The Dispatch Podcast - Regime Change | Interview: John Bolton

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton joins Steve Hayes to react to the United States’ attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend and outline what he wants to see next from the Trump administration. Then, Steve is joined by Kevin Williamson, Charlotte Lawson, and retired Army Special Forces officer Mike Nelson to discuss Israel’s role and how Iran might retaliate. The Agenda:—Bolton on what regime change looks like—Should we send boots on the ground?—Vice President J.D. Vance on no regime change—Iran’s technology in the conflict—Making a face-saving deal—Alliance of malfeasance Show Notes:—TMD's reporting on the strikes—Mike Nelson's piece for The Dispatch defending the strikes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Conditions apply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. While other money managers are holding, Dynamic is hunting. Seeing past the horizon, investing beyond the benchmark, because your money can't grow if it doesn't move. Learn more at dynamic.ca slash active. Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. We've got a little different format today. I'll be interviewing Ambassador John Bolton at the front end of the podcast, and then we will have a roundtable discussion with dispatch friends, contributors, and staff at the end to

discuss the U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear sites and the Israeli campaign before it, what it meant, where we are today, and what it means going forward. Thanks for joining us. Ambassador John Bolton, thanks for joining the Dispatch podcast. Glad to be with you. Well, this is something that you've been arguing for for many years, and we are now about 36 hours after the attacks on the three nuclear sites by USB2 bombers. Your reaction to those attacks in this moment. Well, I think it was the right thing for Trump to do.

I think it would have been preferable to have a joint operation with the Israelis. from the beginning, but better late than never. I think it's a mistake to think that this is a one-and-done kind of operation. I do think the Iranians will respond. I think it'll be a very foolish thing for them to do, but I think that's the position that they're in. And, you know, there's still a lot of cleanup work to do in terms of the Iranian nuclear weapons program.

The Israelis can do some of it, but I think we're going to have to still be involved. But what's been done so far, using the standard of the Internet, National Atomic Energy Agency's Director General, who's commented both on Natanz and on Fordo, very significant damage. Do you think the administration understands, based on your knowledge of the players involved and what we've seen in their comments since these attacks, that there is this additional work to be done? Well, I think the military clearly understands that I can just tell you from my own discussions

with them when I was in government that they have thought through all of the implications of these various nuclear weapons programs by the rogue states. And they know, and people at the Department of Energy and elsewhere know exactly how the nuclear fuel cycle works, exactly how nuclear weapons are constructed. We've been doing it for a long time. We know all the ends and outs of it. And a few strikes, even at critical facilities, are necessary to destroy the program, but not sufficient.

And they would have plans and capabilities to follow up if the president in order them to do so. Yeah, if you follow the administration's rhetoric since the strikes, there were early comments that this was not about regime change, was not going to be about regime change from Vice President Vance on the Sunday shows. And then Sunday afternoon, President Trump said, in effect, hey, why not regime change? Miga, make Iran great again. You had a tweet early yesterday morning saying this is a great first step, but this really should be

about regime change. Why isn't what we've done, even if you include the cleanup work that you're talking about doing with respect to the nuclear program, why isn't that enough? Why regime change? Because this is about the regime itself. Its support for terrorism, as well as its efforts to develop deliverable nuclear weapons are part of the mission they see for themselves in the Middle East and around the world. And until the regime itself has gone, there is no foundational. for lasting peace and security in the Middle East. They are not the only cause of disturbance, but they're the principal cause, both through the nuclear program and the support for terrorism. They have been negotiating for 25 or 30 years on this. People keep saying, well, let's have

more negotiation. You know, how many times do you have to do the same thing before you realize they're using negotiations for their own purposes? The central point here is time is not value-free, time is important, and it is always on the side of the proliferator, to give them more time to solve the very difficult problems of getting a nuclear program functioning, and in the particular case we're facing now, to hide, conceal, move further harden, all of their nuclear assets to minimize the damage that the U.S. and Israel are trying to do to them. And if I think you could make the argument sort of on top of what you're saying, that there's never been a more suitable moment for this kind of of a campaign.

I mean, you've got their proxies who are either eliminated or largely eliminated, not as effective as they once were. There's not much presence in Syria. I mean, all sorts of regional arguments that would say sort of now is the moment if you're going to do it. Well, exactly, because they're all connected. If Hamas or the people it's trying to intimidate know that Big Daddy in Tehran is in severe trouble itself, they're going to say, maybe I'd rather go to graduate school and study 18th century English poetry than become a terrorist. I mean, this is the kind of thing that has ripple effects all around what the Iranians called the axis of resistance or what they tried to implement through the ring of fire strategy.

Again, their term that Hamas began on October the 7th. So that's why, to come back to the more fundamental question, regime change really has to be the objective. And the fact of the Israeli attacks, the fact of our attacks on the nuclear program, I think do have a destabilizing effect on the regime, whether that's their principal motive or not. The Iranians have to acknowledge after October 7, where they've only had one military opponent that they're getting hammered. I mean, they're not doing well in this war that they started. Do they really now want to come after American military or civilian positions in the Middle East? Do they really want to think about closing the Strait of Hormuz? Do they want a second military adversary, particularly when it would be the greatest military power in the world?

