Pod Save the World - Trump’s torched credibility on Iran

Episode Date: June 19, 2019

First, Tommy and Ben talk about the rapidly escalating tensions with Iran, some good news for the protestors in Hong Kong, Mohamed Morsi's death in Egypt, a new Secretary of Defense, a trade war update, why Facebook is still being used for incitement, a 2020 update about Mayor Pete and Tulsi Gabbard, and whether Snapchat filters are the future of government press conferences. Then Avril Haines joins to discuss what it was like going from NSC lawyer to Deputy CIA Director and the legal basis (or lack thereof) for war with Iran.

Welcome back to Potsave the world. This is Tommy Vitor. Thank you guys for tuning in. As always, Ben and I just wrapped a packed show about a whole bunch of news that's happening in the world. There are rapidly escalating tensions with Iran that we are covering closely. There's some good news after the massive protests in Hong Kong, some sad and weird updates out of Egypt, a major leadership change at the Department of Defense, quick trade war update, why Facebook is still being used in some places for incitement. Then we did a quick 2020 update talking about some policies and comments made by Mayor Pete and Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. And then finally, why Snapchat filters may be the future of government press conferences. Our guest today is a real Haynes. She's our former colleague. She joined to

talk about what it's like transitioning from being a lawyer on the National Security Council to going to be deputy director of the CIA. And then she helped us understand the legal case or lack thereof for a war with Iran. So a lot going on in the world today. But before we get to the news, two quick things. One, please subscribe to this land. It's a fantastic show. The third episode is out.

It gets better and better and better. Two, there's new Potte de the World merch live on store.crucid.com. We got t-shirts, tank tops for some reason, mugs, a pop socket, all the things you know and you need and you love. Even a Pote of the World Stress Ball for when the show gets a little overwhelming. So check it out. Store.crucid.com. All right, let's start the show.

All right, Ben, you might have noticed that things are getting a little tense with Iran. So we'll do a quick recap here. Two commercial ships were attacked last week in the Gulf of Oman. The Trump administration says that the Iranians are responsible. And the Pentagon release video footage of what appears to be an Iranian fastboat removing an unexploded mine from one of the vessels. The Germans, the Japanese, the EU, they want to see more evidence before they're willing. to firmly point the finger at Iran. But that has not stopped Mike Pompeo and John Bolton from

discussing potential military responses and the Pentagon announced that another 1,000 U.S. troops will go to the Gulf. Now, Trump seems to be in a different place. He described the attacks as very minor to Time Magazine and stress that the Gulf of Oman is no longer that important to us since we get our oil elsewhere. I'm sure that will make our allies in the region feel good. So per usual, Ben, these clowns are all over the map. What did you make of the video evidence? And what do you think should happen next? Well, you know, unfortunately, we are where you and I are worried we're going to be, right? Which is there have been these provocations after provocations emanating from us.

And then perhaps you have Iran doing something stupid in response. And we're on this escalation cycle that we've been worried about. You know, there are a couple points here. You know, look, did Iran probably have some responsibility for this? I assume so. But it matters that this administration has no credibility. I mean, it matters that they lied about Iran not being in compliance with the nuclear deal when they pulled out. It matters that they lie about everything.

And so I think it is fair and proper that other countries would say, look, we can't just trust Mike Pompeo with a grainy video to verify what happened in this event. You guys have to present this evidence. You have to come to the U.N. frankly, that's what any normal administration would do. So I think it is fair to take the time to get to the bottom of this. But then the second piece, Tommy, is like, we're debating this as if it's inevitable that we would like go to war over these two tankers getting set on fire. Right. I just, I don't think that's where most Americans are that if some crazy Iranian proxy or some cowboy Iranians or even the Iranian government decided to set a couple tankers on fire, that it's inevitable that we would go to war with them. Now, the problem is both Trump and now Iran are on this escalation cycle.

And the question is, how are they going to get off of it? And that's what worries me. Totally, man. And it's not just the hawks in the White House that are a problem. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas suggested sinking Iranian ships in response, which that seems like an odd precedent, as you just noted, that you would sink a foreign country's Navy because they attacked another country's commercial vessel. That feels like a bank shot.

Then there's New York Times columnist Brett Stevens, our old friend Brett. Ben, I want to read you two headlines from recent Brett Stevens columns. March 29th, 2019, the foreign policy. fiasco that wasn't withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal as paid dividends. Fast forward a couple months, June 14th, 2019, the Pirates of Tehran. If Iran won't change its behavior, we should sink its Navy. Thank God we have the liberal New York Times editorial board with these sensible anti-war Iran policies, right? It's so enraging, right? Because first of all, this is so predictable, right? So Trump pulls out of the Iran nuclear deal, says that that's somehow going to fix things. And in fact,

everything's gotten worse because not only do you have Iran now engaged potentially in this provocation, but you have them announcing they're going to restart accumulating a stockpile of nuclear materials. So Trump has made the nuclear threat worse and he's made the risk of war worse. And this was eminently predictable. This is what all of us said was going to happen when he pulled out of the nuclear deal. And so, you know, masterminds like General Brett Stevens are on the one hand trumpeting a reality that doesn't exist, that somehow pulling out of the nuclear deal has accomplished something when it has accomplished nothing. and then once inevitably that leads to escalation,

now he's ready to sink the Iranian Navy. The second thing I'd say is, it's amazing how these people talk about this. Put aside the pirates of Tehran, like the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel here, Part 6 or whatever it is, if you sink a navy, lots of people will die. It will start a war. Iran will kill people in response,

and then we'll kill more people. There's something kind of grotesque about the fact that we talk about war like this, like at some video game after the experience of Afghanistan and Iraq and Libya and everything, the idea that we're just kind of casually saying, whether you're Tom Cotton or Brett Stevens or whoever, Lindsey Graham, that we're going to sink navies as if that doesn't involve significant acts of violence here. Why the New York Times thinks this is a perspective that is essential for this debate is beyond mystifying to me, particularly when they've been so consistently wrong and so consistently are reflexive and just saying,

we have to escalate with the Iranians, which will lead to a war. I don't know why. When we said it was either a nuclear deal or the risk of war, everybody said we were engaged in character assassination. No, we really believe that. And now you see that's exactly the case. They're going to restart the nuclear program. What are we going to do about it?

