transcript
Speaker 1:
[00:00] Hey, I like your new RAV4.
Speaker 2:
[00:02] Thanks, yours too.
Speaker 1:
[00:03] What does RAV stand for anyway?
Speaker 2:
[00:05] To me, it's the Remarkably Advanced Vehicle.
Speaker 1:
[00:08] Really? To me, it's the Runway Approved Vehicle for its amazing style.
Speaker 3:
[00:12] What about Remarkably Adaptable Vehicle because of its versatile cargo space?
Speaker 1:
[00:16] Or Really Admired Vehicle?
Speaker 2:
[00:18] Oh, or Really Awesome Vehicle.
Speaker 1:
[00:20] It really is the Recreational Activity Vehicle, the stylish 2026 Toyota RAV4 Limited. What's your RAV4?
Speaker 4:
[00:36] 12, 10, 28, 2, 23. This is Deep State Radio, coming to you direct from our super secret studio in the third sub-basement of the Ministry of SNARK in Washington, DC., and from other undisclosed locations across America and around the world. Hello, and welcome to Deep State Radio. I am David Rothkopf, your host. As I have been for so long now, you're getting a little tired of it, but I'm still here. We are joined today, as we are each week, by a group of experts who are going to help us try to make sense of what's going on in the world. That group, of course, includes one of our regulars, Ed Luce of the Financial Times. How are you doing, Ed?
Speaker 5:
[01:31] Very well. I'm not getting tired of you, David. Thank you.
Speaker 4:
[01:34] That's beautiful. It's really touching. Two of our friends, both affiliated with the Council on Foreign Relations, Elisa Ewers. How are you doing today, Elisa?
Speaker 6:
[01:48] I'm so happy to be here, David. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 4:
[01:51] We are so happy that you are here. Steven Cook, how are you doing today?
Speaker 7:
[01:56] I'm surviving, but I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 4:
[01:59] Well, that's, you know, these days, surviving is about what we can hope for. So, well, let me start with you two, our guests, out of sympathy to Ed for having to do this every week. Obviously, we're going to talk about this war. Elisa, let me start with an easy one. Do you think the president of the United States has any idea what he's going to do next?
Speaker 6:
[02:34] No, I don't. Since the beginning, I think he's had a ever-moving idea of what he was going to accomplish and how he was about to accomplish it. And I think where we are now almost seven weeks later is essentially the same. He's not getting the response he wants out of the Iranian regime. So he's throwing proverbial spaghetti at the wall. Now a blockade, now an indefinite ceasefire, but maybe only three days. So I think we're seeing kind of that constant churn for lack of good options that let him claim victory.
Speaker 4:
[03:11] Well, that makes sense. Dr. Cook, where do you come out on all this?
Speaker 7:
[03:16] Look, I was telling some folks yesterday that my favorite emoji is the shrug emoji. And at every twist and turn here, the President of the United States does what his gut tells him to do, whether it makes sense for some stated objective that he had the day before or his new stated objective. And it very rarely makes a lot of sense. He is, as Elisa said, he is making it up as he goes along. He clearly believed that this would be over in a few days, that he would find his Persian version of Delci Rodriguez, and he would be able to claim a great victory, and the Iranians just weren't going to play along with it. So now the straight-up form of this is open, it's not open, we're negotiating, we're not negotiating, there's been regime change, these are the most practical people in Iran, there isn't, he's flailing, and as Elisa said, throwing the spaghetti against the wall, trying to figure out what he should do next. I don't think he has any clue, other than to goose the markets at particular moments with statements that have no reflection in reality, none whatsoever.
Speaker 4:
[04:30] Yeah, I think the Iranians have misread him because the Delcey Rodriguez analogy is good, because he would have taken anybody.
Speaker 7:
[04:39] Anybody.
Speaker 4:
[04:39] He didn't care that Delcey Rodriguez was the right hand of Maduro, he didn't care it was the same regime, and the things that he's demanding out of this relationship were all in the JCPOA or in the status that existed on February 27th.
Speaker 7:
[04:55] Well, the problem was the people he had in mind, and he said this, the Israelis killed in the first 10 minutes on February 28th. So they made it impossible to have a Delcey Rodriguez, but he went into this thinking there was someone who he could do a deal like that.
Speaker 4:
[05:12] Pick up the phone, give a call. You know who picks up the phone and calls the president? Who do you think, Elisa? Do you think you do? I don't. Do you think Steven? No. But you know who does every week on a Sunday afternoon? Ed Luce. Ed Luce is now one of the president's phone buddies. And so whereas we're speculating what's going on in the president's head, Ed, you talked to him just the other day, and you were like, what's in your head? What did he say?