Is that really what they want to do in Tehran? I think divisions among the top generals, the top Ayatollahs, over that question do have a destabilizing effect. Let's fragment the regime at the top, make it easier if and when the people come out into the streets to bring the regime down. Just as the Egyptian military didn't fire on the demonstrators, they wouldn't fire on their own people when the Mubarak regime fell. We should be looking for that kind of thing here, too. Yeah, the answer to your question, I think if you're looking at the Supreme Leader Ayatollahamini is, yes, he would just as soon continue to have these provocations. He would continue to stand up to the United States. He's incredibly stubborn.

We've seen that over his entire tenure. What's your sense of the divisions that do exist now? I mean, are there real divisions? Is he the one who's still making all these calls? Well, the ideology at the top of the Islamic Revolution remains. In fact, there was a Financial Times article several months ago now that said the younger generation of Ayatoll is maybe worse. But if you look at the military leaders, including some in the revolutionary guard,

they can see the countries in real disarray. And in terms of popular opinion, going back to the economic riots of 2018 and 2019, there's still enormous economic dissatisfaction, countrywide, not just in Tehran, where the few Western journalists like to congregate, out in the whole rest of the country with its over 90 million population. The young people, 60% of the country is under 30. They know they could have a different life than what the Ayatollah's prescribed for them. They can see it across the Gulf and Dubai and Abu Dhabi and Doha. The ethnic groups, the Kurds, Zaris, Balukis, Arabs, they don't like the Persian majority. And since the Masi Amini murder now two years ago, when the women basically said the Ayatoll is, you do not speak the word of God when it comes to the dress code,

that challenged the very legitimacy of the regime. It wasn't about the hijab. It was about what the claim of the Ayatollahs was to be the only authentic voice of God. Once that legitimacy goes, the regime's in trouble. But the opposition is, while it may be nationwide, doesn't have a strong leadership at this point. It doesn't communicate very well amongst itself. These are all things we could help them with. This has nothing to do with boots on the ground. But the opposition is there. And if the top leadership in the regime fragments, that's when the regime could come down. What does, I mean, you mentioned boots on the ground. There seems to be very little appetite for that among the American populace. And, you know, anytime you're talking about regime

change there, it seems to me is a certain obligation on behalf of the United States. If we help produce a regime change to make sure that what follows isn't chaos. This was one of the arguments about the U.S. rule in post-war Iraq, what do you see as our obligation? What do you see is in our national interest to make sure that it's not just a disaster? And doesn't that mean committing, whether it's boots on the ground, the United States, to a bigger role in the Middle East than it seems like President Trump has in mind at the moment? No, I don't think so. In fact, I think I'm not questioning the good faith or energy or ability or effort of any of the Americans who tried to make the coalition provisional authority in Iraq work after the second Gulf War.

But I think the effort was misguided. I think my own view is we won the Second Gulf War of Handling. And people then tend to lump that in. And we overthrew Saddam Hussein, which is important for the United States. People tend to forget about the success and they look at the failed nation building effort. I do think we have some obligations, but I think the Iranian people are sufficient. sophisticated, they're well educated. Many of them still remember the rule of the Shah when they lived in a very pro-Western country. And what I had suggested going back to

after Saddam in Iraq was not set up a government that we would then run. You don't enhance political maturation in a country by making decisions for the people. You enhance political maturation by letting them make decisions, including making mistaken decisions from which they learn. in the case of Iraq was basically give them a copy of the Federalist papers, say you might find some helpful things in there and then let them work it out. That's how you nation build, put the responsibility on the people, maybe hold the ring from the outside, but don't try and do it for them. One last question in the time that we've got left. You know, I look at this. I've been, I think, where you are on the question of the threat, the potential threat from Iran's nuclear

program, certainly the Obama years saw almost an avoidance of any discussion of the nature of the regime itself, which I thought was a colossal mistake, the decoupling process that the Obama administration undertook in its diplomacy to Iran. But I look at Donald Trump, and obviously you've been a critic of his, you've written critically of him, you worked closely with him. And I think as sort of relieved as I am that we seem to have made some progress on the nuclear program. I'm not comforted by the way that Donald Trump makes decisions in general, by his character as a leader and a statesman. And even the reporting that we're getting, including some conversations

I've had myself, about what led him to want to be involved here, what led him to do these strikes was basically he was in effect jealous of the attention that the Israelis were getting. And he said, I want some of that attention. And so we went and bombed Iran's nuclear sites. How comforted can we feel with Donald Trump in charge, even if he made a policy decision that, you know, accords with the things that you and I have believed for quite some time? Well, I said in my book, working in his administration was like living inside a pinball machine, and that's about the way this decision to attack Iran played out. He wanted to be at the head of the parade, just didn't know which parade was going to be the successful parade. He's never

a loser. You know, he's always a winner, and he was undecided. Now he tweeted. Now he tweeted. He tweeted. about the possibility of regime change. I mean, this is, but it's something to take advantage of. When he moves in this direction, we should encourage him. But it's a reflection. He has no philosophy. He has no national security strategy. He doesn't even do policy as we conventionally understand it. It was like that in the first term. It is like that in the second term. Yeah. Well, feeling both relieved and deeply concerned at the same time, I think is the way to, way to think about it at the moment. Ambassador John Bolton, thank you for your time this morning. Well, thanks so much for having me.

