3/14/26: TRUMP KNOWS HE’S DEFEATED! Begs Other Countries to Rescue US

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2:00Saagar Enjeti:Complete disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures. All right, guys.

2:04Trita Parsi:So earlier today, we talked about how Trump had announced the bombing of Karg Island in Iran, which is very important to their oil exporting. And we're privileged now to be joined by Dr. Trita Parsi. He is the executive vice president over at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Politics. to talk about that and some other significant developments that have been unfolding in the Iran war as well. Great to see you, doctor.

2:27Krystal Ball:Good to see you again.

2:29Trita Parsi:Yeah, of course. So let's go ahead and put this Trump truth up on the screen just to get the exact words from the president himself. He says, moments ago, my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the history of the Middle East and totally obliterated every military target in Iran's crown jewel, Karg Island. Our weapons are the most powerful and sophisticated that the world has ever known. But for reasons of decency, I've chosen not to wipe out the oil infrastructure on the island. However, should Iran or anyone else do anything to interfere with the free and safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision.

3:07Trita Parsi:During my first term and currently, I rebuilt our military into the most lethal, powerful and effective force by far anywhere in the world. Iran has no ability to defend anything we want to attack. There's nothing they can do about it. Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, nor will it have the ability to threaten the United States of America, the Middle East, or for that matter, the world. So this was the announcement we received yesterday evening. And sure enough, you know, reporting is that Kargisland was hit, that it was the military infrastructure, that the oil infrastructure remains intact.

3:38Trita Parsi:Your reaction to these latest developments?

3:41Krystal Ball:I think, frankly, we're further seeing him, Trump losing control over this. Iran apparently seems to have even escalation control at this point. because they struck at all facilities, not military facilities, all facilities in UAE in response to this. I think we have now a situation in which Trump actually is recognizing that the Iranians have this leverage over the Strait of Hormuz, over oil, and he doesn't really have what it takes to go all the way to attack these things because he is now finally recognizing that that would be absolutely suicidal. Even if he were to strike at oil facilities at that island, it does not mean that the Iranians will open up the strait or that the Iranians will not be able to export their own oil.

4:27Krystal Ball:During the Iraqi war, that island was struck constantly by the Iraqis. The Iranians found various workarounds. Obviously, it's very bad for them. I'm not trying to downplay it. But they have workarounds. They put those in place back then. I would suspect that they're even more sophisticated at this point compared to them, Whereas they now have really the control over the Strait of Hormuz. They're the ones who decide which ships go in and which ships don't. And just to see as the evidence of that is that India is negotiating itself with Iran for free passage. And so is France and Italy. They didn't go to Trump to negotiate free passage.

5:02Krystal Ball:They went to Iran because it's the Iranians that are in control. And now for the first time in a very long time, the Iranians actually have leverage. They have significant leverage. When they didn't have leverage and in the negotiations they gave concessions, it didn't get them anything. It got them this war. Now they have leverage. I don't find it very likely that they will give it up without getting major concessions in return. And there's, of course, the risk that the Iranians will do the same mistake as the Trump administration did, which is to overplay their hands.

5:32Trita Parsi:Let me get your reaction to this additional truth social that came from the president. Let me just pull this one fully up on the screen. Sorry. There we go. Many countries, especially those who are affected by Iran's attempted closure of the Hormuz Strait, will be sending warships in conjunction with the United States of America to keep the street open and safe. We've already destroyed 100 percent of Iran's military capability, but it's easy for them to send a drone or two, drop a mine, or deliver a close-range missile somewhere along or in this waterway, no matter how badly defeated they are.

