeed, he's got to build more trust than he has now, assuming the Supreme Leader remains alive. That's another wild card. If he should be killed in this period, I think that's the end of negotiations.

But with a little more trust and a serious effort by Trump, for the first time you can see the outlines of a deal might be possible. Elizabeth, the Wall Street Journal editorial pages when it goes after MAGA isolationists for the first time, you can see the outlines of a deal might be possible. Elizabeth, the Wall Street Journal editorial page this morning goes after MAGA isolationists, talking about how the real war has been the war that Iran has waged on America and the West since 1979. But there is a part of it where they suggest that these isolation isolationists are so shattered by the experiences of Vietnam and Iraq that they fear every war is going to be a forever war.

Well, you know, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the overwhelming number of senators, certain late night talk show hosts on MSNBC all supported the Iraq invasion and all said it looked like a cakewalk two or three weeks in. It would seem to me as you were writing anybody who is not chastened by the lessons of our arrogance going into Vietnam and Iraq would be foolish. That's correct. What is really interesting right now is how much this feels in many ways like the run-up to the war in Iraq in Washington.

There's a huge difference, of course. There's not more than 200,000 troops en masse in the Middle East ready to invade, ready to cross the border and march toward Baghdad. But there are the same people, the same neoconservatives now calling for an attack on Fordow. They are the same people saying that this can be done very quickly and easily. And there's the same deep divide, again,

with Trump's base and in the country, because, as we all remember, we were told it was going to be a cakewalk going into Iraq. were told that the US troops would be treated as liberators and there was an initial euphoria after a three-week victory and then we know what happened for the next close to nine years so it feels very similar and as you as we all know Donald Trump can campaign three times as the president he was going to end our forever wars in Iraq and It feels very similar. And as we all know, Donald Trump campaigned three times as the president.

He was going to end our forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I think what he's doing right now is what we call coercive diplomacy. He has raged and threatened for several weeks now, threatened to assassinate the supreme leader, hoping that this would scare Iran into more negotiations. And coercive diplomacy may work.

I know there are a lot of people who would prefer the coercive diplomacy to an attack. I do want to go back to the Wall Street Journal editorial page. There are a lot of things in this editorial that I agree with. But one line did stand out, David Ignatius. Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini insisted, Mr. Trump's terms on Wednesday. Resisted. Resisted and said, any U.S. military intervention will undoubtedly cause irreparable harm to them. The Wall Street

Journal editorial page says, this recycles this threat from his before Israel's attacks and this is what they say, but it isn't clear that he can make good on it. No, it's not. I mean that sentence does a lot. We've all talked about how even a crippled Iranian government could spread chaos and hell throughout the world, especially when it's directed at U.S. interests, whether it's embassies in Africa, embassies in the Far East, wherever those embassies are, they still could cause grave damage to the United States, could they not? So their ability to damage the global economy in particular is something that you have to

take seriously. One thing that U.S. military planners have worried a lot about in recent weeks is their ability to mine the Strait of Hormuz and essentially prevent any ships carrying crude oil from passing through, which would have an immediate, very dramatic effect on the rate of inflation at a time when inflation is a big issue for President Trump. This claim of irreparable damage, you know, let's be honest, in the long-running now a year of bombing back and forth between Israel and Iran. Iran has been less devastating

in its response than was expected. It's not to say that the Iranians couldn't deliver some some very dangerous damaging blows, but I would focus on the damage to the world economy and the US military positions that remain in the Middle East, in Iraq and other places. But the Iranian military power is on the wane. That's what we're seeing now. And so those threats should be discounted a bit. Another thing the Wall Street Journal editorial board has been focusing on is how Trump's actions as it pertains to

these conflicts could impact China's behavior toward Taiwan. So there's that factor to watch for as well. And as President Trump decides on next steps from the U.S., representatives from the United Kingdom, France and Germany are set to hold talks with Iranian officials in Geneva today. White House officials have told NBC News that Middle East envoy Steve Whitcoff will not attend. Russia is warning against regime change in Iran. The Kremlin spokesman said Moscow would react very negatively if Israel were to assassinate Iran's leader with U.S. assistance.

And Jeremy Bash, this actually, the Russians posing those threats actually underline a much bigger problem. It wasn't until I think it was 2017, 2018 that the Russians actually get back into the Middle East in Syria. As far as troops on the ground, Syria, of course, has since changed governments. If for some reason this government fell, this Iranian government fell, the Russians would lose another vital ally, not just in the Middle East, but worldwide. Talk about that.

