The Dispatch Podcast - Are We Winning the War in Iran?

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

Steve Hayes is joined by Mike Warren and Dispatch contributors Mike Nelson, a retired Army Special Forces officer and a member of the Atlantic Council's Counterterrorism Project, and Tim Mak, founder of the Counteroffensive and Iran War Dispatches. The Agenda:—Latest updates out of Iran—On-the-ground reporting during war—Internet blackout in Iran—Obama's policy toward Iran—Drone warfare—The Ukraine-Russia war—American support for war—NWYT: A spicy salsa lawsuit The Dispatch Podcast is a production of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Dispatch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including access to all of our articles, members-only newsletters, and bonus podcast episodes—⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠by clicking here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything, like packing a spare stick. I like to be prepared. That's why I remember, 988, Canada's Suicide Crisis Hubline. It's good to know, just in case. Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a train responder anytime. 988 Suicide Crisis Helpline is funded by the government in Canada. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes, joined today by my dispatch colleague Mike Warren, a dispatch senior editor,

And dispatch contributors Mike Nelson, a retired Army Special Forces officer and a member of the Atlantic Council's Counterterrorism Project, as well as Tim Mack, one of the leading journalistic entrepreneurs of the past decade, founder of the counteroffensive, which covers Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine, and more recently, Iran War Dispatches, which provides a ground-level reported look at the war in the Persian Gulf. On today's roundtable, we'll discuss Donald Trump's claim that the United States has already won the war. against Iran. We'll look at what Iranians think of this war two weeks in and the possibility of ending the war short of regime change. We'll also discuss the Ukraine-Russia war and what it means for the conflict in the Middle East. And finally, not worth your time, suing a taqueria over spicy salsa? Before we get to today's conversation, 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 a month free.

And if ads aren't your thing, you can upgrade to a premium membership. No ads, early access to all episodes, two free gift memberships to give to friends, exclusive town halls with the founders, and much, much more. Let's dive in. Gentlemen, good to have you here. We've got a lot of get to today. Mike Nelson, let me start with you. Is the United States winning this war with Iran? on. Okay, so I actually have a piece out today in the dispatch addressing this question. It's a tough question to answer because we are and we aren't, basically. At the operational and tactical levels, we absolutely are winning and overwhelmingly so. The U.S. Central Command under Admiral Cooper, and as we see General Kane briefing us on a semi-regular basis, is absolutely hitting the targets

that they have specified. They are destroying the ballistic missile capability. They're tritting the Iranian Navy, they're hitting ground-based targets at a level of proficiency that cannot be demonstrated by any other country. But the problem is there is a gap between what the military can achieve and he's currently achieving and what the president has specified his end state is. And he remains still a little bit nebulous on what he thinks the end looks like. They've policed it up a little bit in that they've come out with four goals for the campaign. Two of those, destroying the ballistic missile capability and destroying the Navy, Suncom can and is doing. Two of them, removing support for regional proxies and some kind of assurance that they will never acquire a nuclear ammunition,

those either require complete regime change so that the decision makers who would want to pursue both of those efforts are no longer in power or some kind of agreement with the current regime or some kind of follow-on regime. Because as of yet, the Iranian regime, and we don't know how much power, how many the younger seems to be exercising, or who's in charge exactly, but whoever is not signaling that they are yet feeling the pain sufficient to seek surrender or seek some kind of accommodation with our demands. So until that happens, we're kind of using hope as a method where we are increasing the pressure. The last time General Kane spoke, he said, that would be the most aggressive day of bombardments and strikes to date, and they'd said that a couple days before that.

So they seem to be kind of trying to increase the pressure along the same lines of effort. But eventually, there has to be a question of whether what we are doing is not sufficient to achieve those results. And if so, what else are we going to do to bring about that victory, to win the strategic goal? Or are we going to hamper back in our goals and make it something more restrained. But unless we do those two things, there's the potential that we'll continue to just exert effort, but never seek a final resolution to the situation that we're trying to deal with. So long way of answering your question, we are winning the military operational and tactical fight. We are not yet winning the strategic fight. Yeah, Mike Warren, to you next, you're seeing from

supporters of the war a lot of criticism over the past several days about kind of doom saying or what they depict as doom saying in the U.S. mainstream media. And our friend Danny Pletka, been on the dispatch podcast before, writes for the dispatch when she can, has a piece out on her substack today pointing to a series of headlines. And I just want to read a couple of them that she argues makes this point, that this is really sort of, you know, we're seeing these replays again, the media right away in insisting on immediate victories, clean, you know, moving on. And she points to headlines like this. From the New York Times, fears about global economic fallout, quote unquote, also from the New York Times, why little was done to head off oil's straight of Hormuz problem.

