The Dispatch Podcast - A Strategic Stalemate in Iran

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

Steve Hayes is joined by Jonah Goldberg, Mike Warren, and Mike Nelson to measure the strategic success of the war in Iran so far and discuss the diverging war aims between U.S. and Israel.The Agenda:���Is Iran winning the war?—Trump's shifting rhetoric—Trump's daily video montage briefing—U.S. and Israel's diverging war aims—Bad timing for a shutdown fight—NWYT: The America First awardDispatch Recommendations:—Media’s New Ethical Dilemma: Polymarket and Kalshi—The Gorilla Channel—Meet the Has-Beens, Never-Weres, and Felon Locked in a Trumpy Primary—Will Cuba Be the Next to Fall?Show Notes:—G-File: Two Trump Administrations—Audrey Fahlberg's reporting on Joe Kent Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees can grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. On today's roundtable, we return to Iran. Is Iran actually winning the war, as some observers claim? Are the United States and Israel on the same page in their war goals? Does it matter if they are? Also, is there a worse time for a fight over Homeland Security funding? And finally, not worth your time, Donald Trump's latest award, the Golden America First Award. Congratulations, Mr. President. I'm joined today by my dispatch colleagues, editor-in-chief Jonah Goldberg, senior editor Mike Warren,

and dispatch contributor, Mike Nelson. Let's dive right in. Mike Nelson, I'm looking here at a tweet from The Economist. A month of bombing Iran has achieved nothing. Will Donald Trump escalate or talk? For now, at least, the advantage lies with the Islamic Republic. And it's got a picture of the cover with someone holding up a map with a ring bearing the flag of the Islamic Republic and the cover line, Advantage Iran.

Now, I'm no military expert. But the United States and Israel has done tremendous damage to the Iranian military, to its intelligence capabilities, to its leadership structure. This seems to me way too clever by half. Who's right? I mean, the economist in their, you know, snarky way of presenting it raised some important issues, but they are, like a lot of people are, way too catastrophic about the way they're categorizing this. To say it's accomplished nothing is, you know, patently false. Particularly when we look at, again, the White House has kind of coalesced around these four criteria that they're trying to bring about.

Two of those are demonstrably, you know, SENTCOM has done a lot to achieve effects against those two, destroying the ballistic missile capability and destroying the Navy. Now, what we have not done is change the calculus of the regime to seek concession rather than resistance. And I think that going into the conflict, it was probably taken as a given or an assumption that a certain amount of pain would create those conditions where the regime wanted to seek concessions. I mean, the president himself said as much, right? The president said, we expect it would bomb the heck out of them for a few days and they'd concede. Right. And what I think we're realizing now is that damage has not translated into sufficient pain to,

bring about that kind of mea culpa or the crying uncle on the part of the regime, that there is a certain amount of solipsism that took place in the administration where we thought, if this happened to us, we would seek concession if we were this badly damaged, but we're not looking at it through the same prism as the way the regime is, which is primarily seeking survival, seeking their position of dominance within the region, and retaining the capability to make decisions later. Because I think one of the things this has done in counter to our long-term goals is this is created a feeling within the regime that we are always going to be under threat. At any time the United States and Israel might seek to end us or destroy some of our capabilities. So if this is

going to end with us still in power, when it does, we need to be able to get moving very quickly on the next mechanism of deterrence to make sure this doesn't happen in the future. So we have accomplished a fair amount. We haven't accomplished what we thought we were going to do. And so now the administration needs to decide what is the next lever that we're going to pull to try to create sufficient pain or pressure or leverage to make the regime concede because it's not there yet. And I think we saw that with the president's ultimatum about opening the straight or we're going to strike your energy infrastructure. The fact that the regime did not blink at all, and he did suggest we are nowhere close to achieving that level of leverage that we need. Mike, help us understand what

happened there. The president, as Mike said, did issue this ultimatum. on the straight of war moves. And just as the deadline was approaching, he announced that because there were these fantastic behind-the-scenes negotiations taking place and good progress being made, he was going to give them some extra time. The Iranians, of course, immediately came out and said, that's nonsense.

We're not negotiating. We don't want to negotiate. We're just fine. Can you shed any light on whether there have been these negotiations? If there have been negotiations, what they look like, And what's the status of the debate about reopening the Strait of Hormuz? I mean, this is a huge problem from a reporting standpoint and from an information standpoint here. Stateside, which is, I don't know, and nobody else really seems to know what to believe, what is really happening.

I mean, Steve, I think maybe you've said this sort of maybe in our editorial meeting this week, that, you know, the president of the United States says one thing. the Iranian regime says another, and we don't really know who to believe on whether negotiations were happening or not. I think the lack of clarity about everything from what the goals are sort of politically with, you know, do we want to change the regime? Do we just just simply want to, you know, knock them on their asses and then we have some other plan? Like, whatever that is, whatever the specifics of, you know, the presidents, you know, we're giving you 48 hours, no, and now we're giving you five days. All of this doesn't work, I think, in a free society

where there are not just members of the press, there are members of Congress, just the American people have, I think, important questions or just want to know what's going on. It is confusing for even those of us who are trying to ask people, what do you know, what's happening, what's really going on. And it just doesn't give,

it certainly doesn't give me a lot of confidence, and you can look at the polling on this. it continues to be an unpopular war. And so it leaves the impression, and I think that's the impression is correct, that the president is sort of jumping from kind of one position to another and doesn't really have any sort of consistent strategy.

You know, the Iranians were supposed to sort of shudder at this threat. And then when they don't, you know, it's like, well, the president sort of goes to the next point in his decision, tree that only he knows and only he has sort of a window into. So at the end of the day, I just, I just don't know. I don't know how to interpret this. I don't know how to, in general, think about sort of how he's conducting this war from his perspective.

