Trump's war with Iran: What we still don't know

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1:11Hey, thanks for listening to AmeriCast. We cover the biggest news stories in the US. If you want to get AmeriCast delivered on your phone every time we publish an episode, make sure you subscribe to us. OK, on with the episode. A lot of Americans are rather surprised to find that suddenly they're at war with Iran. US service personnel have died, and yet the public are asking, why are they in this war? Why was it necessary now? How long is it going to last? And what are they trying to achieve? What would success even look like? Those are some very big questions, especially when the Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth, says this is just the beginning.

1:51We are just getting started. We are accelerating, not decelerating. Iran's capabilities are evaporating by the hour, while American strength grows fiercer, smarter and utterly dominant. More bombers and more fighters are arriving just today. So how did we get here and where is it going now? Welcome to AmeriCast.

2:15Anthony Zurcher:AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. You hear that sound? Oh, I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money. We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it. This is a big cover-up, and this administration is engaged in it. This guy has Trump arrangement syndrome. I have four words for you. Turn the volume up!

2:42Hello, it's Sarah here, and this time I'm at home in Washington.

2:45Anthony Zurcher:And it's Anthony, here in Washington also, but this time I'm in the BBC Bureau. We should say it's 10 o 'clock in the morning for us in the US, about three in the afternoon on Thursday. Later on in this episode, we're going to be speaking to Robert Malley. And he was the lead negotiator on the nuclear deal with Iran that President Obama negotiated and signed in 2015. So he's going to be really fascinating about dealing with Iran and what the objectives of that were. We'll be speaking to him a bit later. First, we should catch up with where we are. Saturday will mark a week since the U.S. launched this war on Iran.

3:22And more recently, over the last few days, we have started hearing a good bit more, haven't we, Anthony, from Trump administration officials laying out a bit more about why this war began and what they hope to achieve.

3:33Anthony Zurcher:Right. If you go on social media on things like X, you'll see slick videos produced by the Defense Department showing the United States bombing and all the things blowing up all over Iran. And then Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of War, whatever you want to call him, has been holding multiple press conferences at the Pentagon where he has been very boastful, I guess you could say, about the progress the United States is making. This is the Defense Department line from Hegseth earlier this week. Thus far, Operation Epic Fury has delivered twice the air power of shock and awe of Iraq in 2003, minus Paul Bremer and the nation building.

4:13The campaign has seven times the intensity of Israel's previous operations against Iran during the 12-day war. Seven times. And as President Trump said, more and larger waves are coming. We are just getting started. We are accelerating, not decelerating. Iran's capabilities are evaporating by the hour, while American strength grows fiercer, smarter, and utterly dominant. More bombers and more fighters are arriving just today. We are only four days into this, and the results have been incredible. Historic, really. Only the United States of America could lead this. Only us. But when you add the Israeli Defense Forces, a devastatingly capable force, the combination is sheer destruction for our radical Islamist Iranian adversaries.

5:08they are toast and they know it or at least soon enough they will know it so no doubting there the fact that Donald Trump recruited Pete Hegseth to be his secretary of war straight from the couch of Fox News television where he would normally give some kind of commentary about how these things were going now he's telling us how it's going from you know his key seat in the pentagon but Still sounding a bit like a cheerleader for it from the sidelines, I think, Anthony.

5:38Anthony Zurcher:Right. Dominant, incredible, historic, sheer destruction. Yeah, definitely cheerleading this from inside the Pentagon. Although, you know, it's kind of interesting because I'm listening to what he was saying there, talking about like, oh, all of the ordnance that has been dropped and the number of waves coming through. I'm kind of reminded of reading about the Vietnam War and how the generals there talking about all the tonnage of weapons, of bombs being dropped, a lot about what they were doing, but not what kind of political effect it was having. Yeah, we're dropping a lot of bombs. We're degrading Iran's military, but what about the purpose behind this?