From the Washington Post, Trump urged uprising, but as bombs fall, Iranians are too scared to move. Another one from the Washington Post, unpopular war makes friendship with Trump a liability for European leaders. And her fifth example, from CNN, Trump may be. unable to end the war he started with Iran, even if he wanted to. She goes on and makes an argument that this is really just sort of myopic from the media. They're demanding things that are impossible to achieve, and that in fact things are going well. And these headlines are examples of, as I say, Dume saying, is she right? I think Danny is right to a point and in a very narrow point, which is that there seems to be a sort of automatic expectation that this war, you know,

needs to have wrapped up quickly and that any sort of negative news that comes from this, you know, that somehow reflects that the entire war is lost at a quaguar. I find it harder to be sympathetic to that view when, as we've discussed on this podcast, that sense that it should be right. wrapped up quickly, that it's going to be easy, that, in fact, we've already won the war, is coming from the commander-in-chief himself. I mean, these are things that Donald Trump has said, while at the same time being very unclear about what the actual goals and long-term sort of status that we would like to see. I mean, Mike's piece for the dispatch today, I think,

is spot on and his comments about us winning the war militarily are correct. And you can can go into the American news media and see coverage of that from the New York Times, from the AP, from CNN and elsewhere. I think the second, the follow-on question about sort of, well, what is this all for? What are we doing? How do we know that these sacrifices of blood and treasure are worth it? How do we know that the leaders are sort of making those decisions, you know, in any kind of strategic way? I think those are legitimate questions. I think those are legitimate questions. There was a lot of kind of sound and fury about a CNN report late last week that the administration had not fully, I'm trying to remember the exact wording they used, had sort of

not fully considered or had not sort of taken as seriously as they could have warnings that the Strait of Hormuz could close. And the New York Times has since corroborated that reporting. It was taken to, by, I think, supporters of the war to suggest that reporting was saying, that the president had no idea that it would happen, as if that had sort of not been gamed out in the 49 years that the American military and the American government have been gaming out war games, potential war with Iran. And that's not what any of that reporting said.

That reporting really emphasized that in the discussions that took place in the run up to the war, that concerns about the Strait of Hormuz closing and the economic impacts of that were underplayed or underestimated. And look, I think that reporting seemed solid at the time. I think it continues to be corroborated, as I said, by the New York Times and others. And so I find when I read criticisms like that from Danny Pledka, I think, yeah, we should be

acknowledging the military success at this point. I think that all the reporting suggests, and how do we know about that? It's from reporting from those news organizations. but I think the follow-on questions, the second part, which might just laid out about objectives and collateral damage and those sorts of things, economic and otherwise, I think that's legitimate cause for reporting and asking those questions. And I don't think it's doem saying, you know, despite the fact that I do think many members, editors and those mainstream publications are sort of primed to doubt the president or this particular operation. We should ask those questions. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think what struck me about that, and we'll put Danny's piece in the show notes, as with everything she writes, it's very much worth a read.

What struck me about the examples she gave is, in my mind, each one of the headlines is true. There are fears about global economic fallout. I do think there was little done to head off oil's straight of Ormoo's problem, and we'll get into that in a moment here, too. Trump did urge an uprising, but Iranians haven't gone to the streets. It is a non-popular war so far, and it does make friendship for European leaders a liability. And finally, Trump may well be unable to end the war he started, even if he wants to. Tim, before we get into sort of substantive stuff with you, I'm so glad to have you back on. We remain thrilled that you're a dispatch contributor.

You have started something new. I think probably most folks are familiar with the work that you do. Tim runs the counter-eventive, as I mentioned in the introduction. He started a new publication called Iran War Dispatches and aims to provide ground-level look at what's happening in these wars. Tim, give us just for a moment a sense of what you're building, why you're doing it, what kind of stories you hope to tell. Yeah, so Iran War Dispatches is basically trying to take what we've established on our Ukraine war coverage and apply that to Iran. And we've been planning for this for many months prior to the initial strikes that occurred as part of this war. But what we want to do is we want to bring international reporting through a human interest lens.

So as opposed to just saying bombs fell here, straight of Hormuzes, this is what's occurring there. What we want to do is we want to bring you into the life of someone who is experiencing the news. That is, people who are watching as Tehran is being bombed. That is, exiles based in neighboring Armenia, where a number of our team for Iran war dispatches is based. That is, trying to profile Kurdish rebels who may soon be leading. a rebellion across the border from Iraq or are presently based in Iran. So trying to take it from a right by profiling people as opposed to just stating this happened because what we believe is that a sense of empathy helps you connect with news events that are far away from you. And so we spent a lot

of time building that up in Ukraine and we're trying to apply the same lands in Iran at aranwar. dot news. What we're trying to do is show you what it's like along the northern border with Iran now. We have a reporter there. We have a reporter who, as we speak, has just entered Iraq and has headed to the border between Iran and Iraq to link up with Kurdish militias that are working in that region. We're really trying to bring you a ground level reporting view at a time where a lot of other news organizations are pulling back from international coverage. And also bring that international view in an independent way. And so that's what we're trying to do at Iran War Dispatches, which any of your listeners can find at Iranwar. News. Yeah, we'll put the link in the

showness as well. Well, Tim, you're in Tbilisi, Georgia today as we're speaking to you now, in these early days of the war, what are you hearing from folks that you have in Armenia, folks that you have in northern Iraq? What have you learned about sort of that ground level understanding of what's happening. A couple things that we're seeing is that our reporter along the border with Iran and Armenia, she's not seeing mass

flows of people leaving, as she did observe last year when the Israelis were bombing during the 12-day war. Instead, I think people are staying put where they originally were either living or moving to other less urbanized areas in Iran.