That's right. The Iranians have been providing drones to support Russia's war in Ukraine. And there has been an alliance, maybe an uncomfortable alliance, between Russia and Iran for many decades. The other dynamic that you referenced, that Mika referenced, was of course China's role. And there was recently a phone call between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. And as you recall, on the eve of the Ukraine war, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. And as you recall, on the eve of the Ukraine War, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin signed a No Limits Pact, sort of an effort to join forces to block U.S. influence and power,

not just in Europe, but also in the Indo-Pacific. And so some analysts have pointed out that there has been this kind of loose alliance that has been developed. And the acronym in Washington is CRINGE, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and global extremists. And those elements working together, where North Korea and China have worked uncomfortably together in some cases, where China and Russia are working together, where Iran and Russia are working together, and even where you saw North Korean troops go and serve on behalf of Russia in the Ukraine fight. You see these are working together. And even where you saw North Korean troops go and serve on behalf of Russia in the Ukraine fight,

you see these countries working together. And so I think as Donald Trump navigates not just the next two weeks, but the longer time horizon, he's gonna have to decide how to keep our allies together to confront that emerging bloc. But Sam Stein, how fascinating you have both China and Russia having a more hands-off approach here.

Vladimir Putin, in a sense, telling the Iranians they're on their own, and Xi Jinping sounding a bit like John Lennon, peace is the answer. War is not the answer, baby. Suddenly a peacenik. But it shows you they do not want to get involved. They do not want to get in the middle of this Iranian and Israeli war, which is fascinating considering how Iran quickly came to Russia's defense in the Ukraine war. Yeah, and I think everything is sort of tied together also with Ukraine, obviously in Bogdán

in that theater. I cringe a little bit at the use of cringe, I've got to be honest with you, obviously in Bogdan in that theater. I cringe a little bit at the use of cringe. I gotta be honest with you, Jeremy. I had a question actually for David though, because we were talking about a crippled Iranian government. And David, I mean, to me the question is not just what is a crippled Iranian government look like, it's what comes next if a crippled Iranian government falls.

And as you talk to politicians in DC, as I have, especially in the MAGA universe, that's their big concern. It's not that we can't get involved military with a pinpoint strike or even something more robust than that. It's what happens if that government falls and how much are we then invested in propping up a new government? Because that's the quagmire that happened in Iraq.

It wasn't necessarily the three weeks of the military intervention. It was what we tried to build after the fact. So can you explain a little bit what might happen domestically in Iran if this government were to fall? So a chaotic postwar Iran would be a threat of its own. And you're right. The idea of the United States with its allies attempting nation-building in that country from outside is crazy.

I've been to Iran twice, and I've seen the passion that Iranians that you meet have for a different kind of country. This clerical regime is not popular with people. So if that regime is crushed, if some kind of peace agreement is done in a way that gives more pragmatist elements in Iran more power, I mean, let's remember the entire IRGC military leadership has been wiped out. So if pragmatists, if the people who want a different country have more power and then take action, you'd have a more hopeful scenario. But no one should think that you can easily build on the rubble a country that's going

to be stabilizing. It would be nice to think, you know, we think back to the absolute chaos that began October 7, the terrible loss of life across the region. It would be nice to think of that cycle coming to an end with a process of rebuilding across the region. I mean, that's a pipe dream, maybe. But if people are going to try to think big, that's the way they should think. And they should enlist people in Iran, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank who have that belief in a different kind of region.

And we'll work hard. It'll take many years. But that's something worth all the misery that's come. Well, and of course, we don't know what's going to happen. I remember many of us saying that bombing strikes alone in the Balkans was not going to bring an end to the civil war there. It actually did. So air power in that instance actually made an impact.

But Elizabeth, as you say, that's the exception and not the rule. Well, actually, I say that's the exception, not the rule. Your article suggests as much. The specter of Iraq now hangs deeply over deeply divided, anxious Washington. President Trump, who campaigned against America's forever wars, is pondering a swift deployment of Iran military might in Iran. You said the sense of dread and the unknown feels in many ways the same way. We're talking about Iraq here.

We could also be talking about Libya and what happened after pushing Gaddafi out after he gave up his weapons of mass destruction. There aren't a lot of examples of regime change in dictatorial run nations that's had a glide path to a peaceful civil society, are there? There are not, look at our history in Afghanistan.

