On with Kara Swisher - Trump's Iran Strikes: Triumph, Stalemate or Setback?

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

President Trump’s decision to bomb Iran shocked much of the world — but America’s involvement was over almost as soon as it began, and so far, it hasn’t sparked a broader war, like so many feared.  So how did we get here? Was the bombing a success? Will the ceasefire between Israel and Iran hold? Is the regime in Iran any closer to collapsing — and if it did, would that be good? Finally, what’s the long term solution to the nuclear issue? Kara gathers a trio of experts to grapple with these questions, and more.  Jason Rezaian is the Director of Press Freedom Initiatives and a writer for The Washington Post’s Global Opinions. He was the Post's correspondent in Tehran before he was unjustly imprisoned by the Iranian regime, and he’s the author of Prisoner: My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison. Jim Sciutto is CNN’s chief national security analyst and the anchor of The Brief with Jim Sciutto. He’s also the author of The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China and the Next World War. Robin Wright is a contributing writer and columnist for The New Yorker and a distinguished fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She’s the author of several books, including The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran, and Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World. Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. President Trump's decision to bomb Iran shocked much of the world, but America's involvement was over almost as soon as it began, and so far it hasn't sparked a broader war like so many feared. So how do we get here? Was the bombing a success? Will the ceasefire between Israel and Iran hold? Is the regime in Iran any closer to collapsing? And what's the long-term solution to the nuclear issue, which is at the heart of all of this? I've gathered a panel of journalists with deep expertise to grapple with these questions. Jason Rezaian is the director of

Press Freedom Initiatives and writer for the Washington Post's Global Opinions. He was a post correspondent in Tehran before he was then unjustly imprisoned by the Iranian regime. He's the author of Prisoner of My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison. Jim Shuto is CNN's chief national security analyst and the anchor of The Brief with Jim Shuto. He's the author of The Return of the Great Powers, Russia, China and the Next World War. Robin Wright is a contributing writer and columnist

for The New Yorker and a distinguished fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She's the author of several books, including The Last Great Revolution, Turmoil and Transformation in Iran, and Rock the Casbah, Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World. This is a smart aspect of society, starting with finance. It's happening across industries, across sectors, and across the world. And it's happening with Ripple. With more than a decade of blockchain experience, over 60 licenses, and strong institutional

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Learn more at sophos Central Platform. So don't sacrifice your peace of mind to grow your business. Learn more at sophos.com. It is on. Jason, Jim, and Robin, thanks for coming on On. I really appreciate it. Thank you. So let's start with a tweet from, of all people, Donald Trump Jr. He posted, destroyed nuclear facilities,

no dead Americans, and no forever war with Iran seems like a big win for me. My father has never looked to plunge us into a prolonged conflict. And those of us who know him best knew all along that his end game was peace to America first. Now, according to a leaked early intelligence assessment, the strikes have only set back Iran's nuclear program by a few months. It's not nothing, of course. It's actually a very good goal. President Trump insists it was obliterated, then they're all pushing back on the intelligence assessments and everything else. Talk a little bit about this. So let's start with you, Jason, and then Robin, and then Jim.

Thanks, Kara. I've been thinking about this since Saturday night when this all happened. I thought to myself, okay, there's no way, and Robin and Jim know a lot more about these things than I do, but there's no way that we have any kind of assessment of how much damage we might've inflicted. And, you know, I think this president, if we sort of think about it in the business realm, sometimes being first to market with an idea is the most important thing. I think Donald Trump was just trying to control the narrative right off the bat. Right off the bat.

And in a lot of ways, it worked. You know, for the next couple of days, every time I was asked about this, I would say to myself, what's the actual intelligence say? And, you know, it takes a few days for that stuff to pan out. But in the media, we're really good at being super skeptical until moments like this. We all line up behind the American position very quickly. Very quickly. Robin?

Yeah, I think there's a danger of saying too much at this early stage about how much damage there was, because if President Trump is wrong, he looks like he's overstated and that the mission didn't accomplish all that it attempted. And also there's a kind of political component of this. The president is at NATO now. He's probably boasting of what the United States has done militarily as he speaks to the world's largest military alliance. And if the word is out that, well, maybe it didn't quite have as much damage as expected, that's going to undermine the kind of imagery that he'd hoped to craft at this critical meeting. So, you know, we won't know for a while, but I think the reality is the program has been hurt one

way or another, whether it's set back months or years. And the real point of all this was to try to get the Iranians back to the negotiating table to talk about the core question, which is still as much alive as it was before the bombing, and that is, how do you limit Iran's capabilities and intentions? Right. Because one of the things is, how do you limit Iran's capabilities and intentions? Right, because one of the things is, why overstate it? It sort of reminds a lot of people of mission accomplished with George Bush, for example. Jim?

