transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Hi, Eli.

Speaker 2:
[00:01] Hey, Bob, how are you?

Speaker 1:
[00:03] I'm good, how are you doing?

Speaker 2:
[00:04] I'm good, I'm good.

Speaker 1:
[00:06] Let me introduce us. I'm Robert Wright, publisher of NonZero Newsletter, which I encourage people to check out. This is the NonZero Podcast. You are Eli Lake, a longtime sparring partner of mine, and also writer for the Free Press, host of the Breaking History Podcast, contributing editor, commentary. You and I have had conversations in the past, often about the Middle East, sometimes about Iran. We've tended to disagree about Iran, but possibly never as clearly as we're going to disagree now. At least that's my guess, because we're in the middle of this war with Iran, it was started by the US and Israel. I think it was a really bad idea. You think it was a good idea. I think you can start out by correcting me if I'm wrong. I'd love to be wrong about that.

Speaker 2:
[00:59] I think that the United States and Iran have been at war since 1979. And I think that the current kind of battle, the hostilities, certainly began on February 28th with the decapitation strikes of the regime and Trump's 3 a.m. message.

Speaker 1:
[01:18] Okay, so that maybe that obviates a question I was going to ask. If you think the war has actually been going on since 1979. What I was going to say, I was going to bring up a subject that seems to matter a lot more to me than to the average person who talks about foreign policy in America. That's international law. I was going to say, I assume you're not bothered by what seems to me a clear cut violation of international law here. But maybe you don't think it's... I was going to say, do you think it's not a clear cut violation of international law for us to have attacked Iran? Or do you just think international law shouldn't be of overriding importance?

Speaker 2:
[01:56] Well, if you mean that international law says that you need a UN Security Council resolution for one sovereign state to attack another.

Speaker 1:
[02:06] Well, or at least that you should only attack in self-defense, which I don't think you can argue that the US was, you know, that this was an attack we launched in self-defense. And that's what the UN Charter says.

Speaker 2:
[02:21] Yes. So I'm in agreement that the UN Charter says that and that this was done outside of it. However, my caveat would be that, you know, I think international law is in a pretty sorry state right now in the world, and states like Iran kind of exist outside of international law in many ways by their tactics. So, you know, I guess I concede that the letter that yes, clearly the UN Charter says that you need to have UN Security Council resolution and the United States did not obtain one. It's certainly not the first American war. It's not the first recent war. We have a lot of examples where, you know, this kind of basic of the UN Charter has not been observed. There are some international relations theorists that said, you know, it was never really in effect. But I would say it's really eroded a lot. But yeah, there's a huge difference. I mean, I'm willing to concede that. I mean, the different, I mean, Colin Powell and George W. Bush and Don Rumsfeld, that administration more than 20 years ago tried very hard to get a UN Security Council resolution. But ultimately relied on a kind of weird argument that there were other UN Security Council resolutions that were in the breach. We don't have to rehash that now. But yes, we now are living in a different era. But I would also say that there have been a lot of wars that did not have, the UN Security Council had nothing to do with. I mean, you could look at the Russian invasions of Ukraine. You could look at the US intervention in Kosovo. You could look at the war in Libya. I mean, there's just a lot that's happened where it just feels a little bit like the UN Charter is pretty quaint, especially if you look at it.

Speaker 1:
[04:17] But it is a treaty commitment by the United States. It's a treaty we ratified. So are you saying that we really, we don't necessarily have to comply with our treaty commitments?

Speaker 2:
[04:30] No, I'm not saying that you don't comply with the treaty commitments. What I'm saying is that the status of the United Nations in general, I feel is kind of approaching League of Nations territory. There are aggressive states in the world. There are rogue states. And that I think that there's a sense here where, I mean, if we move to a slightly different issue, which is the constitutional question about, should Trump have gone to Congress? I, even though I guess I'm on the hawker side of it, I would say I think he should have. But again, that's another norm that's been violated. That was violated before Trump as well. I just think that we're just in a different kind of period at this point. And that my vision of an international system that could work would be one with fewer members but clearer kind of understanding that, we are all agreeing to these sets of norms. But at this point, we don't really have that world. Okay, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[05:29] I mean-

Speaker 2:
[05:29] That's where I'm at on that. So I know the UN Charter as you do, this violated it.

Speaker 1:
[05:37] Yeah. I mean, the last thing I'd say on that is, I think you said, no, you do think we should comply with treaty commitments, but we should have violated the UN Charter in this case. And I don't understand that because this is a treaty, it's a ratified treaty. And by the way, you mentioned that this violates the US Constitution because-

Speaker 2:
[06:00] No, no. I'm not saying it violates the US Constitution. I think that it violates the Spirit of the War Powers Act. But I think that's another norm that has been eroded over time. And I'm not a fan of multilateral treaties, I should say. So I like treaties with other governments. But I just think the problem here is that if you have a world where you have a number of states that just simply live outside of international law, it creates, I think, a problem to the, you know, sort of a danger to the commons when, and it's an overall danger if you sort of have some states that you expect to follow international law, and other states like Iran that exists outside of international law, that you, you know, at a certain point, you know, I think they've relinquished their sovereignty. I wish there was a process. And I don't know how it would work necessarily because I think that, you know, its allies of China and Russia would have, you know, are permanent members of the Security Council and they have a veto. But I think there should be a kind of process where a state like Iran, under the Islamic Republic regime, would kind of relinquish its sovereignty, which is to say they've violated so many things that at a certain point, you can come in and do something about it. But that is not how international law works. But maybe if there was in my ideal world, that's how I would have it.

Speaker 1:
[07:24] Okay, I mean, one more print of the Constitution. The Constitution also says that the ratified treaties become, quote, the law of the land. So I would argue that violating the UN Charter, as you and I agree we did, is actually a violation of the US Constitution. But you're using the word norm, it seems to be kind of interchangeably with laws. There is a difference, but I would agree that compliance with the law is a norm, right? It's like there are lawless societies where people routinely violate laws, and in that case, the norm hasn't taken hold. I would say, I agree with you right now in international law, in the world, the norm of complying with the UN Charter has eroded. You seem to think that Iran led the way or something. I would say no, the US, if you look at the post-Cold War world, which is the world that offered a chance to kind of restore the significance of the Charter and the UN and everything, because suddenly, you know, there were things the US and the Soviet Union or then Russia could agree on. And in fact, did agree on. The Persian Gulf War was authorized by a vote that included China and Russia. If you look at that world, that new start we had with the first Bush administration, I would say it's the United States has led the way in the violation of the Charter. The Panama Invasion under Bush I, as you mentioned Kosovo, yes, we violated the UN Charter before Russia did. And we had more normative power than any other country. We had more potential to restore and uphold the norm of compliance with the UN Charter than any other. And I would say we squandered it. I mean, if we're talking about the Charter, part of the Charter is about trans-border aggression, which I think is the heart of it. I'm not sure what violations on Iran's part you're talking about, but we have committed a lot of them, including the Iraq War in 2003, of course.

Speaker 2:
[09:32] I mean, Iran is responsible for hollowing out the state of Lebanon by arming, funding Hezbollah. It's responsible for the Yemen Civil War, the latest one by arming and funding the Houthis. It's responsible, in part, at least, for the horrors of the Gaza War because of its long-standing relationship with Hamas, although it was strained because Iran also then supported Bashar al-Assad when he was in the middle of his horrific slaughter with the use of chemical weapons against his own people. Iran is kind of a serial violator of international sanctions. Until the JCPOA, it had illegally pursued land-destined nuclear programs.

Speaker 1:
[10:20] That's not, well, Israel.

Speaker 2:
[10:23] Israel is not a member.

Speaker 1:
[10:24] Go ahead and finish. I want to start at the beginning. Go ahead and finish and we'll get to new.

Speaker 2:
[10:28] Well, I'm just saying, Iran in every definition is a rogue state. From its very beginning, the Islamic Republic, the revolution is, we see within a few months, they called the embassy hostage. They send out assassins to kill the first interim prime minister. They have, we know from court documents, they tried to hire killers to try to assassinate Donald Trump when he was out of office, not to mention Masih Al-Iniyajad.

Speaker 1:
[10:56] You're against assassinating the heads of state, right? You would not support any country that would do such a thing?

Speaker 2:
[11:01] Well, I celebrated the ending of Khamenei and his various henchmen.

Speaker 1:
[11:05] That's kind of my point, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[11:06] Well, except I'm saying that, like this for Iran, this is a behavior that goes back a long way. And part of the reason why I celebrate Khamenei's demise precisely because of their rogue and despicable kind of state behavior. I mean, there's a whole series of things. I mean, I don't want to have to go through everything, but you know that the Iranians were behind the assassination of Kurdish dissidents in Germany and in Austria, on and on. It's like this whole list. They, Henry Kissinger, when he was alive, had a great kind of quip about Iran, which is it has to decide whether it wants to be a country or a revolution. And it has tried to spread an Islamic revolution, which I think is an authoritarian debased ideology that is general, is hostile to things that I care about. We haven't even discussed how it treats its own citizens, which is despicable. So I just look at everything that Iran does, and I really don't put it in the same category. In the case of Panama, you had a short war to remove a drug-running dictator. In the case of Kosovo, you had a bombing campaign that effectively halted...

Speaker 1:
[12:32] I'm sorry, Noriega. Sorry.

Speaker 2:
[12:33] Yeah, Noriega. You had a bombing campaign that effectively halted Slobodan Milosevic's efforts to cleanse Kosovo of its Albanians. I do think that, and I just want to make one other point that's related, is that we sometimes get caught up in this, but international law, as you know, not the same as a domestic law because it relies to... I mean, who enforces international law? The United Nations does not have its own army. It relies on the United States to carry the load. I just don't really look at international law in the same way, just because I think in that sense, it's more ephemeral. So, that's why I reject your effort to try to say we're the number one rogue state. And even in a case like Iraq, you know, leaving aside that there was an effort to try to bring on the UN Security Council, I mean, in Iraq, I mean, it was not equivalent of like Russia's invasion of Ukraine. There was not an effort to, you know, kind of occupy Iraq indefinitely and make it the 51st state. It was an effort to...

Speaker 1:
[13:52] But we did occupy it.

Speaker 2:
[13:55] Well, yes, but what do we do when we invaded Iraq? And I would know that there's, I don't think there's any plan for like a serious...

Speaker 1:
[14:03] I don't want to get off on a run.

Speaker 2:
[14:04] What do we do? No, no, what we do is we help them write a constitution and they've had successive elections. That's not what like Russia's doing in Ukraine. Russia's, I mean...

