Pod Save the World - Trump on Iran: Locked and Bloated

Episode Date: September 18, 2019

Tommy and Ben talk about the growing risk of war with Iran in the wake of the attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure, the Israeli elections, Rep. Adam Schiff’s claim that the Director of National Intelligence is suppressing a whistleblower, Trump’s favorite dictator, the death of Hamza bin Laden, Indian Prime Minister Modi’s visit to the US, how to build an international coalition to fight climate change, and storm Area 51 gets cancelled. Then Tommy talks with Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) about why he thinks a military attack on Iran is insane and the humanitarian disaster in Yemen. 

Welcome back to POTSafe the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, you're our roving UN General Assembly correspondent today. Congrats on your promotion. Yeah, I know I'm scoping out Anga. I actually had lunch across the street from Trump Tower, so it's good to be close to our friends there. Oh, nice. I feel very embedded in the UN process because I've been reading Samantha Power's excellent books. So I'd like you to negotiate some sort of resolution for me while you were there. Yeah. Well, we can talk about that with Samantha. maybe a teaser on future episodes. So today we're going to talk about the ever-growing risk of war with Iran after this attack on Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure over the weekend. We're going to talk about these Israeli elections. Congressman Schiff's remarkable letter accusing the Director of National Intelligence of covering up a whistleblower complaint. Trump's favorite dictator, the death of Hamza bin Laden, Prime Minister Modi's visit to the United

States, how to build a coalition that is global to fight climate change. the only good Twitter fight in history and then some very sad news about my favorite viral events so a lot of good stuff today, Rhodes. Yeah, full plate. One quick thing in housekeeping. So you probably heard on Pate of America

and I'd love it or leave it that we are partnering with Stacey Abrams to raise money for her Fair Fight 2020 initiative. First of all, Stacy Abrams is like the most competent, cool, great person in the Democratic Party. She is leading an effort to go on offense against voter suppression and to make sure that everyone who wants to vote can do so in 2020.

So look, we're all like watching these debates, trying to figure what's going to happen next, worrying about everything. The thing we can do today that will help us win in 2020 is donate to Stacey's initiative. So crooked media has committed to raising a million dollars for Fair Fight 2020. We're a little nervous. It's a big goal. We're at about 320 grand so far. So please go to Vote Saveamerica.com slash Fair Fight if you want to give. If everybody gave 10 bucks. We'd beat our goal and Stacey would be hiring teams in all the key swing states to help us win. So that's all the new housekeeping we got. Then let's talk about Saudi Arabia. So over the weekend, there was a serious attack on two major Saudi oil processing facilities.

A group called the Houthi rebels took credit for this attack, but the Trump administration quickly pointed the finger at Iran. Early reports suggest that the attacks use drones or possibly short-range cruise missiles or some combination of the two. The damage was serious enough that global oil prices went up 10% on Monday over concerns about how this might impact global supply. Today, on Tuesday, the New York Times reported that the U.S. intelligence community and the military investigators are looking at satellite imagery, radar, intercepted communications, and pieces of the explicit themselves to try to figure out their origin and who actually did this. But determining who launched this attack will be complicated because we know that the Iranians

provide weapons to the Houthi rebels, but that doesn't necessarily mean they ordered the attack itself. So during an Oval Office press spray with the Crown Prince of Bahrain on Monday, Trump stopped just short of blaming Iran. Frankly, his comments seemed like kind of dialed down from his tweet over the weekend where he said the U.S. was locked and loaded depending on verification. And it sounds like he's kind of waiting on his marching orders from the Saudis before deciding what to do, which is pretty pathetic. Republicans and Democrats are just all over the place on what we should do about it. You'll hear from Chris Murphy later. in the episode who is very clear that he does not think we should go to war in Iran. But in the least

surprising news ever, Lindsay Graham wants the U.S. to bomb Iranian oil refineries and retaliation, because I'm sure that would calm things down. Mitt Romney said a direct U.S. military response would be a grave mistake. Democratic Senator Chris Kunt of Delaware suggested we should respond directly if Iran was responsible for walking that back today on TV. Michael Morrell, the forehead of the CIA, who we both know well, suggested the U.S. should respond. So a State Department staffer named Brian Hook said the Saudis view this event as their 9-11. Ben, I'm going to let you take that comparison for a ride and see what you think of it. But my question for you is, could you describe to listeners what the deliberations would be like right now in a normal White House as you try to figure out

who did this if the Iranians launched the attack and what the appropriate responses could be? Well, in terms of figuring out who it is, I mean, you can piece together kind of what the munitions were whatever imagery you could capture that shows kind of where this came from, and then just try to narrow down your options of who had this capability and who could have carried it out. And I should say, you know, oftentimes, like theories change in the intelligence community. So in this kind of case where you're piecing it together, you know, can evolve. It could say it came from the Iranians. It can say the Iranians must have provided some munitions of the Houthis, there are any number of theories, and you'd want to establish

responsibility. I think the first point, though, that's so important to make, Tommy, is before we get to like what we would do right now, is we shouldn't be where we are now. We're only here because of Trump's decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement and his decision to support completely unchecked the Saudi war in Yemen, which has caused Iran to respond in kind through various provocations, attacks on tankers, the attack on the U.S. drone, and perhaps this attack, if it came from Iran, or if they somehow put the Houthis up to it, as well as all kinds of things that they're doing across the region. Clearly, Trump's policy has been a catastrophic failure. It was supposed to lead to a better deal on the nuclear program. Iran is resuming its nuclear

program. It was supposed to pressure Iran into curbing its behavior across the region. Iran is accelerating its behavior across the region. And what I see the Iranians doing, if they are responsible in some way for this, is signaling, here's what you guys have to look forward to if you go to war with us. You know, we can take out all of the Saudi oil infrastructure. We can take out and shut down tanker traffic. Those two things together could have a massive shock on the global economy. Never mind what they can signal about taking attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq. the Iranians are messaging, this is what you're in for if there's a war. And it's not good. And it's

clearly something that would not be popular with the American people and would not end well for anybody. And so I'd be looking for diplomatic off-ramps if I was the Trump administration. They seem incapable of actually pursuing those. But, you know, unless we want to go tit for tat escalation for escalation, you know, we bomb the Iranian oil infrastructure they hit back. unless we want to get into that type of war, they could have huge repercussions for our economy, for the lives of the Americans who could be caught in the middle of that, then I think you'd be looking for a way back into diplomacy. In that way, is something called the Iran nuclear agreement, which was in place when Trump took office. Yeah, I mean, in terms of options, like, the only thing that ever gets discussed are the military options. And maybe that's because

some of it is classified. But the Saudis could go to the United Nations and try to seek some sort of action there. They could try to build a global coalition to do a better job protecting shipping lanes. We could try for more sanctions. We could launch a cyberdisc hack. The CIA could take all kinds of covert actions. There's a lot of options shy of a tit-for-tat military response. I don't really see getting talked about. Yeah, and you're right. If you wanted to put some diplomatic pressure on the Iranians, you go to the UN. If what the Iranians were doing was messaging, here's the type of thing we could do in a conflict. There are many ways that the U.S. could do that in response through cyber means,