Jonah, you pointed out this week that while it's certainly true that a lot of people don't know, it's not just Mike, right? It's very hard. If you're covering this war full time, there's a lot we don't know. There's a lot. It's hard to ascertain. But you pointed out, that there's one party or two parties that certainly know what the reality is and what the truth is. One of them is the Iranians. Right. And so if Trump is sort of bluffing his way through this or making stuff up to manipulate or goose the markets, that could very well be sending a signal to the Iranians as they're on the receiving end of this information.

Yeah, I mean, it's not just sending a signal that is hard to interpret. Let's just say for the sake of argument that Iran is not having meaningful conversations with the United States. It's possible. The only asterisk I put on any of that stuff is maybe there's some rogue guy not checking in with the rest of the regime trying to work out a deal for himself and saying, I have these deliverables and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But let's just put that possibility aside for a second and say, it's just a lie. It's just a flat out lie that the regime isn't serious negotiations. that they've given Trump a gift, right?

That was the story earlier this week. And Trump is just making it up. Well, the one group in the world that absolutely knows, whether, knows that that's a lie, is the Iranian regime in that scenario. And that's why it is not implausible. It's not ridiculous to say that there are a lot of people are starting to say Iran thinks it's winning this war.

And because they see Trump as the one who's blinking. And that's because Trump cares much. more about constituencies other than the Iranian regime. He cares about his approval ratings. He cares about the midterms. He cares about his popularity. And this, we've got a great deal on the works is another version of his sort of condo salesman. I need two weeks thing. It is, it feels like he's just buying time. And that's fine as a political strategy domestically that keep people from getting too impatient with the war. But as a negotiating strategy or as a posture in a war, it tells Iran that Trump is buckling. And I think, look, I'm weirdly

unconfused about what I think about a lot of this, about what's happening. I'm very confused about what my position vis-a-vis the war should be. And I go back and forth because I have friends on all sides of it. But on all sides of the debate, you don't have regime friends. You're calling the That's right. And I think that Trump is guilty of one of the older, and you know, Mike and you and Steve, you guys know this stuff better than I do, but like one of the oldest sins in foreign policy stuff is mirroring, right, is thinking that your enemy thinks like you. And so you try to anticipate what they're going to do as if you were in their situation. And so Trump thinks everybody wants a deal. And he thinks that the people who don't want deals, if you kill them and replace them with somebody else, then obviously they'll want a deal. And so Trump went into this thinking that there's one person in charge of Iran. I mean, and it's an understandable mistake, Supreme Leader and all that. And that person gets to make all the decisions. Well, it turns out when you decapitate the Supreme Leader and you maim his son who becomes

the next Supreme Leader and kill the new Supreme Leader, big chunks of his family, that maybe that guy doesn't want to negotiate. And maybe that guy doesn't think along the same terms. Like, there are a lot of people in the regime in Iran who think these are the end times. been talking about the end times for a very long time. They wargame the end times, right? And so Trump went into this thinking this is a straightforward Venezuela replay. And I personally think that the way to think about this is if you're grading it militarily, I guess we're going to get to some of this. If you're grading it militarily, we're kicking the snot out of Iran. If you're grading it strategically,

it's much murkier. Yeah. Because the way I've been thinking about, I'm trying to come up with the right analogy. Let's say you pick a fight with a bunch of bikers. Now, you're going to lose in the straight-up fights and the bikers, but before they beat the living tar out of you, you explain to them, hey, I've got all of your loved ones locked up someplace. And if I go down, I hit this button in my hand, and they all die. Right? All of a sudden, those guys aren't going to want to fight you anymore, or they're going to really be nervous about fighting you because they don't, there's something that they care about more than just beating you up. That's the Strait of Hormuz.

That's the global oil markets. And the Iranians have this asymmetric advantage about the Strait of Hormuz. And it's not just the Strait of Hormuz, right? It's also all of their neighbors' oil and gas installations and all of that. And they are pressing their advantage in a non-military sphere. And these got, I mean, obviously the military and the strategists knew this was possible. But the reporting suggests that Trump, said, oh, that's not going to happen because he was guilty of mirroring, right? And he was like,

who would, who would do that? Who would screw with the global oil supply? You know, Iran needs that oil. They need, they make money from that. Why would they, you know, torch their own real estate property, you know, that kind of thing. And, and that's why we're here is that Iran has a gun to the head of the loved ones, economically speaking, of the Western economies, and just more military stuff isn't necessarily going to change the equation, particularly when you have a regime that is bought in ideologically and theologically to what they're doing.

The Maduro thing works in part because everybody in Venezuela is just a scumbag criminal who's self-interested and, of course, they're going to cut deals. Turns out the Iranian regime is full of actual true believers and Trump, it's like wrapping something in lead for Superman. People actually believe in what they believe

are just incomprehensible and invisible to Trump. And that's one of the reasons why we got into the mess that we're in. I love the assumption built into your analogy as a long time Harley Davidson owner that bikers have loved ones. Because we don't often get those concessions, but it's true. So did any of you catch Trump's? He did a gaggle with the press. I believe it was just outside the White House when he was answering questions about this and about the negotiations and about the straight. And I will say, having watched it, it was, I don't know why it's taken me 10 years into the Trump

Erdick to have this moment. But watching it answered the questions, it was more evident to me than it has been before. Maybe I guess the analog would be some of his COVID press briefings that he was just making it. Like there was a serious Tommy Flanagan vibe. Like, yeah, that's the ticket at the end of his. at the end of his phrases. Yeah. Yeah. And it was like, he was asked, you know, who's going to control the straits?

And he kind of looks around and he's like, maybe I will control the straits. You know, it's very much felt like the old John Lovett's thing, which I think doesn't, you know, as Jonas says, the most important people in this dynamic are the Iranians because they know whether this is true or whether this is not true. But even if you're trying to make a case to the American public that you're in charge, just sort of the affect there, I think would have been. let's just say to be charitable, unconvincing. So, Mike, back to you on this. I mean, I think Jonah raises not only a good point, but in some ways, it's the way that I'm thinking about the war, the most important point, right? It is possible to believe that the economist is wrong, that that's an overstatement.

