Air Date: 7-1-2026

Today we examine how four months of American bombardment accomplished what decades of diplomacy never could, making Iran, still run by oppressive theocrats, a regional superpower. An Iranian woman told a reporter she endured the bombing hoping it would topple the regime. Instead, it entrenched it.

Full Show Notes

Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Today we examine how four months of American bombardment accomplished what decades of diplomacy never could, making Iran, still run by oppressive theocrats, a regional superpower. An Iranian woman told a reporter she endured the bombing hoping it would topple the regime. Instead, it entrenched it.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 55 minutes today include

On the Media

Heather Cox Richardson

THE DAILY BLAST

Unf*cking The Republic

The Current

and Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie

Then, in the additional, Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in 4 sections;

Section A, THE DEAL ITSELF

Section B, THE STRATEGIC LOSS

Section C, VOICES FROM THE REGION

and Section D, WHEN THE STRONGMAN FAILS

And now, on to the show.

So tell me about the line in The Dark Knight Rises that this US-Iran tentative non-binding memorandum of understanding reminded you of.

I thought of the opening scene in which the villains take over a plane while flying another plane above it. Yeah. And before they let it fall to the ground, all of the henchmen are linking them up to the cables to escape, and Bane puts his hand on the shoulder of one of them and says, "No."

No. They expect one of us in the wreckage, brother. "

They expect one of us in the wreckage, brother." And he just nods and falls down with the plane. And this is what's happening here. It happens all the time with Trump, is that he can never fail. He is only failed by others. Somebody either willingly becomes the fall guy, Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro literally went to prison for Donald Trump, or they become the fall guy because they accidentally walked into it, and then they find themselves with no way out.

And it was very apparent early on this week when details of the deal started leaking, and you could tell senators, most of whom are longtime Iran hawks who probably wanted this war to continue despite the economic pain, that they didn't like it And so I started noticing very quickly, Lindsey Graham, who's chief among these Iran hawks, said, "Well, the architect, J.D.

Vance and others." That struck me as odd because no one thinks of the vice president being the architect of this major deal. You would think if it's anyone other than the president, it'd be the secretary of state.

And you also have observed that, when these narratives come out clearing the president of any blame for what he himself set in motion, it generally begins on Fox or on one of the far right-wing podcasts or something, and then it gets picked up.

But you say that this particular narrative Pinning this whole thing on Vance actually did begin with Graham in the Senate, picked up by others in the Senate, and then traveled on to the media outlets?

Yes. We've seen it a million times over. When Trump decides he no longer likes someone in his inner circle, it originates on Fox, most of the time on Fox & Friends, the morning show which he watches religiously.

But this case, it was senators quickly moving to describe this as J.D. Vance's baby. And if we recall, in March, J.D. Vance was being reported as the lone skeptic of this military engagement.

Yeah, very consistent with his own America First policy.

Yeah, exactly, and this whole thing came together really quickly, and it happened at the same time that J.D.

Vance is out plugging his book. So J.D. Vance is making the rounds everywhere on all these different TV interviews, but because this is happening at the same time, every interview ends up being about this deal.

What did Vance have to do with this MOU? Did Vance have any input into this document at all?

Oh, he absolutely did.

I just don't think it would be at all accurate or fair to describe the vice president as the architect of this deal the way the senators have. This is a team effort. Ultimately, the buck stops at the president, but when Donald Trump is president and Republicans control Congress, the buck does not stop with him.

It stops with whoever they decide it's stopped with.

Trump has been dropping Vance's name a lot when asked about who's responsible. Even when Trump was asked if he would be at the signing, which ultimately he was this week, Trump said...

Well, it depends. J.D.'s coming in for it. He was originally going to do it.

I, I'll probably be gone by then. We're having dinner.

And this isn't going to fit the requirements that previously senators like Graham and John Cornyn said would be necessary to stop the war, right?

Yes. Before this war was started, the strait was open, and now we're looking at the possibility of Iran receiving passage fees or whatever Ticketmaster-esque language they come up for tolls of whatever they want.

I spoke to John Cornyn at the beginning of this war, and he said, "Yes, gas prices are bad, but we need to make the case thoroughly to the American people that a little pain is worth it if it means eliminating the prospect of a nuclear Iran, if it means removing their ballistic missile capabilities." Well, now we're seeing as a result of this MOU, okay, they have to eliminate their currently enriched stockpile, but it doesn't necessarily impose strict enforcement of future enrichment of uranium.