So they're internally displaced as opposed to fleeing outside of the country. And that's worth noting. Another thing that we're seeing is that thousands of people are coming back into Iran. What she's observing along that border with Armenia is a lot of exiles, a lot of expats who were outside of Iran now. They're going back in, both for the role of humanitarian help, but also because there are people who want to be part of a potential uprising that may occur and trying to find the right time to do that. So there's a lot of energy, both in Iraq and along the northern border from Iranians who want to be part of some sort of positive change, whether humanitarian or political. But that hasn't materialized yet in the headlines in some sort of grand news event, at least not yet.

And what you also find talking to a lot of Iranians who are opposed to the regime is huge amounts of support for the Trump administration. For whatever your views are or my views are about Donald Trump, basically they look. at the previous two governments, the United States, Biden and Obama, and they see governments that negotiated with the regime that has killed tens of thousands of their fellow protesters and people who really wanted some change. And even though Trump has engaged in this war without any meaningful strategy, without considering all the potential consequences of the war, what they see in the short term is someone hurting the regime that's hurt them terribly. And from that respect. They've been very pro-chromed.

Tim, I had a question about how the people that your reporter is speaking with and meeting in that part along the border and within Iran. How are they getting their news about what's happening? Are they reading American or Western publications? Is there some sort of international news organization through either the internet or radio or whatever? How are the hearing about these things and what lens are they able to interpret what's happening in their country? The short answer is that they're not getting any information really at all. There's a total internet blackout right now in Iran. It's been an effect for most of the last few months ever since the demonstrations began in December, January. There's been a real difficulty getting either phone

service or internet access from within Iran. There are a couple of exceptions. One is Starlink access. So the people who have access to Starlink Terminal satellite communication, they're popping on, they'll send off a few messages, get a few. downloads and then pop off because it's actually seen as a, as treasonous to have access to a star-length device. Another is that you can have a foreign SIM card, which is less subject to Iranian government control. But the Iranian government centralized telecommunications in a way that the American government or European governments never could or have done so that it can effectively shut down the flow of data inside the country and out. One of the most frequent

questions we get when we contact folks inside Iran is what are they saying out there about us? Have they forgotten about us? Do they know? What can you tell it? So it becomes this kind of two-way conversation because they really are in the dark. That not only matters in terms of whether they know what's happening, but it does, as is the Iranian regime's intent with all this, it really does prevent coordination among the folks who would want to rise up because there's no sense of where other people are. If you're too early and you rise up, you're going to get gunned down. Without that sort of critical mass that happens with a popular uprising and other people hearing about it, it's very difficult to get a movement going. And that's the Iranian government's hope by doing this.

All right, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from the dispatch podcast. And we're back. You're listening to the dispatch podcast. Let's jump in. Mike Nelson, I want to pick up on something Tim said about the contrast between the Obama and Biden administrations and what we're seeing with the Trump administration. I mean, it's such a dramatic contrast. I mean, I remember covering the Obama administration on Iran. At one point, I was brought in to the White House and actually sat in the situation room and received a really lengthy briefing from several senior Obama administration officials who were, I would say, smart and thoughtful, sort of walk me through their case. them credit. I was somebody who was very critical of what they were doing and they brought me in and sat me down and answered all my questions. But there was at the heart of their strategy, I think, this sort of fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of the Iranian regime. It was the Obama administration's announced approach that they would decouple the nuclear program and discussions

about the Iran nuclear program from all of the rest of the regime's malign behavior, whether it was funding proxies, whether it was sending terrorists out, whether it was, you know, causing havoc for their neighbors, what have you. And it always struck me as kind of a fool's errand to deal with the regime as if you haven't learned anything about the nature of the regime. And what Trump has brought, even if there are real questions about, I think, the way that he's managed the war and the lack of a coherent case for the war, to Tim's point from the Iranian people's perspective is he's brought a totally different approach that says, looks at the regime and says, hey, this is a regime that sows, you know, destruction across the region that is responsible

even before the January slaughter of 30,000 plus of its own citizens. This was something they did as a matter of routine. They have been waging war against the United States for decades, some of which you saw up close in Iraq. I wonder if you just share with us your thoughts on the difference in approaches. You know, final point on that before I let you answer. You know, Barack Obama at one point even acknowledged that some of the money that the United States was sending, the stories about sending $400 million in pallets of cash back to the Iranians, those stories were true. That happened. Giving them sanctions relief, I think, gave Iran access to additional funds that allowed them to engage in more destructive malign activities. John Kerry acknowledged that some of that money would likely be used for terror. I wonder if you have thoughts on just the dramatic contrast, the way that the United States. States has approached the regime.

Well, under the Obama administration, there was a scale, I think, of naivete, right? On the one extreme you had represented by Ben Rhodes, the idea that not only could Iran act as a rational actor, but potentially could be brought in as a stabilizing force within the Middle East, that we could look at them as a partner almost in a post-Iraq war, Middle East, where we would stabilize the environment. To a lesser extent, you had a consensus that they were at least, there was some solipsism, that they would look at the situation the same way we would, and everybody wanted a peaceful resolution and coexistence. And obviously, that was not the case. So there was always this

default to, if we just negotiate one more thing, if we just give them one more concession, then potentially we can find some kind of optimal solution where everybody can live in peace. In fact, like you said, you could decouple the nuclear program from the rest of their ideas. These were mutually supporting and interlocked deterrent capabilities that the more they expanded their regional networks, that was a deterrent to prevent any kind of strikes against the nuclear program. If they successfully got a nuclear device, that would be a deterrent to prevent them from being more powerful or from anyone taking action to prevent them from being more powerful in the region. And as you pointed out, one of the key problems with the JCPOA was the front loading of the incentives to the Iranian regime. there was this idea that we would pay them, or at least, you know, the Obama administration couched it in, we're just giving them back the money that we've been withholding from them since the 70s.

