Trump’s War With Iran and a New Danger at Home

26:28And he went to Congress. He didn't just not make the case for a war. He went out and humiliated members of Congress. Stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down. Why won't you stand up when I tell you to stand up? I'm the king. You know, everyone rises when the king speaks. He insulted them. He berated them. He had previously called the Supreme Court or six of nine judges in the sway of a foreign power. They said, oh, by the way, I'm going to be back in a few days for a multi-billion dollar supplemental appropriation to pay for this war I never asked you to authorize. So that's bad. But what's also bad, and here's, again, to continue with what this imagined or not so imagined circle of my friends would say, is, look, Trump does actually have a plan.

27:11He's a little shy about admitting it because it doesn't sound very nice. But his plan is the same plan as in Venezuela on a bigger scale, which is with the Israelis to kill everybody in the top 40 positions in the government. And then to keep killing people until you find someone who says, OK, I'll do what you want. And then when you find the guy who says, I'll do what you want, you say, OK, good. You're now in charge. And that plan, although unlovely, Ann Applebaum, our colleague, has written very powerfully about the abandonment of Iranian democracy. If the goal is we have to get from here to there while keeping the electricity going, the water projects working, there are hospitals in Iran that have to keep functioning.

27:48Children do need to go to school. I presume there's some kind of pension system. The pensions need to get to be paid. And on your way to whatever a better future is, in the six months after the collapse of the old regime, someone needs to run the place. And maybe a former insider is the best way to get you from point here to point there. And that seems to be Trump's plan to the extent he's got a plan. is what would be said. I'm having flashbacks now because these were the same arguments that, you know, I had, and I'm sure you had back during the second Gulf War, where I did say, I admit it. I said, look, I don't know what comes after Saddam, but it has to be better than Saddam.

28:27Chaos would be better than Saddam because of WMD and, you know, terrorism and all the things that I said, and I admit it. I said, you know, I couldn't really imagine things getting much worse. And then we made it worse, right? We disbanded the Iraqi army. We did all kinds of stupid things. But to take this and to compare it, say, to Venezuela, we eliminated exactly one level of leadership in one person. And then we said to the vice president, okay, fine, you can run things. That's not going to happen here. This is a total... The 40 top leaders are already dead. They're already dead. And the top, you know, at some point, this is an ideological regime.

29:08You know, this is a totalitarian ideological regime. Now, there is a huge amount of corruption. You know, the true, I read, I think it was in somebody writing in the Atlantic pointed out that it used to be 80 % true believers, 20 % kind of charlatans and hangers on. Now it's the other way around. It's 80 % charlatans and 20 % true believers. Great. But in the meantime, you have a gigantic country. This isn't, you know, this isn't even Iraq. I mean, and Iraq was hard enough. You have this gigantic country of 92 million people that could fracture into some authorities. And, you know, you'll get a patchwork of authorities across the country.

29:53And that leaves open a lot of mischief. It's only about 60 % ethnically Persian, as we're all about to learn. As we're, yes, we're all about to learn some things. We're all about to go through some things. uh so i think you know part of the problem is the steel man case rests on yeah these are all valid objections but we're in it now well that's that's a hell of a way to do foreign policy i mean the car's off the cliff you know and turning to the guy in the next seat and saying we fine you drive okay well we are okay but we are in it we are in it so that's and and some tactical military successes have been that underwrites it some very important tactical have been achieved as much by the israelis as by the united states and part of the problem and i say this as a great friend of israel and you know on their side but but it does seem like they have a clear idea of where they're driving the the car to and the united states is a little bit along for the ride well yeah and i think um i suspect that netanyahu has learned how as most world leaders have they've learned how to manipulate donald trump and i'm sure there's been whispering in Donald Trump's ear about you're going to be the liberator of Iran.

31:01There will be songs written to you for centuries. There will be statues in Tehran. Look, Bill Clinton's got a statue in Bosnia. You need one. I'm sure he's hearing all that stuff and responding to it the way we know Donald Trump responds to visions of glory and flattery. But here's where I want to be a war college professor for a minute. One of the things we always warn our students is operational successes do not by themselves translate into strategic success. I mean, the first two years, the first year and a half of World War II was nothing but a string of Japanese operational successes. Things don't turn around until midway.