It doesn't necessarily address their ambitions for a civilian nuclear program. It just ends the current hostilities

For 60 days.

Yes.

Maybe extended to

90. They can keep extending it as long as they want, technically. It's just a public relations Band-Aid for this thing.

But, are the senators who have loudly said that Iran needs to do this, Iran cannot be allowed to do that, Iran can't get any money, are they gonna be able to maintain that position without condemning the president?

I spoke to Lindsey Graham before we saw the text of this deal, and he said, " I, I what I've heard so far," while he was pinning it on JD, but then he said very clear, "If they can enrich nuclear material, it's not a good deal." Reporters were given the text by the administration prior to Congress.

The details leaked out, which they said was fake, and then when they finally gave the official details, it was word for word the exact same. And we've seen that actually there is this possibility that they can enrich nuclear material in the future. So these hawks now have to deal with, well, do we review this?

And part of that component of it is the language of it. A memorandum of understanding is very particular wording to avoid requiring congressional advice and consent.

And you suggest there's nothing that Congress would like more than not having to weigh in. You've said there's nothing legislators, at least in this Congress, hate more than actually legislating.

Oh, that's their least favorite thing. They like confirming nominees. They like renaming post offices. Sometimes they like doing tax cuts through reconciliation, but beyond that, it's difficult to get them to really do things, especially this close to the midterm elections. Anything they do can be turned into an advertisement.

A lot of senators I spoke to said, "Well yes, y- ideally you would want Congress to review this." By law, the, Iran Nuclear Agreement Act of 2015 forces them to. Well, that's if it's an agreement. In the MOU we see, oh, there's a relief of sanctions. It's not clear that the administration can just unilaterally issue sanctions relief.

That might also fall under Congress. Democrats have said this is an illegal war. Nothing's illegal if Congress isn't willing to enforce the laws to begin with.

Anyway, the things you need to know about it are, first of all, that the administration has been saying now since Trump began to strike Iran on February 28th, 2026, that he did not need congressional authorization for those strikes because they were not a war.

And what he was arguing was that under the War Powers Act of 1973, a president has the power to respond to an imminent threat. And that's why Trump made such a big deal out of saying, "Oh, , we think Iran's gonna make a nuclear weapon in the next week," as he said at one point, which is completely contrary to what observers have said and even what Trump's own director of national security told Congress just before the war.

So He was trying to get it, slide in under that imminent threat thing. But with the War Powers Act of 1973, the president has two days to notify the Senate and the House of Representatives that he has launched strikes or some military action. And then from that notification, he has 60 days either to get out or then to get congressional approval for what he has done, so to say that the Congress is behind this military action.

And Trump simply refused to do that. He announced that the ceasefire that was announced on April 7th meant the war was over even though the US was still blockading Iranian ports, which is an act of war, and even though the two sides were still shooting at each other on occasion. But the argument has always been, "Well, it wasn't a war, so we don't have to do any of the things one would normally do if this were a war."

Well, in this document, it actually describes the conflict between the United States and Iran as the current war. , There's I, I, I, I don't like to predict the future, but it's hard to imagine there's not gonna be lawsuits going forward over what the administration did to get around the law, not just somebody's opinion, but the law said he couldn't do what he did anyway.

The memorandum of understanding commits the United States and Iran and their allies , to stop military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon. And that's an attempt to draw Israel, which launched strikes against Iran at the same time the US did on February 28th, , first on Iran itself, and now it's been attacking what it says are Hezbollah camps in southern Lebanon.

And Hezbollah is a militia that is backed by Iran. And Israel has also been occupying southern Lebanon in what it says is a security zone. And theoretically, this memorandum of understanding will commit Israel to stop doing both of those things, and Israel has already said, "N- not happening.

We have no, no part of this, and we're not gonna go along with whatever it is you've decided." So that's, that's another thing right off the top. But then the memorandum of understanding is, , basically an incredible deal for Iran because it get- immediately gets rid of the sanctions that the US has been imposing on the regime now for, for years and years to try and pressure it into ceasing, for example, to, to back things like Hezbollah.

, And those sanctions will stop immediately, as will the US blockade of Iranian ports, which has been strangling the Iranian economy and also has given Iran access, immediate access to the world trade system, including the financial markets. So all of a sudden, the Y- the Iran is back in the, the world financial system, and that's one place that the US and its allies traditionally have had a lot of power.

