The News Roundup For April 24, 2026

24:02If anybody went to a rally in 2023 or 2024, he said, no more forever wars. We're going to focus on America first. We're not going to be involved in conflicts overseas. But since he returned to office, he has spent so much time on foreign policy and on foreign conflicts. But I think the capture of Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan president, right at the start of this year, really signifies a lot of the president's thinking. He saw that very impressive military operation that was able to be conducted largely in a day and then bring a country's president to the United States and, you know, put him in a prison and face trial.

24:35President Trump, who loves instant gratification, saw that and said, oh, I could do that elsewhere. And there's been a lot of reporting about how the president maybe went into this Iran war viewing, oh, this could be a shorter excursion, as he likes to say, you know, similar to what we did in Venezuela. The president so casually talks about taking over Cuba. I've been at outside Marine one, the helicopter when he's coming or going from the White House. And he'll say, yeah, we're probably going to overthrow them soon, but it could be friendly. And you sit back and you're like, whoa, like that's a significant statement from the president.

25:06But a lot of it is rooted in oil. A lot of it is rooted in economics. A president's own family has a lot of ties in a lot of these countries, especially the Middle East. So it's, he talks about it so casually, but it's something that he is talking about every single day. The operation in Venezuela was partly about Cuba because that Venezuela was a patron of Cuba. Cuba is now teetering more so than ever economically. There's power outages all the time because they don't have the support from Venezuela, but they did have the Secretary of State Marco Rubio as a Cuban background. And this has long been a foreign policy goal of the Florida Republican establishment that is now ascendant because Marco Rubio is in this job.

25:46So even though it would seem the Iran war is not going well, I wouldn't rule it out, more adventurism in Cuba. Despite the personal agenda of the secretary of state on Cuba and Cuban politics, what's remarkable in this shift to regime change by Trump is how little – this is John Bolton's criticism. John Bolton says regime change is you can get out there. He says they're not doing regime change right. They're going in and knocking out leaders and just – and we're seeing what we're doing right now is acquiescing to Iran. So there's a – we didn't get regime change in Iran. We're not going to see a regime change in Iran, at least not in the near term.

26:23And so the fact that they're not laying the groundwork or roots for the other kinds of things, if you were going to be a regime change agent, what you're doing is you're punching, seeing how it lands. And I find interesting less the criticism from the left about this, but more the criticism from the right about the president's inadequacies, lack of planning, lack of strategy if you're trying to change governments and regimes. Let's turn to some election news. We got this comment from Rodney regarding Trump's reaction to Tuesday's vote in Virginia. So on Tuesday, Virginia voters passed a gerrymandered map that could secure four additional House seats for Democrats in the midterm election.

27:03Rodney says, I am in Virginia and glad that Virginia voted yes for redistricting. This was only a reaction to Texas redistricting directed by Trump. How utterly ignorant for him to say the Virginia vote was rigged. Now Republicans want to waste more tax dollars on a court case. So in terms of the contradicting messaging, I actually went back and I looked last summer, 2025, when Texas Republican state legislators in the Texas House approved changing their map. President Trump celebrated it and this shifted the map more toward Republicans. But he posted about it and he said big win for the great state of Texas.

27:41Everything passed. We're on our way to five more congressional seats and saving your rights, your freedoms and your country itself. Compare that to the president's post about Virginia, where Democrats notched a victory and he immediately posted a rigged election took place last night. And, you know, we have to stop this and Republicans. So that's how the president views this. And we've seen this for years. When he wins, he celebrates it and he doesn't question it. When he loses, he questions it and tries to say that it's rigged. But in the context of redistricting, it's been so abundantly clear, even from prominent Republican activists, they will go.

28:11Scott Pressler, who runs a big grassroots organization, went to Indiana to campaign against Republican lawmakers who decided not to redistrict. And then the next day went to Virginia to campaign for redistricting and saying we need to stop the redistricting. But it's very political. Right. Despite what the president is saying, Steve, what is Virginia's vote potentially mean for the balance of power in Congress? Well, I think it's a big wash. I think at the end of the day, I think the Republicans regret opening this door. The Democrats in California and Virginia have effectively responded to Texas and Florida efforts and other efforts to redistrict.

28:48And in essence, when you kind of add it up, I mean, they could get I think they could get up to five votes in current conditions in Virginia. But it doesn't really put either party. If the Democrats had taken no action, President Trump would have succeeded in getting a big net gain for Republicans. Right now, both parties are essentially at parity. I mean, the way it stands right now, unless Florida does something, Democrats stand to gain like two seats from these redistricting. It's narrow. Republicans in Virginia who are going to lose their jobs because of this told me that, well, Trump didn't start it.

29:17It's not his fault. Democrats started it in New York in 2022, which is not true. Coming up, we'll talk about Kevin Warsh's confirmation to be Federal Reserve chairman and the latest on the U.S. government's refunding of$166 billion in tariff revenues.

29:36Support for this podcast and the following message come from Rivian, makers of the all-electric three-row R1S SUV and the always capable R1T pickup. With impressive range, storage for any expedition, and technology that feels like second nature, Rivian vehicles are designed for those who seek to explore the planet and preserve it for generations to come. Learn more or schedule a demo drive at Rivian.com. Support for NPR and the following message come from Spectrum Business with connectivity solutions to help your business stay online and on track. Reliable connections, responsive support, and tailored solutions.

30:14Spectrum.com slash business. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. This message comes from Babbel. Babbel's conversation-based language technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash npr. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash npr. Rules and restrictions may apply. Welcome back to the 1A podcast. The Justice Department said today that it's ending its criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

31:02The decision clears the way for the confirmation of his successor, Kevin Warsh. Warsh was on Capitol Hill for what was a fiery confirmation hearing this week. He was grilled by the Senate Banking Committee, including Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who asked about his financial assets. I have agreed to divest all of those assets, especially those that you referenced before I take the oath of office. And that is, will you disclose how you divest those assets, or will you just collect a check for$100 million from someone whose whole business is betting on what the Fed will do?

31:40As I said to the ethics officials at the Federal Reserve and the Office of Government Ethics, and they agreed, I would be redeeming. He was also asked about his independence from President Trump. He has said, and I quote, anybody that disagrees with me will never be Fed chairman. And he's made clear that you are his sock puppet, saying last week that interest rates will drop, quote, when Kevin gets in. Yeah, I think they do. Not when economic conditions change, we'll get lower rates. Not when the economy needs it. Nope. He said, when my guy, Kevin Warsh, is in there, we'll get the interest rates that I, Donald Trump, want.