Either you have a diplomatic agreement that deals with the problem, which we had, or you're exactly where we are right now, which is things are escalating. Yeah, grotesque is exactly the right word. There's some more important issues around the question of a military response. specifically whether it's authorized by the 2001 AUMF or not. And then sort of how you would lay out the intel case to the international community. We are, as I mentioned at the top, very lucky to have Avriel Haynes coming up on the show later, who is an NSC lawyer and deputy director of the NSC.

So we'll dig into that stuff with her. But the other big news is that Iran is increasing uranium enrichment activity. So they said that they're a week or so away from going above the 300-kilogram uranium enrichment limit set by the Iran nuclear deal. They announced that they may also begin enriching uranium up to 20% purity unless the Europeans step in and give them some sanctions relief. So they really have a gun to the head of the Europeans here. I mean, the short version of why those things are bad is they reduce the time it would take for Iran to create a nuclear weapon.

In the near term, it seems like a pretty obvious attempt to divide the international community to peel off the Europeans from the U.S. I mean, Ben, here's what you think of this play from Iran. And doesn't it seem like the kind of thing that might work better? better if you didn't also attack a commercial vessel. They're a little incoherent as well there. Of course they are. But again, what's happened, I think, is Iran has politics, just like America has politics. And this is not to absolve them at all. It's just to say this was predictable. So the United States leaves the nuclear deal, reimposes sanctions, even though Iran is complying, designates

the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, engages in all this belligerent rhetoric, sends an aircraft carrier to the region. And what's happening inside of Iran is all the hardliners are saying, see, we told you, you never should have made a deal with the United States. We're being embarrassed. We're not getting the sanctions relief. We deserve because we're complying with the deal. So we have to do something in response. And what's interesting is Iran is trying to calibrate, well, what can we do to push back and show that we'll take some action without crossing certain limits, right? So they're not saying, we're kicking all the inspectors out, we're totally out of this nuclear deal, we're reinstalling all the centrifuges. You know, they're testing.

Can we escalate a little to impose a cost on the West, essentially, for not falling through on this deal? Again, the danger here is, how do you control this escalation? We take a bunch of steps. The Iranians take a bunch of steps. We take some more steps in response. How do we get off of this ramp towards a war? And that's what's really concerning to me, because the people we're counting on doing that are the Trump administration and the Iranian government. And those are not the kind of people that are going to necessarily be best at diffusing

this bomb. And so it puts a lot of responsibility on Europe to try to figure out some way to muddle through this. We're helped by the fact that Trump seems to not want to actually fight the war. The problem is that John Bolton and all the Mike Pompeo and the people under him keep driving the bus in one direction, and that's the direction of escalation. Yep. And it's hard not to just again note the total incoherence of their non-proliferation policies, because when Trump was doing his 30-hour, whatever it was with George Stephanopoulos over the weekend, George asked him about North Korea expanding its arsenal, and Trump responded, I don't know, I hope not. He promised me he wouldn't. So that seems like a really rock-ribbed policy we have over in North Korea.

Yeah, well, let's put a fine point on the failure here, which is Trump said pulling out of Iran deal would make things better. It's made it worse. Iran is going to start accumulating stockpile again, potentially. He said he was going to solve the North Korea issue. they're still building nuclear weapons, and he's pretending like they're not. Both situations are getting worse, and the Iran one is an entirely manufactured crisis, and the North Korean one, he seems kind of willfully determined to not address it. So, you know, he's failing on two of the most prominent issues that he said he was going to do better than Obama. Yeah, like existential, critical global issues.

All right, let's go to some good news. Last week, we talked about the massive protests in Hong Kong over the proposed legislation that would allow extradition from Hong Kong to mainland China. The protests worked. Hong Kong's chief executive apologized and they suspended debate on the bill. That falls well short of fully withdrawing the proposal, so we probably should not expect these protests to stop. But just to give you a sense of the scale of the protests,

organizers estimate that 2 million people attended the protests out of 7.4 million residents in the territory. So imagine a U.S.-based protest with like 100,000. 150, 160 million people on the streets, and that's your equivalent. Ben, what do you think the takeaway is from what we've seen over the last couple of weeks in Hong Kong? I think that the takeaway is that the authoritarian trend we see in the world is not inevitable, you know, that what all these people want you to think, whether it's Xi Jinping or Vladimir

Putin or Donald Trump or, you know, whoever, that all these authoritarian we've talked about, that they're inevitably moving things in a certain direction. And what the people of Hong Kong have showed us is it doesn't have to be that way. People can mobilize and say, no, this is not what we want. We don't want to lose our civil liberties. We want to maintain our ability to speak our minds. And we can mobilize. And that should really offer people hope.

And it should signal once again that while right now in the world, power is concentrated in the hands of a lot of people who want to keep a boot on the throat of citizens. There are more people who don't want that than people who do. And if we can have the type of leadership and the type of organization that gets people in the streets and in certain democracies, gets people to the polls, you know, we can overcome this. And so to me, it's a very hopeful story that even in a place where it seemed like the trends are moving inexorably in a certain direction, that people had the courage to push back and to push back in massive numbers. And frankly, we should take hope from that in the United States, as we're dealing with our own version of creeping. authoritarianism. Yeah, man. Protests work, truly inspiring stuff. The photos and images in marches we saw over the weekend. So credit to them, let's hope that this continues forward and there's a happy outcome. Let's go to Egypt for a minute where their protests did not have a great long-term

outcome, a very weird story. So the former Egyptian president, Muhammad Morsey, collapsed and died while on trial for espionage in Cairo. So Morsey was Egypt's first democratically elected president. He was the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood until he was ousted in a military coup by the current president, Abtl Fattel-Ci. So Morsi died exactly seven years after his election. This feels like a really big deal. I mean, Morsi's family and activists have been warning for a while that he was being denied food and medicine, kept in solitary confinement, like really awful conditions. He didn't see his family.