Speaker 1:
[14:12] Well, I don't want to get on a run. I mean, yeah, we had elections that we kind of tried to put our finger on the scale of and that's what Russia might do if they did ever seize control of Ukraine. But anyway, the... Let me just give the beginning. So you've said a lot of things about things Iran has done in the context of international law. I think some of the things you mentioned are not covered by international law. Let me say, what I was trying to focus on was the core of the UN Charter, the bedrock of international law, the trans-border aggression. And you started out by, in your list of Iranian crimes, by saying, they hollowed out Lebanon by supporting Hezbollah. Well, as no doubt you know, Hezbollah's origins begin with Israel's invasion of Lebanon, trans-border aggression, violation of the UN Charter. Hezbollah begins as an organization of resistance against Israeli occupation. Does Iran see the opportunity to develop a junior ally? Absolutely. And we can talk about that, but it's just kind of ironic to me that the beginning of that episode is a clear violation of international law by Israel.

Speaker 2:
[15:25] Why did Israel feel the need to invade Lebanon?

Speaker 1:
[15:27] Because the PLO had found a home there.

Speaker 2:
[15:30] And the PLO was conducting a number of cross-border raids and it was threatening. And the PLO was using Lebanon as a base to attack Israel.

Speaker 1:
[15:37] Look, maybe it's conceivable that there's a stronger argument against my claiming that that was a clear-cut violation of law than I appreciate, but I wouldn't say Hezbollah's origins lie with the invasion and occupation of Lebanon by Israel.

Speaker 2:
[15:53] From the very beginning, the Iranians were there with a mission, much the way the more aggressive side of Soviet foreign policy at times. Stalin, they were trying to promote an Islamic Revolution. From the very beginning, you're right, hold on, I want us to say, yes, you're right, that it started as a insurgency against Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon. However, from the very beginning, they were also an instrument of Iranian statecraft. There's a reason why this big scandal, the Reagan administration involved sending arms for hostages. It was because the Iranians were getting the arms and instructing its clients to release hostages that it had taken. So I think that that shows something more than just sort of an organic group that Iran saw a moment of opportunity. Most scholars of Hezbollah today acknowledge that it is an extension of Iran. As such, Iran gave it 100,000 or more missiles aimed solely for the destruction of Israel, which was basically creating an Iranian border with Israel. So that is what I mean. But more importantly, like what is that? I'm saying that to me, all of their activities basically sponsoring an organization that is committed to the Iranian regime's goal, which is to destroy Israel, that places the security of Lebanon, the delicate political balance in great danger. Finally, we have a situation which is finally the case where you see leading members of the Lebanese government in the last three or four weeks have now finally said, Hezbollah is an outlaw organization. They have expelled the Iranian ambassador. I mean, there's a reason why you're seeing these other Lebanese politicians finally saying enough is enough, because Iran basically, I would say, kind of had what sort of stealth or proxy invasion of the country.

Speaker 1:
[17:50] Okay. Let me say just a few things in serial here. When you say Iran gave them weapons solely for the destruction of Israel, we can save this argument for later in the conversation. I'm sure you're aware of the view that actually from Iran's point of view, these so-called proxy groups, I think in some ways that's the most leading term, but in any event, have a largely deterrent function. That is to say, their ability to threaten Israel was supposed to keep Israel from attacking Iran. Indeed, we saw that once Hamas and Hezbollah were completely degraded, Israel proceeded to start attacking Iran. It seems that's not a crazy idea. We can save that argument for later. You brought up the nuclear issue in the context of international law. That's confusing to me because Iran has not violated, I mean, the non-proliferation treaty which Iran is a party to does permit you to enrich uranium. We had a nuclear deal with Iran that allowed us a degree of transparency that no other nation has in terms of monitoring and surveillance. We knew what was going on there. Trump decided to pull out. Israel wanted him to pull out and that helped get us where we are today. The point is, it's not a violation of international law for them to enrich. By the way, if they want to develop a nuclear weapon, all they have to do to do that in compliance with international law is give whatever it is, three months, six months notice that they're getting out of the non-proliferation treaty and they do that. In that case, they would have exactly this status in international law that Israel has, which is it has nuclear weapons and it's not a party to the NPT. So that is not, I think, a serious international law issue. I would say further, a lot of people ask like, wait, why does Israel get nuclear? A lot of people in Iran ask this, why does Israel get nuclear weapons if Iran doesn't? I'd be delighted with a regional, like nuclear free agreement with intrusive inspections and Israel let's go of their nuclear weapons and there's no nuclear weapons in the region. That would be great. But I think a lot of people ask why Israel gets is entitled to get them. Whereas if anyone else wants to get them, even in compliance with international law, Israel gets to just bomb the shit out of them in flagrant violation of international. The last thing is on this assassination thing, I mean, come on. I mean, first of all, the various things you listed, some of them I'm not conversing in, some of them I am conversing in, I'm not acknowledging that there was any kind of, that all of the assassination and plots and or actual assassinations happened, I don't know in some cases, but I will say that surely you would agree. No nation has done more to normalize assassination, broadly speaking, heads of state, everybody else than Israel, right? I mean, that's kind of what the movie Munich is about. You've seen the movie, right? Like after the Olympic, the Black September thing in the Munich Olympics, you know, these terrorists killed these Israeli athletes, it was a horrible thing. But Israel, you know, decided...

Speaker 2:
[21:16] CIA and the KGB killed an awful lot of people. I mean, I don't know what to say. I mean, okay, listen, I don't want to get caught up, but I find that to be a pretty...

Speaker 1:
[21:24] All that was before, so you're saying, yes, it was normalized before Iran started doing it.

Speaker 2:
[21:27] I didn't say that Iran was the only country that ever... I was listing all the things that Iran had done that in my view make it a rogue state, but let me just go back to the nuclear thing because I think you've got some of it jumbled. Israel became a nuclear power before there was an NPT and has declined to join the NPT. Israel is also not a declared nuclear power, and the big concern that as a result of a sort of secret agreement in 1971 or 1970, I forget exactly what year, between the US and Nixon and Golda Meir, was that Israel would not become a declared nuclear power, and as a result, it kind of worked because there wasn't a proliferation cascade in the Middle East. Everybody knows Israel has nuclear weapons, but only Iran has sought nuclear weapons. But I want to get back to the NPT, you're right.

Speaker 1:
[22:17] Wait, what do you mean? First of all, they abandoned a nuclear weapons-per-say program in 2003.

Speaker 2:
[22:30] Before we get there, I want to just explain how Iran is a violator of the NPT, because Iran violated the NPT by building secret industrial-sized enrichment facilities without declaring it to the International Atomic Energy Agency. This was the crisis of the first year of the Obama administration when the US discovered Fordow. Before that, there was the discovery of Natanz. Now, the way the NPT works is that you're supposed to be up front, you're not supposed to build them underneath mountains. As Israel has learned when it found the secret archives of the nuclear program and as the US intelligence and the IAEA learned later, there were plenty of these sites that were for the nuclear program that were never declared to the IAEA. So, that itself is an enormous violation. But let's just take a step back from that. Iran is a fanatic regime that is based on an ideology that is seeking to spread an Islamic revolution. That is what they, every day, death to Israel, death to America. So, there's a difference between a country like that acquiring a nuclear weapon, and a country like Israel or America, or France having nuclear weapons. And so, I don't like the fact that Pakistan has a nuclear weapon. But I would say the prospect of the Iranians getting a nuclear weapon is even worse than Pakistan, which has a shady Islamist security force. So, that's where I just think that like you're kind of glossing over things. And finally, I think I do think it's very important. And so, that's why when you sort of make this comparison, Israel develops a nuclear weapon before there's a nonproliferation treaty. They obviously declined to sign the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. Iran signs the nuclear and then, you know, is trying to cheat that nuclear proliferation treaty. So, I mean, that's where I would say it's apples and oranges.

Speaker 1:
[24:41] As for Israel, I'm not, I'm stipulating that Israel is in compliance with international law. My only point is that Iran can develop a nuclear weapon in compliance with international law if it gives the three months or six months notice of withdrawal from the NPT. That's all I'm saying. Now, as for Iran, itself...

Speaker 2:
[25:01] I don't want Iran to get a nuclear weapon, do you?

Speaker 1:
[25:04] I'd rather they didn't, but that was under control. We had that under control. And then Trump, with Israel's active support, got out of the Obama deal, and with which Iran was clearly complying. And you support, did you support withdrawal from the deal, which had this incredibly intrusive inspection and monitoring?

Speaker 2:
[25:25] If I'm being honest, at the time, I said that Trump should use the leverage of the threat to withdraw to get a better deal. But now, in retrospect, I'm in favor of it in retrospect. But at the time, I wrote columns saying that it was an opportunity to use American leverage to try to get a much better deal than what the... And I would just argue that I don't think that the Obama deal in any way got us out of the woods, because what it was relying on was a kind of promise. I mean, like, a good deal would have been to basically pursue the policy that we have, that we were... What was US policy up to then, which is that you can have nuclear power, but you cannot enrich the power in your own country. And that was called a 123 agreement. That was what the United Arab Emirates basically agreed to. It's what a lot of other countries had agreed to. We make an exception to this kind of understanding because of Iran, that already, as I said, built up a massive industrial enrichment capability. My problem, in as simple as terms, with the nuclear deal, was that it left that massive industrial enrichment capability in place. So Iran could become effectively a threshold nuclear power and still be in compliance with what was the Joint Comprehensive Framework, whatever, the JCPOA agreement. So that's the issue, that we're basically at the end of the process, relying on the Iranians to just keep their word, which I think would have been a bad idea.

Speaker 1:
[27:06] Well, no, I mean, the deal, the thing about it was, and first of all, I mean, enriching it on their own soil, I don't think was, I mean, that was like a normative thing, right? Like that wasn't a violation of the NPT per se, but in any event, by the end-

Speaker 2:
[27:23] No, no, I'm agreeing with you that the NPT allows for it, but yeah.

Speaker 1:
[27:25] By the end of Obama, that's all declared, and it was so transparent that, yes, I do think Iran wanted to, for strategic reasons, remain a threshold state. They thought that that might help, for example, defend against Israel, I think, and although I can't read their mind, who knows what they wanted, but the point is, we would know if they were breaking out and went on a headlong rush thanks to the Obama deal, we would have known, and it would have been months and months before they could develop an actual nuclear weapon, and you would know.

Speaker 2:
[27:58] Even Obama acknowledged at the end of the deal, it would be a matter of weeks. So that's not true, it would be months and months.

Speaker 1:
[28:06] Oh, I don't think that's true. To put it on a warhead? To put it on a, well, anyway, well, that's a technical...

Speaker 2:
[28:11] Listen, this is what the, I mean, this is, it gets a little technical. And my head spins from it, too, but I'm saying if you go back and you look at what the warehouse of archives that the Israelis liberated from downtown Tehran, you find that they had everything in place pretty much. And I don't buy the, I mean, I think that the 2003 assessment, by the way, that they were not, they'd chosen to abandon their path for a weapon is based largely on a fatwa from the late supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. And I would just point out that they probably would have stayed to it, but the thing about, you know, fatwas and the Shia faith is that they die with the Ayatollah. And-

Speaker 1:
[28:53] Oh yeah, and maybe you shouldn't have killed him, but anyway.