31:44And we, frankly, you know, let's face it too, at midway, we caught a huge amount of breaks and some real luck to turn that around. But, But, you know, the Japanese in 1945 saying, how can this be? You know, it was two years of winning. So you really have to be careful with and I and I've said this both to the steel man arguers. Look, this isn't over. Hold the USA chance. Just as to the doomers of whom I am not one, by the way. I mean, I'm I'm concerned, but I'm not a doomer saying, listen, there are some ways this can go right. even under Donald Trump, even with this team in charge, they could, in fact, find their way to a better outcome.

32:25And, you know, we'd all have to be the first one to say, not a fan of Donald Trump, would never vote for him. But if he does manage to liberate Iran, send our congratulations. I just finished reading a book. It was a book based on the Japanese war archives. And the question is, okay, what did they think they were doing when they struck Pearl Harbor? And the answer is it was exactly headstethism. But they didn't know that their plan was that the civilian leadership was intimidated and weak. And they said, well, what we're going to do is we're going to seize Southeast Asia, hit the American fleet, and then see.

32:58Right. And when some, you know, there were some Japanese - And what then? Who knows? You're going to see this as good as mine. You know, and there were some - Something good, maybe. You know, fate is a harsh mistress, David. You know, there were some guys in the room who went, the Americans are not, that's a big country you're tangling with. And the answer they got was, literally, there were people in the Japanese high command saying, once we destroy their fleet in Pearl Harbor, they won't like it, but they'll understand. This is something I worry about, again, sort of basic strategic analysis, right?

33:34That I'm worried that the people in Washington are doing a lot of mirror imaging. they're doing a lot of what we you know strategic analysis called script writing if we do this they're going to do that and then when they do that that opens for us to do this and it's all very convenient and congenial to your own assumptions and i think that a lot of that is going on but as you say have they thought through what happens if the iranians decide we don't care we'll go out in a blaze of glory we'll you know we'll fire everything at everybody are we going to put ground troops in well as we saw in iraq i think the military does think a lot about questions like, what if they decide to go in a blaze of glory and fire every missile at once?

34:10I'm sure there's a good plan for that. What is never planned for is, what if everything collapses? And what if you kill everybody, the IRGCs take their money and flee, and the electricity stops, the water stops? It's not a very forgiving human environment, and there are chronic water problems. What happens if the waterworks stop working? What happens if there isn't a government, And then whatever organized crime networks exist in Tehran, they become the most powerful force or the IRGC turns into a mafia. I was just going to say, I mean, we should learn from other cases of regime collapse, not just regime change by war, but regime collapse, the former Soviet Union.

34:49You know, what happens to the KGB? Well, it turns out they become a powerful mafia and they run the country. You know, what if the IRGC says, we're the most organized group in this shit show here, if I can use one expletive. And, you know, we're the people that can, we'll get the water back on, you know, we'll get the electricity going. But I think the other problem is, what if they decide not, you know, who decides when a war is over? The loser, right? That's an old adage of strategy. The loser decides when the war is over, unless you literally kill every single person. But it's the losers who say when it's done.

35:29What if they say, look, we'll drag this on forever. We'll commit terrorist acts. We'll keep stuff in reserve and blow the occasional thing up. Fine, you're going to scuttle part of our fleet. We'll make the Straits of Hormuz practically unnavigable for insurance companies. So, I mean, there's a, I, in my article, and I know it's a, it's a line, you know, well from the old days, Barbara Bodine talking about after the war in Iraq, she said, there's 500 ways to do this wrong and only two or three ways to do it. Right. And what I didn't count on is that we were going to try all 500 ways first. Yeah.

36:04Well, on your point about the loser deciding, I remember reading a memoir of post-war Japan and the memoir writer just marveling that in the spring of 1946, individual American officers unarmed could go to the market and shop and buy things. And everybody was polite to them. There was no assassination. There was no harassment. They didn't have to put on a sidearm to go buy things in the market. The society collectively decided, we accept you. We accept this outcome. And the United States in turn, by the way, one of the reasons the Japanese occupation went in the way that it did, said to everybody, and by the way, just about everybody here is forgiven.

36:39And whoever was the assistant minister of streetcars before is still assistant minister of streetcars today. It was a completely different approach to war. This administration, it's almost like the president's speeches are foreign policy mad libs where, you know, we're fire and just like I've never seen and lay down your weapon. But this is your moment and freedom and we're not. Who is he talking to? You know, in both Gulf Wars, we made an effort, we, the United States, made an effort to reach out to some of these guys and say, listen, in Gulf One, I know particularly, if you use chemical weapons, you are not going to be able to try a Nuremberg defense.

