The News Roundup For March 6, 2026

25:40We're beginning to get the American people to think that deporting people is wrong. It's the exact opposite. The way you're going about deporting them is wrong. The fact that you can't admit to a mistake, which looks like under investigation, It's going to prove that Ms. Good and Mr. Pretty probably should not have been shot in the face and in the back. Law enforcement needs to learn from that. You don't protect them by not looking after the facts. Steve is surprised that we heard this from Republican lawmakers against Kristi Noem. How much role do you think that played in her losing her position?

26:13I think it played 100 percent of the role. I see here major Republican voices. I think, you know, Tom Tillis, we've known, is planning to retire and step out there. but to hear John Kennedy from Louisiana, Senator from Louisiana, call this spending porn and really hammer her on that spending. But I think Senator Tillis raised the issue that a lot of Americans had. It's how did Minneapolis, how did ICE? I was just out in Minneapolis last couple of days and looking at this and the pain that's out there for them, trying to reconcile how American federal forces came into communities and killed people with what we saw and seeing essentially was a fabrication of facts over that case.

26:52by Kristi Noem and her challenge by that by Republicans. Yeah, Steve, we'll be covering more of this after this quick break. And after that, we'll continue to round out this week's domestic news. Stay with us.

27:09Welcome back to the 1A podcast. It's the Weekly News Roundup. We've been talking about Republican Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, who will be replacing Kristi Noem as secretary of DHS. Margaret, what do we need to know about Senator Mullen as he steps into this role? Just a few quick points on this. One, he's a hardcore ally of President Trump's. So he's certainly expected to continue the administration's policies and approach toward immigration enforcement. He's a Republican from Oklahoma, so there's no risk that the seat would turn over. They have to fill the seat. He's also a former MMA fighter, and he has that, like, fight personality that the president loves.

27:45As you may remember, he actually got in quite a bit of trouble or had a moment when he stood up and threatened to fight someone who was testifying before his committee because he was – yes, yes, because he was an internet critic and Bernie Sanders lost his mind. So, like, the messaging, all that stuff. Also, like, he's, you know, confirmable. I mean, he is confirmable by his colleagues, but there is a question about whether the DHS, the partial government shutdown, a standoff over DHS funding is going to slow things down. Could someone in his own party like Rand Paul slow it down? Two quick economic notes.

28:23A new jobs report is out today. It was weaker than expected with the labor market losing 92 ,000 jobs in February. that pushed the unemployment rate up to 4.4%. Wendy, as we were talking earlier about the price of oil, some notes this week about that. Yes, just this morning, there were announcements that Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate crude, which are obviously two of the most important kinds of oil that goes into our cars and everything else, is at record prices, record since January 2025, I should say, so it's only been a year, but they are at$85 and$90 a barrel respectively, which doesn't bode well for gas prices.

29:03But on top of that, we're also at Bloomberg very closely watching futures this weekend because there is an idea that the global markets on Monday are going to freak out because— that's the technical term— That's the term, the Bloomberg term, freak out. Yeah, exactly. They're going to have a bad reaction because the war does seem to not be a short-term bombing campaign. Let's turn to election season. The first primaries of the year actually kicked off this week in Texas, North Carolina, and Arkansas, starting with a big shakeup to one House race. Incumbent Representative Tony Gonzalez, he represents Texas' 23rd congressional district, announced Thursday night that he's going to drop his reelection bid.

29:43The news comes days after Gonzalez admitted to an affair with a former staffer who died by suicide. Gonzalez was headed to a May runoff with Brandon Herrera, a Republican gun manufacturer and YouTuber who he beat by just 407 votes in 2025. Also in Texas, the three-way Republican Senate primary between incumbent Senator John Cornyn, State Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Representative Wesley Hunt turned out to be the most expensive primary race ever. Before Cornyn and Paxson head to a runoff in late May after neither or more than 50 percent of the vote. Wendy, let's just talk about that race. Senator Cornyn, Attorney General Paxson, how do they appeal to different factions of the GOPs, particularly in Texas?

30:27Well, this is a perfect example of, you know, the GOP dichotomy here. Senator Cornyn, who's been a senator for something like 30 years, is this patrician, old-school Republican. He has worked with the Democrats on certain issues. He has backed President Trump but has quietly dissented at some points, but he never rocks the boat. Ken Paxton is the 180-degree opposite of that. He is a MAGA warrior. He has been embroiled in scandals at the state level as attorney general. He has said, you know, he's been accused of having affairs and he's been indicted but acquitted. And so he is, you know, a very colorful, very MAGA sort of warrior that if if Texas Republicans, you know, really want to change gears, that Paxton would be the guy.

31:24On the Democratic side, State Representative James Tallarico beat Representative Jasmine Crockett to become the party's pick for senator come November. To the billionaires who have taken over our state and taken over our country, your unchecked power is coming to an end. Your days dividing working people are numbered. To the people of Texas, no matter how you voted in the primary, this election is our chance to take power back for ourselves and our communities. Margaret, both Tallarico Crockett running on progressive platforms. What was the win for Tallarico? How did this happen? Short answer, Latino voters.

32:14Longer answer, massively outspending his opponent, campaigning harder, campaigning in red districts as well as swing in blue parts of the state, campaigning on this affordability message, but also interspersing messages about faith and about populism. So and appealing not just to Hispanic voters, but Spanish speaking voters. You put all of these pieces together and there are questions about whether this could be a blueprint for a more nationalized strategy for Democrats. Steve, a Democrat hasn't won a statewide election in Texas since 1994. Could this be the year Texas goes blue? I hate to be the skunk at the Garden Party, but this is a question that people ask about Beto O 'Rourke and others.

