Tangle - War with Iran escalates.

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

Tuesday marks 11 days since the United States and Israel launched joint attacks against the Iranian government and security forces, with several significant developments over the weekend. Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!Two new interviews.We have two new interviews out this week for your listening pleasure. In the first, Managing Editor Ari Weitzman speaks to Tyler Austin Harper, a staff writer at The Atlantic. After Associate Editor Audrey Moorehead’s exploration into literacy on Friday, the conversation is timely — Tyler and Ari discuss funding for the humanities and what role universities should play in the future of education. You can listen here. In the second interview, Senior Editor Will Kaback talks with the author and cultural critic Thomas Chatterton Williams about his new book, Summer of Our Discontent, which explores the social and political changes that followed from the nationwide protests in the summer of 2020. You can listen here.You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: What do you think of U.S. military actions in Iran? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by: Isaac Saul and audio edited and mixed by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the latest from the war in Iran. We're going to break down what the left and right are saying about the new developments. and I'm going to share my take after 11 days since the United States and Israel launched joint attacks against the Iranian government.

To get us started, I'm going to hand it over to John Law, our executive producer, and I'll be back for my take. Thanks, Isaac, and welcome, everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, Anthropics sued the Trump administration over its decision to designate the artificial intelligence company a supply chain risk. A group of 37 AI researchers from Google and OpenAI filed a. a brief supporting Anthropics suit. Number two, the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a grand jury subpoena for records of the Arizona State Senate's audit of the 2020 presidential election results in Maricopa County, Arizona.

The subpoena is part of the agency's expanded investigation into potential irregularities in the election. Number three, Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company of Ticketmaster, reached a settlement with the Justice Department to pay approximately $280 million in civil. penalties and end some of its exclusivity agreements with artists. The settlement requires approval from all states that brought the antitrust suit against the company. Number four, New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said that the Saturday incident in which improvised explosive devices were ignited during protests outside the city's mayoral residence is being investigated

as ISIS-inspired terrorism. Two suspects were each charged with five counts related to the incident, including attempted support of a designated foreign terrorist organization. And number five, President Donald Trump told House Republicans that he will not sign any bills until Congress passes the Save America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and identification to cast a ballot. Iran's revolutionary guards are warning the U.S. in Israel that Iran will decide when the war ends. This morning Iran said it launched new attacks against Persian Gulf countries and Israel. Tuesday marks 11 days since the United States and Israel launched joint attacks against the Iranian government and security forces,

with several significant developments over the weekend. On Sunday, Iran's Assembly of Experts announced it had selected Mosheba Hamineh as the country's new supreme leader. Hamine is the son of former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Hamine, who was killed in Israeli airstrikes at the outset of the attacks on February 28th, and he maintained strong ties to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. President Donald Trump previously called his selection unacceptable, and said Israel said Hamine is a potential military target. Separately, global oil prices have risen amid concerns about production and supply in the Middle East.

The Strait of Hermuz, the narrow waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean, has been effectively closed since the conflict began. Oil-producing Gulf states like Iraq, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates have cut production due to export limitations. Brent crude futures rose to $119. and 50 cents per barrel on Monday, the highest mark since mid-2020, but fell below $100 per barrel later in the day. Energy ministers from the group of seven nations, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States will meet on Tuesday to discuss a strategic

release of crude oil reserves to address the ongoing supply disruption. On Saturday, Israel struck multiple Iranian fuel sites near Iran's capital Tehran, causing large explosions. The strikes were the first known instances of Israel or the U.S. attacking Iranian energy infrastructure since the war began, though some strikes have damaged or destroyed civilian infrastructure. And Israel said it was targeting facilities used by Iran's armed forces. However, the U.S. was reportedly unaware of the scale of the strikes beforehand, leading some officials to express frustration with the operation. Elsewhere on Monday, Turkey's defense ministry said North Atlantic Treaty Organization defenses intercepted an Iranian missile in the country's airspace,

marking the second NATO missile interception in the past week. Turkey is not expected to request formal NATO action against Iran, but it said all necessary measures will be taken decisively and without hesitation against any threat directed at our country's territory and airspace. On Sunday, U.S. military officials announced a U.S. service member had died from injuries sustained in an Iranian attack on troops in Saudi Arabia on March 1st, the 7th U.S. service member death of the conflict. On Monday, the Defense Department identified the soldier as Sergeant Benjamin N. Pennington, age 26.