This is, in my view, an entirely manufactured drama, right? There is an early intelligence assessment. The White House has even acknowledged the existence of that assessment, and CNN and others have reported it, it's early. But the truth is that no one American or Israeli expected one round of military strikes to wipe out the entire program or even several days with with the Iranian strikes. I spoke to the former head of Israeli military intelligence last night and he made this point. He said, that's actually

not important. You know, one, impossible to knock it all out. They dispersed it, they buried it, they've been preparing for strikes like this for 20 years. What is important is that the US has and Israel together have severely damaged. And what is important, and this is the win for Trump, right? He doesn't have to, you know, he actually put himself in a corner by claiming that the whole thing was obliterated. The win is that no US president has done this. They've thought about it, but they haven't done it.

And he's delivered quite a dramatic message to Iran, right, that we will come and we will use the most powerful munitions, non-nuclear in our arsenal to destroy this and by the way, reserve the right to do so again, right, if you don't come to the table. That's the win here. So the idea that he used this word obliterated, by the way, I had a security clearance, I've read a lot of intelligence reports, I've read battle damage assessments, obliterated never turns up in an intelligence report, right? Because you don't have that certainty and very few military strikes destroy everything in one go. So, the win is for Trump and from his perspective and Israel's perspective, to Robin's point, they've done deep damage. They've now delivered a sort of ultimatum,

come to the table now. And it's become a created drama here, which is classic in Trump world, right? He wants something to be the way he wants it to be. And if anybody challenges that, even his own defense intelligence agency, he's going to go full court press against it. Right. Jim, you said Iranian strikes and you meant Israeli strikes, presumably. Yes, of course. Israeli strikes. One thing I want to just add though, I think it, it does actually buy them some time as well.

Right. As this conversation, you know, rages on here in Washington, gives the, the Iranians a little bit of time to decide whether they're ready to come back and talk. I think that they probably have to. Um, and you know, hopefully it gives the Israelis a little time to cool off and think to themselves, well, maybe we don't need to continue air raids on Tehran.

So let's go back to President Trump's first term and the core question, as you put it, Robin. In 2018, he withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or the Iran deal. It forced Iran to dramatically reduce their uranium stockpile and kept enrichment at 3.67%, far below what's necessary to build a nuclear bomb. By May of this year, Iran was two and a half days away from having enough enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb, according to some intelligence assessments. Robin, if the deal were still in place, would Israel have had a viable pretext for attacking Iran or is the deal what set us down this path in the first place?

Well, there would still have been restrictions on Iran's program, not indefinite, not open-ended. There were timestamps on each aspect of the deal. But Iran would still only have 3.67, not be at 60% of enriched uranium. I think this is really important to understand why Iran was doing that. Remember, President Trump, as you said, walked away in 2018. And for 14 months, the Iranians actually continued to abide by the terms of the deal. They didn't escalate. In the meantime, the United States imposed more than 1,500

sanctions on Iran. And so this in some ways, enriching uranium, continuing to develop advanced centrifuges was its maximum pressure response to the United States to give Iran some leverage. Now needless to say, we're all worried about would it cross the political threshold of deciding to make a bomb, which US intelligence said it had not yet done even on the eve of the Israeli and US strikes. So, you know, I think that yes, we would have been much safer, we'd stuck to the deal. The Iranians don't have as much leverage at this time if they go back to the table than they had two weeks ago. But I do agree that they want to have talks, that they want to have negotiations.

But my fear is that we're in the same place when it comes to that core question of can Iran enrich that we were before the military action? And that's why I worry about the renewal of hostilities down the road if this diplomacy becomes dead-ended or stalled. I think also if I can, it brings up a strategic question. Trump pulled out of a deal that was not perfect by any means. It had sunset provisions, et cetera. And this is a big if, you know,

had that deal stayed and had Iran stuck to it and had the IAEA been able to maintain its oversight, et cetera, Iran wouldn't have produced as much fissile material as it did outside the deal, and therefore wouldn't have been as close to breakout as it was outside the deal. So strategically, exiting the deal got Iran closer, right? And strategically, that did not serve America's national security interests, right?

So, you know, that's a question that gets lost in this whole, I mean, you'll hear from the president and others, you know, how horrible that deal was, but the fact is, and again, this is an if, had Iran and the US stayed in and all the provisions survived, it wouldn't have been as close, right? And then that boosts the need if you buy this line of argument for military action. So that helped bring us to where we are today, frankly. So Jason, two questions for you. You lived in Iran first as the Tehran correspondent

for the Washington Post and then as a prisoner. So how did you feel on Friday, June 3rd, 2020, when you found out the head of security apparatus had unjustly detained you, had been killed? And second, you don't just have sources of libertarian. You have family over there. Over 600 Iranians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes. What are you hearing from them and ordinary people on the ground in Iran?