I don't need to remind anybody here about that, but that was 20 years, not nine years. And we saw how that ended. It ended very badly for Joe Biden when he pulled out, something he had wanted to do for a long time when he was vice president. And we saw how that happened. And look where Afghanistan is today.

It's one of the great tragedies. So I also wanted to say something about Trump's decision for the two-week delay, if that's what it is, is just that it puts Israel in a really tough strategic situation right now, because that means the war continues. Israel, as we know, is quickly running out of interceptors to intercept the missiles that Iran is lobbing. So it's a question of who has more missiles, who has more interceptors.

But it's a tough decision. And Netanyahu now is making noises about going it alone and trying to dismantle Fordo somehow with Israel alone, either with bombs or he's talking about perhaps commandos going in and doing it manually. So that is going to be something to watch over the next two weeks. He was really hoping that Donald Trump would come to his aid,

and that has not happened so far. So far, yeah. The Israeli Defense Forces say more than 60 fighter jets hit targets inside Iran's capital of Tehran overnight in a post on social media. The IDF said it hit several sites used to manufacture missiles, as well as the headquarters of Iran's military research and development organization. In Israel this morning, an Iranian missile struck the same city where a hospital was

hit roughly 24 hours earlier. The Times of Israel reports this morning the strike injured seven people. The shockwave from the blast blew the balconies off a nearby residential building as well. Meanwhile, Iran is hacking into private security cameras in Israel in an attempt to gather real-time intelligence about where its missiles are hitting. Bloomberg is reporting that a former deputy director general of the Israel National Cyber Directorate has been going on public radio there to warn the public to turn off their home surveillance cameras or change their passwords. A spokesman for the Israeli government confirmed that internet-connected cameras were increasingly

targeted for Iran's war planning. Photos of impact sites in Israel are also under an official blackout. Jeremy, taking the US out of the equation for a moment to look at capacity pertaining to Israel or Iran, can Israel take on Iran alone? And what's Iran's ability to take on Israel? Well, Israel does not have a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber that could carry the 30,000-pound massive ordnance penetrator, which is what we all believe and assume, based on publicly available information, would be necessary to take out the Fordow enrichment site buried deep under that mountain

outside Gome in Iran. But Israel could pummel the site with a succession of more capable missiles off of its fighter jet platforms, or it could potentially try to seize territory on the ground and block some of the entrances, blow up the entrances, or maybe make their way inside and try to put special operations forces on the ground and go inside the cascade hall and detonate a series of explosives there.

That would be extraordinarily risky for the IDF to put troops on the ground. But again, they've had such dominance of the airspace and Iran has been unable to field too many defensive actions. So unclear whether or not Israel would go ahead with that. I still think they're going to probably wait this two weeks out, see what Trump's decision is, and then kind of recalculate from there. And, David, in the United States, we're seeing reports of limitations of missiles that Israel has to use against Iran, that they may be running out of certain missiles.

I'm curious, are we underestimating Iran's ability to continue striking back at Israel, or are they as depleted and as militarily compromised as news reports have been suggesting over the past week? The obvious answer is hard to know, but certainly before this campaign began, Israeli military leaders were saying to me that they thought this was a unique moment of opportunity to strike Iran because it was weakened by earlier Israeli strikes. Its air defenses were obliterated around Tehran, and its ability to build more missiles quickly had been specifically struck as part of Israel's campaign.

So, you know, whatever the number is, it's a lot less than it was, and they're in a better position to carry out this war. But the thing we all know and fear about warfare is that you make predictions and they prove to be wrong. You think one side didn't have as much of a certain munition and then it turns out that they have an overabundance. So I'm sure the Israelis, especially after the damage to the hospital, are thinking very,

very carefully about this adversary. All right. Former Chief of Staff at the CIA and Department of Defense, Jeremy Basch, thank you so much for coming on this morning. And still ahead on Morning Joe, we're going to go through two new legal rulings surrounding immigration as President Trump loses his bid to tie state transportation funding to immigration enforcement, but wins control of National Guard troops in California. MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin will join us with those stories and a reminder. The morning Joe podcast is

available each weekday. It features our full conversations and analysis. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts and this afternoon, the beginning of something new be on the lookout for a bonus podcast for your commute home. My conversation with Ed Luce of the Financial Times about his critically acclaimed biography of Dr. Brzezinski. You can hear why the former national security advisor might be the most important foreign policy guru of the 20th century,

