The Ricochet Podcast - The Find Out Phase of Diplomacy

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

The Iranian regime is receiving an education of sorts this week, and while we await President Trump's decision on the extent of America's role in busting up the nuclear site at Fordow, the Free Press's Eli Lake (and host of the Breaking History podcast) returns to educate us on why surgical involvement in Iran fits with the "America First" agenda that voters signed up for last November.Plus, the reunited James, Charles, and Steve talk Skrmetti and Mamdani.- Music from this week's open: The Israeli Air Force has a hit on Iranian State Television

hope you survived while i was gone there are many tears but we didn't make it and not what your country can do for you and what you can do for your country mister gore bachoff tear down this wall it's the rich a podcast with charles cw cook and steven a word james lalex

today we talked to you Eli Lake about what else? The mid-east. So let's have ourselves a podcast. Iran's got a lot of trouble and they want to negotiate and I said why didn't you negotiate with me before all this death and destruction? Why didn't you negotiate? I said to the people, why didn't you negotiate with me two weeks ago? Welcome everybody. This is the Ricochet Podcast, number 746 or 743. For me, James Lilacs, your sort of host, because I've been gone for a couple of weeks, swanning about Europe and guess what?

Here's the good news. I'm not going to tell you a single thing about it because who cares? What we do care is that we have Stephen Hayward with us who might be in some exciting locale. He could drop me a few words about it. And Charles CW Cook will be around in a bit. We don't know what's holding him up. The possible speculation was that he's checked himself into the ER because he's having yet another embolism

and or aneurysm about the TikTok law. But we'll get to that when we get to that. Eli Lake will be coming on a little bit later. This could actually be called perhaps the overtaken by events podcast because you never know what's gonna happen in the next 24, 48, 72, is a fluid world more than ever. But Stephen, hello, where are you?

I am still, as you might put it, flouncing around Ireland for a few more days. Oh, wow. But then I'll be back and I'll be quiet about it. How are you finding, well, I'm just going to ask this because I know the travel logs can sometimes just bore the absolute living pith out of everybody, but how are you finding Ireland to be congruent with some of the reports that we get over here? Because, you know, I was just in Italy and England and if you listen sometimes to people fulminating on the internet, you would find that both of these civilizations were in complete and utter collapse and of course that's not what you see. Is Ireland

going through the sort of social convulsions that we see from time to time popping up in the tweets? Well, I don't think so, but it's hard as a tourist to really know what's going on. I'll just give you two data points. One, the Irish Examiner newspaper, which I picked up. They actually have old-fashioned tabloids and broadsheet newspapers, the old-fashioned kind, right? Don't you love them? Yeah. I know. But there's a lead story in the Irish Examiner yesterday that said, far-right interests are organizing online, which is strange since they don't have a political party. So, they're just as clueless as our reporters about how these things work.

Pete Yeah. Pete And then there will be tomorrow in Dublin, a major protest, it sounds like it's populist inflected complaints against current policies. I don't know. It's a little vague. I'm gonna try and turn up for it because I'll be back in Dublin and I'll let you know if it's interesting as it might be. But I'm out in the countryside and the countryside of course is glorious and green and fun and the driving on the left side is a challenge except when the road is so narrow that there is no left or right side. So there's that. Don't you love that? The one lane with a curve and the bushes that are high

and you can't see anybody coming and you wonder, how does this country survive without at least 476 head-on collisions per day? No, I had a similar disconnected experience from the news in which you go over there expecting the country in turmoil and then find yourself gavotting around the maze in a baronial estate somewhere. Don't you love it? But back here America, Skirmety, Skirmety, which actually sounds like it should be a you know an

OZ Indy metal band or something like that. 6-3 Victory, which some are saying is a victory for Tennessee's children, others are saying well you can expect. A majority opinion wrote that the law committee is subject to rational basis review. What's that? It seems like these are three things that are absent in our world today, but Stephen, why don't you walk people through this? Stephen Kupnick Well, you want me to, well, I tend to let Charles do it because he's probably read more of it than I have.

I'll just say this about rational basis review. You could say a lot, I don't want to, but the rational basis says, essentially for decades now, that if there's some reason the legislature thinks a law will end harm to some group or some person or provide a benefit, then we, the judiciary, will defer to it. Justice Scalia used to call it the babbling idiots test because he said any legislature that can't come up with some rationale for why what they're doing is good for the world is clearly incompetent. And the courts have been way too deferential on a rational basis, but I do think that concurring opinions from other conservative justices are, in this case, more important and more significant. But here, I'll kick it over to Charles. Charles, by the way,

glad to see you. We were going to do a welfare check on you, worried that you might be, you know, in the emergency room because of Trump's latest TikTok postponement. No, no, I was dealing with a severe crisis at my house, which was that there was a dead wasp in the pool. And my children were horrified by this. Apparently, only a grownup could pick up the pool scoop and get rid of the dead wasps. That's why I'm one minute late. Okay. Well, if you've one dead wasp about them, never end. It suggests there are more wasps about. I saw a drone taking out a wasp nest the other

day on the internet. It was very, very ingenious because it's, you know, what can't they do? I love killing wasps. I'm an absolute sociopath when it comes to killing wasps. Well they deserve killing as they used to say of the bad guys in the old west your honor he deserved it he earned it. So we have been talking about Scrumetti and the rest and we presume that you've read the law you've read the decision and that you have and you have thoughts upon it. A hungry nation turns its ears to you. Well, the reason, as Stephen implied, that rational basis review matters is that it is, in essence, the idea that a legislature gets to legislate, which is to say that any law that can't pass rational basis review must be preposterous. It must say something like, all of the people in Florida wear purple socks on a Thursday because the governor's name is Steve.