Yeah, I'll take the first part. First, in a way, I've got no love lost for the Islamic Republic and certainly not for the Revolutionary Guard. Their intelligence wing helped me hostage. But I also felt a little vindicated because for you know, for a very long time, I have been, you know, kind of shouting from the mountaintop that despite all of the claims that this system is all powerful, it probably never was. And clearly over the last couple of years, a lot of their capabilities, a lot of their

top leadership has been taken out by Israel in targeted assassinations and drone strikes. Amazingly, strikes that are pulled off from Iranian soil. It's quite an incredible thing to see. And so I think that this narrative that Iran was sealed off and capable of defending itself never really been true. I think Iran's defense spending is less than the Netherlands. Their fighter jets are ones that they bought from us in the 70s. This is not a strong military presence. Personally, it's terrifying. Personally, it's terrifying, right? I have a lot of family in Iran. My wife's entire family still is living there, many, many friends. And when you hear, I don't want to kind of point fingers at our cable news.

You may, but go ahead. Kind of point fingers at our cable news But good. Oh, okay But it's look it's not it's not CNN's fault that you know Fred Blinken only gets in five days after this all starts Right the Islamic Republic has tried to kind of keep the world out of its country for a very long time And so when we watch you know the the coverage of this and we see four different live shots of dark night skies from Israel and one live shot of a correspondent in a bunker who has a telephone who's receiving SMSes from the Israeli government, like everybody else in the country that if you live in this neighborhood, go down into the bunker below your building from this time to this. Iranians don't have any of that. My wife was born in 1984,

smack in the middle of the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq. Her memories of childhood, of early childhood, are of the bomb sirens. Those don't exist anymore. And when President Trump tweets or when Benjamin Netanyahu sends out a message on satellite television or even on, I'm watching CNN and there's a thing on the screen that says, Hey, Iranians, you've been warned to leave your homes. They can't see that. The satellites have been jammed by their own government. So they don't have any information. They don't have no information, right?

And nowhere to go and no recourse. And it's just this reminder that, you know, that Iranians don't have a friend in the world. Not in their own regime, not in the United States of America, certainly not in Tel Aviv. We'll be back in a minute. Hi, everyone. It's Nicole Wallace from MSNBC. Listen to my new podcast called The Best People. I get to speak to some of the smartest, funniest, and wisest people I have ever encountered. People like Kara Swisher, Rachel Maddow, Doc Rivers, Jason Bateman, Jeff Daniels, and Sarah Jessica Parker.

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That's upwork.com slash save to get a $200 credit to put towards your next freelancer to help grow your business. That's U-P-W-O-R-K dot com slash business. That's upork.com.save. This offer is only valid June 24th through August 5th, 2025. So Jim, 28 Israelis have been killed by Iranian strikes, but the conflict has boosted Netanyahu's political standing, though not significantly. Their reports, Israeli leadership was stunned and embarrassed after getting publicly cursed out by Trump.

He said, neither they nor the Iranians knew what the, this is what Trump said, knew what the fuck they are doing. It was quite colorful. Nonetheless, Netanyahu has said if Iran rebuilds its nuclear project, quote, we will strike again. Where is this? Netanyahu has said if Iran rebuilds its nuclear project, quote, we will strike again. Where is the Netanyahu and Trump relationship right now and Netanyahu's status? Listen, you know, Netanyahu's status in Israel, I would say, is quite strong, right?

I mean, here's someone whose, you know, rumors of his death have been greatly exaggerated, right, to paraphrase Twain. So many times over. And yeah, and listen, you can't contest his record from a military standpoint, right? He has decimated Hezbollah in Lebanon. He has struck at the very core, to the very core of Iran's nuclear program, military leadership, et cetera, and at enormous human costs in Gaza, right, that we continue to watch every day has done great damage, of course, to Hamas. And from the Israeli perspective, that makes it safer from its perspective.

So domestically, he seems to be in better shape than he was, and that's one thing. With Trump, their personal relationship has not been great. You've read the stories about how Trump doesn't quite trust him all the time. But I'll say this about Trump imagines that he can force everyone's hand, right? Whether that be Netanyahu, trading partners in the trade war, you name it. But strategic interests matter to these countries, and we've seen that with Israel. When Israel determines, Trump has tried to push Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza multiple times. Netanyahu has forged ahead, right? He's bulldozed ahead and there's not a lot of talk about that, how he's essentially ignored Trump on military action in Gaza.

Because from Netanyahu's perspective, it's too important to him, right? And he's gonna keep doing it and he'll take a slap on the wrist, but he forges ahead. And you know, that's where the kind of rubber meets the road, right? In that Trump doesn't have, he's not omnipotent. He can just curse him out as much as he wants. He can't curse him out. He's not omnipotent. It's kind of like with Putin, he thought the great relationship he had with Putin would

bring about a ceasefire. Of course, that hasn't happened, right? Even Zelensky, who got brow-beaten in the Oval Office from a strategic national security perspective, was like, no, I can't give up. I'd lose my country. So I think it's a, you know, with Israel, as with every other place, that, you know, whatever

diplomatic or personality magic or just brute force that Trump imagines he has, it doesn't always win the day. No, it kind of looks like an old man shaking his fist at the kids on the lawn, essentially. So Robin, is Iran more or less likely to build a bomb right now? Do they feel threat from Trump? And their stockpile of highly enriched uranium could fit into 10 car trunks, and American

officials admit they don't know where it is. How feasible would it be for them to build one if they decided to do it? Well, that's the main point. Will it make the political decision to go ahead? It had not done that in the run up to this round of the 12-day war, as Trump calls it. So that's what's so pivotal. Will they continue to have some kind of nuclear program?