Finally, a video published on Sunday added to evidence that the United States was responsible for a February 28th missile strike that reportedly killed 175 people at an Iranian elementary school. The video shows a Tomahawk cruise missile striking a naval base next to the the school, and the U.S. military is the only one involved in the conflict that uses these missiles. President Trump previously suggested Iran was responsible for the strike, but more recently said he would accept the conclusion of the U.S. military's investigation into the incident. Today, we'll share the latest on the conflict with views from the left, right, and Middle East writers, and then Isaac's take.

We'll be right back after this quick break. All right. First up, let's start with what the left is saying. The left expects the war's impact will soon be felt at home in the U.S. Some say the U.S. and Israeli strategy is unlikely to produce the desired results. In MS now, Joseph Sabios Roig said, America can't afford Trump's war with Iran for long. The war is costing the U.S. an estimated $1 billion a day, according to two congressional sources with knowledge of the matter. Oil prices are now forecast to go higher, while gas prices have already jumped to $3.32.

It's the highest price it has reached in either of Trump's two terms. Zabias Roig wrote. The knock-on effects of increasingly expensive oil will be felt next. Higher costs for oil and gas will spread to the cost of other goods and services, particularly those relying on trucks for transportation. Higher prices for airline tickets aren't out of the question. Grocery bills and electricity prices will also follow suit if the war drags on. Iran's clerical regime does have incentives to drive up global oil prices

as high as possible in a last-ditch effort to ensure its survival. The Iranian military has already targeted power plants and oil refineries in the Gulf, and the financial fallout of the war stands to get worse if nothing changes, Sabaz Raik said. The building blocks of prolonged uncertainty are all falling into place. Trump remains devoted to his tariffs. If the war in Iran stretches on for months, it will magnify the expected price increases for food, furniture, and much more. In the New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman wrote,

Trump has no idea how to end the war with Iran. Nothing would improve the prospects of the people of Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Yemen, and Israel more than removing the Islamic regime in Tehran, Friedman said. But what if that regime is also so embedded in mayoralities, schools, police stations, government jobs, the banking system, the military, neighborhood paramilitaries, that despite its unpopularity with a majority of Iranians, it can't be removed without plunging the entire Iranian landmass, about a sixth the size of the United States and home to 90 million people into chaos. Nothing underscores the embeddedness of this regime more than the fact that Iran just replaced its supreme leader Ali Hamene, killed earlier in the war, with his son, Moshtaba Hamine, said to be another hardliner, Friedman wrote. Iran's regime is a disgrace, a menace to its own people, to its neighborhoods, and to a

rules-based order as much as any other nation, but endlessly bombing it, destroying more and more military and civilian infrastructure, and just hoping that Iranian seeking democracy will come together. Show me, where has that ever happened in history? All right, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. Some on the right say the U.S. is winning the war and should press on. Others urge Trump to wind down the conflict as soon as he can.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board argued, Iran isn't winning this war. The reality inside Iran and the region is that the U.S. and Israel continue to make progress, The regime loses more of its military each day, along with the ability to hurt its neighbors. The Israelis estimate that 70 to 75 percent of Iran's missile launchers have been destroyed, and the U.S. has destroyed at least 43 Iranian ships, the board said. At 10 days in, the war can hardly be considered prolonged, and there's nothing gradual about U.S. or Israeli strategy.

Instead, there is a race. Can Iran do enough damage to global energy markets with its remaining missiles and drones before it loses them or must come to terms. The U.S. in particular has ample oil and gas supplies. Mr. Trump is also right that the disruption is likely to stop when the war does, and it is a small price to pay for major security advances, the board wrote. It would also make no sense to leave so many loose ends, from missiles and production facilities to nuclear sites at Pickax Mountain and the Isfahan tunnels.