They kept warning that he was at risk of dying. And then he dropped dead in a courtroom. I mean, I feel like this tells you everything you need to know. about the current regime in Egypt? It does. And, you know, it's interesting, got me thinking a lot, which is, Muhammad Mercy was no saint here, but he was the one and only truly democratically elected president of Egypt.

And, you know, he was what came out of the protests that removed Mubarak and the elections that followed. And ever since then, there's been this determined pushback. within Egypt to crush what the Arab Spring represented, to put the military back into power, to eliminate any opposition across the Middle East. You've seen this kind of counter-revolution from authoritarian. And all these people we've talked about, Putin-Ehrdogan, you know, 2011, 2012 was kind of a turning point because I think a lot of authoritarian saw the direction of the Arab Spring and of protest and social media and said, we need to push back. We need to

use these technologies to our benefit. We're not going to broker any dissent. and we're going to crush the opposition. And again, Muhammad Mercy did things wrong. He governed in undemocratic ways. He was trying to change the Constitution. I don't think, though, I really don't think he was some firebrand. You know, they wanted to paint him as no different from a terrorist. And we've talked about this before. He wasn't some violent, radical. He was a dedicated member of the Muslim Brotherhood. But it matters that you have essentially a government that removed him from power through undemocratic means, that crushed the opposition in the streets, that detained thousands of people, killed thousands of people, and that clearly let him languish in a

prison cell in ways that led directly to his death. To me, it's representative of this trend that has been essentially the counter-revolution to the Arab Spring, where Egypt has been the epicenter of that. And we should all feel some regret and shame about that, that this happened, that this happened in a country, Egypt, that is the single largest recipient of American foreign assistance. Again, you don't have to like Muhammad Mercy or agree with his politics or like the Muslim Brotherhood, but you can't ignore the reality that the guy who was elected president just died probably from neglect in solitary confinement in a prison cell. It's kind of a distillation of what we've seen with the killing of Jamal Khashoggi from Mohammed Salman, what we've seen in the crushing of the Syrian

opposition, what we've seen in lots of different places. And, you know, it's interesting that Hong Kong thing is happening at the same time and that Sudan, which you've talked about a lot, is happening in Algeria. These things, I don't think, are sorted out. The story's not over. And, you know, I have to think that the people who look like they're on top now, they're not inevitably going to stay there. Yeah, pretty tragic. All right, let's talk about some Trump cabinet news in the foreign policy world. So acting secretary, defense slash future Boeing lobbyist Patrick Shanahan is out at the Department of Defense. Trump is going to name a guy named Mark Esper, who is currently the Secretary of the Army,

and he's a former Raytheon lobbyist as the new acting secretary of defense. So great. The post reported that there were some pretty ugly family issues in Shanahan's past that would have complicated the confirmation process, and that could have been why he dropped out. I mean, I don't know that we'll dig into them, but you noted when we were texting about this, that it's very weird that someone, with those issues in their background could get nominated to the deputy secretary in the first place. But, I mean, I guess stepping back, I'm not that surprised that Shanahan is leaving because he seemed

particularly weak in the job. Pompeo was basically running the entire Iran strategy, including like taking a trip down to Centcom this week. But, you know, it's pretty abnormal to see something like this happen. I mean, an acting secretary has been around for a while to have a massive vetting challenge. That seems like a pretty big failure of the process. Yeah, I mean, these are really tragic family circumstances, and we don't really know, you know, you never know exactly what happens in a family, but it's clear that they should have been red flags. And what's also clear is at a time when we're really potentially on the precipice of a conflict with Iran, you have this complete and utter dysfunction at the top of the Pentagon and no real effort to try to address it, you know, that you could have someone there who was so clearly vulnerable and unconformable as, Secretary of Defense, had he gone through the confirmation process. It's been six months,

the longest we've ever gone without, I think, a confirmed Secretary of Defense in place. John Bolton and Mike Pompeo essentially running the Iran policy from other places. Bolton de facto Secretary of Defense, really, if you step back and look at it. And it should be very worrying to people that at a time when we have war and peace decisions literally right in front of us, there's no leader of the Pentagon. You know, you and I, sat in the situation room. The way that works is you go around the table and the secretary of state gives their view and the view of the state department. And the secretary of defense gives their view and the view of the Pentagon. And nobody's offering that view. Yeah. And what we know, Tommy,

is that when Mattis was there, you know, no friend of Iran, he was pushing back on the escalation with Iran. And it's therefore no coincidence that in the six months since Mattis has been gone, you've seen this escalation with Iran, right? And so to me, there's just a giant, glaring absence of leadership at the Pentagon. And what's most concerning is that seems to be deliberate. Yep, I agree. Never mind the lobbyists, right? How many lobbyists can we put this job? They're all lobbyists. It's offensive. Or defense contractors. And it makes you wonder, you know, why are we supporting the Saudi War in Yemen? Well, whether it's Shanahan or the new guy, they both worked for companies that want to sell arms to people who are using them in Yemen.