First of all, they believe they have a right to peaceful nuclear energy. Iran needs it. It has blackouts, rolling blackouts because of its infrastructure is so degraded, its oil facilities are so degraded, and every country wants a basket of different energy sources. Right. So Iran is likely to continue some kind of nuclear program, whether overt or covert,

no, but also as maximum pressure. The 3.67% is all what the former deal allowed, which is what would be used for a peaceful nuclear program. Whether Iran thinks that it only has leverage because it doesn't own its airspace anymore, it doesn't have an air force, it's weakened if not debilitated. And so I think it's quite possible, especially since they move some of their stuff. But again, is this leverage so that it has some kind of a stand at any kind of nuclear negotiations with the United States? Or is this because it wants to advance a nuclear capability because it feels ever more vulnerable

now? And we don't know the answer to that question yet. But I just say one thing that we also need to look at this round of hostilities in the political context. There is no end of this war militarily. It can only succeed, or the United States and Israel can only succeed if there is some kind of diplomatic off-ramp that makes everybody feel as if the Iranians are not going to build a bomb, that there are some kind of guarantees, there's some kind of verification by the UN watchdog, the International

Atomic Energy Agency, to go in and be able to count every centrifuge and to monitor the stockpile of enriched uranium and to have access countrywide to any suspected sites. So the political outcome of this, at a time the regime has an aging and ailing supreme leader that people are not going to be happy. They haven't been happy for a long time. And so there are some, you know, does the regime have to negotiate a new social contract with its people? Yeah, I'll get to that in a second. But so from your perspective, they still have not made that political decision. And it's a very difficult one to make. Correct? Correct. I think they're just as Robin indicated, there's so many

internal Iranian political variables there always has been but many more right now including the the health of the supreme leader succession plans There are obviously factions within the system saying, we needed a bomb five years ago. There are others who look at it more realistically, the types of people that have more contacts with the outside world than the more insular looking members of the system who look around and say, okay, Israel has a large undeclared nuclear arsenal. The United States has a massive nuclear arsenal. If we get one or two or five bombs, that's going to set off a nuclear arms race right in our neighborhood. Saudi Arabia is going to want one. Maybe the UAE is going to

want one. Turkey is definitely going to want one. And so I think of this, of Iran getting a bomb, you know, a single bomb, deciding to weaponize, you know, coming out, whether they do that publicly or our intelligence tells us that that's happening, that's more of an existential threat for the Islamic Republic than it is for Israel. Can I play devil's advocate on that for a moment? And I hear your point, right? One bomb and there would certainly be an arms race. And then the question becomes, is it just one bomb, right? But it doesn't take a crazy person to look at the world today and over the last several years

and say, what's the difference between the countries that got invaded and didn't get invaded, right? Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons and got invaded. North Korea has nuclear weapons and has not been struck. Iran wasn't there and it's just been embarrassed militarily. It's been struck repeatedly. And it's not just the rogue states who think in those terms. You have a whole host of countries around the world

who are reevaluating their relationship with nuclear weapons and considering going nuclear, literally, because of the changing landscape. And that includes our allies, right? You know, South Korea, there's a public discussion of gaining nuclear weapons because they don't trust the US nuclear umbrella and defense agreement. There's discussion in Japan. You have the German chancellor discussing, sharing France's nuclear deterrent because he doesn't trust America's nuclear umbrella. And sometimes whenever I cover

this and people will say, oh, crazy Kim Jong-un, right? He wants nuclear weapons or the crazy mullows in Iran. There's a reasonable, rational case that you could see that. And I'm not, God knows I'm not rooting for it. I'm just saying there's a reasonable, rational case. you could see that. And I'm not, God knows I'm not rooting for it. I'm just saying there's a reasonable, rational case. That's a very good point. It's not crazy talk, sadly. So speaking of that, officials in Israel has made clear they want regime change in Iran. Robin, you actually met with the Ayatollah in 1987. You write that he lacked charisma,

worldliness and intellectual depth, but he's managed to stay in power since 1981. And even if he's killed, the regime is built presumably to endure without him. Talk about the durability of that. He himself, probably not. But can you talk a little bit about what happens here in terms of at least power change, maybe not regime change? Well, I think for a long time now, several years, Iranians have understood the actuarial tables that the Supreme Leader, now 86, was going to fade from the scene at some point. Right.