things that don't take people's lives that don't lead to a kind of violent escalation. So there is a bigger universe of options, but I keep coming back to the fact that we don't need to be here. We need to pursue diplomacy. In addition to the Iran deal, one of the things that we were encouraging the Saudis to do at the end of the administration that they completely ignored was open up a channel of the Iranians because nothing could be healthier in that region than if the Saudis and the Iranians could somehow de-escalate these. conflicts, particularly in Yemen, but also in different parts of the region, nobody is winning this, you know, sectarian battle across the region. And so I think, you know, what's needed

urgently is diplomacy, and that's not something that we've really been able to get from the Trump administration. Yeah. So let's talk about the Houthi rebels for a minute. You hear a lot of people saying that the Houthi rebels are just an Iranian proxy force. And I think we should take a minute to unpack that argument and talk about who they actually are. Because it's not a lot of true. That's not true. Yeah, it's more complicated. So the Houthis are Shia tribes in northern Yemen. They practice Zadiyism or Zadhi Islam. So I am way out of my depth here. But the brand of Shia Islam that the Zadis practice is described as very different than what Shia's practice in Iran say or Iraq. And again, I'm no expert, but I think that distinction is relevant because a lot of people

just assume, hey, this is a sectarian fight where the Shiites in Yemen and Iran are aligned against the Sunni Saudis. But I think, again, it's more complicated than that. The Houthis, the Houthis. The Houthis have been pretty brutally repressed by the Yemeni government since at least 2004 and at the behest or at least with the support of the Saudi government. That led to multiple wars between these Houthi rebel groups and the Yemeni government. This current iteration of the Houthi rebels, they're not good guys. No one's arguing that. Their motto and their flag includes the language. Death to America, death to Israel, curse on the Jews of victory to Islam.

Yeah, not our friends. Yeah. They are skilled fighters. they've managed to take advantage of the Yemeni governments basically collapse in 2011 during the Arab Spring. They've partnered with fighters loyal to the former president of Yemen to capture a bunch of territory, including Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. So in the process, they've gotten their hands on some very advanced weapons like scud missiles. Now, we also know that Iran's interest in Yemen seems to have started when the Saudi military got involved in this fight in a bigger way in 2009. And since then, that fighting is just rapidly escalated.

And today, the Houthis get arms and training from Lebanese Hezbollah. We know they've gotten arms and training from Iran, including medium-range ballistic missiles and drones. And by the way, a lot of his background came from a great paper by Dr. Michael Knights at the Washington Institute for Near East policy. If people want to geek out more. So, Ben, I think the key takeaways here are that, you know, the Houthis are not our friends. They are a very capable kind of rag-tag fighting force that is, you know, shown itself able to kick the shit out of the Saudis in many occasions. and they're good at this for a few reasons. One, they've been doing it for a long time. They were able to get a lot of advanced humanity military hardware and co-opped a lot of their

soldiers. And they get support from Iran. And I was talking to our old colleague, an Iran expert, Kelly Magsman yesterday, about what it actually means to be an Iranian proxy force, because again, you hear that term thrown around a lot. And Kelly said that back in the day, she really thought of these proxy forces in tiers. So, you know, with Hezbollah, Iran can really direct to their operations. They're like an extension of the military. But they have left. control over Hamas and even less control over the Houthis. So that information, that tiering could have changed since you and I had access to intelligence. But it does seem like this is more an example of shared interests among bad actors than Iran saying, hey, take this weapon, blow up this thing.

I'm sure the Iranians are happy to screw with the Saudis. But it doesn't necessarily mean they're dictating every move. So again, could be dated information, but that's the sense I've gotten from talking to a whole bunch of experts. But, you know, if it was the Houthis that attacked this Saudi oil infrastructure and not Iran directly, that's a damn big distinction that should inform the policy choices that come after from the U.S. Yeah, and here's how the Hesbo, the example is one I was going to give, right, which Hesble is a proxy. They're an extension, a creation of Iran so as to extend their influence into, you know, Lebanon and have a buffer against Israel. The Houthis are an independent actor. And, you know, my experience in government is when the Houthis act,

in Yemen, they acted on their own. They were not directed by Iran to advance on Sana'a, the capital of Yemen. The Houthis had been a part of what they saw as a civil war for some time now, and they opportunistically moved in and took a bunch of territory. At that point, as the Saudis are coming in, yes, the Iranians are providing some support, but these are people who live in Yemen, who've been fighting against the Saudis for a long time and have their own agenda. Their agenda happens to align with Iran's because they're fighting the Saudis. And this is a really important point about the war in Yemen. It has been a catastrophic failure of Saudi foreign policy. If the goal was to dislodge the Houthis and to eradicate Iranian influence, they've actually driven the Iranians and the Houthis

closer together because of their bombardment of Yemen, because of their bombardment of the Houthis, the Houthis turned to the Iranians for weapons. And that relationship between the Houthis and the Iranians has just gotten tighter and tighter and tighter in the context. of this conflict and has not succeeded in dislodging the Houthis or eradicating Iranian influence. It's had the opposite effect in many ways, right? And so it speaks to the futility of the war in Yemen and the need to look at this as a problem that has to be solved diplomatically to end this war in Yemen. I think the other thing Americans have to realize when they see this is we see why on earth is somebody hitting the Saudi oil infrastructure out of nowhere. No, there's a war that's been going on there for

years. If you're the Houthis, if you're the Iranians, this is just an extension of a conflict that you're already fighting, right? The Saudis have been bombarding Yemen for years. And now the U.S. has stirred this pot further, obviously, by pulling out the Iran nuclear agreement and stacking up sanctions on the Iranians and making threats to the Iranians and moving military hardware there. So they don't see this, whether it's Houthis or the Iranians as, I think, a departure from what is kind of an existing state of war in that part of the world. Again, I do think if it's a Houthis or the Iranians, it's a message to the Saudis that you are really vulnerable. I mean, imagine in a conflict that the Iranians just decided that they want to take out all the Saudi oil infrastructure.

They could kind of cripple the Saudi regime relatively quickly. That's the kind of dirty secret here that's been exposed. And one reason that the Saudis might actually not want to tell Trump to take this strike. You know, because Trump said, oh, I'll act whatever, I'll do whatever Mahm bin Salman says in a shocking and complete. abdication of responsibility for U.S. foreign and military policy to a murderous dictator. Well, actually, you know what? Maybe the Saudis don't want this war with Iran to come fully into their territory because, man, they're vulnerable. Yeah. Here's an example of one I'd love to see a little America First Action, but we're not quite getting that. Yeah. Look, in the meanwhile, like,

the result of this conflict is that Yemen is the Arab world's poorest country. There's 27 million people there who have the lowest life expectancy in the region. There is a humanitarian catastrophe ongoing. And Senator Murphy and I talked about that in more detail in that interview. So check that part out because I don't want the potential conflict with Iran to obscure this broader issue in Yemen because we should all be focused on it. Last question for you on Iran, Ben. So there's been a lot of speculation about Trump meeting with the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani at the UN General Assembly. Trump's desire for that meeting and willingness to give the Iranians a $15 billion, dollar bailout and sanctions relief was reportedly the final straw that drove John Bolton out of the

place. Trump initially said he was open to the meeting. Then he called reports that he wanted to meet fake news. So who the hell knows what he thinks. But most recently, the Iranian said, no, it's not going to happen. Ben, I can't help but think that we're like one nice letter from Rouhani to Trump away from the risk of war going down exponentially. But what do you think about the utility of a Trump-ruhani meeting? Is that a good idea? What matters is substance, and there's a deal on the table from the French that is essentially a version of the Iran deal that Trump could decide to just come back into. Instead, he wants the meeting because he loves the spectacle. And my understanding from talking to different people who are close to this situation, right, is that the Iranian said to Trump, we won't meet with you unless you return to providing us with sanctions relief.

