The Rest Is Classified - 148. Can Europe Salvage its Relationship with Trump?

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

Is there anyone telling Trump, ‘No’? Is Trump’s use of power getting more unhinged? And should Europe have done more to open the Strait of Hormuz? Listen back to David and Gordon live on YouTube with Washington Post columnist and author, David Ignatius, to discuss the latest on Trump’s war in the Middle East. ------------------- THE REST IS CLASSIFIED LIVE 2026 at The Rest Is Fest: Buy your tickets ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to see David and Gordon live on stage at London’s Southbank Centre on 4 September: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/the-rest-is-classified-live/ ------------------- Sign-up for our free newsletter where producer Becki takes you behind the scenes of the show: ⁠⁠⁠https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign-up⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- Join the Declassified Club to go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, regular livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. Just go to ⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠ or join on Apple Podcasts. ------------------- Get a 10% discount on business PCs, printers and accessories using the code TRIC10. Visit https://HP.com/CLASSIFIED for more information. T&C's apply. ------------------- Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@restisclassified⁠ Social Producer: Emma Jackson Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello and welcome everybody to this very special live stream from The Restis Classified. we've just been finishing a two-part series examining what's been going on inside Iran, CIA operations, the issues of rescues of pilots, but in particular the issue of what an operation to snatch Iran's highly enriched uranium might look like. And to complement those episodes, as well as examine some of the bigger issues about Iran and US foreign policy in more detail and how the Trump administration might be thinking about its next moves, we're very lucky, aren't we, David, to be joined by a journalist who really sits at the nexus of Washington intelligence and national security. Indeed, we are very fortunate today to be speaking with

David Ignatius, who is a best-selling author and prize-winning columnist for the Washington Post. He has been covering the Middle East and the CIA for well over 25 years. He lives in Washington, where in addition to doing all of that, he manages to write some absolutely fantastic spy novel. He's the author of a dozen of those. His latest Phantom Orbit is an exploration of the modern day race for supremacy in space warfare. One of them, Body of Lies, which is a fantastic book, was made into a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crow. And his first novel, Agents of Innocence, I have to say is perhaps the best novel ever written about CIA operations in the Middle East and was on the in-house required reading list that I received, I joined the Central Intelligence Agency as an intern in the summer of 2006, the CIA at one point

called that book a novel but not fiction, which is a high piece of praise indeed for a novelist. And David and I also, just in a personal note, shared the same editor at W.W. Norton, the legendary Star Lawrence before his passing. And David wrote a wonderful piece for The Post after Star died, which I would commend to all listeners who are curious for a peek into the author, editor of relationship, the title of that piece, which made me both want to cry and laugh at the same time, was these editor's notes are poison I learned from every drop. So we share a similar awe and reverence for the man who poisoned us over many books. So with all that said, David Ignatius, welcome to the rest is classified.

Thank you so much, David. such a generous introduction. I must say I've heard for so many years about all the CIA officers who read my first novel. And I've come to the conclusion that you must have all taken it out of the library.

Library because it's never shown up. No one purchased it. No one bought it. They're passing around the copies. Or the Reddit. It's obviously to me that he didn't buy it. But thanks. We did share a great editor and Star

the lead of my piece about him after he died was all in quotation marks, ugh, cleave, must we? Must we? This is the series of things he'd written in the margins of my bad writing. It made me feel better to know that we had received similar treatment from Starling. We are, unfortunately, not here to talk about spy novels, which I think you and I could talk about all day. much to Gordon Carrera's chagrin. But we are here to talk about Iran.

And I thought, David, the first question I'd put to you is to set up one of the key, if not the key character in this drama, which is President Donald J. Trump. Now, I suspect that many listeners to this, maybe you have a sense that over the past few months he has been acting rather erratically and impulsively. And I'm curious how you think the president sees his position right now amid the ceasefire and the negotiations that are ongoing in Pakistan. Is Trump a man under pressure to do a deal? Or how do you think he's feeling about the situation that he's in right now?

So the first thing that I've noticed about Trump since the Venezuela operation is that he's just flying. You know, he's a teetotaler famously, but it's as if he's, you know, intoxicated with the excitement and power being commander-in-chief. And I thought to myself, there can't be anything quite like it in the world to be a stride that massive military power, the ability to operate so stealthily as in Venezuela. And he's just roaring with it. He's good at the big boom at the beginning of something, and he's good at the big show at the end of something, but he isn't very good in the middle.