Yeah, the revolving door is brought to you by Raytheon. All right, I want to turn to the trade war real quick for an update. I was reading this on the way in. So the European Central Bank said they are willing or ready to provide stimulus to the Eurozone economy in response to the international tensions and the trade war. So this would mean increasing their purchases of bonds with so-called quantitative easing, which they had just kind of slowed down about six months ago. Their general signs that the global economy is slowing down. But really, I just wanted to flag this, Ben, because I remember when we were in the NSC in 2009 and 2010 and we were fighting with the year Europeans about whether the steps that should be taken to fix the global economy required, reduce spending or more stimulus. And the Europeans were fighting for more austerity and we were fighting for more stimulus. And now the Europeans are having to do increased stimulus measures because of policy steps taken by the Trump administration. It just made my fucking headspin.

Yeah, and this is where domestic and farm policy come together because what happens if the economy does have a downturn? You need some stimulus. The U.S. spent a trillion dollars on our tax bill last year. That was the rainy day fund. That was the money that you might spend in the downturn to stimulate the economy. And it was a giveaway to a bunch of corporations and rich people that did very little to help the economy in the meantime, except give it a little sugar high. The problem is you already have a potential downturn coming just in terms of a cyclical downturn. What Trump is doing with the trade war and even potentially driving up oil prices with what he's doing with Iran and Venezuela, it's adding variables that are likely to accelerate a downturn. At a time when if that downturn happens, we have much less in the way of tools to respond to that downturn. The interest rates are already low. We spent the trillion dollars on the tax bill. And so you've got the Europeans trying to step in and here and fill this void.

I think, you know, the potential for this to go south on us over the next year is probably higher than people recognize and is directly tied to the trade war because, you know, we live in a world where if you hurt the Chinese economy, slow down the Chinese economy, you add all these extra costs in the form of tariffs. Like, the bill is going to come do at some point and it feels like it's coming. Yeah, I think so, too. All right, a couple more quick things. I want to follow up on an issue that we've covered previously, but certainly hasn't

been resolved yet. The Times profiled a man named Muhammad Salim, who is a Rohingya Muslim refugee, who was driven out of Burma because of violence that was in part incited or fomented by propaganda on Facebook. So Muhammad escaped. He's one of the lucky ones and got to India where he is now seeing the same stuff on Facebook, Hindu nationalists posting things, accusing the Rohingya of cannibalism, calling them terrorists, all sorts of horrific stuff. This poor guy and his family have had to move four times. I wanted to raise this because clearly, despite years of international outcry, Facebook has not gotten a handle on the problem. And if we see a repeat of the sort of ethnic cleansing and genocide that happened in Burma, in India, where there are 340 million Facebook users and extreme nationalism, it could be a catastrophe. And I'm just, I'm raising it because it's an important issue and I don't know what the hell to do about it.

Well, you know, in Burma, for people to really get their minds around this, this is a country that went from very little internet penetration whatsoever to almost 100% internet penetration overnight. And the entire experience of the internet was through Facebook because people didn't have computers, they had phones, people weren't using Google, they were using Facebook. And so all of a sudden people are holding in their hands what they think is all the information in the world. And what they're consuming is hate speech against the rindja and against minari. and against Muslims. And if you want to understand the dynamic that has taken hold in Burma that has fueled, in part, this ethnic cleansing, a lot of it is these hate campaigns online that stigmatized Muslims in Rohingya, and the government may have fueled some of that, or the government may have served some of that wave.

And this is a real problem. And companies like Facebook, you know, they don't even have any employees in a place like Burma. They just have an algorithm, you know. And this algorithm is hugely destructive. We've seen in Sri Lanka, very good reporting in the time. how similarly minorities were accused in fake online campaigns of forced sterilization that led to acts of violence against Muslims. And at a certain point, this has to stop because it's causing death and destruction.

It's causing civilization of minorities. And the only way to deal with it is through much more aggressive regulation of how these platforms operate and much more vigilance from these companies to say that they accept some responsibility for what is on their platforms. Because otherwise, we're going to have this follow people like this poor man to other places. We're going to see one of these hate campaigns one after another. Wherever a minority can be stigmatized, it will happen. Yeah. Yeah, I don't doubt that it's unbelievably difficult to police billions of users in nearly every single country in nearly every single language on the planet. But, you know, you got a pretty big market

cap, throw some money at the problem. It's, it's, you know, it's. You've got a pretty big market cap. It's, an existential issue for these human beings who are suffering. Well, let me just give you an anecdote. I was in Burma earlier this year. I met with a guy who kind of monitors this. And he said, look, there was a hate campaign here. There was so widespread that anybody who lived here saw it. And it said on 9-11, all Buddhists should go out and protest Muslims.

And everybody's getting this Facebook message, you know, take to the streets to protest the Muslims. And the Muslims are getting these messages that said, Muslims need to take arms to defend themselves. and it's clearly rooted in people who want there to be violence, sectarian violence. And they brought it, this guy I met with and some other people, brought it to the attention to Facebook and said, you've got to pull this down. And part of what this guy said to me is like, look, if you had someone living here, they would see this. If you had employees who were actually trying to deal with this, yeah, you wouldn't catch everything, but you catch a good deal of this stuff.

You have to be in these places and live in these places. And what would cost Facebook to have actual employees living and working in all these places? and working on these issues is a rounding error for how much that company is worth. So, yes, is it hard? Sure. But if you look at how difficult, what this is causing, like, they have to do this. And if they won't do this, then there has to be some regulation from governments to say, if you guys don't take this content down, we're going to compel you to do so.