Biology is undefeated. Yes, exactly. And there's no obvious heir apparent. There's talk that he's kind of named three possible successors, but they are predominantly old clerics as well. I think the question now is what happens within Iran and whether people who've been deeply dissatisfied over the years and have gone to the streets in 2009 during the Green Movement that challenged a fraudulent election result since 2017, sporadic economic protests over price hikes. Most of all, the 2022 women life freedom protests that spread nationwide that I would guess

80% of the population is unhappy. But there's no obvious opposition inside the country that is viable. And there's certainly no opposition outside the country that is viewed as legitimate from inside Iran. And so we're at a point that the regime is extremely vulnerable diplomatically, politically, economically, militarily. Biologically. Biologically.

But remember that the supreme leader does have power, but the most important decision-making body inside the country is the Supreme National Security Council, and it varies from 13 to 15 people, some of whom have been killed by the Israeli airstrikes. But they're the ones who chart a course and then take it to the Supreme Leader and say, what do you think? And for the previous Iran nuclear deal, I was told by its former foreign minister that the council would debate it and then agree and then they take it to the Supreme Leader and he would agree to 95% of it and that the questions he asked were actually not major

big ones. They were kind of the minutiae of the deal. So I think that the elimination of the Supreme Leader would be a symbolic inflection point. But remember, the regime survived an eight-year war, and I covered that war between Iran and Iraq. It survived when two bombs by an opposition group killed the president, the prime minister, the judiciary chief, 27 members of parliament. It survived a lot. And I think that the idea of regime change anytime in the imminent future is probably doubtful, even if it's inevitable long term.

All right. So, but Jason, you've written that quote, decimating Iran's defenses and then letting them stay in power to terrorize their citizens, dissidents and opponents around the world could be, would be a massive failure. Explain why the current situation is so bad for Iranians. And then Robin's noting probably unlikely anything more symbolic to happen. Is there any situation which forced regime change would lead to a better outcome for Iranians in the Middle East?

Look, I think a regime change through bombs hasn't succeeded yet, right? I'm not just talking about Iran. I'm talking, you know, in our memory. The concern, the biggest concern that I have right now about that scenario is that even if the regime were to fall today, that 20% of people, who knows if it's 20% of people that support the system, maybe it's 30%, maybe it's 5%, but a portion of that several million people at least are the people in the country who have guns. This is a country where normal citizens don't have access to firearms. This isn't America. And there is no way for people to organize. I would argue that one of the things that the Islamic

Republic has been most successful at over the years is snuffing out its own internal opposition, either by assassinating them, imprisoning them for very long periods of time, or exiling them to foreign soil. I don't think that the environment is ripe for that kind of change, especially as, you know, Robin talked about the, the, the eight year war with Iraq and the assassinations of their top leadership. You know, this is a country when you go into any city, to any, any street alley, vast majority is named after a kid who was killed in the war that lived on that street. majority is named after a kid who was killed in the war that lived on that street. Right. This is a nation that's endured trauma after trauma after trauma. Are they at the end of their rope?

Yeah. Do they want freedom? Certainly. The economic situation in Iran for ordinary citizens is at its worst point that it's been since the end of that war. Can the system kind of limp along for a while? I think it's at the end of its rope. But, you know, if it were to collapse right now, I fear that what could replace it might be something even worse. We'll be back in a minute. 2025 marks 50 years since a trailblazer named Jam Todd decided to go to the gym with her little boyfriend.

I had started going with Terry to the gym just because, you know, he's your cute boyfriend and you love him and you like you want to spend all your time together. Not thinking about being an athlete at all. Jan told WHYY in Philadelphia there were no other women at that gym. It wasn't considered appropriate for ladies to lift weights. Some gyms even banned it. The idea of a woman having muscles was seen as somehow being somewhat transgressive. There must be something wrong with you if you want to have muscles.

Anyway, feeling spicy that day, Jan squatted down and deadlifted 225 pounds, which is a lot of pounds. She went on to lift more weights, set a bunch of records, model in magazines, and inspire other women to lift weights. More recently, millions of women have started. But why now? Answers on Today Explained, every weekday, in your feet. More recently, millions of women have started. But why now? Answers on Today Explained every weekday in your feet.

So, Iran fired missiles at an American base in Qatar in response to America's bunker buster bombs. That move was clearly designed to de-escalate the situation while saving face. But while they may be weak militarily and internally, they can still block the straight of Hormuz or retaliate via cyber attacks, assassinations, and proxy terrorism. Jim, how capable is Iran when it comes to asymmetric warfare and what sort of response do you expect to see from them in the coming months or years? Even if, as Jason said, they're on their last legs, they're still on their legs, essentially.