Speaker 7:
[05:44] This is like the conversations I have with Elisa.
Speaker 4:
[05:46] Yeah.
Speaker 5:
[05:50] Well, there's been an evolution in my telephone relationship with the commander-in-chief, namely that the last call but one, he said, can you send me some links to your recent columns? And I thought, oh, shit. And so I sent him links to the news reports I'd written up on the calls we'd had. And he texted back, there's this text, texting, no columns. And so I sent him some columns and then he sent back a really uppercase, multiple exclamation marked response about America's winning, I'm wrong, we're doing everything right on Iran and so on.
Speaker 7:
[06:35] Did he call you failing? Did he say failing, Ed Luce?
Speaker 5:
[06:39] Well, I mean, my columns I would say were mildly critical of his approach. You know, one or two points of dispute. All things being equal. And then I called him back last Sunday. And he just sort of ranted at me for about three minutes, then hung up. And I didn't get too many words in, so I didn't really qualify as an interview. So this, so my favorite emoji.
Speaker 4:
[07:07] But what did he, what did he say, Ed?
Speaker 5:
[07:10] That he can't believe how critical I am. Do I want Iran to get a nuclear weapon? And like, where are you from? You're from Britain, aren't you? You know, I thought, I thought you're supposed to be more constructive than this, just sort of went on like this. And then I told, I made the mistake. He said, you're not a citizen, are you? And I said, no.
Speaker 4:
[07:27] Oops.
Speaker 5:
[07:27] Oops.
Speaker 4:
[07:28] Oh, nice to know you, Ed.
Speaker 5:
[07:30] I said I'm renewing my green card. It's, it's that suddenly mysteriously has popped. You know, I'll have to scratch my head as to why. But anyway, my favorite emoji is the monkey with its head in its hands, which is how I think essentially the position Trump is in. I think he's the monkey with the head in his hands. He's, he's, he's got nothing, no, no magic bullets left in his, in his holster. He's not got a Hail Mary. He's not got any way out of this that does not involve climb down. And I think the Iranians have figured out what my colleague who coined the phrase TACO, the acronym TACO has figured out. They figured him out that the more extravagant the threat bombing into the Stone Age, destroy a civilization, every bridge and every, all the sort of threats are preludes, because this is the pattern to TACO. Because there is last sort of desperate bid, you know, to make the JP Morgan Consortium, you know, give him better deal on the bankruptcy workout, whatever it is, it's something he's been doing all his career. And it kind of works with banks if you owe them a lot of money, they get scared, but Iran is not a bank. And it's figured him out. And I'm not sure he's admitted to himself, I'm not a head doctor, but that Iran has figured him out. Because that the humiliation of that is just too great to bear.
Speaker 8:
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Speaker 3:
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Speaker 4:
[10:28] Yeah. Well, I think, Elisa, one of the things that the president has always said is, he has the cards, they don't have the cards. They've been very funny about this, and we can talk about the Lego videos if you want. They've been really good at making fun of Trump. But although he is the one who said that he is going to destroy Iranian civilization, thus making this appear to be existential for them. The way this is playing out is that this appears to be more existential for MAGA than it is for the Iranians. They've been around 7,000 years. They've sustained some blows. They know they're going to be around as long as they need to be, and that sooner or later the US is going to lose interest. Well, the US has lost interest, and Trump doesn't know how to step away from that. It looks like from yesterday's goings on regarding the ceasefire, that he's looking for, three weeks ago, Steve was here, we had three weeks ago, we talked about exit ramps. What are the available exit ramps? Now, it looks to me like he's trying to experiment with different alternatives for soft surrender. Like, okay, what's the subject? Let's talk about something else. This ceasefire could go on forever. Who knows? We'll be in the neighborhood. So, we'll be able to make ominous threats. But I'm not really going to put a lot on the line on this thing right now. As soon as I have the first opportunity to shift the conversation to RFK. Jr.'s raccoon penises, then I'm going to shift the conversation. Does that sum it up in your mind or am I missing some part of the four-dimensional chess game that the president has played?