It's just not true that a month of bombing Iran has accomplished nothing, which is their claim, sort of on its face. But it's also true to believe that in spite of that military success, or maybe, I mean, one could argue, because of that military success, we have all of these other sort of successive problems down the road that seem to have been inadequately thought through that, you know, we've often referred to Donald Trump's presidency as an ad hocacy. I think that is strongly in evidence here. We may look at the long-term difficulties through the prism of the objectives of each side. And as Jonah points out, the objective of the Iranian regime is survival.

And sort of that's it. It's not much more than that. And so far, they are achieving that objective. The U.S. objective is much more opaque, I would say. But even if you go back to the four objectives that were laid out or the ones, I think Trump added one to his list last Friday when he said the world was winding down and we had five objectives. and then you have the other objectives that sort of the president just throws out there to complete surrender and total annihilation. It is possible to believe that we could be not only winning but dominating the military battle, but in the medium and long term, have the more difficult task if the regime's task is mere survival.

Yeah, I think that one of the problems with his shifting rhetoric and his adhocracy and ad hoc goals that he lays out is it's hard for San Francisco. and it's hard for the State Department or whoever else is leading these negotiations to scope down what we're really trying to achieve and the means by which to bring those about if those keep shifting. And part of the problem, I mean, you're right, he added a fifth one, which is kind of an extension of the ballistic missile one, which was the defense industrial base. Basically, it's the next layer so that they can't rebuild their missile capability later. So you can argue that that is an extension of the second one and still one that Suncom can't achieve to some extent, or at least a trit it. But if we talk about, for example, management of

the strait or the conditions by which we will accept a cessation of hostilities when the straight is in condition X, the president hasn't thought that through. So he hasn't delegated the ability to create those conditions to either his diplomats or his military members. And that hasn't been communicated to the Iranians because they don't know necessarily what they need to agree to. Now, I think this is an extension of something we saw back in 2015 or 2016. There was a seminal moment in the Trump campaign. And it was the interview with Chris Matthews when he's asked about abortion and criminality of abortion,

if it is outlawed. And off the top of his head, he just says, well, we'll put women who get abortions in prison too. And that was a departure from traditional pro-life thought, but you could tell he was not steeped in pro-life thought. He is not part of the culture. He was just parodying it. He was saying what he thought people would say.

Similarly, we have people in Tampa at Foggy Bottom at the Treasury Building who have thought about these conditions for decades about what we need from the Iranians, what looks like peace in the region, et cetera, et cetera. And he hasn't. And now he has access to all that information, but he has no interest in absorbing it. He just, I think, took an original idea at inception that we and the Israelis agree that Iran is bad and that it's time to deal with them and that all decisions that flow from that initial agreement will be in alignment. And without thinking through what those are, we get these kind of in the moment conditions that he fluctuates on. Yeah, I mean, it's not even like that he's not familiar with it. I mean, I think that's a very good point. It's a terrific comparison, I think, that moment. But there was reporting from NBC out this week about how the president is being briefed on what's happening in the war. And the, it's a sort of complicated, longer series of reports. But among the things that NBC reported was that the president, in effect, doesn't want to hear bad news and does want to hear good news. I mean, this is not anything new. We've known this about Donald Trump for years. I think it's, you know, sometimes you could argue that it's even a positive in a political context. But it often creates challenges that wouldn't exist otherwise.

But in this context, just reading this NBC report about how Trump, the news Trump gets on the war. One example came this month when five U.S. Air Force refueling planes were hit in an Iranian strike at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, according to one of the two U.S. government officials. Trump wasn't briefed about the strikes, and he learned about what happened from the media. When Trump inquired, he was told the planes weren't badly damaged. Behind the scenes, Trump acted angrily to the news coverage and posted on social media that the people who were reporting that there was bad damage to these planes wanted the U.S. U.S. to lose the war. He just literally in that case didn't know. And the other quote from this article is the official noted that Trump's briefings tend to draw better feedback from his aides when they focus on U.S. victories. None of that surprises us, Mike. Warren. Is it the kind of thing that

can be overcome? Is there anybody that you know, I mean, you covered this, you covered the Trump first term carefully. You know the players here. Is it something that Mark, Marco Rubio could go to the president at a certain sort of key point and say, Mr. President, this is not going the right way. Mr. President, here are five things you need to know in order to make good decisions about your next steps. And they don't fit with your understanding of what's happening in the war. I'd hope so.

I'd hope that Markerubio can do that and maybe is doing that. You know, the NBC report is, as you say, not surprising. And I have no reason to doubt the reporting. but, you know, for all we know, there are other briefings that he's getting, you know, from someone like Marco Rubio that is much more realistic and, you know, it's the good and the bad and it really lays out to the president what the situation is. But I do think, you know, the old saw, right, that personnel is policy. The huge difference between this term for Donald Trump and the first term, the first term, you had a lot of people in positions of power. There was James Mattis at the Pentagon. You had H.R. McMaster and later John Bolton at the National Security Council,

the National Security Advisor. He had Rex Tillerson and later Mike Pompeo at the State Department. And then sort of going down the slightly lower levels, you had a lot of people. At the time, and even in this new term, there was a kind of sense that, you know, Americans weren't getting the full Trump and weren't even sort of understanding what a true Trump presidency looked like. And that was supporters of the president and opponents of the president who were sort of maybe almost criticizing the first term for all of these people trying to kind of stop Trump from being Trump. Yeah. And I understand that kind of analysis or criticism.

