Pod Save the World - Trump Goes to War With Iran

Episode Date: June 22, 2025

Tommy and Ben react to Trump’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. They break down the many horrifying ways Iran could retaliate in the short and long term, how the conflict could snowball across the Middle East, and why the US can’t just bomb its way back to the negotiating table. They also get into the administration’s baffling, bad-faith messaging on the attacks, how the Democrats should meet this moment, and the global reaction.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

POTSafe the world is brought to you by SimplySafe. You know that moment at night when you're locking up, turning off the lights and you just want to feel completely safe before heading to bed? I do. I do that feeling too. That piece of mind is what SimplySafe can give you. It's given John Lovett.

He's been using it for very long. John Lovett set up Simpli safe himself even. Shockingly, somehow. He said it was easy to do. It's got top of the line sensors. You can turn it on and off on your phone and it keeps everybody safe. Most security systems only take action after someone breaks in and that's too late. SimplySafe's new active guard outdoor protection helps stop break-ins before they happen.

If someone's lurking, agents talk to them in real time, turn on spotlights and call the police, proactively deterring crime before it starts. SimplySafe is named Best Home Security System of 2025 by CNET and trusted by over 4 million Americans. And it was ranked number one in customer service by Newsweek and USA Today. There's no contracts, no hidden fees, monitoring plans started around a dollar a day, and there's a 60-day money-back guarantee. visit simplysafe.com slash crooked world to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan

and to get your first month free. That's simplysafe.com slash crooked world. There's no safe like SimplySafe. Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. And we are recording a bonus episode on Sunday, June 22nd at about 1 p.m. Pacific time to discuss the fact that the United States is now at war with Iran.

Last night, the U.S. military dropped a dozen. 30,000 pound bunker buster bombs on the Fordo nuclear site. We dropped two bunker buster bombs on the Natanz nuclear site. And a Navy sub fired about 30 cruise missiles at Natanz and Isfahan to other Iranian nuclear sites. The total operation evolved about 125 military aircraft. They dropped 75 munitions total. So this is a pretty serious military mission. Ben, here's a clip of President Trump talking about what happened in a brief speech last night.

Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, the bully of the Middle East must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier. I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. We worked as a team like perhaps no team has. ever worked before. And we've gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel. There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed

over the last eight days. Remember, there are many targets left. So ominous ending there, Ben. So despite Trump's bravado, his national security team is not arguing that Iran's nuclear facilities were totally obliterated, like he said there. J.D. Vance said this morning on Meet the press that Iran's program was, quote, substantially delayed. In other words, the problem was not permanently solved by bombing, as everyone said before they decided to bomb. Just a little more background to what happened. So as listeners know, Israel started this attack on Iran several days ago and did so knowing that they did not have the military capability to take out the Fordo site in particular, which is buried deep into the side of a mountain. For that, it is assumed that you need

these massive U.S. owned and made Bunker Buster bombs, and the U.S. is also the only country in the world that has the planes that can deliver them. So Netanyahu knew that to quote unquote finish the job, he would have to draw us into this war. Now, I guess we'll find out if they worked and if Fordo is destroyed, Ben. But very troublingly, I'm also starting to see background quotes about the need to have boots on the ground in Iran to verify that their program has been destroyed. So that would be a pretty massive commando kind of operation that, you know, you can assume that Israelis would rather that those be American boots. Let's just leave it there. So another important question, Ben, is just whether Iran has moved any of its stockpile of enriched uranium out of these facilities

before the Israeli and U.S. bombing campaigns began. We don't know the answer. Certainly something U.S. and Israeli intelligence would have been watching closely, will be watching closely. Ben, just lastly, I think it's worth pointing out that even this really historic, massive, scary mission was well short of the full Pentagon plan to destroy Iran's nuclear program. This is a quote from Politico. The Pentagon assessed this year that the U.S. military would need to do 30 days of sustained strikes to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities owing to their underground depth and spread out layout.

So it looks like this operation was just significantly short of that. So anyway, let's just pause there. Get your reaction to what happened. And then we can get into what might happen next. Well, I mean, it goes without saying that I think this was totally unnecessary, that there was no imminent threat from the Iranian nuclear program. Nothing had changed materially from a few weeks ago other than Israel, you know, disrupting Trump's own diplomacy and beginning to bomb Iran and demanding that Trump come in. So if he and Netanyahu is definitely the coach in that equation. Trump, by the way, didn't sound his best. He's kind of heavy breathing and, you know, didn't look that good. But, I mean, in terms of the strike itself, and we'll get into all the ramifications of things that could come out of it, it should be noted that Fordo is buried by design deep, deep underground.