Speaker 2:
[28:55] Well, okay, he was like, but my point is that I just think that they, the plan was to have everything in place and then either become a threshold nuclear net. But this gets to like a deeper point, which is that, again, I would like for there only to be one country with nuclear weapons, America. But there's a difference between Israel or England having nuclear weapons versus a country like Iran, which I mean, you don't deny that they- This is where I disagree.

Speaker 1:
[29:25] This is where I disagree. And I think you have to understand a lot of people do disagree. And I would just say, I would say at a minimum, it's far from evident that there's a clear cut difference between the two. And I would say that I think in general, what we've seen here is that you see such an obvious kind of moral distinction between Iran and Israel, that it's just we have no compliance to act as if Iran, we have no obligation to act as if Iran is a normal state. But I think you need to at least understand the perspective that that's not obviously true. That if you were like this impartial observer on Mars, I mean, look, like right now, you look down and say, look, wait, Israel is at the moment, maybe you'll disagree with this terminology, but ethnically cleansing Lebanon, ethnically cleansing Gaza, ethnically cleansing the West Bank, a shitload of violations of international law. They bombed Syria at will even after a friendly regime takes over and so on. And I would say that if you go back a long way, even, and first go over the list of terrible things Iran has done, and we go through them all and figure out, which ones are well-substantiated and which ones aren't or whatever, a lot of people would still go back and say, look, Israel has been committing what used to be considered atrocities for decades, like these assassinations and so on. I'm not even saying, and I want to emphasize, I'm not really taking that view right now. I mean, I think it has its appeal, but my main point is, I'm not sure you'll appreciate how from just a fairly remote vantage point, it's just far from clear, especially in the wake of the last two years. But it's far from clear that Iran is a bad guy and Israel is good guy. Now, I know if you're the average American, you take that for granted. I would argue that that's because our perception of Iran has been mediated by a media in America that is biased. And look, happens all the time. I would say the same thing about the Ukraine-Russia war. Ukraine's our ally, Israel's our ally. This slants our coverage of-

Speaker 2:
[31:51] What?

Speaker 1:
[31:52] Right?

Speaker 2:
[31:54] I'm sorry. There's a lot you've said.

Speaker 1:
[31:56] Okay, go ahead.

Speaker 2:
[31:57] And I guess I would respond like this. It feels to me like the argument that you're making, and at one point you said, I'm not even saying I are, but you're saying a lot of people are saying-

Speaker 1:
[32:05] Well, for present purposes, I'm just trying to get you to step back and say, wait a second.

Speaker 2:
[32:12] I want to address the people who think that Israel's the bad guy or Israel's the terrorist.

Speaker 1:
[32:16] I'm not even saying they're the bad guy. I'm saying it's not self-evident to a lot of people, including me, that Iran is a clearly worse actor than Israel. That's not clear to me.

Speaker 2:
[32:28] All right, well, it's very clear to me, but let me just explain what I think the error is in your kind of telling of recent history or the current state of things. When you talk about, first of all, let's just start with Gaza. Israel withdraws from Gaza in 2005, and as soon as Israel withdraws, there's this one sort of interim period, there are elections, and Hamas wins for the legislature, and then eventually Hamas conducts a kind of coup of the Palestinian Authority presence, the security presence. Well, wait a second, I'm getting to it.

Speaker 1:
[33:08] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[33:09] Okay. And as soon as Hamas takes control of Gaza, it begins launching a series of rocket wars, and those rocket wars then compel Israel to effectively close its border and try to monitor things that are coming in because they don't want the people, the sovereigns of Gaza to have those rockets. Egypt also closes the border. And in that process, Hamas continues to treat the population of Gaza as a kind of human sacrifice because it's more important to Hamas to destroy Israel than to build anything approaching a state for the Palestinians who are so cursed to live under them. And ultimately, it culminates in October 7th, which was a kind of, I would argue, almost a national suicide mission because of the utter brutality of the rape and murder spree. In the case of Lebanon, and I think there is room to argue about the taxes and the strategy, and there's all kinds of things, but on just a sort of moral level, it's not that Israel out of the blue is deciding to do that. Israel is responding to hundreds of rockets that are being, missiles being fired by Hezbollah, and where do they fire their missiles and rockets from? They fire them from homes. This has been documented over and over again, but it's basically almost a mafia-like operation where they say, we need you to put this in your garage or wherever, and when the time comes. So that is a reality that Israel has to deal with. So when they are going in, I don't know how long that ground force is, but I would concede that Israel Katz is a terrible kind of international spokesman for the state of Israel, their defense minister, but there's a reason why they're going in and they're saying, we've got to make sure that this whole area, South of La Tani is cleared because that has been a staging ground for these missile attacks, which basically makes the northern part of the country uninhabitable. For me, I just think it's kind of a chicken and egg thing, which is to say, Iran is committed to destroying Israel. It says, I don't think it has the capability of destroying America. It's a core part of the regime's identity. I'll go one further, which is that I actually think that they are, I mean, I think we've seen because there've been so many uprisings in Iran since 1999, but I don't think that what the Islamic Republic offers, which has prioritized its pursuit of revolution and pursuit of the negation of the Jewish state, I think it's an anomaly in Iranian history. I think it's kind of un-Iranian, and that's why I don't think that that regime has legitimacy. But that's what Israel is kind of dealing with. You can understand that it's very different than just a random state having a nuclear weapon. It's a state that has committed Israel's destruction trying to get a nuclear weapon. The reason why I would say that the JCPOA was inadequate and a bad deal was because it basically allowed Iran to keep its nuclear industry. It lifted any sanctions, so they were allowed to build up their conventional missiles, which go hand in hand with the threat of a nuclear weapon. It infused it with cash with all the sanctions relief, plus the cash bribe for the release of dual national Americans who had been unfairly held in Iranian jail. That's why I don't want Iran to get a nuclear weapon, because the nature of that regime is very different than. Now, there are foreign policy realists, that's a school of thought as you know, who think that the ideology of a particular government or regime is immaterial, states pursue their interests. I don't buy that. I just think that there's a huge difference between a state that is organized like Iran is today, versus a normal nation state. So that's how I would put it.

Speaker 1:
[37:35] Okay. A couple of things. For starters, in your Hamas narrative, when I said you left something out, I would encourage people to find a piece I wrote a couple of years ago now, in NonZero. I think it's on the right column of the homepage because it was relatively favored by readers or something compared to my other stuff. It's called The Truth About Hamas. One thing it details, I'm sure you know the basics of the story, is that before the coup you talked about, what happened to us, America said, let's hold elections for a Palestinian government. As it happened, so Hamas won the election. I mean, they didn't win a majority of the vote, but because of the way it worked and various things, they wound up in control of the legislature and it was kind of a quasi-parliamentary balance system where the prime minister was going to have a lot of, the legislature had a lot of power. So, well, we decided and we said explicitly, yeah, it's fine for Hamas to run, it's an election. But we didn't say they could win. So once they won, we, in effect, sponsored a coup against Hamas. And that led to this whole civil war. And there was this moment when it was being, the civil war, there was mediation going on in Saudi Arabia, when the leaders of Hamas were saying some pretty damn moderate things. The truth is, neither the United States nor Israel, I think, wanted to follow up on those. So they didn't really get pursued. We'll never know what happened if we had tried at that point to nurture moderate elements. But anyway, I'd encourage people to read the piece, look into that.

Speaker 2:
[39:24] Moderate elements of Hamas?

Speaker 1:
[39:26] Well, I'm just saying, they were saying things. They were saying a two-state solution was okay. I mean, they weren't. Well, look at what they said. Read my piece.

Speaker 2:
[39:34] I'm happy to look at what they said. But Bob, let me offer a note of comity with a T. It was a massive error on the part of the Bush administration and also the government of Ariel Sharon, or maybe it was Ehud Omar when the election happened. Hamas should have never been allowed to run in the elections, full stop. The reason I would argue they should not have been allowed to run in elections is because they were an armed faction.

Speaker 1:
[40:10] So, we're the people we supported in the coup.

Speaker 2:
[40:12] Well, okay. I'll say another fact.

Speaker 1:
[40:14] We gave them some of the arms.

Speaker 2:
[40:15] They also shouldn't have run because we knew they were not committed to the democratic process. By the way, now that's not a question of speculation. How many elections have there been since then? How many elections has Hamas held? None. So, I am not one of these people. There's an argument that some Israelis have made, which I disagree with entirely, which is that, well, the people voted for Hamas. I say, no, the people voted for Hamas 20 years ago, once, and they haven't had a chance to correct their error. And, therefore, I see the Gazans as victims as of Hamas. And I've written a couple of things on this myself, where I've said, you know, this is a terrible situation for the average Gazan, because they're double victims of both Hamas and the Israeli war. So, I think that, you know, the empathy that we should have for Palestinian suffering should compel you to pursue real regime change. And one of the problems with the war fight, the wars, the rocket wars that led up to October 7th, is that they were always, the theory of the Israelis was that we would just hit a bunch of things and bomb them, and that would be a deterrent. I don't think you deter, you know, religious fanatics, authoritarian fanatics that way. I think that, especially since for them, and at least in terms of the battle space of public opinion or narrative battle space, the suffering of the people they purport to rule is a bonus. And we know this of how they decide, how they have chosen to fight and how they have built the tunnel networks that they don't allow their citizens to entry into, you know, after they conduct the horrors of October 7th. So my point here is only to say that we are in agreement insofar as they should have never been allowed to run an election. They're anti-democratic forces.

Speaker 1:
[42:15] No, I didn't say that was my view, so we're not necessarily in agreement there. I think if you're going to have an election, the outcome should be respected and you should give the winner a chance to rule and see whether they're going to deliver on their promise to rule decently.

Speaker 2:
[42:27] Well, let me put it like this. I agree that the Bush administration created a problem and they should have, the mistake was allowing Hamas to run in the election. I think the mistake in general was thinking that there was a way to moderate political Islam by allowing political Islamists to have power. I think we have to just come to terms that political Islam is, and I hope that at the end of this conflict with Iran, there is no more Islamic Republic in that country, and it is relegated to the dustbin of history. But I think we have to recognize that the Muslim Brotherhood and political Islam as a movement is a vicious and foul ideology that really does serve to be in the same landfill as communism, Nazism, et cetera. And that's really, I think that was a big delusion. And I remember coming on the show after I was in Egypt, and I remember saying, because I'd met, under Hazi Mubarak, the old dictator, I'd met members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and they were charming. They spoke English, they understood politics. There were a lot of things I liked about the moderates that I met. And then if you kind of continue to follow the story, what you found is none of those moderates were part of what happened once they finally won an election. No, they were going full steam ahead. So my point is that we have to just understand that political Islam, the ideology of Sayyid Qutb and Hassan al-Banna has run its course, and we really need to kind of move on. And we've already seen the Gulf monarchies have moved on. You know, I hope the Egyptians will move on. I think they basically have, although it's not a democratic country under Sisi. But, you know...