6:19Anthony Zurcher:What about whether it's actually achieving our overall objectives? It could drop a lot of bombs, but we're not in the nation building business, he says. We're not doing the nation building of Iraq. But if so, what happens when we're done destroying things? Yeah, I read somebody saying that they thought Pete Hexeth sounded more like he was a character on Call of Duty than actually somebody who was running the progress of a war like this. And stood beside him at each occasion has been the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well, General Dan Kane. And I have to confess, the thing that always springs to mind first when I think of Dan Cain is what Donald Trump says every time he ever references him, which is that the first time he met him, he discovered that his nickname was Raising Cain, and he liked that so much.

7:07The implication is he made him chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Nonetheless, he does seem to have been actually a slightly more grown-up voice within the administration when talking about the planning of this war. Right.

7:20Anthony Zurcher:There was a Washington Post article before these military strikes began where it said Cain was telling people within the White House that he was concerned about the preparations for this war, whether the United States would have enough ordinance, whether it would be able to get allies to sign on and be involved. and if it wasn't just going to be the United States and Israel alone. Now, Donald Trump quickly said that that was all fake news, that the United States was totally prepared. He is after the start of the fighting said that we have enough ordinance to continue on indefinitely. But it was interesting, even if the details of the report are not entirely accurate, that he was someone who clearly was there thinking about how we're going to do this and what the potential consequences and risks are.

8:13Because his job will have been to plan out the campaign, presumably, selecting targets, what order they're going to go after them, the manner in which you try and knock out Iran's air defences, then allowing you to target other sites inside Iran. That's all done at his level, isn't it? He's the one who's actually plotting the progress of how to conduct this war rather than the politics of it.

8:35Anthony Zurcher:He became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff because when Donald Trump came in to the White House again last year, he fired the previous Joint Chiefs head who had been appointed by Biden. Actually, breaking with tradition, usually you don't replace people. You wait for them to serve out their term. But he wanted Cain in there, raising Cain. You know, like you said, Donald Trump likes his nicknames. You remember his first Secretary of Defense in his first term, James Maddox, had the nickname Mad Dog and Donald Trump would never stop talking about Mad Dog Maddox to the point where I think James Maddox didn't really like the nickname and didn't like Trump using it.

9:14Anthony Zurcher:And they ended up having to falling out fairly early in Trump's presidency. Yeah, Anthony, I believe that into the White House at some point soon, a lot of defense contractors have been invited to discuss accelerating weapons production. So there There obviously is some kind of concern about running out of stocks of missiles and other supplies if the progress of this war goes on for too long. We have no real clear sense, do we, of how long this is likely to go on. And that would have an impact, obviously, on stocks of missiles, but on lots of other things as well, not least American public opinion towards this.

9:50Anthony Zurcher:American public opinion, the cost to the Defense Department, to the United States as a whole. There's talk about having to come back to Congress to ask for more money. And the problem is basically right now the United States is shooting$4 million surface-to-air Patriot missiles to shoot down$20 ,000 drones that Iran is launching. And I think that's a very real concern and something that Trump didn't lay out in the beginning, how long this was going to be very clearly, or even the goals of what he wants to accomplish. And Anthony, one thing I've really noticed is that rather than worrying too much about what the end game is here or what ultimate success might look like, so the frustration coming from people like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who think the war is going fantastically well at the moment, but they're not getting the credit for it, that it's not being reported in a fashion that indicates just how well he thinks the US forces are doing.

10:48This is what the fake news misses. We've taken control of Iran's airspace and waterways without boots on the ground. We control their fate. But when a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it's front page news. I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad, but try for once to report the reality. The terms of this war will be set by us at every step. And just on his last comment there about him saying the press only want to make the president look bad by doing things like reporting U.S. casualties. CNN's Caitlin Collins asked Caroline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, about that at the last White House briefing.

11:32And she was asking about Hegseth's comments on negative press coverage. Secretary Hexler was complaining that it was front page news about these six service members who were killed. That's not what the secretary said, Caitlin, and that's not what the secretary meant. And you know it. You know you are being disingenuous. There is not. We've never had a secretary of defense. Who cares more? We don't get through our tragic things happen. It's front page news. I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad. Yeah, but you know, we cover the debts of U.S. service members under every president.