And so actually, there may not be a way beyond kind of intelligence to determine the levels of destruction there, to determine whether or not any stockpile was moved to determine what might still be operational deep underground. And that's where you get into these questions about boots on the ground, which obviously would be a major escalation if it's U.S. or Israeli troops. unlikely that you're going to get inspectors in there. And I should say that with the JCPOA, the Iran deal, you would have had, you know, not that you would have had them with the U.S. bombs dropping on them, but you would have had access to these sites to see what's going on. So there's a lot of uncertainty here, and we may not get total certainty. And we can't really trust what's coming out of the U.S. government because the Director of National Intelligence changed the U.S. assessment of Iran's nuclear

program after she was commanded to by Donald Trump. She went from saying this could be up to three years to saying it could be three weeks, I think, for a hundred-a-nuclear weapon. And also they've been repeatedly lying publicly then, which they then come back and say was all just a big ploy to deceive the Iranians. But in practice, they'd just been lying to the American people. Everything's been a lie. I mean, what they've said, I mean, and this really bears emphasis, because we are so far down the rabbit hole with Trump here that this is making the pre-Iraq War Bush administration look

responsible by comparison. And they were lying as well. I mean, they're just making up intelligence assessments with no evidentiary basis. They're not even bothering to put out cooked intelligence. They're just making stuff up. We can get into the international piece of this, but Trump did say that there was going to be this two-week pause to explore diplomacy and offer Iran on off-ramp. And actually a bunch of European foreign ministers took him up on that. And we're literally meeting with their Iranian counterpart in Europe like a couple days ago.

David Lammy, who's been on this podcast, went out and said he met with J.D. Vance and Marco Rubin. and they assured him that there was a diplomatic opening that needed to be taken. So they lied about, they're lying about the nuclear program. They're lying, they lied about the timeline for their own strikes. How can we believe anything that they tell us? Trump lied to the world about obliterating the sites, not even his own surrogates and lackeys will back that one up. So it's part of what is, there's so many things that are uncertain about this. And the worst one is that these bombs dropped on Iran without needing to be. But one of the things that's really disconcerting is we just can't believe anything that these people tell us about really significant matters of war and peace,

and neither can the world, and neither can the Iranians, who thought that they were in a diplomatic negotiation with Steve Whitgoff just a couple weeks ago. Yeah, I think what's important to just keep in mind in the kind of early days after an operation like this is that the U.S. military can and will win any single battle that they are asked to fight, right? There's no one that can compete with the U.S. military, and I'd include Russia and China there, but where we have struggled as a country and as a military is the long game. It's like it's not about winning battles. It's about winning wars. And that is often because our strategy isn't clear. And that is once again the case here. Like is our goal to degrade or push back Iran's nuclear program? Is it to eliminate it entirely?

Are we focused on the ballistic missile program and the proxy forces? Because those were the things the Republicans always said, we're not part of the JCPOA and which made it such a bad deal. What happens, Ben, if the Israelis keep pushing for regime change, are we going to back them there. And then like I got even bigger picture like and we've talked about this on the show. Like we are just fully entering this might as right like rogue state era. And like I'm not naive. And I know that the United States often has done whatever it wants. But at least as you were saying a minute ago, like in the run up to the Iraq war, the administration tried to persuade the world and the American people about the intelligence case for WMD in Iraq. Now they were wrong and they lied, but they

made a case. They tried to pursue, you know, they tried to, there was a vote in Congress. They went to the UN. There was an effort to persuade the UN. Right. Trump is like completely just done away with that. Like their message is quite literally, who cares what the intelligence says? We're doing what our gut tells us. Like, we don't care if it's legal or constitutional or what the rest of the world thinks. Might is right. And like, okay, that's fine, I guess in the near term, but, you know, we're not going to love it when the Chinese or the Russians continue to operate that way as well, right? I mean, so any sort of like international order or norms or institutions that are supposed to keep us safe are just like completely tossed out the window.

Yeah, I mean, they're gone. And the reality is, look, let's bring Israel into this too. I don't believe what they're saying either. And actually, they said contradictory things too, because the assessments of their strikes before Trump took this strike. is that actually maybe they'd only set the nuclear program back about six months because they can't get at Fordo because they can't destroy these deep underground sites. But then the Israeli fire minister was out there saying before Trump took this strike, that they'd set it back two years. But with the basis for why that is, and by the way, someone who used to be in the U.S. government,

like, I don't know where he gets that number from because the Iranians know how to do the nuclear fuel cycle. If they have any fuel and any centrifuges, it's a lot less than two years. If they have that down in a tunnel, if they have that underground, it doesn't take a lot of nuclear fuel and a few centrifuges for them to weaponize that. And so I don't believe what the Israelis are saying about this. I don't believe what our own government is saying about this. I'm sure the Europeans, and we can get to their response, which has been a little bizarre. Pathetic.

Pathetic. I'll just say it. But they got put out on a limb by Trump and he sought off the limb, whether like having diplomacy is kind of a facade for the U.S. to take this. shot at the Iranians, the international atomic energy agency, which verifies nuclear programs. They're obviously been cut out of the loop. There's just nobody in the loop except for Trump and his kind of lackeys around him. By the way, who we should also add, do you have a lot of confidence in what Pete Heggseth or Tulsi Gabbard telling you? So we've got Israel, the Israeli government of Bibi Nanyahu and the American government of Donald Trump,

no allies in that tent, right? I mean, the Iran nuclear deal, we had, all the Europeans and Russia and China in the tent, no UN system, no legal basis for what they're doing. So it's real rogue state stuff. And even, because I've got, yeah, I'm sure like Utah, I may have got people, you know, all over my mentions, but I have of whom are bots, you know, telling me that, what a great thing this is.