Speaker 6:
[12:28] Well, I don't think he's playing a chess game at all. But I do think that he's, if his instinct is to tell him find the exit, he's being held back by something. And I think part of that is that he's created a pretty significant mess here. And the second and third order effects of this are going to be felt for a while. So even if he does change the subject of his attention to something else, people are going to continue to talk about the economic implications of this war for months. They're going to talk about the fact that food prices are rising three months from now. And there are going to be issues with respect to our partners in the region getting their stuff out of the Strait of Hormuz, even if he decides that it's time to talk about RFK Jr. or whatever. And so I think it's harder for him to do it in this scenario because the implications of this war are actually pretty significant. Can he try? Sure. And I don't know that his base is all that interested in hearing why or how he gets out of this war. They're interested in him going back to the things that matter to them the most. So that's really not the audience. The audience is November, midterm elections. That's going to be where the rubber hits the road here when prices are high and people are wondering why that is. And this war is going to be the obvious answer.
Speaker 4:
[13:57] Well, you know, Steve, one of the ways I find out about what's going on in the world, of course, is I go to the FT. Ed has, by the way, an excellent column in the FT today about the US and Israel. We could talk about that in a little bit, but I encourage everybody to read it. But I read a story that illustrates Elisa's point in the FT today. And I don't know if you saw it, but I'm going to... The headline was, War disruption forces world's biggest condom maker to raise prices by up to 30 percent.
Speaker 7:
[14:32] All those college Republicans are in the outrage.
Speaker 4:
[14:35] They're in trouble, right? It's in trouble. And Lufthansa announced it's canceling 20,000 flights. And there's at least one Gulf country that is apparently talking to the US about an economic bailout. I don't know, have we underestimated the next order consequences of this war?
Speaker 7:
[14:59] Well, I don't think so, but I want to go back to something that both Elisa and Ed said here. I think everything that Elisa said was spot on, that there are a host of things that his base cares about and the war is not really one of them. But I also thought it was very interesting that Ed said that this is a question of humiliation. And one of the reasons why this is so hard for the president to figure out how he's going to end this is because anywhere he turns, any option he has at this point for ending it results in his humiliation. The United States is worse off as a result of his decision to go to war. The Iranians win here despite he can talk about how much damage has been done to Iran's military, its ballistic missiles and so on and so forth. But the fact of the matter is, is that when this comes to an end, the likelihood is that the Iranians will have some say in how the Strait of Hormuz is, how ships navigate through the Strait of Hormuz. And this will obviously be a blow to America's longstanding interest in freedom of navigation. And he will have by doing this, undermine or contribute to undermining the prosperity of our partners in the region. The Iranians will still be standing and will have this new leverage that they can hand over the global economy. This is a humiliating surrender for him, no matter how he figures it out. And that's why he's saying, the blockade will stay on, but there's a ceasefire, but maybe not. And so he cannot figure out, this is the one time in his life, because exactly why the Iranians have figured him out. That he cannot figure out a way out of it. And that's why he's having such a difficult time. And that's why he may say, I don't really care. Let's talk about anything else. Now, as far as the second and third order effects go, I think to some extent, almost immediately, people started thinking about what this was. But I think that your last point about a Gulf state, it's the UAE has gone to the United States and saying, just in case, we would like to arrange some sort of financial backstop. That is, I think, a very big deal, not necessarily because the Emiratis need it right now, but because a source of American power in the region and the world was our important partnerships. The UAE is one of those important partners, very important to the regional order of the Middle East that made it relatively less expensive and relatively easier for the United States to achieve its goals in the region. If they are damaged to the point where they need financial support from the United States, it's going to, I think it augers very significant change to the regional order and the power dynamics there. I think, again, the Iranians may be smashed, but we're handing them power that they didn't have on February 27. That is the folly of this reckless war.
Speaker 4:
[18:02] Well, another thing that that illustrates, Ed, is that they may think the US owns this, that they violated Colin Powell's rule, the Pottery Barn rule, and that if the US is going to go in and be there and disrupt all these economies and we're friends with a country, then we're going to have to bail them out. Clearly, clearly, one of the things, for all the reasons you guys have enumerated, that this war is doing is hammering America's standing and people's attitudes towards Trump. Now, you've just been in Europe and you've talked to leaders from that part of the world as well. Isn't it true that, even those who were making on Trump have gone sort of a quantum leap further in thinking how irrational and out of control he is?