At that point, a legislature might say, but beyond that, as long as it represents the will of the people and it can be coherently explained, it passes. Now that is of course how most laws are judged. But in this case, the ACLU wanted the Supreme Court to rule that Tennessee's law was not subject to rational basis review, but required a higher standard that could not be met and was therefore liable to be struck down on the grounds that in this case, it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment passed in 1868. The Supreme Court said no, it doesn't violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. And there were really two reasons given for this across the majority opinions. One is quite complicated because it One is quite complicated because it revolves around the question of what a trans person is and whether or not a trans person is going to invoke the equal protection clauses, protections of people who are of a particular type being treated differently than people of another type. And that was the Robert's opinion saying, no, this doesn't count.

And then you had a separate opinion from our concurrence from Amy Coney Barrett, who said, you know what trans people actually aren't a protective group in the first place. So it doesn't matter whether or not the pretzel logic that was used by the ACLU obtains, because even if it did, trans people cannot by definition be part of the sort of groups that we traditionally consider to have immutable characteristics and therefore be protected by the 14th amendment. And then you had Kagan's opinion in the dissent, which I think is an odd one for the purposes of this discussion, because although Kagan dissented, she implicitly acknowledged that Tennessee's law would have survived the standard of review that she wanted.

She just thought that it was liable to be looked at by the court in a different way than rational basis review, but she basically said, look, this law would stand. So it was really seven, two in the law's favor. And then you have the dissents from Sotomayor and Jackson that to sum it up in legal terms just sort of went and left it there. So it's hard to, yeah, it is hard to, hard to argue the immutable characteristics aspect in this case, is it not? When they're talking about the definition seems to be the very mutability of them and the subjective view of what these attributes are. Yeah, but the important thing to say here just in conclusion is that the case that was

brought by the SCOU was really, really weak and frivolous even. And that this has set back this legal argument for quite a long time. All the press, of course, has focused on, it will set back the political agenda of the trans movement, but that's not what the court was being asked to consider. The legal precedent that was set here is really bad for those who want to argue preposterously that the 14th Amendment prevents states from passing laws that have anything to do with trans people. And the, I don't know what Steve thinks of this, but the comparison I saw some draws with Glucksburg. Glucksburg was a Supreme Court decision in which the plaintiffs argued that the 14th

Amendment prohibited states from banning assisted suicide. And the Supreme Court said, I'm not even sure I agree with this opinion, because I think the whole edifice on which is built nonsense, but the Supreme Court said, no, no, the only exceptions to the substantive due process doctrine of those that were really built into our nation's history and tradition. And as a result, they lost that case, but they've also lost a lot of subsequent cases because of that standard. And so the argument, as I understand it here, is the ACLU blew this because they allowed the Supreme Court to set a rule in motion that is going to haunt them for decades to come.

Well, there's a lot of recriminations happening right now on the left, and maybe you picked up on this, Charles, that long article a couple days ago in the New York Times by Nick Confessatore, who's a pretty left-leaning but very good journalist in the ordinary sense of doing real reporting. And what his article reveals, indirectly in places, but more directly in others, is that a lot of people thought this was a kamikaze mission by the ACLU. And why did they bring this case? What a terrible idea it was to bring this case. We knew we were going to lose and set back the cause. And in one of the sentences, I'll share it with you,

one of the sentences in the article was, the LGBTQ movement drove itself toward a cliff and took the Democratic Party with it. And I think, by the way, Professor Torrey's words are left out where some believe this to be true. Well, that's a euphemism for, boy, there's a lot of people who are really mad right now at the ACLU. And there's another great quote in it, very short, quoting a law professor, quote, "'This case exposes a lot of ethical problems in the practice of medicine,' end quote.

A law professor with expertise in sex discrimination law told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of blowback from students and colleagues." Well, that's pretty good confirmation that this whole movement is inside a bubble that will brook no dissent and no criticism. Another surprise that a right-leaning Supreme Court says, no, we're done doing the suspect class or protected class classifications. We're done using the equal protection clause for any preferred

liberal cause or client or victim group that we want to enshrine. And finally, Thomas's concurrence just puts a little bow on it saying, and by the way, we're not going to defer to experts who've disgraced themselves in the last few years. And so that's a nice also rejection that Supreme Court's no longer going to nod when the experts say something that we know is nonsense. You know, the other reason this is so important, James, is usually when these cases have brought the claimers of substantive due process, which is, in my view, completely nonsense reading

of the 14th Amendment, that has been used for 70 years by progressives to get the courts to strike down laws that they just don't like. I know Steve will agree with me, but he said, you know, conservative court, conservative opinion, conservative justices. But really, this case was crazy. Yes, it wasn't even a question of conservative or progressive or originalist or non-originalist or the normal ideological cleavages that we observe. It was just crazy.

It was just a bad, and the fact that he got two votes, I still find depressing as somebody who believes that the law is a thing rather than just an expression of power? Well, you may have gotten two votes because that's what right thinking people would do. The people who are on the wrong side of history who do not want to be kind, who have old-fashioned ideas of sex, not gender, are the ones who are going to say, of course this is an easy decision, but the enlightened people who see a new world out there and seek to born it into existence. Of course they're going to say no.

The law doesn't matter. What matters is, as our Lieutenant Governor here in Minnesota said, is to protect trans kids and she had that on a t-shirt which was festooned with pictures of knives. I never could figure out what the Lieutenant General was trying to tell us. Wow. We should actually get stabby if somebody says that a 14-year-old shouldn't be chemically castrated. But that just shows how old a time I am. When does fast delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato

salad isn't so famous without its grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that actually they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders, service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. It's time to turn away from this particular matter to something of international import given that you know I don't know if you guys know this me but there's something

on the on the Internet on X it's a glowering figure frowning poorly drawn and the phrase is nothing ever happens and whenever we get close to what seems to be the definitive thing that's going to do that thing, it doesn't happen. Whenever we get about ready to seemingly solve this long standing festering problem to pull out the splinter, set the bone, nothing ever happens. Well, something's happening now and something continues to happen and who better to speak about it than our old friend Eli Lake. Eli, welcome.