But in reality, those funds were fungible. It wasn't just a repayment. We knew that they were going to fund the regional proxies. And the idea we can give you this money, there's no check on the bad behavior that comes with that money, that you do fund the regional proxies. And that somewhere down the line, we may or may not have verification of the things that you've promised us. You know, we're keeping our fingers crossed that we can postpone this for five years, and then who knows what happens after that. In addition to having more means by which to conduct malign

activities around the region, the Iranians also took advantage of opportunity. So when the Houthis were more aggressive against the Republic of Yemen government, the Iranians didn't let a crisis go to waste. They backed the Houthis and helped use that to interfere with trade off Bob Al-Mendeb, or threaten that as another deterrent along the path. Now, as you pointed out, I've been fairly critical of much of President Trump's foreign policy, particularly as it relates to our multinational agreements and organizations and our alliances, primarily in Europe. But his instincts on Iran have generally been pretty good and pretty aggressive. The maximum pressure campaign was effective in restraining some of that ability of the Iranians to conduct activities,

and it did put pressure on them to make some strategic choices about whether they were going to change your behavior. striking Soleimani, who largely was the architect of these regional proxies and of taking opportunities around the region, bore fruit in that the coup's force has been less aggressive or had been less aggressive in the aftermath of his death. Midnight Hammer was the right call, not only in terms of finally taking an opportunity to strike at the physical infrastructure of the nuclear program, but it actually de-escalated the 12-day war between Iran and Israel and helped at least a year ago bring that escalatory. latter to an end. And then, as we've pointed out, there are myriad legitimate causes for Epic Fury. It's just that last linkage where he might be engaging in some of the same mistaken thinking in a slightly different way than the Obama administration was, which is, you know, to some of those

headlines that you pointed out that Danielle Pleckko pointed out, I don't buy the reporting that no one thought that the Iranians would block the Strait of Hormuz. We saw retired Admiral Kidd Donagan this weekend talking about this, that of course we had planned for this. The whole time I was at Sencom, we thought they would do this. What I think was there was a gap, the military advised, we think this is one of their levers. And the administration believed we will be able to bring sufficient pressure prior to that so that the regime will capitulate. Or collapse. As the president has said, he thought the regime would collapse in the early days. Correct. Correct. He thought this uprising would take place pretty early on. Right. And I think there are a lot of reasons that hasn't happened.

But that, to a certain extent, you know, collapses one thing, but the capitulation is still thinking that the regime might act like rational actors, that their primary desire is a peaceful coexistence with the United States, whereas they are true believers. Right. And they are choosing the path of resistance. Yeah. Mike Warren, I mean, there's been a lot of back and forth about that. I've been involved in several conversations, including a few over the weekend, about the extent to which the administration was. negligent or not attentive enough to the likelihood of the effective closing of the Strait of Hormuz. And I think Mike made the important distinction, which is nobody in the military was surprised by this.

I mean, this is something that literally has been planned for decades. And they presented this and briefed this to the president. The president didn't want to hear it. And his senior administration officials, we've seen this in their public rhetoric. They have gone out and said, remember, the president has said the war is complete. there's nothing left to target. I thought the regime would collapse. Pete Higgseth, when he was asked about this,

late last week, said, don't worry about it, got it under control. And now what we're seeing in public is the administration scrambling to bring on allies to help escort ships through the strait, including many allies that the administration has spent

the first year of its second term insulting and, you know, saying, in fact, we don't need your support. So I think Mike makes the appropriate distinction. I think it's certainly not a criticism of the uniform military, who haven't been warning about this, and by all accounts, warned about this beforehand, and the administration, on the other hand,

who I think were overconfident about the ability to affect change immediately in these first days of the war so that this would not likely happen. Have you read anything or talked to anybody who points in a different direction and says, in fact, the administration had done extensive planning and this was part of the plan? No. I mean, I think there's not to sort of belabor this point,

but I would say that the reporting on this has actually been pretty responsible at making that distinction, in my view, that yes, the military had, of course, planned and understood that this was not only a possibility, but a likelihood in that it was essentially political appointees and ultimately the president who had underestimated the effect of that. But no, I mean, I think if we, this is an administration where what you see in public is much more reflective of, of the reality behind the scenes than maybe a normal administration. And I think that the scrambling that you're talking about, looking for allies to sort of, I mean, we heard Pete Hexeth late last week, essentially say the Strait of Hormuz is open. If only Iran would stop shooting at ships. And that's actually literally what he said.

Yeah, I probably botched a word there. But essentially, if they would, he said, if Iran would not do that, then the straight would be open. I think that reflects from the political leadership in the administration exactly what's been reported, which is an underestimation of what the military has long known about war in Iran. And if you look, by the way, it wasn't just allies that the president has spurned in the early part of his administration of the second term. It was only like a week and a half ago that he was sort of dismissive of any help he needed from, say, the UK in Kirstarmer. And here he is now calling out for aid and help.