And he isn't very good at the aftermath. I'm just struck by how many of these peace deals that he touts and who's not in favor of peace in our miserable world. Just don't get finished. The Gaza deal, actually, if you look at the particular details, is pretty good. They recruited first-rate people, the person who's the executive director Nikolai Milanoff,

as good as you could find them at least. I talked at length with the Palestinian who's there to oversee the technocratic committee, first-rate person, but nothing's happened. I just have a feeling that the follow-up that should be present if Iran is really going to make a transition from this revolutionary country to something different, some kind of managed IRGC,

and, you know, state capitalism, that it's going to need more work than this team can put in. I mean, it's just watching it here from Europe, where I am, David, in London, I mean, the perception is that Donald Trump has, partly because he didn't have clear aims going in to this conflict, and they had all these multitude of different aims, whether it's regime change, whether it's the nuclear material, whether these other things. You know, on the one hand, they gave him a kind of flexibility at one point about declaring victory, But it's also now making it very hard to see what the end game looks like. I mean, do you think opening the straight may be saying there's a nuclear deal?

That's what he's looking for now just to basically get out of this? Yes. So I think Gordon that he wants an exit ramp. I was told that he had come to understand that the deeper you get into this conflict, the more it's like a quagmire. Certainly he's warned to his career about the, the danger of that. And now he found himself in one. And he wants out, but he wants out thunderously, victoriously. So you have this weird oscillation between, you know, claims that the war's already

over and we've won, they're dying for a deal. And sending, as of today, I think we have 10,000 additional troops heading to the Middle East. So this, this undamped oscillation is a feature of Trump. And I think it's increasingly, Gordon and David, undermining Trump's ability to get the success he wants to have as president. I think the world's really kind of wised up to it. The people are sick of at first. Europeans are sick of all of his bad mouthing NATO and crazy talk about seizing Greenland. I think that China's and Russia's of the world are kind of going, yeah, yeah, you know, and some of that too with the Iranians. So I think he wants out.

I think he is close to a deal. I got a very detailed read out of the negotiations that took place in the Somabad, which I published in my column, gosh, the beginning of the week. And it's turned out pretty much as people said it would. It was a very generous offer on the table from the U.S., surprisingly generous. It's not all that much better than what the JCPOA offered

for all of Trump's talk. But it does provide what I'm told Trump negotiators said to Mohan Ghalibaf, the Iranian representative, would be a golden bridge, that was their phrase, into a new era for Iran. Iran, as I know, having visited there, perhaps Gordon, you've been there as well. Iran is poised to be a fantastically successful modern country. It has great intellectual capital resources. It is one of the most civilized cultures I encounter. So that's been part of the Trump team's pitch. Walk with us into this future.

You're going to be superstars. We'll help you. We'll find capital for you. And Ghaly Baf, who's no stranger to big-time deals from what I know, it was pretty receptive to that. David, what do you think the shape of that deal would be? What would the Iranians have to give up and what would they get? First, the highly enriched uranium stockpile that they have, the question is how they give it up

and what they were pretty much prepared to offer before the war started was a process where the IAEA would supervise dilution of the stockpile. from 60% down to some very low level of enrichment. So I think that's already out there. Trump seems to want the IAA to supervise removal of the canisters that contain this material. That would be better for sure. But they seem ready to do that. Trump has said in the last several days that the Iranians have agreed to no nuclear weapons. Well, that's kind of a crazy formulation, because they...

They don't, A, they don't have a nuclear weapon. B, they've said for decades under the fatwa of a previous Supreme Leader that they didn't want a nuclear weapon. Nobody believed that, but that's in their official policy. What I think Trump means is that they've agreed to give up what they've always claimed is their right to enrich uranium for civilian nuclear purposes, which is a pathway to a bomb. And my guess, I don't have this hard enough to, I'll just describe it as a guess, is that they're ready to sign onto some kind of international consortium that would include other Gulf countries that would get enriched uranium together. So they wouldn't be enriching inside Iran that they would have enriched uranium.

So they could say, we still have the right to it. We're exercising that right through this consortium. And there'll be various, various other aspects of the deal. But, you know, those I think are the principal ones. and then the straight of Hormuz. I mean, as of today, they're already agreeing to open it. But the problem is that once you've unshielded that weapon, it's always there. It's like, you know, the guy who pulls back his coat and you see he's got a gun.