32:20Taylor Poplaris, before we get into this hearing, just reaction on the DOJ saying they're going to drop this investigation. What does that mean? It's notable because this has been something President Trump has been spearheading because of a personal feud with Jerome Powell and disagreement with Jerome Powell not lowering interest rates as fast as President Trump wants. I think it's notable in the tweet that Janine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in D.C., put out. She said this is because the inspector general for the Federal Reserve has been asked to scrutinize the building costs overruns because there's a huge renovation taking place.

32:53And then she said, accordingly, because of that, I've directed my office to close our investigation as the IG undertakes this inquiry. What's striking about this, though, is there's a North Carolina Republican senator named Tom Tillis who's retiring. He's kind of in his YOLO phase because he's really frustrated. He's been very frustrated with this investigation. That's gotten a lot of bipartisan criticism, people saying there there's no there there. This is truly President Trump directing, as Arthur talked about earlier, the Justice Department to go after somebody because the president is frustrated with them.

33:22And Tillis was played was vowing not to support Kevin Warsh's nomination to be Jerome Powell's successor until this investigation ended. And I think the Trump team is now realizing that Tillis was going to hold firm and that they would Kevin Warsh would just be sitting and waiting until Tillis maybe left office at the end of this year. So this clears the way for that now. It's a big win for Tom Tillis. And it also lets a lot of Republicans who felt uncomfortable about this investigation because most of them respect Jerome Powell. They can now move on from that. It's also an interesting model because when Kristi Noem was under fire and under pressure and resigned, it was Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana, another Republican senator, who said this does not cross – you know, does not hold muster and should be out.

34:04So you're seeing effective Republican pushbacks to the White House and they're winning. Yeah. All it takes is one guy. One guy each time. So let's get back to now. That obstacle removed. Let's talk about the hearing itself. Key takeaways, Arthur? So Warsh, like a lot of Trump appointees, was asked who won the presidential election in 2020. He couldn't say it was Joe Biden. And that's just – this is like standard, but it's also very weird. On the question of independence, he was on the Federal Reserve Board before during the Great Recession when he was a total inflation hawk. Even when there was negative inflation, there was deflation.

34:47He said, we got to watch out about inflation. And so now he's being cast into the opposite role as somebody cheering for lower rates instead of higher ones. And so that obviously raises questions about his flexibility, his ideological flexibility. But he knows this. And so he doesn't say, I'm going to cut rates. He says, well, there are ways rates can be lowered if, say, the Fed reduces its balance sheet or if AI massively boosts productivity. So he's very savvy in how he doesn't explicitly promise to do what Trump says. But even if he did say that, the Federal Reserve Board chairman is not a dictator.

35:27You've got to win a vote among the other Fed board governors. So it's not as though this will immediately cause interest rates to plummet, inflation to skyrocket. we'll have to see it up. Steve, I'm thinking back to what you said at the beginning of the hour as we're looking at economic pain as we're not clear about gas prices, that long-term effect on inflation. What else did we learn about how Warsh would handle this? Well, Warsh is very interesting because he wants to trim even more than other Fed governors what goes into the core price index. And they essentially want to knock out the, you know, because many of the Fed governors already want to knock out food and gas prices and the volatility there, but other volatile shocks.

36:07And And so as you get a narrower and narrower portfolio of what's considered in that core price index, and you kind of say, well, that's the stability in the economy. And thus it could justify, from his perspective, bringing down rates or having that. The problem is once you do that, you basically don't realize how these other factors in the economy are driving the overall system up. But I think for this time, it's a way to say without him saying he's for rate cuts. It's a way to get to rate cuts indirectly. I should say that Kevin Walsh is very, very well respected, in my view, across the economic sector.

36:45It's important to do that. I know Democrat appointees, Republican appointees, people throughout the Fed system that largely support and endorse his capability and competency. And the kinds of things he's put on the table are not unlike other things. So as we kind of focus in on what he's trying to do this, it's not out of line with other folks. But what he did say is he wants to trim that down even more. And that is something that fits the Trump agenda. I think one of the interesting things, too, to that point, because Kevin Warsh is pretty widely respected, but you hear a lot in the Trump era of people talking about the audience of one and how especially these prominent nominees, these people have to get confirmed, especially on television.

37:24They are in many ways performing for the president's approval. And as we talked earlier about the domestic impact of the war in Iran, you hear Donald Trump talk about two primary economic indicators that matter to him every day, which is the stock market and which is interest rates. That's why he focuses so much on who is Fed chair. And that's why he tries to argue that the war isn't having that much of an economic toll because the stock market might be performing well. He's less focused on kind of the kitchen table economics that impact the vast majority of Americans every single day. But it puts somebody like Kevin Warsh in a tough position because now Trump is going to be expecting him.

37:57This basically gives him a glide path to confirmation, and then he's going to have to have that balancing act that Stephen Arthur outlined. Yeah. How long are they going to be friends? It's a good question. Yeah, not that long. And it's a 10-year term, right, for Fed Reserve chair. So we'll have to see if that lasts. One other thing we often heard from the president last year was tariffs. And I wanted to give an update on what turned out to be President Trump's unconstitutional tariff plan. About two months ago, the Supreme Court struck down Trump sweeping tariffs on imports. Now the administration is working to refund more than$166 billion.

38:29On Monday, the U.S. Customs launched a portal to begin the refunding process. Taylor, how's this going to work? There are so many unknowns. And even in talking to Trump cabinet members, they don't even know. When I interviewed Kelly Loeffler, the small business administrator, we said there are a lot of small businesses who want tariff refunds. Can they get them automatically? And she deferred and she said, I don't know. That's going to be up to Customs and Border Protection because it falls under them. So there are a lot of unknowns. And President Trump has been asked about this. And he's been asked, are you concerned about the potential economic impact if hundreds of billions of dollars have to get sucked out of the U.S.'s wallet for this?

39:06And he basically said, I don't know if that will have to happen. But if it is, it will be a blip on the radar. But there are a lot of business owners in the country who are really relying on those to come in because of the impact on tariffs despite the president's insistence that it's helped people, not hurt people. Well, it would be good for the economy, for businesses to get more money. But that's the key thing is the payer of the tariffs is businesses, the people who are importing the goods, not the consumers who may have actually borne the cost of the tariffs through higher prices. What Arthur is saying is so important because throughout this, we have a supply chain.

39:39At every point in the supply chain, depending on who you had various people paying and offsetting the tariffs, I bought table linens. Those table linens went up a lot because tariffs that a small business in Chestertown, Maryland paid. Is that owner? Jen Baker going to get that tariff money back? Or is there somewhere along the way? That is, it's a Pandora's Bach, which is going to be fascinating to watch. But you're not going to get it back, Steve. I'm not going to get it back. Right. I was going to say, individual consumers are not. This week, President Donald Trump's acting attorney general signed an order reclassifying state-licensed medical marijuana as a less dangerous drug.