Yeah. Well, one thing I'll say is I think that the telegraphing of those missile strikes on Qatar was really one of the most fascinating developments of the last several days, right? That Iran via Qatar told the US it was going to fire at it, and therefore the USA was able to prepare for it, and then the US president tweeted out, thanks. Thank you for the heads up. It's remarkable. I mean, that's a sign of, I mean, it's really a sign of weakness, right?

In that Iran had to do something and that yes, the number of missiles was the exact number of bombs the US dropped, it's all symbolism. But it clearly did not want to pick a fight with the US because it was concerned it would get pummeled, right? If it took shots at US bases or killed US service members in the region. So that's notable. And that speaks to weakness.

It does have capabilities though, and Iran has a history of not striking on the day after, but perhaps months later or even years later, right? If you think of the Soleimani strike when Trump ordered the killing of Soleimani, and Iran did send missiles towards bases and US soldiers suffered traumatic brain injury, et cetera, but it wasn't the big conflagration that many had feared, but years later, right, there was a plot to kill American officials, right?

So that can still happen, and Iran has tremendous terror capabilities around the world. You know, you've had this talk of sleeper cells, it also has cyber capabilities. But then the same calculation happens, right? If Iran were to set off a bomb somewhere in the US, God forbid, and the US were able to determine responsibility, right? That's not always clear that you could do that. One can expect a massive US response

and Iran would have to say, could we survive that, right? The final thing I would say is that it's so hard to judge, right, the survivability of these regimes. I mean, look at Russia. I mean, Russia has its own issues, right? Including an ongoing war in which they're basically just sending young men to get chewed up on the front lines and economic consequences at home, et cetera.

But somehow Putin survives. That said, a couple years ago, you know, Prigozhin, you know, drove halfway to Moscow, right? You know, and it wasn't like folks were standing in his way until he turned around. So, you know, sometimes there can be weaknesses that we don't expect. I mean, in 79, the Shah, right? The CIA didn't think he was gonna go down and he went down. It's just really, really, really hard to say. And then who replaces him?

Because it's sort of like Russia with Iran. Do you get someone worse? Possibly. You're not gonna get some democratic, or it's unlikely, right? Or it's no guarantee at a minimum that you're going to get a democratic hero. Not the Shah's son, for example, who has been making a lot of noise. Do any of you worry about lone wolf terror attacks or assassinations that can't be tied

directly back to them? Look, I worry about that because there's a history of it, right? Robin's probably met this gentleman who, shouldn't call him a gentleman, the local DC man who was hired by the Islamic Republic in 1980 to kill a former Iranian diplomat in Bethesda. Right? He's been living in Tehran ever since, helped them set up their English language propaganda channel. That's one of many instances of the Islamic Republic doing a targeted assassination on foreign soil. They've abducted dissidents in third countries and brought them back to Iran and executed them.

That's happened in the last couple of years. That's the kind of thing, as someone who was their long-term Guest worry about I worry about that and I think that a lot of Iranians worry about that But in terms of much larger attacks on us well, I don't think that that's their mo right now So let's get back to the issue that set off the week's attacks Iran's nuclear program JD Vance recently articulated a so-called Trump doctrine. It involves trying to aggressively,

diplomatically solve problems, presumably by cursing. If that doesn't work, he says, you use overwhelming force to solve the problem and get the hell out of there. Multiple administrations have said that verifiable diplomatic resolution is the way to solve the nuclear issue in the long term. And after the ceasefire took hold,

Iran's UN envoy said that, quote, we are now closer to diplomacy than ever before. Robin, is that accurate? Are we closer to a diplomatic solution than ever before the war began? And is this Iranian regime a partner Trump can realistically strike a deal with? I mean, you did say thanks, but that's a far cry

from any kind of diplomatic deal. Well, the question is, can Trump get a better deal than the Obama administration did? The original deal, right. Yeah, in 2015, which, remember, followed two years of really tortured diplomacy. And it ended up as a document that was 159 pages plus annexes. And the idea that the Trump administration could come in and in 60 days negotiate a new deal that gets down into the minutia of how do you verify, who does it, what are the levels for how long, was just always totally unrealistic. The problem now is, is President Trump going to give a time limit, another 60 days, to

work out a deal that's very complicated and with the Iranians now more paranoid than ever or suspicious than ever about what the U.S. intention is. So I'm worried about the diplomatic process that follows and the patience of the United States. Donald Trump has not shown a lot of patience. And remember, he keeps saying he can end a war in Ukraine in one day or end the war in Gaza, and both of them are still ongoing with no diplomacy that's been effective. And I worry that his patience runs out. And of course, Prime Minister Netanyahu as well, who is, to put it mildly trigger happy.