I mean, Iran going forward is always going to have the, you know, the opportunity to use its straight-of-Hormuz bomb. It's a better deterrent, frankly, than the nuclear weapon would be. Yeah, you can't use a nuclear weapon. You can close the straight of Ramos again. And this is not the last time we'll hear the Iranians say, you know, unless you listen to what we want, such and such, we're going to close this straight of foremost. Which makes it feel like that Iran comes out of this stronger with a more hardline regime, maybe having been militarily battered, but actually with this new weapon and, you know, with the potential to use it in the future. I mean, that is all. world away from the regime change that had been talked about? It's certainly not a regime change. It is a leadership change. I think it's a mistake analytically to say they come out of it stronger because they really have been battered. Their network of proxies staggers forward, but the damage done to Hizbollah is so enormous

that Hasbola is accepting the Lebanese government negotiating openly with Israel for ceasefire. And my money is on the Lebanese government moving forward with disarmament in some more meaningful way of Hezbollah. The proxies in Iraq, I think, are on their back heels some. So, and, you know, internally, we haven't gotten every weapon that they possess,

but an awful lot of them. So the idea that Iran is stronger, I don't agree with. Because I don't like the regime, I think it's done enormous harm to Iran and the region for the whole time that I've been following in Middle East. A good riddance is what I feel about the Iranian regime. My concern is that the process of evolution into some post-revolutionary Iran that is a modernizing player, but also just a less rigid, a more competent regime

that's faithful to its people. I worry that that's been set back. That process was happening. A foreign ambassador who served many, many years in Tehran said to me once, this regime is on a one-way street down toward its end. And I think that's still true.

But I worry that the street is lengthened, that weirdly we may have put some time on the clock. The Aytahua was going to die soon anyway. From everything I know, there was increasing dissension, factional fighting, jockeying for position, all sorts of opportunities for the transition process we've all awaited in Iran. That stopped as soon as he was killed. Ghalibov seems like the strong man for the moment, but I'm told by friends in touch with people in Tehran that he's getting a lot of pushback from harder, harder liners.

I haven't following Goliath literally for 20 years. I wrote my first column about him in 2006. That's how long he's been kind of hanging around, you know, make convincing people like me that, you know, I'm really a modernizer. But anyway, that would be my worry. I don't think, Gordon, that they're stronger, by the ways I would define that, but I think they may be more durable because of regime cohesion.

David, the series we did this week on the pod was looking at the prospects for and how a special operations mission to go after the highly enriched uranium might happen just to kind of lay out what it could look like. My sense is that a few weeks ago that was on the table inside the White House, do you think it's still on the table? or do you think that it is unlikely to happen? So I think it's such a crazy idea, to be honest. I mean, it is a mission destined for failure. I think it was more probably always more talk. You know, special operators always want to do the impossible. And I'm sure there was, you know, chatter and options were prepared and submitted.

it. But the idea of seizing and securing enough space for, you know, to build a little, you know, mini airport and get the trucks to run back and forth to the site and load the stuff. And meanwhile, entire country's an army around. Someone's shooting at you. Yeah. It just doesn't really seem all that realistic. I mean, I'm sorry. If it were me and I wanted to have a really kind of nasty option, I just, mine everything in the area and say, okay, boys, you know, you still got the HU. If you try to go get it, you're going to blow yourselves up.

And if you get through the mines, we're going to, we're going to shoot you from the air and just leave it there. But what do I know? You're a seasoned observer of the intelligence world in its relationship to politicians. I just wonder, when you look back at how Donald Trump got into this and what he does next, how much does he listen to those voices? And does he have voices around him who are giving him kind of serious advice? Because obviously Tulsi Gabbard doesn't look like she was in the room, his DNI.

You know, are there people who are telling him what is realistic and what the consequences are who have an impact and who he will listen to? So you two might well have better sources on this than I, but I'll tell you what my impression is. First, you worry that this was an intelligence failure, as October 7 was for Israel. I don't think so. I think our intelligence analysts, as battered as they are, basically got it right from what I've been told by people who read the assessments from the National Intelligence Council and other analytical work. it was stated clearly, decapitation will not lead to regime change. The IRGC will backfill.

That strategy that Trump obviously believed, much as Putin believed that within a week of going in the Ukraine, the regime would fall, Trump, I think, believed that they would capitulate when faced with this overwhelming, decapitating power. He was told, sir, not likely. He ignored that. He was told that it was a significant possibility that Iran would strike at the Gulf countries, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates. They don't seem to have, you know, really believe that. I think they were shocked by the degree of Iranian offensive attacks.

But again, Trump was warned about that. He was warned that the Strait of Hormuz might be closed. So I think the intelligence agencies and General Kane and the joint staff did a pretty good job. I've come away from both Venezuela and this operation with increased admiration for John McCain as a chairman. And on the CIA, again, this really is, you know, what do I know land? But I am told by a number of people that Ratcliffe has protected enough of the people and capabilities and prevented the sort of crazy, you know, cash Patel, score settling, house cleaning. A lot of people left because they just weren't comfortable with a situation, a lot of older generation.