Speaker 1:
[44:14] Could have been, but we didn't...

Speaker 2:
[44:16] Yeah, but that's the problem. This is the hustle. This is the scam that the Islamists play. They pretend when they're out of power to like democracy, and then once they get power, they hate them.

Speaker 1:
[44:28] We can't have that argument, but I certainly don't think the problem with Egypt before the coup, that we implicitly supported, I certainly don't think the problem was that the Muslim Brotherhood leader was showing that he just couldn't live with democratic constraints. But in any event, let me, so, okay.

Speaker 2:
[44:48] Okay, I don't want to get into it, but yes, he was. He was absolutely...

Speaker 1:
[44:51] Okay, I'll let you say yes, he was, and that'll be it. So we've been doing this for close to 50 minutes. Now we're gonna go into overtime. This is the, you know, that's available to paid subscribers of the NonZero newsletter. Before we do that, I want to do a couple of things. Well, three things probably. I want to remind people that your stuff can be found at the Free Press, which I am not gonna call a Barry Weiss propaganda outfit because that would be totally unlike me to treat any guest with that kind of discourtesy. Okay? So do I get credit for not saying that?

Speaker 2:
[45:27] You sort of said it, but okay.

Speaker 1:
[45:31] Actually, that reminds me, we could talk about her in overtime. Let me write that down. Also, and your podcast, Breaking History.

Speaker 2:
[45:40] Yes. We're filling in with some interviews, but when we get back to our regular seasons, we're gonna do two seasons. It's a narrative podcast. So I do a lot of work.

Speaker 1:
[45:50] It was very highly produced under its previous name, which I forget. But anyway, it's back. And people can check out your conversation with Andrew Sullivan. It appeared on his podcast, but on his podcast, you run into a paywall. It's kind of like this podcast, except you run into it earlier. You, in contrast, pirated the entire thing and put it on your feed.

Speaker 2:
[46:13] With the blessing of Andrew.

Speaker 1:
[46:14] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[46:15] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[46:16] So then the other thing I wanted to do is, I'm gonna give a few bullet point replies, largely by way of foreshadowing what I want to pursue in overtime, then give you a chance to do your bullet point replies to my bullet point replies. I reserved the right to say, okay, that bullet points over in the middle of your bullet points, if they start seeming like paragraphs.

Speaker 2:
[46:40] Fair enough.

Speaker 1:
[46:41] Okay. So let me say I was delighted to hear you say, use the phrase chicken and egg. It's kind of a chicken and egg thing. I may have not understood the context, but I think that is true of this whole thing, Israel, Palestine and so on. If you're trying to say, well, one guy is the bad guy and the other is a good guy, it just depends on where you start the history. Because both sides, whenever you say, you did this horrible thing, they can say, okay, but right before that, you did this horrible thing. It really is a question of where you start this story. I think much the same can be said between Iran and Israel. You, I think, don't, but that's something I will pursue. Quick point on Lebanon. This is a little, maybe a little cheap, but in addition to invading, you've probably read or are familiar with the book Rise and Kill by Ronan, is it Bergen?

Speaker 2:
[47:42] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[47:42] You know, it's just because you, I say this only because, you know, you make a big deal of all of this horrible stuff. Iran has done one thing Israel did was they started this campaign. They created this fake group that was supposedly a Lebanese group of some kind. And then Israel, like they would like plant a bomb that would go off in a parked car and kill people and attribute it to this group. Then this fake group will come out and say, we did this. No, Israel did it. And I'm just saying like, you got to go back to-

Speaker 2:
[48:19] I'm not familiar with that part of the book. I haven't read it in a while, but I'll-

Speaker 1:
[48:23] No, you should check it out. Well, the issue I want to get to about Hamas ultimately is, well, the generic issue I want to get to is the meaning of the term proxy. I mean, Trump has talked as if Iran, I think he thinks, I mean, who knows what's going on in Trump's brain? I think he thinks Iran actually did October 7th, like it was Iranian troops. I think October 7th, well, let me just say the generic point is that proxies always have an agenda of their own that is what largely motivates them. There is some convergence of interest with their sponsor, and sometimes they do things at the behest of their sponsor, but sometimes they just do things because they want to do them, and their sponsor maybe doesn't try to stop them or whatever. I think there's a tendency to, on your side of the argument Eli, to look at everything Hezbollah or Hamas has ever done, and treat it as if it were an Iranian initiative, when it's not always. I think that's an important thing. To keep in mind, you mentioned, you said, you know, Ron, is there religious fanatics? Well, a lot of people would just say, well, wait, look at the current Israeli cabinet. Come on, this is getting out of hand. You have true, crazy religious fanatics, Ben Gavir, Schmottrick, and they're doing horrible things. That would at least be the reply. Anything else in my? Well, I think there's an issue of kind of essential. I am more optimistic about the chances changing the character of any political group over time than you are, but that's a philosophical difference. Okay, do your bullet points.

Speaker 2:
[50:14] Quick bullet points. Okay, I know it's the case in Lebanon, but I think it's also the case in Gaza. Israel has found and killed pretty senior Revolutionary Guard Corps officers who were there kind of giving on the ground guidance. And then also the weaponry.

Speaker 1:
[50:36] Wait, you mean guiding October 7th?

Speaker 2:
[50:38] Well, I'm just talking about you have a pretty, it's not just a, you know, we write a check every year.

Speaker 1:
[50:47] No, it's a true, it's a true, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[50:48] Right, okay, okay.

Speaker 1:
[50:49] It's a true sponsor, you know.

Speaker 2:
[50:52] Right, no, but I-

Speaker 1:
[50:52] Sponsor client in the sense that America Israel is sponsor client kind of, but they do shit we don't want them to do, go ahead.

Speaker 2:
[50:58] Again, because the NonZero, formerly Blogging Heads, is not a television debate show where everybody just kind of, I will concede that what we basically know is that the planning for October 7th was, I think, largely kept in house and was a surprise to, I think, even Hamas leadership who were in Qatar. Although that may change as we like learn more, but my understanding is that that is the understanding now. And but I'm less inclined to, I see your point that sometimes proxies can do things without the knowledge. I mean, so I concede that, I mean, I don't think Khamenei knew that October 7th was in the offing, but they certainly celebrated. But more importantly, I mean, like Hamas would not have the ability to do that had it not been for years and years and years of nurturing guidance, etc. from Iran. Okay, and then Ben Gavir and Smotrek. Okay, yeah, there's a, let me just say, there's very important difference. I'm not going to defend Ben Gavir and Smotrek who have important positions in the Israeli cabinet. I've said this many times before, I think they are Judeo-fascists in the same sense. But the difference is that, you know, Israel has elections, that Israel's government can change. Iran, for, you know, they have kind of elections, but they don't really matter because the power resides with the supreme leader. Even their parliament, their Majlis is, can be overruled by a council of experts, the Guardian Council. And there is a much longer kind of history that if you read Khomeini's book, Islamic Governance, that, you know, the structure of the Iranian regime is such that there was no opportunity for somebody who might be more moderate on these issues to gain actual control over their armed forces, Revolutionary Guard Corps, et cetera. So that's where I think that your analogy fails.

Speaker 1:
[53:08] Okay, with that, we can head into overdone. I want to discuss the question. And the higher level, more abstract version of that is like, is Iran or is it not a rational actor in a way? I think.

Speaker 2:
[53:24] Yeah, I saw you wrote something on this. And I, yeah, all right. So why don't you start off with Nick, your point.

Speaker 1:
[53:28] Okay, so thanks to everybody who's stuck with us this far. The way you can listen to the rest of this is by becoming a paid subscriber to the NonZero newsletter. And yeah, now we can continue. Where should we begin? It's too bad there's so much to talk about because I'd also like to talk about this current state of play in the war, but because we should say, I mean, we're taping this. Who knows where we're going to be in 36 hours, depending on Trump's commitment to his latest deadline. You know, it seems to me, in many ways, Iran has been a very carefully calculating rational actor. Again, it's far from clear to me that a kind of a viewer from Mars would go, Oh yeah, Iran's the country that's out of control. I mean, as you may recall, when we assassinated Soleimani, the response was, you know, they kind of, they lobbed missiles over to a base, made sure they, I think, indirectly gave us a heads up so there wouldn't be any soldiers there and didn't kill anybody. They did much to the thing, and I think some in Iran now regret this, but they were similarly moderate in response even to the June thing. Now, of course, in response to the Israeli attack in June, you know, they fired missiles toward Israel, because I think, you know, any country would have. But as far as America, even after America joined in the bombing, and perhaps because America didn't actually kill anybody, I don't know, but they can find the response, another pretty tepid response, almost designed not to kill anybody or anything, you know, a few missiles toward a military base. And in general, I would say even in the current war, given especially how degraded you might think their command and control structure is by now, they've, you know, it seems to me, there has been a clear logic behind the escalation. It hasn't been, oh, okay, this is it, we're gonna blow our top. It's not like Trump. It's like, you know, the, okay, you're gonna hit this kind of target, we're gonna hit that kind of target. It's been very graduated. So I don't know where, and I would say, and this is another case where we get into the kind of chicken and egg or where do you want to start. But again, neither of us thinks that October 7th was an Iranian initiative. It was something done by a client or whatever you want to call it of Iran's. And in general, I would say, I think if you look at Hezbollah and Hamas, for the most part, over the last decades, you know, whenever there's been an escalation, each side has had a plausible story about what, who started it and who escalated too much and so on. It's pretty damn rare, I think, that if you look at it closely, just out of the blue, missiles started coming into Israel. I mean, sometimes it would be a response to what was considered a really unwarranted infringement on, say, Palestinian rights at the Dome of the Rock or something, but it's pretty rare, you know, that it was truly gratuitous. Again, I mean, October 7th was its own thing, but we don't think that was Iranian-sponsored. So I'm kind of hard-pressed to see. I mean, again, you can, on both sides, point to these seemingly atrocious things, assassinations, car bombs, killing civilians. But I don't, it's just not clear to me, what is the basis for saying that Iran is this irrational actor? And of course, this is in the context of the question of nuclear arms. I don't welcome them getting a nuclear weapon, but the assumption seems to be that if they had one, the first thing they'd do is blow up Israel, which I think is crazy. They wouldn't.

Speaker 2:
[57:40] Well, I think to answer the last question first, but it gets to the point you were trying to make, which is that Iran had, and let's, you mentioned Qasem Soleimani. I mean, what he'd done is he built up a massive network of these proxy militias whose sole purpose was to, or its prime directive was to try to destroy Israel.