40:15The regulation will shift licensed medical marijuana from Schedule 1, which is reserved for drugs without medical use and with high potential for abuse to the less strictly regulated Schedule 3. The move marks a major policy shift removing barriers to researching the drug's potential use cases. It's been a big week for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a marathon four days of hearing on Capitol Hill over the last week. Kennedy answered questions on everything from his vaccine skepticism to whether President Trump's prescription drug plan is actually saving Americans money.

40:50He deflected blame for the largest measles outbreak in decades. Here he is responding to questioning from Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. Mr. Chairman, we've done better at controlling the measles outbreak than any country in the world. This is a global outbreak. It started before I came to office. most of the 80 % of children affected are over five years old, which means their decision not to vaccinate predated my appointment. Under pressure from both Democrats and Republicans, he did reiterate that his department advises all children to get the measles shot. Here he is responding to Democratic Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado.

41:31Are you taking that position today? That has not been your position. That's my position. We promote the measles vaccine. At the same time, according to The Washington Post, the CDC blocked a report about vaccine efficacy from being published in the agency's scientific journal. The report found that COVID vaccines reduced the number of hospitalizations among healthy adults this winter by half. Arthur, as we are getting this competing messages here from Kennedy and the DHS, is he changing his tune on vaccine recommendations? I mean, the way he spoke about vaccines before he became the secretary is really stark.

42:08He said they're, I can't recall the exact quote, but he basically said, urged people not to get them, not to get them for their kids. I think what's interesting now is that it seems as though the White House does not like having this vaccine questioning element so prominent in the administration, and they've now appointed a new CDC director, Erica Schwartz, with no ties to the anti-vaccine movement. Kennedy said he wasn't consulted on the choice. If you remember, he fired the person who'd previously been in that job, who also was really credible on vaccines. So it seems like they're trying to get ahead of him, ahead of his politics, ahead of the midterm elections this year.

42:52You also see, if I could just chime in, his wording was notable in that hearing where he was speaking, not personally advocating for the vaccine, but saying HHS as an institution is pushing it forward. And that's something I spoke with Dr. Oz, who obviously is a famous doctor, but oversees the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services now, been very pro-vaccine and very pro-publicly encouraging people to get the measles vaccine. And I asked him a few weeks ago, I said, is Secretary Kennedy undermining what you're very clearly mapping out? And he basically was like, Kennedy does not speak for the institution as a whole.

43:26And he goes, HHS as an agency has been advocating for people to get the vaccine. But the issue is Secretary Kennedy has such a big following and such a big megaphone that, you know, his messaging is the face of it. That ends up outweighing what the agency as a whole is trying to say. One last congressional story I want to talk about. Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen says the emergency money the department has been using to pay employees' salaries will run out by the first week in May. DHS has been partially shut down since mid-February. Steve, either party look ready to budge here.

43:56What are the pass forward for funding? It doesn't look like right now. This looked like a battle between the Senate and the House. Mike Johnson's in a vice. Mike's got the Freedom Caucus. You know, the Speaker Johnson has the Freedom Caucus on one side versus others who want to deal and know that this is pain. But the Republicans are perceived as the ones in control, and the Democrats are not going to yield until they have a win. But Mike Johnson continues to pull rabbits out of the hat, and he'll continue to do that until the day he doesn't. But I think right now the Republicans are the ones in trouble on this one.

44:28Oh, for sure. I mean the Senate approved fighting for all of DHS except ICE and Border Patrol. I sat on this show two weeks ago. I thought the House would pick that up, and they didn't. They still might. I feel bad about that. I didn't expect Mike Johnson to go back on what had seemed to be – I was with you that day, and you said it's a slam dunk. I was going to say. Thank you, Steve. Anyway, they are working on a budget, a special way of funding it that they can do by themselves and in which they might succeed. But there is intra-Republican fighting at the pressure on Johnson to just pass the Senate one does grow because they have said they – DHS has said they lose the ability to pay people through the illegal means that the president directed.

45:10So stuff is moving there. Let's end on some good news. It's been decades since an elephant calf has been born at Smithsonian's National Zoo until this year. On February 2nd, the Asian elephant Lin Mai was born here in D.C., becoming the first Asian elephant born at the zoo since 2001. Lin Mai has had some nutritional challenges from being rejected by both her mother and grandmother. But after an innovative fecal transplant from another baby elephant in Columbus and being adopted by an anti-elephant in the herd, she is making great gains. All right. Just wanted to end on that. I'm going. I'm going to go see her.

45:47I'm going to come with you. I think she weighs 500 pounds right now. So still fairly small. Thanks to Steve Clemens, editor at large at The National Interest, Arthur Delaney, senior reporter at HuffPost, and Taylor Popolars, national political reporter based at the White House for Spectrum News. Thank you for being with us. We're just getting started with the week's headlines. When we come back after the break, we'll have a new panel and all the news from around the globe. We'll be right back.

46:13Support for this podcast and the following message come from Rivian, makers of the all-electric three-row R1S SUV and the always capable R1T pickup. With impressive range, storage for any expedition, and technology that feels like second nature, Rivian vehicles are designed for those who seek to explore the planet and preserve it for generations to come. Learn more or schedule a demo drive at Rivian.com. Support for NPR and the following message come from Spectrum Business with connectivity solutions to help your business stay online and on track. Reliable connections, responsive support, and tailored solutions.

46:50Spectrum.com slash business. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. This message comes from Babbel. Babbel's conversation-based language technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash NPR. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash NPR. Rules and restrictions may apply. Welcome back to the 1A podcast. Let's turn to some international news for our weekly news roundup.

47:35It's a full house at the WAMU studio today. With us, Robbie Grammer is a national security reporter at The Wall Street Journal. Hi, Robbie. Great to be here. Emily Tampkin, a freelance writer, author, and reporter and contributing columnist at The Forward. Her forthcoming book is called Holocaust Consciousness. Emily, welcome back. Thank you. And Jack Detch, defense reporter at Politico. Hi, Jack. Good to see you. Good to be here, Nyla. Let's start this hour with some back and forth between President Trump and journalists at the Oval Office on Thursday evening. Sir, would you use a nuclear weapon against Iran?

48:06You posted on Truth Social a few weeks ago. No, we don't need it. Why do I need it? Why would a stupid question like that be asked? Why would I use a nuclear weapon when we've totally, in a very conventional way, decimated them without it? No, I wouldn't use it. A nuclear weapon should never be allowed to be used by anybody. Those comments followed a post on Truth Social President Trump Thursday morning saying he's ordered the Navy to, quote, shoot and kill any boat laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz. He followed up by asserting the strait was sealed up by the U.S. Navy until Iran made a deal.