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Thanks to Ambassador Bolton for joining me, and now we have a roundtable with Kevin Williamson, National Correspondent for the Dispatch, Charlotte Lawson, who's been in Israel for most of the past two years reporting for the dispatch, and Mike Nelson, former director of operations at the Institute for the Study of War and a longtime special forces soldier. Mike, let me start with you. You have a piece on our website this morning about the attacks that we saw from the United States on Iran's nuclear facilities over the weekend. Just give us your sense of those attacks, whether it was the right or the wrong thing to do, how we should think about them and where we go from here. Like you said, this is pretty momentous. It's a pretty big

This is something that has been talked about through multiple administrations going back to the Bush, the Bush administration when we thought that there might be strikes against the Iranian nuclear program. It is a big deal. It is, I think, the right call. And partially it's framed against the changed environment that we find ourselves in post-October 7th, that the Iranian regional proxies that they built up that had been a strategic deterrent against any kind of action against their nuclear program have largely been degraded or destroyed because of the, the war in Gaza, the related activities targeting Hezbollah. And so now this offered a prime opportunity for Israel to, number one, strike against a more vulnerable Iran. And number two, and Iran had demonstrated that they would be willing to conduct a strikes against Israel's domestic population. You know, they greenlit the attack that Hamas conducted on October 7th,

and that presented a real danger to Israel. So this was a real marked opportunity in a time for Israel to decide, we have to deal with this as they're, you know, potentially as short as a few weeks away from nuclear weaponization breakout. Once they engaged in that, they kind of found themselves in position being half pregnant where they started the campaign but couldn't finish it with the facility on Fordow. And that presented President Trump with the choice. Does he commit U.S. assets that can strike this? Or do we wait and see how the situation spirals in one way or the other? And I think he made the right decision to intervene, strike the facility as only we could. Now we sit back and wait and see if it was totally effective, partially effective, and what the Iranians decide.

Let me follow up a little bit on the question of these proxies, because Iran has long seen these proxies as sort of both enhancing its offensive capabilities, but also as a deterrent. People aren't going to mess with the regime. They're not going to mess with the nuclear sites if they were worried about the possibility that Iran could set off or send its proxy forces out to do its dirty work. in the aftermath of such attacks. How degraded are these proxies? And what does that mean in terms of what the U.S. might expect in terms of blowback? Well, so the two primary ones that have changed since October 7th, that, like you said, offered a strategic deterrent against any kind of action against the regime or their nuclear program before.

Number one, Lebanese, Hezbollah, and number two, the Assad regime. Hesbola was the veiled threat. They had massive amounts of missiles and rockets that the theory was if Israel conducted any strikes against or significant strikes against Iran or threaten the regime a substantive way, that Hezbollah could rain death and destruction down, killing thousands or more Israeli citizens. So that was always the veiled threat. That was always the strategic Trump card that they knew they could play.

Well, as Hezbollah got involved initially towed the water on behalf of Hamas, and Israel responded with their long dormant programs at target leadership, to kill Masrallah. We've seen that Hezbollah has at least, whether most likely lacks the capability now, even if they wanted to, but now twice as released statements saying they're not getting involved after the initial Israeli strikes. And now after our strikes, Hezbole has said, you know, like Roberto Duren, no Moss, they don't. want any more of this, at least not right now. Second of all, the Assad regime had offered a free base of operations for Iran to at least stage and project power against Israel. They had tried to stage or forward stage or install several weapons, missile launchers, and things like that, flying those into Damascus under the previous regime. But the Assad regime had been propped up by Russian assistance and by Hezbollah fighters who had been imported to fight on

behalf of Assad. With both of those allies distracted by their own fights and degraded, Assad eventually toppled and now Iran doesn't have that either. So they've really lost their ability to maintain this veiled threat against the Israeli homeland, and that offered this opportunity for Israel to strike.

Kevin, in the immediate aftermath of these U.S. strikes over the weekend, we had Vice President J.D. Vance go on the Sunday shows, and insist that this was something of a one-off. We'd given, apparently given the Iranians a heads up, that this was a one-off, that we were targeting their nuclear facilities, that there wasn't a regime change element to this. J.D. Vance went on the Sunday shows and repeated that message in forceful terms. This is not about regime change. No matter what, we can't be any clearer

than this. This is not about regime change. And then six or seven hours later, his boss, Donald Trump, who seems determined to humiliate J.D. Vance at every turn, whatever the geopolitical implications of the policy are tweeted out something saying, hey, regime change is a politically incorrect phrase, but maybe this should be about regime change. Maybe we should be thinking in terms of mega, make Iran great again. How are we to understand what the United States policy is now with respect to the regime in Iran? Yeah, we get confused by terminus. and we forget about the basic underlying questions, which is, what do you want? So we talk about regime change as though it were a thing in and of itself.

What we want is to change the nature of the Iranian regime. That doesn't necessarily mean changing the personnel. It means changing its character and behavior. But in that sense, this is obviously about regime change. We're trying to convince them to behave in a way that's different from how they have. You could take out the whole top echelon of leadership in Afghanistan tomorrow. By Friday, the new regime is going to look like the old regime. You know, changing the personnel doesn't necessarily get things done.