But those people don't even know what just happened. And those bots don't even know. Like, what, because the Iranians could conclude from this, that North Korea, you know, made the right. move by going underground and covert and just popping up with nuclear weapons and nobody's bombing them. And again, what is so difficult to process, and we'll get to the U.S. politics in this, and we've said this, but it bears repeating, the negative consequences don't necessarily show up the next day. We can talk about whether they attack U.S. troops, but let's put that

aside. Let's envision that the Iranians don't take a shot that, you know, harms U.S. service members, and we obviously hope that that's the case, or there's not some terrorist attack. but they could pop up in two years with a nuclear weapon because this happened, you know? Right. And that's not like, like, that's the whole reason that you want diplomacy and a verifiable mechanism with inspectors. If this thing goes sideways, if it there is to the international peace, if there is like further instability in the Middle East, if there are efforts to disrupt the global economy, if there are attacks on Gulf states, if there are, you know, U.S. troops that have to go in Iran, that's when you're going to want. allies. That's when you're going to want friends. And I think Trump doesn't realize that, you know, you may not feel like he needs friends now, but when you need them, they're not going

to be there. This is an ad by BetterHelp. We all need healthy minds these days. Strong, supple, healthy minds. It's harder than ever to keep my mind healthy. Mine's pickled. Mind's pickled. All I do is watch the news. You need to talk to somebody. Figure it out. Men today face immense pressure to perform, provide, and keep it all together. So much pressure to perform. So it's no wonder that six million men in the U.S. suffer from depression every year, and often it's undiagnosed. It's okay to struggle. Real strength comes from opening up about what you're carrying, doing something about it so you can be at your best for yourself and everyone else in your life. If you're a man and you're feeling the way to the world, talk to someone,

anyone, a friend, a loved one, a therapist. For example, you can learn coping skills, how to set boundaries, how to recover from watching Trump's fascist military parade go through D.C. and ice thugs beat up U.S. Enders. That's a reason enough right there to try BetterHelp. With over 35,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's

largest online therapy platform, having served over 5 million people globally. And it works with an app store rating of 4.9 out of 5 based on over 1.7 million client reviews. It's convenient. You can join a session with a therapist at the click of a button, helping you fit therapy into your busy life,

plus switch therapists at any time. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of experience. Talk it out with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash Crooked World. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com slash Crooked World.

Today's podcast is sponsored by Acorns. What does retirement look like for you? How do you want to spend your golden years? Well, it depends on whether we're at Gitmo or Alcatraz is reopened by then. Yeah. Just kidding. Well, you'll feel so much better, though.

if you're in one of those places, but you started saving early and investing. Alcatraz you'll kind of have a view, which I guess I could cut both ways because then you're sort of, you know what you're missing. Just kidding, everyone. You want to spend your golden years doing fun things, seeing your family, traveling the world, but you have to save for that. Acorns is a financial wellness app that makes it easy to start investing for your retirement now. Because the sooner you start, the more of a chance your money has to grow. You don't have to be an expert. Acorns recommends a diversified IRA portfolio that can help you weather all of the markets ups and downs. You don't have to be rich. Acorns lets you get started with the money you've got

right now. You'd be surprised at what just $5 a day can do. Plus, sign up for Acorns gold and you'll get a 3% IRA match on new contributions in your first year. That's extra money for your retirement on Acorns. I'm sure many of you waited way too long to start saving for retirement. I certainly did well into my 30s. It can feel daunting. You can wonder if they'll ever catch up. The only way to do it is just to start right now. Be methodical. Put in what you can every week. Five bucks a day, five bucks a week, five bucks a month, whatever it is.

Over time, it will add up. Your investments will see a return in the markets. And you'll be so, so, so glad when you retire that you started investing as early as possible. Sign up now and join the over one million all-time customers who have already saved and invested over $2.2 billion for their retirement with Acorns. Head to acorns.com slash world or download the eczew. Acorns app to get started. Paid to client endorsement, compensation provides incentive to

positively promote Acorn's Tier 1 compensation provided. Investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors, LLC, and SEC registered investment advisor. View important disclosures at acorns.com slash world. So let's talk about how Iran might respond in sort of the short term and then let's get to

the long term. So short term, a lot of the possible steps you're seeing speculated about are Iran could close the straight of Hormuz, which for those who don't know is it's very narrow passage connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman. It's right off the Iranian coast. And at its narrowest point, I think it's about 21 miles wide with a far narrower shipping channel that's like two miles wide. So very, you know, narrow choke point where you have about 20%

of the world's oil flowing through it. And that's not just critical for the Iranians to get their oil in and out. It's key for the UAE, the Saudis, like all these sort of Gulf oil producers. So if Iran were to close the Strait of Hormoos for any extended period of time, you would likely see a massive spike in oil prices. And then obviously that would also more likely lead to a direct conflict between the U.S. Navy and the Iranian Navy that was attempting to shut down the strait. So that would be a big deal. You know, they could also just try to mine it or just kind of like slow things down in the strait. But it would be a pretty big escalation. The other thing you're seeing talked about a lot is whether Iran might use proxies to retaliate.