Hey, thanks for having me. So something's happening. We don't know quite what it is yet. So I think we're all up to speed on what has happened that the Iranian missile defense has been, I wouldn't say completely neutralized, but given that the IDF has control of the skies over Tehran for protracted periods, it sounds like neutralization might be the word. Missile launchers galore being taken out oftentimes by drones, oftentimes by drones that are coming from bases inside Iran that was set up by the Mossad, I think in 1981 or something. I mean, it's just the complexity of this organization, of this attempt, this fight of this war is astonishing.

So where do we start? Do we start with exactly how astonishing it was and, uh, or do we start with what is happening now and seems likely to be happening soon? Because we would hate at the end of all this to say nothing really happened. Oh, something's happened. Oh Something's happened. I would say This is the F. Oh phase of the Fafo You could you know, I mean I don't think the Israelis Would leave Iran without taking care of the Fordo facility and what they consider they have a

taking care of the Fordo facility and what they consider they have a Right. Remember they have a blueprint They have a roadmap to the entire Iranian nuclear program because they stole the archives in 2018 now and they have quite obviously The the regime wire for sound so at this point I just think They have I think it's more than just air superiority. I think they have a kind of, no one's omnipotent except for God, but they have a kind of level, they have a degree of specific intelligence, I think, with the regime, particularly the nuclear

stuff, that they know where things are, and I think the most important thing that we have to be watching now, I'm not worried that they're not going to take care of it. I think that we have to worry about if there's a sudden regime collapse and there's anarchy, who's going to secure nuclear materials that they haven't secured yet? That's my number one worry. And then, I mean, I think we have to look at this as the beginning of the end of the regime. And what I would like to see, and unfortunately, the United States really blinded ourselves in the beginning of the Trump administration when we cut all these NED programs, which I think we talked about last time, the National Endowment for Democracy,

I would like to see sort of, there is a real opportunity to have a transition to democracy. It's not going to happen overnight, it's not like the end of a movie where everybody rises up and tears down the statues of Khomeini, but there is an opportunity. The Iranian people hate their regime, but they're battered and beaten because of the lethal violence that the intelligence ministry, the Basiji militia has basically identified anyone who was a leader of the last one, the women life freedom, and either tortured them in jail, murdered them, exiled them. But there is still a network in Iran, and I just think that you have to be able to give that a little bit of time. I'm not talking about a year, I think they could

probably get it together in a few months. And then the Iranians have to be the authors of their own transition to democracy. But I think it could be close. It just takes a little bit of time. And that's the alternative, by the way, to a really unstable potential civil war, replacing Khamenei with an even worse, more extreme kind of tyrant. If you want to avoid those scenarios, you have to work with the Iranian people. And the good news is the Iranian people have shown that they're ready, but they're not going to rise up in the middle of a bombing campaign. We'll get to the democracy question in just a second, but yeah, I want to start, go back to photo which you, at this point I expect the Israelis to announce that a tunneling land

submarine has actually taken it out. Yeah, exactly. Something we haven't even heard of yet. But if the United States does get involved because it takes some US sized planes to drop the ordinance that is needed, we hear. The bunker busters, I'm not sure exactly what, when they talk about MOABs and some of the daisy cutters and the rest of those that seem like fuel air explosives that don't really get down and penetrate to the scalp as your head and shoulder shampoo

would do. If the US does get involved then there seems to be preparation that suggests that, evacuating some exposed aircraft at air bases, tightening of this, we've got more assets of sailing into the region. Do you think that our involvement would be limited to saying, all right, we'll give one of these, we'll send a B-2, we'll send a big, big, big thing over and drop a big, big thing? Well, there were reports on Israeli television that the B2s have landed in Israel. Yeah, I saw that and that doesn't make sense. You don't have to land them there. They can fly a long way. Unless the Israelis will fly them and maybe it's possible that there's been a secret program for the Israelis to train on them and they know how.

There's a lot of surprises and things that we don't know right now. So maybe it'll be a sort of- I'm not sure that's- End of the lease. Yeah. I'm not sure that qualifies as plausible deniability. You know, we gave them our- Well, but I mean, the plausible deniability, listen, the United States is going to be blamed. The reason that the Iranians haven't hit an American position at this point is because I think the warnings have been pretty clear from Trump and everybody else that if they did that, you're finished. That's it for you.

This is, by the way, this is a real opportunity to reset what was a kind of, you know, the feckless non-proliferation diplomacy when we're dealing with potentially other rogues. This is finally a consequence for the Iranians after 25 years. And, you know, it's not just going to mean more and more sanctions. It's there at some point it It's gonna be a kinetic consequence I think that's a good thing for you know future dirtbag dictators who might want to go nuclear Yeah, you got 25 years on board right 25 years 25 years of shouting death to America before you know Yeah, all of do I have to come back there and turn the car around? I mean it'd be Right. Yeah, Eli, it's Steve Hayward actually over in Ireland at the moment trying to keep up with things. It does seem to me there's, I don't know, maybe there's a possibility that

there's some good strategy underway at the moment. And it seems to me there are three possibilities here. One is Trump says, okay, we're going to, I'm going to wait two weeks, that's the latest news I've seen, before making a decision. Now, in the meantime, Israel continues to degrade Iran, attack its leaders, as complete command of the skies, and is leaving Fordow, however you say it, alone, because they lack the capability, they lack the bunker busters, or they lack the delivery vehicles. I kind of think maybe Israel's got some big bombs of their own, but they don't have the big planes to deliver them.