32:58And look, I mean, I'm going to be skeptical until the day it happens. But I think right now Texas continues to be a deeply red state. I think it's very hard structurally to come and win. Texas has remarkably low voter turnout levels when you kind of compare them nationally. And it's one of the things that drags down Democratic aspirations. Tallarico could be different. His messages may appeal at a certain line. But right now, I think we've got to deal with the reality of it is that many people sort of look that this could happen with a character like this. But there have been a lot of people, including Beto O 'Rourke, who went through this, who said it's going to take a very, very long time to lay the infrastructure for a genuine, organic, statewide Democratic win.

33:47So count me as skeptical. On Tuesday in Dallas County, GOP officials required voters to cast their ballot at their local precinct instead of the countywide polling sites. That change meant hundreds of voters showed up at the wrong polling sites. A county judge extended polling for two hours, but then the Texas Supreme Court ordered ballots cast after 7 p.m., the original poll closing time, to be separated from others. Margaret, amid President Trump's unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud, what concerns did the situation in Dallas bring up around actual disenfranchisement of voters? Does this give us a sense of what may happen in other states?

34:27Yeah, I think you've exactly isolated the concerns. And you don't have to have, like, super detailed knowledge of how elections work to understand how this has potential for disenfranchisement. We really saw Jasmine Crockett raise it in what became her loss to Tallarico. But the bigger concern, I think, among Democrats and among election watchers, who are two different groups, is that this could have implications for the general election, particularly in red states where state elections officials are or Supreme Courts are handing down decisions. One is confusion over closing time for polls. And the other is changes to voting locations.

35:03So this isn't even issues like, do you have a passport to prove that your married name is, you know, whatever. This is like, where do I go and what time do I have to get there? Yeah. And I just want to point out something that people outside of Texas might not know. The Texas Supreme Court is an elected body. And I'm not sure of its current makeup, but I believe it is largely conservative. And the Dallas County judge was a Democrat. So there may also be some politics going on here. Maybe. I don't know. Margaret, can you put on your Institute for Democracy hat and just ask us as we look across the landscape and midterm elections as they approach how much you anticipate this may be a problem in other states?

35:44I think you have to, if you are a voter and you want to protect your own interests for your vote to be heard, this just raises the stakes on you informing yourself to get that information early. And if you know who you're going to vote for and you have the ability to go cast a ballot before election day, to do that. Because the short answer is, We don't know until we know, and by then it may be late. So this is just—it's always important to be well-informed and to plan early, but I think this gives us an early warning sign that it could be especially important this year. Right, and you're just saying to voters, it's sort of on you, especially at this point, to understand what the rules are in your district, where you're going to vote.

36:23Look, journalists should be writing about it. Elected officials from either party should be trying to make sure that the right thing happens. But in the end, nobody cares more about your ability to exercise your vote than you do as an individual. So I think it is always upon the individual to understand where to get good information sources for news, you know, understand how to take care of yourself. This is also true for elections this year. Steve, do you want to weigh in here? No, I largely, you know, kind of agree with both my colleagues. Let's move now to North Carolina, where former Governor Roy Cooper secured the Democratic Senate nomination.

36:58Here's what he told Morning Joe on Wednesday after his big win. A Democrat has not been elected to the U.S. Senate from North Carolina since 2008. And we've only elected two Democrats in our state in almost 40 years to the U.S. Senate. So this will be a tough battle. It is likely to be the most expensive campaign in U.S. Senate history. It's a seat that we need to win for those very working people. It's time for us to elect a senator who's for everyday people and not the big corporations and the billionaires. Cooper and former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Watley will face off in November for the open Senate seat.

37:43The winner will replace Republican Senator Tom Tillis, who we earlier mentioned is retiring. Wendy, Roy Cooper's nomination, huge win for Democrats. He's someone who's won statewide in a right-leaning state, but he's also facing some challenges here. He is. He is also a very popular Democratic governor like Bashir in Kentucky. He's a Democrat who runs a Republican state. You know, North Carolina voted for Trump three times and has conservative senators. You've seen Tom Tillis, the one who they are voting to replace, sort of loosen up as he doesn't face elections anymore. But the voters in North Carolina don't know who Michael Watley is, but the Republican Party and the MAGA base sure does, and they will be pouring money into the race, which I think is why Cooper was describing it.

38:31He's bracing for a tremendously expensive race. There's a lot of banking interests in North Carolina that might weigh in on Cooper's side if he's popular, but national Republicans are going to see this as a must-win. We just have a few minutes left in the hour, and I just want to go back to the war. We're getting questions from listeners about this, and I just wanted to end with a few minutes of conversation around this. We got this question from a listener in Virginia. I haven't heard anyone offer up the principled case for the war. It hasn't been articulated by any of the national Republican figures and certainly not by the Trump people.

39:06Are there not some national security experts who believe the opportunity really did have to be seized now? Steve, are we hearing that from anyone? Well, I mean, I think there were some people, in fact, I wrote about this, that one of the big drivers of this is that, you know, when you kind of look at Israel's success in rolling back many of Iran's proxies, rolling back Hezbollah, taking action with Hamas and Houthis, and also penetrating Iran's security so substantially that it was able to maintain and conduct a lot of assassinations within Iran itself. I think people look at this as a ripe moment of vulnerability.