48:39Now those comments came after U.S. forces said they've intercepted two more Iran-linked vessels in the Indian Ocean, boarding one and escorting the other as part of efforts to enforce their naval blockade. Robbie, it's hard to even ask this question because I know things are changing so rapidly and there's a lot of confusion. But as of Friday morning in Washington, D.C., what do we know about the situation in the strait? Well, in short, a lot of commercial ships are waiting around nervous up at the top of the Strait of Hormuz for all this to get settled. And for other ships, it's basically a high stakes game of cat and mouse.

49:16Iranian ships, Iran is letting some ships through if they pay basically an extortion fee. But then there's a question of if the U.S. Navy stops them. Now, Iranian flag vessels at the same time are trying to run this blockade that the U.S. Navy has set up a little bit further back into the Strait of Hormuz going into the Indian Ocean. And so they're trying to run this blockade. They're making it into the Indian Ocean. They are turning off their transponders to try to sneak through. And U.S. Navy destroyers are going around and searching for them. There was one that tried to run the blockade this morning, an Iranian vessel called the Dorena that my colleagues reported on.

49:56And it made it close to Western India before a U.S. destroyer intercepted it and said, not so fast, come back. And so it's this very weird, high stakes sort of status quo where everyone is just waiting to see what comes next in these negotiations if the U.S. and Iran will agree on either end to ease their blockade. And so just a reminder to everyone, Iran has believed to have mined parts of the strait and had been demanding payments as much as$2 million to allow ships to pass through. On Thursday, Iranian State TV shared video of what they said were Iranian military forces climbing onto a vessel in the strait and announced the capture of those ships.

50:39These vessels have been transferred to the territorial waters of the Islamic Republic of Iran for inspection of their cargo and documents. The IRGC Navy once again emphasized that any action aimed at disrupting the implementation of the laws announced by the Islamic Republic of Iran regarding transit in the Strait of Hormuz, as well as activities contrary to safe passage in this strategic waterway, will be continuously monitored by the IRGC Navy, and violators will face decisive and lawful action. I'm going to get to the lawful action in a moment. But Emily, the Philippine government confirmed at least 15 seafarers are being held by the IRGC.

51:22How has Iran raised the stakes here by capturing foreign flagships? Right. And the Philippines has confirmed that it was 10 on one ship and five on the other and that both were trying to break through this blockade. And on the one hand, it's the stakes have been raised tremendously. These are now there's 15 Filipinos who are being caught for for a conflict between Iran and the United States. This is now gone beyond these two countries. This is touching everyone in the region. This is touching the world economy. Of course, the stakes are being raised. And yet, if Iran's goal is to say, look, we're taking, you know, we're taking Filipinos, we're taking people from all over the world.

52:00Surely this will be what gets the U.S. to end the war. I'm not sure that that is going to change President Trump's calculations. To the point of legal action, Jack, is this legal? Is this piracy? That's what the Trump administration wants to call it. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was at the podium this morning and said the IRGC has basically been reduced to a gang of pirates with a flag. So it may look like piracy. It may walk like piracy. It may look quack like piracy. But by the international legal definition, not strictly speaking, these are state actors doing this, not non-state actors. Piracy would more clearly refer to non-state actors.

52:36The other thing, though, is this has created a tit-for-tat with the United States because on Thursday we saw the U.S. seizing boarding more vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. So this seems to intensify, at least in the interim, this fight over control of the strait. But to be clear, whether we're calling it piracy or not, international law does not allow for countries to impose fines or fees to go through something like the strait. That's right. Of course, the Iranians will try and justify this based on alleged violations of sanctions. They can make other justifications to try and hold up to the legal bar.

53:11But strictly speaking, yes, this looks like an unsanctioned action by a state actor. Robbie, let's look at the ceasefire, the deal and the talks or the lack of any of the above. The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araqqis, is expected to arrive in Islamabad Friday night for more talks. But this has sort of turned into the ultimate game of chicken. Earlier this week, the administration extended the U.S. ceasefire with Iran at the request of the Pakistani prime minister until Tehran presents a, quote, unified proposal for talks. So now what? I mean, everyone's in holding pattern. So, yeah, like you said, Iran's foreign minister is heading to Pakistan and then Russia and Oman.

53:50And the Pakistanis who have been trying to mediate these talks between the U.S. and Iran are hopeful that they can find some sort of way to punch through this impasse between the Iranian side and the American side. And both sides right now are waiting for the other side to blink. Now, when you talk to Trump administration officials, you know, they'll say we completely devastated Iran's military. Its economy was already teetering on the brink before the war. Its leadership was taken out by successive Israeli strikes, and this blockade is really going to ratchet up economic pressure on them, block their main source of revenue, their oil and gas.

54:24So basically we can just wait it out and wait and see until Iran is finally ready to come back to the table. The flip side here is Iran has not, despite this war, despite this devastating war, has not ceded any of its strategic objectives. and that is to retain the capacity to one day build a nuclear bomb and to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed. And so the talks right now are in stasis. Both sides are circling each other, waiting for the other to flinch. And as Emily and Jack pointed out, everyone else, the world, the global energy markets, these poor maritime, these poor people on these commercial ships, they are all caught in the middle, waiting for the standoff to end.

55:08I mean, certainly, Robbie, the world economy has been battered over the past eight weeks. Some analysts have called it the worst crisis to hit the global energy market in history. But Iran's economy is also taking a beating. Here's the White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt speaking to journalists on Wednesday. Operation Economic Fury continues. And the effective and successful naval blockade continues as well of ships and vessels that are moving to and from Iranian ports. We are completely strangling their economy through this blockade. They're losing$500 million a day. The Karg Island is completely full.

55:45They can't move oil in and out. They can't even pay their own people as a result of this economic leverage that President Trump has inflicted over them. Emily, what is the state of Iran's economy right now? It's horrendous. The IMF has said that they believe that Iran's economy is going to shrink by 6.1 percent this year. Inflation is 68.9 percent. Um, people can't, you know, that's, I just want to drive home that this is touching the most basic and immediate products that people need. It's not, it's Operation Economic Fury means that when people try to feed their families, they're struggling.

56:20But the idea that that economic leverage, yeah, it's, and the spokesperson is right insofar as it's hurting the economy and it's hurting people who need to live. But leverage to do what, right? If the point is to get Iran to say, OK, our economy is so bad, we concede, that has not yet happened. And in fact, I think one thing that the White House might want to remember is that unlike the United States, Iran does not have midterm elections this year. So we're sort of in this game of chicken or seeing who can cry uncle first, whose people can be hurt more, be devastated more economically to get their government to shift.