And so this is where we get into, in some ways more complicated terrain than we were when they were shooting at each other. So superficiality and aggression at the same time. Yeah. I mean, listen, if it's a doctrine, right, it hasn't worked yet, right? Because, I mean, even look in the trade war context,

it's not military action that's threatened, it's severe economic pain, which Trump has threatened and imposed on a whole host of countries, but there hasn't signed a deal, right, of any substance. Nor has it seemed to have the effect he had hoped. Yeah. And then the other piece is, if that doctrine is a doctrine,

he's not applying it to Russia, right? And by the way, no one begrudges a president's attempt to find diplomatic solutions to the many problems we have around the world, right? You want that. But with Russia, Trump imagined again that he could just kind of magically do it out of his special relationship with Putin,

and Putin is forging ahead. And what is the pressure that Trump has applied on Russia? Certainly not military and we wouldn't root for that, but the sanctions that he said he was going to use as a cudgel have never come and he hasn't mentioned those recently, even past his own two week deadline. So at least we haven't seen the substance of that doctrine as articulated by the vice president. So Jason, you've written that the US Iran relationship is characterized by decades of ignorance, mutual hubris,

and myopic understanding of Iran by American officials, and that Europeans on the other hand have a deeper understanding of Tehran. We're recording this, well, as Robin noted, Trump is at the NATO summit in The Hague. Are European allies best positioned to help breach the chasm between the US and Iran? Are any of them making an attempt to step up? Because they've been notably quiet.

I don't know if they're in the best position, but they're in a much better position. All right. So are any of them attempting? I would hope so. But even during the Biden administration, I have pretty good relationships with a variety of European embassies here in DC. One in particular, the Swiss embassy, that's our protecting power in Iran has been for the last 40 something years. And the sense that I got from them during the Biden years was they weren't looking to the Swiss to give them advice on anything.

Well, you know, the Biden folks knew everything, right? And Trump folks maybe don't know everything, but they certainly aren't looking for advice from the Swiss on this, as far as I can tell. But the last thing that I'd say is that, you know, one piece of this that we've been locked out of Iran's economy by choice for a very long time. The Europeans, Germans, Swiss, Italians, Spanish, have a lot of investment with Iran and a lot of need for Iranian oil. So they're looking at this and they always have from a much more pragmatic, self-serving point of view.

And I think it's kind of time for us to look at it that way as well, not just out of the military ideological security lens. What's best for America? Mm-hmm. Robin? That gets to the issue of transactional. And President Trump looks at everything from a transactional point of view. And there is enormous potential for American businesses to get involved.

Iran has 92 million people. They're very westernized in terms of their tastes in whether it's appliances or fashion technology. And so there is the potential for something. The problem is I think at this point, because the United States has basically had a yo-yo policy, it's going to do a deal, it walks out of the deal, it wants to do a deal again, that a lot of businesses may not be as interested as they might have been before because of the fear of what Israel does or if there's one little hiccup, that there's going to be new sanctions and the whole idea of rapprochement

with Iran collapses again. And the Iranians kind of know that too. And they want sanctions lifted. They want investment in the country. There are estimates that just in the last four years, it's lost hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue from oil. It relies largely on China for smuggled oil. So it's interested in a deal,

but this gets back to it's much more complicated this time. And I really worry that this is, as the administration likes to say, this is phase one. I worry that phase two may not be as quick or efficient or straightforward as everybody hopes. So the conflict in Iran has pushed Gaza into the background for now, but it's unlikely to stay there. On Tuesday, Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinians waiting on aid, killing at least 46 people,

and the death toll has risen to over 56,000. Counterintuitively by attacking Iran, Netanyahu may have given himself space to negotiate with Hamas by placating the extreme right wing of his governing coalition. Jim, do you see an opening here? How does this 12-day war affect what happens in Gaza? Goodness, it's one of the hardest stories I have to do every day, right? Every day we will do our best to check in on Gaza. You know, in the last 24 hours, you've had dozens of people last several days killed

just trying to get food, right? I mean, they're trying to feed their families and they're getting shot, right? I mean, it's just heartbreaking to watch. But Israel has really faced no real consequences for how it has conducted the war there. I mean, there's a lot of public criticism, right, even from Israel's European allies, but the US has not moved and it, no penalty, and Israel's calculated it could keep moving forward till it meets whatever its military objectives are, which seems to, which aren't quite clear, right? Even to some Israeli officials who were former members of Netanyahu's government who criticized him and say, listen, we've met what I thought

were the military goals and yet here we are, we're still bulldozing the place. So, and then you have members of his own government who speak quite openly of kicking the Palestinians into the desert. So it's hard to determine the chances of peace or some sort of lasting ceasefire when you don't know what the actual objective is. And as you watch events unfold every day, one can reasonably conclude that Israel is not interested in peace there but wants to continue... To bulldoze. Bulldoze, to use an iron fist.

The thought occurred to me as Robin made a point earlier in the show today that Israel might, at least the current Israeli leadership, might conclude that forever war works for it. I mean, it'll sign ceasefires like it has in Lebanon, for instance, but when it determines it wants to take something out there, it's going to do it. And that seems to be the footing we're going to be on in Iran, right? Yeah, it's a ceasefire now, but if we see you move one of those trunkfuls of fissile material, we're going to bomb it, right?