There's also little reason to leave standing any IRGC or besiege bases. Even if the regime survives, bombing, it's in the U.S. security interest to give Iranians the best chance to retake their country. In the Washington Post, Jasek Willick made the case for declaring an early victory in Iran. Defense Secretary Pete Hegsef keeps underlining the war's scoped military purpose, the degradation or destruction of Iran's missile capacity, nuclear program, and Navy. In his telling, the United States is targeting the Islamic Republic's means of projecting power beyond its borders, not the prevailing form of government within them, Willick said.

Under that conception of the war, Trump ought to be able to declare victory at the time of his choosing, even in the coming days, with the highest value-known military targets taken out by thousands of strikes from air and sea. That might be the best outcome, both for Trump politically and for the U.S. strategically. The longer the war goes on, then, the more ambitious the goals may become. Replacing the Islamist tyranny that rules Iran with a freer government would obviously be the best outcome for the U.S. and the Iranian people. But short of such regime change, the U.S. might soon need to decide whether it is willing to settle for a weakened tyranny in Tehran with a decimated military at its disposal, Willick wrote. The prudent choice, the conservative choice, would be to take the past week's gains and walk away. All right, that is it for what the right and the left are saying, which brings us to what writers in the Middle East are saying.

Some writers decry the war, even as they hope for the end of the Iranian regime. Others suggest Iran's days as a regional power are over, no matter the war's outcome. In the New Arab, Nassarim Parvaz wrote, I was tortured by Chaminet's regime. This war is still unjust. For so many of us, me included, we wanted Chaminet and his henchmen to face justice in a courtroom, on trial for decades of crimes, repression, and killings.

I never wanted to see them killed by foreign forces, but confronted by the families of those he helped destroy, Parvaz said. None of this can justify foreign military attacks that kill innocent people. The death of one man does not legitimize the bombing of a crime. country, the destruction of infrastructure, or the killing of children. Justice cannot be delivered by missiles. Iran should be governed by the collective will of its people, not by force and not by a figure selected or imposed by the United States or Israel. Real justice cannot be outsourced to foreign powers, Provost. Western governments often claim that military intervention brings freedom.

People in the Middle East know that this is not true. We have seen what war did to Iraq, to Afghanistan. we know that authoritarian regimes use war as a cover for repression and that foreign powers are rarely interested in self-determination. In Arab news, Abdul Rahman al-Rashid explored the end of Iran as a military power. So far, the signs of what will come after the war do not suggest that the regime is on the verge of collapse, either through internal unrest or external pressure, al-Rashid said. That may mean that the world will have to accept living with a weakened but still functioning regime. This recalls the Safwan Tenth scenario when Iraq signed its surrender after its defeat in Kuwait

and the destruction of much of its military. Saddam Hussein's regime remained in power for another 12 years before it was finally removed in 2003. A similar pattern may now be unfolding. In the coming weeks, estimates suggest that the remaining elements of Iran's weapons arsenal, along with its factories and military institutions built over three decades, will be destroyed. This could grant the region a reprieve from Iranian threats for perhaps a defense. decade, assuming a negative Saddam scenario in which a weakened but surviving regime attempts to rebuild its capacities, Al-Rashid wrote. Another possibility, however, is that Tehran itself may

change, either through a transformation of the regime or its policies, becoming a more normal state focused on development and regional cooperation. All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take. All right, that is it for the left, the right, and some writers in the Middle East are saying, which brings us to my take. I consider myself a patriot. I love my country. I wouldn't pick anywhere else to live or raise my family. I believe in our founding documents.

I respect our institutions. Even Congress, even when they make me want to root my hair out. And in my general day-to-day life, I find Americans to be a kind, confident, decent, and generous bunch. I've been blessed to see much of the world, and, well, honestly, I just like it here the most. I say that to honestly preface what I'm feeling right now, which I think I can mostly describe as shame.