Okay, so if there were a collapse of the regime, set aside for the moment your point that there could be chaos in what happens to the material, well, maybe don't put that aside. That's a big thing we want to not see. Yeah, exactly. On the other hand, you know, we might see is you don't have to take out Fordow because the regime will collapse and they'll agree to allow, who, I don't the internet an international body to come in and take command of the site and move everything out or whatever. That's one possibility. Or another possibility is that they allow for international inspectors to dismantle

Fordow. Exactly right. They end it all and then you have a weakened humiliated regime. That is almost even though I have to tell you I have been covering the Iranian democratic opposition now for 25 years and I loathe this regime and I just feel they're so close to collapse and that's a good thing. However, I think it's almost a better scenario if they agree to this kind of humiliating deal for them, which is no enrichment, no program, you lose it, nothing.

And that I think will leave in place a kind of weakened, I mean, at that point, Khamenei's got threats on all sides. You know what I'm saying? There's going to be hardliners. Also, keep in mind, this is a religious fanatic regime and it is based on the kind of assumption that God is with them. Well, guess what? It doesn't look like Allah loves you right now. In fact, it looks like he doesn't like you very much at all. And that I think has a profound kind of effect among, for a regime that is based on

this kind of almost like divine prophecy. And that, that, that's all, it's similar to, you know, when the communists face a setback and their whole ideology is like, this is the direction of history and so forth, maybe it isn't. And that, you know, introduces all kinds of problems and you add to that the idea that they are really hated I mean hated by most Iranians And that so even if you're like a colonel in the you know Revolutionary Guard Corps riot control forces or something like that. You probably, you still a family and your kids probably are hearing in school about other people who've

been tortured. That's a tough position to be in. Are you going to fire, are you going to follow the orders and fire on those demonstrators? That's what we've got to be looking at. And unfortunately, you know, in a kind of spasm of, you know, reckless and heedless actions in the beginning of this administration, we've kind of blinded ourselves in that regard in that we cut all these programs. Now, some of them are still going on. The National Endowment for Democracy has figured out a way to kind of keep some of them going and they move money here and there. But we would have been in a much better position had uh the doge knife not come for those things well i mean i agree with you that a potential downside of the scenario i started to lay out is

uh is right in other words if you had a weakened regime that did agree to give up their nukes they would still be very dangerous and they would reconstruct and they would do you know other forms of terrorism reconstruct i actually think that would be great scenario they would be really i think i think it would be great scenario because they would be weakened forms of terrorism. No, they would try to reconstruct. I actually think that would be a great scenario. They would be weakening. Really? I think it would be a great scenario because they would be weakened. And I think it would be, I think at that point, that you would be buying a little bit of time for the democratic opposition to get their act together. I think you can see why that scenario would appeal to Trump, who is willing, I think,

is willing to do it, but really would prefer not to. And so that's why I think this sort of tweak play, and meanwhile Israel will do what it can do, which is a lot. I think you can see why that scenario makes some sense in the, that's what they're thinking, that's their strategy. And I'm, well, we talked about this last time you were on. I mean, I remember Penn Campbell and all the origins of NED back in the early and mid 80s under Reagan I'm hmm

I think like some my opinion and we talked about this before so we don't have to redo this is that I think it has Not been as good as it was back in those days and has decayed some for various reasons and I don't know Even if you grant all that there were programs in Iran For things like internet to fight internet censorship to get alternative to for things like internet, to fight internet censorship, to get alternatives to get it on the internet. Right. There were things in Iran that were, you know, again these were small-bore programs the Iranians themselves took great risk to sort of be part of, but that would at least provide

a channel to policymakers right now who could say, okay, this is where the state of the Iranian opposition is. This is what they need at this point. And to me, it's situational. It's like, yeah, you're placing a ton of bets all over a bunch of authoritarian regimes, but now is the time when you really need it. And my point is that like, alright, fine. I mean, and I agree with you, some of it got caught up in a lot of kind

of NGO woo woo and everything like that, but there was a way to use a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer. Yeah. All right. Let me switch gears real quick with one last question for you and then I'm going to hand off to Charlie. I have been encouraged by seeing some reaction from people in the, sort of the MAGA world, in the MAGA orbit. Pete Slauson Sure. Pete Slauson And so, you know, Tucker Carlson has been somewhat marginalized, even Trump talked about nutty Tucker Carlson, right?

Pete Slauson Kooky, yeah. Pete Slauson Kooky, whatever, said kooky nutty. You may not have seen it, but you know, Paul Gottfried, who's an old certified neocon hater, said, and I think a very important article in Chronicles magazine, which is very much, I'm not an isolationist, but very non-interventionist and so forth, he said, you know, sometimes the neocons are right and I think this is one of those times. I thought that was quite, I mean, Paul, he's a controversial guy, but I think he is one of those times. I thought that was quite, I mean, you know, probably he's a controversial guy, but I think he's carried some weight. Brian Kennedy in the Claremont Institute

orbit has said something even stronger. And so, I mean, I think that the liberal media especially, I think, is trying to say, oh, MAGA is divided. And it's true that Trump has his own peculiar curiosities, but I think that's not true. I think that, you know, Friends of Israel ought to be encouraged by the fact that so many people in the MAGA base are declaring themselves on the side of Israel and on the side of America getting involved in Israel's side. I'm not surprised. Good. I mean, it's like, you know, I mean, the Ayatollahs have been an enemy of the United States since

1979. Right. Most Americans have some memory of them either blowing up our soldiers in Iraq or taking our diplomats hostage or screaming death to America or doing any number of things. And it's like, you know, don't overthink it guys. Also if I was in MAGA world, okay, I would be a Little worried if I was saying like if my allies included like, you know Ilhan Omar like I don't know like, you know, it's like Matt Gaetz

Marjorie Taylor green There's a theory in NBA called the Ewing theory, which is that Patrick Ewing at the end of his career, it was obviously a great center for the New York Knicks, but at the end of his career was kind of a liability and when he left the Knicks, the Knicks got better. So I look at it like Tucker, MTG, you know, Matt Gaetz. That's Ewing theory to me. Like, I think the team just got stronger, you know? I mean, so I'm agreeing with you.