On the other hand, you know, if Saddam Hussein had woke up one morning decided he wanted to be Lee Kuan Yew, he'd probably still be in power. You know, if he were changing the nature of the way he were doing his government. So I suspect that the, what looks to me like a conscious decision by the Israelis to not target the political leadership of Iran when they are taking out the nuclear scientists and the senior military leaders and such is a way of trying to get that regime change without the messiness of taking out the actual personnel of the government and trying to build a new state and install a new government by letting them know that we can get to you, that the United States is willing to get into this and send B2 bombers over there and drop the biggest thing we have short of a nuclear well. weapon. We expect different behavior from you here on out. And I think that is, I think that's the message has probably been sent. And the question for us now, I think, is assuming that the Iranian regime wants to survive, is it more afraid of an internal coup or, you know, being displaced by internal elements or is it more afraid of a, it would probably be an existential conflict with the United States if it got into a more full-scale war? And they know that they won't

last five days in a real, you know, conflict with the United States. And I suspect that their calculation, and I hope that their calculation, is that that is the worst outcome and that they'll deal with whatever internal blowback they get, you know, loss of face and humiliation and looking weak and all that stuff, is still going to be more survivable for them than an escalated. I hate the word escalation, by the way, but a larger and broader and deeper and meaner conflict with the United States. So, I mean, it's impossible to read their minds, of course. they're operating from a very different set of assumptions and priorities and playbooks than we are, and it's very difficult to get into their psychology. But if I were betting my own money on it, I would bet for some sort of largely symbolic, not terribly bloodthirsty response that lets them act like they did something but doesn't invite a more muscular and aggressive response from the United States.

Now, having said that, I hate making predictions, and it's entirely possible that I'm entirely wrong about that, so I'm not sticking a great deal of credibility on this. I don't have any particular expertise in the internal thinking of the Iranian regime, but I'm not sure anybody does. No, I think that's part of the problem. I mean, certainly in terms of human intelligence by our own U.S. intelligence agencies, I think, is, should we say, sparse? I'm not sure it's Iraq level sparse, but it's sparse. One follow-up on that. I mean, you would think that this would be a moment of a real vulnerability for the Supreme Leader, given the vulnerability that the regime has now shown, that the country,

has now shown. I mean, for years, I think there was a perception. It was a debated perception, but a perception nonetheless that Iran was the leading military power in the region that it couldn't be touched, that any engagement by Israel, like the one we've seen over the past 10 days, would be met with a sturdy and firm response that would exact lots of damage on the Israeli infrastructure, the Israeli populace, we just haven't seen it. They haven't measured up. There aren't many wins to point to if you are Iran. Doesn't that lend itself to the possibility that somebody will look at the Supreme

Leader and say, hey, you were wrong about the strength of the regime for all these years and look for an opportunity to cause some trouble? I think one of the things we often overlook in our conversation because we have a hard time getting outside of ourselves and looking at ourselves critically. It's just how different the United States is from the rest of the world. I was writing something about Japan from my newsletter this morning. I just looked it up. Our GDP per capita is two and a half times Japan's now.

And Japan's a pretty wealthy country. So Iran very well may be the predominant military power in that part of the world. But that doesn't mean very much compared to what the United States can do and to what the United States can do through allies that we support, like Israel. I rather suspect that what we say, after the Gulf War, where the world was sort of was shocked for a little bit, the high lopsided that conflict was. I mean, everyone knew the United States was going to win and win fairly easily, but the way the United States just rolled through Kuwait and drove

the Iraqis out as though it were a weekend outing, really changed how a lot of people think about things. It's one of the reasons why some other countries started pursuing nuclear weapons more aggressively. I think we're going to see maybe another round of the same kind of thing. People just saying, you know, Iran, for that part of the world, has a real military It's a real, if it were Iran versus Saudi Arabia, it'd be a real fight. But the United States versus almost anybody is not a real fight. And Israel is not the United States, obviously, but they enjoy a lot of U.S. support. They enjoy access to American weapons and advanced technologies.

And that sort of thing now is just, it provides such a lopsided battlefield and such a lopsided conflict that, yeah, maybe the Iranians are the top dog in that part of the world. It makes him a very, very close second to a kind of offhanded American effort. Charlotte, you've spent the better part of the last two years in Tel Aviv. What's your sense of the Israeli response to these U.S. strikes over the past couple days? And then the Israeli response to this war effort over the past 10 days or so led by the Israelis? It's a good question. On aisle on the main highway in Tel Aviv yesterday, there was a giant billboard that said, Thank you, Mr. President, it had Trump's face in an American flag.

And I think that pretty much captures the Israeli response to this. I think it's safe to say that the Israeli public is nearly uniformly supportive of the U.S. strikes and even supportive of the Israeli campaign. And that's despite a lot of public backlash to the current government, Prime Minister Benjamin Nanyamu and backlash to other Israeli war efforts to soak the war in Gaza, namely. And it's also, despite the real pain that the Israelis have felt as a result of this war, it's nowhere near what assessments indicated it could be before the war start. Israeli security officials told the Knesset that casualties from Iran's initial strike on Israel could be anywhere between 800 and 4,000 people. So, of course, what we've seen in recent days isn't anywhere near that scope,

but it's still unprecedented to see buildings in Central Israel, Heifel, fall. So I think the Israeli support for this conflict speaks to, one, just how confident the Israelis are that they're winning, that they're able to go into Iran and operate with near impunity in its airspace. And then it speaks to, two, they're recognizing. that this is an existential threat that needed to be dealt with. We've heard from Israeli leaders that they, too, at this point, are not pursuing regime change in Iran.

You've heard that from the prime minister himself. You've heard that from others. What's your sense of how realistic that is, given the work that needs to be done in the aftermath of what we've seen over the beginning parts of this campaign? So at least publicly, you're right. The Israeli government has tried to put itself in lockstep with at least the initial American war aims. This is, you know, a limited operation to eliminate immediate threats. I think if Iran takes, you know, an unwise course of action, and this does escalate into targeting, you know, political targets in Iran, if escalates into a war of regime change, it wouldn't be the worst-case scenario from the Israeli perspective. I think there's, I mean, Mike mentioned the post-October 7th mindset. I think there's a real recognition in Israel that this regime can't coexist with Israel.