6:07Trita Parsi:Hopefully, China, France, Japan, South Korea, the U.K., and others that are affected by this artificial constraint will send ships to the area so the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat by a nation that has been totally decapitated. In the meantime, the U.S. will be bombing the hell out of the shoreline and continually shooting Iranian boats and ships out of the water. One way or the other, we will soon get the Hormuz Strait open, safe, and free. So they're hoping that China will join this fight alongside of us to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

6:38Krystal Ball:I mean, look, every sentence there contradicts the next. First declaring complete victory, saying that these countries will, and then later on saying, hopefully these countries will join in this effort. You're seeing the words of a man who actually has been defeated and who knows it. This is the desperation phase of this war at this point. The question, though, is it hasn't yet ended and it can end in a much worse way than what we're already in. He's looking at increasingly bad escalatory options to give the pretense that he is in control, hoping that the sounds of more explosions in Iran will cover up the fact that he has absolutely no strategy.

7:17Yeah.

7:18Trita Parsi:And just talk to us a little bit about why reopening the strait has become clearly so central in Trump's mind. And I think it's also worth noting that all of these moves occurred after the markets closed on Friday, which I don't think is an accident.

7:33Krystal Ball:And even then, he actually didn't strike the old facilities. If I'm sitting in Tehran right now, I will interpret that as Trump's aim at playing madman has come to an end and that he is now being constrained by others. He probably wanted to go all the way. This is just speculation on my end. He wanted to go all the way. But there was such pushback inside the U.S. government, pointing out the tremendous negative effects this would have on the global economy, on oil markets and on the U.S. economy months before midterm, that he had to pull it back and instead just did this pinpoint attacks against the military facilities, which then tells the Iranians Trump is not willing to escalate further.

8:15Krystal Ball:This further strengthens their sense, false or correctly, that they are more in control of the situation right now.

8:21Trita Parsi:So you see this, you believe the Iranians will perceive this in spite of the bluster as effectively being a sign of weakness that he attacked, he constrained his attacks to the military facilities, is only threatening the oil infrastructure, but is unwilling to go there himself because of the pain that he knows that will create in his own economy.

8:42Krystal Ball:I believe that that is a likely interpretation on the Iranian side. I think there was an expectation on the Iranian side that he would attack the oil facilities on that island, that it potentially even tried to seize the island. The Iranians know that seizing the island actually is not that terribly difficult. Keeping it and making it anything of value is much more difficult because the Iranians can then rain drones and missiles on that island, which is right off their coast. I mean, the time these drones would fly would be so short. And they have such more effective short-range missiles compared to their long-term missiles, long-distance missiles, which also have proven to be very effective.

9:20Krystal Ball:But they would at that point also destroy their own island and their own oil facilities, which would be a very high cost to the Iranians. So I think we've seen a point in which the US kind of backed down from a very, very strong escalatory move, recognizing that this would be more or less suicidal. My colleague Amir Hanjani at the Quincy Institute believes that what we're seeing right now, and he's an economist, is the beginning of the COVID phase of the global economy, that it's going in that direction, which means that we will have a major, major economic contraction. COVID ended up costing in the first year a negative 3 % GDP contraction globally.

9:58Krystal Ball:And that this is now the early phases of that, unless this war is stopped. But stopping the war is no longer in the control of Trump. And this is part of the reason why you're seeing this increasingly desperate language. He knows very well that even if he stops attacking Iran, pulls out of the waters in the Indian Ocean, declares victory, points to things that he actually had achieved in this war in terms of degrading Iran's military, the Iranians will likely continue to close the straits and control who comes in and who doesn't, because they have that ability right now. This is not the same closure of the Straits as it would have been 20 years ago in which they would have just put mines in the waters and they would have no control whose ships would be exploded.

10:40Krystal Ball:Now they have full control. They can control whether a Chinese ship goes in or not or whether an Italian one goes in. And they themselves have actually been exporting more oil during the war than they did prior to the war.

10:52Trita Parsi:What did you think of the move on their part to say, we will let some ships through, but it's going to be denominated not in U.S. dollars, but in Chinese yuan?

11:02Krystal Ball:I mean, they're doing everything they can to just squeeze Trump and the U.S. economy as much as possible. I don't know if that's going to be successful in terms of getting countries to switch over. But many of those countries are going to be quite desperate. I mean, India only has old reserves for 25 days. The impact on Asian markets right now has already been devastating. Already last weekend, they started to cut down on the number of days schools are open, offices are open, because they don't have the fuel for all of these different things. The U.S. is a little bit further removed, has a much stronger reserve.