and what American leaders can learn from his legacy. I will also tell you about Mika's ill-fated attempt to burn a letter of his in front of Ed Luce. That letter, as we will explain in the podcast, ended up in the book anyway. Subscribe today. You're watching Morning Joe. We're back in 90 seconds. 26 past the hour. Beautiful shot of Capitol Hill in Washington, DC this morning. It's going to be like, I'm not exactly sure,

but in the coming days, I think the temperature's gonna be anywhere between like 99 and 800,000 degrees. It's gonna be really hot in the Northeast this weekend. There's a heat wave. An appeals court panel has ruled President Trump can maintain control over California's National Guard troops in Los Angeles amid anti-immigration enforcement protests,

rejecting Governor Gavin Newsom's attempt to take back power. The three judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that Trump appeared to have acted within his authority when he took control of 4,000 troops under a law that has never been invoked without the consent of a state governor. The court said it disagreed with the White House's stance that the president's decision is completely insulated from judicial review, but argued the office of the president carries unusual weight in the matter. Newsom expressed disappointment in the ruling while state Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement, the case is far from over.

Trump weighed in on social media calling it a great decision for the country. Separately, a federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from forcing 20 Democratic led states to cooperate with ICE in order to receive billions of dollars in transportation funding. In April, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy notified states they could lose funding if they did not cooperate with immigration enforcement officers sparking lawsuits from 20 states. But a chief district judge in Rhode Island ruled yesterday the department lacked authority to require states to cooperate to obtain the money and that the White House provided no plausible connection

to the purposes intended for the funding, which is to support highways and bridges and other projects. So Sam Stein, your thoughts? Well, there's, I mean, obviously a big win for Trump in one case and a fairly substantial loss in another. And I guess the larger picture here is that if you just step back and you look at all

the levers of government that Trump is using, all the resources he's putting through to put together this massive deportation regime, it's really striking. Using the National Guard against the governor's will is an extraordinary use of power. Trying to leverage federal funds is remarkable. And I guess I'd ask Lisa Rubin, I mean, this latter case on the transportation funding, Lisa, is this just going to be limited to transportation funding or does the federal judge's ruling have any applicability to other federal funds? In other words, can Trump turn around and say, okay, fine, I'll restrict some health

care funds from a state then? I think, Sam, you can take it as a warning sign, but one that doesn't necessarily have direct application to other agencies, especially since this is just a single decision of a district judge in Rhode Island with respect to that particular case before him involving Secretary Duffy and the fact that these states weren't as cooperative as the administration wants them to be with ICE enforcement. So if I were the administration I take it as a little bit of a warning sign but not necessarily a blanket disapproval for the larger strategy of

trying to condition funding and other areas on immigration enforcement cooperation. You know, at least it seems there is an access in both of these cases, even though they're the decisions handed down by different courts. You had the three judge panel saying that the president had authority as it pertained to the National Guard, a good bit of authority, and the justification was to protect federal law enforcement officers and also to protect federal buildings. So there's that nexus there, and I suspect, I suspect the Supreme Court will likely uphold that

decision. On the other side of it, though, you have funding for roads, bridges and airports being held up because of decisions states make regarding immigration and their relationship to ice. Not that clear nexus there. Is that how we should look at these two cases? Not necessarily, although I can understand why you're looking at it that way. I mean, Joe, one of the things that differentiates these two cases

is that in the case of Trump's decision to federalize the National Guard, there was a statute that he called upon and invoked in order to do that in a June 7th presidential memorandum that then empowered Secretary Hegseth to call up the National Guard when he determined that through usual forces or regular forces the president was unable to execute the laws of the United States. That is that particular provision of the statute that Trump was relying upon, not the part that says that you can call them up in

the instance of a rebellion or an invasion or a danger of one of those two. So in that respect, that is somewhat of a victory too for Governor Newsom. You don't have this appeals court saying, oh, there's a rebellion or an invasion. And of course we should grant

deference to that decision. But more globally, the bigger picture difference between the two is you've got a congressionally enacted statute, one that's been in place for decades, saying that the president can do this. In the instance involving the Secretary of Transportation, there was nothing that empowered Sean Duffy to make that determination. In fact, that was what the court sort of rested on, that you don't have this authority to

take already appropriated funds in your context and condition it on something that Congress didn't say it was dependent on in the first place. Well, and the other thing you used the word globally is that, you know, before we were talking about Iran, it was our focus was on Los Angeles and what was happening in the streets there. This decision in essence gives Trumps the green light to use the National Guard in other states and the administration has been hinting very publicly that they're going to go into New York City, Chicago, maybe some other states all happen to be blue.