39:47So why wait for Iran to come back? So there is a view of that. You also have a lot of people who've been critics of President Trump. I would put them in the neoconservative camp, some liberal internationalists who said, this is a good time to get rid of this awful Ali Khamenei, the regime, and to try and do this. So even though President—and then, you know, put this on the other. John Bolton, who's been at kind of war with President Trump, is now, they are basically in the same track again. So for those people who are positive about this moment, it felt like a right moment of vulnerability for Iran, despite the very mixed messages about why we went in now.

40:25All of you are veteran political reporters. You have covered multiple administrations. I want to know how you compare this war in Iran to past conflicts you've covered. And we got this question from Jada in Minneapolis. How is this operation in Iran any different from Bush 2's weapons of mass destruction search in Iraq? Well, it's an excellent point. And it all comes around the building a public case, which is one of the biggest things that a president can do. I mean, starting with, and I wasn't around for this, FDR going to Congress the morning after Pearl Harbor and saying, you know, this is a day that will live in infamy.

41:05But all the way up to Bush, too, who at least he and Cheney and Rumsfeld came up with a lie that the American people could, you know, got behind temporarily. Also, that was after 9-11, which, like Pearl Harbor, was this moment that Americans were ready to bomb anywhere, anytime, anything. And they took advantage of that to finish something in Iraq that they wanted to finish. But my point is that there was a message and there was discipline. in. Every administration official knew what their line was and what they would say and no more. And the president would go before the public in not in a social media video, but in a televised address to the nation.

41:45And then there would be news conferences where questions could be asked. None of that is happening. They keep, depending on who you ask, as we saw at the top, Marco Rubio says one thing, Pete Hegg says another, Donald Trump says something, and then something else and then something else. And so there is no, when Americans need leadership, they need a firm ground, all people do, need a firm ground under them. And that's what's not happening here. I'm afraid we'll have to leave it at that. I know we'll continue to have this conversation over the next week or two. And as we're hearing, perhaps much longer.

42:20That's it for our panel today. Wendy Benjaminson, Washington Senior Editor for Bloomberg News. I want to thank Margaret Tolliv, senior contributor for Axios and director of Syracuse University's Institute for Democracy, Journalism, and Citizenship, and Steve Clemens, editor-at-large for The National Interest. Thank you to all of our domestic news panelists. Up next, we'll have a new panel and the news from around the world. We'll be right back.

42:48Welcome back. Let's get right into the international side of our weekly news roundup. We're now six days into the U.S.-Israel war against Iran, which has killed at least 1 ,300 across the country since Saturday, according to the Red Crescent. That number includes Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and top political and military brass. Both the U.S. and Israel say they expect their attacks to ramp up in the coming days. Tehran's response has been severe. The military has fired missiles and drones across the region, killing at least six U.S. service members and a dozen people in Israel.

43:23Missiles have been intercepted across Gulf countries, Turkey and Cyprus, as the enclave of war has widened. Iranian missiles have increasingly targeted oil and gas infrastructure in Gulf countries, prompting concerns about disruptions to global energy markets. European countries and the U.S. have urged their nationals to leave the region. We're going to get into all of that this hour with our expert panel. Josh Keating is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He's also the author of Invisible Countries, Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood.

43:56Josh, welcome to The Roundup. Great to be here. Joyce Cottom is the editor-in-chief at Al Monitor. You heard her on 1A earlier this week. Joyce, welcome back. Great to be here. And Nick Schifrin joining us, foreign affairs and defense correspondent for PBS NewsHour, host of the new international affairs program, Compass Points. Hi, Nick. Hi there. Thanks so much for having me. Our panel is here to answer our questions and all of yours. You can email us to 1a at wamu.org. As nations around the world ramp up evacuation efforts for their citizens amid spiraling violence in the Middle East, there are further signs of the war spilling beyond the region.

44:30On Thursday, President Trump once again called on Iran's Revolutionary Guard to lay down their weapons. I'm once again calling on all members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the military and the police to lay down their arms. They're only going to be killed. And now is the time to stand up for the Iranian people and help take back your country. You're going to have a chance after all these years to take back your country. Accept immunity. We'll give you immunity and we'll be giving you really the right side of history because that's what it is. Joyce, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the bombardment was about to, quote, surge dramatically.

45:10On Friday morning, the president on Truth Social said there will be no deal with Iran except unconditional surrender. So nearly a week into this war with U.S., Israel and Iran, where are we? Niel, a very good question. There is no sign that this war is going to end anytime soon. We are entering week two, and we've seen the bombardment is only intensifying. intensifying. In Tehran alone, the bunker of Khamenei was hit today. The presidential palace, the national security headquarters, we're seeing cities from Shiraz to Qom being hit. Tehran, of course, as you know, is a very big city, almost the size of New York City, almost 10 million people there.

45:58So it's being hit the heaviest. The administration is now talking that they're going to hit facilities that manufacture missiles. But it all looks just an escalation ladder. The Iranians are escalating in the scope where they've been hitting. As we've seen this week, they hit as far as Azerbaijan and the U.S. and Israel are intensifying their strikes. We heard from Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqsh. He told NBC that his country is ready for a ground invasion by American troops. He also refused any negotiations with the U.S. He said Iran had not asked for a ceasefire. Here's a little bit of his interaction with NBC anchor Tom Lamas.