Speaker 5:
[19:05] Yeah. I mean, you know, you go by the rule that with Trump, accusation is always confession or at least it's projection when he accuses somebody of something. Right from when he sort of got into the presidential game in 2015, he kept saying using this term, they're laughing at America. They weren't actually laughing at America. During Obama's term, there were critics of Obama. There were allied partners and other countries that were disappointed in him, but they weren't laughing and they weren't laughing during the Biden administration and perhaps much of the world wasn't during Trump's first administration. But it's really hard for me to overstate the degree to which the world isn't laughing is too sort of trivial a term, but is in despair but also contempt, I hate to use that word, for how this administration is conducting things. They watch not just Trump, they listen to him say these crazy things. I mean, we can stick just to the Iran Mall, we don't need to get into the Pope and Easter Day and all that kind of stuff. They watch the really sort of cheesy amateur and insulting videos that the White House are putting out, and I think rightly sort of way sort of left in the dust in terms of production values by the Lego ones the Iranians are putting out. I conclude from conversations with Europeans, to other places I travel, something truly bizarre and a real sort of metric of how bad things have got, that a lot of the world is rooting for Iran to win here. And these are people who wouldn't for five minutes wish to live in Iran. And they might be fully aware of the ghastliness of the Iranian regime and the fact that it's probably getting more ghastly. But they do not want Trump to come out of this situation looking anything other than humiliated, even if it entails costs to them. And it's hard for me, as I say, to sort of overemphasize this because it's, you know, I think people, I think people, well, you guys will travel. But I think a lot of people don't realize how the world is looking at America.
Speaker 9:
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Speaker 4:
[22:06] Well, you know, Elisa, one of the things that's quite stunning about this, and I think a lot of folks perhaps in the media don't have long memories, but their memories should go back, say, four months, right? Four months ago, the Iranians killed 30,000 innocent people who were just speaking out for their freedom. Their regime was hated by them, despised by people in the neighborhood. If you could not have been lower on the scale of global regime relations, reputation, vibes than the Iranians were, with the exception of just a couple of countries. I think Ed has put his finger on something that nobody's really talking about. Somehow, the Iranians are winning the information war on this. You know, you and I were at an event last week and something happened. And it was, you know, Trump was saying that, you know, the, I guess, there was passage through the strait. And the people in the room, none of them friends of the Iranians said, well, I'm not going to believe that unless I hear it from the Iranians. From the Iranians. That's the, and, you know, then there's the Lego stuff. All these embassies are coming out with their little comments throughout this thing, which are, you know, are funny. Meanwhile, the US is fumbling and fumbling. How did Iran become the information warfare superpower in this? And then on top of it, you know, we were talking about the economic consequences. You know, it's already a matter of, sort of, conventional wisdom in the US foreign policy community, which, by the way, makes the kiss of death, in my view. But that Iran played this brilliant economic warfare game against the United States, and we were hammering them with, you know, military means, and they said, well, we got another way to play this. Apparently, they got two ways to play this, and I think they're both being kind of underappreciated generally.
Speaker 6:
[24:21] So, and I think that's one of the saddest things that we're talking about here is the fact that Ed is picking up on this idea that people who know the depth of the vileness of the Iranian regime are somehow secretly hoping that the US loses in this fight. And that is, that's deeply disturbing, right? Because this regime is, and it still is, by the way. Let's not forget that despite the fact that President Trump says regime change has happened and pragmatists are now in charge, this is the militarized ascension of regime hardliners, right? These are the guys who have always been there behind the door and now are just at the table. So rationalizing somehow whitewashing this regime because of the way this war has been conducted is yet another massive cost of this war. The regime's information ops are not new to us, right? They've been doing this for decades. They learned it from the Russians. They learned it from others. So this also should not be a surprise. By the way, what they've done in the Strait of Hormuz isn't all that much of a surprise. But either, I mean, every scenario that we've ever run for decades, when we talked about the Iran contingency potentially going into a direct conflict, Strait of Hormuz was always at the top of the list of things that are going to be in Iran's quivers it could use. How it did this was a little bit interesting and maybe not exactly what we all predicted. But nonetheless, this was always one of the highest risks. It should surprise no one that this is what the regime did when it felt it was under an existential threat. The only person it seemed to surprise was President Trump.
Speaker 4:
[26:18] President Trump. Yeah. Well, we've had conversations like this before, and typically, I'll go, when we get the second half of the conversation, I go, so what's going to happen next? But I'm not going to insult you because nobody has any idea what's going to happen next. But what we can project is how this has changed the power equation in the region and in the world. I mean, it's certainly damaged US standing. But let's just take the Middle East. You know, I've heard a lot of folks involved in the region say it'll never go back to the way it was on February 27th. What will it go back to? Well, I mean, are we headed into sort of permanent instability? Are we headed into new kinds of alliances? Are we headed into permanent conflict? Where do you think we're going here, Steve?
