Today, Explained - America First (unless Iran...)

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

Vox's Josh Keating and author Vali Nasr explain what bombing Iran won’t accomplish. This episode was produced by Peter Balonon-Rosen and Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact checked by Laura Bullard and Denise Guerra, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Further reading: Iran's Grand Strategy: A Political History by Vali Nasr. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. Iranians protesting US attacks on nuclear sites in Iran. Photo by Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This weekend, the current president of the United States did something no former president of the United States has ever done. He bombed Iran. And I want to just thank everybody and in particular God. For a lot of people it was giving Timu George W. Bush, but the vice president had a counter-argument. But the difference is that back then we had dumb presidents and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America's national security objectives. But are these America's national security objectives?

Because most Americans aren't interested in bombing Iran and certainly most Americans don't want a war with Iran, but it sounds like the president might? Truth social. It's not politically correct to use the term regime change, but if the current Iranian regime is unable to make Iran great again, why wouldn't there be a regime change? MIGA! Where do we go from here on Today Explained? Support for the show comes from Yonder. There's a certain time and place

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New York Magazine. You can find it on newsstands. You can subscribe. New York Magazine. Really a good magazine. Today Explained, Sean Ramos from here with Josh Keating from Vox. He's a senior correspondent covering foreign policy and national security. Josh, what did the president do this weekend? So on Saturday night, US time, the US launched airstrikes against Iran's nuclear program. A short time ago, the US military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime, Fordow, Netan, and Esfahan. This ended about a week of speculation about whether the US would join the air campaign

against Iran that Israel had launched. It was kind of a major about face for a president who very recently seemed very committed to a diplomatic path for dealing with president who very recently seemed very committed to a diplomatic path for dealing with Iran's nuclear program. No U S president has ever bombed Iran. Why did Trump go for it? It seems like what happened was a combination of factors. One, Israel presented some new intelligence that they feel indicated presented some new intelligence that they feel indicated that something had shifted with regards to Iran's ability to build a weapon.

There's been reporting that basically the Israelis believe that Iranian scientists have sort of squirreled away some highly enriched uranium that international inspectors didn't know about and had begun discussions on actually building a weapon, on putting nuclear material on a missile. US intelligence officials, it seems like weren't buying that. Last March, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence said that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.

And US spies for the most part seem to be sticking with that. Trump says he doesn't believe that. What intelligence do you have that Iran is building a nuclear weapon? Your intelligence community has said they have no evidence that they are at this point. Well, then my intelligence community is wrong. Who in the intelligence community said that? Your Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. She's wrong. Who in the intelligence community said that? You're the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. She's wrong.

He doesn't care what she said and that he believes Iran was moving close to a bomb. Maybe he saw something that really convinced him. Maybe Israel's initial success in this air campaign, the degree to which they've been able to launch strikes at Iran almost without impunity, with very little in the way of Iranian defenses, and have been able to absorb the missile strikes that Iran has fired at Israel. Maybe that convinced him that it was time to go. This is a president who likes to back a winner, and he may perceive that this war was going well and he wanted to be part of it. He walked down that hallway that many presidents before him have walked down after doing stuff like this on Saturday night.

This time he was flanked by his vice president, his secretary of state, and the secretary of defense. What did he have to say to the nation? There's no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight, not even close. There has never been a military that could do what took place just a little while ago. The speech seemed to indicate that this was a one-off. Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. We're not exactly sure if that's true. The following day, Dan Cain, General Dan Cain, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

said that it's clear there was significant damage to all three, but we'd have to wait on final damage assessments. BDA is still pending and it would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there. He also said that there would be no more strikes unless Iran didn't, well, he was a little vague about that actually. The implication seems to be that if Iran retaliates against US troops in the region that there could be more strikes, but he seemed to suggest that this was a one-off, that there weren't further military actions planned. He didn't get congressional authorization to do this in keeping with a decades-long tradition now. Who knew he was going to do this?

Not very many people. Supposedly congressional Republicans were given some advance warning. Just Republicans. Just Republicans, congressional Democrats were given some advance warning. Just Republicans. Just Republicans, Congressional Democrats were given very, very, very brief warning. The Israelis do seem to have been involved in some coordinating fashion. So Israelis may have known more about this operation than Congressional Democrats? Most likely they did, yeah. Wow. It's worth noting just a couple days earlier, Trump had said that he was going to wait two weeks to make a decision. And you know, a lot of, I'll be honest, I wasn't sure if he would really go through with this.

I mean, it- He didn't even tell you? He didn't. No, he didn't. I was not on those signal chats. As you mentioned, Trump's own director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, expressed skepticism that Iran had the capability to build a bomb. Here we have the president bombing nuclear facilities.