What is the mood like Elizabeth that you sense from talking to lawmakers, state officials, about where this goes from here, now that the president does have the legal green light to use the National Guard. I can tell you that in New York City, if he deploys the National Guard in New York, there will be, it'll cause, it's gonna cause a giant outrage and create probably more violence

than there would be anyway. Isn't that what he wants? Well, that's the office. That's of course one of the working theories that he wants to, you know, create this all over the country and then, you know, declare martial law. There's no sign that that's the wording. We're close to that. But that's one of the fears you hear from Democrats, you know.

And I also want to say, just talking about the Sean Duffy case, let's not forget what happened in Maine, where the Trump administration froze funding for a child nutrition program in Maine because Maine was allowing transgender youth to compete in sports. And that was stopped. But that's another example of, again, the Trump administration trying to use anything in its powers to advance its policies.

So, Lisa, a question from David Ignatius in Washington. What are these two cases and all the whole range of legal action that's going on now? Tell you about where we're heading in the showdown that's clearly ahead for the Supreme Court in testing the extent of the president's Article 2 powers broadly. We're heading toward a big case that will be, you know, epical. What's your sense as these cases move forward about where we'll end up? Well, it's interesting because, David,

this particular case, the one involving Los Angeles and California, the Court of Appeals last night saying, this does not involve the president's constitutional authority because at the district court, when asked, the Department of Justice very clearly said, no, no, no, we're relying on this statute. And they were given every opportunity by the district court judge, Charles Charles Breyer to invoke a particular constitutional

authority. They couldn't think of one when they went to the Court of Appeals, they said, Oh, now we're relying on the president's inherent Article two powers. But the court didn't buy that. And last night's decision limited him to the statute itself. And so there's a lot of good news in this opinion, in a way, for Gavin Newsom and Rob Bonta, in terms of escalating this fight, because although the court is granting Trump what he wants, they're doing so in a way that leaves a bunch of open issues,

including the continued vitality of this 1827 opinion that they say they had to rely upon in granting Trump this deference. But you're absolutely right. There's going to be a showdown over his constitutional authority and how broad the executive powers are. This is the unitary executive theory

that has been advanced on Trump's behalf since the Bill Barr days, just trying to increasingly enlarge, enlarge, enlar large what belongs to the president and the president alone. That's going to be at some point at ahead at the Supreme Court and particularly if it arises in a foreign policy or a military context. There are many Joe included, I think who would say that the Supreme Court is likely to side with Trump. All right.

Well, you know what's so fascinating here, Mika, is you have Republican lawmakers and others holding up charts saying, oh my God, Donald Trump has had more injunctions against him than any other president before, but as Lisa pointed out, it has been the goal of Donald Trump at the end of the last administration and through the beginning of this administration to push the limits of this administration to push the limits of Article two power. So that if that's what you're intending to do, and it's certainly that's a legitimate thing to do to test it as long as you abide by court's decisions. Um, if if you're constantly pushing the

boundaries as they said they were going to do, then you're going to have courts pushing back more in the areas where you've gone too far. And that's what we see happening. And it's really difficult to say where the court's going to end up, the Supreme Court's going to end up. But I do know you're going gonna have to look at John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, the justices and the chief justice, because they're not likely going to be a rubber stamp for Donald Trump in these areas of expanding

Article II power beyond something that's been recognized by courts for a very long time. Definitely a question. MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin, thank you very much for coming on this morning with your analysis. Thank you, Lisa. Time now for a look at some of the other stories making headlines this morning. Hackers linked to the Chinese government are increasingly targeting Russia in a bid to collect intelligence about the war on

Ukraine. As the New York Times reports China sees it as a chance to collect information about modern warfare tactics, Western weaponry and what works against them. Quote, Chinese military experts often lament that Chinese troops lack battlefield experience. The hacking comes despite the professed friendship between Presidents Putin and Xi Jinping. And overseas, Pakistan is waging a deadly air campaign inside its own borders. The government there is increasingly turning to drones to monitor and strike militants. It's a tricky issue for Pakistani leaders who heavily criticize the American military

for using the same tactic in the region. And it was a very warm welcome in Teneflay, New Jersey yesterday. As hundreds of people packed the streets to greet Edan Alexander, who endured nearly 600 days of captivity in Gaza, he was among the hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7th. The American-Israeli soldier grew up in that New Jersey community and graduated from high school there. And Dave Ignatius, he said that the conditions

by which he was treated changed markedly after Donald Trump was inaugurated. Also, of course, we saw the president getting involved in negotiations on his own without Benjamin Netanyahu as well on releasing hostages. Curious your thoughts about that and the president's ability to, let's say, use a stronger hand in some ways to move people to the negotiation table. Well, Joe, it's great to see him back home looking really healthy.