They have Shia militia groups that they support in lots of places like Lebanon and Iraq. They could attack U.S. military or diplomatic facilities. Then the thing I was thinking about, like, there are still Americans in Iran because they live there because they're dual citizens, because just where their lives are. I mean, you could see them getting rounded up in some sort of scary way. There were reports last night of the U.S. monitoring Iranian sleeper cells in the U.S. I don't know how real that threat is. it's not my biggest point of concern. I worry a little more about, you know, attacks on Americans overseas, but obviously like that came out of the U.S. government that leak. So it's something they're

thinking about. There could be a cyber element where they launch some sort of cyber attack on the U.S. in some way or they could just, you know, go hard at Israel. All options are on the table here. I mean, we do have one critical data point to look at for precedent, which was on January 3, 2020, Trump had Qasem Soleimani, the head of the IRGC assassinated. And then on January 8th, five days after that Soleimani strike, Iran launched 12 ballistic missiles at a U.S. base in Western Iraq. Now, only by the grace of God was no one killed, but I think 100 service members had traumatic brain injuries.

And Trump, after that happened, decided to de-escalate and not respond. But, you know, in that moment, if Iran had killed some U.S. service member, like we would have been drawn into something much, much bigger. And so all those options are on the table here. So this idea that, you know, we bombed Iran's nuclear facilities and now it's over, it's like, unfortunately, Iran has a say in the matter of when this ends. That's right. And you covered a lot of, you know, the short-term attacks that they could launch on U.S. personnel, the mining of the Straits of Burmoo's to disrupt the global economy. The terrorist attack that might not come tomorrow or next week, right, but whether it's, you know, potential sleeper cells in the U.S.,

and I'm not sure about that, whether it's attacks on Americans or Israelis around the world. That's something that could happen on a longer timeline as well. There could be attacks. If they just decide to go all out kind of nihilist, they could just start attacking, you know, Saudi oil fields, right? Not to attack the Saudis, but just to be arsonists, right? And that's actually probably why the Gulf states have been, you know, not exactly supportive of this step. So they have a lot of different options. Cyber attacks as well, they'll almost certainly try to take.

But the reality is these are all short-term things that could escalate. To your point, if it does ratchet up, the pressure on Trump will be to take some further shots inside of Iran. The same people that pressured him in and doing the strike will pressure them to kind of go further and maybe go all the way to regime change. We also don't know what the Israelis are going to do. Are the Israelis going to pause or are the Israelis going to keep hitting inside of Iran and push towards regime change or try to provoke Iranian responses that drag us further in? And then you really do have a huge vacuum. And then the pressure will be, well, we need U.S. troops in there because it's chaos and, you know, someone needs to secure the nuclear sites or there's a failed state. You know, there are all these things that we don't know.

And Trump has not articulated this, but beyond just saying, like, well, I took the shot and it's over. But the Iranians get a vote on whether this is over. And the other thing I'd say is that, you know, even in the better scenarios, this is nobody in Iran is going to forget this. No. And, you know, look, we have experience in regime change in Iran. In 1953, 54, we sponsored a coup that seemed like it turned out great at the time, but that laid the seeds for the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and the taking of our whole embassy personnel is hostage and this whole conflict that we've had with Iran ever since.

When Israel bombed Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor in the early 80s, it was treated like a big success. Well, that led to decades of tension in multiple wars. with Iraq, and we all know how that ended. So this is what Americans have short attention spans on these things. American politicians are usually afraid to be against military force and strikes like this, but they have a very long tail, and that could be really bloody and really destructive or really economically disruptive, or it could lead to Iran, again, you know,

going, dashing for a nuclear weapon and covertly. But even if those things don't happen, this is still lighting a powder keg that could explode at any time in the future. Yeah. Interestingly, to your point about, you know, Iran potentially attacking Gulf Arab, you know, like Saudi oil infrastructure, it's notable that, you know, I'm sure a lot of these Gulf countries, they hate the Iranians, right? Like, they're their mortal enemy.

They would love to see regime change in Iran if it led to a friendlier government that came after. But the Gulf Arabs have not been allowing us to fly through their airspace to conduct these operations. It's all going through Syria and Iraqi airspace, which suggests some hesitation. And a lot of people point out that Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz would impact them as well. So maybe it would just be a sort of self-defeating. I think it was Ruby or J.D. Vance called it like a suicidal decision.

But, you know, you go after the Saudi oil infrastructure, maybe take them offline, check up the price. Maybe that could net benefit Iran, which is, you know, if they're selling oil at a higher rate, you know, that gets them some revenue. And can I say one other thing, Tommy? Like, because all these scenarios you mentioned remind me that, like, I thought we were supposed to be focused on China, right? Like, I personally think we should be focused on climate change or AI.