Yeah, I agree. There's just no excuse for allowing hate speech up. Okay. A couple of 2020 things, and then we'll get to our guest. Mayor Pete did an interview with Axios, and he said he would not reverse Trump's decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. So some context here. Every president in recent history, including President Obama, has promised to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and then didn't fall through on that promise

until President Trump. Ben, do you think that these candidates should be pledging to move the embassy back? And if so, why do you think that's an important commitment to make? Well, I think here's the first thing they should be doing, which is saying that they will reopen diplomatic representation to the Palestinian people in Jerusalem, right? Because in addition to moving the embassy, they also shut down the diplomatic representation to the Palestinians, which had been in Jerusalem through our consulate there. That's the first thing. Then the second thing is, I would say, you know, there's a way to say we have to see steps taken by the Israeli government to make a Palestinian state. in a two-state solution viable, or else, you know, we'll consider moving my embassy back to Tel Aviv. So I think there's ways in which people can try to suggest that, look, it's politically very difficult, and I get that. But I think at a minimum, you can introduce the idea that we need Palestinian representation and we need some progress on this peace issue. I think it's hard

to put this genie back in the bottle. I'm somewhat sympathetic to the candidates. So I get that people may not want to go as far as saying we're going to move the embassy back. But I think there's ways to at least introduce, and to give Buttigieg's credit, he said, if we see annexation, there'll be consequences in terms of the assistance we provide to Israel. So it might not be moving the embassy back. It could be in other ways, right? Right, right, right. That's how I approach the issue. It's very hard to ask people on such an emotional issue to say, we're going to reverse this decision, move this embassy back. I do think that they can say, we'll open the Palestinian representation and look at ways in which we can try to exert leverage on Israel to take meaningful

steps towards the two-state solution. Meanwhile, in Israel, over the weekend, Netanyahu did a big press event where he claimed to name a new town in the Golan Heights, the Trump Heights, since President Trump recognized the Golan Heights as being part of sovereign Israel last March. So basically it's a big sign in the middle of nowhere, but that's the level of seriousness with which foreign policy is now being treated by Bibi and Trump. it just it makes it all look like just a total charade you know like they're just they already named a train station after trump in jerusalem like this is it's like not unlike the war comment made earlier like there's real lives that's take here like they're you know are the Palestinians going to be able to live in security and dignity or the Israelis who want to make peace with their neighbors can be able to do that and instead we get like trump heights and trump station yeah um last 20 20 20th thing so tulsi gabbert who we haven't talked about a lot in this show she's a rock war veteran she's on the house Armed Services Committee, a member of Congress from Hawaii who's running for president.

So she did this an event with the Washington Post. And she's been really pressed on her foreign policy views a lot because she said some strange things about Syria using chemical weapons or casting doubt on it. And she met with Bashar al-Assad back in the day. But in this event, she argued that the U.S. could perhaps work with Assad and Vladimir Putin to counter the rise al-Qaeda or ISIS fighters in the Middle East. And then when she was pressed on whether she accepts now that Assad used chemical weapons, she said, that has been reported and called it, quote, a serious issue, but claimed that

there is, quote, still more information coming out from various investigators and whatnot. So I don't know. I was curious what you make of her foreign policy, Ben, because there are a lot of folks on the left who I think find her approach interesting. There's probably a lot of, I don't know what you'd call them, people in D.C. who believe that ultimately the U.S. will have to resume relations with Assad in some since he's clearly now in control of Syria. But this continual casting doubt on the chemical weapons use seems oddly stubborn to me.

I mean, like, I haven't seen all the intel that you saw back in the day on what Assad did or didn't do in Syria, but it seems like the international community has weighed in pretty forcefully here. Yeah, I mean, the Syrian use of chemical weapons is an open-and-shot case. I mean, they were chemical weapons fired from an area controlled. entirely by the regime. We had intelligence. I don't know how much I can even go into

that was pretty clear cut in terms of who ordered that to be fired. But even if you can't read the intelligence that I read, they controlled this area, they had troops there, they had chemical weapons there, and it was fired from

an area controlled by the regime at the opposition. The idea that this was some masterful false flag is about as crazy a fucking idea as anybody could put forward. The thing about like a Tulsi Gabbard here is the same challenge I have with like a Glenn Greenwald, Tommy, which is, I think there's a place for like a healthy skepticism of American farm policy.

You know, I think you and I have given voice of that at times, that we've made mistakes, that there need to be challenging of certain assumptions. But what I have problems with is this failure to recognize that that should not lead you into the arms of Vladimir Putin, that you can think that the United States has done a lot of things wrong over the years without thinking that the answer to, to that is to embrace, in some fashion, Vladimir Putin's worldview, which is essentially where this certain line of thinking often goes. This is an fundamentally undemocratic, authoritarian, illiberal worldview. And so the challenge for Democrats who have huge problems with American foreign policy is to articulate an alternative path. There's something other than the status quo, the blob, the reflexive interventionism, the kind of breaches of interventionism, the kind of Brett Stevens light approach that some Democrats take versus saying, yeah, we've gotten everything

wrong and the chemical weapons attack was invented and we just need to deal with Assad and Putin's right about all this stuff. I think that is problematic. Now, I would say that I don't mind her having a view. Like she should, you know, there's a sense that she shouldn't even say these things. I mean, frankly, like, let's have all these views laid out on the table and have a debate about it. So she's entitled to that position. The one thing I think she's. she's not entitled to is her own facts about this chemical weapons attack. But, you know, it'll be interesting. The U.S. foreign policy after Trump is in some ways going to be like this blank slate because Trump has blown so many things up. And we should be laying out. Here are all the different ways we can

go from Tulsi Gabbard over here to Pete Buttigieg to Bernie Sanders to Joe Biden, who's more conventional and just, you know, lay that all out for people to see. Yeah. I mean, what I struggled with in some of these comments is there's often this default to a suggestion that we could partner with various bad actors on counterterrorism issues. And I think that's one, lazy and two, what got us in a lot of trouble over many, many decades in various places, like Egypt, like, you know, think of all the other regions where we've had, quote, counterterrorism partnership and we've lost touch with our values and bigger ideals and things we want to stand for. I do think it's very important to know our history and be honest about all the