46:41Are you afraid of a U.S. invasion in your country? No, we are waiting for them. You are waiting for the U.S. military to invade the ground troops? Yes, because we are confident that we can confront them and that would be a big disaster for them. So you're saying that Iran is ready and willing to take on the U.S. military if there were to be ground troops? Well, we were ready for this war even more than the previous war. So you can see, you know, the quality of our missiles, how much they are upgraded after the last war because we learned lots of lessons. Josh, what should we make of these comments from the Iranian foreign minister?

47:25Well, President Trump has refused to rule out using ground troops. In fact, he said he doesn't have the yips when it comes to ordering ground troops. You know, I think given the force posture in the region and just what we've seen from the president politically so far, you know, a massive Iraq-style ground invasion still seems pretty unlikely. It's possible we could see sort of more limited special operations forces. I mean, even if the Iranian military might not be much of a match for the U.S. in terms of capabilities, Iran has shown over the years it can inflict heavy casualties on U.S. forces.

47:59The Pentagon has attributed one in six of the deaths of U.S. troops in Iraq to Iranian-backed militias, sometimes using weapons assembled in Iran. And so, you know, Iran has shown that even if it can't, you know, fight the U.S. in a direct one-on-one war, it can inflict heavy casualties. And one thing you can say about Trump, while he's clearly gotten more comfortable using military force, he has avoided sort of large open-ended commitments of U.S. ground forces and, you know, avoided situations where we see large numbers of U.S. casualties. We've seen six U.S. service members killed already so far.

48:40But, you know, what we haven't seen from Trump is how he would react in a situation where there are, you know, large numbers of U.S. casualties, you know, dozens or even hundreds. And, you know, I think that may be what the Iranian regime is sort of counting on. Let's talk about casualties on the Iranian side. We have new details emerging on the bombing of an Iranian school in Manab in the southwest of the country. Iranian state media said some 165 people died in the bombing, which struck a girls' school. The school was located within 100 yards of the perimeter of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval base.

49:15That's according to satellite images and publicly available information. The precision airstrike on a school and nearby clinic may have been the result of outdated target lists. That's according to an NPR source who specializes in satellite imagery. The images, the buildings were once part of the base but had since been walled off. Israel has denied involvement. At a press conference Wednesday morning, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said the U.S. was looking into what happened. Reuters is reporting that the military investigation is pointing to U.S. responsibility. But it's what Hegseth said on Monday that I want to draw your attention to.

49:50America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history. B-2s, fighters, drones, missiles, and of course, classified effects. all on our terms with maximum authorities. No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win and we don't waste time or lives. Nick, what effect do you use this approach to civilian deaths have on the war? I think that we need to separate the overall rhetoric and approach of this civilian leadership in the Pentagon from the people actually pulling the triggers.

50:41So to go back to this single incident, the people I'm talking to do suggest that, yes, this was a U.S. strike in error, and we'll see more about that as people are willing to reveal details of the investigation. But you did cite the NPR and Reuters reports in terms of where this is probably headed. the location of the school being right next to or perhaps on the exterior wall of what was presumably the target, which is an IRGC target. Right. And we've clearly heard administration officials say, right, that they do not, obviously, they do not deliberately target civilians. For sure. And Israel says that and the U.S.

51:22says that. But obviously, this is war with a lot of missiles flying. And so the precision is important. And sometimes we do have to acknowledge this happens. and professional military members do acknowledge it happens, but they also argue very strongly that, you know, they take every precaution against this stuff. So that's why they're investigating. But I do think that there's a lot of civilian military experts who have worked in the Pentagon for many, many years, who worked on task forces, who worked on departments that were entirely stood up and designed in order to limit civilian casualties.

51:58those people no longer exist anymore. Those offices were largely rolled up. And those people are concerned about the rhetoric from the civilian leadership in the Pentagon, including the statement that you just heard from Secretary Hegseth, does reflect a kind of stance or reflect a kind of approach to how they believe war should be fought. This is not a surprise. Secretary Hegseth was very critical of any war crimes, prosecutions that the military did of itself in the past. And that's how, in fact, President Trump came to know of him. That said, the warfighters themselves, as they call themselves, take pains to be professional and, of course, would have checked that target ahead of time.

52:44So that's the question. Was the map out of date? Did the bomb fall astray? Those are the questions being asked today. but certainly former officials who we're talking to very concerned about the rhetoric from the secretary and also those steps that I cited before, taking down some of the structures designed to limit some of military targeting in order to limit civilian casualties. Let's rewind a little bit. There were weeks of indirect talks between the U.S. and Tehran mediated by Oman. Last week, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, spent hours, several hours in Geneva trying for a breakthrough.

53:23The Omani foreign minister even made a public statement saying he was hopeful about progress towards a deal. Joyce, very simply, even though it's a simple question, which does not have a simple answer, why now? Why this week? Well, there are confluence of events that led us to the war, Naila. Part of it, as you mentioned, the talks, three rounds, Washington didn't get Trump nor Israel what they wanted, which is zero enrichment, which is full access to the nuclear arsenal of Iran. The second thing that is more interesting is the timing of the first shot on Saturday morning, the runtime. time. And that was because they had the intelligence that the supreme leader, Khamenei, was holding a large meeting above ground in his company.

54:17Israel had that intelligence. Yes. Israel, perhaps also with the help of the CIA, as we know reportedly, and they decided to act. Once they acted, once they took out Khamenei, somebody with a caliber, he's not just a political figure. This is a Shia figure for the Muslim Shiites worldwide. It was hard not to start a war. This, I mean, you have to look at the domestic components for both Israel and the U.S. Trump, you know, with the release of the Epstein files, with inflation, with everything that's happening inside the United States, his popularity is down. With Netanyahu, he's undergoing a probe still.