It's openly vowed to destroy it, and it's taken actions to actually complete that goal. So I think that there's a sense that he is, Islamic Republic, without resistance, isn't the Islamic Republic. I don't think Israelis are optimistic that it's going to moderate it. There's no reason anybody should be optimistic that it's going to moderate as long as it remains in place, in my view. Mike, looking at where we are sort of at this moment with the Israelis having done what they've done for 10 days, the success, what we think is the success. They're real big questions still to be answered about what happened, but the success that the Israeli government had in bringing the United States into the conflict,

I asked Ambassador Bolton in my conversation with him about the prospect of boots on the ground. It doesn't seem to be much of an appetite among the U.S. public for boots on the ground. Certainly there's a split, an obvious split in sort of Maga World, Donald Trump's political base, in which many people, many outspoken online MAGA supporters are very strongly opposed to, they were strongly opposed to what he did, although many of them have flipped on that, I'd say pretty quickly, since he did it. What are the possibilities that we can do, the United States can do what we want to do to further our aims, eliminating Iran's nuclear program without boots on the ground,

Israeli or American? Well, like you said, there are still a lot of, to quote, Rumsfeld, a lot of known unknowns, and then there are, I'm sure, some unknown unknowns as well that we're not tracking. But the first one and the primary one is, what is the actual operational capability of the Ford off facility? What is anything left operational? Did we fully destroy it, et cetera, et cetera? Second one is what's the status of the 60% in rich uranium, the several hundred kilograms that they had already refined. The IEEA said they had tested some samples that were refined up to 83%.

So where is that? Was it destroyed at Espehon? Was it moved elsewhere? We don't know. Now, the good news is even if that hash of uranium was absconded with in the middle of the night prior to the strikes and somewhere secure and safe in uranium control, I don't believe they have anything currently that can be weaponized. It would still require more centrifuges or find the capability that they would either have

to rebuild or export and get from somebody who would assist them in this process, which is not likely. So most likely things are at least at a pause, if not destroyed. You know, they are no longer within weeks that the most aggressive estimates of weaponization break out. And I think Iran right now finds itself. We've kind of seeded decision making after this to Iran. The ball is in their court now to decide what they want to do with this opportunity. And I know they probably don't look at it like an opportunity.

It's latest in a series of long humiliations that have taken place over the past two years. but they're kind of like, you know, to use a pop culture reference, they're kind of like Tom Hagan advising Sonny after Salasso tries to kill Vito, right? You know, they've just been insulted in that their father was attempted to be killed, but the smart play is making the deal, right? Instead of listening to Sunny's hot head. They have an opportunity right now to probably do some kind of face-saving response, something within theater against us and Israel,

declare that they have resisted and then try to find some kind of use that uranium potentially as a bargaining chip to seek some kind of diplomatic resolution. But what they have to realize is they have had two primary goals since the Islamic Revolution, regime survival and exporting of their view of Islamic Revolution. But right now they're like a body in shock, right? The core function is regime survival. And that's their primary thing that they need to focus on. If they can lick their wounds and accept that they are, they could potentially still survive. And we have the president's rhetoric and tweets or truth, whatever, kind of working against that right now. But if he can get back on message that, hey, this is an opportunity for you to take a pause in

the escalatory ladder, they have an opportunity here. Now, if they don't take that opportunity and they escalate, they don't have many conventional assets that they can do, that would be more their nuisance in theater, there's talk, you know, they're already making noises about the Strait of Hormuz. China has said loudly do not do that. It threatens their commerce. The, you know, Fifth Fleet is ready, willing, and able to deter them and disabuse them of their notion that they can block the Strait of Hormuz if they, if they attempt. So if there is some kind of non-face-saving response, it's likely to be something through these distributed networks in the West or Europe or potentially in Israel. And that would be a mistake on their part

if they decide that. Yeah, we've heard reports that they had threatened to activate sleeper cells in the United States if the United States were to attack. Kevin, is the, is the, and certainly the missing nuclear materials, if they are in fact missing, is a potential leverage point for the Iranians, as Mike says. It's also a threat. How worried should we be about the possible. of a dirty bomb, something that we've been talking about as a country for decades. Yeah, I'd worry about that more immediately than I would an operational nuclear weapon, although one of the things always been mysterious about this to me is that, you know, I've heard for years that they're, you know, weeks or months away from being able to build a nuclear

weapon, well, why wouldn't they just do it, whether they announce it or don't announce it? We say we're not going to have boots on the ground, and I understand why people talk that way, and that's another one of those phrases that sort of, you know, gets a hold of people as boots on the ground. but at some point you're probably going to need to have some people walking around looking at things and figuring out where this stuff went, what the actual status of these facilities is. There's only so much you can tell from satellites, only so much you're going to get from Iranian sources. I mean, maybe it's Israeli boots on the ground in there looking and not ours. But if all we did was knock out a bunch of tunnels and collapsed the stairways and the air shafts and whatnot,