mistakes the U.S. has made, recent history, ancient history, the Iraq war, all of it. But, you know, I was thinking about this, too. I mean, narratives are very important. And I do think it's good to talk about the United States and our values and what we hope to be in the world in an aspirational way because that encourages people to try to live up to that story and those values. And if we're just running down the U.S. as a malign force in various places, that kind of lets us off the hook to try to be better. And I don't know that's the outcome we want either. No, if you just say we're like everybody else, I mean, look, we've made huge mistakes. That's all true. But at the same time, if you're a protester in Hong Kong or you're a protester in any of these places,

or you're a civil society activist, you need somebody to look to, right? I mean, I've talked to people who've been held in prison and said, even though we know the U.S. is hypocritical, the fact that the most powerful nation in the world was saying that democracy, and human rights are things to be respected and cherished and valued, that had an impact to them. That was meaningful to them. If we vacate that role, which Trump, I think, has done, then we're in a world where it's just pure power that rules and values don't matter at all. And just because we have not reached our own standard with consistency doesn't mean we should just say, let's toss it all out the window here. I'm not trying to caricature some of these views, but I think we need to

figure out a way to appeal to people's desire for a politics that is rooted in believing in something and that is rooted in values and that says we are on the side of people who are on the world who want these things. We are different from Russia. We are different from China. We've made mistakes. And this is why, by the way, Tommy, Obama would acknowledge those mistakes and get criticized for it because it was an attempt to say, you're right, you're right about the Iraq War, you're right about torture. But precisely because we believe in these things, I'm trying to change these policies. Ultimately, that's the only way in which you're going to overcome this authoritarian trend that we keep talking about, because somebody has to stand for an alternative set of value. Somebody in power

has to do it. It can't just be the people in the streets alone. They need people who are running governments who stand up for these things. Yeah, agreed. Okay. Last story before we get to real, and this was my favorite one of the day. So, A group of local Pakistani officials were holding a press conference, and they were live streaming it and inadvertently made news when their social media director turned on the cat ears filter and allowed them all to be in this weird augmented reality situation for the entirety of the thing. The Guardian reported the story out. They were sure that all necessary actions had been taken to prevent further cat incidents in the future in Pakistan. But, I mean, did these guys just hit on something genius here, Ben? I mean, imagine if a bunch of government officials held press conference.

is where you could fuck around and throw some animal filters on them. I mean, people might actually tune it. I think so. I mean, first of all, it's kind of funny that they said all necessary measures have been taken. It was, like, they'd gone to war or something, like, to deal with the cat filters. I've often dealt with the fact that fear gets more clicks, you know, that fear and hate campaigns get more clicks. The only thing that gets a lot of clicks in response is usually cat videos or Snapchat filters. So maybe these guys are on to something, right?

Like maybe if we just, it's a way to make government more attractive, it's a way to humanize this, it's a way to reach young people who get their news on Snapchat and Instagram. Like, I don't know. Like maybe in one Democratic debate, everybody could choose their own Snapchat filters. Yeah, you throw some kitty cat ears on Tim Ryan and all of a sudden, you know, he's got a big fan base. Suddenly you're thinking this guy, you know, might share my values. That's right. All right.

When we come back, we will talk to former Deputy National Security Advisor, former Deputy CIA Director, genius lawyer of Real Haynes. We are thrilled to welcome our former colleague of Real Haynes on the pod. You served in so many roles under Republicans and Democrats in various administrations in Congress. But we all worked with you when you are an NSC lawyer, then you were the deputy director of the CIA and then deputy national security advisor. So you literally know everything about most things. So thank you so much for doing the show. That's not accurate.

And I'll let that go. The nicest human being of all the human beings, number one. Truly the nicest person. So, like, can we just start with a personal experience? I mean, what was it like for you transitioning from the White House to the CIA? You know, you were read into a lot of sensitive, classified, covert stuff. But I imagine that going to the agency and being in the mothership is a whole different story. Was it like nonstop briefings, personnel issues, travel?

Like, how do you fill that first week? Yeah, it was a lot of what you just described. In other words, just really getting to know the agency and getting to know the issues and listening a tremendous amount to people who understood their work and, you know, helping me understand it in that context. But it was really, I mean, there were so many dimensions to trying to learn about this new institution that I had had a window into, but I had not obviously existed within. And, you know, one thing that definitely jumps to the top of my mind is the fact that, you know, that my office was a lot nicer, the CIA. I can tell you, like, first of all, it had a window, which is kind of surprising, but also, like, in that piece. But it was also just, it was a very different kind of job. I mean, going from, first of all, being a lawyer to being an intelligence officer and trying to sort of, you know, understand what that meant for me and how I should be reframing the way I think about things. And then it was also, obviously, a huge management job, which my prior jobs had not been. And there are just, you know, thousands of people, obviously, in the agency and you're trying to think about what does that mean?

How do I help to make sure that the place runs well, that, you know, personnel issues and all of those things are done? But at the same time, really trying to understand the business in a way that allows you to be effective and sort of focus in on the right issues and not get lost in the details and prioritize appropriately, all of the kind of classic issues. But I had a wonderful teacher, not just in the folks around me, obviously, and the people who were really helping me. understand how to do things, but also John Brennan as the director, who, by the way, had a secret door into my office, which sometimes was awesome and other times was less so. So when John was at the NSC, he always sort of felt like a horse that had been caged his whole life. Like when he got back to the agency, was he just sprinting in fields like happier than a pig and shit? Yeah, a little bit. I mean, I have to say it was, for one thing, it was so much fun.

to watch him walk down the hallway. So we would sometimes go down to get Starbucks because, you know, you've met me. And watching the reaction that people had to John as, you know, you were walking through the hallway because they really saw him as part of the institution in many respects and somebody who had come home in a way and, you know, and who understood their world and yet was now directing it. And I think it energized him in a way that was really pretty remarkable to watch. Yeah, he's a good guy. All right.