But the other side of that was that these were people who had careers, who had reputations that preceded Trump that were sort of were not entirely dependent on Trump for their position. Who could be more honest, who could be more straightforward. There were much more debates. I mean, there's so much dismissal, particularly among MAGA world, of process. But when it comes to national security, process is really, really important because that national security process, for instance, through the National Security Council, in which a lot of different voices from across the government and not just sort of the national security elements, you know, the Defense Department, National Security Council, intelligence. but even from places like, you know, the Department of the Treasury, Department of Commerce, all these different parts of the government, sort of bring lots of information to bear,

that the president then has to sort of sift through. He has aides that help him sift through and make well-informed good decisions. They're not always the right decisions. There are mistakes, but the process is there to help the president. And this is a president for whom, like, process means nothing. that we're like reading something that might sort of give him a complicated view of what the stakes are and how to make decisions based on, you know, imperfect information or conflicting information.

He has no time for that, and there are no people around him who can tell him the things that he doesn't want to hear so that he can make the best decisions. And that, at the end of the day, is what makes it so concerning for me to sort of watch this, watch all of these military successes and feel like what's backfilling? And so we're left with a mess. And the process could have helped stop this, but Trump is just not someone who does process. So it's funny. I just wrote a Wednesday G-File about a similar point about how in the first Trump administration, there are all sorts of people who wouldn't let Trump be Trump. That is something that they take great pride in. Right? You know, like, you'll hear Paul Ryan say, you won't believe the things we stopped.

Yes. Right. You wouldn't believe the things we prevented, right? And the MAGA crowd concedes, buys that narrative too. They think that that was the problem. He was undermined by anonymous and all of these people who, you know, and that's part of the reason why they hate sessions and all of that kind of stuff. and the second administration was built and designed to prevent anyone saying no to him. And to let Trump be Trump. That was the whole point. That's why loyalists have a higher, you know,

you're more, you can be a 22-year-old friggin intern and run the counterterrorism shop at the FBI if you're a super mega loyalist, right? Man, I wish that was a hypothetical. Yeah. So, and this is why, I mean, I don't, know where Steve wants to go next, but this is simply why I have so little patience for the Trump has betrayed MAGA argument because this is Trumpism on full display. It is Trumpism

to some people on Fox News, you know, getting whispers in his ear in Mar-a-Lago, being impetuous, getting over his skis because he did something. manly and strong in Venezuela, and it worked once so it can work again, and doing foreign policy by social media, all of these sorts of things. I mean, like, you can go down just an enormous checklist. This is what Trumpism looks like. And the Trump has betrayed MAGA crap is just an example of cope. Yeah, it's cope. It's people who convinced themselves that everything else was forgivable or fine. It's a moment of revealed preferences. Yeah. Right? It's like if, if, you're You had no problem with anything Trump did for the last decade, essentially, including January 6.

But when he does something allied with Israel that benefits Israel, that's when your whole worldview falls apart. You're telling me something about your attitudes towards Israel more than you're telling me something about Trump. And like at least a lot of the other resignation or Trump betrayal kind of stories, to the extent we've had any in this second term, they've been like from decent career lawyers or prosecutors who were ordered to do something they thought violated, you know, legal ethics or just the law

or was too reputational damaging to them as lawyers and that kind of thing. And that's forgivable, right? I mean, that's very much like Trump One kind of thing. It's like you try to like do things by the book where you can, but also he's the commander in chief and he's the president. You got to do what the president wants. But then if it goes too far, you have a choice to say no or quit or you face the consequences

or whatever. But for most of the people gnashing their teeth and renting their cloth over this, it's just, it's about their Israel fixations more than it is as anything to do with like some surprise move by Donald Trump. This is just how Donald Trump has done politics and foreign policy from the beginning. All right. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from the dispatch podcast.

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Many promotions are available both in-store and online, though some may vary. Okay, we're back. You're listening to the Dispatch podcast. Let's jump in. I want to get to the Israel question in just a second. But I would say, like, if we were compiling a list of the things that we can just assert as true about Donald Trump over having watched him now in the public eye in the political context for the past decade, plus one of them surely would be that he has little patience or tolerance for people who disagree with him. I mean, it's, you know, there's always all this talk about a team of rivals. And that's seen in the discussion about sort of the presidency and how a White House should operate as the model, Trump's never really pretended to have a team of rivals. I mean, we've had moments where you can point to people on different sides of different issues. But if you've learned anything about Trump, you watch him and I would point to the post-election 2020 back and forth about this, you say something to Trump that he doesn't like your sidelined.

you are no longer part of the conversation again and again and again and again. And then he just chooses new advisors. So he switches from Bill Barr to Sidney Powell. I mean, there was a whole line of people working for Trump on the campaign side in the White House counsel's office and elsewhere who went and told Trump you lost the 2020 election. And one after another after another, they were either cashiered or sidelined or they resigned out of frustration. And the next thing, you know, he's meeting with Sidney Powell and Mike Flynn and, you know, all these conspiracy theorists in the White House. So there's no incentive if you want to remain in the room. And one of the things that I think somebody like a Marco Rubio often tells himself as he's rationalizing his service is I want to be in the room when the important decisions are made.