56:54And I do think that maybe that White House statement leaves out that the U.S. government is facing domestic political pressures that are unique to our system that Iran's are not facing. Robbie, also I want to just ask about the pressures in the region, particularly when we think about Gulf countries and their relationships with Tehran. Where do you see that going? Yeah, I mean, before the war, a lot of Gulf countries, countries in the region, sought to come to some form of uneasy detente with Iran, saying, we don't like you, we don't trust you, you're a threat, but let's just learn to live together uneasily and, you know, and that's it.

57:30And then the war starts, and many administration officials here expected Iran to bubble the U.S. bases in the region or Israel. But Iran went so much further, and it launched massive salvos of missile and drone strikes at the UAE, at Bahrain, at Qatar, at Saudi Arabia, Iraq, even Oman. And Oman is sort of sometimes referred to as the Switzerland of the Middle East. It tried hard to avert a war to step in on Iran's behalf. And so all of these Gulf states, they're angry at the United States, but they're even more angry at Iran for how Iran has dragged them into this war. One of Tehran's primary war tactics has been economic damage to the energy infrastructure of its neighbors.

58:10Some reporting suggests that 83 percent of its total missile and drone strikes were levied at Gulf neighbors, the majority at the UAE. Jack, the longer this goes on, as we look at all of these Gulf countries, are U.S. security guarantees going to be worth anything? I think that's a million-dollar question here because the U.S. is still the only game in town when it comes to great power security in the Gulf. That's, you know, when you think of heavy metal in the strait, when you think of sailors at sea, the Chinese and the Russians have provided some boutique support when it comes to weapons, to targeting capabilities, but they don't really provide that same support.

58:46The problem is this isn't really the era of the Carter Doctrine that that lasted from the 1980s into the 2010s. Now you have a situation where you do have a U.S. Navy blockade, but you have an unpredictable U.S. president. You have a U.S. magazine that's quite depleted. So Gulf country is going to have trouble getting their air defenses back into shape. So it does mean a lot. They are the only game in town. They're valuable, but it appears like with any Donald Trump relationship, they're conditional. This week, President Trump said he was not influenced by Israel to attack Iran. Emily, as we're nearly nine weeks in, where are we seeing Netanyahu and Trump still aligned?

59:24Where are they diverging? OK, we should first say that while I'm glad to hear the president remember that as president and commander in chief, he's ultimately accountable for this war, I think it's to say that you weren't influenced by the leader of the country you went to war with strikes me as just a bizarre thing to say. But be that as it may, look, Trump has repeatedly said, let's get this done quickly. Let's wrap this up. You know, we're crushing it. We're killing it. We're, you know, those are not Netanyahu's goals. Netanyahu has pushed for a war much like this for a long time, has said that it's central to Israel's security.

59:57And, you know, I mentioned elections earlier. Israel, too, has upcoming elections. And Netanyahu has different political considerations than Trump. Most Americans do not want this war. It is not popular with the United States. And most Americans don't understand why we're in this war. That's not true in Israel. Right. This was a very popular, at least at the very beginning, was a very popular war, and that may wane further as it goes along and as the goals become increasingly unclear. But for his own coalition, for his own domestic support, Israel has a different set of political considerations than the United States does.

1:00:29So while they were aligned on the decision to do this and while they, I think, agreed that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon, raising the question of why Trump and Trump 1.0 pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, but be that as it may, Um, what, whether it's good that this war continues, I think, is a big area of divergence. Let's talk about Iran. The New York Times reports that Iran's supreme leader, Moshtaba Khomeini, is facing critical medical conditions after surviving a bomb attack that's left him awaiting a prosthetic leg and facial plastic surgery. He has not been seen or heard from since being appointed in March.

1:01:04He was injured in an attack that killed his father, the Ayatollah Khomeini, on February 28th. Robbie, what did we learn from this reporting on Mosheva Khomeini, his condition, his care? Well, Mosheva is in hiding. He's isolated. And it's not clear what say he has over the trajectory of the Iranian government. Reportedly, people in the Iranian government are scared to go to him, scared that Israel could trace through them his location and try to take him out as well. And so messages are being passed to and from him, handwritten notes, reportedly through a chain of different messengers where they will send a message through these handwritten notes to him and he will reply and send these messages back.

1:01:52Suffice to say, not a very efficient way to run a government, let alone a government at war, let alone a government doing these negotiations. And the point is, you know, he's he's isolated. He hasn't been seen. He's he's severely injured. OK. But I think the big takeaway here is what does this mean for the U.S. negotiations with Iran? When Trump officials sit across from Iranian negotiators, are those negotiators speaking for Iran? And nature abhors a vacuum, as the saying goes. If there is a weak Ayatollah who's injured and isolated, what does that mean for all of the different factions in the Iranian regime, particularly the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is the most powerful military faction in the country?

1:02:35Is it taking more power? Is there any sort of balance between that and sort of the political establishment? And so when they negotiate, is there infighting that could ultimately scuttle a deal that the United States brokers with Iran if and when one comes? Jack, can you break this down a little bit for us? If we have an Ayatollah who is medically fragile, who is in charge? And is there a divide between the hardliners in the country? Well, it seems like senior commanders of the guards, as Ravi said, councils of elders are helping to make decisions. And that's the fascinating thing, right, is if you have a position where you have a supreme leader that's wounded, that's injured, that perhaps doesn't have full command and control of his military.

1:03:18You have a situation where the military then can delegate and make decisions at a very low level and perhaps interrupt things. I mean, one of the fears that I hear constantly from industry, from troops in the region, is the fear of Iranian vessels, drone vessels, coming in, being commanded at a much lower level than the supreme leader at different ranks of the IRGC. And you have to remember, the IRGC is a body, too, that controls 25 to 50 percent of the Iranian economy. So a huge player here. Iran's civilian institutions haven't disappeared. So, Robby, if we think about the presidency, the foreign ministry, other parts of the Iranian state are active, but how have we seen their roles redefined?

1:03:57Well, that's an important factor, and it's one of the reasons that this war has become so difficult. This is not a situation like a Saddam Hussein's Iraq or a Gaddafi in Libya or even a Maduro in Venezuela where the entire state rests on one person on one authority. The power is still divided into all of these factions. and Machaba's father, the late Khomeini, before he was killed, seemed to do a good job of balancing all these factions against each other, retaining ultimate authority. And it's an open-ended question right now of what his son, his successor, can do to balance these factions or if the IRGC will just take power.

1:04:39And another concern here is the Israeli strikes, along with the U.S. strikes, took out a lot of IRGC leadership. And what that means is that these lower-level IRGC commanders have come up through the ranks of battlefield promotions as their bosses get taken out in strikes. And the tendency that we seem to see, according to U.S. officials, other officials in the region who track this closely, are that they are more radicalized. They're more hardline. They're less experienced. And you just don't know what that means. It turns this massive, powerful institution in Iran into a big wild card against the backdrop of this war and these negotiations.