I'm encouraged by all that. When does fast delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without its grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app

and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders, service fees, exclusions and terms apply. Instacart groceries that overdeliver. Charlie. Hello. All right. Let's talk about Yoko Ono. No, I'd have to do my impersonation and really I don't want to shatter the glass

in this little room I'm in. I think I did an impersonation when I represented the dissents in Scrometti earlier of Yoko Ono singing. So forget the intramural fight within MAGA, just from an American citizen perspective, here's a devil's advocate position that I want you to address. Yeah. Iran is bad, but we have a terrible recent memory of interfering in the Middle East.

We got involved in Iraq and the Ames metastasized. You yourself, I just talked about maybe the end of the regime. Yeah, but didn't work out so well last time. Israel has been in charge of this process from the beginning. Why would we get involved? Why does it matter to America? Yes, we like Israel, but they seem to be doing fine without us. What would possibly convince us at this point to get in another Middle Eastern war? Because I know there is the MAGA argument, but a lot of that's quite silly in that

it is inextricably linked to Trump and people maneuvering around Trump. But a lot of people don't do that. The vast majority of Americans don't do that. But the view that I just adumbrated is something I've heard from other people who aren't conservative or progressive or particularly political. They're just baffled by what is in it for America, qua America. Okay. Well, that's a good question. And I would answer it in a few ways. First of all, we already are involved. We are sharing intelligence, although Israel has far better intelligence

than we do, but we are helping in that regard. And we're also helping shoot down missiles where we're arming Israel with the interceptors they need, which we're running out of. I would say that's a pretty big deal. The second point here is that regime change, nation building wars are quagmires and they're no good good but being on the winning side of a war is good and this doesn't look like it's gonna become a regime change quagmire war starting primarily because the president is Donald Trump so this is the situation where you have a president who will be getting briefings at some point perhaps let's just play out maybe it's a bad scenario

Khamenei topples there's anarchyarchy in the streets. He's getting briefings like, oh my god, you know, Iranians are gonna run out of fuel in six days. We have to do something and I think he's gonna say, don't care, not my problem. And that's just sort of built in with Trump. He's not gonna do any nation-building and and that I think you don't even like, you know, it's not like, oh take my word for it, but like I think it's true. He's just not gonna do it. But like, I think it's true. He's just not going to do it, especially now in his second term when he's really feeling himself and he kind of understands the powers of the presidency.

But the second thing is this, it is in our interest in the following sense. The United States, since the dawn of the atomic era, really after the Soviets stole our secrets and then tested so we had two nuclear powers. The United States has been interested, Republican, Democratic presidents, in limiting the number of countries that have nuclear weapons. If Iran goes nuclear and if for some reason Israel can't fully take out the full program and it needs the United States to drop these bunker buster massive ordinance penetrator bombs. Well, if that's the case, then it's so much better if you really eliminate the prospect

of Iran getting a nuke for the simple reason that it means that Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt won't get a nuke and you won't have the kind of proliferation cascade nightmare that was very possible before under the old world under the old reality of just a week ago when Iran was right up to the precipice of going nuclear because it had built up this huge industrial nuclear industry that sadly Obama's very bad deal allowed the Iranians to keep. And so now you can reset the clock. And it also sends this great message to all of the other rogues that are watching that if you try to go the route of North Korea, it's not going to work out for you. That's not the best scenario. So up until I guess Thursday last Thursday up until a week ago

the logic of Tyrant was I better get nukes because you know what? Gaddafi didn't have nukes and he got him. He lost his regime Saddam didn't have nukes and he got invaded. They better have nukes because I better that's that's my insurance policy That's why the way my regime survives now You've introduced another scenario if you push for nukes and you decide that you're gonna be the leading state sponsor of terrorism And you're gonna fund the group that does October 7th Well, then maybe the fact that you're going after your nukes

It's gonna be a reason why you your regime will not survive and that's a good lesson for everybody. And nobody wants more nuclear powers. So that's the other thing as well. So I mean, I think you raise a really good point. Why should we get involved in another war in the Middle East? Not as important to us. But if you want to know, like, what's the main reason we keep getting drawn back into the Middle East? It's Iran. So I just, I just did a conversation slash debate with Dan Caldwell, who was recently left the administration. And he made this whole point about, well, what about the stability? And I'm like, the driver of instability in the Middle East is Iran.

If you either defang Iran and get enforced that regime to rethink its behavior or you cause a change in that regime, then you're removing the primary kind of driver of instability. So that's the other thing. Well, you know, it seems to if I can jump in, Charlie, for a minute, it does seem to me that if you take a long, like 50 year story arc here, there's one thing I haven't heard people talk about. So, you know, when Iran fell in 1979, it removed a strategic bastion for the West against the Soviet Union. And the Soviet Union, that kind of, I mean, they were quietly trying to foment revolution there,

but they didn't directly intervene, unlike Afghanistan a year later. And it seems to me that if that were now reversed, if you had an Iranian regime that was at least neutral or maybe even pro-Western in some ways, it changes the equation with China. That's why I think this is beyond just the Middle East, which you laid out very well. I think this is as global geopolitical significance. Oh, yeah. I mean, I just, all of that. And the thing is, I think it was the statement of Chancellor Mertz of Germany, Israel's doing, has done the dirty work. The hardest part, which, you

know, the riskiest part of this, Israel's taking care of. They're taking out the air defense systems, they're going after the launchers and the ballistic missiles. Um, at this point I would say, you know, I mean, Iran is in a, it's, it's such a precarious position for them that if the United States kind of added on in the last minute, I might, it would send a great message and they would be on the winning side. What about China though? We just brought that in. Tucker Carlson told us that Iran had the fearsome bricks at its back. Uh,

there hasn't seemed to be any general mobilization there so far, but Iran sells a lot of its petroleum products to China. And where does China come out at the end of it? Let's presume that the Iranian government falls and that something inimical to Chinese interest is installed or at least indifferent to them or neutral. How does China look after all of this? China looks sort of as if the West has more vitality and nerve and backbone and fire than, than may have been thought.