Like, we're not interested in your photo op. We're interested in getting the sanctions relief that we were entitled to because we're complying with the Iran nuclear agreement. And that is a logical position, you know, as much as I find fault with the Iranians on a host of things, they don't want to just have this facade. So you've had this bizarre situation where Trump has been chasing this meeting with the Iranians. He's been saying, I'll meet with them with no preconditions. All the people, Mike Pompeo, Steve Munkin, who worked for him, have been saying, we'll meet with the Iranians with no preconditions.

At every juncture, the Iranian said, we don't want to meet with you. And then finally, the Iranian said, no, we really, really, really don't want to meet with you. And then Trump comes out and says, I never said I wanted to meet with Iranians. It is like a petulant child is in charge of the diplomacy

on the biggest flashpoint potentially in the world today, which is a totally insane way of making American foreign policy. I can't resist just returning to the Saudis for one point, Tom, because he cheated up. to suggest have a U.S. State Department official, Brian Hook, who, by the way, is the same genius who emailed the captain of an Iranian oil tanker and offered to buy it with cash.

And who's the same asshole who fired a woman who is a career civil servant who worked in the Obama administration, but also was a career person, not a political pointe of ours, because she was Iranian American, perhaps, or because she worked on the Iran agreement. and there's an Inspector General report coming out on that firing soon. This guy says to a bunch of Hill staff that the Saudis say, this is their 9-11. I mean, nobody was killed in this attack, equating some oil infrastructure getting blown up with 3,000 people getting killed by 15 Saudis out of the 19 hijackers is so grotesque and offensive. And the fact that these guys in the Trump administration just keep doing and saying crazy shit like this, and Democrats aren't doing enough to make this stick to them. Imagine if a Democratic, if someone in the Obama administration had said that equated an attack on Saudi Arabia to 9-11, it's just, it's mind-boggling and just shows you the depths of their complete fealty to the Saudis.

Yeah, the Saudis already had their 9-11, and unfortunately 15 of the 19 guys were on the wrong end. So I don't want to hear that bullshit again. Okay. enough about our latest conversation about potential war with Iran, because this is always a real treat. The Israelis are voting to see who will be the next prime minister as we speak. So a quick reminder that there were elections in April, and Prime Minister B.B. Netanyahu won the most votes of any candidate, but he was unable to form a coalition government so they had to do a revote, or actually he forced them to do a re-vote rather than share power or turn it over to somebody else.

Israeli elections, again, are very different from the U.S. elections. There aren't head-to-head contests between two parties. You have 30-plus parties running for seats in the Knesset, which is their parliament, and whoever can assemble a coalition that controls 61 of the 120 seats runs the government. So we don't have final results yet, but there was some pretty gross last-minute campaigning that I think we should talk about. So I'll tick through a little of that. Bibi Netanyahu's Facebook account chatbot, that's sort of an automated messaging service

that you can use to provide information, got shut down for violating hate-to-speech rules after saying things like Arab politicians want to destroy us all. Netanyahu broke Israeli election laws or regulations by releasing polling data and by doing interviews during what is supposed to be a quiet period. Before that, Netanyahu held his final pre-election cabinet meeting in the Palestinian territories. That's the first time that's happened in two decades. And they approved the new settlement. So that's very subtle.

Over the weekend, Trump and Netanyahu released statements saying they had discussed a new defense pact between the U.S. and Israel. the idea is popular in some parts of the Israeli government, but a lot of people, myself included, kind of thought Trump might go even bigger with this pre-election gift to Netanyahu. So let's posit this defense-packed idea for a second. Ben, a lot of policy experts pointed out how this is hardly a new idea, but it's ultimately been one that neither side wanted. The U.S. didn't necessarily want to be forced to come to Israel's defense if they go to war. And then Benny Gantz, the former Israeli defense Fortead, who's now running against Netanyahu, said it could actually tie Israel's hands if something

happens. What did you make of this proposal? Is it something you guys considered back in the day in the Obama administration? No. And actually, there's one more thing that I saw about the pre-election, a Harat's report that is actually relevant to this discussion, which is that Netanyahu even wanted to potentially launch a war in Gaza shortly before the election that was vetoed by his security chiefs. You know, that's one report in Hararets. But it's somewhat believable. Netanyahu clearly is willing to do anything and break through any norm and law to perpetuate his power. Because he'll keep him out of jail.

We should remind people that he's worried about getting prosecuted and he wants to win re-election so he can get immunity for himself from prosecution. That's right. This is potentially about his freedom. But the Gaza War ties into the complexity of a defense pact, right, which is mutual defense pact usually suggests that, you know, if one nation is attacked, the other nation will immediately come to its defense. right? So if a NATO ally is attacked, we will, you know, presumably go to war on their behalf. Well, defining from the American perspective, defining what that is for Israel is very complicated. You know, do we, are we compelled to go to war if Hamas fires a rocket in Israeli territory? Or if the Israelis go to war in Gaza, are we compelled to join that war?

You know, the types of military conflicts that the Israelis find themselves in are very kind of complex and in some ways, you know, unending, right? If you talk about the wars against Hamas and Hisbalah, and so what exactly would trigger the U.S. coming to Israeli's military defense and putting U.S. troops into those situations? So that's a very complicated piece of business. It's not as clear cut as saying, you know, we're laying down a marker that we will defend our NATO allies against like a Russian invasion as a deterrent here. And I think for the Israelis, you know, their mindset has often constantly been the capacity to defend themselves by themselves, right?

I mean, that's always been the kind of Israeli ethos. We want to have the capacity to defend our state by ourselves, given their history, you know, that being a part of it. They get the benefits that come from the U.S. relationship anyway, that the 10-year MOUs that govern the provision of military assistance to Israel, assure them of long-term sustained U.S. support for Israel's defense. So it's not like they don't already have enormous assistance from us. This, for me, is an unsurious tweet by Trump just to kind of reinforce to the Israeli electorate that he's got, he'll do whatever Netanyahu wants, and he's got his back, and Netanyahu can say,

once again, look at my friendship with Donald Trump. But it's really not a serious or substantive idea and just shows you that Trump and Nan Yao are both just kind of desperately seeking to drag him across the finish line here. Yeah, it doesn't seem like it landed the way they'd hoped. One other interesting U.S.-Israel relations story I saw. So there was a political report that said the U.S. government believes that the Israelis placed these cell phone surveillance devices near the White House and other key parts of D.C. Trump was asked about this by reporters, and he said,

I don't think the Israelis are spying on us. I really would find that hard to believe. We should note that the Israelis deny spying on Trump or the U.S. Ben, do you think that's true? Yeah, I mean, it's eminently believable. I mean, I don't know about this device, but 100% I think the Israelis are spying on Trump. You know, I always found it absurd that the Israelis would make these comments that they don't spy on us. I mean, my favorite about this, Tommy, is when they, like, threw, you know, through a fit after we didn't veto a resolution on settlements,

they said that they knew from intelligence that we had somehow colluded to write this resolution. So they're not even hiding the ball on this stuff. I mean, when you're in government, you assume that the Russians, the Chinese, and the Israelis may be seeking to intercept your communication.

