No grand strategy on Iran, just vibes

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1:13Gerard Baker: Hello and welcome to the State of It USA, the world's sanest take on US politics. I'm Katie Balls joining you from Washington, DC. And I'm joined by my colleague, Jerry Baker, columnist for The Times and editor-at-large of the Wall Street Journal. So we are now nearing a fortnight of Trump's war ever since he launched strikes on Iran. And since then, we've had various messages about how long it might go on for and what exactly the president is trying to do. The goals of this mission are clear. It is to destroy the ability of this regime to launch missiles, both by destroying their missiles and their launchers, destroy the factories that make these missiles and destroy their navy.

1:52Gerard Baker: They were going to try and destroy Israel. So we stopped it with good timing. Then it's going to be ended soon. And if it starts up again, they'll be hit even harder. Jerry, what's the view from New York? Is there appetite for this? We know when it began, the polling was pretty negative, something you've written about this week.

2:13Katy Balls: I think people remain very uncertain about how this unfolds and in particular how it ends. You know, we have Trump has narrowed down his list of objectives from, you know, everything to, well, we really were trying to do is just to degrade Iran's military capabilities. Now, as we've said before, that does give him the option to sort of signal an end to the war whenever he likes. But there's evidence. It seems that the Israelis wouldn't be very happy with that. There's a lot of concern that, you know, the United States could be left here. You know, if Trump does declare victory in the next week or so and pulls back, that the regime is still in place.

2:49Katy Balls: It has time to rebuild. Is the U.S. really going to be stuck in this kind of long, you know, mowing the lawn, as the Israelis called it about Hamas in Gaza? Are they going to have to go back in every now and then every time Iran starts building up its weapons again? So even if Trump declares an early end to the immediate hostilities, are we stuck in a kind of an open ended battle? And of course, there's the specific questions of what's going to happen, you know, in the next few days in terms of shipping and the Straits of Hormuz. Because I think it's fair to say the US has done a lot of damage and Israel has done a lot of damage to Iran and to its capabilities.

3:23Katy Balls: And I think a lot of Americans think that's a good thing. But there's real uncertainty about how this ends. And yet the interesting thing is Trump seems pretty content. We're getting reports. We had a report in the Wall Street Journal saying he's being advised to look for an off-ramp. A lot of people are nervous about this. They do want this to end sooner rather than later. And yet Trump, you know, seems to be sort of fairly blithe about this, about the fact that even his approval ratings are low. I mean, maybe there's a sense that, you know, he's looking for a place in history. He's not so concerned about his approval ratings.

3:55Katy Balls: He certainly doesn't care about what happens to the Republicans in the midterm elections. So we're in a really unusual situation where the politics are pointing strongly against Trump and against conducting this war and against continuing it and in favour of ending it as soon as possible. But Trump himself, you know, seems to think that he's on a kind of a mission to change the world and he's not so concerned about the politics.

4:17Gerard Baker: Yeah, I've been having some interesting conversations over the past week. And one that particularly comes to mind was with someone who was a senior figure in Trump's first term in the White House. Now, there were various serious senior figures in Trump's first term in the White House because he had such a high staff turnover. But they were recalling conversations about Iran dating back to the first term. And back then you had John Bolton, and he was a key figure in Trump's circle for a time. Obviously now enemy of MAGA, warmonger, neocon in chief, as far as the base are concerned. But this guy was saying that he remembered John Bolton coming in and he said, you know, pretty much every other day saying now is the time to strike Iran.

5:02Gerard Baker: Now is the time to go in. and then you'd all of a sudden have the rest of the team, all the figures that were more isolationist, anti-intervention, being like, okay, we now need to undo the work of John Bolton and get Donald Trump back on side. How do they do it? He said what they would do is they would say, well, you could go into Iran, Mr. President, but if you were to do so, you need to realize that you would be fighting the next election at boots on the ground and oil at$120 a barrel. So that was in my mind earlier this week when we saw the prices of oil spike. So I think that the general mood in Washington is still one where I think there's a sense of trepidation.