Also, I think if you're trying to, and you're looking at it like, well, this source of instability, by the way, a nuclear Iran isn't good for China. Um, is gone and, uh, they're still going to have oil and, uh, whatever comes next, they'll sell it to us And it'll probably be much easier because it won't be under all these sanctions You're right from China's perspective if they're just interested in the oil, which clearly they are by the way What's fascinating to me is the axis of dirtbags or this axis of resistance North Korea Russia Iran and China They all hate each other. They're just in it because they're you know, aggressive

authoritarians that kind of menace the democratic world. And that's what they have in common. So, you know, I would say that's one of the most humiliating things. By the way, the most humiliating thing is that the battered remnant of Hezbollah put out a statement saying, we wish you the best of luck, but we can't be now's not the right time, you know That's just like that's amazing to me. Hezbollah would not exist had it not been for the Islamic Republic of Iran They're not even getting involved. They're totally isolated alone The only allies they seem to have are the Tenta Fata cosplayers on Western European and American campuses and you know, I don't know

Darrell Cooper and a few of the alt-right you know World War two revisionist style historians nobody else is coming to their aid the Russians which you know we're using Iranian drones they're not doing anything the UN Security Council is not like stopping and having a serious talk about anything everybody's just seems like they're all good with it you know what I mean it's The UN Security Council is not like stopping and having a serious talk about anything. Everybody's just seems like they're all good with it. You know what I mean? It's like, I mean, it's amazing.

It is interesting that we haven't had the usual shots in the television of the UN building with some sonorous talk about how they're meeting in an emergency session and declaring this and I mean, people put out the statement, time for deescalation. Nobody's doing anything about it. It's just incredible. When does fast delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without its grainy mustard.

When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. I have a second devil's advocate question. So you said that the regime is awful. Obviously I agree and That the people in Iran don't like it, which I assume to be true. Although it's always difficult to tell

Well, can I stop you right there Charlie sure five times since 2017 we have seen national uprisings Yeah, so I'm basing it on that pattern that every few years and by the way against right horrific Repression. Yeah, I mean some of the things that were done against the with them the Masi ma The the the latest one called the women life freedom after this poor Kurdish woman was murdered, you know for not wearing her hijab correctly There were girls schools in Iran that were Under poison gas attack, literally in the school. And they came home, they didn't die, but they were very sick. And that was what they, well,

that's what this regime was willing to do to stop those demonstrations. And yet my view is that as bad as it is, and they, they've, you know, they, the torture and everything else, you see, nonetheless, they, they, they, they managed to get these demonstrations going, you know, every couple of years. So that's what I say. They hate that. I agree. I'm with you on this, but the devil's advocate position is yes. And despite all of those uprisings, they're still there. So the question I have is the

Israelis have taken out a good number of the leaders of Iran. Yeah. And I think the rumor that Khamenei is dead is probably false, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility that that would happen. Yeah. Why are we so sure that this would lead to a better Iran? Isn't there a fear that it would lead to a more extreme Iran? Those positions get filled with people who are even more crazy than the ones who are in them now?

Well, okay, so let me address it in two parts. There is no guarantee. You roll the iron dice of war, there's no guarantee. It could of course go very badly. I would argue that the risks It could of course go very badly. I would argue that the risks of allowing Iran to inch ever closer to a nuke were less tolerable than the risks involved in this military action. And that's, I think that's the honest position because we have to be realistic. We can't say, oh no, no, no, no, it'll be great. Okay. So I agree with you.

Yes, there are, there, it could, in some ways, I suppose it could get worse. But you have to look at this, like, as I sort of said, this factor of like, this is a regime that's built on the idea that they're, that all of their momentum is based on the fact that they're favored by a law. And when, you know, so yeah, it's possible that there's going to be more fanatics that say say this is just another even greater test But most rational people will look at things and saying You know, uh, maybe maybe we got this one wrong And then you add to that which is i'm saying that there we can't know this

But the dynamic even like all the regime elites still live in iran And all the regime elites are going to be touched by the enmity that most iranians all of the regime elites are going to be touched by the enmity that most Iranians feel for the regime. And then you add to this this massive humiliation, and it's a regime that is based on the sense of like that they're omnipotent, that they're invincible, that God is behind them. That myth has been punctured. So yeah, I don't think that's going to be very good in terms of the stability, and I don't see think that's going to be very good in terms of the stability and I don't see how that's going to favor someone who's even more extreme. Of course it's possible, but I don't see how that extremist is going to be able to sort of have, is going to be able to get themselves

out of the legitimation crisis that they have right now already. That was before. Only time will tell, he said sonorously. But Eli, we'll leave you with this. Before we go, can I make a request? Well, I was going to make a request of you first. You go first, then I'll... I will. Usually you're wearing a band t-shirt. You're not wearing a band t-shirt today. Why is that? Have you forsworn rock music for this period? No, no, no. I'm going on other shows, and so I decided to class it up with a little, a little class of polo here for you. Uh, what is your request? It could be absolutely anything of us,

unless of course you want to. Okay. So my podcast Breaking History, um, we've been doing some go to stuff, but my latest one is on William F Buckley. And I do these AI songs. And so I've given, I, I I've given Perry a link to the one on Buckley, which I think you guys will like. It's a little outlaw country called a thwart history yelling stuff.