I'm embarrassed. I'm mortified, deeply concerned. I don't know exactly how to say it. But as I watch the early days of this war, I'm feeling my faith in all that I love about this great grand experiment shift, just enough to turn my stomach and make me want to hide my face. Perhaps it's how it started. The U.S. military was in all likelihood of responsibility. for bombing a girls' school in Iran.

More and more evidence suggests it was us every day and that the school may have been targeted using artificial intelligence. Our president has blamed the strike on Iran and now says our military is conducting an investigation and he'll accept whatever the report shows. In defending this position that it might not have been us, President Trump claimed that the Tomahawk weapons recorded

in the strike could have been from someone else since other countries besides the United States have them. New's Pentagon correspondent Jen Griffin responded rightly by noting that Trump is trying to muddy the waters because the U.S. is the only army in this war with Tomahawk missiles. It seems highly unlikely that it would be anyone's tomahawk other than a U.S. Tomahawk that hit that school, she said, and I think the president knows that. I can't tell what'd be worse, that he does know that or that he doesn't. This strike alone, which reportedly killed close to 200 people, most of them school girls, it is just one signal about how the war is progressing. Human rights activist news agency,

a U.S.-based nonprofit whose reporting in Iran has been critical for understanding the brutality of the Khomeiné regime, is now reporting that more than 1,100 civilians have been killed in the war. Our liberation of the Iranian people includes apocalyptic scenes of city streets ablaze with toxic black oil-drenched rain falling from the sky. Along with Israel, we've bombed desalination plants that will worsen an already serious water shortage, and Iran then responded in kind in Bahrain. Israel also bombed 30 Iranian fuel depots on Saturday, infuriating U.S. counterparts who worry the strikes on critical infrastructure that serve Iranians could backfire and rally Iranian society to the regime while driving up

oil prices. U.S. Israeli strikes have hit schools, hospitals, and historic landmarks. In the first 48 hours of the attacks in Tehran, some 100,000 people fled the capital. To be honest, my tolerance for witnessing this kind of carnage, death, and destruction is simply waning, if not totally evaporated. After more than four years of nonstop consumption of scenes of war in Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, and Sudan, bearing witness to more children being killed, more civilians buried in collapsed buildings, more wars speak about missions and threats and kinetic actions, all while our leaders are detached from the absolute horrors of what's happening on the ground. I just can't tolerate it much longer.

A Tangle reader recently accused me of being a pacifist, the lens through which I see much of our modern conflict. I don't think that's quite right, or at least hasn't always been true. I've written supportively about dumping unthinkable amounts of money into our military in the past. I do not believe all American intervention is bad. In fact, I've written explicitly about the times it has worked. I believe some wars are just and some wars are unjust. And in the last few years, I've been inclined to support U.S. support and intervention in Ukraine, where 40 million people are the victims of an unjust war. I understand that violence is still a regrettable, albeit apparently inevitable part of human nature.

nature, especially at a global scale. But when I survey what's happening in Iran now, I'm not convinced we're doing the right thing. Maybe the war fatigue has made it impossible for me to look at burning cities of millions of people and think of it as us winning. Or maybe after watching this sort of thing play out enough times, I'm just seeing clearly in a way I can't unsee. Part of me just can't fathom that in 2026, this is how our civilized society is still solving its biggest problems. I can even make the case for this war. I could point to the horrors Iranian proxies have wrought across the Middle East and the months and years of ineffective negotiations with Iran that have failed to disarm the regime and stop its funding of terrorism or back them off from pursuing a nuclear weapon.