In case things go off the rails, I can be there to kind of help correct. There's so little incentive if you want to keep showing up in the room to actually. do that, that I think it's a challenge. Mike Nelson, I want to go to the piece that you wrote and address something that Jonah brought up in his comments. Your piece this week was about the delicate maneuverings of maintaining a coalition of working with allies in an undertaking like this. And you pointed to Israeli airstrikes on South Pars gas fields, where the president came out and really lambasted the Israelis in social media post, said basically, hey, they're on their own. We don't agree with this. And, you know, later reporting revealed that,

in fact, the United States had blessed to these strikes that the president was, or at least had been made aware of them, that the president was taking issue with. And I want to add a couple of data points to that, particularly with the U.S. in Israel. There was the public dispute over the South Pars gas fields. There's a dispute over whether the United States and Israel should be encouraging the Iranians to rise up. This is sort of a key part of the Israeli strategy is to at least create the conditions for them to rise up. Benjamin Netanyahu said last week, you know, you can lead someone to water, but you can't force them to drink. The time is now you should be doing this. The Israeli ambassador made similar comments this week. You also had that same Israeli ambassadors to the U.S.

lighter saying that the Iranian parliamentary speaker, Mohamed Boggar Ghalibov, would not be a few future, good future leader of Iran. This was somebody that had been reported the United States was sort of eyeing as a potential person we could do business with. Are these things normal, first of all? And if they're normal, if it's normal to have these kinds of tensions and this kind of back and forth, is it normal to have them in public the way that we've been seeing? I mean, the going in proposition for any kind of coalition construct for fighting a war is that coalitions are made up of different countries and different countries have different inherent interests. and there is largely a fair amount of overlap in those interests, but they're not going to be

uniform. It's not going to be a perfect circle. There will be some spillover where different countries have different concerns. And in the piece I mentioned during World War II, the Allied powers had notorious disputes about the pace of the war, where the next front should be, et cetera, et cetera. During our war in Afghanistan, we had different priorities when it came to how important counter-narcotics operations were between the different partners based on how much Afghan heroin threatened the home populations. Just like that, here, the United States and Israel face different kinds of threats from Iran. Iran threatens our regional stability, our regional interests, some of our regional partners.

Iran threatens Israel's existence, and they have tried several times to bring about the end or create the conditions to bring about the end of Israel, and they have not been shy about that. So Israel is going into this with a very different threat hanging over them from the state of Iran. As such, if each country is left to their own devices, they might have a different definition of what the end of this looks like. Israel has probably more of a vested interest in the end of the regime. And the end of the regime, no matter what that looks like, even if it descends into chaos that's contained in Iran, a civil war in Iran, that potentially still meets Israel's goals. A destabilized Iran is not able to project power and threaten Israel. A destabilized Iran might cause refugee flows or spillover violence in the region that the United States has to deal with.

So we might have slightly divergent interests in or goals as far as how we see bringing about it into the conflict. The problem here is normally that gets negotiated between the members of the coalition at the national leadership level. And then it's built into a construct, where the coalition is going to achieve XYZ, and we're not going to go beyond that. We haven't done that. It goes back to what we were saying with the president, kind of just going in with looking at, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're going to go do this, but not articulating what this looks like. So right now, Israel, developing their autonomous targets,

are hitting things that make it more likely that the regime gets destabilized or is unable to sustain itself than we are. This does not mean, as like Jonah was talking about, we've had mainly principled departures from the administration. We had what I would consider kind of a flamboyant conspiratorial departure recently in the form of Joe Kent, who literally just got his job because he was an election denier and a very vocal one when he ran for Congress twice. And we should explain that Joe Kent was the head of the National Counterterrorism Center. He had been a candidate for the House of Representatives in the state of Washington, where he won a primary over Jamie Rivera Butler who had voted for impeachment. So Trump supported Joe Kent, pushed Joe Kent. We had some really terrific reporting from Audrey Falberg back at when she was at the dispatch about Joe Kent and his footsie with sort of white nationalist.

Groyper types, including Nick Fuentes, back in 2022. So none of this was a surprise. He was a known conspiracy theorist when he was tapped. It was, in my view, a scandal that he was chosen for that position, despite his, you know, impressive background in service to his country. But that's Joe Kent. Right. And just to be clear, Joe and I came from the same organization back in the day, Fifth Special

Forces Group. He lost his wife. you know, she served honorably in Syria and was killed, along with a friend of mine, John Farmer, who was in the incident, three Americans were killed. You know, his service, there are a lot of people, presidents, loyalists who have gone after Joe Kent claiming all sorts of, that he was always a scumbag. You know, there's no reason to believe his service was anything other than honorable and fantastic. But at least since leaving the military, he has had these crazy conspiratorial ideas domestically

in terms of the 2020 election and internationally in terms of blaming everything on Israel. So a slight disalignment in national interests does not mean that Israel is some kind of manipulative state that's leading us by the nose. And it's amazing to me how many people swore to me that the president was this strategic thinker, now are willing to say that he is led around by the nose and unable of making his own decisions and determining his own calculus as to whether we have interests in conflict with Iran. We do. But just as we had a misalignment, slight misalignment between FDR and Churchill, just as we've had

misalignment in every coalition we've we've ever had, that doesn't mean that Israel is some kind of nefarious actor or working against us. What is different is we don't have anybody, at least at the national level, ironing out those differences and saying this is what the coalition is seeking to accomplish, and this is what we are not. So the fault of the misalignment is not with Israel. It's with the United States as the nominal coalition leader and not taking that leadership role in determining what the end of this conflict looks like. And when the end of the conflict will come. Jonah, I think that's one of the most interesting things we look forward here to think about. If you look at the stated objectives of the Israeli leadership, it implies a much longer commitment here. I mean, if they are really

trying to foment unrest inside Iran and give time for street protests to turn into an attempted internal regime change effort, that's not happening tomorrow. And Donald Trump last Friday said the war was winding down. And he continues to say, you know, basically times up, we're about to bail, everything's good. Now, it is the case that even as he says that and says it repeatedly, we're sending marine expeditionary units over there. We are readying other troops to head to the region with the possibility of some kind of use of ground troops. How do the United States and Israel get on the same page on the discussion of the length of the war, if the objectives are not the same? If Trump says the war is over, Israel is going to stop bombing.

I don't see how Israel continues to do this stuff without. Like, Trump has to have the deliverable of Israel stopping, too. And I don't think BB could do it unilaterally. I defer to Mike on this, but I'm pretty sure that a lot of Israeli jets are being refueled by American tankers as they get to Iran. So, like, if we stop refueling them, because people... Like, I have to say, just a brief parenthetical. I am not great at geography, but there are some people out there who are so profoundly stupid about geography.