37:25We sent word to various generals, understand what will happen to you. Instead, Trump says, everybody out there, if you resist us, you get certain death, blood, gore in the streets. But lay down your weapons. I feel like, was there any preparation for this? What should the people, what should you and I, what should anyone who cares about our voices, what should anyone who is watching or listening who shares broadly our perspective, What should we do now? Because American personnel are in harm's way. We want the United States to succeed in its foreign policy objectives. This seems, in the abstract, a good cause.

38:05And yeah, it's run by unworthy. The clowns are the best one. It's run by unworthy people, both morally and intellectually unworthy. But it's done. There's no undoing this. What does Tom Nichols, what does David Fromm, what do people care what we think? What should we think and say? Well, if somehow tomorrow, you know, Trump fired everybody and he said, OK, Tom and David, come on in. You've got your shot. You got you got five minutes for an elevator pitch. You know, I would say this is the time to find somebody that you can talk to. Don't keep doing this damage that you don't want to have to fix later.

38:44Go to Congress now, because I'm getting even I'm getting to the point where I think Congress should invoke the War Powers Act, because there's a whole issue of constitutionality here that I think, you know, we alighted in previous wars that is now completely thrown out the window. And to say to the Iranians, here's the new deal. You are going to change your type of government. You are going to stop killing people. Here are the, here's the list of demands. Sign here. And, you know, you may get away with what's left of your regime. Trump's answer seems to be, and I would say, if I were standing there, I'd say, Mr.

39:18President, you can't kill everybody in Tehran and then say, now form a government. That's just not how it works. So you've killed the worst guys. Now find the less worst guys and basically get them to seal their own doom over time. But the more that it's done at the point of American weapons, the more opening there is for all kinds of chaos that could make even worse people more empowered and lose the... This is something very important to point out, and I know this is to, not to you, David, but I know that, you know, a lot of folks think of Iran as death to America and the whole country hates us.

39:55That is not true. The Iranians are an educated, modern people who actually, a lot of them have a fair amount of affection for the United States, as ironic as that is after everything we've been involved with going back to 1953. But you don't want to lose that by creating a serious situation where everything gets just pounded into rubble and then people start blaming the nations around the world. It's being in blame. I will jump on one thing. Yeah, I think we're here in this terrible situation because of people like Obama. I don't take back anything I wrote about Obama's feckless foreign policy in the Middle East.

40:38But the answer to it was not to say, to throw all the cards up in the air and say, screw it. Let's just bomb the crap out of everything and see what happens. I mean, that is the pendulum in completely the other direction. And I am still really anxious that this is not going to turn out well. Yeah. I have a particular dog in this, right? Because I'm on record as saying, and people often say this is contradictory and I keep insisting it's not. I was against the Iran deal while it was being negotiated. I was against signing the Iran deal in great part because Iran got its benefits upfront. The United States got its benefits on the back end.

41:14Once signed, once you have made the mistake of signing a deal where the other guy gets his benefits signed up front, you don't tear up the deal. He's already got the $90 billion of unfrozen assets the Iranians got. At that point, your next choice is having signed this stupid thing. Enforce it. Don't exit it. You know, it shows, and for anybody out there who thinks that all of us conservatives from the old days are, you know, meeting at the meadows and coordinating our views. The fact that I was exactly, and I was not yet at the Atlantic, you and I were not yet regularly talking. That was exactly my position as well.

41:51I was against this thing while it was being negotiated for exact, I said, this violates some basic rules of diplomacy, which is that you don't front them the hamburger for the money you're going to get Tuesday. You don't do any of that. But once you're in it and the whole rest of the international community, including your closest allies, have signed on to it. You're stuck with it, and then you have to make it work. Then it's the only game in town. And the Iranians, they were as happy as could be when Trump said, fine, screw it, we're out of this. And they said, great, so are we. Yeah. Well, that's where the alternative was war.

42:29The war we've now got. But again, let's not fall down that hole either. We're not fighting this war over nuclear weapons. No, we're fighting over regime change that the administration won't acknowledge that it's doing. So here is, and here's the, this is a problem of going in without allies and having alienated all the allies. Supposing we get real lucky. Supposing we find somebody who's, you know, assistant to the assistant to the president, who's got enough juice to, he survives. He's got enough juice to make his writ run. And he says, right, we're dealing with the Americans and we're undertaking a transition to a better future.