you know, a country that's got a really big oil industry, the one thing they're good at industrial is drilling holes in the ground. You know, if all of this is getting back down there, they can get back down there. If we haven't actually destroyed the facility, then again, if we actually did, you know, disrupt things in the refining chamber, I guess as it's known, that creates, you know, radiological issues and things like that. So you need to know about it from that way, from that direction as well. So I don't see how we don't treat this like, you know, the involvement in the Serbian war some years back where you're just going to do pinpoint airstrikes and pretend like, you know, nothing else is required of you. It's a different kind of thing. if you actually want to dismantle the program is going to require some in-person dismantling. And unless the Iranians, for some reason, agree to, you know, uninterrupted, unbothered inspections the day after tomorrow,

that's going to mean somebody has to fight with them to make that happen. Yeah, those inspections still feel unlikely to me, given Rand's resistance over the years. Charlotte, we have seen since October 7th, one stunning jaw-dropping success from Israeli intelligence after another. October 7th itself was, of course, a colossal intelligence failure. But since then, it has been truly remarkable some of the things that we've seen. And one of the conversations before the U.S. strikes over the weekend was that the Israelis could bomb the heck out of Fordo and the surrounding areas, three miles, five-mile radius, whatever have you. and then drop in teams of commandos to do exactly the kind of boots on the ground that Kevin and Mike have been talking about.

Do you have a sense that they're prepared to do that? I mean, I think the one assumption we can make about the Israelis is that they're not sitting still. We're all still processing what's happening. We're working through it in the news. We're reading about these things. But undoubtedly, the Israelis were prepared for what the United States did, or even if the Israelis would have had to try to damage these nuclear sites, perhaps to a lesser extent than with American involvement.

They've been planning for this forever. Benjamin Netanyahu has been focused on Iran as the big threat for decades. Any word in the Israeli press or the folks that you're talking to about what we can expect from the Israelis now in terms of next steps? Yeah, I think one of the reasons, not the reasons. But one of the reasons October 7th was such a colossal intelligence failure is because Israeli attention was really diverted elsewhere. I mean, this is the conflict that the Israelis have been preparing for for decades in

addition to the war against Hezbollah. And we saw really the precision of Israeli intelligence throughout that entire war from Pagergate to the targeting of Nassarala's bunker to precise. intelligence about Hezbollah's missile stockpiles and where to target those. So I would never write off the possibility of an Israeli commando operation to try to either assess the extent of the U.S. damage or target the remnants of Iran's nuclear program. Obviously, it's something that's not very openly discussed just for operational security reasons. But we saw an Israeli command operation in Syria back in the winter that was targeting Assad-era facilities.

So I think if there are boots on the ground, it would probably be from the Israeli side. And Netanyahu yesterday in a speech alluded to some Israeli insight into what happened to that in Ritz-Turbanian. He said he had interesting information about it, but wouldn't share. anything else. Mike, one of the things we heard from skeptics of American involvement of the United States doing what the United States did over the weekend was that Iran's allies would step up, the BRICS nations, Russia, China, others, and really stand with Iran and cause problems for the United States. It's early. But thus far, I would say the response for Moran's putative allies

has been muted. We haven't seen much. Doesn't mean that they can't do something. It doesn't mean that we won't see it in the coming days and weeks. But so far, at least publicly, we haven't seen much. How worried should we be

about that kind of a unified response? Well, I think one of the things that's been illustrated of the last several years about the access of resistance, the alliance of malfeasance, whatever we want to call it, It's definitely an alliance of one-way relationships.

Russia has not been, you know, when Assad was under serious threat, Russia didn't really step up to back him. China is a transactional actor primarily looking to establish their forward presence, engage in predatory lending and military sales, but not so much interested in backing up their alleys or proxies when they're in harm's way. So I think that we're not likely to see. We'll probably hear, you know, wailing and gnashing of teeth and objection if we do anything more even over this.

But I don't think there's going to be any serious kind of, you know, kind of already is they're primarily focused on business and not necessarily on a wrong saving face and straight-of-form moves. I do think that calculus may change if we start communicating or openly seek regime change, not because they see the Ayatollah as a great. great ally with whom they need to stand, but because particularly Russia doesn't necessarily want to deal with the aftermath of what gets loosed in the chaos afterwards. We have to remember, you know, right now you have the Pahlavi family pretending, trying to play the role of Ahmed Shalabi. This will be an easy transition. You just need to fly us back in and we'll take over.

That's not accurate. Not only is there no natural trend towards what would happen after the Ayatollah, but we keep forgetting, you know, Iran is not just Persians. There are Balut separatism movements. There are Kurdish independence movements. There's the M.E.K. Marxist cult. There are all kinds of, and then there's still ISIS that conducts attacks within Iran. There will be chaos that is released if the regime falls. And so Russia primarily with this in their near backyard doesn't want to deal with this, I think, spilling out elsewhere. So if we did shift towards, towards a policy of seeking active regime change, I do think you'd see some kind of at least

diplomatic or economic pushback from them, but I don't think anybody's going to stand militarily. We're not going to see Chinese troops or Russian troops in Tehran. Maybe the North Koreans who are, you know, selling soldiers for money or for food. But that would be about it. So I don't think we're going to see a lot of resistance. One thing to note as well, we talked about, you asked about kind of Israeli aggression or boldness with potential. commando strikes, I think it's important to point out that Israel's conventional boldness is kind of put to shame some of the conventional thinking of American calculations over the past decade and a half. We couldn't strike Syria's chemical program in 2012 and enforce Obama's red line

because we were so terrified of the Syrian-Iad threat, the S-300s. And Israel ran roughshot over Syrian airspace with that integrated air defense. We were told that Iranian air defense was so secure that nobody could strike there without casualties. And Israel enjoys air superiority, if not air dominance right now, flying refuelers in plain sight in their daylight hours. So I think that they've exposed a lot of the kind of the, you know, Iran, as Kevin was saying, Iran probably is still the most capable military of the Muslim countries in the Middle East, but they're nowhere near as capable as they were made out to be. All right. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from the dispatch podcast.