Like, whatever, all these things, whatever you're describing, we're going to have more military presence than the Persian Gulf for a long time in the Middle East. We're bogged down here. Like, we're not focused on these other things. And meanwhile, China looks like a responsible global player relative to us. So table stakes just got a lot worse.

If the U.S. looks like a real. rogue state. China looks like a responsible actor. The U.S. is, again, distracted, or not distracted, focused on the Middle East and not focused on these broader geopolitical, you know, tectonic plates that are shifting underneath us. Nothing about this is going to serve our long-term interests. Unless, yes, maybe we set back the Iranian program a year, right? I mean, that's nobody's claiming that you can't destroy a program. It's in people's heads in Iran. They know how to do it. So at best, we went through all this to set this program back by like about a year. Yeah, not great.

Okay, so let's talk about how Iran might respond in the long term. We've talked about some of this, but it does seem likely that they will withdraw from the NPT, the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. It seems likely they will kick out international inspectors. You know, you can see a scenario where they kind of announced to the world, like, well, now we're going to develop a bomb because it's the only way we can protect ourselves, or they could just, as you said, decide to do it covertly. I mean, you wouldn't, to your point, I mean, we don't know if they moved around some of this enriched uranium.

You would need just a little bit of that and some of the advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium to bomb grain pretty quickly. So that's a possibility. Politically, I mean, people in the in D.C. talk about Iran like it's completely monolithic and like they don't have politics too. But this is almost certainly likely to empower the more hardline anti-U.S. force. who will argue that talks with the U.S. are useless because they can't trust us, right? This is as Trump's message and the J.D. Vance, Rubia message this morning was like, now Iran should come back to the table. Well, I don't know that you can bomb people back to a negotiating table when you've been lying to them and pulling out of agreements you made.

It will almost, this strike will probably stir more nationalism in Iran. It could harden support for a regime that is pretty much hated otherwise. But, you know, they hate the regime blessed and they hate being bombed. by the Israelis and us. And then, Ben, I really, like, I really can't overstate how much I worry about this long-term terrorism threat. You know, like, I have talked to you about this. I tweeted that, like, you could see a bus full of American tourists get blown up somewhere

in Cyprus or something in a few years. And all these maga morons were like, that's, you know, kind of like, well actually me, saying that Iran's done this in the past and what's the difference? Like, yes, you idiots. Like, that's my point, right? Like, they have a track record of doing this shit. if we incentivize more of it, if we goad them into more of it, if we, you know, it's like give them another reason to do something evil that will harm the regime long term, but like they view it as a

face-saving opportunity or something they feel like they need to do. This is how the world works, right? Like it's like everyone wants to start the story on, on, you know, at their kind of deflection point, right? Like we're always the victims. We're always responding. But the Iranians are going to view this is like one of the biggest attacks on their. national sovereignty, whatever, you know, and like, did decades at least. And they're going to respond in some way. We just don't know what it will be. Yeah. And to your point about diplomacy, I mean, they're going to conclude we made a deal, the JCPOA that we complied with for years, and then Trump pulled out for no reason whatsoever. Then we were in a negotiation with Trump,

and we thought we were getting close to a deal. And then Israel bombed us, and then Trump bombed us. And so that doesn't suggest, I mean, you know, I would like the best option is, yes, that there's a deal, that the Iranians come out and they say, we just want to end this escalatory cycle and what we will do a deal with you. But I don't know. I mean, the way that they've, you know, the way that they've experienced these negotiations, they might be saying that while still doing the COVID option, right? And obviously, you try to cover that with intelligence and inspections in a deal. But I don't think that they're going to trust America's word in a deal. We'd have to bring the rest of the world into it. We'd have to bring the UN into it that Trump is ignored, right, to verify that deal.

So this just opens up a lot of questions. And he is so short term, you see him, he's like, oh, this is done. I took the shot. Everybody congratulate me. I'm moving on. Iranian nationalism has been kicked up. I've talked to people that hate the. regime who say that, you know, people in Iran are enraged by this. There's a rally around the flag

thing that happens, even if it's not necessarily rallying around the regime. That doesn't go away overnight. That, you know, like you said, it creates political pressure on them to do something, but it also, you know, kind of creates a dynamic where kind of change, like the kind of progressive change you want inside of Iran, like the women's life freedom movement gets harder, not easier in this scenario. Like, you can't, like, we've learned this. bombing a government does not like elevate the more progressive forces in a society. It tends to do the opposite. No. No, I think the Trump people are like kind of hanging their hat on this idea that, you know, he gave around 60 days to cut a deal. Then on day 61, the Israelis started bombing.

Then why was Wickoff going to go there on day 63? Why schedule the meeting? Right. Which is so that's wholly bullshit. And then Trump gave them two weeks. And then you pick up the Atlantic this morning and you read that the two weeks thing was just a ruse to trick the Iranian. But reportedly, like, the U.S. couldn't get those talks going or a back channel through Turkey going with Erdogan because the Supreme Leader was unreachable because he's in a bunker because, of course, he is, because we're reading all these reports that the Israelis presented to the U.S. a regime change operation to kill the Supreme Leader.