Speaker 1:
[58:07] I disagree with that, but go ahead.

Speaker 2:
[58:09] Okay. But what I'm saying is that I don't think that Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Iraqi, well, the Iraqi militia is a little different, but because Iran was working with the Iraqi militias from the very beginning of the Iraq War, but then they really go and overdrive because of ISIS. But all of these groups, I mean, I'm just saying if you look at Hezbollah, Hezbollah does not care about Lebanon. They are, their prime directive is attacking and destroying Israel. And in the process, it became more powerful than any other faction within Lebanon. Thankfully, that's not the case right now. So they had the ability and they've done it many times to bring Lebanon into war, even though the rest of Lebanon would not want to provoke a powerful neighbor in Israel. Ditto for October 7th. Now, again, we are agreeing that it's not like Iran gave the order for October 7th, but that the little demon machine that it built, that helped nurture and build in Hamas and Hezbollah and everything, that was sort of the purpose of these things. They were like little windup toys. So we didn't know when they were going to go off. We didn't know when they were going to do it, but that was what they were doing. So that's why I look at it as the Iran itself. And by the way, you see this with the democratic movement inside of Iran. One of the slogans that you started seeing, even going back to the mid 2010s, was for Iran, not for Gaza, not for Lebanon, but for Iran, which is like the idea being that this is a regime that has used its wealth and used its power and endangered and brought misery to its population and endured sanctions because it is pursuing this kind of crazy fantasy goal of an Islamic revolution and destroying Israel. And that is why I don't want them to get a nuclear weapon among other things. But that's why I consider Iran to be the aggressor in all of this, because that's the key fact. Israel does not sponsor militias that do cross-border raids into Iran. That's just not a thing. I mean, there is an old relationship with Israel and the Iraqi Kurds, but that's not the same thing.

Speaker 1:
[60:34] They've been assassinating people in Iran forever. Nuclear scientists. I mean, what's the huge difference?

Speaker 2:
[60:39] Yes, because they don't want Iran to get a nuclear weapon. That's exactly right.

Speaker 1:
[60:42] Well, I mean, whoever is shooting, they all have their motivation. But-

Speaker 2:
[60:49] Well, you could say, you could, whatever, that's the point.

Speaker 1:
[60:54] It's just that you identify with Israel's motivation. You think it is critical to assassinate Israeli nuclear scientists, just as people in Hamas think it's critical to fire rockets into Israel, whatever you think. But I mean, see, this is the value of international law is it's in this respect impartial. It just says, these things you can't do, okay? We don't need to do all of this grievance assessment. It's just you can't do it. And both of them are doing it.

Speaker 2:
[61:30] And I don't really see what international law has to do with it, because, again, Iran doesn't care about international law.

Speaker 1:
[61:41] You're saying Israel does? Who does? Israel does? No, you're not going to say that.

Speaker 2:
[61:47] Israel cares about... Israel, I think, believes that the United Nations is a kind of hopeless institution at this point, as I do, and I think most Americans probably do.

Speaker 1:
[61:57] Leave the institution aside. Transporter aggression is a thing. They just did it, and they do it all the time.

Speaker 2:
[62:04] Well, but why did they do it? Why do they do it? They did it because Iran has had a single mission. It has supported these militias with a single mission to destroy the state, and it was pursuing nuclear weapons. Eventually, Israel has a choice. It can follow international law and do nothing, and hope negotiations work out and trust the promises of the Ayatollah, and that you get to keep the capability to build an industrial-sized nuclear weapons program, but we accept your promise not to do it. It could do that and then cease to exist, or it could decide to deal with the threat. I think that in that respect, even though of course, October 7th is a horrible tragedy, and if I could go back in time and prevent it, of course I would. But October 7th, I think was a clarifying event for Israel in the sense that it was like, all right, as if we didn't get the message before, they mean it, they want to destroy us. And so in part, now, I think there's also a thing here too. Iran knows it sponsors Hamas, right, Bob? It could have the way that at least the Khatami president did after 9-11, and we saw a number of Iranians who happen to be very pro-American after 9-11 express remorse for the terrorist attack. It could have said after October 7th, this is not what we have in mind. We're announcing that we're cutting off all funds to Hamas. We don't believe that this kind of thing is acceptable. It could have done that and it probably would have saved.

Speaker 1:
[63:35] I think it's not what they had in mind, but a lot of times allies don't say things. European allies aren't saying the actual truth about how they feel about Trump's launching this war. Happens all the time. But let me say- Okay.

Speaker 2:
[63:49] What I'm saying is that I'm saying you've got to get back to the driving purpose of the Iranian regime. Which is not to build a prospers Iran. It's not to make Iran a great country, which it should be because of its resources, the talent of its people, its rich tradition, etc. It's to destroy Israel, its death to America. In that respect, it practices a kind of proxy imperialism. That's what I'm getting at. It's like that's what they want to do. Once you understand that, then you understand why Israel would take such extreme measures to make sure Iran does not have a nuclear weapon.

Speaker 1:
[64:30] Well, I understand that Israel believes that, and that actually leads to something that I think is important. I would like to now step back and spend some time just giving you Iran's side of the story, so to speak, or the side that would have to be added to what you've been saying to yield what I think would be a more objective perspective about how things are perceived on the other side. So first of all, I assume you will agree that one thing that happens not frequently in world affairs is that one nation sees things another does, whether in the way of military preparation or even actual attack, and attributes entirely offensive motivation to it, when from the point of view of that side of that nation, there is at least some degree of defensive motivation. And I assume one case that you'll agree fits that model is that I assume you'll say, A, Israel thinks that the war, what it is doing now in Iran, which looks to me like trying to induce state collapse, it includes bombing civilian infrastructure, it's several thousand civilians have been killed and so on. I believe, the average Israeli believes that is ultimately defensive. But Eli, surely you can see how many, many people in Iran would refuse to believe that this is a surely defensive measure. Do you just, I don't want to argue about what it is. I just want to say, you acknowledge that A, this is a common theme in geopolitics, this asymmetry of perception and that B, the current war is probably a good example of it, right?

Speaker 2:
[66:09] Well, let me just say about state collapse.

Speaker 1:
[66:14] Well, okay, but forget that. I withdraw that. No, no, I want to get you to address the point. I withdraw state collapse. I'm just saying, can you see how a lot of Iranians would look at what's happening and say, you can't tell me this is defensive? Are you kidding?

Speaker 2:
[66:31] I think a lot of the Iranian people are delighted that their oppressors are finally getting what's been owed to them. I think the Iranian regime, I think their propagandists like Professor Morandi probably would say that, I don't know, Israel is a pedophile cult that once nothing but blood.

Speaker 1:
[66:55] Let me ask you this. You just don't see any kind of plausibility to a perception that is certainly widespread in some parts of the world. This just couldn't be a surely defensive operation on Israel's part. It's just too, it's an onslaught, it was unprovoked, ostensibly at least. And, okay, you don't buy that. Okay, fine.

Speaker 2:
[67:19] Well, no, no, I concede, because I have eyes to see and ears to listen, that lots of people, including in America, think that America and Israel are the aggressors in the war, and Iran is a victim of this aggression. I mean, sure. So people do think that.

Speaker 1:
[67:38] And that's not, and it happens a lot, right? I mean, in, you know, World War I was a good example, I think both sides saw the preparation, military preparations as offensive in nature. Both sides saw the preparations they were making as largely defensive. It happens a lot. But what I want to say is, I'm going to give an Iranian side of the story that I think in my mind helps me understand how they could view a lot of the things that they do that are called offensive as defensive. You know, you said they, you know, they've done death to America and they of course famously Iran-backed militias in Iraq have killed American soldiers and so on. So, let's, you know, I'll just, you know, most of this stuff and a lot of people do, but just to kind of put it in one place, so to speak, you know, in 1953, Britain and the US play some role in supporting a coup that deposes a democratically elected government.

Speaker 2:
[68:44] I want to finish, but I'm going to check you on that. Okay.

Speaker 1:
[68:47] In America, you can say America didn't support it or?

Speaker 2:
[68:52] There was something called Operation Ajax. There was a CIA officer by the name of Kermit Roosevelt.

Speaker 1:
[68:57] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[68:57] He did go to Tehran and he wrote a book. The same year as the 1979 Revolution that claimed credit for saving the Pahlavi Dynasty. But he's an unreliable narrator.

Speaker 1:
[69:13] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[69:14] No, no, no. This is a very important point.

Speaker 1:
[69:17] But the main point is the Iranians believe it. Okay?

Speaker 2:
[69:19] No, no, no, no, no. In fact, the people who run Iran right now, because I believe in 1979 Khomeini and his goons stole the Revolution, which was much broader than the Islamists who ended up seizing power. But at the time, the reason why Muhammad Mosaddegh was eventually forced to relinquish the presidency, was because the speaker of the Majlis, who was also the Grand Ayatollah in Khome, Ayatollah Khoshani, he turned on Mosaddegh. He was part of a Nationalist Alliance. And he withdrew his support. And why did he withdraw his support? Because as the president of Iran, Mosaddegh was dangerously consolidating power to the point where he dissolved the Majlis itself, he fired the Supreme Court, he purged the military of its generals. And this gets into the weeds a little bit, but the Iranian Constitution in 1953 had a role for the Shah. And the Shah was technically supposed to appoint the Prime Minister and had the power to fire the Prime Minister. What effectively Roosevelt did was two things, the CIA part of it and the MI6. What they did is they had a pressure campaign on a very reluctant Shah that was almost exiled himself and asked him to exercise his constitutional prerogative and fire Mosaddegh. Because all of his, many of Mosaddegh's supporters were terrified that they had kind of created this monster. And I have a great respect for Mosaddegh, I should say, as for most of his career as a reformer in Iranian politics. But when he gets power and he ends up nationalizing the oil, which I think was a good thing for him to do. But after that, he is faced with a kind of British boycott and takes a series of incredibly undemocratic actions, which alienate his own natural coalition. So the idea that it was outside power that moved him is not true.

Speaker 1:
[71:21] I'm just going to stipulate that I commit myself to go learn more about this.

Speaker 2:
[71:26] May I recommend a book by Ray Takei?

Speaker 1:
[71:29] Sure.

Speaker 2:
[71:30] I know I've read the other side of it, the Kurtzer book, and there are a lot of people who've written up, but I'm just saying that I did a deep dive on this.

Speaker 1:
[71:37] Let's skip it and pick up the narrative later, which is the US. So the Shah is ushered in via this coup. The US is a big supporter of the Shah. The Shah, you will agree, was brutally oppressive, his secret police, the Savak tortured people and so on and so on.

Speaker 2:
[71:54] You're yadda yaddaing over a couple of things that I just want to make.