Yeah, Kevin, let me ask you about other potential blowback for the United States. What are, you know, there's talk of Iran potentially shutting the Straits of Pormuz of playing games with the oil markets. What are the realistic concerns that American policymakers should be thinking about with respect to economic retaliation? Yeah, well, someone from West Texas, he still has a lot of friends there. I hope they do. I mean, why not just send us pallets of money? Iran's big idea is apparently that they're going to use disruption in the Middle Eastern oil supply to drive up prices and make countries that were previously dependent on Middle Eastern oil exports, more dependent on other sources, and use this to strike down the country that is the world's largest producer of oil and gas and a gigantic exporter of

this stuff. I'm sure the United States would love to step in and pick up whatever slack happens in that market if they if they shut things down. I mean, people in the oil and gas have been complaining about prices for the last few months anyway. You know, some of the Trump administration drill baby drill stuff has actually not been all that good for them because they're afraid of overproduction and lower prices and slack and all that. But I think if the Iranians get real froggy about there, there's a lot of guys in Midland who are going to have new trucks next year and they're all going to be very happy about it. If that means I pay an extra 60 cents a gallon for diesel, I mean, I'm not going to love it, but life goes on. You get yourself a Tesla.

I hear you can get them used cheap right now. Charlotte, thinking about the Israeli political situation, obviously Benjamin Natanyahu's been somebody who's been criticized kind of from all sides, well before October 7th and in particular after October 7th, there were protests of his moves on the Israeli judiciary. He was, I think, seen to be in a pretty rickety political position and speculation that some of what, what he's done by being as bold as he's being is to consolidate political power and political support. Whether that was his goal or not, it seems to have worked. I mean, we've had Israeli opposition parties say that they're standing shoulder to shoulder in the face of the threat from Iran and in the offensive moves that the Israelis have made. If there were to be significant Iranian blowback on Israel, if they were to be a significant Iranian blowback on Israel, if they were to be. able to activate what's left of these proxy groups and do real damage, or if there were

casualties on the orders of what had been briefed to the Knesset before the war. Is Netanyahu in a much better position politically today? And would that last in the face of those kinds of additional challenges? I think it is safe to say he's found his consensus issue. I think a lot of political pundits and reporters who have been following Netanyahu like to predict his imminent political

downfall. I've never done it because there have been many reasons to think that he'll be on the outs and it just it happens briefly but we're not in that moment right now and I think like you said, opposition

figures in Israeli politics have been standing really shoulder to shoulder with Netanyahu. So theoretically, this would be the moment for him to call an election that hasn't happened yet. But I don't think the Iranian response being more overwhelming would change much Israeli public opinion when it comes to this war. It's obviously difficult to predict because it hasn't happened yet. And there's always a chance for, for an Iranian attack that does break through and cause a mass casualty event, hopefully it doesn't happen.

But I really think just because Israelis have been primed for this war, some of them their entire lives, this is decades in the making, that there's a real willingness to kind of feel the temporary pain if it means eliminating this long-term strategic threat. There's another world leader who has been, counted out time and time again, who has looked to have been on his last legs and defied predictions of his demise repeatedly. And that's Donald Trump. Charlotte, I'll leave you out of this since this is much more speculative and political discussion. But for Kevin and Mike, I talked to Ambassador Bolton

about my own views on what's happened over the past several days. And on the one hand, I'm, I find myself relieved. This is something I think was almost inevitable. The United States was almost always going to have to do this, whatever we heard from the Obama administration and their enthusiasm and optimism about diplomacy. It was never going to work because the regime was was or the regime is what the regime is. And handing cash money to get them to do the right thing was never going to be effective. So on a policy level, if we were talking about it in a complete vacuum, I would be very strongly in favor of what we saw the United States doing. And as I say, I have felt a little relief over the past 36 hours. On the other hand, the commander-in-chief is Donald Trump.

I think there are and have been, Kevin, you've written about this a lot. You know, real character questions. Donald Trump is, I don't think, anyone's idea of a state. He doesn't use sober judgment. He comes to the conclusions he comes to for reasons that are, I think, often problematic to be generous, to use a euphemism. And if you look at the stories that have been reported in the past few days, I mean, the New York Times reporting today, consistent with conversations I had had with people who were familiar with Donald Trump's decision-making, leading up to these strikes, that one of the main reasons he decided to do this is because he was watching Fox News and was jealous that the Israelis were getting good press. How confident can we be, even if you agree with this as a policy decision, that he's the one to sort of walk us through this next stage of what could be chaos and challenge and difficulty? Kevin, I'll start with you and then I'll follow up with you, Mike.