So for Trump to go out and say, you know, I don't care, or I don't think they're doing this, either shows she's incredibly naive and has no idea how the world actually works, or he doesn't even give a shit if a foreign government is collecting intelligence in some of the most sensitive areas of the U.S. government because his politics are that Saudi Arabia and Israel can do whatever the hell they want. It really was.

It's like he's either lying or he is so naive that it's actually dangerous. I am sure that there's like five intelligence services up on his janky-ass old smartphone, whatever the hell it is. There's a great story. I think it was by Newsweek that talked about sort of the history of spying between the U.S. and Israel. And there aren't a lot of people in the report denying that the U.S. collects intelligence on other parties as well. But there's this amazing anecdote from the late 90s when after the Israelis said they stopped spying on the U.S. because a spy named Jonathan Pollard was arrested in 1987. Al Gore was in Jerusalem. And there was a Secret Service agent who was using the bathroom and took a little longer than normal. And when he came out,

he saw, I assume, a Mossad member climbing out of one of the ventilation ducts in an effort to play some sort of device in the room. And he like kind of coughed and made some noises. And the guy just like quietly climbed back in and they never spoke of it again. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you raised an important point here about Trump, you know, just hopping on the phone with any Yehu right winger who calls him and sharing his thoughts on the China trade war. I'm sure the Chinese. are up on that, right? Yeah. I mean, the guys are walking intelligence risk, you know, having, you know, walking around

Mar-a-Lago having conversations about national security. I mean, God only knows how much foreign adversaries and, you know, countries like Israel that are friendly but also spy, how much they've penetrated the highest level of the U.S. government in their intelligence collection because Trump and people around them are completely sloppy with information. and never mind that there are people like Jared Kushner, who shouldn't even have security clearances, walking around talking about stuff.

Well, that's a perfect lead-in into our next topic. But before we go on, we should just say, back to our Iran conversation. Like, the burden of proof should be extra high for the administration to show definitively that Iran launched this attack because, like, two weeks ago, just for fun, Trump tweeted a highly classified image of Iran's botched satellite launch

just for shits and giggles, I guess. So I think we should expect that level of evidence. Well, and also when you lie thousands of times, this is the consequence. The world doesn't believe you when you go out and say Iran did it. They're like, well, you better prove it because you lie constantly. And you're saying it's your word and the word of a Saudi crown prince who lies about murdering a Washington Post journalist. No, we got to see the evidence here. Also, Trump doesn't help himself because guess what? The U.S. intelligence community found that Iran was complying with the Iran nuclear agreement. And Trump said that they were

wrong. So he's undercut, just like he said they were wrong about the Russian interference. So he undercuts the credibility and intelligence community. And then, you know, when it suits him, he says, oh, you know, we've got this intelligence. So, you know, this is the cost of having a president like this. Yeah. Okay. So speaking of abusing intelligence. So on Friday, Congressman Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, released this stunning letter where he accused the acting director of national intelligence of withholding a whistleblower's complaint from Congress. Schiff's letter says that the intelligence community inspector general deemed the allegation from someone within the intelligence community to be credible and of an urgent concern. And the DNI is required by law to

forward that information to Congress. Schiff says that the DNI consulted with the Department of Justice about this matter, which is really weird. Crazy. Yeah. Because the intelligence community, they want to keep everything in-house and deal with it internally. They do not want law enforcement involved. In the most explicit part of the letter, Schiff says the committee believes that the misconduct involves the president or senior White House or administration officials. Schiff arrived at this conclusion because the DNI is basically telling him, look, I'm being told by my bosses, a higher power, not to release this information to Congress because it's subject to executive privilege. So there's a very small group of people who are more senior than the DNI and able to assert

executive privilege, something that usually happens in the White House. So Schiff issued a subpoena. He says that no DNI has ever refused to turn over a whistleblower complaint. Ben, this is a one because you and I have no idea what the underlying issue is, but it sounds like something that could be pretty explosive. Yeah, I'd watch this space. I've never seen anything like this in 15 to 20 years of working on national security. There is a whistleblower law that compels the intelligence community to share this information with the committee, and Adam Schiff is the chairman of that committee. And by the way, that doesn't mean you go to the Justice Department. So the other thing I take from this is Bill Barr has utterly corrupted the Justice Department. I mean, remember

when he said that he was going to be responsible, he, Bill Barr, for issues around declassification, which is not the role of the Department of Justice, should usually be the role of the DNI. So one thing wrong with this is the involvement of the Justice Department, all on the signal that that sends. Other problem, we don't have a DNI, like a lot of places, it's an acting DNI. And remember, it wasn't even the person who was in line to be the acting DNI that Trump didn't want that person because she was a straight shooter, so he went searching for somebody else who could be weak in that position. That's another problem. And yes, to say that the information implicated by the whistleblower, somehow it has to do with a higher up than the DNI or the, you know, the only

person who's higher than the DNI is the President of the United States or perhaps the National Security Advisor, the White House chief of staff, I guess, could weigh on a matter of executive privilege. That puts this squarely in the White House, right? So we know there's information there. We know there's a whistleblower complaint which suggests that this was wrongdoing. We know that there's an active effort by the Trump administration to suppress this information. Like this is something we have to get to the bottom of. And I hope that Adam Schiff is aggressive and relentless in doing so.

Yep. Like you said, watch this space. So in the wake of the G7 meetings last month, there are all these kind of funny kind of terrifying stories trickling out about Trump's conduct. So, BuzzFeed reported that Trump told this like same long, rambling story about Kim Jong-un to the G7 leaders that he told them last year, like the identical story. Everyone but Boris Johnson had heard it. And they all had to sit through some 10-minute thing, which is not all that surprising,

but certainly weird and annoying. This one's even weirder. The Wall Street Journal reported that when Trump was waiting to meet with Egyptian president L. C.C., Trump reportedly said, where's my favorite dictator? It's worth noting that a 2018 State Department report in Egypt called the government out for unlawful and arbitrary killings, forced disappearances, torture, arbitrary detention, substantial interference with the freedom of speech and assembly, and forced child labor. I guess this shouldn't surprise us. Trump has publicly said of C.C., he's a very tough man, I will tell you, but he's also a very good man. He's done a fantastic

job in Egypt, not easy. But Ben, like, this sends a hell of a message about our commitment to human rights around the world. And you also have to think that Muhammad bin Solomon and Kim Jong-un were pretty hurt by those comments. Yeah, the tears. into the beautiful letters that they write with Trump. I mean, first of all, like the repeating the story thing, it's like it's concerning when it happens in your family,

you know, like somebody's getting older and they repeat the same story. Like, I can only imagine what Angela Merkel is sitting there thinking as Trump is regaling them with the exact same story. But look, the broader point about Cici, who you rightly point out, has tens of thousands of political prisoners, torture, extrajudicial killing,

strangling of civil society. like the worst kind of autocratic, repressive dictator. For Trump to be just joking about this, at the same time that he's cozyed up to Kim Jong-un, Maham bin Salman, Vladimir Putin, the kind of rogues gallery of dictators, man, he is squandering whatever credibility the U.S. had as a promoter of democratic values around the world.