People need to be part of the global trading system, and crucially also part of, it's called the SWIFT bank, but part of the global banking system so that you can do trades with other countries, which happens all the time, and Iran has been excluded from those while, , there was pressure to make it try and become a better neighbor, , a better member of the global neighborhood, if you will.

Those are all gone. In exchange for that, the memorandum of understanding says that Iran will use its best efforts to enable commercial ves- vessels to pass safely through the Strait of Hormuz. That's not a guarantee. That's we're gonna use our best efforts to do that. And it also says that Iran will not charge those vessels for 60 days only.

And then it goes on to suggest that Iran and Oman, which is on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz, will jointly determine the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz. And what they have been saying is they're not gonna charge a toll, they're gonna charge fees for services for crossing the Strait of Hormuz, and some of those services might be things like not being bombed.

So there is the, this possibility, and probability, let's be honest, that Iran is planning to charge people money to cross through the Strait of Hormuz, which is of course gonna make things more expensive, and crucially undermine the concept of the freedom of the seas. I've talked a lot about the freedom of the seas, but it's really important.

It's one of the things, , that has a long history before 1941 that I won't go into now. But think about, just to color that period, think about the days of piracy and people running different flags up their masts and taking down different flags when they're on the seas because some country might be at war with another country and you're trying to get on by them.

, , The age we think of as the age of piracy and before that. The concept that you can be on the seas and trade regardless of from where you hail has been really important for the global economy, and the concept that we have lived under really since World War II is articulated in 1941 in the Atlantic Charter, which is set out by US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, , um,...

Oh, come on Winston Churchill. I was gonna say, all I can say is I can see him, and my father always said babies either look like Winston Churchill or Dwight Eisenhower. And so all I could think of was what he looks like as a baby. Sorry about that. Anyway, they set that out in 1941 with this idea that it's really gonna promote global trade, and if you keep people involved in global trade, you will create a, a rising standard of living, but you will also stop wars starting over the sorts of things I just described.

So that idea of the freedom of the seas has been central to the understanding of world trade really since World War II. Obviously, they didn't put that in place during world, during the World War, but afterward they did. And the Iranians charging, , tolls to pass through the Strait of Hormuz undermines that, and it is certainly going to be paid attention to by other countries who also border straits or border important waterways that they could block or they could charge tolls for, and that's gonna cause international friction.

Anyway, that, says that the, that the, the Strait of Hormuz will be free for 60 days, but not after that. So when Trump is out there saying, "Oh, the strait's free, the strait's free," the-- it literally is in writing that it's only 60 days. Then, , the other thing is that the memor- memorandum of understanding says that Iran will, , have access to its frozen assets that have been frozen, , because of American sanctions and other countries' sanctions around the world that amount to, the number I have seen is $24 billion.

Half of that allegedly has already been delivered to Iran. And this, because it is Iran's own money that has been frozen, Trump has been saying, "We're not giving them any cash. We're not giving them any cash," by which he is contrasting what he believes happened f- under the joint, , comprehensive plan of action that Obama and, the US and, and un- five other, I think it's five other countries, China, Germany, France, , the United Kingdom, I always forget one, negotiated in 2015.

But the reality is this is significantly more money that is changing hands, and like under Obama, it is Iran's own money. This is-- there's not a handout there of American money in that unfreezing of assets, or so it appears.

So let's start with JD Vance's appearance on The View. He took a hammering on a number of fronts. I wanna highlight one exchange, though. They're talking about inflation. JD says, "We're doing all we can."

Then one of the hosts points out that Trump recently said, "I love the inflation." Listen to this.

We're doing a lot to make it better. It's gonna take a little bit of time. There's a lot more work to do, but the president knows that a lot of Americans are struggling. In fact, he ran on that, he talked about it, and we've done some things and made some good progress on that point.

He just said he loves the inflation.

What he said, Ana, what he said is that he loves the fact that the inflation is gonna come down when this war is over. That's, that's what he said. That's

not what he said. That's not what he said. That wasn't addressed. That's not

what he said, but that's okay. Are you his, wait, are you his interpreter or are you his vice president?

Come on.

Well, look, look, I, I, I... What the president said, people were asking about the inflation, they were asking about the affordability problem- Yeah ... which again, is very real, and what he said is, "I love the inflation 'cause it's gonna come down when the war is over."