So, of course, he's going to go hide. Yeah, it's a top thing on the phone. So, Ben, let's listen to a couple of Trump's lackeys talking about what happened last night. First, here's J.D. Vance on Meet the Press this morning. Sort of a super cut of someone. What do you have to say? We're not at war with Iran. We're at war with Iran's nuclear program. And it was only when the president decided that the Iranians were not negotiating in good faith that he took this action. He didn't take it lightly. But I actually think it provides an opportunity to reset

this relationship, reset these negotiations. The Iranians are clearly not very good at war. Perhaps they should follow President Trump's lead and give peace a chance. If they're serious about, it, I guarantee you the President of the United States is too. I certainly empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East. I understand the concern, but the difference is that back then we had dumb presidents, and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America's national security objectives. So this is not going to be some long-drawn-out thing. We've got in, we've done the job of...

So that's just a great example of how they're not even trying to make trying to make an argument. Like, he's like, oh, no, we're going to be okay in this operation because Bush was dumb and the rest of the presidents were dumb and we're smart. And also, Ben, like, J.D. Vance saying, we are not at war with Iran or at war with Iran's nuclear program is just such, like, unbelievable, embarrassing bullshit. Like, the brave truth teller, J.D. Vance, who is, you know, like fighter for the common man, skeptic of wars of choice, would have absolutely crushed any person.

politician who said something that self-evidently stupid and ridiculous because he knows what it means to bomb Iran. We're war with their country. And by the way, Trump tweeted Iran now is the choice to end this war. So they might want to get on the same page here with their spin. Well, and first of all, we should be very clear, too, in all this bombing, because Israel's bombed them too. And Trump said we, referring to the U.S. and Israel, Iranians have been killed.

And let's not lose out of fact that hundreds. Hundreds of Iranians have been killed. I'm sure hundreds more of been injured. Tehran people have been trying to evacuate. It's chaotic. People are panicked. People are scared. Those people aren't like, oh, they're not bombing us.

They're bombing the nuclear program. Those people, like, are part of Iran. And you can't just, you can't bomb a country and kill its people and say, you're not at war with them. You're at war with a facility. You know, that's just not how this works. JD Vance's superpower is signing absolutely confident and assured and sometimes even intelligent about everything's talking about. But he's no idea what he's talking about. This guy, you know, three years ago was like an author, venture capitalist running for Senate in Ohio.

Like, what does he know about starting a war over a nuclear program in the Middle East with a country of 90 million people? So their level of certainty in how they talk. They talk about this the same way they talk about transports or, you know, ice raids. And it's just reality is going to catch up to these people. there is still such a thing as objective reality, no matter how much they try to speak it out of existence. Potty, the world is brought to you by Haya. Typical children's vitamins are basically candy in disguise, filled with two teaspoons of sugar,

unhealthy chemicals, and other gummy additives growing kids should never eat. That's why Haya created a superpowered, chewable vitamin. Haya fills in the most common gaps in modern children's diets to provide the full-body nourishment our kids need with the yummy taste they love. Formulated with the help of pediatricians and nutritional experts, Haya is pressed with the blend of 12 organic fruits and veggies, then supercharged with 15 essential vitamins and minerals to help support immune system, energy, brain function, mood, concentration, teeth, bones, and more.

With non-GMO, vegan, dairy-free, allergy-free, jellison-free, nut-free, and everything else you can imagine free. Haya is designed for kids two and up and sent straight to your door so parents have one less thing to worry about. I know Charlie's a big Haya guy, and I noticed... Huge Haya guy. He was taking the MENSA entrance exam the last time I saw me around. Yes.

That's after just a year. or two of Haya vitamins. And if you're tired of battling with your kids to eat their greens, Haya now has Kids Daily Greens, plus superfoods, a chocolate-flavored greens powder designed specifically for kids, packed with 55 whole food ingredients to support brain power, development, and digestion. Just scoop, shake, and sip with milk or any non-dairy beverage for a delicious and nutritious boost to your kids will actually enjoy. We've worked out a special deal with Haya for their best-selling children's vitamin. Receive 50% off your first order. To claim this deal, you must go to Hayahealth.com slash world. This deal is not available on their regular.

their website, go to h-I-Y-A-H-E-A-H-E-A-L-T-H-H-C-H-E-A-L-T-H-C-H-K-R-E-A-L-H-R-ROLD-T-E-H-E-ROLD. Here's another supercut Ben of some of Marco Rubio's comments from this morning. I think he went on Fox News's Sunday show and CBS earlier today. It was not attack on Iran. It was not an attack on the Iranian people. This wasn't a regime change move. This was designed to degrade and or destroy three nuclear sites related to their nuclear weaponization ambitions. Are you saying there that the United States did not see intelligence that the Supreme Leader had ordered weaponization? That's irrelevant.