Speaker 7:
[27:23] Yeah, I think there's certainly within the region, there's been a fracturing of it. You're going to see different kinds of alignments emerging. First of all, I think the Iranians, as I said before, are empowered, which is a big change. Previously, they didn't have any control over the straight-up Hormuz. They will have essentially stood up to the United States and forced the president of the United States to back off. That will certainly empower the Iranians, which will scare the hell out of the western side of the Gulf and others. But there, there's fracturing itself. The Saudis seem to have drawn closer to the Qatari position. There is an emerging block of the Pakistanis, who are not part of the region, and the Egyptians and the Turks talking about a security alliance. The Emiratis are angry at the Egyptians and have continued their anger at the Saudis. They are drawing closer to Israel, the United States, and other countries in the region. The GCC is no longer, or even if it ever was, it's even less coherent than it was before. The Arab League has a new secretary general. It's meaningless. So I think that you're going to see a shaking out of the region, and not only is there the immediate problem of a newly empowered, weakened, but empowered Iran, even if that doesn't really make sense. But if you work on the region, you understand exactly what that means. And the adversaries, the countries that the Iranians have been menacing, the region in which they have been sowing chaos is fractured in and of itself. I've been laughing in recent weeks. Anybody's talked about Israel's normalization with Saudi Arabia. I mean, countries in the region see Israel as an agent of chaos, a very capable one, but that is what concerns them. So I think we're seeing a scrambling of the region and the way in which we've thought about it before. Saudis, Emiratis, Bahrainis, Egyptians, Israelis, kind of lining up to meet the Iranian threat is not something that we are going to see going forward. Very, very different alignments are going to emerge.
Speaker 4:
[29:39] Yeah, no question about that. I made reference to your column. One of the things that this war has done is accelerate something that was already happening faster than I could believe was happening, and that is the decay in the US-Israeli relationship. US support for Israel has gone through the floor under Netanyahu in the wake of the atrocities in Gaza and beyond. But now, you've got this phrase, you and I talked about this earlier today, which is really a potent phrase, and that is Netanyahu in the situation room. This idea that there he was at the lever, talking Trump into this thing, and we've had opinion polls in the past couple of weeks, that have suggested that opposition to Israel and sympathy to the Palestinians has not only done a complete about face in the US, but it's one of the issues on which there is much broader agreement on foreign policy than on almost anything else. You wrote about it, but to me, I'm astonished that we are in this place.
Speaker 5:
[31:04] Yeah. It's not suddenly happened, as you know, since February 28th. Some of it has been building up since the reaction to October 7th. I think American public opinion was very, very sympathetic to Israel for the most part of what happened on October 7th. But the reaction to it played straight into Hamas' hands. Although a disaster for Gaza, a propaganda victory for extremists. When I hear people say that the shift, explain this shift in public opinion, particularly amongst younger Americans, as a function of jihadi propaganda running rampant on the campuses, and Hamas messages, and Hezbollah messages, et cetera. There of course are sort of left anti-Zionist student circles that exist and they're clearly more numerous than before. But I think this is a very self-soothing explanation. It's public opinion in general that is shifted, not Hamas influenced public opinion. And I think the shift is, for want of a better term, it's merit based. It's not propaganda driven. It's merit based. People are seeing the David acting like a kind of out of control Goliath. And that has led to a shift in opinion, which is generational. It's also asymmetric. It's a lot more amongst Democrats than Republicans. But the Democrats have been consistently the more affiliated pro-Israel party. And, you know, you've got 40 out of 47 senators, including a majority of Jewish American senators, voting to end arms transfers to Israel up from, I think, 18 a couple of years ago, maybe 11, 11, the last 11, then 19 and 20. This is double the last time, which is double the time before. I mean, the trend is very pronounced. And I don't think it's, it's not a blip. And therefore this is, this is something that Israelis are going to have to be thinking of. Now the other, the other sort of split there is clearly Israeli public opinion is by and large behind Netanyahu. There is this sense of siege of constant threat inside Israel. Jewish American opinion, you know, obviously doesn't feel that. And so the divergence between Jewish American opinion, the very significant subset of American public opinion and Israeli opinion is, is extreme. It's a really, they're sort of mirror images of each other.
Speaker 4:
[33:57] Yeah, no, no. Yeah, one.