1:05:17And Emily, what Robbie's describing, this long-used decapitation strategy that Israel has used, the U.S. has used, how else is this complicating an off-ramp here? It's sort of like, in the same way that, you know, the fact that the U.S. has been negotiating with Iran and multiple times now decided to strike Iran, that does not help further negotiations. Similarly, if you have assassinated, decapitated the people who are in charge, the people who are who are one rung down, who are now in those roles. Just watch this. And so the idea that they're going to come up and be, you know, Western-friendly reformers, it just is, I mean, first of all, it's just not what happens historically.

1:05:59And also, just think, if you think about it logically, right, in the same way that striking during negotiations doesn't encourage negotiations, people who get promotions by watching their bosses and predecessors get killed are not going to be warmer toward Israel or the United States. And this idea that by, quote unquote, decapitating them, they would be overthrown, it just hasn't happened, right? And so if the intended policy is to take them out and so they are overthrown and a new Iran is born, that's not happening. And instead, what is happening is people who are part of the system are being hardened by this, watching this, observing this, being shaped by it, and then coming to power.

1:06:41So it makes negotiations and just the future of Iran-Israel-U.S. relations that much more difficult. I want to ask about the messaging that's happening for the war online. In early March a week after the first U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, the White House posted a video of real American attacks mixed with clips from popular movies, TV series, video games, anime. Within hours, Iran and its sympathizers responded by flooding social media with now viral video clips reportedly created by teams of Iranians depicting everyone from Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, Satan, Benjamin Netanyahu, others as Lego figurines.

1:07:20This is a word. It's called slopaganda. The videos often contain disinformation and anti-Semitic tropes. But here's the thing. They don't look or feel like state propaganda. I want to just ask you all what you make of this social media machine Iran has managed to sort of bottle the internet zeitgeist to being fast and funny. It's sort of like designed to go viral. It's kind of cool, which is a crazy thing to say about Iranian propaganda. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, both countries here are trying to gain the upper hand of this information war of who can meme better. And there's something to the messaging, especially on the U.S.

1:08:01side, while Trump is on the back foot, you know, with some factions of his own Republican Party saying, wait a second, we voted for you explicitly to not get embroiled in another war in the Middle East. And so sometimes the meme-ification of information warfare here, it does serve a good purpose. It's obvious, but it should be said that the regime producing these videos, the sloppaganda, on one level, it's funny, it's weird, it's quirky. On another level, this is still a regime that has wholesale slaughtered tens of thousands of protesters hanging women who are trying to fight for basic rights in their country.

1:08:42And so it's the way that it's funny and quirky is almost more pernicious when you think about the regime behind it all. It's also sort of a response to how Trump has communicated for years now, right? Sharing memes found on Reddit and wherever else of him tackling CNN as a wrestler or, you know, showing, putting out racist cartoons about the Obamas. And I was just thinking, as Robbie said, like, who can meme better? There is something fundamentally unserious about that sentence. I don't mean to. And that's not Robbie's fault. That's the reality of what's happening here. Thousands of people are dying and people are honing their meme skills.

1:09:23And people, I include the U.S. administration in that. And so I just, I think, not to get on my high horse here, but I do sort of think it shows a fundamental disregard of human life from both Iranian leadership and our own leadership. Yeah, the administration in the early days of the war was very, very captivated by their traffic numbers on some of these memes, comparing the war to grand theft auto, to tackles in football, some of them hitting over three billion impressions is what the White House bragged to us. I think there's sort of a back and forth, right? I mean, you see as tension boils up in Washington too, when we saw Joe Kent resign over the war, the Iranians took advantage of that.

1:10:06The Iranians have gone out with the Lego Pete Hegseth and said, what do you do with the drunken Hegseth? So there's very much this desire by the Iranians to play into this idea that there's chaos between the U.S. and their allies and to tap into that. The Financial Times is reporting that a top envoy to President Trump has asked FIFA to replace Iran with Italy. In the upcoming World Cup, U.S. Special Envoy Paolo Zampoli suggested the swap to FIFA's president and Trump to repair ties between Trump and Italy's prime minister, Georgia Maloney. The two are said to have fallen out after the president attacked Pope Leo over the Iran war.

1:10:42The Italian sports minister rejected the idea. The impact of Iran's war is also playing out across multiple fronts in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia says it's faced nearly 1 ,000 drone attacks in recent weeks, many of which it believes to be launched by Iran-backed militias from inside Iraq. Some of these strikes targeted critical oil infrastructure, including a major refinery on the Red Sea. Jack, what does this war within a war tell us about how the conflict is spreading across the region? I think you see the Saudis kind of taking the Americans' place in what had been sort of a subconventional war.

1:11:20in Iraq and Syria. They're helping to deal with Iran-aligned militias on Iraqi soil, so that's very much within their interests, trying to protect their energy interests. And, of course, the Saudis have gotten a much more close relationship with the Iraqi government in recent years. So I don't think we're expecting to see tanks cross borders, to see a major conventional fight here, but it shows the degree to which Saudi Arabia also kind has to mow the grass to use the Israeli term of art in the region in their estimation. Meanwhile, in Lebanon, a ceasefire is holding between Israel and Hezbollah, but just barely.

1:11:57Ambassador-level talks between Israel and Lebanon yesterday here in Washington extended the ceasefire due to expire Sunday another three weeks. Here's President Trump yesterday. If you look at Hezbollah, that's where everybody seems to be united against them. So they are both very united in that way. I think there's a very good chance of having peace. I think it should be an easy one. Relative to some of the things we're working on, it should be an easy one. But it's been so many years because nobody focused on it. These are the first direct talks between the two nations in decades. The president said the two leaders would be meeting in the coming weeks.

1:12:33It's worth noting it's illegal under Lebanese law for leadership to engage with Israel, something the president commented he learned on Thursday. We got this question from Kevin listening in Switzerland. I hear announcements of an additional ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel, but given that this does not include Hezbollah, what meaning does it have? And what would Israel expect from the Lebanese government during this ceasefire? Was Lebanon ever returning fire into Israel? Is Lebanon implicitly accepting responsibility for Hezbollah's actions by signing a ceasefire? Are they promising they could put a stop to Hezbollah?

1:13:06I think Kevin's really put his finger on exactly what the issue is, which is that it's not just Israel, Lebanon. It's Israel, Lebanon and Hezbollah. And though the president thinks this will be an easy one and everyone is in agreement, that is not actually, strictly speaking, true. because there are many in Lebanon who are saying, actually, if Hezbollah disarms, that's the last protection that we have really is gone. Whereas Israel says they've been shooting rockets into our country. They started up again after the Iran war, after Israel and the U.S. started this war with Iran. You know, it's not safe, especially in the north.