boy, I just wish we could get a bunch of people on Fox News to, like, praise the Germans to the heavens for keeping their budget deficit under control. You know, that would be nice if Trump could learn from the example. You know, Trump is, I prefer to him as Lord Feather Christian sometimes, which is a joke about a guy called Lord Darby, who was once said to be like a feather Christian who always bore the impression of the last man to have sat on him. You know, Trump tends to be very heavily influenced by the last person he seems to have had a conversation with. And there's some of that going on here. I think, too, he cares just

profoundly in an immature and I think dangerous way about how he's perceived and how people talk about him, particularly in the press. And a guy who particularly, you know, claims to hold in contempt the New York Times and Washington Post and the source called mainstream media, obviously very, very deeply cares about that sort of thing. He also cares how he has talked about vis-à-vis other presidents. So he likes to be able to come out and say, well, Obama, wasn't able to do this and Biden wasn't able to do this and everyone talked about this, but I was the one who finally was able to come in and get rid of the Iranian nuclear program. I mean, there's a good reason to probably leave Charlotte out of this part of the conversation,

as you say, but, you know, the questions I always ask about Donald Trump is, in any given situation, ask yourself, what would someone who's lazy do? What does someone who is stupid do? And what is someone who's a coward do? And if those bin diagrams, you know, all come together on one policy, typically you can pretty well bet on Donald. Trump doing that. Now, in this case, we actually got what I think was probably the right policy outcome so far. But this is really the only beginning of this. And just kind of not to filibuster, but to circle back to what we began this conversation with, we need to know whether this mission actually was accomplished. We don't know that. This is the first time as everyone has remarked that these

weapons have been used in combat. They've been tested. Sure, we have some idea what their capabilities are, but we don't really know what's happened at Fordo and the other facilities. We don't know what the Iranian plans are from here and what we need to do to either counteract bad ones or encourage good ones. And Trump's great danger is his short attention span, his need for praise, and his politely, you could call it risk aversion, I suppose. Any further steps from here are riskier than the steps we've just taken because we can do airstrikes all day against Iran and not really have to worry very much about anything except for like ordinary air accidents and things like. that because their air depends as apparently as the guy with the slingshot standing on a rooftop somewhere. But all the stuff that will be necessary from here on out to make sure that we've actually accomplished things that we want to accomplish there is going to require things that

Trump and his administration historically have not been very good at, which is some risk tolerance, sustained, intelligent activity, coming up with a policy that actually aligns with the long-term interest of the United States and not Trump's short-term political or psychological interests. and then executing that policy in a sustained way over a period of, well, from now until the end of his administration, you know, in 2041 or whenever he leaves office. And so I think there's reason to be not especially optimistic about his own personal capacity for that kind of action, although one hopes that maybe there's some better people in the administration. You know, for someone like Rubio to press things in the right direction policy-wise doesn't necessarily put him on a political or public. collision course with the president. He doesn't have to come out and say the president's wrong. He's not doing the right thing. He's not following the right course of action here.

But he can hopefully behind the scenes keep the administration focused on making sure this mission gets completed. And yet, Mike, Donald Trump overcame his risk aversion. You know, there's somebody that people were mocking just a couple weeks ago using that acronym Taco Trump always chickens out. he didn't in this instance he stepped up he took massive risks I think risks for the country risks for himself politically and as I was having conversations with a diplomat from the region the other day you know he said yeah might be the case that you wouldn't want to pick Donald Trump to sort of guide the United States through what could be a very fraught geopolitical period. But on the other hand, nobody else has stepped up and done this. And this was probably

something that needed to be done. So maybe you needed somebody like Donald Trump to do the thing that nobody else has been willing to do. I, uh, so the piece up today, I lay out what I think is a logical conclusion. You can look at the events and decide why striking Fordo or US strike against Fordo was the right decision. I would not in any way claim that that was the logical chain that Donald Trump followed to come to that conclusion, uh, to, to, to go. to another pop culture reference. I'm reminded of the moment where in the original naked gun series, Frank Dreven's getting an award for killing his 50th drug dealer, and then he admits, well, I actually just backed over him with my car. It turned out he was a drug dealer. So sometimes

you stumble into the right outcome through, you know, inadvertent circumstances. I do think that, like Kevin was saying, if we go further or if we try to do anything beyond the limited the means of this strike, there are going to be setbacks, you know, going back to the Dick Cheney statement, there were going to be times in the shadows, they're going to be setbacks. And I don't know that Donald Trump has the character to do what George Bush did, say, in 2005 when, you know, when sentiment was turning against the war in Iraq, and instead he said, we're going to maintain our presence there. In fact, increase it to make sure we see this through. So we see, we saw, if in less than 12 hours from the administration completely on message, this was a limited

strike, we were just striking this capability to Donald Trump, then communicating something more. I think if he can resist, if those around him can help him resist the need to communicate something else or entertain something else or chase the shiny object, this can be very successful. But what we've seen, you know, nobody knows what Donald Trump's decision is going to be besides him, even those very close to him were embarrassed because they made bold statements that there was no way the president was going to commit to this. And, you know, Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, all those who were close in the president's camp or at one time were have found themselves out in the cold. So I don't think anybody can truly predict where he's going to go with this, aside from Kevin's point that it's largely going to be based on impulse and his sentiment about how he's being talked about rather than some guiding principle and some end state that he's trying to work towards through thick and thin. Yeah, one of the things we've heard reported is that there was tremendous operational security

about this in the days leading up to this. And I think the reporting is reasonably well grounded. Jennifer Griffin at Fox News is a very good reporter, has very good sources, has done some of that reporting. But it's also the case that one of the best ways to have operational security is to make last minute decisions and operate on an ad hoc basis the way that Donald Trump does, which, while might give us the blessings of operational security, brings a lot of additional maybe unnecessary and unwanted risk. Mike, Kevin, Charlotte, thank you for this terrific discussion. Appreciate it taking the time today.

And thank you all for joining us on the Dispatch Podcast. You know, I'm sorry.