Well, when we go back, we will put snip. Can we play it? Well, we will, not right now. All right, okay, fair enough, fair enough. Guy who shows up at the wedding dance and says. Perry just started at the 32 mark. Handsome at the 32. There's an instrumental introduction

and then you get into the lyrics. And I think I've kind of captured Buckley if he was like Waylon Jennings in like 1971. Well, it will be our outro music, we promise you that. Okay, you'll love it. And we thank you for reviving William F. Buckley in inhumane clone AI form. Well, the podcast is itself, I mean like you know, it's a tribute to Buckley. Although you know I deal with some of the flaws as well, but I think overall you can tell

I'm a fan. Okay, well hop on VO3 and start to do the video for that so we can actually have WFB getting down with his own tune, putting on a 10 gallon hat and a stride. Eli, thank you so much, it's been great as usual. Oh, thank you. It's always a pleasure and we hope to talk to you soon when something else happens because the phase of nothing. I love coming on the show.

Well, we love having you. And Steve, I found out you and Michael Anton are pals, which is cool. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Oh yeah, you wrote a terrific article about him, by the way, yes, that was important. Right, I forgot, right, thanks, yeah. All right, all right, now we've backscratched enough,

happily so, and we see you and we advise everybody to go read everything and listen to it that he does. We'll have the links in the podcast and the page at Ricochet. Have a great day. And now before we leave, one more topic. We've had Scrutty, we've got Israel. The other thing that seems to be going on nowadays is a very peculiar contest in New York City where a gentleman who came to my attention first when he was doing these wonderful little fist pumping videos for rent control because that works just so great

Is a mayoral? candidate and they're going to have to decide aren't they between the wise stewardship of a Cuomo moderate and steady and This fellow who wants to you know globalize the intifadaada but of course intifada is just one of those words doesn't mean what you says it does and you know it means kind of basically struggle or do the right thing or the rest of it I expect that there will be a lot of people who show they're good progressive bona fides by voting for him because he says all the right things and they will be insulated utterly and completely from the consequences of his

policies but I think Cuomo is going to pull this out and I know about New York politics, but it would seem to me that a lot of people are going to look at this guy and say, no, 2020, we would have been all over that. But five years have passed and things have changed or have they? Have they, Steve? Well, yeah, I mean, I'm having it right. Well, I'm having flashbacks here to 30 years ago. I mean, here's the theme. The blue cities and blue states are so far gone that there's that when you're saying that Andrew Cuomo is your quote unquote moderate hope, there's really no hope.

It's just going to get worse. Cuomo might win, but I think the future of New York is clearly sliding to the left. I started having flashbacks. You go back 30 years to San Francisco. They had an incumbent mayor by the name of Frank Jordan, who everyone's forgotten. He'd been a former police chief, so he sounded kind of like Giuliani a little bit. And I don't remember now how he ran the city, but certainly better than it is now. And he was challenged for a re-election by Willie Brown, the former speaker, by the way, one of the smartest politicians in America, but very left and, you know, very much a machine Democrat, but a realistic lefty. I mean, even he has said, starting 10 years ago, the progressives are going way too far in San Francisco and elsewhere. But I will tell people

back East that the election contest featured Frank Jordan stripping naked in the shower with two hosts of a morning gay radio show. It's to try and curry with the gay vote, which is obviously important in San Francisco. And I tell people, oh, and he was the conservative candidate. Right? And Willie Brown was the other candidate. And at the same time, Jerry Brown was the mayor candidate, and at the same time Jerry Brown was the mayor of Oakland. So the Bay Area had a complete brownout, as I like to put it, because Willie Brown won, of course. And boy, I would take Willie Brown back in a second in San Francisco over the mayors we've had lately, or even the governor for that matter, which, you know, I grew up with

despising Willie Brown, he was the epitome of all evil, and now he looks like the mature elder statesman of the Democratic Party in California. And so here we are in New York, and we have this crazy left-winger, and we're saying, oh, please, please, Andrew Cuomo, you've got to beat this guy. Now, there is the element of the ranked choice voting, which is one of the worst ideas ever, and who knows how that might screw things up here. one of the worst ideas ever, and who knows how that might screw things up here. Even the New York Times finds this ma'am Donnie, that's his name, to be too far beyond the pale. So, I don't know, part of me wants to see ma'am Donnie win just because, you know, they richly deserve the pain and punishment. What's that old line of Mencken's? Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good

and hard. They're going to get it good and hard. They're going to get it good and hard no matter who wins because Cuomo is experienced, but he'll still be pretty bad. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered.

Download the Instacart app and enjoy zero dollar delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Yes, but those of us who love New York and want the city to prosper don't want to wish ill on it. I mean, in part, yes, because there's always that idea that we get, well, they voted for the worst possible person, now we'll put these awful policies into place. Then they'll realize the error of their ways. But the error of their ways never consists of a massive overhaul and reexamination of

their ideological precepts. It's always just, well, we have to find somebody who's better at doing these ruinous things. So that's where your sympathy tends to end. It's not rent control that's the problem. We have to nationalize property and execute the billionaires. That'll be the thing that we'd, I mean, so yeah, they deserve to live with the consequences, but unfortunately the people on whom this falls

are the people generally who can least afford it and whose lives will not be made better for it. Charles in Florida, this almost must seem like laughter, father, to you, living in that wild, open, mad, crazy libertarian state that you do. But when it comes to the fate of the blue cities of America, do you think that it's just going to be an unending, grinding cycle of one progressive after the other, trying things that don't work, placating the people

who contribute little and just driving the sensible folk out of town? Or, or is there anything that we can point to that says, no, it's not going to be endlessly polarized. We will bring back our cities. It is possible to, you know, to do a Giuliani here. Well, I should start I say I do care I I'm glad that I don't have to live in those places. I like the federal system, but I like all of America I love California. I think California is the most beautiful state. I wish it were properly run And I love New York. My wife's from New York. I lived in New York for years It's a great place.