1:13:39And we should say that even with the ceasefire, there have been exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah. You know, how much exactly how much these talks are able to, what is the word, contrain or restrain Hezbollah is, I think, to be seen. But for now, there is this three week additional ceasefire. Do you want to add anything there, Jack? No, I mean, it's been interesting to see the degree to which the Israelis have basically just disregarded Lebanon's government throughout this entire process. They've basically said, we're not going to deal with you until we can find someone who can deal with Hezbollah.

1:14:16But the people who can deal with Hezbollah, in Israel's estimation, are the Israelis. Emily, as we were talking about this fragile ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, Israel is still maintaining what it calls a security zone inside southern Lebanon. What does that tell us about Israel's long-term strategy? So what Israel says is that – and this is – we should say this is sort of a return to form in some ways because they had a similar buffer zone from 82 to 2000. So now here we are 26 years later with this buffer zone that they say is to protect Israelis from rockets from Hezbollah coming in to the north of the country.

1:14:53However, we should say that there are some in the Israeli ultranationalist right who have been pretty plain about the fact that they want to annex this part of the country. We should also say that a million people in Lebanon have been displaced. and further, you know, I was saying earlier that the U.S. wants to wrap this up quickly. Israel does not want that. Obviously, having a security zone within another country does not point to, yes, yes, we're going to wrap this up and be done right away. So let me put this to all of you. When we're putting all of this together, when we're talking about a fragile ceasefire in Lebanon, previously we were discussing the proxy attacks in the Gulf.

1:15:34What did you all see region-wide this week that we should be paying attention to. Robbie? I think the first thing is how the Lebanon talks will affect U.S.-Iran talks. So Iran has said, we don't want to do any serious talks, any negotiation, unless Israel halts its hostilities in Lebanon and withdraws back to its border. The American side, meanwhile, is saying these two talks are happening in parallel, but we are not connecting them, because doing so would basically give an acknowledgement that Iran has say over sovereign Lebanese issues. Now, the Americans and Israelis here say after years of Hezbollah being battered by Israeli strikes following the October 7th, 2023 terror attacks, Lebanon, the Lebanese government has this historic opportunity to finally wrest Hezbollah from its governance structures, from southern Lebanon.

1:16:28And they're saying, Lebanon, we want you to, you know, to finally take control and finally confront Hezbollah. The flip side is Lebanon, first of all, is in the Lebanese government's in a very precarious position, in large part because of the Israeli strikes. And there is a real fear that, A, the Lebanese army is too weak to confront Hezbollah directly. And B, would a confrontation from Hezbollah spiral in a way out of control into what's seen as a confrontation with Lebanon's entire Shia community? I'm going to point to another subplot from this week, which is that there were Israeli soldiers who desecrated a statue of Jesus.

1:17:08And they were, you know, there was global outrage, global outrage, excuse me. These soldiers were disciplined. The soldiers who stood around and did nothing, they're going to be spoken to. I think this is interesting for a couple of reasons. The first is that there is this growing hostility to Christianity in some parts of the Israeli Jewish population. This is a big problem for the Israeli government because Israeli officials, by their own admission, for years now have said, let's not worry in terms of foreign policy about these pesky, whiny, liberal American Jews. We're going to be with the evangelicals.

1:17:45So obviously, if now part of your population is being outwardly aggressive toward Christianity, that's a problem. Also a problem because there's this growing tendency on the U.S. political right to be sort of, oh, I'm just asking questions about Jewish control of our foreign policy and that this does not help that. But it also was interesting to me. I want to lift up a piece by a Palestinian Christian that Aretz published that sort of said, why is there more global outrage about a statue of Jesus than about the hundreds, thousands of people who are being killed, you know, the schoolchildren, the people displaced, et cetera.

1:18:21Now, I think the reason is what I just pointed to, which is that there are sort of real religio-politique questions and issues tied up in this desecration. But I just think it's also worth saying what the IDF has apologized for and what it has not apologized for. One thing that's been interesting is China's tepid role but taking a more active hand in diplomacy this week. Xi Jinping was calling up MBS in Saudi Arabia, sort of pushing the line of that they want talks. They're not taking any hand in encouraging talks themselves. And they seem very content to try and keep this summit date with Donald Trump open in May where they can talk trade.

1:19:00They can talk Taiwan. A whole number of issues will be on the table. But you see Taiwan or you see China rather wanting to step into the region in a big way and yet also do it in a velvet glove. Right. Robbie, I just want to ask about, remind everybody that China was pushing on Iran to accept the initial ceasefire ahead of the deadline in early April. How have we seen the Chinese government conducting this diplomacy? Well, there's two fronts here. The first is China wants the strait reopened. It's bad for business for this shock in the global energy market, especially given how much gas and oil from the global market China hoovers up.

1:19:39And they want that. The second is there is a bit of a Machiavellian twist here. China, having the United States sucked back into a massive costly conflict in the Middle East where the United States is burning through so many high-end munitions is not bad for Beijing in the long run. And so they're balancing these two things, even if they're not saying publicly of, look, we want the strait reopened. We want the oil and gas taps turned back on. We need those. And also, you know, if the United States is dragged into another war, our arch geopolitical rival, if it burns up resources, time, political capital, munitions, you know, you have to divert a lot of your military assets from the Indo-Pacific where we're confronting some American allies.

1:20:25Why are we going to stop you here? Jack, we also saw a lot of stories this week about China's currency and how that's China's economy and how they're being affected by the use of its currency during this conflict. What's notable about that? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, right? Like, it seems like the yuan in recent years has shaken off the stigma of sort of being a back basement currency that's only available for pariah states and now is becoming more of a currency of choice. The Chinese are trying to float that here. Of course, it's not a currency like the dollar that can float freely and is involved in the international currency market in the same way.

1:21:02But you see over the past few years trade in the yuan rising. That may be set to continue after this goes on. You know, often in the International Roundup, we ask about what's behind the actions of China's government, what Chinese President Xi Jinping wants. Do we know what his government wants in terms of this war with Iran? i mean i think i would just go go back to what i originally said they they want some form of stability here um and they also won't mind if the united states uh burns up a lot of its its credibility and its resources in the middle east um i think the you know if people were waiting for china this this superpower to come barreling in and say we are going to conduct great power diplomacy that is not something that's happening uh this is a diplomatic quagmire that china is very happy to not touch with the 10-foot pole here.