43:03and we're leaving aside the anti-American ideology. We're giving up terrorism and we win. We really win. We win the war we won. At that point, it's still going to be true that Iran doesn't have enough water for its cities. It's still going to be true that this country that was on its way to being, had it not had, and I quoted this chart where from 1960 to 1980, the growth in the Iranian and the Portuguese standard of living is identical. Today in 2020, Iran is really no richer per person than it was in 1980. And Portugal is a fully paid up member of the first world, the OECD. It's a wonderful place.

43:37And Iran could have been, Iran today could be Portugal, but they're not, they're poor. So we have to help, we're going to have to help them. We're going to have to make sure that they have drinking water. And that's going to cost a lot of money, more maybe than the war itself. And Trump has again and again made it clear to his base, the United States is not putting up that money. Well, who is? I can think of at least one country that'd be more than happy to do it. China or other countries that perhaps do not have America's best interests at heart. I mean, the Chinese have been, you know, masters at the game of walking in and saying, listen, the American money always comes with strings and they're annoying and democracy, blah, blah, blah, you know, um, here, we'll just help you build stuff and we won't ask any questions.

44:19And you can take 10 % off the top and we budget it. We budget it for that. Exactly. It's a, it's a lot of, you know, It's a lot of overhead. Everybody's got overhead, David. But I mean, I think it's a serious problem, right? If not, I mean, Russia, and this does kind of put the screws to Russia a bit. But, you know, again, in that mythical moment where you and I get to walk into the Oval and say, OK, here's things you ought to do and say, oh, and by the way, Mr. President, now is the time to put the screws to Russia and, you know, help the Ukrainians really push this thing because now the Russians have lost a friend.

44:54and that's a good thing. But when Trump talks about this war going on for five weeks, my answer is to do what? To do what? Well, and this is where the refusal to think about reconstruction becomes an impediment to the war aims. Because one of the things that the United States came out of the World War II with a reputation for was if you do fight the Americans and you do lose, they help you. Isn't that, what's the movie I'm trying to think of? The Mouse the Broard. The Mouse the Broard, right? We're a poor country. We need reconstruction. We'll pick a war with the Americans and they'll come in and they'll, in fact, it was a hilarious movie from the 60s even that people knew that.

45:31So yeah, that was part of the deal. If President Trump were, I mean, there used to be a Twitter account called Good President Trump, imagine him. I imagine that person just gave up. Gave up. Actually, it was interesting. It was illustrated with an image of Donald Trump with a bald head, like he'd accepted it. But good President Trump would say, and by the way, if you do lay down your arms, that we and our allies are going to be there with the money you need to have proper waterworks, to have the electricity, to improve your roads, to send people back to school, to make universities more broadly accessible.

46:09Our goal for you is that those 40 years of development or 45 years of development or 50 years of development you miss since 1979, we're going to put you back on that track. And the vision is 40 years from now, you will look like Portugal. And the United States will now have several friends and allies in that region, including a country of 92 million people who, you know, just as Germany and Japan did, are going to feel pretty warmly about what happened. None of that is on the table. None of it. And in fact, I think that the rhetoric, you know, I couldn't, as you know, I was working through the weekend and working nights, so I purposely slept through Egg Seth's 8 a.m.

46:54briefing, which is why I think he has them at 8 a.m., by the way, because he doesn't think anybody's watching. But having watched it, caught up on it later, you know, it's just insane. I mean, it's all, you know, chest thumping, Conan the Barbarian stuff, not the kind of thing that's going to make anybody in Iran say, you know what I ought to do? I had to trust Pete Hegg said that I should lay down my arms and everything, you know, will be okay. I mean, we are, to some extent, by what we're doing, we're putting some of these guys on death ground. And that's a bad plan. This is the part that they really seem unconstitutionally capable of dealing with, which is to say to whomever emerges.

47:32And if you have a plan for a transition to democracy, and if you stop repressing, you will live. We won't ask too many questions about your bank accounts. There's a role for you. We are not actually planning on killing you all. We offer amnesty and exit as part of a plan to make a transition to a better future for Iran, which is going to be defined by the Iranians, but shaped by the values of all the people who are going to, and this is the key point, help you pay for it. Yes. And the thing I was going to say about a transition to democracy or something less oppressive than the thing we just overthrew.