What I find depressing about this, James and I have made this speech many times on various podcasts, is that this is a case in which the people who are making bad decisions have in front of them all the evidence they need to prevent them from making the bad decisions. I am actually quite tolerant of people making bad decisions when they don't have that information or when something new is happening in the world. We have different ways of processing information depending on our ideological assumptions. Conservatives are more likely to say, oh,

don't make that change. But in this case, we've been through this before, and yet it seems that nothing is now sufficient to push the voters of New York, but also Chicago, which is worse, and California to fix it. And that's the bit that I think is alarming, to me many of the questions that are up for debate in New York at the moment are pre-political. Crime, budgets, it's not that we don't have different views on them and they're legitimate views, it's that they're the sort of questions that historically whatever other disputes we were having, voters would say, fix that or you don't get to make the secondary case. And that's what put Giuliani in and that's what put Bloomberg in three times in New York, was voters saying, look, I don't like Republicans or

I don't like independents on this, this, this and this, but he does make sure that the streets are safe. And you saw it in California as well when Reagan was elected. And I just wonder watching the example of Chicago where they just keep voting for the same lunacy over and over again, whether that's true anymore. And if it isn't true I don't really know what to make of it as somebody who thinks that people are fundamentally rational because it's not.

No, I know it's not. It's like the Groundhog Day movie where every day you wake up and tear down Chester's and Svens. I share the confusion with you but like I say people are so hesitant to vote for the awful party because the awful party is full of racists transphobes and other people who wish ill on everybody else and want to just simply sit in you know the backwoods somewhere pick on a banjo and maybe listen to an AI generated song about William F Buckley that was going to be my outro there and my cue into it, Stephen, if you'd been the sort of Segway observer that Rob used to be, but I'll allow this before

we go for you to make the point that you want to make. Well, sorry, but I mean, I think you all have seen the, some of the graphics are really telling, but some of the places where Trump made the largest gains were in the blue cities in the Chicago area, New York, Los Angeles, California. And what it suggests to me is that there is a lot, there are a lot of people out there who are disgusted with things who aren't conservative, they're maybe, they're not, they're probably in many cases traditional Democrats, they're often minorities, Hispanics, Blacks. And the. The point is that there is, I think, sentiment for something different. And unfortunately, conservatives or Republican candidates on the urban level are just absent. One thing to have Trump as an alternative on the national, or bad, they're bad, right,

or there's the bad candidates. And the collapse of competition at the urban level by Republicans is, I think really showing itself here because you don't see many alternatives. A lot of them are bad because a lot of people go into politics for self aggrandizement and self enrichment. And the way you do that is to attach yourself to whatever institutional remora Tammany Hall like has attached itself to your city. So there's that. Right.

But also you've got to blame the voters in a democracy. And I had Lani Chen on my podcast a couple of years ago, and he told me about the time he ran for controller in California. He said that he would go into these public meetings, debates with his opponent, and he would say, California has big problems with this budget and the way that it allocates money. And if you look at the Medicaid budget relative to this and our tax revenues, and we've got, and people would say, Yeah, that's a great point. I'm really worried

about this. And then his opponent would come in and say abortion. And these opponent won by 10 points. And I remember thinking that's the public's fault. Like that. They literally had the choice. Right. Control is not governor. I understand.

I don't think it's rational in the grand scheme of things, given where these states are going. But I totally understand somebody who has absolutely different politics than I do, who says, look, I just don't like Republicans and their policies. And yeah, the state's a mess, but I'm very worried that they will pass pro-life laws or loosen the gun restrictions or do school, whatever it is that they care about. And so I'm just willing to suck it up. But when you're talking about the role of controller,

a role that has literally nothing to do with abortion or gun control or gay marriage, is actually just the thing that people say they're worried about. And you have an opportunity to pick somebody who's more sensible on it, and you don't. That's the point at which I just think you have to take responsibility for it, right? You can't say, oh well it's because of the two-party system or you know. Abortion for some small American flakes for others and always twirling twirling into the future. Kang Kodos 26. Gentlemen, it's been a pleasure and we'll convene again next week when something will have happened or not because

there's two weeks to talk or yes because something happened in any case we want everybody to go to ricochet.com sign up because yeah yeah yeah you can read the front page but the member feed is where all of the interesting conversations begin and where you will meet a sane generally civil mostly center-right pretty much conversation and cohort the likes of what you've been looking for in the internet since you put that thing in. I'm James Lilacs, Stephen Hayward, thank you. Charles C.W. Cook, thank you as well. And thank everybody for listening and we'll see you all in the comments at Wickershake 4.0. Bye bye.

Get your hand out my pocket, the money's better spent On groceries and doctors, and paying off rent I'd like to help my neighbor, those worth less than me I'll set aside some extra, and call a charity That is not the common spend, spread the wealth around They're baiting waste and taxes, spend our money that they found The time is on the mark, Gloria and Berlin The universities are wallowing in sin

The government expand from bottom to the top Against this history we stand here yelling stop Keep comments out of college, the cards you gotta list Dick Nixon did his homework, just ask old algorithms The unions are corrupt, the culture's spelled like trash You make it an honest buck, you lose half of it in tax What happened to the church? What happened to our schools? Teaching kids to hate our God and graduating fools. Gummer and expand from bottom to the top.

Yes this is the way we stand, there yell and stop. But keep calm as on the march, glory I am for them. The universities are wallowing in sin. Gummer and expand from bottom to the top At fourth is history's stand here yelling, stop! What's better than a well marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool.

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