Trump considers war in Iran

0:00The new episode of The Next Five is all about CFOs in an AI world. Patrick Villanova at Blackline joins me. CFOs are inherently risk averse. We have to be very prudent when we implement AI. As does Olya Brasi at Highgate. My rule is no human owner means no go live. And Gina Gutsight at FTI Consulting. There's no excuse. You're the CFO and you're signing the name to the financial statements. Listen to The Next Five wherever you get your podcasts. Enjoy. Let me take you back to last year for a second, November 6th. It's very early in the morning after the election, and Donald Trump is standing in front of a massive crowd in Palm Beach, Florida, delivering his victory speech.

0:44Edward Luce: Except we defeated ISIS. And 22 minutes into that speech, he says this. But we had no wars. They said, he will start a war. I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars. Many members of Trump's coalition remember that sentiment. They remember that line. And now, as the conflict between Israel and Iran enters its second week, they're hoping he won't renege on his promise. If we get involved in this war, we are going to see terror attacks right here on our homeland because Biden and the Democrats ripped our border open for the past four years. You don't know anything about Iran. So, actually, the country— Okay, I am not the Tucker Carlson expert on Iran.

1:23You're a senator who's calling for the overthrow of the government. You're the one who claims— You don't know anything about the country. So you've got Georgia Congresswoman and Trump hardliner Marjorie Taylor Greene railing against war with Iran. You've got former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who wants restraint. You've got MAGA influencers like Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk, who don't want the U.S. to dive in headfirst either. Up is down, down is up. At the same time as all of this, Trump is now openly considering direct military intervention. Whatever he does, he'll have to justify it to the people who voted for an America First agenda.

2:04This is Swamp Notes, the weekly podcast from the Financial Times, where we talk about all of the things happening in U.S. politics, finance, and the economy. I'm Mark Filippino, and this week we're asking, does Donald Trump want to go to war? Here with me to discuss is Edward Luce. He's the FT's U.S. national editor and columnist. He's also the co-author of the Swamp Notes newsletter. Hey, Ed. Great to be with you, Matt. Good to have you back. We've also got Guy Chazan. He's the FT's U.S. correspondent. Hey, Guy. Hi. All right, so quick note here. We're recording on Friday at 9 a.m. in Washington, so things might change by the time our listeners are tuning in.

2:39Just wanted to timestamp that for people. And with that out of the way, Ed, I want to start with you. Give us some background here. How did Donald Trump get to this moment, you know, where he's deciding whether or not to help Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attack Iran.

2:53Edward Luce: Well, when he came into office in 2017, he kept the Iranian nuclear deal that Obama had negotiated in 2015, which eased sanctions on Iran in exchange for Iran accepting much stricter limits on its civil nuclear program. And then Yahoo had openly sort of campaigned against that. In fact, he had broken precedent by appealing to the joint houses of Congress in a speech whilst Obama was president to reject Obama's deal. That sort of broke completely new ground for a foreign leader. And eventually, well, eventually, relatively quickly, then Yahoo persuaded Trump to walk away from that deal. And then Trump imposed what he called this campaign of maximum pressure on Iran to get it to climb down, which it didn't.

3:45Edward Luce: And in early 2020, Trump's sort of most, I guess, risky military action that he's ever taken in those four years was to assassinate Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. So he has a history of being influenced very strongly by Netanyahu and Netanyahu being the real sort of prime mover here. And of course, the situation we're in today is very much Netanyahu's timetable and choosing. That situation, launching strikes on Iran's nuclear program last week, which triggered the conflict that we're seeing today. What are Trump's options here? Right now, he said he'll make a decision whether to strike Iran sometime in the next two weeks.

4:27Edward Luce: Well, the argument that those who are urging Trump to join Netanyahu, including chiefly Netanyahu himself, is that the Pentagon's£30 ,000 bunker buster bombs will bring the decisive final blow onto the Fodor underground uranium enrichment site and other sites, Natanz, etc. And if that's something that Trump can be convinced of, that it's as simple as a bunker-busting bomb or two and Iran's nuclear program is dead, then Trump would clearly be tempted to follow that advice. But he's getting contradictory advice, which is, no, you can't bomb a program out of existence. We cannot guarantee one bomb or even two will do the trick.

5:13Edward Luce: And Iran's retaliation, they could close off the Strait of Hormuz. They could target U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria. These two arguments are sort of one on each shoulder. And I think he's sort of tilting now towards more caution, having started off quite gung-ho in response to a situation that he did not initiate. A person on each shoulder. You've got Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk whispering in Trump's left ear maybe about not attacking Iran. And then you've got Fox News in the other ear whispering, banging the war drums. Guy, break that down for me a little bit more. What are the divisions within the Republican Party and also just cultural conservatives?