Speaker 7:
[33:59] Can I just get in on, on, on something here about it? I think I agree with that. I think it is, I think it's merit based. I think that there, but I think there's a longer, there's a longer period of it where it began, I think in 2015 with the Democrats, very seriously, with Prime Minister Netanyahu coming to Washington and speaking in Congress against the JCPOA. And I think they're Democrats who are not going to forgive or let the Israelis off the hook for that one. Because in many ways that opposition has led us in part to the place that we're here now. I think that, again, the images coming from Gaza have had a tremendous impact. Of course, you know, there is a kind of post October 7th world view within Israel that, you know, says we need to resolve our security problems rather than manage them. Because managing them meant we will have, we had October 7th, then we could potentially have more October 7th. But again, that's not dismissing the ecstasies of what happened in the Gaza Strip. And there's certainly ways the Israelis could have, could have handled it differently. I will take issue with this. I don't think there's a consensus in Israel. I think there was a consensus in Israel on taking on Hezbollah. The Israel Democracy Institute would suggest that 80% of Israelis wanted to continue the operations. The Institute for National Strategic Studies had a poll that said 65%. Other than that, however, the implied number of seats for Netanyahu and his coalition from current polling would suggest 50 seats in the Knesset, 11 short of the majority that they need. That doesn't necessarily suggest that the opposition will get 61, but that Netanyahu is far from there, and that his personal approval is actually quite low among Israelis. He could end up the prime minister because of the Israeli electoral law, but not because he's wildly popular. There's a consensus behind him.
Speaker 4:
[35:57] Well, Elisa, you've been a denizen of the Hill. I mean that in a positive way. You're a recovering denizen of the Hill. This big change has taken place that Ed has talked about. One of the things that's most striking about the change is the gap between the 40 Dems and seven, I guess, who voted against it, is that the leadership is in this other group, and that a lot of the leadership in the US does not seem to be aligned with where the views of most Americans are in the US relationship with Israel, which is not just an interesting foreign policy question, because when I talk to political pundits and commentators and consultants and so forth, and politicians, something strange has happened here. It's almost become a litmus test in American politics as to whether you're in touch with where things are going in the future. And it's almost like if you're not just progressive Democrats, if you're under 40 Democrat, and you see somebody is like sort of in Apecville with Israel, you're like, I'm not supporting that anymore.
Speaker 7:
[37:19] Where is Apecville?
Speaker 4:
[37:21] Where is it? It's nowhere though. But what do you think about this as a political trend, Elisa?
Speaker 6:
[37:30] Well, it worries me for a couple of reasons. One, because I think it doesn't bode well for the trajectory of the rise in anti-Semitism that we're seeing at home and across the globe, right? I think this conflation of disagreements with Bibi Netanyahu and his far-right government and the US-Israel relationship at large is a mistake, and it's a mistake strategically, and it's a mistake for how we look at democracies anywhere in the world. But I think you're right, right? So both things can be true. I think it is becoming a litmus test. I think what you see amongst those members who did not vote with the 40 against the two arms sales last week is kind of a clinging on to this belief that if you don't have President Trump and you don't have Bibi Netanyahu, you somehow can still come back to the foundational elements of this relationship between the United States and Israel, and it's a proposition that hasn't been tested.
Speaker 4:
[38:35] Yeah, but it's wrong. I just want to say right here for the record, it's wrong. I think we're entering a mainstream view, that there's no reason that Israel should not be treated the same way we treat France or Britain.
Speaker 7:
[38:51] A hundred percent, we should be. This is a wealthy country that's capable of looking after its own security. It's not written in the Torah that we need to give them financial, military assistance.
Speaker 6:
[39:02] I mean, that's the debate, right? One of the reasons why this becomes so-
Speaker 4:
[39:04] Thank you, Rabbi Cook, for your time.
Speaker 6:
[39:09] I feel better now that I know that, that it's not written in the Torah. But it really is this issue of assistance that crystallizes this. You don't have this debate over other relationships in part, because you don't have $3.8 billion of US taxpayer money going to support that country's military. That is at the heart of this problem set. I think what Steven is saying is what we're seeing in this trend, that people don't want to be supporting that with US taxpayer dollars. Whether that is indicative of, we don't think this relationship is in the strategic interest of the United States, I think is a different question. I don't think that's what polls are really asking, and that's definitely not what they're reflecting. And after 78 years, I mean, Israel is celebrating its 78th birthday today, right? This is a real question as to what it should this relationship be. Shouldn't it be a mature, normalized relationship like we have with other close partners and allies? And what does that look like? And that's a departure from where it has been at least for the last three decades. And I think that's what Democrats are trying to surface. I'm not sure that Democrats are always surfacing that debate in the best possible way, but it's a debate that Republicans are ignoring. So it really comes to a head in part because it becomes such a partisan issue.