Look, I think there's also some interesting questions that have to be answered about the goal. between President Trump and BB Netanyahu and the Israelis. What do they want? Where are we working in concert? And I think that there seems to be in the sort of different operations that are happening over the last several days a kind of almost feeling out of where each ally is and where they want to go. And I think there are a lot of questions about how long Donald Trump wants to keep this

engagement going. And that is causing confusion. Now, maybe there's, maybe this is all sort of crazy like a fox. He's got a plan somewhere there that we just don't know. And all of the sort of public facing elements of this where he says, we've won. And then he says, we could be there for a couple of more weeks or, you know, that is all somehow strategic. I have real doubts about that. But that is always the problem when it comes to these kind of engagements. It's not the military. The military seems to be doing an excellent job. It's the question of what is the mission, what is the goal, and what does victory look like? And that, to me, remains unclear.

Yeah, I think when you have the leaders of Israel and the leaders of the United States articulating different understandings of what victory looks like, there is a real potential for a split. I mean, Benjamin Netanyahu in his public rhetoric, is sort of laying the groundwork for being there for a long time. Yes. and doing a much more comprehensive clearing out of the Iranian regime, of destroying weaponry that might target Israel in the future.

And Donald Trump is literally saying there are no more targets to hit, and the war is effectively complete. We're out of here pretty soon. I think it will be very interesting to watch over the next week or two. If that rhetoric comes closer, if Netanyahu begins to use Donald Trump's language about this war coming to an end, or if Israel continues to talk about, regime change and sticking around for the long howl. It would be, if Donald Trump declares the war over

and decides the United States is ending kinetic action, I think there's a working assumption that the Israelis would have to follow suit. I'm not sure that's the case. I think it'll be interesting to watch that. Tim, I want to come back to you on the question of what you're hearing from Iraqi exiles and folks on the ground. We have not seen, despite open calls from this from Benjamin Netanyahu, originally from Donald Trump, we have not seen the kinds of uprisings from the Iranian people that I think our leaders hoped for. Is it as simple as looking back to what happened that second weekend in January where the Iranian regime is assessed to have killed 30,000 plus of its own people, the besieged militias throughout the country, just randomly shooting people. And they're afraid.

Add to that, the increased pace. of U.S. and Israeli airstrikes, and there's no reason for them to go out and get involved. Is that the sense that you're hearing from folks? And if not, is there another explanation? I don't think we can discount the amount of trauma that comes from tens of thousands of people being gunned down over such a short period of time

and not just gun down in the street, but then hunted into hospitals, beaten, in many cases, detained, and then in all likelihood, tortured as a result of being injured in protests. And that trauma lingers on. And I think one of the main problems here is that this bombing campaign, if you see it as help, the help came too late, far, far too late. And there's no way to use the cover of these attacks in an ongoing way to help with, you know,

these strategic bombing strikes. They're good at degrading physical infrastructure. They're good at removing some of the missile assets of the Iranian. regime has, but it does nothing about the between 150 and 200,000 IRGC troops that still remain alive, armed, and ready to gun down anyone who tries to resist the regime, right? And so at that operational level, as Mike has so wisely told us, the United States is really hitting military targets and degrading the ability of the Iranian military to project force outside of Iran. But that's not going to do anything about these smaller towns or either these medium-sized towns that are still run by thugs

with guns who will shoot you in the head if you decide to congregate and protest against the regime. So we have to differentiate between strategic bombing and these strikes, which are degrading the power of Iran, and what would be necessary to enable a broad uprising, which is some sort of security that if you gather in large numbers, you won't be shot and kill. and all the people around, Dushan killed, or otherwise detained and tortured. Because that is what is waiting

for a lot of these people. And I think the final point is a lot of the people who would be leaders in this popping uprising are sadly already dead. The people who are most courageous, the people who are most at the front of the line trying to fight for a better future

for the Iranian people, a more democratic future, a less a theocratic thuggery. They're all gone. They're all gone. I think that's a really, really important point. The leaders went out and rallied people out to the streets back in January 8th, 9th and 10th. I think there's also, and Tim you mentioned earlier, you know, a generally positive view of Donald Trump and what he's

doing here to try to remove the regime for many Iranians living in Iran today. There also has to be a sense of sort of not knowing whether to believe United States leaders because Donald Trump, It is true. You know, certainly we're engaged in war right now. There's confusion, as we've talked about quite a bit, on this podcast, about exactly what the aims of the war are. Donald Trump doesn't spend a lot of time these days talking about democracy for the Iranian people or freeing them from this despotic authoritarian regime. It is the case that he said in late December to the Iranian regime, if you shoot the protesters, will shoot you and then he didn't come. And you go back and you look at, you know, the history going back again to the Obama administration. Barack Obama gave an interview in 2022 to the POD Save America podcast. And then he later talked about it with David Axelrod in an interview that he gave at the University of Chicago where Obama said that one of the biggest mistakes of his presidency was during the Green Revolution in 2009, 2010.

he didn't speak up on behalf of the Iranian people. And even when they were protesting and trying to bring other Iranians out to the streets, Obama said, quote, it is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran's leaders would be, adding that he wanted to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran and becoming a handy political football. Obama would go on to say, in the context of failing, to speak out. He says, when I think back to 2009, 2010, you guys will recall, he's talking to the POD Save America folks who were Obama administration staffers. There was a big debate inside the