55:06He's in phase two, stuck in phase two of Gaza. Iran is weaker. So this was just the majority of events coming together was opportune for the United States and Israel to act. Let's hear from both of those leaders. We have heard President Trump say Iran posed an imminent threat. He said the attack was designed to ensure Americans will never be, quote, threatened by a nuclear-armed Iran. You'll also remember last June, he said the U.S. and Israeli forces had crippled Iran's nuclear development program. The messages from the administration since this began have also been varying. We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first.

55:50We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces. This is not a so-called regime change war. But the regime sure did change. The objective was not regime change. The objective was to take out those missiles. So very different goals from the president, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and House Speaker Mike Johnson. Josh, an evolution of messaging from the administration. How does this line up in terms with what they're saying? There was a potential imminent threat and that the U.S. is acting both defensively and proactively.

56:27Yeah, it almost seems over the course of the week, the administration is almost like trying out different messages to see what sticks. At times, Trump has talked about overthrowing the regime, about gaining freedom from the people of Iran. He has said that if he hadn't acted within two weeks, Iran would have had a nuclear weapon, which contradicts the earlier messages. That is, Iran's nuclear problem had been obliterated back in June. And the Rubio clip you played, which made it sound like the imminent threat they were talking about, was Iranian retaliation in the case of an Israeli strike. That got sort of walked back when a lot of people took that to mean that essentially Israel had dragged the U.S.

57:11into this war. You know, just this morning, Trump said that, you know, no outcome was acceptable except for unconditional surrender by Iran. and that he said yesterday that he believes he should have a role in picking a new supreme leader for the country the same way that Delce Rodriguez was installed in Venezuela after Nicolas Maduro's capture. So it does seem like there are a few messages. I mean, I think what's important is if they stop short of regime change, and that still seems, even with the statement today, that still seems likely, you may start to see some divisions open up between the Israeli and U.S.

57:50aims for this war. I mean, Israel clearly sees this as a unique opportunity to actually once and for all eliminate this regime. I think it's an open question whether Trump is willing to pursue this war long enough to make that happen, particularly as the costs, you know, in terms of casualties and just in dollars and cents of this war start to ramp up. Let's talk about the Israeli side. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his address announcing the strikes, framed the offensive against Iran as a religious conflict. He invoked Jewish history and used religious text and sentiment to rally support for the attacks.

58:29Here's a bit of his address to Israel on Saturday. My brothers and sisters, in two days, we celebrate the holiday of Purim. 2 ,500 years ago, in ancient Persia, an enemy rose against us with the exact same goal of destroying our people. Nick, how should we interpret Netanyahu, what he has said in the past week about Israel's justification for this? And can you just sort of add on to what Josh started talking about? As we understand Netanyahu and Trump's interests align, where do they diverge? Well, you know, look, I mean, Netanyahu has used this language about the Islamic Republic for many years, and it was not lost on many Israelis, not a single one who I talked to over the last week, that the coinciding of Purim with the launch of this attack, which obviously started with, as Joyce was pointing out, the strike that killed the supreme leader, you know, the Iranian leader for the last 37 years.

59:26who's been helping position Iran as chanting death Israel, both proverbially and preparing to try and strike Israel as we are seeing now. So I think Bibi's messaging and kind of vibe, if you will, has been there for a long time. I think what Josh was saying at the end is really the critical question, right, and what you're getting at in the question that you asked, which is how far does President Trump go when it comes to collapsing the Iranian state? The military, including the civilian leadership, has been very clear, and you heard that reflected by the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, missiles, drones, Navy, period.

1:00:12No nukes is kind of added to that, but the primary targets have not been nuclear. They've been all missiles, drones, and Navy. That is an operation, effectively, that the U.S. military has given to the White House and said this will take a number of weeks, perhaps four to five weeks. We heard President Trump say that time frame up front in public. They are now saying it's accelerated. So even, let's say, if it's three or four weeks, it's a lot of targets. And so Iran is a country, the Islamic Republic is a country of institutions, right? So if you take out the IRGC's ability to wage war effectively, whether it's Navy, missiles, or drones, the institutions still exist.

1:00:54And you cannot defeat that, any analyst tells me, from the air. And so that's where the question of how far will Mossad and CIA go with, for example, the Kurds or other groups it can find. That's the main question. And there is no answer to that. I think that's what's really interesting here. U.S. officials who talk to me reject the pottery barn argument, right? They reject the idea that if they broke it, they have to fix it. But that's where it stops. They do not believe they have to decide whether they're going to go for some kind of fomenting an insurgency that has regime change or the president just says, we won, we're done, and yells at Bibi like he did last summer to end the war.

1:01:36And we just don't know. But that's the point. Like U.S. officials don't think they need to decide between the two. And critics of that approach, of course, will say, well, you're never going to get what you want through diplomacy or this initial wave of attacks. And so you do have to have a plan for what comes next. But U.S. officials think you give the president options and he gets to decide eventually. Just a brief follow-up on that. I mean, one advantage from the administration's point of view to having several rationales for this war is they get to decide what victory looks like. I mean, we've seen this movie before.

1:02:11You know, when, you know, so-called Operation Rough Rider, the bombing campaign targeting the Houthis in Yemen, that was ended when they had essentially struck this agreement between the U.S. and the Houthis, even though the Houthis kept shooting missiles at Israel and at shipping. And, you know, similarly, last June, they, you know, Trump got to decide when, to his satisfaction, Iranian's nuclear program was obliterated. So not setting out totally clear guidelines for what constitutes victory could, you know, give Trump a little more freedom of action in terms of when he decides this war actually ends.