So Joy Behar got a good dig in there, saying that Vance is just functioning basically as Trump's propagandist and not leveling with people, although she said it in a way that kinda kept it light.

Virginia, what did you make of the exchange?

Well, , I think, , I don't know, do people still say mogged? I feel, I do think that JD Vance got mogged by the, , by the women of The View. , They were all on top of him. I know he had said on Fox News the day before that, , or maybe earlier th- earlier this morning that he was trying to prepare for civil conversation, but he knew he was going into the lions' den.

Inflation question is gonna be really interesting to View, View viewers, right? , , JD Vance has this book come out about his Christian faith, about his Catholic faith, and he really, really wants everyone to focus on his religious journey because he believes that he can bond with the suburban women who are y- sometimes lean Republican, especially on issues like crime, and he might get to them by The View, right?

So he wasn't going into the lions' den for no reason. He was going into it to promote a book, and indeed, they gave the, , they gave the, the, , QR code so you could buy the book at the end. Yes, I saw that. So they did their part, right? , And they gave him a onesie For his, , forthcoming newborn that says The View on it.

, But when-

Virginia, I have to ask. Yeah. Do you think that, do you ha- do you think that JD Vance and Usha are going to put that onesie on their baby?

I was wondering about that. I thought, maybe that's just another Mog, that's just another Mog moment. We'll ha- brand you with The View, brand your, your baby.

- Yeah, that's good ... , we don't wanna get, right, too symbolic about it, but there was a lot, there was just a lot going on, and it's a lot to watch. And, and, , Whoopi and some of the other host- hosts of color were especially incensed and, and didn't, didn't give any ground. And that w- there was something satisfying about seeing that because we've seen Trump attack so many women over and over again in interviews, walk out of interviews, call women nasty, call them pig, call them whatever.

And so just saying, "We're not really gonna entertain the, some idea that there's a kumbaya here with you," and making it very clear with their expressions that they weren't gonna entertain it.

JD Vance was really on his best behavior though, we should point that out. Yeah. Now, what do you think of the inflation exchange?

Because I wanna clarify for people that the inflation exchange is really about inflation from the war. Right. That's what Trump was talking about when he said, "I love the inflation." And it maneuvered Vance into a position where he was essentially forced to say or forced to defend what Trump said there.

What did you make of the exchange?

So what, what, what Vance says is he didn't mean he loves the inflation. He meant, "I love that the inflation is gonna go down after the war." And for some reason, everything these days is reminding me of this moment in The Simpsons. I, I can't remember what season it is, but I think that, , , Krusty the Clown or someone who's trying to kill Bart has, "Die Bart die," tattooed on his chest.

And when it's revealed, "Die Bart die," he says, "No, this is just German. Die Bart die. The Bart the." Right? All right. It's German. That's

good.

And I love that because, no, he didn't say, "I love the inflation." He said, "I love that the inflation is going down. Die Bart die." There's no way that that's what he was saying.

Everybody knows not, that's not what he was saying. And for t- for JD Vance to introduce doublespeak, to introduce propaganda, really shows how he's on his back foot

I wanna add something about that exchange as well. As you say, it's a stretch, as Vance said, that Trump was claiming that he loves the fact that inflation will come down after the war.

I think Trump was more saying, "I don't give a shit about the inflation 'cause the problem's gonna magically go away because I say it is, and that's it, and you should make it go away in your head." That's what he actually meant. Mm-hmm. But seriously, right, there's another vulnerability here, which is that Vance is tying himself to the idea that costs will come down significantly after the war.

In other words, he's endorsing that idea and aligning himself with it, and that's gonna take a while, and whatever actually happens with costs, I'm not sure the public's gonna feel good about costs anytime soon. Yeah. So Vance has been maneuvered into a position where he's tied to defending that, essentially that big, big, big thing about the Trump term- Right

which is a very, very tough thing to defend.

It's asking people to pay more for groceries in exchange for some foreign policy goal that keeps shifting, that we don't understand, and that, by the way, frankly, the administration did nothing to gin up support for. So we don't even have a narrative about why we're in Iran.

They weren't building nukes, or were they? Or what... , nobody is following this enriched uranium conversation or whatever J.D. Vance is saying this new Iran deal is, which sounds, , the last or good Iran deal except worse. And nobody understands what we're doing there, just as they didn't understand Venezuela and they didn't understand the first attack on Iran.