Why is he at odds with his own intelligence staff? Well, that's something of a tradition as well. The lead up to the war in Iraq seems very recent to me, but I'm realizing I'm just getting old and that seems like a long time ago for other people. In that case, the administration pressured the intelligence community to come up with findings on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program that would build a case for military action. Indeed the facts and Iraq's behavior show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are

concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction. We have not found at this point actual weapons. It does not mean we've concluded there are no actual weapons. It means at this point in time, and it's a huge country with a lot to do, that we have not yet found weapons. It means at this point in time, and it's a huge country with a lot to do, that we have not yet found weapons. This time we seem to be doing like a speed run of the lead up to Iraq. You know, they're rather than pressuring the intelligence community to come up with this, you know, favorable intelligence. Trump is simply saying he doesn't believe the intelligence assessments that were given to him, that he believes what the Israelis were saying. Rather than trying

to build a case in Congress, making a case to the UN as we saw in 2003, Trump simply ignored those. It's like we're doing Iraq, but much faster. The only difference being that in this case there really was a nuclear program. You published a piece on Saturday night, immediately after this happened, titled This Time It's Trump's War. You pointed out that Trump had overruled objections while shifting his position on taking military action against Iran. Why is he kind of going alone on this? Do we know? I want to read something that he said in May in a speech he gave in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Just a quick quote. He said, he was talking about the sort of legacy of the last few presidential administrations in the Middle East. He said, in the end, the so-called nation builders direct far more nations than they built and the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves. They told you how to do it, but they had no idea how to do it themselves. They told you how to do it, but they had no idea how to do it themselves. Now, I read this, and I think it's a fair reading, that this was a castigation, a rejection of decades of US attempts to remake the Middle East through military action. Maybe this is just a one-off, maybe it's just a strike on the nuclear program, but Israel clearly sees this as a potential regime change operation. And then on Sunday, we saw Trump posting on Truth Social that it's not PC to talk about

regime change, but if the Iranian government can't make Iran great again, then maybe there should be regime change. We've been hearing and reading that Trump doesn't have much of like a, you know, foreign policy ideology for, I don't know, like a decade now. But as much as he has one, it's America first. This is not that. The first person Trump thanked in his speech on Saturday night wasn't the troops, wasn't the pilots of these bombers. It was Benjamin Netanyahu.

It's feeling a little Israel first out there right now. Is Trump diluting his brand, Josh? This is another major shift we've seen. I mean, Trump was basically giving Israel the cold shoulder in the Middle East. It was cutting deals with Hamas for hostages. It was, of course, engaged in these nuclear talks with Iran that Israel was not too happy about. They stopped bombing the Houthis even though the Houthis continued lobbing ballistic missiles at Israel. So it didn't seem like either protecting Israel from its enemies regionally or appearing to be in lockstep with Israeli foreign policy in the Middle East. So it's really that much of a priority for this administration.

This is a major shift. I don't really have a good explanation for it other than this is a president who's shown more than once he's capable of shifting on a dime in foreign policy. He can go from calling for fire and fury in North Korea to calling Kim Jong-un his best friend. So there were a lot of people on the so-called America First right, as well as some on the left, who hoped that this would be a president who would show more restraint in the use of military force, who maybe wouldn't be as locked step aligned with Israel in the Middle East. The theories about where Trump's foreign policy was headed, or who was calling the shots a few weeks ago,

haven't held up very well. And I think, you know, observing this president over the last decade or so, that's something we should come to expect. The view from Iran when we return on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Quince. Summertime and the live-in is easy and also maybe time to upgrade your closet. Was that in the song? Quince offers lightweight, refined, timeless summer staples at prices, I'm told, that are half the cost of similar brands.

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Start your risk-free Greenlight trial today at green light comm slash explain That's green light comm slash explain to get started green light comm slash explained So my gush me connie bet as we have mozu a rose you are listening to today explained You are listening to Today Explained. Professor Vali Nasser just published a book on Iran's grand strategy. It's called Iran's Grand Strategy, a Political History. We asked him how long they've been trying to build a bomb. Well, it hasn't been developing a nuclear weapon. It has been developing a nuclear program.

It actually started before the revolution under the Shah. At that point in time the Shah saw it as a mark of Iran having arrived as a great power, but also he saw industrial uses for it. He wanted to develop and modernize Iran. He needed electricity and he thought that a nuclear industry was critical for that. And I think the Islamic Republic began to think about a nuclear program when they got hit by Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war with chemical weapons and the international community didn't do anything. According to its own declarations, Iraq used more than 101,000 chemical bombs and munitions

during eight years of war, including mustard gas and nerve agents. And then they started basically thinking also as a nuclear program, as a way of getting US's attention to sit down at the table and negotiate with Iran about lifting sanctions and de-escalating. And every time the US balked at it, they built the program bigger. The idea of Iran having a nuclear weapon is unacceptable. And it's unacceptable to the United States, and it's unacceptable to the nations we're working with in the United Nations. Then Obama came to the table, he signed a deal.

Because America negotiated from a position of strength and principle, we have stopped the spread of nuclear weapons in this region. Iran gave up much of its program, not all of it, much of it. Because of this deal, the international community will be able to verify that the Islamic Republic of Iran will not develop a nuclear weapon. And then Trump pocketed those gains and then left the deal. The Iran deal is defective at its core. If we do nothing, we know exactly what will happen.