1:21:54Yeah, I mean, China's game in the region is predominantly economic. So, Robby flagged the big point, which is oil and gas supplies. They want that to continue flowing. But I think it shows the degree to which China's reticent to bring big power to bear. China has a carrier program ever since the financial crisis in 2008. China has the biggest fleet in the world by far. They're not making a difference here. And that's a notable statement. I want to just quick stop in Pakistan. The country is currently at the heart of negotiations over the Iran war, paused a$1.5 billion sale of weapons to Sudan on Monday.

1:22:29That's after Saudi Arabia reportedly said it would not finance the weapons sale. Sudan's in the fourth year of a devastating war between the military and a paramilitary group. This led to famine, displaced 13 million people, killed at least 59 ,000, especially in the Darfur region. Jack, what's behind this Pakistani-Saudi weapons deal to Sudan? Well, I know Robbie's the expert on Sudan, so I'll leave some for him. But it seems like this was something that was funded largely by Saudi. They decided to pull back funding for this. And it goes to show kind of Saudi Arabia's recalibration of their foreign policy role.

1:23:06They were more interested in sort of further abroad proxy conflicts in Sudan, in Yemen. Now, Now it seems like they're pulling back and focusing more on the region and the campaign in Iraq is evidence of that. Let's go to Ukraine now in its fifth year fighting Russia's full scale invasion. Emily, on Thursday, the European Union approved a$106 billion loan to keep Ukraine's government afloat through 2027. That had been held up for months. So what led to this breakthrough? OK, so there's the short and the slightly longer. The short version is that Hungary and Slovakia had had it on pause because they were not getting their Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline.

1:23:45Ironically, Druzhba means friendship, but it was causing animosity here. Ukraine said it was the Russians who damaged that pipeline. The Hungarians said, you're delaying repairs on purpose. Finally, this week, oil hit. And so we're all happy and working together again. The slightly longer version is that Hungary had been really – sorry, the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, had been using Ukraine to try to get people out to the polls to vote for him in his reelection, saying, I'm the only thing standing between you and Ukraine taking advantage of you and the EU dragging us into war, et cetera, et cetera.

1:24:16He lost, right? So I think we'll be seeing a lot less of that out of Hungary. And a question is whether we will continue to see it from Robert Fica, the Slovak prime minister. So as you're mentioning, this is involving Russian oil again flowing to Hungary and Slovakia. At the same time, we saw the EU announcing new sanctions on Russia. So what is the EU doing to counteract Russia as it continues to help Ukraine? In addition to this loan, there's also a new tranche of sanctions, including on Russian ghost fleets or phantom fleets, which are thought to be involved in helping the Russian energy sector and on other entities as well.

1:24:54Now, you might say, doesn't it undercut that cause to have two EU countries continue to rely on Russian energy? And to that, the answer is yes, that it's a sticking point between the EU and Hungary and Slovakia and Ukraine. Before we leave Europe, some historic news from the UK. Children in Britain who are 17 or younger or anyone born in the future will never be able to legally buy cigarettes After lawmakers approved new stricter restrictions on smoking this week, here's the British Health Minister addressing Parliament. It is a landmark bill, my lords. It will create a smoke-free generation. It is, in fact, the biggest public health intervention in a generation.

1:25:31And I can assure all noble lords, it will save lives. The tobacco and vapes bill raises the legal age for buying tobacco by one year, every year. starting with people born on or after January 1st, 2009, meaning affected age groups face a lifetime ban. The legislation now goes to the king for a ceremonial sign-off before taking effect. Before we go, I want to look ahead to what's in your reporter's notebook, what you're watching for this week. But I did want to ask what you all are making of this reporting about an email from the Pentagon outlining options for the U.S. to punish NATO allies it believed failed to support them during the Iran war.

1:26:12Robbie? Yeah, I mean, the Trump administration is livid at NATO allies for not stepping up to help the Iran war. NATO allies are countering, well, you know, you spent the past year really bashing us, casting doubt over the alliance. Oh, and by the way, you didn't warn us in advance that you were going to war. So how were we able to help from day one? And so some of the options on the table reportedly, as Reuters reported, is temporarily pausing or suspending Spain's membership from NATO, which is not as international on NATO law goes, a legally viable option, punishing other NATO countries, looking at questioning their holdings over sort of former colonial states.

1:26:55The big example is the Falkland Islands within the UK. So it just goes to show how fuming mad Trump remains at NATO for not stepping up to help his blockade. At the same time, NATO allies are talking about forming a coalition to help escort commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, but only after the conflict has ended. Jack, we also got this email from JM Billion in Vermont. Maybe you can answer this. Can your guest comment on the current reporting on the Iran war's depletion of U.S. military arms, particularly on what this conflict means for U.S. vulnerabilities with Russia and China, and whether there's a huge bill coming that will land on Americans?

1:27:32Yeah, I mean, I think this has come up earlier in the program, but you see in the first days of the conflict, Tomahawk land attack missiles were a big use case that were fired. Those would be key probably for land targets in a China campaign around Taiwan. One, the Journal obviously has great reporting this week about the depletion of stockpiles that this has caused and how it could affect other war plans. But it'll have broad scale effect because this is all the same pool of weapons, right? And it's going to take the U.S. manufacturing industry, the arms industry, one to two years to ramp up to full capacity, not to mention to replace all of these depleted munitions.

1:28:08Air defense is another huge one. The Ukrainians desperately need it, too. Emily, I'll let you have the last word as we're almost out of time here. But just what we missed, what you're watching, what we missed talking about this week, what you're watching for next week, either one. Well, one big story is that voting is underway in West Bengal. This is the fourth most populous state in India. And it's one that I encourage people to pay attention to because last time and also this time, the Modi and the BJP have really looked to it to say, like, we can finally make inroads here. And that will mean something to our political project.

1:28:37Mamta, who runs West Bengal and the TMC, are saying, I don't actually think so. I don't think that's going to happen. So we will find out, I believe, May 4th, but voting is under right now. So pay attention to that, too. All right. And we'll talk about it when it happens on the Roundup. Thanks so much to our panelists today. Emily Tamkin, freelance writer and reporter and contributing columnist at The Forward. She's the author of The Influence of Soros and Bad Jews and a forthcoming book called Holocaust Consciousness. Jack Datch, defense reporter at Politico. And Robbie Grammer, national security reporter at The Wall Street Journal.

1:29:06Mike Kidd is our sound designer and engineer. Chris Castano is our digital editor. Maya Garg is our senior managing producer. Alexandra Bote is our senior supervising producer. Aileen Humphreys is our senior producer and editor of 1A On Demand. And Thomas Liu produces our podcast. Special thanks to Matthew Simonson for additional on-demand support this week. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Naila Boodoo. This is 1A.

1:29:41Thank you.