This has not been sold to the American people, and yet we're asked to make a sacrifice for it. We're asked to pay more for groceries while he keeps telling us affordability is a hoax and that he loves inflation. And I, I just-- I think this is the tall- This is the, yes, as you say, signature piece of foreign policy, clearly.

And I think it reads to the American people as we've gone to war for Israel and we don't know why, and, and, , nobody has a stake in figuring out this nuclearized Iran because we keep not understanding it. The only thing we understand is we're paying more, something about the Strait of Hormuz, and this is all Trump's fault, and we have, and no faith in him.

, There's not even a strong base that's, trying to spin up support for it. What they just say back is, "It's a hoax," or, "You're nasty for asking questions about it."

100%. And I think there are clear signs that Vance is getting set up now to take the fall for the Iran deal if it goes south. Axios reports that CIA Director John Ratcliffe told Trump and other top officials that the intel agencies seriously doubt that Iran will ultimately make the concessions that Trump will demand in terms of constraints on its nuclear enrichment program.

And this is a really key thing. I wanna read it. Quote, "In internal discussions, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth both expressed concerns and raised questions about the memorandum of understanding announced Sunday, while Vance and US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner advocated for it, according to two of the sources."

Close quote. Mm-hmm. So Virginia, that strongly suggestive. People around Trump who expect, rightly I think, that he's gonna have serious trouble pinning Iran down when the talks on nukes get going, want it very clear that Vance internally rooted for this deal. And we're talking here about people who are sympathetic to Hegseth and Rubio.

What do you make of that?

As, as you said before, I think he's being shivved. I think that the person who is, , least confident in Trump's decisions around foreign policy, as we've seen from his past disputes with Trump and Hegseth, and pretty aggressive, meaningful isolationism, is having to defend those things and then just babble about how bad Obama was, about, , whatever comes into his head because the details of the deal have never, , , been fully exposed.

We don't know what they are. But we don't even know what our objective is. , The objective of the first deal was to prevent supposedly breakout capacity, right, from Iran so that they couldn't turn what they had into nukes, and that was a deal, a deal that the UN was invested in for-- on its n- with its non-proliferation treaty.

It was a deal that Iran was ultimately invested in because it got a lot of goodies, and that it complied with, right? But now are we trying to prevent breakout capacity? What's the time horizon? What are the things that an ordinary diplomat would ask about with this deal? No. It's just Trump trying to humiliate people or be humiliated himself.

And as we know, Iran is-- has gone to, , psychologists to say, "What is it like to deal with..." Remember with Nixon, he was exercising the madman option? Well, I think that Trump's madmanness is non-optional. ... He is a madman, right? He's not choosing, "Am I gonna act like a madman?" He just is. And, , this isn't a question of Democrats saying, "He is crazy."

This is a question of if you are negotiating with this person, how do you talk to an actually insane person? How do you say, , flatter his ego, do XYZ. And Iran is very likely to get away with some, pretty hideous things with, with JD Vance scrambling to defend him, being shivved by the president, and the president himself insane, and Hegseth pretty insane.

No one has ever accused Donald Trump of being a brilliant or even a competent strategist, nor will they ever, not after starting and then losing a costly war to Iran. This bilateral perspective, though, is what we're fed through US media channels, so it's a little limited and ethnocentric because the wider implications of this unconditional surrender to Iran changes the calculus for a host of nations in the Middle East and beyond, and it may have fundamentally altered the balance of power.

So to be clear, the memorandum of understanding, in the words of a former US diplomat, Aaron David Miller, is, quote, "A ticket to negotiation." So in other words, there's still time to screw this up, or as our dear leader so eloquently said...

If I don't like it, we'll go back to shooting at them, dropping bombs on their head.

Ah, yes, the art of the deal

UNFTR Novel concept alert here. I thought for this exercise that I would exclusively source non-US-based media, save for an observation made in a recent Brookings Institution report. Because something wondrous happens when you unplug from the American media matrix. You can actually hear how things impact, oh God, what do you call it?

Other people. So let's dip a toe in the water by talking about the easternmost point of the United States. I'm speaking, of course, of Israel. Whatever the outcome of this round of negotiations, Israel is one of the biggest losers in this tenuous agreement between the United States and Iran, and it might very well play the spoiler in the weeks and months ahead.