5:40Gerard Baker: Republicans feel as though, you know, there are some bits they can get behind. There's some bits where they worry about what the end goal is. And I think very much they hope that in Trump's objectives, which do seem to be becoming more narrow, there is a way for that off-ramp if they're going to need it. I mean, Gerry, just on the comms point, you've written a piece this week where you compared the strategy to something from a Marvel comic book. This seems to be one of the reasons that this does feel like uncharted territory, to your point. I mean, we also have Pete Hesgift, the Secretary of War, giving these almost daily briefings, which you watch, and they feel a little bit more like a locker room halftime pep talk when I watch them.

6:17They are toast, and they know it.

6:20Gerard Baker: And we have only just begun to hunt, dismantle, demoralize, destroy, and defeat their capabilities.

6:28Katy Balls: B-2s, B-52s, B-1s, predator drones, fighters controlling the skies, picking targets. Death and destruction from the sky all day long. Yeah, look, thanks for mentioning the column. I wrote a column in The Wall Street Journal this week just about Trump's real communication problem, if you like, which is that whatever you think of the policy, and again, you know, he's narrowing down the objectives. You can like the policy or not like the policy. a large part of the policy is actually articulating it. It's a large part of it, both for a domestic audience and for an international audience. And Trump is just incapable of articulating it.

7:06Katy Balls: Forgive me for quoting myself, but I said that, you know, I said of Winston Churchill that he mobilized the English language and sent it into battle. With Trump, you know, he kind of douses the English language in gasoline, sets fire to it, and then drops it in a dumpster in the middle of his own parade ground. And I say that, and of course we all know that about Trump, that he says ridiculous things. And by the way, not just says ridiculous things, but behaves in ways that are just not serious. I mean, I thought showing up for the dignified transfer, as they call it, the returns of the remains of those six servicemen and women, one woman, I think, who died in the early stages of this war.

7:47Katy Balls: He showed up in his USA baseball cap. It's that plus the endless back and forth verbiage, verbiage, the stuff you just talked about, Pete Hegseth talking like, you know, he's a kind of character in a Marvel comic or in a video game. It's that sort of triviality, the unseriousness, the lack of, you know, this is war, right? This is a serious business. This is Americans dying and, you know, thousands of other people dying in America using lethal force. And the gap between the scale of the mission and the task and indeed what America is supposed to stand for and the president and his advisors' ability to articulate it and to represent it in the most persuasive and commanding way is just enormous.

8:34Katy Balls: And by the way, I don't think, and I said, I wrote this in the column, I think one of the reasons the war is not popular is for precisely that. Trump has not articulated a serious mission here, why Americans should be fighting and potentially dying 10 ,000, 8 ,000 miles away, why they should be willing to tolerate gasoline at$5 a gallon, which is what it would represent, why they should be willing to tolerate the disruption to the world. He hasn't articulated that case at all. He hasn't made that case in a serious way. And so surprise, surprise, more than 50 % of Americans don't support this war.

9:11Katy Balls: Or, you know, again, whatever you thought of the Iraq war, my view, I supported at the time. I'm very happy to say, well, happy to say, sorry, I shouldn't say that. I'm very, you know, I have to say I think it was a disaster. But whatever you thought of that, George W. Bush spent a year with Tony Blair and others preparing the American people and the British people in the world for war, making the case for war, as it turned out. It's a case that was profoundly flawed. But at least that's what they tried to do. Trump is just sort of like one day I really think one day a lot of Americans two weeks ago woke up and discovered that the United States was at war with Iran and I tell you Katie I think half the country didn't even know what was going on there was no sense that Iran was a threat there was no sense that there was an immediate need for military action so this is a communications failure which again we've we've seen with Trump in every in almost everything he does he's just this inability to articulate in a serious way what he's trying to do and I think that's hurting hurting Republicans badly.