A little more serious stuff. So the Trump administration this week, this weekend, accused Iran of attacking two ships in the Gulf of Oman. So, I mean, from my perspective, like situations like this are why we need great intelligence. Given what you know about our ability to collect intelligence in that region, how confident are you that we can get to the bottom of what happened? And how would you go about making the case if you did believe that Iran was responsible to the international community? Yeah, it's a really good question. I mean, one thing that I've learned is even though I absolutely agree that this is the moment when you need good intelligence and when you need people who are then, you know, providing that intelligence without bias and trying to brief people on what you do when you don't know, it's also true that in those first few hours, facts change. In other words, not reacting too quickly, and I know you both will understand this is a really critical aspect of learning how to govern.

that, you know, the first facts that you get are not necessarily the last facts you're going to get. In fact, rarely are they, right? And so one thing I would be doing is trying to reach out across the intelligence community to make sure that we're gathering everything that we know and putting things into context effectively and ensuring that, you know, what we're presenting is as solid as it can be. And when we aren't sure about things identifying that, you know, credibly. And really, that's a big part of what the, obviously, the Director of National Intelligence does in producing intelligence then to the White House. And in that context, I think you would be looking at essentially a whole series of different intel sources, whether it be, I'm trying to think what I can say in an unclassified way. But, you know, it's not just going to be about what people are seeing and hearing, but it's also going to be about images and other sources of intelligence and trying to map them. across each other in a way that helps you understand what's solid and what's not. And it felt like every, I mean, Pompeo came out pretty quick. You know, I mean, and again, this, you know, posit that, you know, probably, sure, Iran may

very well have done this or one of their proxies. It did feel like that was a pretty fast presentation of that information. Yeah, it's hard, you know, obviously, I don't have any inside information, right? I have no clue. And I certainly agree with what you just said that, you know, it seems likely, right? that there's Iranian bang. But it's hard not to be maybe a little bit skeptical of the very quick, as you point out, reactions. And also, in some respects, I think I saw, you know, a comment from Bolton, like, who else could it be, right? You know, is it kind of like, who do you think?

I think it's wise not to be flippant in these moments, but really to sort of be as straight up as you possibly can be to the American people as you're trying to make clear, here's what we do know, here's what we don't know. Once we're solid, right, we will. will react in an appropriate way. And I think that's the best space to be in in those moments. Yeah. Well, that leads to another question, which is, you know, should we go to war with Iran over a couple tankers that aren't even U.S. tankers? I want to get to the legal piece of this because you've been at the intersection of the use of military force and the law. And one of the things we've talked about on the show is how Pompeo's been kind of plowing the ground to suggest

that the 2001 AMF that is in response to 9-11 that authorizes the use of force. against al-Qaeda and associated forces, would somehow potentially justify, authorize, make legal, military action against Iran? What do you make of that argument? And should Democrats in Congress be saying, no, you're not authorized? Yeah. I think one of the challenges, just from a kind of public narrative perspective with respect to the 2001 AMF, is that I think people feel as if it's been stretched beyond all reason. And in that context, like, why couldn't you make just such an extraordinary argument with respect to Iran? And how do we actually deal with something like that? And in fact, even though I'm not suggesting that I certainly, and President Obama said this in May

2013, right, like essentially the authorization to use military force has gotten to the point where it needs to be, I think, you know, refined, repealed, ultimately replaced. with something that is clear and that makes it clear that both Congress and the executive branch are on the same page in terms of what it allows. But that being said, it's not true that we thought that the AUMF could in fact justify force under all circumstances. We had a very kind of, you know, basic rubric under which we looked at whether or not force could be authorized. And we had to argue that, by the way, in court. And we had to argue that when, you know, we were dealing with detainees, and we also had to deal with Congress on this point, and we articulated it pretty

clearly. And it was one that was consistent with what the Bush administration had argued and, you know, presumably what it is that lawyers are looking at right now. And I don't see at this point based on the information at least available to me how you could make the argument that Pompeo is making. And so, for example, we would say it authorized force against al-Qaeda and associated forces. And then we had a very sort of careful frame for how we would evaluate whether or not a group was an associated force. So you would look at whether they were basically an ally of al-Qaeda, whether they were focused on the United States, whether they were organized sufficiently to be an ally, all of those things, right? I think the idea that Iran is allied with al-Qaeda, which seems to be sort of part of the argument that is being put forward, is a pretty extraordinary stretch. I mean, I think it's publicly available, the sort of AQ members that have been identified as ones that somehow have been, quote unquote, harbored by Iran were in fact detained by Iran.

And it's not as if Iran didn't at moments find, in a sense, mutual interests that they exploited in the context of, you know, al-Qaeda's operations and their relationship with us. But to say that Iran is allied with al-Qaeda is a very bizarre statement, and I think one that the lawyers would have a hard time justifying. And if you were looking at them as an imminent threat, I think that would also be hard to argue. I mean, I recognize even if there's solid information that indicates that Iran targeted the tankers, that they've done a whole variety of things, even if they were to take action that violates the JCPOA that we've already withdrawn from and violated ourselves, in effect, it's very hard to see how that translates into an imminent threat. Exactly. Yeah. And even during our administration, the intelligence community was unwilling to say Iran is an imminent threat to the United States under those circumstances.