And, you know, it's clear to me that people in the Middle East, maybe people around the world, take Donald Trump's threats seriously and modify their behavior. I think when Trump says all hell will break loose, people probably think that that might mean them. And it's also notable that Trump is the first president that I can remember who actually negotiated directly with Hamas, so conferring a measure of respect even as he was threatening them. You know, Trump

is such a work in progress, Joe. I think he's doing this in an ad hoc way when he makes threats, when he eases off the threats. You know, it would be fascinating to see all the things we've been talking about this morning are going to play out over the next few weeks. Which Donald Trump's going to show up on which morning? I don't know. Yeah, and it will be fascinating also to see if a deal is reached, then people will look back and see again what's happened over the past week to the threats leading to what I think many people would see as a hopeful outcome. Right.

Of course, it could break the other way as well. And if you're president of the United States, in this case, Elizabeth B. Miller, the fact is you're going to be second guess regardless. I mean, if you don't go in, then you will have conservatives for the next 50 years blaming nuclear Iran or— Saying, this was the moment. Yeah. Will be saying, Donald Trump had a kill shot and he backed off.

Whereas if you go in, you, well, you have the possibility of being remembered like George W. Bush was after Iraq. It is a, again, it is, this is one of those situations when you're president where there's not an easy answer and whichever way you go, you're going to be criticized. I think the answer is simply, there's actually no good answer in this mess right now. Even if there is some kind of a negotiated settlement, it's going to be very fragile. And you're right, there will be people criticizing it. And look at, George H George HW Bush was criticized for

not finishing off Saddam Hussein in the 1999 in the 1991 Gulf War there are still people who complain about that there are still people who say the US should not have gotten out of Vietnam that we made a mistake so this this will that this is not this is not going to go away anytime soon. The issue with Iran is- Consumances either way. Yeah. I'm sorry, go ahead, go ahead. No, that's, I just wanna say that this will not go away. It has been around for as long as I've been in Washington,

which has been going on two decades now. I remember writing stories about how hard it would be to take out Fordo, and that was in, that was in the, that was 15 years ago, that it was going to require a massive amount of jets. Now, what has changed is that the Iranian defense systems have been taken out, the air defenses. And so it is different now. I was just going to add to this, and of course, not David Ignatius, but his father would also remind us, there are still people critical of Harry Truman for firing Douglas MacArthur

and not letting him use nukes on China. Not my dad. Not your father, but your father could tell us in real time about Harry Truman catching Yale for that time. He would say, civilians, generals work for civilians. I'm sure he's watching this morning at 104, Joe, so he'll be very happy that his views were invoked. Hi, Dad.

Oh my God, it's amazing. You know, it's that, Winsting, we were talking about, we were talking, David, you, John Meacham and I were at the National Cathedral and I think we were talking about the Truman Doctrine and your book and the announcement of it. I think it was George Marshall at Harvard in 1947 and your father stood up and said, I was there. Exactly. In the greatest choice ever.

All right, writer-at-large for the New York Times, Elizabeth B. Miller, thank you so much. Her latest piece is online now. And still ahead on Morning Joe, legal analysis on the Reagan-appointed judge who is fast-tracking a trial for one of the hundreds of executive orders from President Trump.

We'll explain why. Plus, we'll tell you which former Trump administration official was at the White House yesterday, and we'll dig into how that meeting could impact the president's decision on Iran. Morning Joe is coming right back. Well, today marks World Refugee Day, which is an internationally recognized day each year designated by the United Nations.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, right now there are more than 122 million people displaced from their homes around the globe. This is an all-time high in that number. Joining us now, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, David Miliband. His organization serves refugees in 29 cities across the United States and was one of the nation's largest refugee resettlement agencies prior to the start of the Trump administration. David, it's good to have you on the show. Explain if you could the significance of this day, especially this year.