11:59The press does only want to make the president look bad. That's a fact. Now, they're not the first administration or government ever to complain that the press aren't 100 % behind their military efforts. They often want journalists to be cheerleading for war efforts rather than analysing them. And I've seen that happen with other governments in other conflicts. But it does seem to be really quite acute with this administration, as though they were feeling quite insecure about what we've talked about before, about whether public opinions behind this war, whether they have a clear justification for why they're doing it, or if they think they can achieve the success they want anytime soon.

12:40Anthony Zurcher:It's the press's job to ask questions, though, and to report. And one of the big questions they've been asking since the very beginning, even before Saturday's war started, is why was the United States doing this? And I think, Sarah, you'll agree that we still don't have a really clear answer from this administration on that very question. How many answers do you want, Anthony? I've counted seven, I think, different justifications now for why this war is necessary and why it's necessary at this point. Really, I mean, the Trump administration is not on the same page about this. They've given all sorts of different reasons for attacking Iran.

13:18So have a listen to this. This is both the president and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, with some of their reasons. Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating eminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people. We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher those killed. And then we would all

13:52Anthony Zurcher:be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn't act. We were having negotiations with these lunatics and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. They were going to attack. If we didn't do it, they were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that. And we have great negotiators, great people, people that do this very successfully and have done it all their lives very successful. And based on the way the negotiation was going, I think they were going to attack first. And I didn't want that to happen. So if anything, I might have forced Israel's hand. The president said this is the weakest they've ever been.

14:29Anthony Zurcher:If we don't hit them now, a year from now, a year and a half from now, no one will be able to touch them and they'll be able to do whatever they want. I guess the worst case would be we do this and then somebody takes over who's as bad as the previous person, right? That could happen. We don't want that to happen. It would probably be the worst. You go through this. And then in five years, you realize you put somebody in who was no better. So shifting grounds, clearly, that the Trump administration is trying to find a justification after the fact, because they really didn't tick through much of this at all.

15:03Anthony Zurcher:Sarah, you remember the State of the Union address. Donald Trump barely mentioned Iran. It was at the very end. And that was just a matter of days before the United States launched its attack. Yeah, and I remember the build up to the Iraq war in 2003 as well, how much of George W. Bush's State of the Union address was devoted to that, how much time they spent on television in public making the case against that regime, why it was necessary to take military action. This was debated for weeks and months and the public were prepared for it, whereas a lot of people, I think, and probably not least you and I, Anthony, were hugely taken by surprise on Saturday morning.

15:42And most people I've seen asked about this say that, yeah, they're terribly, terribly confused about why and why now. There was some real pushback, though, wasn't there, from that idea that Marco Rubio had said, oh, well, Israel was going to attack Iran anyway, so we had to get in there first so that we didn't suffer in the retaliation. Donald Trump didn't like that, because when he was asked about that, the idea that he was pushed into doing something by Israel, by Prime Minister Netanyahu, he is not happy with.

16:12Anthony Zurcher:Yeah, there were portions of Donald Trump's base, people in the MAGA movement, who were incensed by that justification that Rubio offered, that it was the idea that Israel was the reason why the United States acted and who was calling the shots in American foreign policy, whether American foreign policy should be based on decisions made outside of the United States. The whole idea of America first is that it's America calling the shots, not someone else. So I'm not surprised that Donald Trump in that montage we heard, walked that back significantly. And Marco Rubio himself did the next day too.

16:52Yeah, by telling reporters that he didn't say what they'd all heard him say, essentially. Quite a lot of the justifications. Well, we hear estimates as to how close Iran was to developing a nuclear weapon. And also Donald Trump has talked about the capability of long range missiles being able to hit the United States. It's the US's own defense intelligence that says that none of this was remotely imminent, that they were about a decade away from either a nuclear bomb or intercontinental ballistic missile. So, I mean, that's quite significant. Well, exaggeration might be a kind way of putting it towards the administration when they talk about what kind of military threat are unposed.