Whenever it comes to things about the Middle East, like, if you look for it on Twitter, you'll see hourly someone saying, this is all about Israel taking Iranian land for a greater Israel. And it's like, really? It's like 800, 900 miles away. You know? I mean, like that's a big bridge for Israel. And anyway, so I think if Trump says it's over, it's over. I mean, he told Bibi to stop with Gaza and he stopped.

He told Bibi to stop that it was over with Operation Midnight Hammer and it stopped. I don't think Israel has the bandwidth to do it solo, political, military, or otherwise. And so that doesn't mean that Israel stops doing clandestine. stuff or providing intel opposition forces on the ground or those kinds of things, right? The Mossad's gone to Mossad, which is awesome. But I think the real problem here, I mean, part of the problem is talking about the stuff is that it's a crash course in learning why some military cliches are cliches. The enemy has a vote, right?

Lots of people say it. When you watch it on cable news, they make it sound like, you know, they're quoting, you know, Thucydides and they're the wisest person on earth, but it's just, it's just factually true. And Iran has a real vested interest in creating deterrence or reestablishing some kind of deterrence. And, you know, Ken Pollock, first week of this, I had him on the remnant. And he made this point, and I keep coming back and do it in my head. He was like, Trump thinks this can be a surgical thing. where you get to a deal, and then it's all clean and tidy,

and he gets to declare a success. The Iranians think this is an all-out total war for the destruction of the, not just the regime, but the whole theocratic, fanatical, Islamic revolutionary movement, and they see it in eschatological terms, which is my point about the mirroring thing. And even if for the ones who don't, even if sure the corrupt guys in the IRGC who are battle-hardened, real tough people, they are going to see, if Trump says, okay, we won, they'd be crazy not to do something more. I don't know what it is, but like they're now essentially saying the Strait of Hormuz is our naval toll booth.

And anyone who wants to use it has to pay us, we now have sovereignty over it. That is one of their new demands. and I don't blame them in pure geostrategic terms. And I don't think Trump has figured out a way to fix that problem. I should also just, I don't know if we're going to be on around any much longer. I don't want to get into a big partisan blame kind of thing here. But the idea that you would go continue doing this stupid-ass TSA shutdown thing at a moment where the country we've been talking about having sleeper terrorist

cells in our country for decades, we're at a all out to the mattresses war with is insane. Like a few years ago, there were these terrorist attacks in Istanbul, and one of them was the brilliant idea of blowing up people before they go through security. We are now concentrating literally thousands of people in five-hour-long security lines at airports all around the country because of this. you know, pick your side of who you think is wrong. This is one of these things where I'm perfectly happy to be both sides are because of this fight over TSA funding.

And as a matter of just basic fundamental national security strategy, it's embarrassing, you know, to think that, like, you're not going to sort this out. Like, a president who actually is taking this more seriously would say, yeah, I know we want to win this thing, but let's cave on this because we can't have this. we can't have our airline industry this vulnerable when we're attacking the leading terrorist power in the world. And it's just embarrassing. It just as a matter of basic politics. Who bears the blame for that? You mentioned the president. Well, first of all, I'm perfectly happy to do both sides. I think it's majority of the Democrats. I think the Democrats are

being stupid about this because they've made their point. No one who's inclined to vote for the Democrats because of their position on ICE will not vote for the Democrats. If they message it properly and say, hey, look, we're going to take the higher road here. This is disrupting the economy. This is disrupting people's lives. And moreover, it's a national security threat during a war that we shouldn't have gotten into and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They should take the high road.

They should do it. But the base doesn't want it. And the Rachel Maddow crowd will say it's a capitulation to tyranny and all this BS. But Thune and Johnson should also be figuring out how to fix this, too. The Democrats would respond by saying they have gone to Republicans with a proposal to fund everything but ice. And if Republicans want to do it, they can do it at any time. I think everybody's... Yeah, I get it. I get it. That's my point. I don't think it's a binary thing for the blame. But like, grow up people. Yep, I'm with you. This is like not a normal situation for a normal

shutdown fight. Amen. It's, you're basically exposing this massive Achilles heel at a time we're bombing the crap out of a terrorist regime. Well, and let's not let the president off the hook here, because there have been deals, frameworks of deals, that he has blown up himself this week. And sort of social media posts just this week, right? And it's a huge mess. Politically, I think I'm writing something about it. I think it actually ends up hurting Republicans

because the image of those lines, you know, is just compounds all of the other things that swing voters feel is, the problems that have become because Republicans are in charge, it's sort of not more complex than that. But I do agree with Jota that Democrats have a lot of the blame here, but it's an interest, I mean, God forbid that something actually happens, you know, what sort of political blame will be cast about. The one thing that I find hilarious is the underlying argument is Democrats' objection to the presence of ICE on the streets in so much as they are in such a large presence.

So the president's solution to this is to take off ice off the streets and manned TSA checkpoints. So we have less ice on the streets in aggregate. That's the president's solution. Everybody wins and everybody loses. Before we take an ad break, please consider becoming a member of the dispatch. You'll unlock access to bonus podcast episodes and all of our exclusive newsletters and articles. You can sign up at the dispatch.com slash join and if you use the promo code roundtable, you'll get one month free. And speaking of ads, if they aren't your stuff,

thing you could upgrade to a premium membership. No ads, early access to all episodes, two free gift memberships to give away exclusive town halls with the founders and more. Okay, we'll be right back. At Desjardin, our business is helping yours. We're here to support your business through every stage of growth, from your first pitch to your first acquisition. Whether it's improving cash flow or exploring investment banking solutions, with Desjardin business, it's all under one roof. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us. And contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk. Business. When WestJat first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere,

and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to Westjetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. Welcome back. Let's return to our discussion. We're going to move to not worth your time, but before we do, we've gotten a lot of requests from listeners over the years and in particular over the past several months to find out what we're reading and to get an understanding of something that we've read that might be worth their time. So before we get to not worth your time, I'd like to ask each of the panelists, something on the dispatch, from the dispatch, our writers and contributors, that you have been reading that we can say, without fear of contradiction, is worth your time and worth the time of our listeners.