But, you know, just to last come, and if you're a young operations officer, what could be better than this? You know, you've got two wars, you got all kinds of crazy stuff that people want you to do. I mean, how cool is that? So I'm sure operations officers think, you know, this is great.

And thanks, boss, for helping us out. For analysts, this is a terrible time. Their analytical work is ignored, and for everything I know, they're demoralized. But they kept telling the truth, and nobody listened to them in the White House, but that doesn't mean that they were, you know, the fear would be that they would end up producing bad intel to suit their customers.

And I don't think that's happened. David, we started this conversation talking about Trump being intoxicated with the use of military power and the promise of it. What do you think is next for him? What is it Cuba? Is there is there somewhere else that he's going to turn his energies if, if indeed he does get a big shiny deal with the run? that gives them a golden bridge into a better future? Where does he turn next? Clearly a concern.

This is a Florida group that surrounds him. Marco Rubio most prominently, Rubio is passionate about Cuba. But I think the Florida-centric nature of this administration means that Cuba until it's resolved in some way will be always be a big issue. My guess is that he'll make one last big. push on Ukraine. I think he understands that that's the most dangerous issue that he faces, and the one where he's had the least success. My fear is that he's going to try to muscle

Zelensky into accepting a concessionary deal to Putin, and that would just have terrible consequences. I wrote a column this morning about the looming danger of a Russia-Europe confrontation and the possibility that Trump basically would join Putin in stuffing a dangerous settlement down Europe's throat. So that's what I think is most likely in terms of a big project and the most dangerous. Yeah, because I think here in Europe definitely the feeling is that the Iran war has had a significant impact on NATO on those issues of trust and alliance and reciprocity and, you know, the arguments over basing and which bases can be used, whether it's between Spain, but also the UK and the president's criticism of the UK and people are worried is Greenland

going to be back on the agenda. So you do, I do think, you know, Iran almost more than Ukraine recently has contributed to the sense that NATO may be in crisis, actually, and that the relationship is in a really bad way. Europe frankly made a mistake and not involving itself more directly in thinking about ways to reopen the Strait of Homo's. I think there was a moment where European disdain, in particular stormers, was overdone. I get it. I mean, I was in Davos when Trump was just on a tear all spun up about Greenland. And people just got sick of it.

And that they've stayed angry. I remember Alexander Stubb, arguably Trump's, with Ruta, Mark Ruta, Trump's best friend in Europe, he just had it enough. And so I think it was that that led them to take a very standoffish position on the Strait of Hormos beyond what was reasonable and sensible. I know that's probably an unpopular view for your viewers, but that's what I think. No, but it is interesting to hear that

because I think it's obviously been quite popular at home, you know, for Stama and others. You know, it plays well domestically to be standing up to Trump. And there's a certain view which is, okay, you know, we've had enough and the better policies to stand up to him.

But there are, there's, there may well be implications of, you know, of that and consequences for that, which I guess they're really ready to go. The question I would ask you, your viewers and both of you, I mean, if you're really ready to go it alone in security terms, you know, okay, what a rep. I don't think that's the case.

Not yet. I mean, the answer is, given that, you have to be careful. Yeah. Yeah. David, there's a question from the chat here about Congress, the role of Congress and potentially enabling or constraining Trump's kind of foreign adventurism. Do you see that as a factor in his decision-making or any kind of potential hurdle for him going forward, or is it just a non-issue? I don't think it is going to be a hurdle because Congress is just determined to chicken out. The willful surrender of its Article I powers is amazing.

Justice Neil Gorsuch in his – I guess it was a – was a concurring opinion, put it right to Congress. Like, where are you? Why have you given up the role of the Constitution mandates? And it's become increasingly clear to me that although Congress has been ducking war decisions now for more than 20 years, they don't want to make these decisions. They don't want to go on record. They need to, that the whole reason that it's so important for Congress to declare war is that once you're in a war, you need to keep the public with you.