I'll tell you where they're really happy about this. It's Beijing, because it's like the U.S. used to at least stand for something. Now the U.S. looks no different from Russia or China. We look no different from any other big country that, you know, will value some crass definition of our own interests over any set of values. And the thing is he doesn't even have to do this. You know, you don't have to praise dictators. You don't have to make light of massive human rights violations. Like, he's going out of his way in some bizarre way to, you know, to, you don't have to make light of massive human rights violations.

Like, he's going out of his way in some bizarre way to essentially do a way with American support for human rights. And that's going to be a tough thing to get back for us. I mean, and now we see what a world looks like in which nobody is even trying to claim the moral high ground. It puts journalists at risk. It puts civil society at risks. It will lead to emboldened dictators. It will have very real consequences in the lives of people in places like Egypt and around the world. you know, it's easy to laugh it off as Trump being a complete buffoon with an autocratic

gene, but, you know, there's also a real pause to it. Yeah. The other thing that caught my eye over the weekend was the White House released a statement announcing the death of Hamza bin Laden, who is Osama bin Laden's son. Some people thought that Hamza might go on to lead al-Qaeda one day. I guess the White House must have gotten a more definitive confirmation that he was dead, because the news had actually leaked out back in July. But he probably just wanted to do a statement for political benefit. And Trump called it a symbolic blow. It said Hamza was a key leader.

Peter Bergen, who is a terrorism expert, we know well, who actually interviewed Bin Laden back in 1997, said there's no evidence that Hamza bin Laden played an operational role. Rita Katz and other terrorism expert told the Washington Post that Hamza had appeal across multiple terrorist groups because he talked about unity and didn't criticize ISIS. so no word on his support among white working class voters in Wisconsin. Yeah.

So we do know that bin Laden himself wanted Hamza groom for a leadership role. But Ben, I'm just curious how big a deal you think this was and how much we should worry about al-Qaeda generally versus threats from ISIS rather terrorist groups. Because by the way, Abu Bogger al-Baghdadi is alive and just released a new tape this week, I believe. Yeah, and that's what I was going to get to. I don't think this matters much at all. I mean, presumably this guy was a bad guy. and I guess you could say

someday he could have ascended the ranks because he's a bin Laden. But, I mean, this just feels like Trump wanted to put out a statement like, you know, he killed his own bin Laden, right? No. I mean, Obama took out Osama bin Laden, the operational and inspirational

leader of Al Qaeda. The people who matter here are Baghdaddy and the leader of ISIS and Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda. You know, those are the two most prominent terrorists. And I think if you're assessed the relative strength, you know, ISIS has been the more prominent threat, in part because they're

willing to kind of carry out or try to inspire these attacks that are more random, less sophisticated, but in some ways more terrorizing, as we've talked about, you know, running people over the car, shooting people up versus the kind of complex attacks that al-Qaeda seeks to plot. So Al-Qaeda, you know, there's still a threat out there, but I think right now, you know, ISIS is the more pressing one. Yeah. Switching gears a little bit. So there's a lot of foreign leaders in the United States the next couple weeks for the UN General Assembly, including Indian Prime Minister Modi. So this upcoming Sunday, President Trump is heading to Houston, Texas to do an event with Modi that is called Howdy Modi, shared dreams, bright futures. I'm not making that up.

What was the pitch meeting where that came, you know, someone came up with that? I don't know. I mean, you were in Coms, Tommy like, howie Modi? Howdy Modi. Get it? Yeah, no. Retire. So just a reminder for everybody listening that last month, the Indian government led by Prime Minister Modi, stripped Kashmir of what little independence it had for the last 70 years. Thousands and thousands of Indian soldiers were sent into Kashmir where people have been living in essentially a police state. Additionally, India announced that nearly two million people, most of whom are Muslim, will need to prove that they are citizens or risk getting deported or to one of 10 mass detention camps that the government is either building or planning to build. So all this is notable because Trump's taking this meeting. The Gates Foundation is giving Modi its goalkeepers global goals award for providing 500 million people in India with safer sanitation, which admittedly, that's a huge deal. Sanitation problems do lead to a lot of deaths in India.

But I also, you know, I'm surprised that the response to the Indian government annexing this territory, stripping rights away from millions of people building these detention camps has led to almost no recriminations or response from the international community that I've seen. No, and I've barely seen anything from Trump, the White House. I mean, the State Department put out kind of diplo-speak statements, but, you know, not a word from Trump on this. And yeah, the timing couldn't be worse. Like right after he does this dark move in Kashmir, you're going to validate him with this kind of weird howdy event in Houston, which, you know, I guess for Trump, you know, maybe he likes Modi more now. I mean, honestly, like, the way to get

in Trump's favor is to look like a strong man and look like a nationalist. It seems like, you know, can any of us doubt that privately Trump is probably not saying to people, wow, that looked like a bold move in Kashmir, you know? I mean, it's kind of chilling to think about, but that's clearly the mentality that Trump has, right? And, you know, who knows what? he's thinking. And Modi does these big events sometimes with the diaspora when he comes to the U.S. or Canada. Trump may be also thinking about like certain Indian Americans in his reelection who might like Modi. I don't know. Who knows what Trump's mentality is here. What's clear is what's not part of his mentality is any kind of support for human rights. When we were in office, to be clear,

we also did kind of court Modi. We saw Modi as someone who had kind of two sides to him. One is the Hindu nationalist with troubling authoritarian tendencies. And the other is this man who kind of aspired to be a reformer and a player in the world stage and do things like provide sanitation to hundreds of millions of people. And, you know, our effort was to try to encourage him to do things on climate and development that were beneficial to Indians, but President Obama would always lace this

with an appeal for the need for diversity or tolerance. When we sought to do something with Modi when he came to the United States with the first time, we took him to the Martin Luther King Memorial, you know, to try to make a point about the need to embrace the tradition of nonviolent change and social justice that King, Martin Luther King, and Gandhi represented.

Trump, I don't think that would be part of his message when he sits down with Modi. It probably won't be at the Howdy event. No, I'm glad you won't be in the Audi event. No, I'm glad you brought up climate change because Modi's visit and the UN General Assembly has got me thinking about it. Obviously, climate change is a global problem by definition. And what we do in the U.S. will have a big impact, but we will need to bring along countries like China and India if we actually want to solve the problem and prevent warming from a level that will be unsustainable.

President Obama was able to convince Prime Minister Modi to join the Paris Climate Accords. I was hoping you could help people understand how that happened, what lessons you guys learned that might give us all hope that we actually can find an international solution to this problem? Because sometimes you hear these fatalistic arguments that, well, you know what the U.S. does, doesn't really matter because China and India are going to burn a bunch of coal and we're screwed anyway. And I just, I think recent history shows that's not the case and we need to think a little bigger. Yeah, so India was the holdout, right? And so it's absolutely the case that you need China and India in the deal and you need countries like Brazil in the deal as well. And, you know, what Obama's strategy was was first get the Chinese in. And so he worked over the course of a year to get Xi Jinping to agree to ambitious targets on climate change that we announced together knowing that that would then put pressure on India so that by the time we got to Paris for the final negotiations, we could say to Modi, look, everybody else is in on this deal, you know?