48:08We get it that it's not going to happen tomorrow. We've learned our lessons. We're not going to send you copies of the Federalist Papers and say, here's your homework. But it can't be, just as I think we should have done in Iraq, there was a plan, I guess, from the British to say, look, we don't disband the military. We take a bunch of generals and we say, we're going to put this country under military rule for now. And we're watching you. and you're going to have to transition to a civilian government and all the time with uncle sam and the allies saying don't screw this up because we can come back here anytime instead we're simply saying hey people in iran kill your government and go take power and we're not coming by the way not that's i mean everything that trump is saying and i and i really want to emphasize this so much of what trump is talking about would be more credible if he were talking about doing it backed by ground troops.

49:03And I don't want him to do that. So that is where the steel, even though we're off the cliff, there are still dumb things we can do. Even as the car is plunging, we can unbuckle our seatbelts and try and stand on the roof. There are things that we shouldn't do. And that I'm worried that because Trump is a man who can never admit a mistake, that he will double down and dump. That's because you know him, David. That's what he does with everything. I mean, this, that this administration always does that. And it's sooner or later, something's going to happen where Trump's, I think something could happen where Trump's going to want to double down.

49:39This is the time to think about what do we want? What are we satisfied with? Who's going to guide what happens next? And I don't think anybody's thinking about that right now, or let me put it a different way. I'm sure there are people thinking about that, that no one's listening to right now. Well, let's, let's finish here. But with this thought, which is we all wish a safe return home for the Americans in harm's way. We all wish a better future for the people of Iran. We all wish this situation will be resolved quickly and with minimal harm to innocent people. And as much as our mental skepticism is engaged, our hearts are in sympathy with all of those who face danger in this war that didn't have to happen but has begun.

50:22And I'll add only one other thing, that whatever my thoughts about this particular government, you know, that the good Lord guides them and grants them some insight and wisdom in doing this because they are the civil authorities right now and they have to do this. And so I think it's important to point out that I hope they do it well, despite my worries. I mean, look, God's probably doing his part as best he can, but Trump doesn't listen to him either.

50:51All right. Always the pleasure to talk to you. It's great to see you, David. Thank you.

51:02A few months ago, I invited Atlantic staff writer, Charlie Warzel, onto the David Frum Show. As podcast hosts, we talked about the pressures and temptations of the medium. Outrage often gets rewarded. Nuance does not. Charlie doesn't take that bait. On his show Galaxy Brain, he covers the ways technology is changing how we think and how we live. Not just the obvious stuff, but the subtle ways it shapes what we believe, how we talk to each other, how we see ourselves and our neighbors. If you've ever wondered how smart people end up believing implausible things online, Galaxy Brain is worth your time.

51:39It's thoughtful, surprising, and a little unsettling in the very best way. Find it wherever you listen or watch.

52:13with one another. New episodes of How to Touch Grass come out every Monday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks so much to Tom Nichols for joining me today. As I mentioned at the top of the show, there will be no book talk this week. But I do want to thank you for viewing and listening to the show and remind you that if you want to support the work of Tom and me, the best way to do that is by subscribing to The Atlantic. I hope you will like and share this dialogue on whatever platform you use. Thank you so much for watching and listening to The David Fromm Show. and I look forward to joining you again next week on The David Fromm Show.

52:46Bye-bye.

53:10This episode of The David Frum Show was produced by Nathaniel Frum and edited by Andrea Valdez. It was engineered by Dave Grine. Our theme is by Andrew M. Edwards. Claudine Abed is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. I'm David Frum. Thank you for listening. A few months ago, I invited Atlantic staff writer Charlie Warzel onto The David Frum Show. As podcast hosts, we talked about the pressures and temptations of the medium. Outrage often gets rewarded. Nuance does not. Charlie doesn't take that bait. On his show Galaxy Brain, he covers the ways technology is changing how we think and how we live.

53:55Not just the obvious stuff, but the subtle ways it shapes what we believe, how we talk to each other, how we see ourselves and our neighbors. If you've ever wondered how smart people end up believing implausible things online, Galaxy Brain is worth your time. It's thoughtful, surprising, and a little unsettling in the very best way. Find it wherever you listen or watch.