Speaker 10:
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Speaker 2:
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Speaker 4:
[41:34] Yeah, you know, I just as an aside, my first job was as a denizen of Capitol Hill as an aide to a congressman. And the congressman I was an aide to, there was a guy named Steven Solars, who was the representative of the largest group of Jews outside of Israel. He would say that on a regular basis in Brooklyn, New York.
Speaker 7:
[41:56] Brooklyn and Queens.
Speaker 4:
[41:58] Well, ultimately, things shifted around that way. That was the end of Steve Solars. But he was a huge defender of Israel. And I have to say, I'm sure he would have switched to this new position over time. I just, having known him and having dealt with it. And if somebody's listening who disagrees with me, you know, share it in the comments. And before we go, I'd like to go sort of pull back the focus a little bit in the last round of questions to the world at large. We've talked a little bit about how other countries, like Europe and so forth. Another country that seems to be coming out of this stronger, that has played this quite deftly, I think, and has been involved with it to a much greater degree than the Council on Foreign Relations has indicated, I'm kidding, is China. China is central to this in terms of their dependency on oil from the region, the fact that they have given Iran the ability to play the long game in some respects, what they've done in the UN on this, the fact that Trump's blockade was never a serious threat, because under no circumstances was he going to fire on a Chinese ship going into the Strait of Hormuz, and frankly above and beyond all of that, Trump wants to go meet with Xi Jinping desperately. He's like, let's just get this over. I've got a historic meeting in Beijing. I mean, he really, really wants that, and he tweeted or true socialed as much recently. On top of all of that, this thing that I find bizarre, but nobody seems to talk about, is that Pakistan is a client state of China, and they have been given the ball to run with this whole negotiating process because maybe Steve Wittkopf is doing some real estate deal with them. But the largest Chinese embassy in the world is in Pakistan. They've got $40 billion of infrastructure deals with the Chinese. They're super dependent on the Chinese. I just think that the hand of China is visible in all of this thing, and it suggests to me where things are going in this region, that it's going to be very, very hard to talk about future issues in the Middle East and elsewhere, but in this part of the world, without factoring where China comes out more in all of this. Ed, just your thoughts.
Speaker 5:
[44:36] Yeah, I mean, when you were asking earlier about what the Middle East is going to look like after this Iran war, I mean, one of the key things is less trust for the American security umbrella, and more sisters doing it for themselves or whatever the right analogy is. There's going to be more defense spending or more taking on their own defense burden, but there's going to be an opportunity here for China.
Speaker 4:
[45:00] Was that like an Annie Lennox reference?
Speaker 5:
[45:03] Yeah, was it Annie Lennox? It wasn't the Weather Sisters. No. Let's not get into 80s or 90s pop music, let alone contemporary pop music, when I'm the person answering the question. I brought that on myself. But, you know, now I'm completely confounded.
Speaker 4:
[45:29] What you were saying is, David, you're completely right, China's role is much bigger.
Speaker 5:
[45:33] What I was going to say is, it's raining, man. Oh, no, I'm really sorry. My, there's something's gone wrong with my software. China has, you know, obviously depends far more on the Strait of Hormuz than any other major economy. Americans, you know, are a net surplus of oil and gas producing country. And therefore, China needs to step up. Is this going to be an opportunity for China to step up? But that comes with responsibilities that, you know, would involve, I think, bringing Iran back in from the brokering some kind of a regional compromise. And I don't know whether China is yet in a position that it feels confident enough to do that because it's perfect at the art of doing nothing to interrupt its enemy while he's making a mistake. It's really perfect at the art of what they used to call in British diplomacy masterful in activity. Now there has been some activity, but it's been subtle in terms of supporting Iran, in terms of supporting Russia since 2022, and of building up alternative payment systems for the Iranian $2 million per tanker toll to be paid through the non-dollar denominated stable coin, the Chinese yuan, settling in those currencies. There's stuff that's going on, but it's subtle. At some point, if China is to redeem its rhetoric of being the grown up, the stabilizer, the predictable power, it's going to have to take bigger diplomatic risks in getting involved in mediating and indeed shaping new orders, new peace settlements.
Speaker 4:
[47:27] I'll go to Steven and then Elisa. It's roughly the same question. But is that true, Steve, what Ed's saying? Because couldn't China just have the invisible hand? Couldn't they have a softer touch? Isn't there a different way to be a superpower than the US or Russia, the Soviet Union were in the day? China's mastered focusing on their issues at home, but playing an ever greater role in the world without breaking the China?
Speaker 7:
[48:01] Well, with the exception to the reference to It's Raining Men, I agree with what Ed is saying here.