Speaker 1:
[71:57] Okay, but let me finish.

Speaker 2:
[71:58] No, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it, but I just want to say.

Speaker 1:
[72:00] No, don't spend any. Okay, just tell me at the end what I got wrong.

Speaker 2:
[72:03] Okay, fair enough.

Speaker 1:
[72:04] Because the Savak, I talked to Iranians at the time who were terrified of the Savak in the late 70s.

Speaker 2:
[72:10] I'm not going to disagree. The Savak was a brutal organization.

Speaker 1:
[72:12] Okay, and the Savak were the Shah's people. The Shah was supported by America. That definitely became part of the Iranian narrative. After the Revolution, you know, they of course took some people hostage in the embassy, some students or quote students, I don't know what, which it happened. It wasn't totally gratuitous. They had their demands. I mean, we had given safe harbor to the Shah. And for one thing, they wanted the Shah back. I don't support hostage taking to get people returned to your country. Although I'd actually just as a thought experiment, which again, I want to put in parentheses, don't want to get it to respond to now. I wonder if a coup had magically ensued a few weeks ago and the Iranian people had deposed Khomeini and he took refuge in Russia and some Iranians took hostages in the Russian embassy and demanded that he be returned. I wonder how many Americans possibly including you, Eli, would really object to that in a big way. But in any event, that was so it wasn't a totally gratuitous thing. Let's just take some and I would just say death to America didn't come out of nowhere. Moreover, as you know, the Iraq war starts, Iraq invades Iran shortly after the revolution. America supports Iraq and Iran later. Well, kind of, but on balance.

Speaker 2:
[73:40] Selling Iran, the TOW missiles were given to Iran specifically because they needed anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry. I mean, that's absolutely true. Again, I'm not denying it. Saddam was supported with intelligence.

Speaker 1:
[73:56] They supported Iraq in any event. The Iranian narrative is what matters as much as anything. So they go. And meanwhile, yeah, Iran is doing stuff now that America is the enemy. We all know about the barracks bombing in Lebanon, blah, blah, blah. But you get up to the Bush administration, and after 9-11, the Iranians are actually helping us. With our invasion of Afghanistan, of course, it's out of common interest. They don't like the Taliban or whatever. But clearly, we saw the potential, and yet within a couple, for alliance out of common interest or cooperation, within a couple of months of that, I'm sure much to their surprise, in fact, reportedly much to their surprise, Bush declares Iran part of the axis of evil right before invading and occupying Iraq. Now, if you're Iran, and there's this history, and right before the war, Bush says we're, you know, Iran is like, there's two countries in the Middle East that are part of the axis of evil, Iran and Iraq, and they invade and occupy Iraq, which is your next door neighbor. Yeah, if you're Iran and you're a rational actor, you do whatever the fuck you can do to get America out of Iraq, and if it includes sponsoring Shia militias who blow up American soldiers, that's what I would say pretty much any rational actor could do. So, it's like, you know, that these seeming, these things you associate with religious fanaticism, like Death to America, it's true that you've got an Islamist regime, you've got a religious regime, they're going to be put in religious terms, but they didn't come out of nowhere. They didn't come out of the Quran or something. And, you know...

Speaker 2:
[75:43] I mean, Death to America couldn't come out of the Quran. It was written in the eighth century. Of course, it didn't come out of the Quran. Okay.

Speaker 1:
[75:51] Then we agree. But my point is, my point is, I'm still waiting to see a reason that Iran shouldn't be considered a kind of fundamentally rational actor, which is the premise of this war, kind of. Is like, not only can they not be allowed to have nuclear weapons, but they can't be allowed to have a ballistic missile arsenal. I mean, as you know, Eli, this is a big part of the reason that Bush got out of the deal. He wanted something longer and stronger, stronger meaning we don't just limit nuclear weapons, we limit ballistic missiles because these guys are crazy. Actually, there's no evidence that they use the ballistic missiles in a crazy way or a suicidal way or anything else. So, I and you know.

Speaker 2:
[76:44] They're firing ballistic missiles at hotels and I mean, any number of energy facilities and so forth.

Speaker 1:
[76:50] But how much civilian infrastructure, how many residences has Israel destroyed in Gaza, in Iran? Well, I mean, come on.

Speaker 2:
[76:59] Okay. Let's take that in a couple of ways. I would argue that you still had in Iran, they played a double game, which is to say that the families of Bin Laden and Zawahiri did escape to Iran and they allowed, they harbored Saif al-Adl who was able to orchestrate some of the activities for al-Qaeda in Iraq. They had a on-off relationship at times and they were interested in I think if you look at the other things that those Shia militias did in addition to going after the United States, they also fomented a kind of sectarian civil war and a lot of what the worst of the-

Speaker 1:
[77:51] Which we did in Syria? I mean, you know, okay.

Speaker 2:
[77:54] No, that's, no. What I'm saying is that you had an opportunity in Iraq, had Iran not played the kind of role that did, to come to some sort of accommodation under a new, and there was a bit of quiet after the success of the counterinsurgency in the late 2000s. But the point is that I think Iran was, much more interested in kind of taking, using the opportunity of the Iraq war, not for their own defensive purposes, because they were afraid of the access of evil speech and the evil Americans. They were interested in becoming the regional hegemon.

Speaker 1:
[78:38] As Israel is, right? You would agree Israel wants to become the regional hegemon.

Speaker 2:
[78:43] Let's table that for just a second. That is, Qasem Soleimani said this himself. This was his entire strategy in this period. Then we saw that they went well beyond Iraq. They went to Yemen. Of course, they continued to double down in Lebanon. They then become the sort of, along with Russia, they prop up Bashar al-Assad after he's in a war that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians, where Assad uses chemical weapons. You've got a pretty awful actor that is, I think, motivated by far more than just simply their concern that they might be next on the axis of evil list or something. Add to that another factor, which is that I want to get to what your point about rationality. I think that Iran is rational within the context of its revolutionary agenda. It makes rational decisions. It has very, I mean, Soleimani was widely respected by America's best generals as a really brilliant military thinker and planner. So there's a rationality to it, but it's a rationality to what end? Vladimir Lenin was a rational person, and so was Joseph Stalin, but they were rational to again, what end? That's to me the important distinction, which is that it's not that Iran just wants to be left alone, that Iran just doesn't want to be invaded, Iran doesn't, it's that Iran wants to spread this Islamic Revolution, because it is committed to this ideology. So that would be my response there. If I could just make a brief point on the Shah, because I think it's lost. I would agree with you that the Savak for a lot of its history was brutal, and so I'm not denying any of that, and let's add to among his other many sins, is that there was a vast chasm between the elites and the rest of the country. So there was a huge wealth gap, and the Muhammad Reza Shah was notorious for living a luxurious and good life. But he also was responsible for a lot of reforms that basically ended the peasantry, the arrangement for a lot of the rural farmers. I mean, he enabled for the first time in Iran's history, really, for people to own their own land and get out of subsistence poverty. He introduced women's rights. He introduced literacy programs. And that's not an excuse. I'm not making an excuse. I think you got to take the good and take the bad. But Khomeini himself as a figure in Iranian politics, you know, for the entire reign of the Polovies, you know, for most of the time, he's agitating against women's suffrage. He's agitating against the land reform. He's what was known as the White Revolution. And that's ultimately what got him exiled was, you know, his adulation.

Speaker 1:
[81:56] I'm not making a brief either against the Shah on behalf of Khomeini. I'm talking about the role, how America came to play this role in the Iranian regime's narrative.

Speaker 2:
[82:07] I will say that in 1979, the Shah was hated and he was seen as an American client. So I think initially you're correct. What's interesting to me is that today, if you look at some of these protests in Iran that have been in the last few years, you find people sounding Javad Shah, Javad Shah, because the situation in Iran is so bad, they want to go back to whatever was before it. That's not a scientific poll. There was one that was conducted in 2024, which showed that one of the most popular of all the people who were asked in the survey by a fairly serious group, although you can trust the polls in Iran, but it's interesting that Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed Shah, got I think 17 percent or 20 percent whereas no other figure was, every other figure was at the single digits. That was interesting. But again, that to me is not data that he should lead, and I wrote a very long piece for the Free Press kind of a profile of him that sort of questioned whether he could do it. But my point, going back to it, is that the situation now is such that we're not in 1979 when there I think was widespread popular support for getting rid of the Shah, we're in 2026 where I believe that the vast majority of the country, I'd say there's a 20 percent kind of group that still supports the regime, everybody else sees that it's led to ruin. Another part of the story of the Obama diplomacy was that they were promised infusion of cash and they were hoping they were going to get prosperity, and that's the moment that Iran decides to enter the Syrian Civil War on the side of Assad.

Speaker 1:
[83:50] That's the moment that- Well, we entered the civil war. We funneled arms into that and turned it. But let me just say a couple of things in response to that. I mean, as for the deal per se, of course, even the deal didn't provide full sanctions relief. In any event, I think we kind of slow-walked some of the reliefs that were supposed to happen. And in any event, of course, Trump got out of it pretty soon. So we'll never know. And I will say, this is one of, I think, many times, we have undermined Iranian moderates. I think you'll agree, the moderates supported that deal, and we undermined them, I think, maybe you won't agree to this part, by seeing to it that the deal just didn't work out.

Speaker 2:
[84:34] Can I respond to that?

Speaker 1:
[84:36] Yeah, quickly, please, because I want to get to the rest of the news.

Speaker 2:
[84:39] Very quickly, I have been to Iran once. It was the end of 2002, on the eve of the Iraq War. This was during Khatami, who was the only reformer president they've ever had. And I witnessed, well, I should say I watched on Iranian television, but I was there with a lot of the student opposition at the time. And I saw the show trials that were broadcast throughout the country of Khatami's closest advisors. So, I would argue that the reformers, the people who might have been moderating, were purged long before we had Obama and his deal. And Javad Zarif and Hassan Rouhani, I would never call them moderate. What I would call them are pragmatists, and they just had a different theory as to how to advance Iran's regional and Islamist ambitions.

Speaker 1:
[85:26] Yeah, I mean, underlying this is kind of a differing views on how possible it is for the character of any regime or any group of people to slowly change over time. And I think we just-

Speaker 2:
[85:38] Remember, in 2009, the protests were because they'd stolen the election for Ahmadinejad, who at the time was a hardliner, oddly has now emerged as one of the fiercest kind of critics of the regime. To give you a sense of how bad things have turned. But the times in which people, Iranian people wanted to kind of inject reform-minded, more moderate people into the system, at every time they were kind of turned away and purged out of it. So I think it's a very important point to make about the character of the regime.

Speaker 1:
[86:10] I just think I can point to a lot of times, well, in the history of Israel's interaction with various actors and America's where we could have supported moderates. I certainly think the Iranian nuclear deal was an opportunity. We'll never know for sure what would happen if we had stuck with the commitment.