11:35Krystal Ball:But all of those things that is happening in the global economy, just as it was with COVID, will come back to haunt the U.S. economy as well, sooner or later.

11:43Trita Parsi:Let me ask you about this reporting from the Wall Street Journal, which indicates that this is Ali Abouna, who's a great reporter and journalist, and he's saying U.S. military leaking. They warned Trump that Iran would close Hormuz, but he ignored them, thinking Iran would collapse and he'd get swift, decisive victory. And here's one of the quotes from here. General Dan Cain, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Trump an American attack could prompt Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz. Cain said in several briefings that U.S. officials had long believed Iran would deploy mines, drones and missiles to close the world's most vital shipping lane.

12:18Trita Parsi:Trump acknowledged the risk, these people said, but moved forward anyway. He told his team that Tehran would likely capitulate before closing the strait. And even if Iran tried, the U.S. What if your soda actually did something for you?

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14:23Saagar Enjeti:Generated assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures.

14:30Trita Parsi:The military could handle it. So I think a few things that were noteworthy to me, I mean, first of all, just the fact that these leaks are coming out now of people in the administration, likely in the military brass are trying to say, listen, we tried to tell this guy that this was a bad idea, which shows you as an indication that on the inside, they also think that this is, you know, a catastrophe on their hands at this point. And then obviously the details here that Trump, rather than listening to military experts, was sort of high on his own supply, coming off what he perceives as this magnificent victory in Venezuela and thought, oh, the Iranians, they'll capitulate.

15:06Trita Parsi:They're just going to threaten this. It's an empty threat. And they'll break before we ever get to this point.

15:12Krystal Ball:with one small, well, actually very important addition to that. There were some other people also whispering in his ear saying, ignore the advice of the U.S. intelligence service, ignore the advice of the U.S. military, and that were the Israelis who were telling him constantly, Iran is at its weakest point ever. They will capitulate. They have no other option. Go back to what I've been saying for the last couple of months that the whole approach to the diplomacy was erroneous because he was under the false impression that the Iranians are much weaker than they actually were. He ruined the diplomacy because he thought capitulation was in the cart.

15:46Krystal Ball:And now he's turning a war into a debacle because he thinks capitulation is in the cart. And this was not something that he came up with on his own. This was something that the Israelis kept on pushing onto him. I mean, the whole idea that there was a moment to attack was because Iran is at its weakest ever. I mean, just go back and look at the reporting from that time. This was constantly repeated by the pro-Israeli crowd in Washington and by Israeli officials. Those are the people Trump chose to listen to instead of his own military. And here we are.

16:14Trita Parsi:What do you make of the reporting that the Saudis also were influential in pushing Trump towards war?

16:20Krystal Ball:I think the picture that has emerged is that the Saudi foreign ministry actually lobbied against this war. But unbeknownst to them, MBS himself lobbied in favor of it. And this has been a pattern that we've seen in the past, in which MBS does his own thing completely above the government, kind of like Trump. and the rest of the government is not necessarily even aware of it. We're also seeing now that there is clear evidence that the U.S. has been using some GCC states, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, to attack Iran. And we've seen how the Iranians have struck at Saudi bases and destroyed American refueling planes that are extremely expensive, seven of them, if I'm not mistaken.

17:03Krystal Ball:So even though those bases may not at that point have been used, and we don't know for certain, for direct attacks, they were integrally part of the logistics and the refueling. In fact, the Israeli planes have had their, whatever that thing is called on, trackers on. So the Iranians could see that the Israeli planes were flying to the Saudi airfields in the midst of that war. So part of the reason why the Iranians are striking as well is not just because they're trying to squeeze the economy, et cetera, is because there is a realization on both sides. Both sides have kind of pretended as if everything is better than it is.