Speaker 4:
[48:09] Which is you don't want to talk about 80s pop music either?
Speaker 7:
[48:12] Well, no, I'm more than happy to talk about 80s pop music, but It's Raining Men would not be part of my canon. Let's put it that way.
Speaker 4:
[48:19] I see.
Speaker 7:
[48:21] I think, but again, I agree with Ed. I think that the Chinese are perfectly happy for the United States to get wrapped around the axle of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran and the fracturing of the region in which it had been the predominant power for three decades without stepping up and having to do much. I think that they are subtly supporting the Iranians because it helps keep the United States bogged down the region and that's less resources for Asia. I think that the Pakistani role here is less about China, although I can imagine the Chinese whispering to them at certain moments and more the fact that the Saudis have a defense pact with the Pakistanis. They don't want to call it in because they don't want to get involved either. And the very real fact that they can talk to both the United States. Pakistanis have done well in Washington under the Trump administration. They can talk to the Trump administration and they can talk to the Iranians.
Speaker 4:
[49:19] I think that's because they own part of the Roosevelt Hotel, but it's a complicated story.
Speaker 7:
[49:23] But I think that the Chinese would have to step up in a way that they don't want to in order to establish a different kind of equilibrium in the region. And I think they're smart not to. I think one of the, I dabbled in this a little bit, one of the cardinal rules of Chinese foreign policy is to remain neutral in local conflicts. And I think that they've done a very good job of it and they don't seem prepared or want to. And I think it's wise to get more deeply involved in what they've done.
Speaker 4:
[49:58] Well, they don't unless they have to. And I think, Elisa, they were triggered by President Trump saying he's going to wipe Iran off the map. So, your thoughts?
Speaker 6:
[50:10] I mean, maybe. I mean, I think that they... There's no mistaking that the Pakistani delegation went to Beijing right before the first round of talks in Islamabad, right? And so, there is, I think, a subtle connection that's happening there, but it's consistent with what Ed and Steven have already said about China kind of keeping arms-length, kind of security-centric issues with respect to the Middle East. This may be an opportunity for them, but I think what is more important to them coming out of this is they've learned some tremendous lessons about US capabilities and tremendous lessons about what a contingency in another strait might look like, one that has the country Taiwan's name in it. And so, I think they're getting a lot from this. Might they need to broker some quiet, cold arrangement in order to ensure that they get to replenish their oil when their stockpile goes down? Maybe. But I think the upside for them here is more than just the US being bogged down. It's more than kind of the erosion of what is left of the international liberal order. It's really learning lessons that are going to apply to Beijing very directly in perhaps not the far too distant future. So it's got all kinds of benefits for them that they don't necessarily need to erase at the moment.
Speaker 4:
[51:41] Yeah. Well, my conclusion to that, and I will conclude with my conclusion, a moderator's prerogative, is they are reinventing what it is to be a superpower. They have watched, they have paid attention, they have come up with a new approach. It is a subtler approach, and it is an approach that uses soft power much more effectively than we have recently. In fact, we've abused our hard power and our soft power with tariffs and so forth. I think it has an impact on this. And frankly, whenever the United States does wrap itself around the axle in places like this, it only benefits them. And to me, the perfect example of this, and I'll end with this, I saw it earlier today, was that on the front page of the Financial Times this morning, one of the stories was of a Chinese battery manufacturer, one of the two giant Chinese battery manufacturers that is introducing a battery that has a 1,500-kilometer range and can be recharged in six minutes. And these Chinese EV battery manufacturers control over 50% of the global EV battery market right now, and the number is growing. Tesla is falling dramatically behind worldwide in market after market. They're winning on that, on AI and on other things, the sources of their super power are growing, because they don't get wrapped around the axle. And somewhere in the midst of all of this, you could have, we could have noted that the head of the Kuomintang Party from Taiwan went to China two weeks ago, and they had a week of meetings in which the whole point was, we must find a way to resolve our differences without a war. And it's, it's, it's, it's a very different vibe than you will hear from even, you know, China experts here in the United States. Anyway, that is a subject for another day. I am incredibly grateful that I could get the three such noted Eurythmics experts as Ed and Elisa and Steve together here today to talk about that and so much else. And I am very glad that all of you have joined us. Please join us again every week for this and everything else we do here at The DSR Network. And if you're not subscribing to us on YouTube, go do that now. That just takes a click. And you'll increasingly, that's where everybody's getting this. And we hope you will follow us there. So see you all soon. Thanks, guys. Bye bye.