I see that question being asked on the media. That's an irrelevant question. They have everything they need to build a weapon. That is the key point in US intelligence assessments. You know that. No, it's not. No, I know that. No, I know that better than you know that.

And I know that that's not the case. What happens next is up to the regime. Okay. The regime wants peace. We're ready for peace. Look, at the end of the day. if Iran is committed to becoming a nuclear weapons power, I do think it puts the regime at risk. I really do. I think it would be the end of the regime if they tried to do that.

So, I mean, there's just a great example of how they're just not even trying to make a case. Like, your argument is that the U.S. intelligence assessment about whether Iran has decided to get a nuclear weapon is irrelevant? What? And there's total internal inconsistency in what he said, because he described him as three, like, nuclear weapons. organization sites. And then he said that it is irrelevant because they're not. They're three nuclear sites. It's different, right? Whether they've decided to weaponize is whether or not this is an imminent threat. And so in the same appearance, he's all over the map. It's a weaponization site. Then there's not a weaponization decision. Then it doesn't matter. And then if they do decide to weaponize,

and will end the regime. Like, like, and just oozing arrogance, you know. Again, I just, I can't help, I hope for the best here. I really, too. I just, I don't have a lot of confidence in watching and listening with these guys. No, not at all. So let's just talk about the Democratic Party and the Democratic reaction. I just, I want to just make the case to Democrats that I feel like in moments like this, there is a tendency to kind of shrink from the debate and to worry that taking military action looks strong and decisive while talking about facts and nuance and restraint or diplomacy looks weak. I mean, like, what was this operation called? Midnight Hammer. Yeah. It's like, I was just call it war gives Trump a boner. Yeah. But like if you,

if you let that political fear silence you now, when people are really paying attention, then only the hawks are the ones out there making the argument. And we will lose that fight. Like, Remember, Donald Trump ran as an anti-war guy. He stole that mantle from the Democrats in 2016. Joe Biden made it worse, unfortunately, through his handling of Gaza, but also through what I think was principled leadership on Ukraine, right? But we became viewed as like the warmonger party. Like, we need to get back to being the anti-war party. And that means not just opposing wars like this, but also standing up for diplomatic problems, which I know I'm going to trigger you now, Ben, but like that gets me back to the JCPOA because.

The JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal, worked. It was working when Trump pulled out of it. His own secretary of defense, Jim Mattis, testified before Congress in 2017 that Iran was in compliance of the JCPOA and that it was in our national security interests to stay in it. But he pulled us out of it. And part of why support for the JCPOA was weak, I think, is that very few Democrats would full-throatedly fight for it. It was like there was so much throat clearing about the flaws and the fact that it didn't

encompass the ballistic missile program or support for proxies and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the reason for that is because Iran's nuclear program was seen as an existential threat, one, and two, everybody knew that Iran would never cut a deal all at once. They gave up every element of what they viewed as their self-defense. But instead of just fighting for the thing, we looked weak and like there is a direct line between Trump pulling out of the JCPOA and where we are today. And unfortunately, it runs through four years of Joe Biden, not reengaging on all of these matters and not getting back into the JCPOA. But, like, I just think we got to like, we've got to have some confidence and some courage in these moments. Yeah, it should not be this complicated. The JCPOA point is the obvious one.

You had a deal. It was working. Iran was complying. You didn't have a nuclear Iran or a war to worry about when that deals in place. Trump tore it up. And that was a direct line to what just happened. And by the way, when we used to say in the JCPOA debate that it was a deal or a war, people said, oh, how dare you say that? How dare you say that? How dare you? It turned out that that was the case. But let's just start the clock from today.

This was dangerous and unnecessary and based on lies, faulty intelligence or just outright lies about the intelligence. The American people are against this. Republicans and Democrats are against this. This presents all kinds of risks. It's the kind of thing Americans are sick of. It's the kind of Forever War politics that have cost multiple presidents. And yet Democrats still have this kind of caution about being against the use of military force or being cross-wise with Israel or whatever the thing is.

Let me just add this point, too, Tommy, to this. How can Donald Trump be an authoritarian threat to American democracy in every realm except this one? How can you see that this guy is like a fascist who's like militarizing ICE, who's deploying the National Guard to our streets? and not be concerned about him launching a new war only several months into his presidency. The last I checked, it's not good when fascistic leaders launched foreign wars. It's very strange to say, well, I'm against all the authoritarian things Donald Trump is doing, but I'm not against this lawless war he launched against Iran in league with Bibi Nanyahu, another lawless guy who's committed war crimes already in Gaza.

We're going to be on board with that because we don't have that political fight. That makes you look like you have no principles. That makes you look like you're afraid. That makes you look weak when we should be pointing out that Trump did this from a position of weakness. He was dragged into this by Netanyahu and a bunch of hardliners in the Republican Party. And we cannot pretend like Trump is normal in this one area of policy. He's somehow normal when he drops bombs on Iran and he's a threat on everything else he does. That makes no sense.