Thanks very much, Mika. I mean, it's a very striking figure, 122 million people displaced by violence and by conflict around the world. More than a third of that number come from just four countries, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan and Ukraine. Here's the remarkable thing though, the number has doubled in the last 10 years. I first came on this show 10 years ago to talk about the crisis in Syria, the civil war in Syria.

Then the number was around 50-55 million. Today 122 million. And these are not people seeking an economic better life. They're people who are displaced by conflict. And that's why I highlight those countries that I mentioned. The Trump administration inherited from the Biden administration, at least in this aspect of the government's work, an effective program, the Refugee Resettlement Program that brought in about 17,000 people through the International Rescue Committee, about 120,000 in total across the

US last year. It's a very organised program, but it's been suspended by the Trump administration. Obviously, the International Rescue Committee, we work in the war zones, like Ukraine, like Syria. We see things across the arc of the crisis. And these are people whose desperation is to go back to leading a normal life. David Ignatius here in Washington, you've been doing this wonderful work really since the days you were British Foreign Secretary.

I just wanna ask you, in all those years of working with refugee issues, what's the biggest thing you've learned about this problem and why it's so severe doesn't seem to get better? What's the thing that you've taken away from that? Well, I think it speaks directly to what you've all been talking about over the last hour, that the costs of failed diplomacy are very high.

It's easy to start a war, but very hard to finish it. And the human scale gets lost. Was it Stalin who said that one person's death is a tragedy, a million people's death is a statistic? That's the world that we're living in. And when I talk about an age of impunity, what I fear is that we're forgetting the human side of this. David, it's Sam Stein here. You called the refugee resettlement program a success under Biden. You noted that Trump ended the program or is in the process of ending the program. Look, I'm not sure you're going to convince the MAGA faithful here, but they look at this

program and they say, this is not our problem. These people are not American citizens. We don't owe them our resources. We have to take care of ourselves first because we have our own problems and they should take priority. If you had the chance to just talk to one of them about what the inherent good is in helping refugees, what would you say? It's not your problem, but it is your benefit.

Refugees have come to America from Einstein, who created the International Rescue Committee, to Madeleine Albright, who ended up as your Secretary of State, to thousands of business people, sports people, entrepreneurs around the country, they are America's benefit. And if you don't tackle humanitarian problems where they start, they end up coming to bite you.

That's the message that we keep giving. It's an interdependent world. If we don't fix it together, it's going to come and bite us in a very dangerous way. I've just been to Syria, and I had a chance to meet the people who've been displaced by violence there. I met our staff. I also met President al-Sharah, the new president of Syria. In the last six months 450,000 people have gone back to Syria. These aren't people who want to exploit America. They're people who want

to rescue their own lives. For the very small minority that are allowed in under the refugee resettlement program, they become productive and contributing Americans. Well, and David, I wanted to talk to you about, as we've been talking about the debate centering around a possible regional war with Israel and Iran and the United States possibly coming in, wanted to talk about how wars impact and create refugee crises. You talked about Syria, the Syrian civil war created perhaps the worst refugee crisis since World War II. Talk about wars' negative impact on the refugee situation actually makes matters so much worse for refugees and increases the number.

Well, you're right to say I've been at this for some time. I was actually foreign secretary, secretary of state in the UK when we discovered our special intelligence service, they discovered the Fordow nuclear plant, which was a secret nuclear facility that the Iranians were running. And that's part of diplomacy as well, bringing into the public domain that which is being done secretly. But your point, without conflict there wouldn't be refugees. That's what the essence of the refugee crisis is. And your highlighting of Syria, I mentioned Ukraine,

I can also mention Afghanistan. Here's the truth that is often obscured. Most refugees are not at the southern border of the United States. The vast majority are in the poorest countries in the world. 75% of that 122 million figure you gave are in poor countries, not in rich countries. And they're mainly in the countries next door to those in conflict. The largest humanitarian crisis today is in Sudan. I visited South Sudan, one of the poorest countries in the world. My goodness, if you're fleeing to South Sudan,

you have to be absolutely desperate. But that's what people are doing, over 600,000 at the moment. Conflict is the biggest driver of extreme poverty today. If you're born in a stable country that's poor, but has a government, has property rights, has markets, you've got a chance. If you're born in the midst of conflict in Sudan or in Gaza or at the moment in Ukraine, your chances are really very, very dim.

Oh, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, David Miliband, thank you for coming on this morning. Thank you very much. And thank you for what you do.