And Mike Warren, I'll start with you. Alex Deemis, our colleague, has a terrific piece up this week about the headline for it. It's in the media's new ethical dilemma, Polly Market and Kalshi, or Kalshi, I think is how you pronounce it. these prediction market companies and what do media companies, how do they deal with the fact that, you know, reporters and commentators are going to be commenting and reporting and sharing information about world events. They can also potentially bet on in these markets. And bring an insider opinion to, yeah.

Exactly. Exactly. And it's a great story, but I just love the top of the story in which Alex goes to a polymarket sponsored bar that opened in D.C. this week. It was sort of a pop-up three-day event where they had array of TVs where you could sort of monitor the situation on a whole number of events that you could also bet on in Polymarkets sort of betting pools. And it was, I mean, you should just read it. The opening of this bar was itself a disaster. It does make me wonder if somebody at Polymarket had bet on whether this

bar of theirs. I could have predicted that it was going to be a disaster. Exactly. Well, you could, you would have cleaned up. Mike Nelson. So, Just from a couple days ago, Nick Catogeo's Gorilla Channel, first of all, because any opportunity to bring back one of the old, the deep Twitter lore, pixelated boat bits that is hilarious is always a good opportunity. But also,

it's relevant to the conversation we had earlier about the way that the administration, and particularly the president, is ingesting information about the war, mistaking measures of effectiveness with measures of performance, and how it speaks to the way the administration is thinking about the nature of conflict,

that the killing is an end unto its and should be enough to bring about the strategic goals that they have not yet thought through. So I think it's really good at tracing back the way we've understood the president's character and the way he looks at information and makes decisions based on it and how it's relevant to the conversation that we're having here about Iran. Jonah? So I want to first say we've had a bunch of great stuff about the SAVE Act, the good, the bad and the ugly about it.

There was a great explainer for the Morning Dispatch, the Save America Act explained. Stephen Ritcher tackled something I've been thinking about. And another piece is the Save America Act, a passport to electoral success. I've been arguing this for a while that this could blow up in people's faces because the Republican coalition today isn't the Republican coalition that existed when Republicans wanted to start doing voter ID. The low propensity voters, a lot of them have moved in the Republican column. And so making it more difficult to vote may actually disenfranchised, so to speak,

more Republicans than Democrats. It could be another version of like the dummymander, and I'm glad we had something on that. But the only reason I wanted to start with things I've actually read, including Kevin's piece on the Save Act, is that I have not finished our lead article this morning. Meet the has-beens, never worse, and felon locked in a Trumpy primary by this guy named Steve Hayes,

a very difficult guy to write for the dispatch. We are still going through edits on his Taliban piece, but I just, I want to give a shout out. It starts great. I started it this morning. I was like, oh my gosh, but it's longer than the wedding scene and the deer hunter, so I haven't finished it yet. I just want to give him encouragement, you know, because, you know, he's a plucky little,

you know, aspiring writer. And when he actually puts his, puts the effort in, he can, he can actually write a a thing or two. Thanks. If only we had editors, you know, this thing is way too long. No, we had very good edits on the piece. And it still ended up too long. But it was a fun piece to report.

my nomination is a terrific piece that we ran at the beginning of the week from Gil Gera or for those of you who listened to that episode where he came on and discussed Venezuela, I will call him Gil Gera, who wrote about Cuba. Will Cuba be the next to fall? And Gil has a gift of taking very complicated situations and making them accessible, easy to understand without dumbing them down. It's something that we aspire to do, I think, with virtually everything we do. we do here at the dispatch, but he has it. And this is a terrific piece. I've been reading, you know,

sort of newspaper headlines and following the Cuba story from a distance. And just reading this, I think gives you a much better understanding of exactly what's leading to the difficulties on the streets down there, why this is different than past blackouts and past energy shortages and where it all might lead. So I highly recommend that. And we will put all these in the show notes. We will definitely put all these in the show notes. Thank you, Jonah. Finally, today, I wanted to go to some clips that we have. One from a dinner where President Trump spoke and was honored on Wednesday evening for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

That's the committee in Washington that helps get Republicans elected to the House of Representatives. They had a dinner and they bestowed upon the president. a new prize. Here is House Speaker Mike Johnson. The president has done so much for the American people, and we want to honor him in some small way, some token of our appreciation for his leadership. And so tonight, we have created a new award.

We're going to do something we've never done before. We're going to honor him with a new award that we'll present annually from this point forward. But he is the suitable and fitting recipient of the first ever America First Award. We can think of no better title for what that is. That's this beautiful golden statue here appropriate for the new golden era in America. And we want to let you know before we bring the president out. House Speaker Mike Johnson giving the president a new award. But wait, this is not the only new award in the past couple of months that Donald Trump has received.

And here is Johnny Infantino, the current president of FIFA, the worldwide soccer organization. This is what we want from a leader, a leader that cares about the people. We want to live in a safe world, in a safe environment. We want to unite. That's what we do here today. That's what we'll do at the World Cup, Mr. President. And you definitely deserve the first FIFA Peace Prize for your action, for what you have obtained in your way, but you obtained it in an incredible way. And you can always count, Mr. President, on my support, on the support of the entire football community or soccer community to help you make peace and make the world prosper all over the world.