The Chinese are in it, the Europeans, the Brazilians, the whole world. You don't want to be the outlier. You have to be more ambitious in your climate target, right? Little phoma. And frankly, Modi had the politics back home were don't do this. The politics back home were resist, you know, the West and trying to force you into doing this. And I remember Modi's sitting in Paris, I was in the meeting with Obama and saying, and unless I could sympathize, look, I've got 300 million people without electricity.

and you're asking me to skip the phase of development that you got to do, which is burning coal and dirty forms of energy in order to get people electricity. Why is it fair that the U.S. and other rich countries were able to do that? And now you're asking us to avoid it. And what Obama said was essentially two things. You know, first on a personal appeal, I remember it was one of the more interesting interjections I saw Obama make. He said, look, I'm African-American.

I know what it's like to be in a system that was unfair and unfair. fairly designed. But that doesn't mean I can just choose to completely opt out of the system that I'm a part of. And it was this kind of really interesting way of establishing a personal connection with a foreign leader. And I do think that that personal relationship that Obama invested some time in with Modi did get him into Paris. And when people say, well, why did you spend time with Modi when you knew some of his troubling background? It was because of this. It was because of how important climate change is and because we wanted him in. But the second part, which relates to your question about optimism is we also got together with Bill Gates and a bunch of other people to put together

a solar power initiative. So we could show Modi, look, we understand that you need to bring energy and electricity to 300 million people who don't have it. But here's a better way to do it. Do it with solar. Do it with wind. Do it with the technologies of the future. We will get some people together to provide some seed funding. If the markets see you moving in this direction, there'll be new technologies and new investments that could allow you to move faster. And the whole idea of Paris is if governments are moving in a very aggressive way together to shift the global economy from dirty to clean energy, that the market will follow, the philanthropy will follow, the technology will develop. That's why it's so important that everybody's moving together

and that there's not backsliding and there's not hedging, right? And the risk of Trump pulling back on American leadership is, well, that's the blank check for Modi to say, well, maybe I will drag my feet or for Bolsonaro to say maybe I will log the Amazon. And so the imperative of here, we don't have time, we're running out of time, is to restore that spirit we had in Paris where everybody wasn't on the deal, whether they're in government or whether they're external philanthropists, investors, technologists, whomever. We need everybody at the table to get this done. Well, I hope leaders will summon some of that creativity and optimism as they heads in New York for the UN Climate Summit on September 23rd because we don't have a lot of time, Ben.

Okay, let's close with some good news and some sad news. So first, the good news. If you haven't seen it, Liz Cheney and Rand Paul have been engaged in a vicious Twitter war. Cheney called Paul a big loser. She said he would surrender to terrorists. Paul Sin, by the way, was wanting to end the war in Afghanistan. Rand Paul tweeted that, quote, few people have been as wrong on foreign policy over the last few years as the neocons and Liz Cheney. He dropped the vicious hashtag warmonger Cheney's pretty good.

And he said, Liz was just mad because Trump. quote, shredded her dad's foreign policy. Now, we should stipulate that Rand Paul is right here, but he's also fucking insufferable. So I think maybe we just sit back and enjoy this one. You know, it's something delicious about watching these people just set each other on fire. It does show you the complete kind of, it's a weird social experiment in seeing all of the different contradictions in the Republican Party's foreign policy, like on display. It may be what we're in for if Trump loses is these people. just all setting themselves on fire, you know, because you've got all the unconstructed Iraq war,

neocan, like bomb every country, people like Liz Cheney and Lindsay Graham, and then you've got this kind of isolationist libertarian and Rand Paul, and then you've got all these America firsters, you know, neo-fascist types. It's totally incoherent, right? And so if you remove Trump from the equation, you know, a president who is creating the party's from policy just by what he does. This is a pretty good window into the kind of complete lack of coherence in that party. And it's also just kind of fun to watch those people type. That's the best. Look, if my name was Cheney, I wouldn't leave the house, let alone a pine on foreign policy. No, and why she's somehow turned to, right? She's on Sunday shows, like another strike against the Sunday, you know,

somebody named Cheney, like, is the go-to here. How are these people, like, able to, like, put, I watch Condi Rice in every show around 9-11. And yes, while we commemorate 9-11, like no mention of the fact that she was a national security advisor during the biggest catastrophic mistake in the history of American farm policy, the war in Iraq, right? Yep.

I mean, with Brandon Paul, it's a fight, but it's not like when that guy tackled them in his yard. So, I mean, no, at least the guy wants to end wars. Like, God forbid, we consider that. Finally, some sad news. Ben, the Storm Area 51 event was canceled. You and I talked about this a while back. Someone hit the gravity bong a little too hard and decided that everyone needed the storm area 51 on September 20th to find those damn UFOs.

A couple million people RSVP to the event, but then they canceled it because the organizers were worried it would turn into a literal fire fest since they had no infrastructure, food, water, toilets, whatever. So I guess I just have to say, I'm disappointed. You either want to know what's out there or you don't. Ben, is this literal cancel culture at its worst? It's just, I was so looking forward to this. And why these people couldn't just buy like 100,000 bottles of water and 100,000 edibles and just send people walking very slowly in the direction to very 51 is a gigantic disappointment to me.

It would have actually been like the best expression of the insane moment they were in the United States, the blend of like weird conspiracy theory, a blockbuster action movie, bizarre reality television and doesn't anybody want to know about the fucking aliens? I do. I regret every single day that when I was in government, I didn't get to the bottom of this. I thought these people were going to do it for me and, you know, they just had too much quit in them. Gen Z, man, I don't know. You know? You need food and water now? Okay. Yeah, come on, man. I mean, yeah, I mean, just take an edible, take a walk. Go see what's there. Okay, with that advice, we're going to go to my interview with Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy.

I am thrilled to be joined by Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy. Senator Murphy serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and he has been a key leader in the fight to end American involvement in this horrific civil war in Yemen. Senator, thank you so much for joining the show. Great to be with you. Thanks for having me. So there have been a lot of armchair Iran experts and some professionals that I talk to who are very nervous about the risk of war after this. attack on Saudi's oil infrastructure and maybe even more nervous than they were after the Iranians shot down our drone. You posted this great Twitter thread recently where you said,

we shouldn't even consider going to war with Iran over this incident in Saudi Arabia. Do you still feel that way as the evidence seems to grow that the Iranians might have been involved? And if yes, can you explain why you don't believe we should respond militarily? What's so dangerous is that this administration acts as if we have a national security treaty with Saudi Arabia. We are not the guarantors of Saudi Arabia's security, nor are we the guarantors of security regionally in the Middle East. And for good reason, we have come to understand over the years that U.S. military involvement in the region, even sometimes for a good cause, ends up prolonging wars, ends up prolonging the misery. And so in this case, it would be absolutely disastrous for the United States to telegraph to the world that we are the protectors of the Saudi oil industry. A U.S. strike on Iran might make us feel good because we responded in a tough, strong way to this Iranian strike on Saudi Arabia.