5:58Well, I think the really influential sort of influences in the MAGA movement, people like Steve Bannon, and obviously you have Tucker Carlson as well, have really been urging restraint. and, you know, saying that the U.S. really has to stay out of this war and not get involved and citing the examples of 2003, which the sort of America First movement has always said was a catastrophic error that the U.S. got initiated that war. I mean, you've just seen the most extraordinary scenes recently. I mean, I think the most striking example of this, the split in the movement, was that interview Tucker Carlson did with Ted Cruz, where you really saw that in very, very sharp tones, this ideological split within the kind of Republican world.

6:48I am the product of the last 25 years watching carefully, being involved in the periphery,

6:53Edward Luce: and I see an unending string of foreign policy disasters that have impoverished and hurt our country. An unending string. An unending string. They would include Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria. I love the Tucker Carlson example so much because his son, Tucker Carlson's son, Buckley, is on J.D. Vance's staff, I believe, right? So you've got factions within factions. Yes, absolutely. I mean, obviously, you do have the Hawks on the one hand, you know, people like Lindsey Graham. There's plenty of them on Capitol Hill. The older school Republicans who are very, very pro-Israel, and really that is almost like the kind of lodestar.

7:30and you have Mark Levin, the radio show host, who's obviously been banging the drum as well, who wants regime change in Iran.

7:38Edward Luce: That is a man who's going to make sure this generation and future generations are protected from nuclear missiles coming out of the Middle East, from barbarian primitives from the 7th century. But there are plenty of people in MAGA who really are saying this is a founding principle of the movement, that we stay out of wars like this. And, you know, Trump himself said in his inauguration speech, we will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into. So that is in a way the battle cry of MAGA. Do we have a sense of what's going on on Capitol Hill, how things are divided there?

8:21Edward Luce: Well, there are a number of non-interventionists, as we tend to refer to them nowadays. is Rand Paul probably foremost amongst them. But I think he is, as Guy just mentioned, outnumbered in that arena by the Ted Cruz's and the Lindsey Graham's who are gung-ho for regime change, not just for bunker-busting bombs and nuclear enrichment sites. So the preponderance there are hawkish, but Trump, you know, doesn't fear them. Yeah, I mean, he knows that whatever decision he takes, this is because his mind has not yet been captured. It's a war for his mind. He doesn't fear them. He knows from many issues across a long period of time that the Ted Cruz's and Lindsey Graham's will fall into line once he has decided.

9:05Edward Luce: They are, they turn the line. I think what he fears, a colleague of ours coined the phrase, Trump or his chickens out. Yeah, taco, yeah. Taco for bond markets, Trump and bond markets. But Trump does not like to take on fights he cannot win. It's not that he's an anti-militarist. His opposition to the Iraq, his latent opposition to the Iraq war, it didn't come from some humanitarian impulse. It came from reading the crowd, reading the public mood, and as a tool, a very effective tool of breaking with traditional republicanism. So I don't think he's opposed to fights. his sort of most daring military order to date was his assassination of Qasem Soleimani.

9:51Edward Luce: But that was only after the CIA had assured him that Iran's retaliation would be muted. So I think if Trump believes that Iran will fight back, that it actually could turn into a real fight, it would be a real surprise if he went ahead with military action. His record to date shows that he only picks fights he really is clear he's going to win. And therefore, the debate is really who can credibly suggest that how credibly can the Steve Bannon's of this world impress upon Trump their view that this would unleash the hounds of war and Trump would lose control of the situation. So we've mentioned Bannon a few times now.

10:36He was chief strategist during the first Trump administration. Now he runs this media operation where, you know, he's very tapped into the populist wing of MAGA. Guy, what is he saying about Trump's base, what they think of his choices here? I mean, it's quite interesting that Steve Bannon, he's been such a vocal critic of the idea of the U.S. getting involved in this war. And on the other hand, he's made very clear that he thinks that if Trump decides to do this, that his supporters will fall in line, that they will rally around him. The vast majority of the MAGA movement go, look, we trust your judgment.

11:12You've walked us through this. We don't like it. In fact, maybe we hate it.

11:17Edward Luce: But, you know, we'll get on board. And, you know, I want to bring up John Bolton here, Trump's former national security advisor. He was interviewed by one of our colleagues this week and said that 75 to 85 percent of MAGA would support Trump in all this. I mean, what do you think of what Bannon said and what Bolton said? I think it's true because I think that in a way, I mean, some people have described the MAGA movement as almost like a personality cult. These are people who have tremendous loyalty to Trump as a person, as a politician and as a personality. And I think that they will essentially fall into line because they believe in their leader.