1:02:50Joyce, can I ask, we've heard a lot of conversation about the IRGC. What do we need to know about them? As we've heard President Trump saying we'd like them to surrender. What do you think our audience needs to know about that? Yeah, I mean, saying we want the IRGC to disarm or surrender is just it's a mirage. I mean, this is a very militant group with a long militant history, not just in Iran, but in the in the region. You know, we talk about Khubr bombings. We talk about training Hezbollah in Lebanon. We're talking about like 900 ,000 people. Also part of the IRGC? Correct. And in a sense, the IRGC is not just militant group.

1:03:33It has a strong grip over the Iranian economy, you know, telecommunications, banking, foundations, charities. This is all the IRGC is very much integrated into the system. What's interesting now after this war started is the IRGC is getting stronger in capturing the Iranian political system. So before the war, you know, we were hearing from more moderate figures in Iran like Rouhani, Zarif and all of all of these guys. Now it's you're hearing the name come more often, Mushtaba, Khamenei, the son of the late supreme leader as a possible successor for for his father. Mushtaba is 56 years old. He's he's more hardline than his father.

1:04:23He's much closer to the IRGC. And we heard from President Trump that he actually doesn't like him. He finds him unacceptable to lead to lead Iran. But but here here, you know, we're in a different we're in a very different situation inside Iran and also regionally. You know, the fact that the IRGC feels comfortable, feels confident to be striking UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, day in, day out. This is unprecedented and this is a new reality. They want to drive up the cost, the price of this war to force a change of calculus in Washington. That's Shois Karam, Editor-in-Chief at Almonitor. We're also with Nick Schifrin, Foreign Affairs and Defense Correspondent for PBS NewsHour, and Josh Keating, Senior Correspondent at Vox.

1:05:14I'm Naila Boudou. This is 1A. This week, the Pentagon released a periscope video of an Iranian warship being attacked by a U.S. Navy submarine. The video showed a massive explosion in the water, followed by still frames showing the ship sinking beneath the waves. The Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Arakshi identified it as the frigate Denna, saying it had been lost 2 ,000 miles from Iran's shores near Sri Lanka. With nearly 130 sailors aboard, the Sri Lankan Navy said it rescued 32 people and recovered the remains of 87. Nick, this frigate was reportedly on its way back home after participating in India's multilateral naval exercises.

1:05:57What threat did it pose? Why was the way that the U.S. publicized this different than past wars? Well, this isn't only a story about how it publicized it. It's just a story of all these countries who are actually involved in this. I mean, it's fascinating. As an aside, U.S. officials, to me, right before this war were very dismissive of this war spreading, at least beyond what Joyce just cited, Iranian strikes on Gulf Arab neighbors. But this is actually an example of many countries being involved. And why is that? So as you just said, this ship left an Indian exercise, which the U.S. was invited to, and was traveling through international waters near Sri Lanka when it was struck by an American torpedo operated on a submarine with Australian sailors.

1:06:47And so Canberra is now answering questions. It's the first time or perhaps one of the first times in more than 80 years that a torpedo has been used in war to sink a ship. What threat did it pose? I mean, zero. I mean, the U.S. says that the Iranian Navy as a whole poses a threat, but this ship itself was just leaving this exercise. It was an Indo-PACOM submarine, by the way, so a submarine that's usually in the Pacific focused on China or the area. So it wasn't a central command, wasn't the part of the military that is actually fighting in Iran. And so, you know, Prime Minister Modi has been a little bit cautious in the last few hours about this.

1:07:31But clearly, you know, we have questions of him and his relationship with Iran. We have questions about the Quad, this regional group that includes both India and Australia. and yet the United States military, to go back to our previous point, is boasting about this and is showing off in this video what it can do. Nobody's surprised that an American submarine can take out an Iranian ship, but clearly releasing the video, making this a very public statement, trying to make a point to all sorts of countries around the world, frankly, of what the U.S. military is willing to do and what the political leadership of the U.S.

1:08:10military is willing to authorize in terms of an attack on a ship that is so far from Iran. CNN is reporting that on Tuesday, President Donald Trump had a phone call with the head of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, the KDPI, also the largest of five parties in the Kurdish coalition. Two days earlier, Trump spoke to Iraqi Kurdish leaders in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region. CNN reporting has also found the CIA was working to arm Kurdish forces with the aim of fomenting a popular uprising in Iran. Joyce, there's a history of Washington enlisting their aid in various conflicts, for example, Iraq and Syria, and then abandoning them.

1:08:48What position are the Kurds in here to help? That's a very good question. I mean, and just recruiting minorities, using them to foment, you know, dissent, internal revolts is the oldest trick in the book. We can go just a century ago, but with the Kurds in Iran, this is a population of 9 to 10 million. They're mostly in the north, and they're connected to Iraq. Where this could be seen helpful by the U.S. and Israel is to try to do a Syria scenario, like we saw with Ahmad Shara, you know, drive up from the north, take one city after another. So they're trying to just recruit the Kurdish minority.

1:09:29and if that, you know, perhaps if they're successful, inspire the Sunni minority in the Ahwahs and other minorities in Iran to topple the current regime. Since Saturday, Iran has unleashed thousands of drones and ballistic missiles targeting Israel, American military bases and embassies in the region, as well as energy facilities and infrastructure across Gulf countries. The Iranian response has spared no one in the region, not even Amman, which mediated the latest round of nuclear talks and for decades has maintained a close relationship to Iran. In an address to the United Nations, the Gulf Cooperation Council condemned the strikes by Iran.