Speaker 2:
[86:34] I just want to point out that executions peaked under Rouhani's presidency, not the other way around. So they killed more people, they hung more people from cranes under Rouhani than they did under Abdel-Din Dajani.

Speaker 1:
[86:47] I don't know the history well enough. I do know that the relative extremists point to what they call the failure of the deal, rhetorically, at the expense of the people that you're saying weren't very moderate, but are considered the relative moderates. Now, on the, you know, when I said, you know, you said Iran wants to be a regional hegemon. I said Israel wants to be a regional hegemon. You kind of, Brian, let me just say something about that. I think that's a perfect example of what I said, what I meant when I said that, you know, one person's defense is from the point of view of their adversary or enemy, offense. Now, I think, yeah, they both would like to exert their influence in the region indefinitely. Nations tend to want to do that if it seems possible, but I would say that in both cases, there are particular reasons you would expect them to view that as part of a defensive strategy. In the case of Iran, again, to get back to the Iran-Iraq war, it's worth remembering they had basically zero allies except for Syria. Syria was the one ally. No Arab nation supported them. America was opposed to them. So they had, in the wake of that, which I think you'll agree was a pretty traumatic experience. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians were killed. The horrible war. And they didn't start the war. So they emerged from that. Yeah, they would like to maximize the regional influence. And if Syria was the only country that gave them any support, they're not going to get too picky about Syria's human rights record. And let's face it, America doesn't get picky. Israel doesn't get picky. We are all fundamentally...

Speaker 2:
[88:33] Human rights record? What are you talking about, Bob? Come on, that was a horrible, disgusting example of, like, massacre after massacre. He's dropping chlorine bombs on villages. You know it and I know it.

Speaker 1:
[88:44] So was Iraq, which we supported in the Iraq-Iran war. So was Iraq.

Speaker 2:
[88:49] I think it was... By the way, I'm not, like, defending our relationship with Iraq.

Speaker 1:
[88:53] No, I'm not asking you to. I'm just saying...

Speaker 2:
[88:55] By the way, the proper way to say it is that after the Iran Contra scandal, America was actually arming both sides of the war because of the hostage deal with the Iranians.

Speaker 1:
[89:08] You know, in any event, in my view, all Israel, the US., the Iranians, have all been mercenary. I mean, look, Egypt, Egypt, you know, military coup, installs Sisi, he right away, to make a point, takes peaceful, purely peaceful demonstrators, guns down a thousand, kills a thousand. And the US is like, you know, life is hard. Is this, was this a coup? No, we're not gonna deem this a coup. Come on, we're just all, we're all, you know, all these powerful nations are completely correct.

Speaker 2:
[89:44] Of course it was a coup.

Speaker 1:
[89:45] But we didn't say it. The US government refused to say it was.

Speaker 2:
[89:48] Right, because there are legal reasons they can't. I understand.

Speaker 1:
[89:50] I'm just saying, don't act like a wrong issue, come on.

Speaker 2:
[89:53] 600,000 perished in the Syrian civil war. And that did not start contrary to some narrative.

Speaker 1:
[90:01] Perished in the civil war? Half of them were killed with weapons we fucking provided.

Speaker 2:
[90:05] Oh, please, that's not true. But more importantly, the reason that that civil war began was because during the Arab Spring, Syrians got the crazy idea that maybe they should have democracy. And Bashar al-Assad, how did he respond? Okay, now, and he kept doubling down.

Speaker 1:
[90:21] Let's not litigate the civil war in Syria. I mean, you know.

Speaker 2:
[90:25] What is there to litigate?

Speaker 1:
[90:26] He was a brutal dictator, his father was a brutal dictator, all this is true. I'm just explaining how if Iran had, coming out of the Iran-Iraq war said, you know, Syria is the only country that gave us any support in this existential event that was almost the end of us. But still, we're not going to latch on to them as a safety line because they're really bad guys. Almost no country would have done that. That's all I'm saying. If you want to disagree, hold off on the disagreement, because my main point is that like, what you call a quest for hegemony, regional hegemony, which yeah, can fairly be called that, I would say Israel by almost anyone's reckoning is currently seeking regional hegemony. I mean, they've just displaced a million Lebanese. We know what happened in, well, leave that aside. In the case of Syria, after a regime took power, the current regime that was clearly gonna be pretty friendly to Israel, was willing to be by historical standards, Israel nonetheless took the opportunity to bomb the shit out of Syria, just to wipe out any military hardware, because you never know. Flagrant violation of international law. This is why people look at Israel and say-

Speaker 2:
[91:46] Also, Israel intervened to save a massacre of the Druze population.

Speaker 1:
[91:51] That was a different matter. That was a different matter. They bombed military hardware all over the country. But my larger point is, this is why everyone looks at Israel and says, well, apparently the current strategy is regional hegemony. Yes, it is. But Eli, I don't doubt that they view it as a defensive strategy. Seems crazy, but they do. And I'm just saying, I mean, seems crazy to a lot of people, but they do. And when I say they, who knows? I mean, I think most Israeli people view all of this stuff as fundamentally defensive. How cynical is Bibi? To what extent is it like a way to keep them in power? Who knows? I don't know. But I think it's fair to say that a lot of Israelis at the grassroots and elite level consider what seems from a distance to be relentless offense is in fact defensive. And I'm willing to concede that. And I'm just saying, that's the thing you seem not willing to concede on the part of Iran. That all these things, and I'd like to move if you have time to do the specific get to Israel. They want to destroy Israel line that is related to all this. But this is a big part of my point is that what looks to you like irrationally offensive intent is from the point of view of a lot of Iranians, what is necessary for national security. And I concede that Israel looks at things the same way, crazy as it seems, you know, you look at what happened in Gaza, I literally find it almost hard to believe that these people think of that as defensive, but I know they do, the Israelis do. So that's what I'm asking of you is like symmetry of perspective. How am I doing?

Speaker 2:
[93:40] No, I'll just reject. I know. I mean, we just have a fundamental disagreement here. I just think that the state of Israel is organized around the idea that there should be a Jewish homeland and a safe haven for the Jews. That is its animating kind of, that's its mission statement, if you will. Ever since the first Zionist settlers came to what was then known as Palestine, they have been, not ever since, I would say, really, it starts with Haj Amin El-Husseini in 1920, 1920 in the Abu, the, oh, God, I'm going to forget the name, but there was a series of riots that kind of invoked. But listen, the thing with Israel is that from its very inception, from its very founding in 1948, its neighbors have tried to kill it. Now, it is in an interesting position at this point where its traditional Arab foes have largely accepted its existence. But sort of taking up that mantle of, you know, trying to destroy the Jewish state has been largely Iran, and it's tried to accomplish this through a series of proxies to the detriment of its own population. And the only other thing I would correct is, and you say a lot of Iranians. I don't think most Iranians who have to live under that regime share the enmity towards Israel that its masters do. And that is the point, is that it is an revolutionary ideological project, whereas I would say that Israel basically just wants to have a secure homeland, and the world's only Jewish state. Those are two different kinds of things, and from there, that's how you kind of explain it. Now, is Israel perfect? Does Israel kill civilians in difficult wars? Of course, they do.

Speaker 1:
[95:34] Are they ethnically cleansing the West Bank right now?

Speaker 2:
[95:38] Okay, on the ethnic cleansing, because I don't like the idea of... I don't want to dodge that, and I recently saw somebody sort of make this point about, oh, people who defend Israel never want to talk about the West Bank. I think what we're seeing in terms of settler violence, for the most part, is absolutely despicable, and I don't defend it, and I would like to get back to...

Speaker 1:
[95:55] Well, the state defends it. The state, in effect, defends it.

Speaker 2:
[95:58] Slow down. Slow down. Slow down. I would like to get back to what was the status quo of only, I would say, maybe a few years ago, where, you know, violent settlers would be tried and punished, and if the fact that they are not being punished right now, I think is a real problem for Israel. So I'm not going to defend the settler violence at this point. But I also think that the activities of the settler violence, and they have patrons in the government with Ben Gevier and Smotrik, and I think it's a real moral failing. So in that respect. But I don't really compare that to Gaza. I mean, there are certainly people in the extremes of Israeli politics who think we should, that Israel should resettle Gaza. But I don't think that is going to happen. And certainly that's not what Netanyahu's position is. And I don't think who eventually replaces Netanyahu.

Speaker 1:
[96:51] Do you think they're going to let the Gazans back into the 51% or whatever that Israel currently occupies?

Speaker 2:
[96:58] I think that's entirely contingent on the dismantlement and disarming of Hamas. I think the problem is that you cannot have, it's like if Hezbollah didn't exist, Israel would not be sending ground forces into Lebanon. The reason that they're there is because of the hundreds of rockets that are being fired every day since the Saran war started. That's why it's happening.

Speaker 1:
[97:23] We can get back to how these tit for tats turn into this. I would say that I think it's basically a policy of Israel's to engage in disproportionate response. That makes conventional structures of deterrents hard. But that's another reason.

Speaker 2:
[97:44] Let me get back to- Isn't that what deterrents is? That you respond disproportionately and so it doesn't happen again?

Speaker 1:
[97:50] When deterrents works, it often rests on a calibrated incremental escalation on both sides. And Israel's philosophy is kind of, they step over the line, you fucking beat them to death, and eventually they'll just surrender. I don't think Israel does engage in incremental escalation. No, I don't. I think their policy is disproportionate response.

Speaker 2:
[98:18] We've covered a lot of ground. So I have a question for you. You wrote a piece a few weeks ago that you basically made the argument that you hope Iran wins this conflict.

Speaker 1:
[98:26] Oh, I didn't put it quite. I mean, what I said was, can I actually, I encourage people to go look at that.

Speaker 2:
[98:33] Why Americans should root for Iran.

Speaker 1:
[98:35] Exactly. Because the short answer, I want to get back to the short answer is, I think Iran actually wants after this war, who have a stable Middle East more than Israel does. That's what I think. But we can argue about that. And I think that would be better for the world. But I want to quickly just make, because at the bottom of all of this is your-

Speaker 2:
[98:58] Let me note my objection to that. I don't think Iran wants this. Okay, I don't think Iran wants a stable Middle East. And I think that if Iran got a nuclear weapon, it would further destabilize the Middle East.