The same Donald Trump that is deporting people to a gulag in El Salvador. and deploying the National Guard to our hometown of Los Angeles and dismantling the federal government is the same person that launched this strike and has not told the truth about it. And is filled his administration with totally incompetent people, radic incompetent people like Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hedeth who are in charge of this war. This is not a close call for Democrats. And I think people are watching this, including people like us who are in the Democratic Party, to be like, well, let's see some backbone from our lives. leaders. Let's see some people who are willing to go out there and have a fight on principle that, by the way, the American people, we know agree with us on. Yeah. And I think, you know, there's a number of Democrats out there making the case that Congress needed to vote to authorize

this war. And I think that's an important part of the debate. But where I'm seeing Democrats, I think, shrink from the fight is just on the substance itself. And that, like, this is not how you solve the problem. This is not how we're going to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. And that it's not okay for the United States to just act as a global rogue actor and just bomb countries without any sort of legal basis or even intelligence case for why it was imminent and necessary. Right. I mean, like all the Republicans who are saying, oh, no, we didn't need Congress. The president of the United States has the authority to respond to imminent threats like proliferation of WMD. The U.S. intelligence assessment as of March was that Iran was like a year

at least away from getting a nuclear weapon. Like there was no imminence here and they're not even trying to tell us that that assessment changed. They're just saying we don't care. Yeah. And look, this is where Joe Biden got into trouble because he did a lot of good things, right, and fighting climate change, joining Paris Agreement, like focusing on Asia Pacific, like trying to, you know, standing up for Ukraine. But it was this region. It was the Middle East where blank check support for Gaza didn't go back into the Iran deal, fist bumping with NBS. You can't have a Democratic Party foreign policy where you carve out what is kind of the most important file here, which is war and peace and the Middle East and all these complex

relationships, you know, we should have a long conversation in this podcast about, you know, the Democrats want to have an alternative to Republicans. You have to be consistent and principled on it. And you can't kind of carve out these areas where you are acting out of political fear because people will smell that and they won't take you seriously on other things. If you're, you know, they won't take your warning seriously on, you know, the National Guard in the streets while you're saying, well, you know, I support Trump dropping. gigantic bombs on a country on the other side of the planet with no legal basis or no intelligence basis just because, you know, that's where he and BB Naniau decided to go.

Yeah. And also we have a political opportunity here where you are seeing a bunch of people who supported Donald Trump in the last election come out and say, this is bad. We don't want war with Iran. This is the exact opposite of what he told us he was going to do. Some have called for him to be impeached. So we need to speak to those people and provide a clear alternative. Final thing then, I mean, the international reaction has just been completely muted and bizarre, right? Like, Kier-Starmor's statement from the UK is a good example, like talks about how Iran's nuclear program is a grave threat to international security, can't be allowed to have a weapon. U.S. has taken action to alleviate the threat, blah, blah, blah, calling Iran to return to the negotiating table. Like, just a few days ago, top officials in the UK were talking about the illegality of this operation.

I don't know. I'm not seeing like, I'm not seeing a lot of voices from our allies saying much of anything. We are seeing condemnation from the Russians, from the Chinese. Former Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, said a kind of a crazy tweet. A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads and that the enrichment of nuclear material and now we can see it outright, the future production of nuclear weapons will continue. You never know with that guy, whether he's tweeting something on behalf of Putin or whether he's just. shit face somewhere kind of popping off on a social media account. But I don't know, I'm curious what you make of just kind of the silence in the face of this ballooning war. Mainly from Europe. I mean, you know, the global South will be, you know, horrified by this. Russia and China will try to take advantage of it. Europe is not unlike the Democratic Party in this one. You know, they're afraid of Trump. They're afraid of tariffs. But the reality is at a certain point you're going to need your own foreign policy here. Otherwise, you're just going to be riding, not just shotgun. You're going to be riding in the trunk.

while Donald Trump is driving the car off at cliff here. And I think early returns on this one are, you can tell they're not happy about it, but they're also kind of putting their head down. And I don't think that's very sustainable either. No, I don't either. Okay, I think that's it from us for today. I'm sure we'll be talking about this a lot more this week. So thanks for listening. Please subscribe to POTSave the World on YouTube. We cover all the biggest events happening in national Security in the U.S. and around the world. This nuclear issue and the war in Iran has been front and center. We've covered Gaza. So if you subscribe to Pod Save the World, you will hear at least weekly updates on all the biggest events. And we try to talk in normal ways with language you can understand

and actually make it fun and interesting. So thanks for listening. Please subscribe to Pod Save the World. See you. Pod Save World is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Alona Mikovsky. Our associate producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, and Ben Rhodes. Say hi, Ben. Hi. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Canter is our audio engineer.

Audio support by Kyle Segglin and Charlotte Landis. Thanks to our digital team, Ben Heffcote, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Tolls, and Molly Lobel. Matt DeGroote is our head of production. If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our friends of the pod subscription community at cricket.com slash friends. Don't forget to follow us at Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events. Plus find Pod Save the World on YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more.

If you're as opinionated as we are, please consider dropping us a review. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.