And that may be the status with Gaza. It's not pretty, and I don't think anybody would say that openly, but if you look at the events of the last several months and even years, it does seem to be where we are, right? Unfettered, yeah, absolutely, where they don't seem to have a goal except removing them away from Israel. So last question, this so-called 12-day war feels like it might be a coda to a tragic and transformative 20 or so months in the Middle East. It began with Hamas's brutal attack on October 7th and was followed by Israel's ongoing siege of Gaza, its dismantling of Hezbollah in Lebanon, American strikes against Shiite militias in Iraq, the fall

of the Assad regime, and the American operation against the Houthis in Yemen. So will the ceasefire hold and are we nearing the end of the violence and volatility in the region or are we further from peace than 20 months ago? Let's hear from Robin, then Jim, and you get the last word, Jason. No, I don't think... I think the strategic balance in the region has shifted a bit, but I worry, as Jim mentioned, that the goal really in Gaza is to force the Palestinians out. There are very few places to live.

The economy's been destroyed. I think that the hardliners in the Netanyahu government really want the Palestinians to leave. To where is a big question? And of course, that follows with they kind of escalate that to the West Bank as well. So the Palestinian question doesn't exist. I think the changes in the region, the Gulf countries,

Qatar, Saudi Arabia to a certain extent have come out stronger. Iran's allies in the axis of resistance are much weaker, but they're not eliminated. Hezbollah did well in recent local elections in Lebanon. None of these groups are destroyed, the Houthis, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq. And remember, the cliche, you can't bomb an idea. And there is a sense across the region

that there are not democracies in the region, and people are very unhappy. But where does it go from here? And if there's no political alternatives, then people turn to, whether it's religion or extremism or terrorism, those questions, those bigger questions have not been resolved by anything that's happened since October 18 months ago. No alternatives.

There's no alternative ideas, right, or power to do so. Jim? Well, listen, I think we should acknowledge that President Trump took a shot at Iran, a significant one, and it did not lead to a massive conflagration, which had always been the concern. It's what had held successive American presidents of both parties back from doing so. That doesn't mean that there won't be blowback that we don't see later, but he was able to take that shot. And Israel, by the way, Israel has, and I remember just a few weeks ago, months being in Israel and all the talk and debate as to whether Israel would strike Iran's nuclear

facilities. And again, the same questions and concerns were raised that this would lead to a conflagration. It hasn't. And that speaks to a point Jason made earlier is that the Iranian regime is not 10 feet tall, right? It appears to be weaker than we imagine. It doesn't mean that it's disappearing, right? And it has survived before and may strike back. There's an opening for negotiation, and that's a good thing. But there are a lot of questions as to how that would move forward,

right? And one of which is, if you're Iran, do you trust, right? Do you trust in negotiation with the US or with Israel today? You know, US president who brags about having lied about being interested in talks last week as he was planning a strike. And then also just the inherent volatility to Trump's foreign policy, the agreement you make one day might not hold

several months down the line. So how do you negotiate in that environment, or do you just try to wait it out, right? And that's an open question. Listen, I spent a lot of time there as both Jason and Robin have, and no one's rooting for peace more than me, but boy, how many opportunities have we seen disappear? Jason, finish.

You know, one thing that we haven't really talked about a lot is I think that this idea of Normalizing ties between Israel and and the Gulf states gets harder and harder with every passing day I'm thinking a lot about Syria and all the work that's going to be needed to rebuild that country I don't believe that we've seen the end of direct conflict between Israel and Iran. I hope I'm wrong. But I think that Benjamin Netanyahu sees an opportunity to go further and probably feels pretty emboldened right now. But I think, you know, as, as America, as an American, I'd like us to do some of the things that we used to do and try and engage with civil society in those countries, whether it's Iran, Syria, and help kind of build an idea of what a better future looks like. Cause that's, that's a step that we haven't taken.

We talk about it a lot. You know, our failings on Iran are not partisan. It's a 46 year, actually longer than that, you know, 50 plus year failing. Um, and it'd be a really great time for us to build sort of a national project to figure out what is it we're going to do long-term vis-a-vis this country that we haven't been able to. Is there a taste for that with this particular regime? I don't think so, but I think we have to help kind of envision what would come next.

That's not something that the revolutionaries did in 1979. Remember, that the people that ended up in power did so in a really opportunistic, chaotic landscape. And we've been stuck with them ever since. So I think Iranian diaspora, the Iranian people also have a role to play in this. And it would be wise for us to help them find some agency. All right, on that positive note, I really appreciate. Thank you, Robin, Jim and Jason. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor Russell, Kateri Yocum, Megan Burney, Allison Rogers, and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kherwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Catherine Barner and Bradley Sylvester. Steve Bohn engineered this episode. And our theme music is by Trackademics. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. And

don't forget to follow us on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube at On with Kara Swisher. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.