1:10:09Here are the Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti ambassadors to the UN. These attacks come at a time when mediation and de-escalation efforts are intensifying in Arab countries, prioritizing political solutions and dialogue. This escalation is therefore unjustified and undermines efforts to establish security and stability.

1:10:31Terrorizing and targeting civilians in countries seeking peace is an abhorrent crime. This attack constitutes a flagrant violation and an unacceptable act in every respect. Nick, we're seeing this have an unprecedented effect across the region with tens of thousands of European and Western citizens telling their nationals to evacuate. That's caused some chaos as well. Can you just speak to this strategy behind Iran to target all of these other countries? What is working in their favor and what is not here? Well, I think Joyce said it right before, and I think Josh was talking about this too. You know, what the IRGC would like to see is targeting of the United States' Arab allies to the point where they run out of interceptors or are putting pressure on Washington to stop the war because they are running out of interceptors in terms of air defense.

1:11:27Also, you see Iranian targeting of oil facilities, energy facilities across the region, essentially cutting, shutting off the Strait of Hormuz, not officially, but it's kind of de facto closure. The oil analysts are calling it right now at that leading to Qatar announcing today that they don't think any energy would leave through the strait, leave the Gulf by the end of next week, leading to one hundred and fifty dollar a barrel oil, something that President Trump and many U.S. presidents in the past have really resisted. And so that's the strategy, Iran trying to rise the cost of the war, whether militarily or economically, and rise the pressure on Trump politically via the Arab allies.

1:12:15What is important to note here that we haven't talked about is that the degradation of Iran's missile and drones is happening. So you're down 90 percent on missile launches. You're down 80 percent on drone launches, according to the U.S. military. Now, that's not 100 percent, right? So you still have this pressure, political, economic, and military pressure, especially from drones, which the U.S. is struggling to figure out how to cheaply shoot down. And that's going to Ukraine, and that's another story. But that's the race, if you will, right now. Can the U.S. and Israel find enough of Iranian ballistic missile launchers?

1:12:54Can they degrade Iran's ability to launch drones such that this economic pressure, this political pressure that Iran wants to put on Washington via all these strikes across the region, what runs out first? And obviously nobody knows the answer to that, but that's one of the big questions looking into next week. Can Iran keep this tempo up? Are the strikes effective? What kind of intelligence are they getting in order to launch those strikes, by the way? and can the U.S. and Israel both degrade Iran's ability to launch and also have enough air defense in order to prevent, you know, larger-scale casualties or some of the strikes on energy facilities.

1:13:34Nick, can I just ask you in terms of where they're getting their intelligence, there's new reporting from the Washington Post out this morning about Russia perhaps providing intelligence to Iran. Can you share a little bit more information about that? Right, so I don't have this confirmed, So I will just repeat what my excellent colleagues, Noah and Ellen, and I think a group of a team of reporters have reported this morning, a very important story that suggests that Russia, after watching the American intelligence and military apparatus provide Ukraine targeting assistance, literal targeting assistance to hit Russians in Ukraine and along the border of Ukraine, Russia sees this as an opportunity for a little bit of payback.

1:14:17The article quotes multiple current officials saying that Russia is providing targeting intelligence to Iran that has enabled Iran's attacks, these drone and missile attacks that we've been talking about, enabled those attacks to be more accurate. And so, for example, there was an attack on a facility in Kuwait, and the family members of the soldiers who were killed say it was not shielded by drone protection, which the army is supposed to do. You know, the question is, did the Iranians have specificity on whether there were some facilities that are not hardened, we call it, not, you know, kind of protected from overhead drones and missile threats?

1:15:08Do the Russians have a level of satellite detail that they're providing to Iran, which is enabling attacks on intelligence facilities run by the United States across the region, specific attacks on command and control, parts of U.S. bases, right? So the suggestion is that the attacks have been more calibrated than they normally are. But again, I give credit to Washington Post reporting. I have not confirmed that, but that's essentially, you know, what all of us are going to be asking our own sources about today. Right. We're getting quite a few questions from listeners about Russia. We got a question from Ian about the Russian intelligence.

1:15:45Josh, can I just ask you, on Russia-Ukraine, Pat said, will this war in the Middle East give Trump the excuse he's been looking for to back off what's left of our support in Ukraine? Can I just add in, where do we put Vladimir Putin in this calculus as we're talking about this war and Ukraine? Well, Russia is, of course, a long-time ally of Iran. Iran has provided many of the Shahid drones that Russia has used to attack Ukrainian cities. You know, I mean, in our globalized world, this is always going to have ripple effects. We're seeing the increase in oil prices may actually sort of redound to Russia's benefit.

1:16:25But, you know, it helped their war machine by increasing the revenues they're getting from selling their oil. And then, you know, of course, as Nick alluded to, like, you know, the key numbers for like how this conflict is going to play out is the number of Iranian missiles that they can fire versus the number of interceptors used by, you know, U.S. facilities in the region, by Israel, by the Gulf countries. And there's a finite number of these interceptors. They're usually much more expensive than the missiles they're designed to shoot down. And they take a while to produce. So, you know, the more munitions, both, you know, particularly these high-end interceptors that are used in the Gulf, the fewer are going to be available for Ukraine.