But it would end up in a regional conflict that we couldn't manage to a conclusion. just wait to see what Donald Trump looks like as a wartime president. So I just think that this question is important as to whether Iran was involved or how involved they were. But this idea that it requires a U.S. response when the attack was not on the United States, was on Saudi Arabia. By the way, a deeply imperfect ally of the United States, that precedent threatens to drag us into all sorts of conflicts in the region. that would end up getting our friends in just as much trouble as it would us. Yeah. So, okay, if we lived in an ideal world, which we do not, what do you think we should do?

What would a normal administration do in response to an attack like this? Well, it's like impossible, right? Because a normal administration wouldn't have put us in this position. Yeah. In the first place, a normal Republican administration would have listened to their military advisors who said, hey, I know you don't like the Iran nuclear agreement, but it's really not worth it. getting out of it, you're going to sit in motion a series of escalatory behaviors that might get us into war, so stick it out, try to make sure the Iranians comply. This wasn't a normal

administration, so we backed out of the agreement, even though nobody was with us. But here we are. So what do you do? If a normal administration walked into the White House today, how would they behave? I think what you do is de-escalate, not escalate. You would actually telegraph to the Iranians that we want a discussion about how to get out of this, about how perhaps to, you know, least walk back into parts of the Iranian nuclear agreement. They're sending us a message over and over again. If you cut off our supply to the international oil market, which is what we're doing with sanctions, then we're going to cut off your supply to the international oil market. And the way that we do that is by striking tankers and Saudi infrastructure. So de-escalation is

what we should be doing here. And that begins with talks, with discussions. That seems implausible today with the Trump administration. But I think that's what a normal administration who walked into the middle of this crisis would do. Yeah. So, okay, we have a nearly 20-year history of wars becoming more complicated than we'd hoped and them dragging out. We have the very recent example of the war in Iraq, which was one of the most disastrous foreign policy decisions in the history of this country. We have a president of the United States, who is a wartime president. Unfortunately, that war is with people who are mean to him on CNN on any given day. So, like, why isn't every Democrat saying,

what you're saying. Why aren't people saying it's fucking crazy to even consider going to war with Iran or supporting this president in any kind of military context? So, listen, I think in general, the Democratic Party needs to dramatically step up its game when it comes to national security. It's scary stuff to try to opine on nuanced questions of foreign policy when the enemy is hard to define and when we don't have neat peace treaties that wrap up hostilities. And so you've seen over the last, really 10 years,

this retreat by Democrats to domestic policy. Now, not that there aren't plenty of important things to talk about when it comes to repairing our own country, but we really have ceded a lot of this ground on national security policy to Republicans and for a long time to neo-conservatives. And so we have to, as a party,

be in the game and remind folks about this one clear lesson that we learned over the last 20 years, which is that when the United States tries to solve, political problems in the Middle East with the blunt force of American military power, we screw things up, we make it worse, we end up in groups like ISIS beheading Americans. And so I guess I don't have an answer for why Democrats aren't screaming from the rooftops about it. And I frankly think it is an enormous gift to Donald Trump.

He's giving us the potential to essentially eliminate what is traditionally this big national security advantage in elections for Republicans. We can eliminate that if we actually go out there. and talk about, A, how dangerous his foreign policy is, how he's putting us on the press of his of war, and then what we would do differently. I wish more of my Democratic friends were talking about that. Yeah, me too. Sorry for channeling my interbedo for a minute, but I'm deeply frustrated. Do you think Trump should meet with the Iranian president, President Rouhani at the UN General Assembly? There's been some talk of this may be happening. Apparently, it's why John Bolton got frog marched out of the Oval Office, or out of the White House, rather.

The Iranian seemed to have shut it down today, but I feel like hope springs a turn. there. Well, but, you know, why wouldn't the Iranians shut it down when you literally are being told two different things? One side of the administration is saying, hey, we'll meet with no preconditions. And then Trump is saying, no, by that, we meant that we will not meet with no preconditions. If I'm the Iranians, you know, why would I walk into a meeting in which, you know, I have no idea what we're talking about? So, listen, I think this is a tricky one, Tommy, because, you know, I'm never against, you know, the United States sitting down and talking. At the same time, you know, what we saw with the North Koreans is the president view negotiations as simply a photo op. He didn't allow diplomacy to actually work.

All he wanted were the cameras to snap. And in the end, you know, we were probably worse off at the end of that than we were going in. So, you know, even, you know, your boss, President Obama never did a side-by-side with Rohani because he saw that there was downside. to that photo op. And he knew that he could actually get some really important stuff done through others, through diplomats and people who worked for him. So I guess I don't want to recommend against talks. I just think there's a much better way to do it than just sticking Donald Trump and Rahani in a room

and hoping that things turn out better rather than worse on the other side of it. There's a chance that it could be worse at the end of that meeting if he doesn't let his experts, his policy people do some work ahead of time. Yeah, that's fair. He doesn't know what hell he's talking about. He doesn't. So stepping back a little bit, it is, look, it's important that we're talking about what happened in Saudi Arabia over the weekend. Our relationship with Iran is fraught and we'll always talk about it.

But it is frustrating that this conversation is drowning out the broader humanitarian catastrophe that is happening in Yemen right now with U.S. support. Can you explain to our listeners what is happening in Yemen right now and what you've been trying to do about it? Well, and of course, it is, thanks for focusing on this because it is relevant to the, crisis that we're engaged in right now, part of what is sort of stirring up the Saudi Iranian rivalry in the region is the war in Yemen, where the Iranians are supporting the Houthi rebels and the Saudis are regularly bombing them out of existence. So what's going on in Yemen today is a massive civil war, creating the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe. Hundreds of thousands of people have died. Over 100,000 kids under the age of five have died of starvation and disease,

the world's worst ever outbreak of cholera. Right? I mean, this is like epic scale, cataclysmic stuff. And it's being caused by a war that the United States is participating in. United States is helping the Saudis drop bombs often on school buses and churches. The Houthis are doing lots of bad shit too. But it is, you know, it is both sides that are responsible for it. Unfortunately, the United States is one of the participants.

So here's what makes it worse. It used to be that the Saudis and the Emirates would put in a bunch of, bunch of humanitarian money to try to make sure that people got fed and immunized. Now they're refusing to even put in the humanitarian dollars. So they're bombing the place and then also not contributing money to the UN to try to fix it in the interim. What we should be spending our time doing right now instead of ramping things up with Iran is trying to lead from an American standpoint to wind down the war in Yemen. Because by the way, al-Qaeda and ISIS are getting stronger and stronger there as the conflict continues. So it's the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe. The U.S. is causing

it in part, and it is part of the reason why we're in the situation today with things getting scaled up with Iran. Yeah. So you've been part of the group leading this bipartisan effort to end U.S. support for the civil war in Yemen. Similarly, I believe Congressman Rokana has drafted legislation saying that Trump doesn't have the authorization to go to war in Iran, and he's trying to attach that to the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act. Now, Republicans use the NDA to hold Obama hostage on all kinds of issues back in the day, like trying to end Gitmo. They basically use that bill to prevent Guantanamo from being closed. Is there any hope that Democrats might be able to use the NDAA to end our support for the Warren Yemen or prevent a military

response in Iran? So, as you know, we've actually got a couple bills to the president's desk to end our commitment to the war in Yemen. We actually passed these resolutions that required the president to pull us out. He vetoed them and we didn't have enough to override the vetoes. And so I absolutely think we should be using other legislative vehicles to try to end the war in Yemen. I think it's that big a national security nightmare for us. But it's kind of beyond me why this, you know, this legislation to say we shouldn't go to war in Iran without a congressional vote is controversial. I mean, I don't understand why Republicans all of a sudden decided that the president could march into war with a foreign power without a vote from the legislative branch. They didn't feel that that was the case when Obama was president.