10:06Katy Balls: I think, again, they finally have got a message about what the war is about. It is about degrading Iran's capabilities. And again, I don't dismiss that. It's not insignificant. And also, I don't dismiss the fact that Iran has killed so many Americans over the last 50 years and actually, you know, taking them out is not an unreasonable thing for the United States to do. But needs a leader who's capable of explaining all that and making the case for them. And Trump is just failing on that point. And he's failing, of course, in terms of the diplomacy, too. We've seen one of the interesting things we've seen in the last week now is you know some really hostile comments coming out of arab countries i've seen comments from fairly senior people in the uae and even in saudi arabia saying what are we doing here we first of all we're getting hit with these with these missiles and drones from iran um you know and it's your war your war and israel's war what are you actually doing here and when are you gonna actually explain to us what what this is about and then of course you know some of the trump people or trump friendly people like lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator, hits back and says, oh, you Arabs, you know, you should show more gratitude for all the things we've done for you.

11:06Katy Balls: This is just not the way to communicate with the American people, with allies, with people around the world. And I think that more than anything explains why this war is such an unusual one. And so far, at least, it's failing to persuade many people that it's the right thing to do.

11:26Gerard Baker: Well, let's hear from the president when he was press this week on those multiple mixed messages in a press conference. But your defense secretary says this is just the beginning. So which is it? And how long should Americans be? Well, I think you could say both the beginning. It's the beginning of building a new country. But they certainly they have no Navy. They have no Air Force. They have no anti-aircraft equipment. It's all been blown up. They have no radar. They have no telecommunications and they have no leadership. When I listened to that clip, Jerry, it seems to me that he wants to have strategic ambiguity.

12:02Gerard Baker: And I was speaking to one Republican on the Hill this week who was saying the thing about Trump is he is intentionally unintentional. I had to mull that one over for a bit, but I think their point being that ultimately it might look chaotic, but they're saying every time he says something, he has a point to it. And you go back to one of the things I found quite interesting about moving from Westminster to Washington, which is how the president communicates full stop, but particularly this phone diplomacy we've seen in recent weeks where, for example, the interview that really moved the markets this week was a short phone call with a journalist where he said the war was nearly completely over and then later went on to suggest, actually, the war could be going on for some time to come.

12:45Gerard Baker: And there seems to be, and I've spoken to figures back in the UK, and they see all these things. I think Donald Trump is sitting down for about 40 different interviews when really there seems to be a game whereby you work out the number which Donald Trump occasionally picks up depending on his mood. And journalists just call it night and day and occasionally get these exclusives. And therefore, do you think that in a way Trump is getting the narrative out that he wants? And what do you think is different between the first and second term if we go back to, you know, the arguments that previously stopped him from going to Iran, which were oil, the economy.

13:21Gerard Baker: We're seeing them play out in real time now. But yet he doesn't seem so bothered. I don't know if that's because he hadn't thought about it or actually, look, he's not personally going back up for re-election.

13:31Katy Balls: He hasn't thought about it. I mean, there's no grand strategy here. I love these people who come up and say, oh, Trump's playing 4D chess. You know, every time he does something, it's like, you know, which reminds me of that was a great line. I can't remember which way round it was. But Metternich said of Talleyrand when he heard news of his death, said, I wonder what he meant by that. You know, it's like this is what Trump is like. Everybody. Oh, Trump is so deep and so, you know, thoughtful and so far thinking far ahead of everybody else. I've heard stuff in the last week. I keep reading stuff about, oh, this is all about challenging China.

14:00Katy Balls: Iran's really China's ally and Venezuela was China's ally. And what we're doing, we're in the stages of this grand strategic battle with China. And Trump's brilliantly kind of depriving China of a key ally in these places. Well, actually, you know, you can make exactly the opposite argument, which is that China's sitting back and very happily looking at the United States spending, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars potentially of munitions on a war where it may not get very much. So I find this, you know, oh, he's, you know, he's thinking it all through. He isn't. It's all instinctive. And again, let's give him some credit.