1:17:17Trump actually alluded to this. You know, he said that Biden had sent all these interceptors to Ukraine, to President Zelensky, who he called P.T. Barnum. And, you know, so and it's going to limit the number of these systems that are available for a potential contingency in the Pacific, too. We've seen, you know, THAAD missile defense batteries moved from South Korea to the Middle East in recent weeks. So, you know, all these battlefields, all these, you know, areas of conflict are connected in, you know, multiple ways. Right. And as Josh was just mentioning, the Pacific, Joyce, I know you want to add in, but I want to ask you also about China because China offered to mediate this war on Iran.

1:18:00So I want to just ask about China's role here as well. You know, for sure. I mean, there is nothing better for Russia and China than to see the U.S. bogged down in another Middle East war. So let's start with that. But just on Russia, and this ties into China, on the oil, on the selling oil front, this is a big opportunity for them, not just to sell to Russia, but just the U.S. just overnight gave India a 30-day waiver to buy Russian oil. So at the time, as Nick mentioned, when Iran is hitting oil refineries, you know, in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, Russia is ecstatic about this. At the same time, Naila, I think there is an opportunity for Ukraine, too.

1:18:43We saw Zelenskyy offer Gulf countries a low-price drones. I'm terrible in military technology. But they're much cheaper drones that Ukraine produces to intercept Iranian drones. Which, by other accounts, are also very cheaply made drones that Iran is using right now as well. Yes, the Shahid drones that they hit Ukraine with. So we're seeing a lot of competition on drone technology. On China, they're trying to mediate, especially to protect their own interests. So they're working with the Qataris and the Iranians to allow liquefied gas to pass through. They're working with the IRGC to allow their ships to go through without being attacked.

1:19:31So China is trying to find this space for deconfliction in the war, less so about, you know, rescuing the regime in Iran. As we're talking about the Ukraine war, one thing we have not talked about is Europe's role in all of this. Josh, certainly we're seeing European countries, perhaps reluctantly would be the right term, being drawn into this conflict. How should we understand the response we've seen from different European countries and particularly the U.K. thus far, with Trump saying of Keir Starmer, he's no Churchill. Right. So there was a conflict in the lead up to this war between the U.S.

1:20:06and U.K. over the use of the base in Diego Garcia, which the U.S. uses for airstrikes against Iran. You know, Britain did not want to permit that base to be used. They had questions about the legality of this war. You know, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has also said he believes this operation is taking place outside the bounds of international law. And yet both countries have dispatched warships to the region as a means of sort of pushing back against this Iranian missile retaliation. And the UK now is allowing its air bases to be used for strikes against the Iranian missile program.

1:20:48And the reason for the UK deploying its warship was we started seeing missiles hitting Cyprus, an EU country. And we've seen missiles hitting Turkey, a NATO country. So, you know, even if European countries did not particularly want to get involved in this war, even if they had skepticism about whether it was advisable, whether it was legal, just the sort of rapidly expanding, globalizing nature of it has led to them, you know, committing their resources, you know, effectively, tacitly in alliance with the U.S., even if they don't particularly support the operation to begin with. We just have a few minutes left, so I'm going to ask you if we can do quick answers here for just the final round of things we haven't had a chance to get to.

1:21:36Joyce, we haven't talked about Lebanon emerging as a second front in this. What do we need to know about that? Yeah, it is a very heated front. Just this morning, eight Israeli soldiers, I believe, were wounded on the border. We're seeing a high number of evacuees, around 100 ,000 just displaced in Lebanon. Western Beirut, Dahye, southern Beirut, excuse me, has been heavily hit by Israel. So it's not like the ceasefire we saw in 2024 ever held completely. But Lebanon is very much in the eye of the storm. There are fears of a full Israeli invasion of occupation in South Lebanon to create this buffer zone.

1:22:24So it's one we are keeping an eye on. Josh, I want to go to this email that we got from Kristen. We're talking about the wider impact of the war in Iran, Saturday's assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khomeini. Kristen says this has been called a decapitation attack, which sounds and feels a lot like assassination. Does this break any national or international law? Yeah, it's a good question, one I dug into for a piece this week. I mean, the U.S. has been involved, you know, covertly, the CIA, in the killing of several world leaders, you know, Patrice Lumumba of Congo, Salvador Allende in Chile, you know, and it has attempted, you know, for instance, targeting Saddam Hussein's palaces in, you know, both wars in Iraq.

1:23:09But, you know, I was looking for an example of a country, you know, actually killing the, you know, the leader of a country in the process of an invasion, in the process of military action. And it's hard to find an example of that. The closest successful example I could find is actually from the year of the Iranian revolution when the KGB killed the president of Afghanistan in the lead up to the Soviet invasion. But, you know, if we are really seeing an era where this is becoming normalized, you know, governments killing the leaders of adversary nations in the process of military operations, I think that's something that, you know, all world leaders are probably going to want to think twice about given the risks to them.

1:23:55Nick, final thoughts, what you're watching for next week? Well, again, it's whether the president's patience runs out before Iran can keep firing and whether the United States decides to pursue regime change or not. That's Nick Schifrin, foreign affairs and defense correspondent for PBS NewsHour. He's also host of the new international affairs program Compass Points. I want to thank also Josh Keating, senior correspondent at Vox, covering foreign policy and world news. He's also the author of Invisible Country's Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood. And Joyce Karam, editor-in-chief at El Monitor.

1:24:27Mike Kidd is our sound designer and engineer. Chris Castano is our digital editor. Maya Garg is our acting executive producer. Alexandra Bote is our acting senior managing 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 podcast and 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. Thanks for listening. This is one.