11:57and if he decides to do something like this, however controversial, then he presumably has good reason to do that and they will take his word for it. We've talked a lot about the MAGA base, but I want to talk a little bit more about pro-Israel voters who want Trump to back our only strongest ally in the Middle East. What if Trump doesn't take a strong enough stance to back Benjamin Netanyahu?

12:25Edward Luce: look i mean netanyahu is the only world leader urging war i mean this is a really rare moment where vladimir putin is giving the same advice to trump as as america's um allies in western europe which is de-escalate but i would caution against saying that there's um necessarily a strong consensus amongst jewish americans i mean there's there's very little data now In terms of sort of big figures in the American foreign policy world, yeah, there is a sort of stronger hawkishness. But if you look at public opinion, Jewish-American opinion is no different to American opinion, which is strongly supportive of negotiations.

13:04Edward Luce: And Trump really pays attention to opinion polls. Yeah. And speaking of opinion polls, Ed, are Democratic politicians unified enough against Trump going to war that they can use that? to persuade voters in the midterms? Both parties are split. I mean, and that's what's interesting about this situation is it does not fall along partisan, traditional partisan lines. And most Democrats are opposed to a regime change, but some are in favor of striking the uranium enrichment sites. So that gives Trump a lot of room for maneuver. And of course, the consequences of whichever fork in the road he takes are really, really huge.

13:49Edward Luce: This will change the course, either decision of Trump's presidency, a break with Israel or going all in with Israel. If he chooses one or the other, that is hugely consequential either way. Guy, does a surgical strike, just targeting on the nuclear areas of, development areas of Iran, does that do enough without angering the base that wants peace? is there a way to walk that line? Well, my sort of gut feeling is that actually it might be just enough and not too much that it doesn't alienate the base too much. That's the interesting aspect of this. It's what is the absolute minimum he can do that will sort of pacify Netanyahu and also not alienate his base.

14:42And that's a very, very fine line to tread. But it's not like Iraq in 2003 in that there's a likelihood that U.S. boots on the ground are going to be involved here. So in that respect, it's a limited military operation. And perhaps he can keep it on a small enough a scale that he doesn't end up really alienating and angering his base. All right, we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to ask our guests what other stories they're watching this week.

15:42Thank you. You're signing the name to the financial statements. Listen to The Next Five wherever you get your podcasts. Enjoy.

15:56We are back with Out of the Swamp, where we ask our guests to talk about a story they're watching outside of Washington politics. I want to start with Ed. Ed, what are you watching?

16:05Edward Luce: You know, it's incredibly hard for this situation to watch anything else with much detail. But I do keep a really close eye on how Mark Carney is doing in Canada. He, of course, sort of hosted the G7 this week, has this sort of rueful look on his face every time he meets Trump, but seems to have the measure of him. And there seems to be sort of a knowingness, even a sort of humor to how he's handling this role. And it's just an extraordinary metamorphosis from somebody who was really an international economic bureaucrat to becoming quite a natural politician and potentially a sort of counterpoint to Trump on the world stage.

16:49Guy, what about you? What are you following outside Washington politics? Well, one of the really big stories here in New York is the Democratic primaries and all eyes at the moment on this candidate Zohran Mamdani, who's sort of darling of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in New York. And he really is, you know, the one to watch, I think, in this race. He's got all kinds of very quite radical economic proposals for sort of alleviating the economic hardship of poor New Yorkers. So he's very interesting. He's got a massive social media presence, and he's putting up a strong fight to Andrew Cuomo, who obviously is one of the leading candidates.

17:31Former governor of New York. Former governor of New York in that primary. I want to thank our guests, Edward Luce. He's the FT's U.S. national editor and columnist. He's also the co-author of the Swamp Notes newsletter. Thanks, Ed. Always a pleasure. And Guy Chazan, the FT's U.S. correspondent. Thank you so much, Guy. Thank you. This was Swamp Notes, the U.S. politics show from the Financial Times. If you want to sign up for the Swamp Notes newsletter, we've got a link to that in the show notes. Our show is mixed by Kelly Gary. It's produced by Henry Larson and Lauren Fedor. We had help this week from Sonia Hudson.

18:01Special thanks, as always, to Pierre Nicholson. I'm your host, Mark Filippino. Our acting co-head of audio is Topher Forges. Original music by Hannes Brown. Check back next week for more U.S. political analysis from the Financial Times.

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