14:33Katy Balls: Sometimes his instincts are very, very good. His instincts have got him here. I mean, both in terms of his success in business, if you can call it that, or his success particularly in TV, but more importantly politically. He was an instinctive politician. He didn't sit down back in 2014, 15 and say, do a kind of a detailed exegesis of the state of American politics and this was the populist moment. He just kind of had those instincts that people were tired with the way things were, everything was, and he was going to stand up and call it out. That's what he does. And, you know, so sometimes those instincts stand him in good stead when you're leading the country to war in a part of the world where America has, frankly, received a bloody nose so many times in the last 50 years.

15:19Katy Balls: You have to have something more than trust in the president's instincts. Look, again, I don't want to overstate the gloom here because I think, in fact, if you ask me what's going to happen, I think Trump is at some point in the next week, two, three, whatever is going to say, we've done all this damage. We've taken out the missiles. We've taken out most of the nuclear stuff. We've taken out most of the key parts, the leadership. We've done enormous damage to the domestic security apparatus, to all the missile launches, everything. you know we've done all this to an inveterate enemy of the United States which was threatening us you know and has killed our people again and again and again and I think he'll say you know fine and by the way again I think that's a reasonable argument to make but I think the question will be what then comes next I mean if you do leave the regime in place like the Terminator does it just sort of reassemble itself and come back again and I think that's a real risk and does the US get involved in this long-term conflict but again none of this has been thought through, I think.

16:14Katy Balls: I think this is all Trump. Yeah, you know, I think he came off the Venezuela, the sort of easy win in Venezuela and thought, oh, I can do exactly the same again in Iran. And I just don't think there's a seriousness about him, about the way he thinks about these things. And, you know, if he's lucky, if we're lucky, he kind of gets away with it here. If he's not, if we're not, then things do take a bad turn.

16:36Gerard Baker: Yeah, I think he has made things loose enough that to your point, you can see a world where if they want that off ramp, you can say you've had enough wins and you can say it's done. But even then, there's a question of, is it really over? And I was thinking back to the Bush speech where you had, you know, mission accomplished in the background. And obviously, what followed were many, many more years of the US being entangled in a conflict. So even when you want to have a narrative win, you can't necessarily guarantee that the other side are going to play ball and all these loose ends are going to be tidied up.

17:08Katy Balls: Yeah, I think the challenge for Trump will be, you know, both diplomatically, strategically in terms of US interests, but also politically, domestically. The regime in Iran kind of wins if it survives, even though, again, I think you can make a reasonable case that you've done a lot of damage to it. If it survives, if Khamenei Jr. and the IRGC remain in charge, I think for the American people, they will say, what was all that about? What was this, you know, this two, three, four, five week war with surging energy prices? And we've lost, you know, a number of Americans and we've spent a huge amount of money out there.

17:45Katy Balls: What was it about? Those guys are still there. And I think it will be very hard to paint that as a victory in the way that even I mean, to be fair to Bush back in 2003, when he did his mission accomplished thing, you know, the US had got to Baghdad. Saddam Hussein's government was toppled. There was a provisional coalition provisional authority in place that was then running the country. We had technically achieved our immediate objective, which was to get rid of the government of Saddam Hussein and to take over the country. Trump can't even really make that case at the moment. I know talking to some Republicans who've been through these wars in the past, they worry that this will not look like a victory and it will, again, just sort of do further damage to the prestige of the US.

18:32Gerard Baker: Let's now go to a break, Gerry. When we come back, we'll be talking about where the 2028 and the nomination for the Republican Party is really going to just be like an episode of The Apprentice. Hey, this is Adam Grant, host of Ted's podcast, Rethinking with Adam Grant. Let me share with you why smart finance leaders turn to Bill. They know that clarity isn't just helpful, it's strategic. As the intelligent finance platform, Bill uses AI to automate the busy work for nearly half a million businesses so they can focus on intentional growth. Eliminate the friction and start scaling with the proven choice.

19:05Gerard Baker: Visit bill.com slash proven to talk with an expert about automating your business finances and get a$250 gift card as a thank you. That's bill.com slash proven. Terms and conditions apply. See offer page for details. There's one place for the newest drops in wellness and performance and the biggest sale of the year. It's the drop by GNC, curating the best of what's new, handpicked by the pros who know what works. And right now, get it all, buy one, get one 50 % off

19:33Katy Balls: during the semi-annual LiveWell sale. From crushing workouts to leveling up your nutrition and everything in between, get the best deals on the latest innovations.