I could point to the thousands of Iranians who flooded the streets in celebration when we took Al-Ghameh in his inner circle. I can note the dominant message the show of force is sending across the globe and the new respect our enemies will have for how willing we are to deploy the most powerful military on earth. And maybe this was the only message that Iran would understand. It's called peace through strength. It's not a slogan, Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told Sean Hannity, you have to be strong to protect freedom in an unkind world. But is it working? Do we have an off-ramp? Do we have a plan? Is what we have now better than what we had a month ago? Those questions seem critical. The reported new Supreme leader, Moshtabakhamane,

is more hardline than his father. Younger avoids the public, just had his wife and father killed in U.S. Israeli strikes. Do we expect to be able to make peace with this guy? Any semblance of a rules-based international order is officially dead now if it weren't dead before. We've now wiped out the entire Iranian regime and seem to be hell-bent on killing whoever tries to fill the gap that we don't like. Not long after we dropped into Venezuela to arrest and incarcerate their president, we are now threatening to do the same to the replacement whom we also helped pick. And all eyes are on Cuba next. This is might makes right, and we're not the only mighty country on the block. The same principle can easily justify Russia invading Ukraine or China taking Taiwan. Our own leaders and civilians,

now more than ever, will be Marx. And if or when another country decides to inflict harm on them, what ethical or moral standard will we point to so we can explain why it's bad? I want answers to these kinds of questions, but when I look at the people who are supposed to be in control, I'm struggling to get them. President Trump asked Monday whether the war was very complete, as he said, or just the beginning, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth said, responded by saying, you could say it's both.

Well, okay then. Congress has had an opportunity to rest control of the war back from the president, but opted not to. Senator Lindsay Graham, the Republican from South Carolina, is going on Fox News with free Cuba and make Iran great again hats, assuring Americans that were marching through the world to clear out the bad guys. Trust me, I want to feel good about all this, about taking out this awful regime, about liberating the Iranian people, about beating back the big, bad, tough guys all across the globe. But when I look around and honestly take stock of things, I have a hard time getting there. I don't see us making life better for Iranians or Venezuelans right now, and I'm certainly not understanding how my country has improved in the last few months.

I'm open to being convinced, but right now, I'm not close. We'll be right back after this quick break. This is Associate Editor Audrey Moorhead with a staff dissent. I share Isaac's horror at some of the U.S. actions during this war. Nevertheless, I find his claims about the death of the rules-based international order and loss of U.S. moral authority lacking. It's not that I think a principled rules-based order is still intact. It's that the notion of such an order was always a mask, obscuring the constant threat of U.S. military might, and plenty of actors, like Russia, China,

and especially Iran itself, never bought in. The U.S. rejoining the might-makes-right game outright is simply a return to the status quo, and cynically, I can't bring myself to much despair over that fact. I also strongly disagree with Isaac's framing that this somehow makes it difficult to criticize Russia's actions in Ukraine. The U.S. is attempting to bring about regime change in Iran and Venezuela, not trying to turn them into U.S. states and territories long term. I may not approve of U.S. interventionism, but claiming it's no different morally from Russia or China's power-hungry imperialism is a bridge too far. All right, folks, we're skipping over our reader. today to give our main story some extra space, and we're going to go straight to our

Under the Radar story. On Saturday, a federal judge ruled that Carrey Lake was improperly appointed to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media, an action she took during her four-month tenure should be considered void. USAGM oversees Voice of America, a government-funded international broadcaster that provides news and cultural programming to a global audience. Lake was elevated to the top of the agency on July 31, 2025, in an acting capacity. without Senate confirmation until she stepped down on November 19th. During that time, she significantly reduced USAGM's workforce and dismissed hundreds of contractors working for Voice of America,

which has since come under scrutiny for its coverage of the conflict in Iran. Lake criticized the judge who issued the ruling and said the Trump administration will appeal. Politico has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. And last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story. In August 1972, two young. women leaving a movie theater in Fairview Park, Ohio, found a newborn baby girl in a paper bag in a shopping cart. They called the police and accompanied the baby to the hospital, but they never stopped thinking about her. More than 50 years later, Pearl Marshall, now a music teacher living in

Virginia, discovered she was that baby. With the help of a local historical researcher, all three women reunited last summer. I won't forget the day that we found her, Darlene Gilliland said, and I won't forget the Dane that we found her again. News 5 Cleveland has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to readtangle.com,

where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Moll, signing all. Have a great day, y'all. Peace.

Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Zoll, and our executive producer is John Lull. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kayback and associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsay Canuth, and Bailey Saw. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership,

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