White House about whether I should publicly affirm what was going on with the Green Movement, because a lot of the activists were being accused of being tools of the West, and there was some thought that we were somehow going to be undermining their street cred in Iran if I supported what they were doing. And in retrospect, Obama said, I think, that was a mistake. I think sometimes we in the West underestimate how long those things can last. And we know that there's a very different administration and a very different approach. But the fact that he didn't say anything and the fact that Trump early on said, come out and we'll protect you and then didn't, you can imagine beyond just the practical implications, Tim, as you point out,

of seeing your friends and neighbors and leaders of democratic movements inside Iran slaughtered in the streets that you're unsure of whether you're going to have that support. I want to segregate approval of Trump's actions from trust in Trump, right? So what we're seeing is that Iranians that are against the regime are happy to see the regime get smacked around. But that doesn't mean that they're going to put all their faith in Donald Trump. In fact, I mean, I think the general sentiment that I've gotten, and remember I only have a small snapshot that I get in small spurts from inside Iran. And I don't have any sort of method to survey thousands of Iranians, but I'm just trying to give you best I can the picture that we have.

The enthusiasm or the hope that there will be in the near term some sort of popular uprising that changes the regime is not very high, right? It's not very high right now. If I've slapped in the face of the Ayatollahs is all they can expect for the moment, they'll take it. But the enthusiasm for a popular uprising at this point, not very well developed. Tim, if I could just pause and editorialize about what you just said there, and I would just encourage people to go check out Iran War Dispatches

and the counteroffensive, the work that Tim has done both on Iran and on Ukraine, because it's so important and so rare that somebody in your position, says, hey, I can't provide you the full picture here. I'm providing you what I can provide you. I'm providing you what's in front of me. But I can't provide you with a whole picture. And I think too many people in our business don't take that step of saying, I don't know. And I think one of the reasons that the trusted media in general is, as low as it is, is too many of our colleagues, when they have gaps in their knowledge, don't acknowledge those gaps. They paper over them with speculation. And you're not doing that. You're telling us what you know. You're telling us

what you don't know. And I think that allows your readers. And we do the same thing at the dispatch. We try really hard to do the same thing at the dispatch. But I think that does, it allows your readers to place great confidence in what you are telling us. Because you're saying there's stuff I don't know, but here's what I do know. And therefore, you should trust what I'm telling you in these areas that I do know. So I just wanted to point that out because I think it's really important. I wish more of our colleagues would do that. I want to turn now to a discussion, a little discussion here to wrap up of Iran and the war that we've seen now for four plus years in Ukraine, the war of aggression that the Russians have launched in Ukraine. And there is tremendous overlap in a number of

different ways. But I'm going to focus, Tim, with you on the drones. It's been widely reported that the Russians are providing intelligence to the Iranians. Vladimir Putin came out after Mostobok Khomeini was named the new Supreme Leader, offered, publicly his, quote, unwavering support to the younger commune. What can you tell us about that intelligence beyond what's been publicly reported? I believe it's been reported that Russia's provided some targeting in intelligence, but also a better understanding of exactly how these drones, most of which are made by Iran in Iran, the Shahid drones, actually function in wartime.

The Iranians knew what they wanted them to do. The Russians have been seeing this on a day-to-day basis. What have they learned? Well, actually, over time, Russia has localized a lot of their production outside of Iran. And so the Iranians originally built and designed these drones. The Russians have essentially imported that whole process onto Russian territory and are now turning out hundreds, if not thousands of these drones per day. In fact, as we're speaking, there was an attack in.

Ukraine in central Kiev, with debris falling on the Maidan, this independent square that serves at this symbolic sort of temple to Ukrainian democracy. Shaheed or Shahid-style drone was shot down and fell smoking right in the middle of the city, even as we were just taught, just right before we started this conversation. What does that mean? Russia and Ukraine has been essentially the laboratory for modern warfare over the last four plus years. The war did not start off. with these kinds of small $20,000, $30,000 drones. But it evolved such that drones became a prolific part of warfare and what the battlefield looks like now.

So what is Russia providing to Iran? It's providing, as you mentioned, targeting information, but it's also showing Iran how to use these drones in an effective way against an enemy in the United States and Israel that has not yet adapted to some of the modern approaches to drone warfare. I saw a terrifying video yesterday of a drone being flown by an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq. And it's a drone that's flown via optic fiber cable over one of the American bases near Baghdad International Airport. And it flies, and this video has been published by a number of news outlets, it flies over the entire base, surveils buildings, flies in and out of spaces, looking for targets.

And during this entire kind of two and a half minute video, it is not interrupted, it is not shut down, it is not intercepted in any way, shape, or form. And to me, what was terrifying about that is just how much the Russians, Iranians and the Iranian-backed militias are learning and how far behind the United States is, even though it is the preeminent military power in the world, it just is not ready for this new turn of the page in modern warfare. It doesn't have the anti-drone capabilities. Now, the Ukrainians do have these capabilities. They've been fighting this war for the last few years. But as you pointed out, Steve, I think you mentioned that the Trump administration has been pushing away and dismissing almost every ally that now needs and required and is asking for help from. As recently as the last 48 hours or so, Trump has said he doesn't need Zelensky's hell. He doesn't need anything from Ukraine.