In just a short period of time, the world's leading state sponsor of terror will be on the cusp of acquiring the world's most dangerous weapon. So the Iranians then built something bigger and they were willing to negotiate over it with Trump when this attack by Israel and then the US came. So until now, I don't think they made a decision to build a bomb, but definitely the nuclear program had very important strategic value for them, which is the only way in which they can get out of the chokehold of US sanctions, the containment wall that Iran has built around them, is to put the nuclear program on the

table and say, what are you going to give me for it if I gave up X, Y and Z? And now President Trump says, Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. But it feels like there are people out there with different views. What is the best understanding we have of what just happened to Iran's nuclear program? We have the word that's been put out by the United States that this was a very successful bombing that they've used upwards of 13 massive bunker buster bombs on this site called Fordow which is a massive mountain

under which Iran has built its plant. We devastated the Iranian nuclear program. Now in reality unless you actually put people on the ground particularly in Fordow which is this fortified mountain, you really won't know what has been destroyed and how much damage has been done. Now increasingly, there is talk that actually Iran had emptied out these facilities of their centrifuges or sensitive machinery, etc. So the facilities might have been damaged, but not necessarily what was in them. And most importantly, according to Israel, that Iran had amassed enough fissile material

for nine bombs. And that's why they were imminently going to get a bomb or nine bombs, and that's why Israel had to do this. But the vice president just said yesterday that we don't know where that material is. It has taken its sensitive material out of these enrichment production sites. We know that? We know that they've moved the enriched uranium? Well we won't know anything for sure until we can get in there and we can't. But there is evidence and in fact, even Israelis have said that there were trucks, evidence of trucks moving near Fardo, the site in the days before the attack came.

And maybe that's also what pushed them to move the attack up when the president said two weeks, they moved it faster. So we really don't know what's been damaged. And then secondly, we don't know how quickly can Iranians rebuild it because, you know, they have know-how, they have engineers, they have scientists, they have capability. So if anything, the US has damaged the program, has initiated a war with Iran at some level, but it has fallen short of its claim that it has completely obliterated Iran's nuclear program. But what we know, John, is they no longer have the capacity to turn that stockpile of highly enriched uranium to weapons-grade uranium. And that was really the goal here. Uranium is not

that difficult to come by, John, but enriching uranium up to the point of a nuclear weapon, that is what the president put a stop to last night. What would a war with Iran look like? Many of Iran's proxies and friends from Assad in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, even Russia, are either weakened, destroyed, preoccupied. What should we expect in terms of retaliation from Iran? Well, Iran has enough missiles, short-range missiles, medium-range missiles to hit plenty of US targets in the region.

Or not hit US targets, go after the oil and energy supply chain, close the Straits of Hormuz, hit tankers, things like that. So I think an Iranian retaliation will come. I don't think Iran is looking to start a bigger war, but Iran also does not want President Trump to think that this was really easy. Let's do it every day of the week. So I think the retaliation will not be so much out of anger or lashing out or revenge, as it will be to still try to give the US a sense that this is not a good idea. Up until just a few weeks ago, it seemed like President Trump wanted to talk to Iran, wanted to consider a deal with Iran. Is that now off the table?

Well, what he thinks about a deal is not what the Iranians understand about a deal. I mean, right now he's talking about, I want you to show up and sign a surrender treaty, an unconditional surrender treaty. That's what his definition of a deal is. A deal would now be much more difficult because I think Iran's experience with this whole thing means that it has led them to a point where they don't trust in anything President Trump says or does. He says, I make a decision to bomb you in two weeks. He does it the next night. He says, you know, we have one more round of talks going and I only am going to go to a military option if the talks fail. And he allows Israel to start the military option before the talks failed. So why would Iran necessarily trust a deal with the

US? A lot of people are scared right now that the United States, the world is about to see another forever war, maybe World War Three if you're super paranoid. Does Iran want that? Does anyone actually want that? No, I don't know if anybody want that. I don't think World War III is a bit hyperbolic because World War III sort of suggests that there are circumstances in which Russia or China or other global powers can come into this war. And I just don't see that. So that's going to hyperbolic, but I think a real costly forever war, another Middle East war that is going to look, Iraq look like child play.

And Israel can start this war, but in the end the United States will be the one that will own it and will have to deal with it. And it's gonna cost the United States trillions of dollars, It's going to divert this attention from varieties of other global issues. It's going to be extremely taxing. I don't think the U S wants it. I don't think Iran wants it, but I think we're in a circumstance where president Trump decided that if he struck Iran, there is no risk of having

to then put boots on the ground, which is a huge assumption in my point of view. It has to basically shoot a bow across President Trump's arrow for him to sort of realize that there is serious risk here, because only then might he back off. And so for that reason, I do think that Iranians would retaliate, not out of pride, but out of the desire to warn the president that you shouldn't go down this path. ["The Last Supper"] Valley Nasser is a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University. His book once more is titled Iran's Grand Strategy of Political History. Shortly after we spoke today, Iran said it launched an attack on the largest U.S. base

in the Middle East. That would be in Qatar. As of publishing time, we had no reported casualties. Peter Balanon-Rosen and Hari Mawagdi made our show today. Miranda Kennedy, Laura Buller, Denise Guerra, Andrea Christensdottir and Patrick Boyd helped. This is Today Explained. explained. you