19:41Gerard Baker: All the newness is all on sale right now during the Live Well sale on The Drop by GNC.

19:50Katy Balls: Welcome back. Well, as ever, this being America and politics dominates. Everybody's talking about the domestic implications of this war, depending how long it goes on. And the big question in a lot of people's minds is, where does it leave the Republican Party as it seeks to win this war and then find a candidate in 2028? J.D. Vance, the vice president, seems to be the prohibitive favorite for the Republican nomination. Katie, very interestingly, this week we've had a number of stories saying that Vance, before the war, expressed significant skepticism to Trump about the wisdom of this, but that once the decision was made to go to war, he completely supported it, and in fact thought the US should go all out to do as much damage as it could.

20:35Katy Balls: So Vance, letting it be known that he had doubts about the war, that seems to me to be a classic kind of what they call CYA in America covering your backside or CYB, A standing for something different, where if the war does go badly and if as we've talked about, it isn't popular and it ends up not really with a decisive victory for the US, he can kind of say, oh, well, you know, that's me. And I've always been against these these forever wars and these interventions in places like the Middle East. I think the danger, of course is that it just makes him look even more cynical than he already is we've had some other interesting stories in the last week about Trump going around and asking donors whether they think Vance or Rubio Marco Rubio the Secretary of State would be better and the overwhelming response from donors almost to the point of like standing up and giving him a standing ovation is Marco Rubio because they don't trust Vance they think Vance is this sort of rather cynical inauthentic slippery character who I think a lot of them think can't win an election if he's so closely tied to Trump.

21:40Gerard Baker: Yeah well I think to the point about the article so this is a report and as you say saying J.D. Vance was opposed before but now of course is being a loyal foot soldier and is effectively you know behind the president even if he's doing a lot less media than he would normally do in your average week. I think what it's telling is the fact there's been there's been no denial there's been no furious response from the White House or the vice president's team saying fake news. And we know that this administration, if they don't like a story, are very quick to say that. So there's clearly, you know, at least one side that want that story to be out there.

22:13Gerard Baker: They don't want to have a fight about it. Then I think you get to the Marco Rubio point and ultimately is becoming all about 2028 and that prism. It's certainly the case that one of the games Donald Trump likes to play at dinners when you speak to those who have attended is often, you know, playing off his team against each other. And he will say it, I think, in a fairly jovial way, which is, you know, oh, what do you think about JD? How about Marco? What about my guys? Isn't my team great? But do you have a preference? And I think this is clearly to get a sense. And partly because for now, Donald Trump, you mentioned the poll ratings, but he is president, he is on top.

22:51Gerard Baker: I don't think he is necessarily the type of personality who would be super thrilled to have a clear heir apparent for three years going straight, which everyone looked to and took attention away from him. So I think it's slightly in his interest to have people guessing and jockeying for that position and who it might be. But then I think you come on to another aspect, which is the rise of Marco Rubio. And there is a real sense in the Republican Party, also I think among some administration figures, that the Secretary of State is on a really good run. They look to his interventions in foreign affairs.

23:26Gerard Baker: We're talking about the difficulties of what's going on in Iran. But also, this is an area where I think Donald Trump is trying to build a legacy when it comes to these things. And certainly Venezuela, the focus on the Western Hemisphere, Mark Arubia's profile has risen with that. And so have his fans. And you compare that to J.D. Vance, who, you know, if we had figures from both their teams on this, they would say this is all a media obsession. Of course, the vice president is going to focus more on domestic affairs. Also, logistically, for security reasons, you're never going to have the vice president by the president's side, outside the White House particularly.

24:02Gerard Baker: And that's one of the reasons J.D. Vance is missing in action recently. But certainly you can say a narrative is forming, which is J.D. Vance taking a back step from lots of the big foreign policy things that are happening and Marco Rubio filling that space. It's not that surprising that Republican donors prefer Marco Rubio to J.D. Vance. If you think about when Donald Trump picked J.D. Vance to be his running partner, I think there was heavy lobbying for Marco Rubio, for other candidates in that time. And there was a sense that J.D. Vance was not one of the gang in terms of the Republican Party.