The United States absolutely needs some of this technology and know-how. Iran is getting the download from Russia, the United States, for all of its support that's given to Ukraine prior to the Trump administration, ought to be tapping into some of the benefits of American aid to Ukraine. And one of those should be how do we use this technology more effectively? How do we apply some of these tactics? How do we use not only drones, but counter drone and electronic warfare devices that are now prolific in Ukraine? To not do so would be terrible malpractice. We're going to take a break, but we'll be back shortly. Welcome back.

Let's return to our discussion. Mike Nelson, I wonder if you can just help me make sense of this. And let me give up sort of a brief recap of what we've seen on this over the past few days. Ukraine is an ally. The leader of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, is helping the United States fend off drone attacks using expertise it's acquired in its war against Russia, providing help specifically in Jordan, elsewhere. In the region, meanwhile Russia, a longtime adversary who invaded that ally of ours, is providing

intelligence to Iran, another longtime enemy, and the one we launched a war against 16 days ago. As I mentioned to Tim, Russia is providing targeting intelligence. They're providing intelligence on the effectiveness of drones. The kinds of intelligence that is meant to make it easier to kill Americans in the region. and harm American interests. And as I noted, Russia's president last week publicly offered his unwavering support to Iran. In recent days, Steve Whitkoff, the president's chief negotiator, said we ought to take Russia at its word when it denies that it's providing intelligence to our enemies, despite the fact

that U.S. intelligence analysts have reported those activities. There's no real question in the intelligence world that Russia is helping. Iran. And then just late last week, the Trump administration announced it was suspending sanctions, broad sanctions on Iranian oil, a boon to Russia in its war on Ukraine, our ally, and in its assistance to Iran, our enemy. What's happening? How should we understand this? So there are a couple different things to address there. The first one is you lay out very clearly how the Trump administration suffers from some of the same naive assumptions about Russia that we talked about the Obama and Biden administrations

holding about Iran. The idea that Russia is a responsible actor, that they want to find consensus with us when in fact they are at least an adversary, if not an enemy. I don't think we should be surprised that they're providing targeting information and best practices to Iran as they fight us in this conflict. I also don't think we should necessarily be outraged at that.

You know, this is, we did this to the Soviets in Afghanistan. the Iranians did it to us in Iraq. This is, to quote Omar Little, it's all in the game. This is kind of the way it's played. When your adversary is engaged in a conflict with one of your allies, proxies, partners, or otherwise, you tend to, number one, want to bolster your partner, and number two, make things more difficult for your adversary. We should and do do the same, and we shouldn't be surprised that the Russians do it. They absolutely are providing information to make it more effective and more likely that Iranians are going to kill more Americans. That's what they're doing. That's what conflict is. We should not take any or have any illusions about the fact that Iran is not necessarily a treaty ally of Russia, but they are aligned in this kind of axis of resistance around the world that is opposed to the United States and the Western interests and the way that we think the world should function. Part of the problem we have is we look at these as discrete different problems as opposed to an interlinked global conflict, or at least global competition. The example you brought up of lessening oil sanctions against the Russians, that is a short-term solution trying to lower the price of gas at home, making the war in Iran more popular without viewing these interlocked situations. We are making things easier on the Russians as well by making things cheaper for the American consumer, when in fact what should have happened is prior to the entry into this conflict, and then throughout now, even though we didn't do it,

is saying, this is a worthwhile conflict. It will come with sacrifice. not only in terms of American lives, not to the scale that we've seen in other conflicts because we are so much more capable than the Iranians, but there will be American deaths. And you, the American consumer, are going to have to bear the burden of increased gas prices. And that's a small price to pay for dealing with this adversary that has threatened American interests in the region, has threatened non-standard attacks against the United States, including cyber attacks against American companies just recently. And that greenlit the October 7th attacks that killed 1,200 Israelis in their homes. So this is an evil regime that we have to contend with,

and doing that comes with some costs. That includes holding the allies and partners of that regime accountable and continuing to do so as they conduct their own malign activities in Ukraine. So that's a long way of getting to. I think the problem is we don't look at this the way the Iranians and the Russians do as a overall different theaters within an overall global competition or conflict. And inherently, especially Steve Wickoff, who strikes me as one of the most naive people ever, we can't look at Russians as honest brokers, as people who want the same resolution we do. We keep thinking that they want peace in Ukraine to end the war unto itself. They could end the war at any moment. They don't seem to care about the cost in human lives, Ukrainian especially,

and apparently not their own. So thinking we have more of a motivation in any human toll than they do is the first step in understanding that they're not going to come to the table with honest negotiations. Yeah, Mike Warren, last word on this to you, Mike Nelson makes a good point. I mean, it is the case that to succeed in war sometimes oversees at a place like Iran. It is important to maintain public support. And you could make an argument that, you know, what Donald Trump is doing by trying to keep, you know, oil prices low, gas prices low here is actually in service to a military victory in Iran. You could also be a little more cynical, and I will be. And these two are not mutually exclusive. You could also say Donald Trump has shown himself to be extraordinarily sensitive to any