Speaker 1:
[99:07] Well, again, look, them getting a nuclear weapon isn't the issue. If Trump wanted to keep them from having nuclear weapon, he could have done that diplomatically even after he got out of the deal. But he didn't because he wanted to follow the Israeli longer and stronger, whatever. But on this underlying point of Iran wanting the destruction of Israel... Now, I'm really not an expert on all of the... Everything has been said. I know a couple of things. First of all, I do think there's a tendency in American media to, in general, give heavier play to the incendiary things that Iranian leaders say than to the moderating things. So a kind of example of this... Well, this is a different kind of bias. You're familiar with the famous claim that President Ahmadinejad of Iran, in echoing Homeini, said, Israel must be wiped off the map. I'm sure you know that turned out not to be a strictly accurate translation. And I'm not saying the accurate translation is one I would welcome, you know, is a statement I'd welcome if I were Israel. I'm not saying it's not threatening to Israel, but it is different. And what the actual translation was is the regime... I don't know, first of all, it wasn't Israel, the country. It was either the Zionist regime or the regime that occupies Jerusalem or whatever, must pass from the pages of time or something like that. And the main thing I want to say there is, like, why don't... Why didn't the actual translation in American media ever catch up? Like, I just asked perplexity today as an experiment. What has Iran said about the continued existence of Israel? And it coughs up this false translation, Israel must be wiped off the map. That's just embedded in the national memory. I would also say...

Speaker 2:
[101:07] But I don't... Why are we splitting hairs? Why does it matter?

Speaker 1:
[101:11] Let me finish.

Speaker 2:
[101:12] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[101:13] I also know that Iranian leaders, when they've been pressing, like, what do you mean when you say things like this, like the regime must blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? They say, well, we just mean the regime. And they've even, I think Hamedi said, we're not against a one state solution in which Jews live in peace with Palestinians and so on. That's what they said. You may doubt the legitimacy of it, but, you know, so the point I want to make is twofold. First of all, these kinds of qualifying things never catch up with, you know.

Speaker 2:
[101:54] Why are you clinging to this? First of all, erasing the pages of time right off the map is like, what are we talking about?

Speaker 1:
[102:01] Because if what they are saying is, we do not want a Zionist regime, we want regime change. I object to that if they mean it violently, but I would say Israel has said the same thing about them. We do not want this Islamist regime. And the difference is, Israel's actually doing something about it. They assassinated the leader. They attacked the country massively. So you tell me, what if you accept what they actually say at face value, which is we want the regime gone, we're opposed to a Zionist regime, as I don't endorse that. I don't endorse what Israel just did. But I want you to explain the difference to me between Israel saying we do not want an Islamist regime and we're going to kill everybody in it, and then actually doing it. And Iran saying something that seems to me kind of comparable.

Speaker 2:
[102:55] Well, I don't even know where to begin with this. I mean, Iran has openly stated its desire to end Israel since Khomeini took power.

Speaker 1:
[103:10] And what do they mean by end Israel when you ask them?

Speaker 2:
[103:12] I kill all the Jews and wipe them out?

Speaker 1:
[103:15] No, I don't think that's what they say. I don't think that's what they say.

Speaker 2:
[103:17] Well, okay, listen, listen.

Speaker 1:
[103:19] That's my point.

Speaker 2:
[103:19] There's a famous clock that was put up by Khamenei a few years back about the end of Israel, the countdown or whatever. It's a huge part of their state ideology, Robert.

Speaker 1:
[103:31] As you know, they don't even use the word Israel.

Speaker 2:
[103:33] As you know, they don't even use the word Israel. And assuming it was mistranslated. And I don't even really understand the difference between pages of time versus wiped off the map, but okay.

Speaker 1:
[103:45] Well, a lot of the differences between saying regime and saying Israel, but there is a difference. There's a difference between the regime must change over time, must be replaced by a new regime, which Israel is trying to do in Iran. And saying, come on, wiped off the map means we bomb the fuck out of them and kill them all. You know that. And it's not what was said.

Speaker 2:
[104:06] First of all, okay, that is what they want.

Speaker 1:
[104:09] Well, you can say that, but it's not what they said. So if you're asking why am I making a big deal?

Speaker 2:
[104:14] They like killing Jews the way the Hamas does. That's what they do. I mean, it's a big part of their ideology.

Speaker 1:
[104:20] Israel seems to like killing Iranians and Palestinians.

Speaker 2:
[104:23] Oh, please. Listen, this didn't come out of nowhere as you acknowledge. I'm glad that you, I understand that. But the reason why Khamenei was killed in the opening strikes of this particular, of this latest war, was because of the entire prehistory leading up to it, that Iran has devoted so many resources to supporting groups that would attack Israel. And then having the ultimate deterrent so that Israel couldn't do anything about it. So I kind of agree, like I don't know that it was certain that Iran would use a nuclear weapon as soon as they obtained one against Israel, but they would use a nuclear umbrella to protect all these proxy groups, which that's what they do. They attack Israel. I mean, I mean, we know from their state behavior. I'm sure you remember many years ago, the Kareen A that was sent for the Palestinian, it was an arm shipment that was just in the beginning of the Intifada when there was still an effort to try to maybe bring back peace negotiations. That's been their policy. They wanted to support the people, they support organizations whose job it is to try to destroy Israel.

Speaker 1:
[105:39] I'm not endorsing, well, that's why you're putting-

Speaker 2:
[105:41] That's why, by the way, and that's ultimately why Israel, after developing a huge thing, we cannot allow this regime to get a nuclear weapon. I think everybody can understand why, and that's ultimately why it led to this. That's where we are. My hope is that it ultimately will succeed in a color revolution. We were running out of time now, but I do think that, I should say, I wrote a column today that said, Mr. President, do not attack civilian infrastructure. Because I believe that there is an opportunity to, the end of all of this, replace this regime that, again, stole the 79 Revolution and has lost its democratic legitimacy internally, and is just a menace to the region. I think once you get Iran knocked out, I don't think you're going to see Israel laying claims to Kuwait or wherever. It's not going to be supporting Jewish terrorist groups that are going to try to hollow out Syria or something. That's not in the cards.

Speaker 1:
[106:51] That leads back to my article which you cited. I did want to say quickly back to the, they send arms to these proxy groups. Part of my point about coming out of the Iran-Iraq War with only one nation having supported them is it makes it seem plausible to me that, yes, they would look around and go, well, look, there's this Palestinian cause and none of these Arab states are really supporting it. This is a real opportunity for us to gain influence by supporting these groups. That would be a great deterrent. Doesn't seem crazy to me, but in any event, on my article, yeah, it's like I do, well, part of it is this. I assume you agree that Israel would consider this war a win if it just leads to the collapse of the reigning state, chaos, civil war, whatever, to Israel, that is better than a coherent state that has the capacity to become a strong state, unless there is regime change. In other words, I mean, that's what all the evidence points to that. And I'm saying that I don't think Iran really sees its security as entailing, it's sending, it collapsing whole states. And in any event, I don't think it thinks it has the realistic aspiration of doing that.

Speaker 2:
[108:21] I think they would love to collapse the Israeli state. And I just don't think they were outfoxed. I think, as I said, I think it was a duel for many years, and I think Israel is coming out on top. And I just don't see what the problem is. I think Israel is fighting for its survival, basically.

Speaker 1:
[108:40] Yeah, and I think-

Speaker 2:
[108:42] And I think, by the way, that Iran is going to be better off, hopefully, when the regime falls. Now, I will acknowledge the following. I don't know that Donald Trump or I'm not, I mean, I think that if you believe Netanyahu's rhetoric and Trump's rhetoric, there are times when they say, the Iranian people will have an opportunity to get their country back, and that's the part I like. But when he, Trump says many things, he also says he'd like to kind of deal with a Delcey Rodriguez figure in Iran, which would, I think, that could be an interim phase, but I'm worried that I don't want the regime to survive. But it would be better if the person in charge of Iran was not at least corrupt and not a true believer in their ideology.

Speaker 1:
[109:33] Well, I think I'm far from alone in looking at Israel now and see it taking big swaths of Lebanese territory, doing what it did to Syria, doing what it did to Iran, and saying, wait a second, this looks an awful lot like a rogue state, and I don't think it's good for the region or for the world for it to lack a counterbalance in the region.

Speaker 2:
[109:56] Do you think that Israel wants to indefinitely occupy Southern Lebanon? I don't. I think we know exactly why.

Speaker 1:
[110:04] They have done this.

Speaker 2:
[110:05] They're trying to clear the area so they can go in house to house and get all these missiles that are hidden among the civilians, which, by the way, is also a war crime to launch missiles and hide missiles among where civilians live, which is a constant problem. If you want to know why Gaza looks like a moonscape, which is a terrible tragedy, it's because Hamas, again, decided to conduct a horrific raid and a massacre, and then hide under a tunnel system that had been built for 20 years almost, that was interspersed with all of the rest of Gaza. We know that that wasn't for the civilians because they wouldn't let the civilians in. So it's like, this is what this is.

Speaker 1:
[110:45] So Israel had to kill the civilians.

Speaker 2:
[110:47] Well, Israel, I think, especially, well, the number is around 60,000 to 70,000. There have recently been pretty good studies of how many of those were actual fighters. And you get to this, there are a lot of civilians that were killed. It's a terrible tragedy again. But Hamas started the war. They wouldn't let civilians leave when Israel was warning them. There's a reason as to why Israel did it. It wasn't just to conquer Gaza. You know that. You know that Israel didn't do the war to conquer Gaza. Hamas started the war. Israel was trying to wipe Hamas out. And Hamas, because of its nature-

Speaker 1:
[111:28] You mean Hamas was trying to wipe Israel out?

Speaker 2:
[111:31] Israel was trying to wipe Hamas out after-

Speaker 1:
[111:34] In response.

Speaker 2:
[111:35] In response, yes. I mean, I think that that's right. Yeah, which was kind of a fool's errand. If we could go back in time, ideally, maybe there would have been a better strategy to empower local Gazans and give them small arms and hope that they would take out Hamas. I mean, I'm just saying, I don't know. And we might come up with, I would say that it's possible that you could sort of say, when the war is analyzed, you could say, well, there were other options that could have gotten that. But anyway, maybe we could sort of leave it there, but I'm just saying that there's a difference. It's not like the war was not to conquer Gaza. It was because they were attacked and they said, we have to end Hamas.

Speaker 1:
[112:25] Such is my graciousness that I'm going to give you the last word there. Any other last words you want?

Speaker 2:
[112:30] No, Bob, it's always good to talk and I appreciate it. This I thought was a constructive conversation.

Speaker 1:
[112:33] It was, you know, in these troubled times, we are a paragon of civil discourse, Eli.

Speaker 2:
[112:38] No, and I really, I say this every time we do it, but it's very important to me, especially in the ghettoization of our discourse, that we have this space, because it's rarer and rarer these days. I hope to come back soon, Bob. Maybe we can have another cop pick where there would be more agreement, and we can maybe talk about that offline, but you know.

Speaker 1:
[113:02] Yeah, I'm sure we can find something.

Speaker 2:
[113:06] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[113:06] We'll come up with something. We'll come up with something we agree on. We agree on some aspects of Trump, I believe. Anyway, thank you so much, Eli. And we'll see you next time.