They wanted all sorts of oversight over when President Obama went to war. So I think this is a very strange precedent for Republicans to say, hey, we're not going to vote for something that just simply says, before you start bombing Iran, like come and talk to us first. Yeah, for all their attacks on Obama about the red line, many of which are well-deserved. They didn't even want to vote on an authorization to go to war in Syria. Now, they seem to be accepting this argument that you hear from Pompeo and other sometimes that the authorization for the use of military force passed back in 2001 to deal with the 9-11 attacks, somehow authorized war in Iran. That seems insane to me.

And if that's the case, then you are truly involved in a never-ending war. Because remember, the 2001 AOMF is about going after those that harbored Al-Qaeda. Now, it has been sort of metamorphosized to mean anybody that affiliates itself with Al-Qaeda or anybody that Al-Qaeda turns into. Well, if that's ISIS, if that's Boko-Ram, if that's anybody that is ever temporarily housed members of Al-Qaeda, then you essentially have blanket permission from Congress for the executive branch to go to war in an unlimited fashion in almost every dangerous country that exists. And how on earth is that conservative, right, to grant that kind of discretion to the executive branch for all these robings that howled over the ways that President Obama exercised executive discretion. This would be the biggest exercise of executive discretion in the history of the world if the 2001 AOMF would.

interpreted in a way to allow the president to bomb a sovereign country, in this case, Iran. Yeah. Last question for you. So I think we're all quite happy that Trump's neocon, walrus, national security advisor, John Bolton was just frog marched out of the White House. But does it worry you that we are having this conversation about possibly going to war with Iran with no national security advisor, an acting director of national intelligence, an acting Homeland Security secretary, a secretary defense that no one has ever heard of. I mean, is Mike Pompeo going to drop these bombs himself? How is this working? Remember, like, Mike Pompeo is not a seasoned diplomat. I mean, we all sort of rely on Mike Pompeo to be the wise man in the room. I like Mike as a person. He's smart,

but he has no experience in international diplomacy, as neither does the new secretary of defense, as you mentioned. So I think the short answer is, it's just good that John Bolton is not in the room right now, period stop. You know, when you have a attack of this scale that sort of itches people for war with Iran, you just don't want John Bolden anywhere near that conversation. How sad must he be? Yeah, I mean, so we're better off with no national security advisors than that guy. But I will say, and I've tried to make this point on social media, and it is not worked,

I have tried to suggest that this constant turnover of bad people in the administration is a problem in and of itself because there's the controversial stuff that the National Security Advisor works on like Iran. But then there's, as you know, just a lot of basic blocking and tackling that there's not a lot of disagreement between Republicans and Democrats on. And when you cycle through people this quickly, even if they're bad people on stuff that really matters, it just makes it impossible for the rest of the world to work with us. on stuff that's not controversial, like, for instance, trying to solve, you know, problems in the Balkans between Kosovo and Serbia. And so, you know, we are becoming totally irrelevant in the world today, not just because people think our president is bananas, but also because they have no idea who to talk to on a daily basis. And the people they do tend to talk to don't know what the hell they're talking about. That's a problem as well. Yeah. I lied about the last question.

Last last question. So you were just in Kosovo, Ukraine, Germany, Serbia. I believe you weren't allowed into Russia because what you're too mean to Putin? Why wouldn't they let you? And how was the rest of the trip? Yeah, I mean, I think the Russians just sort of like messing with delegations that want to come to the country. So, you know, they did this in the past where they'd, you know, give visas for one person but not others. And it is a way to try to divide Congress from itself. That's what they did here.

They gave a visa to Mike Lee and they wouldn't give one to me and Senator Johnson. I don't think too much of it. I'm a critic of these guys. but, you know, if you're not letting me in, somebody who wanted to actually, you know, have a dialogue with the Russians, then I'm not sure, you know, who you're letting in. The rest of the trip was interesting.

Probably most interesting was the stop in Ukraine. I was there, you know, at the moment when Trump announced he was not going to move forward on aid for the country. And, you know, the Ukrainians are just super confused right now because they got Rudy Giuliani showing up, telling them that they need to start investigating the Biden family. And then they have these official notices, from the Trump administration telling them out of nowhere that your money is being suspended.

And, you know, well, you know, I don't think anybody's making the explicit connection between the two. How can you not, if you were the new president of Ukraine, think to yourself, huh, maybe if I do what the president wants me to do with the Bidens, I'll get my money. And it's just that's a, that's a massive scandal in and of itself that, of course, has gotten very little attention. And to one of our most important allies, the Ukrainians, it's throwing them into a little bit of crisis mode. Yeah. Well, Senator, sincerely thank you for like just speaking honestly about what a crazy idea

of war with Iran would be and for all your work to try to end what's happening in Yemen because it is just, it's truly horrific. Two last things. If folks should check out your Twitter feed because you actually do really helpful things, like explain who are the Houthis, something we did on this show earlier in the recording, but it's like just basic context. And also, if people want to help fight for some of these pieces of legislation and they want members of Congress to attach a bill to end the war in Yemen or stop a war with Iran to the NDAA, what can they do? How can they help you out? So I think, you know, this is just not a topic that is incoming in the Senate offices like domestic priorities are.

And so, you know, making sure that you're paying attention to my Twitter feed and other progressive foreign policy thinkers. You mentioned Ro Khanna. Bernie is obviously very forward-thinking on much of this, others in the House as well. Follow a few of us on social media. That will give you quick updates when we're trying to attach an amendment to a piece of legislation and then throw in a quick email to your member of Congress. There are also great advocacy organizations that are working on these issues. Move on, has stepped up its efforts on foreign policy, when without war, the Friends Committee,

There are a lot of organizations that are pushing Congress on a progressive foreign policy agenda on this idea of standing up to Trump more regularly on his bad shit crazy ideas like going to war with Iran. You can join those organizations as well. Amen. Senator, thank you again. I really appreciate your time. Thanks, Tommy. Thanks, everybody for listening to POTSave the World. Ben, you got any good UN meetings on the docket here?

Are you going to like a Friends of Yemen event or like some of the things we used to do? No, I am looking forward to, though. I'm going to be in Singapore, but then back in New York for moreungafon and seeing, among other people, the woman who helped negotiate the Paris Climate Accord, Christiana Figuera. So hopefully she'll have some optimism for me. And I do love Chris Murphy. If you're looking for a Democrat in Congress to listen to on these foreign policy issues, follow that guy on Twitter, follow what he has to say, follow what he writes,

because I think he's helping to define where we need to go as a party. You know, it's funny, I made the identical plug that you did, and we didn't even coordinate it. He really is great. All right, buddy. Travel safe and see you soon. See you. Potsy of the World is a product of crooked media. The senior producer is Michael Martinez.

Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Chris Basil. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Malconian, and Milo Kim, who film and share these interviews on video each week.