And what America increasingly does is start wars that the public isn't prepared to see through, and then it bails out with real damage. That's been the theme of almost every one of my novels, to be honest, is we start things that were just, we wrote. The president's right checks, the public isn't prepared to cash. So that's why you need a declaration of war. So that Congress and the people are on board. And until you have that, I think we're going to be a pretty feckless superpower that has trouble following through because we don't go through our own process. One more question we've got from the chat about maybe restraints or constraints on Donald Trump

is the economy. And I think there was a lot of assumption that that would be. that's the thing which will change his policies. You know, whether here, whether it's fertilizers and fuel prices or whether it's China, when it did, you know, kind of threatened tariffs of self, that he will respond in those kind of situations. I mean, does that work in the current crisis? Or do you think he is kind of legacy building and thinking, I really want to do, I want

to expand American power, whether it's Greenland, whether it's Cuba and do these things, even if there is a cost to them? He does now have this heroic self-image, legacy building, as you said. And he says often when asked about short-term costs of things, when people fear the tariffs would have a significant negative impact on the economy, it didn't turn out they didn't. But his response was, that's okay. I'm ready for that because we need it in the long run.

We need to rebuild American manufacturing, which is true. His program for doing that was not a very good one. But, you know, he believes that, that leadership requires you to take the hit in the short run because it's the right thing to do. You know, even though it's Donald Trump, I don't want to, I don't want to naysay the, you know, the commitment of a leader to do on popular things. I think he's got that.

The problem is that he just has none of the discipline of leadership to see things through to have coherent to avoid saying the opposite thing the next day. He's just, you know, he's like a bouncing ball. You can't, as I said earlier, undamped oscillation.

And he also, the world suspects when he's about to take a short-term hit for all his talk about willing to be willing to bear the pay and he isn't you know the trump all his chickens out i don't like that a phrase because sort of eggs him on the show that he's not at this time he's not going to chicken out and you know nuke somebody but um i think he you know uh financial markets think he's going to end up settling and that's you can see that reflected in the behavior of the markets for the last two weeks yeah

very last question uh from the chat david of it is, what do you make of, and I realize this is venturing a bit into pop psychology here, so I ask with some trepidation, but what do you make of Donald Trump's mental state now? There's been obviously some speculation based on, I would say, some of the truth social posts and general behavior that he is perhaps behaving more erratically than he was in the past. What are, what do you think about that? What are your contacts hearing on that front? Well, I hear from every direction, concern about his erratic statements, you know, picking a fight with the Pope, what a crazy thing to do. And rather than letting it go, he just keeps coming back to it.

Why? Why? I mean, I don't know that that shows, you know, chronic mental state, but it's just a dumb thing to do politically. But he can't let, he can't let these things go. If he's in a fight, he's just going to, he wants to have the last word. This sort of, you know, dress up thing, you know, releasing AI images of himself as, I mean, you know, he's done Jesus Christ. most recently, infuriating people. Well, he was a doctor, right? I mean, that was, to say that with a straight face,

oh, come on. But, you know, he's posed as a, I think, as a Star Wars guardian. He's posed as the Pope. He's posed as a king. You know, there are these, it's like, it's like, you know, kids, it's dress up. And that part of his

behavior is present is mysterious. And, you know, we're going to see what kind of shape our republic is in, not just in terms of the machinery, the ability to have good, fair elections, but in the quality of our electorate, because people have a chance to say what they think about all this. Everybody's watching the same thing that the three of us are. And if people ratify that conduct by voting for people who support it, all the worries about the United States are justified. But if people say, no, I've had it. And they either don't turn out or they've been.

And there's a lot of expectation that this will be close to a way of election with a big public repudiation of what we're seeing. then I hope people around the world will feel a little bit better about the United States and that our machinery is a little more resilient than it's a period this last year. Yeah, that's an interesting note to end it on because going back to the view from Europe, I think it is that feeling, you know, as you raised about, well, you know, can Europe stand on its own two feet? And the answer is, you know, not yet. How quickly can it do that?

Who knows? Has it got the will to do it? Who knows? You know, does it need to? that, you know, and and or can it, can something of the relationship be salvaged? You know, I think, I think that still feels like a bit of an open question, but an important one, you know, and as you said, I think people are watching what happens within the US and some of those constraints and the elections and those things very carefully to know, you know, I think, you know, things are

never going to go back to where they were, I think, but, but, but, but, but whether they'll be in a relatively stable place or really, a really bad place. It's hard to tell, isn't it? Yeah. Indeed. Well, David, thank you so much. Yes. I'm a big fan of both of your works on intelligence, and it's really a privilege to be on your show. Thank you. Well, thank you.

We enjoy yours. Thank you very much. David. And I will say, unlike all of the CIA officers who have checked David's books out of the internal CIA library, I would urge everyone to go and purchase it at full price in hardcover. Phantom Orbit is the latest one, the first one, Agents of Innocents of Innocents, all of the other 10 in between, go and check them out. But David Ignatius, thanks for being with us today. Yeah.

Thank you, everyone else for joining us. Thank you.