And that was Johnny Infantino, the head of football. FIFA, the worldwide soccer federation. Jonah, I'll come to you first with this question. If you had an award to give Donald Trump, what would your award be? And if you don't want to answer that question, did these awards, do these sort of Trump ass-kissing awards, they're sort of embarrassing for the country? Do they actually do any harm or are they sort of harmless? well geez the funny thing about the clip from mike johnson i made this joke on twitter but is that you

actually can't see the statue he just describes this golden statue and i was like let me take a guess it's a calf right uh huh passover's right around the corner so it's finished right actually someone responded with a with a gif from blazing saddles where harvey corman's going too jewish but um but i got say like I do think it's bad right I mean like I try to be a little consistent about this kind of thing there was a lot of people on our or my side of the aisle during the Clinton stuff said oh this sends a bad signal to kids that tells them you know how to behave there was like quotes about how Bill Clinton's behavior was trickling down into the culture of high schools and and lots of you know, bemoaning and Bill Bennett-esque, you know, Tisking.

But I think there's something serious to that. And I also think when you say that the supposedly very manly guy, that his vanity is so thin that he can be bribed with BS trophies and awards and that everyone has to pretend like the emperor's new clothes are fantastic, I'm just not sure that that's great for the culture. I'm not sure it's great. You know, it's also just, the problem is, on the flip side, you're right. You know, it's just horribly embarrassing because everyone else, it's embarrassing from every angle, right?

You're embarrassed, you know, one of my favorite German words is friend shaman, which means embarrassment at a distant for somebody else. It's like half the jokes in the office are you feeling embarrassed for Michael Scott, right? I feel so embarrassed for Mike Johnson. I feel so embarrassed for the people who have to pretend that these awards are real and merited and the people who congratulate him. Yeah.

And so it's embarrassing from every single angle. And I don't think it says anything good about the culture or how you're supposed to measure success in life. Mike, if you were in line, if you attended that dinner, Mike Warren, last night, and were seated near the president, went up to shake his hand afterwards. Could you have, in good conscience,

and with a straight face, extended your hand and said, congratulations, Mr. President, on winning the first America First Award. I mean, clearly I couldn't. I'm laughing, just like, imagining being in that situation. You know, we can laugh about this NRCC award, but, you know, I will not tolerate any criticism

of the FIFA Peace Prize coming from an organization that is known for its uprightness and has no corruption or anything like that in its history. I defy you to show otherwise. Look, what is there to say? There are so many times I've been covering Trump now as a political figure for 10 years and 10 plus years. And in that time, I have basically always had little kids. And it never ceases to amaze me that the way that people in Trump's

party, people in Trump's orbit, treat him like a child that needs a pat on the head because if they don't, then they might get a temper tantrum. There are so many parallels to my own experience. And all I can say is if you keep giving these, you know, pads on the head and nice little gold statues, they're never going to learn anything. But maybe Trump is a little too old to learn anything anyway. So Warren, I don't want to put you on the spot, but just very quickly. Sure. And we're not doing a betting market thing here. But Mike Johnson said that this is the first annual America First Prize. What are the odds that there is a second annual America First Prize?

And if there is a second annual America First Prize, will Trump be the first two-time winner? Historics, really, that would be. And what are the odds that in five years, anyone but you and Drucker and a handful of people can even answer the trivia question, what was the America First Prize? You know, I may not be able to answer it in three weeks.

Like, this is something I'm putting out of my head. No, my first thought when you started this question was, well, Trump is going to win it again next year, clearly. I also say I love, I said this in our Slack, that the most unintentionally funny line from Johnson is he names the America First Award. he says, we could think of no better title for what that is, which the slight different intonation. And, yeah, I got to agree with that.

I'm like, yeah, I can't think of any other better title for whatever this is. Couldn't be worse. Speaking of like forgotten trivia, you know, we've missed an inaugural award that the president received within the past beginning of this year. Last month from the Washington Coal Club, he received the inaugural, I want to get the title right, undisputed champion of beautiful clean coal award. So, you know, what would be the acronym?

Wait, what would be the acronym? Wait, what would be the acronym for that? A cobkey, I guess. I got by a cob key. He's getting ready to Egot with these, like, crazy awards that are made up. But they're becoming more and more like, you know, these Midwestern beauty contest,

like, you know, the Misteen Cheese Curd or the Ruben. Hey, you're stepping on toes. Step on toes. Except they. They earn them, right? They actually compete for that. Thank you. Okay. Good recovery. But what, you know, the, the obsequiousness and the kind of the greasiness of these external organizations trying to influence him with these awards. And we've seen it not just with

awards, Tim Apple, bringing him a, you know, a golden iPhone or the Swiss watchmakers, just giving him literally a block of gold. I think, by the way, we're forgetting the OG of all these, which was the orb in Saudi Arabia. Right. Well, there was also Rick Scott gave him an award in the first term. That's right. He came out giving some golden bowl. Yeah, I think it was like a National Republican Senatorial Committee or something. We love your Musk Prize, first annual. But what's crazy, internally, just this last week in Memphis, you saw Stephen Miller give this way over the top. You are, you know, it's like when Happy Gilmore apologized to Chubs, you're very attractive. I'm not very good looking.

you're the smartest, you know, whatever. But then in the segue there, the president turns to Cash Patel, the FBI director, who should be rooting out these, you know, Iranian sleeper cells and says, all right, Cash, let's see if you can top that. In other words, it's not even that they're expected to do it. It's not even that it's an unspoken. It's that before we can move on to other business, you must praise me. It is a demand.

And that's where we're going. Well, Rick Scott, for the record, gave President Trump the Champion for Freedom Award after the riot at the Capitol on January 6th. Thank you all for joining us today. Thanks to Mike, Mike, and Jonah. We will see you next time. If you like what we're doing here, there are a few easy ways to support us. You can rate, review, and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice to help new listeners find us. And as always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns, or corrections.

directions, you can email us at Roundtable at the Dispatch.com. We read everything, even the ones from people who like the FIFA Peace Prize. That's going to do it for today's show. Thanks so much for tuning in. And a big thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible, Noah Hickey and Peter Bonaventure. Thanks again for listening. Please join us next time.

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