24:40Gerard Baker: you had Donald Trump Jr, Tucker Carlson and others arguing for J.D. Vance because they thought he will be closer to MAGA. Now you can pick past comments J.D. Vance has made and say he didn't used to like Trump but certainly his views on foreign affairs where he sat on tariffs and various other issues made the case was made by people close to Trump including members of his family that if he wanted MAGA to continue past him J.D. Vance was a better bet than someone like Marco Rubio, who may have changed his spots for that, but ultimately could be more of a neoconservative in the future. And we're seeing some of that now in terms of who is getting behind Marco Rubio and saying how wonderful he is.

25:20Katy Balls: Yeah, there is an irony here, of course, which is that Trump's intervention in Iran is kind of a kind of bit of a class, classically from the sort of neocon book, especially when they were talking about regime change in the early stages and the evil regime and bringing democracy and supporting the uprising of the people in Iran and getting them to take over their government, all that kind of stuff. That was absolute classic neocon stuff, which is, of course, anathema to large chunks of the MAGA base and that base represented by the likes of Tucker Carlson in particular. Tucker has been the most articulately outspoken against sort of wars of regime change in America chasing windmills around the world.

26:03Katy Balls: Now, Rubio is the one in the administration who is most closely associated with that. He's, you know, I think Rubio is, to be fair to him, although he's trimmed a lot, obviously, to gain acceptance with Trump and his crowd. Rubio is still kind of an idealist. You know, I think it's partly very personal with him, his family background from Cuba. I think Rubio would love nothing more than to topple the government in Cuba and replace it with a democracy. I think the Venezuela operation to some extent was was about that. Although, of course, Venezuela is not anywhere near to being a democracy. So Rubio has always been back.

26:40Katy Balls: He was a strong supporter of the Iraq war. First time around, he was a strong supporter of persisting with the Afghanistan war when others were sort of skeptical about it. He's been a very articulate exponent of remaking the world for America. And this is kind of what the Iran mission looked like. As we've said, Vance supposedly out there, and I can believe this, sort of expressing some reservations about this for exactly the same reasons or the obverse of those reasons, which is that he's very anti-neocon. He doesn't like the idea of America going out and trying to change the world. And yet it does, as it stands, Rubio's standing is somewhat higher, at least with the public, than Vance's is.

27:18Katy Balls: And, you know, again, even though the paradox is the war's not popular. I have reason to believe that Rubio was not particularly enthusiastic about this, but it's kind of more in Rubio's sort of overall global playbook than Vance. And yet somehow Rubio seems to be emerging with a little bit more stature from this than Vance does. It's going to be, you know, this is going to play out in the next few weeks and months. I tell you one thing I think that is really important and I think quite troubling is the role that is going to be sort of ascribed to Israel once this war is over. However, if the war is not a great success, if it doesn't end in a decisive victory for the United States and, you know, the Iranian government surrendering, which seems unlikely, then I think a view, an argument will be put strongly from the Tucker Carlson wing.

28:07Katy Balls: And I'm sure it will be echoed at least internally by J.D. Vance and his associates that the U.S. was kind of led into this war by Israel, that we were fighting Israel's war, not our own war. And, you know, Israel is already in remarkably held in historically low esteem in the United States right now compared to where it was at any point in the last 50 years. There was a poll a couple of weeks ago which basically said that Americans are marginally now more favorably disposed towards the Palestinians than towards the Israelis. That's an astonishing thing for anybody who's followed America over the last 50 years.

28:39Katy Balls: America has been an Israel's staunchest ally with huge popular support on both sides of the aisle. That's gone. So I think one potentially very tricky thing for the Republicans is going to be how unpopular Israel may be, how much the likes of Tucker Carlson are able to make the argument that this was a war for Israel, not for the United States. And then whether or not also on the Democratic side, whether the Democrats kind of really want to run hard now as an anti-Israel party. And again, they'll doubtless accuse Israel certainly of dragging the U.S. into this war. And again, there's enough anti-Semitism on the left already with a significant amount of sort of Islamist sentiment among the radical left of the Democratic Party.