17:30Anthony Zurcher:Right. And there's an extra wrinkle in this, in that the War Powers Resolution, it's an act or War Powers Act that was passed in the 1970s, gives the president the ability to launch military operations if there is a clear threat to an imminent threat to the United States. So they have to say this in order to at least follow the law. And if they don't, if they say, well, we're just doing it because we decided this is an American's interest, they really should get Congress's approval ahead of time. And they didn't. They didn't seek that out at all. No, no. And that's another controversial aspect of this as well.

18:10The president can assume the power, as you say, under the War Powers Act to do that, but he can only maintain a conflict for 60 days, I think, without going to Congress and getting express authorization. Is that right?

18:22Anthony Zurcher:Exactly, Sarah, 60 days until they have to get Congress to sign off on it. Although I will also add that the Trump administration says that this law is unconstitutional and shouldn't bind the president's hand. And he is not the only president who has said that. So this could end up being another legal dispute between Congress and the White House, but the courts have to decide. But at least for now, it is hanging over this administration's head that they need to wrap this up in order to avoid such a kind of a conflict. Right. Let's speak now to our guest, Robert Malley, who was one of the lead negotiators on the 2015 nuclear deal under President Obama, US Special Envoy to Iran for 2021 to 2023 under the Biden administration, a key linchpin on Iran policy.

19:14Thanks very much for joining us, Robert. Yes, hello. You have actually been in the room speaking to the Iranian negotiating team about exactly these topics. Is there a deal to be done there or does the regime ideology mean it's just never going to be possible for the US to get what it wants. This is a regime that is both deeply ideological, but also has sort of its main priority is survival and the perpetuation of the regime. I mean, it's ideological, perhaps more than others, but it has that strong desire to perpetuate itself. And if what the Trump administration was asking, as Steve Whitcoff, the envoy at one point said, was capitulation, I don't think you need to be an expert in Iran.

19:58You probably just need to be an expert in human nature to know that that was not going to happen. And the fact that he said in the midst of these negotiations that President Trump was, I think his word was, frustrated that Iran did not capitulate when the alternative was, you know, a war that Iran was certain to lose, I think that said much more about the mentality on the U.S. side than it said anything particularly revealing about the Iranians.

20:21Anthony Zurcher:One of the things that Trump said about those negotiations was that Iran would agree to something or seem to agree to something and then back away, that they were basically just stalling for time and that they were not negotiating in good faith. From your experience, when you were negotiating with the Iranians, did you feel like during your negotiations they were operating in good faith and that they were trying to legitimately reach some sort of an agreement with the United States? I don't know what to make of the term good faith. Yeah, they played games, they would present something, then they might take it back.

20:54Their goal was to stretch this out. And often it was, and I have no doubt that they were trying to stretch out the talks with President Trump. But we did reach a deal. I'm sure that people could criticize the deal. But one thing I don't think one could say with a straight face is that Iran violated the deal. Iran was not just abiding by the deal based on what it said. It wasn't just abiding by the deal based on what the IEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, claimed. Even the Trump administration, there validated the fact that Iran was abiding by the deal between the time it took office and a year after President Trump withdrew.

21:29So, you know, good faith, bad faith, I don't know. What I do know is that they negotiated a deal. They were abiding by it. I'm not going to make a moral judgment about whether this is a good faith regime or not. It has certainly lied and killed quite enough for me to shy away from that characterization.

21:46Anthony Zurcher:In hindsight, do you feel like it was a good deal now that we're looking back? Do you have any regrets that you weren't able to get anything more in it or make it a more durable deal that the Trump administration wouldn't have torn up shortly after coming into power in 2017 and now obviously moved on to outright warfare with Iran? So it's a great question. I don't know that any negotiator in the world doesn't end the negotiation and think, well, if I got this, I probably could have gotten something better. I also think, you know, yeah, probably there are things that could have been stronger. What I do know is that President Obama had one objective, which was to deal with this issue.