And I just, I don't see how you create that kind of basis from a legal perspective. Yeah. I mean, so, like, when we were in office, obviously, you know, we had the privilege of knowing President Obama and understanding that he was someone who had real values and cared about the law and cared about doing. doing things the right way. But the process of determining whether a force is associated with Al-Qaeda is inherently secretive, right? I mean, you're looking at often classified intelligence, you're making judgments based on information that you can't make public. Did that process ever trouble you with how much of it required the public just to trust us? Yeah. I mean, it's a big fan of transparency. And I have to say, having been in government for, you know, over 10 years,

that made me more of a fan of transparency. And yet it also demonstrated for me on a daily basis just how challenging it is to accomplish in a sensible way. And that doesn't mean that everything should be unclassified. I do believe that there are some things that need to be classified. But it's far smaller number of things than, you know, what we ultimately end up classifying for a whole series of reasons that are probably not worth discussing. But here's – to answer your very – sort of, you know, your point more specifically, tell me, my view is that it's probably true that in a situation in which you're, for example, looking at whether or not an organization is an associated force of al-Qaeda and making a

determination about a use of force, that some of the information is going to be classified. That doesn't mean that you can't make a case to the American people. And it certainly doesn't mean that the decision about – whether or not we should be able to use force against that group or that actor shouldn't be made public. And I think that's something that we can and should do. And moreover, you know, we obviously, there are some times when we're dealing with some classified information where that's critical to the determination. And that's the time when we need to share it with Congress and we need to have that kind of outside validator in a way and for the American people to say,

okay, there's another institution that's out there that does this. I guess one last thing, One of the interesting things to watch, you know, we all get asked what's it like to see Trump dismantling all these things we worked on. We talked earlier about how the Iran nuclear agreement. We made this argument. How are you going to deal with it, a diplomatic agreement or a war? And now we seem to be presented with that choice. But one of the bigger issues that I've noticed is how much there were certain kind of norms of behavior. like you tended to respect the opinion of the U.S. intelligence community if you were the President of the United States,

or you felt obligated to provide information to Congress, or you didn't tear up treaties that were on the books, not just the Obama agreements, but we've seen Trump systematically pull out of treaties. Did we miss how fragile our democratic institutions are? In other words, is Trump demonstrating that a lot of this was based on more people, opting in to a democratic approach to governance rather than being compelled to do so? Because, you know, if you look at how Bill Barr's approach being Attorney General, if you look at how Trump's viewed the intelligence community, if you look at how he's treated international agreements that we seemingly should be obliged to follow, is he showing us that actually this is a much thinner veneer of a year of democratic and legal requirements than we thought. Yeah. I mean,

The example I use that I've thought a lot about is when I was in government and even as a line attorney, you know, working the idea that the president would say something that was not accurate was so terrifying. Yeah. Like, you know, that you would. Totally, right. And I remember we would scrub everything that we got that was going to go out. Everything Tommy said is spokesperson. Totally. And you felt this responsibility in that moment, right?

And people would get into our year like, oh, my God, that almost went out, you know. And it's not that you never have. had the president or somebody say something inaccurately, but when it happened, it was a huge deal and investigated within the organs, all of these things. And yet now it's, I mean, I can't imagine that people spend the time that we did, right? Like, I mean, just because even if you believe in it, you sort of look at the situation and you think, like, why should I put, you know, my energy into that when everything else is so clearly not paid attention to in that respect. I think it was, as you say, maybe more fragile than I anticipated to some extent,

But I also, I really believe that it's another, you know, lesson that I feel like I already knew and I know you guys do too. It's like you set the tone from the top. And it made such a difference to work for a president who we really believed at the end of the day, first of all, was genuinely interested in doing what was right for the United States, had tremendous integrity in the way in which he approached decisions. And even when I didn't just, you know, agree with everything, I knew that he was trying to. to do the right thing and ultimately was happy to live with that decision. And I can't imagine how we can be effective as a country regardless of what our ideological perspective is under the current circumstances. Because how do you expect to be effective essentially when the institution is not actually working the way it's working? And the truth is not the basis for decision.

Totally, right? I mean, particularly in a democracy and all of these things that are, yeah. I find myself, I mean, and this comes back to the Iran thing, and I'd be really interested in what your own views are. I think that, look, this is maybe not fair, but my perspective is one in which I think Bolton has long sought essentially an opportunity and a basis for going to war with Iran, in effect. And I find myself thinking that if I were in his position and I were thinking about how to make that happen, right? what I would do is create a situation. Exactly what he's doing. Exactly, right? So create the situation where there's a provocation. I would actually not do it on the basis of self-defense from the United States or even the AUMF. What I do is I'd piggyback off of Israel, right? So, I mean, we know that Netanyahu has had an interest in also taking action against Iran. And if he were to do so,

he would need and want the support of the United States. I can't imagine that there's a better moment for him to ask for that than to have Bolton as the National Security Advisor. I don't think that, frankly, Trump is interested in going down that road right now for political reasons, but there may become a moment when Israel says, we're going to move and basically we want you to help us. We're going to take the view that we're acting in self-defense by taking a targeted attack, basically, against their nuclear facilities because they're enriching and we want to do this. And the United States should support us, essentially in that collective self-defense. And then that is an argument that's hard, I think, from an international legal perspective,

they may have an argument. I think it will be criticized by many. And then from a domestic legal perspective, what they do is they would be doing it through the context of essentially it's a limited operation. They're in support of Israel. They, right, like all of these pieces would fall in. And they would be subject to the war powers resolution, but they would presumably think it wouldn't last that long. And I think they'd be wrong in thinking that there would not be a significant reaction as a consequence of this and it won't drag us into a war. Yeah, that's what worries me is that even Trump might not want the war, but Bolton is creating a logic of escalation that you're currently now counting on either Trump or the Iranians to take an off ramp.

Yeah. And it's hard to see it. Every NSC meeting that I ever tended with Avril would end with a bunch of people turning to her and saying, legal or not legal. Thank God you are in the rooms for all those meetings to keep everybody straight. And thank you for talking with us today and being literally the most patient person

that I've ever worked with explaining very complicated legal matters to adults like me who never even took the L-SAT. Please. That's just ridiculous. I miss you both so much. We missed you too, Avril. Thank you so much for doing the show. I'm jealous. I'm not with you guys in New York.

But talk to you soon. See you soon. Thanks.