kind of, you know, secondary effect that affects his popularity. And what he's doing here is looking ahead to the midterms. Republicans are already coming in on sort of bad footing. And the one place that he could really point to where prices were low, where he had done sort of what he said he was going to do on inflation, on the economy, was gas prices. He can no longer say that. So this is both in service to making the war more popular at home, potentially, or at least not turning people negative on what we're doing, but also clearly a benefit to the president's political outcomes. I guess, I mean, we're talking about like a quadruple bank shot of trying to keep American support for the war. I mean, we are a free society and the best and most straightforward way of getting support for anything,

but certainly a military conflict like this, is to be honest, straightforward and fulsome with information. Now, you can't, you know, reveal everything. You obviously need to maintain some kind of strategic ambiguity in your public feeling. facing, you know, as you plan and you execute, you know, military strategy. But in terms of, again, I feel like a broker record on this, but in terms of making a public case for it for this war, seems like a much better approach for doing this. We're past that point. So maybe he does have to make these kind of quadruple bank shots and there's some sort of

justification for it. But it just underscores the problem, the naivete that Mike just mentioned about Russia, I think, can extend to. really kind of every part of the way that this has been executed so far, an expectation that everything would be what, just like Venezuela, would be sort of an extension of those, which I agree with Mike on this, good policy toward Iran up to this point, Operation Midnight Hammer and all the strategic moves in the first term,

I think there was a feeling this would be the same. And we can hear that in, again, the words that President Trump says publicly. I think it's naive and it really treats Americans as if they're fools. And they're not. They're paying attention. They're reading and they're learning more about this. And the government should be straightforward about what it's doing. And instead it's trying to these quadruple bank shots.

I just don't have confidence it's going to work. And finally today. Not worth your time. A New York talkeria, I'm reading USA today here. A New York taqueria is no longer in hot water after a judge ruled against a German tourist who sued the restaurant for selling salsa that he alleged was dangerously spicy. Faisal Mance

sued Los Tacos number one for $100,000 in damage after he allegedly experienced gastrointestinal problems, high blood pressure, and emotional distress from eating spicy sauces at the New York City restaurant. This guy claimed in his lawsuit that he had tongue blisters because the salsa was too spicy.

Mike Warren, look, I think when you're into the Trump administration, we're spending a lot of time, way too much time, watching our government, deport people who don't deserve to be deported. Some people, sure, hardened criminals, deport them, get rid of them, just as the president said he would do when he was campaigning for office. But we're often seeing innocent people deported. You're seeing the State Department take staff.

to keep people from coming into the country because they may have said something wrong on, quote unquote, wrong on social media, what have you. And I oppose that. It's too much. However, I think we should ban faecal months from ever coming back to the United States if he's suing a takeria for providing spicy salsa. My experience, I admit, I'm not objective about this at all I'm somebody who loves spicy foods. I can't do them quite the way I used to be able to do in my 20s and 30s when I would entertain my friends by always getting the spiciest thing I could. I used to go to restaurants and order whatever their hottest thing was on the menu and say,

make it extra spicy and tell the chef I think he's a sissy and then get my food. So I can't do that anymore. But come on. guy is suing a taco restaurant for spicy salsa, I say ban him. Keep him out of the country. Yeah. I mean, how do you disagree with that? By the way, it's not only that he sued this taco place for two spicy salsa. He also sued Walmart over apparently its Wi-Fi policy. This case was apparently dismissed. So my question is, what is a German tourist doing coming over to the United States, like looking for American institutions, a taco restaurant and Walmart to sue? What is this

about? What is this game? We're seeing a clash here between, not a clash, really, the emergence of both German litigiousness, which is a real phenomenon, with European inability to handle spice, right? And that's what news is true. When I first was in, you know, when I first was in Ukraine in the very first days of the war, I was reporting in Kiev. It happened to be in Ukraine just as the invasion began. And I was well known for having a bottle of saracha attached to my belt via carabiner. I once in Eastern Europe asked for hot sauce. And they were like, well, you have black pepper at your table. So that's what we're happening. What we're seeing here is this European allergy to hot sauce combined with German.

I think that, you know, we're knocking Herrmann's a lot here, but I think we do need to congratulate him on replacing the Zimmerman telegram as the stupidest request by a German of a Mexican as it relates to the United States. That's pretty great. That's pretty great. Yeah, I should report that this case was dismissed with U.S. District Judge Dale Ho writing that spiciness of the salsa is often the point capturing the obvious. Now I so I studied in Germany, Tim, for six months and this was at the height of my or as I was building to this love of hot sauces and hot peppers. And it was the case that my favorite sauce when I would go and get some piece of

schnitzel was something called the Pfefferramshk sauce, which had the black pepper and was the closest thing to spicy that you could find in Germany, but really not much unless you do sort of the hot mustard and horseradish, which, eh, it worked, but it wasn't, it wasn't quite the same. I think it would be interesting to try saracha on some German noodles or just a plain schnitzel. I like the combination. Maybe we should push this on the Germans, more American cultural imperialism. I just like the idea of squirting someone like a curryware. and that sounds like it would be delicious. All right.

Thank you all for joining me for this conversation. Great discussion about where we are on Iran, where we are on Ukraine, the way that we've learned from what's happening in Ukraine, and in particular, hot sauce. Until next time. Finally, today, if you like what we're doing here, and how could you not 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. As always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, you can email us at Roundtable at the dispatch.com. We read everything, even the ones from people who file frivolous lawsuits over spicy salsa. 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 Vonaventure. Thanks again for listening. Please join us next time. Thank you.