29:21Katy Balls: So I think that's one of the consequences of this war could be in terms of domestic politics. Ultimately, how close the U.S.-Israeli relationship remains. I think that's a much more open question today than it has been, you know, at any point really in the last 30 or 40 years.

29:40Gerard Baker: Yes. And of course, Jerry, if you have a situation where Donald Trump decides next week, Friday, the week after, to declare huge victory and ultimately leaves Israel to it, A, that's quite a burden for Israel. But you can imagine Israel may have to look back to America for help in the future. And I'm not sure they're going to have a friend as warm towards them as Donald Trump in terms of what comes next, potentially if it's Marco Rubio. but we know on the democrat side um that they like to be more hesitant even if there is that deep relationship and then if you do think about the potential of where this goes next i think you have seen those forces in the republican party for a long time they're israel skeptic and it's really also the future of the party if you think about where it's coming from because it tends to be the younger age groups so you have your steve bannons tucker carlson's Megyn Kelly, Candice Owens and others.

30:34Gerard Baker: But who are they speaking to? It's this newer generation. And from attending some of these younger MAGA events and Turning Point, there is this negative view towards Israel. And you can imagine this wall feeding into it.

30:48Katy Balls: Yeah, I think Israel could find itself in a really strange position. There's no question since the horror of October 7th, that Israel has been in the ascendant in that region. And of course, Iran has been on the decline. I mean, inflicting whatever, again, a lot of people unhappy with Israel's war. I'm not one of them. I think Israel, the damage that Israel was able to inflict on Hamas in that war was extraordinary and was a largely successful war. Obviously, civilian casualties were a tragic consequence, but I think sometimes that happens in war. They inflicted huge damage on Hamas. They inflicted massive damage on Hezbollah.

31:24Katy Balls: And, of course, they directly struck Iran. And by the way, despite the Palestinian situation, despite what happened in Gaza, enjoying fundamentally improving relationships with Arab countries, particularly Saudi Arabia. So, you know, Israel has found itself, thanks to its own resilience and the skill of its military and arguably the skill of its strategists, has found itself in a very strong position. And that, I think, is obviously what drove Netanyahu to say this is the moment for us to really deliver the coup de grace to Iran by taking out the regime. And that would really establish Israel's security, its safety, if you want to put it this way.

32:00Katy Balls: It's his hegemony in the region. Now you could find itself in a position where it doesn't deliver the coup de grace, that we have this war and the Iranian regime survives, damaged, obviously, and significantly defanged, but still survives. Arguably, perhaps still even more determined, given what's happened to it in the last two weeks, to shore up its own defenses and perhaps to develop a nuclear capability. with now the kind of pretty clear evidence that the US and Israel are between them not able to destroy the regime. So they will feel some additional resilience from that. And on top of all of that, you may have an increasingly, I wouldn't say hostile United States, but certainly the United States is going to be more wary of committing to Israel than it has been at any point in the last few decades, because all the things we've discussed, the Democratic Party, which is increasingly hostile towards Israel, and an element of the Republican Party that thinks their foreign policy has been dictated by Israel.

32:59Katy Balls: So, you know, it is a strange situation that Israel could go from this position of extraordinary strength that it's developed over the last two and a half, three years, to a greater fragility and uncertainty for Israel's prospects than it's had in the recent past. So, again, this is obviously all speculation. Maybe, Katie, you know, Trump will declare victory tomorrow. they'll get rid of Khamenei number two the Iranian people will rise up and the former Shah's son will take over and everything will be fine but it still seems a bit of a long shot to me and I think if it doesn't if all those good things don't happen then we are storing up problems for the longer term but I think that's probably just about what we've got time for this week I'm sure much more will happen in the next week we'll have more to discuss do join us again next week we'll have more for you on the State of It USA but in the meantime thanks for joining us have a great week

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