In fact, it already happened on the eve of this recording with a fresh round of strikes on Lebanon that have reportedly stalled negotiations within the proposed 60-day window that we're under. So this is impossible to speculate on, but what we know for certain, should the current framework stand, is that Israel is more isolated than it has been for several decades.

Any hope of a détente with the Gulf States, for example, to further the blueprint of the Abraham Accords, has likely been stalled. More significantly, as Yair Golan, the leader of the center-left Democrats in Israel noted, "Netanyahu is ending his tenure with Israel's enemies stronger, Israel weaker, and the deterrence built with the blood of our fighters eroding before our eyes."

Perhaps a little dramatic, but this is the sentiment inside Israel. Now, to the extent that it's become a proxy for the United States and the Middle East, this framing is still limited in the overall scheme of power dynamics. So let's zoom out. Middle East outlet Al-Monitor writes that, quote, "Iran remains a formidable and undefeated force capable of threatening Gulf Arab states and global energy flows," they say, "while the United States has again revealed the limits of military power against a resilient adversary."

End quote. So as far as I've read, this is the prevailing perception coming from most non-Western media. Although, as Brookings concludes, quote, "The United States needs to finally come to grips with the reality that its bases and carriers, and potentially even its homeland, will not have sanctuary in future wars against major powers."

End quote. Take that in for a second. The United States was exposed by an adversary that has only gained in international reputation and stature among its peer nations in the region. See, for many in the Gulf States, this is more than a disastrous outcome. The Al-Monitor reporting goes on to say that, "The deal, Gulf sources say, has already begun to reshape Gulf strategic thinking, eroding confidence in US protection, entrenching Iran as an enduring regional force, and accelerating a shift toward accommodation rather than confrontation."

If you think of the, the time and the money and the energy and alliance-building that's taken place between the Gulf States and the United States over the past century, this is an astonishing turn of events. See, while Americans view this largely as a wrongheaded and temporarily inconvenient blunder with high gas prices, make no mistake, the rest of the world's eyes are wide open.

We were beaten decidedly, and this matters. It's impossible to overstate how deeply connected we are to Saudi Arabia in particular, and how this relationship helped mold our alliances with the other Gulf States in the region. A relationship forged in oil with the recognition of Saudi sovereignty in 1931, and a formal partnership between Standard Oil and the Saudi kingdom called Aramco.

Now, today, Saudi Aramco is wholly owned by the kingdom, and it's one of the largest companies in the world. We've been attached at the hip for almost 100 years, only to be potentially undone by Donald Trump. Now, understand, I'm not making a value judgment here. If we put our feelings aside to look at this through a cold capitalist lens, this is a relationship that endured the Great Depression, a World War, the embargoes of the '70s and the rise of OPEC, the Gulf War, all of Bush and Obama's entanglements, and the dismembering of an American journalist.

You see, oil is our love language, and the Saudis are the poet laureates of crude. Again, according to Al-Monitor, quote, "Gulf capitals have intensified contacts with Tehran lately, seeking economic and security understandings to reduce the risk of confrontation." Only Donald Trump could force one of our tightest codependencies to completely reevaluate their relationship status with other countries.

Not for nothing, the guy has a gift. Beyond the lack of faith that Trump has engendered in the Gulf region with this failed attempt to flex our muscle, which includes, by the way, Qatar, the UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, there's the matter of Iraq, just to the north and adjacent to Iran. Hundreds of thousands of lives lost, trillions of dollars expended in the Iraq War.

So now we effectively control Iraq, but there's a hidden aspect of this financial control that the US media tends to overlook or, at a minimum, underappreciate. According to Shafaq, which is a Shia-owned, slightly left-leaning, but very highly reputable organization, at least according to Media Bias Fact Check, quote, "Since 2003, Iraq has struggled to transform formal sovereignty into fully autonomous state capacity.

Its political landscape remains divided between forces that lean toward Washington, often including parts of the Kurdish and Sunni communities, and others that prioritize ties with Tehran, particularly within the Shiite camp." End quote. It's important to recognize that Iraq is predominantly Shia Muslim, at least I think it's around 60%, which more closely aligns with the population in Iran.

Recall the chaos surrounding the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Iraq during the first Trump administration. For many Shiites in Iraq, this was a devastating event because Soleimani was the bridge between these communities, and he had deep ties in Iraq. He was a complicated figure, to be sure, but it illustrates the complex nature of these nations.

So despite the fact that Iraq's oil money flows first through the Federal Reserve in the United States before repatriating to Iraq, which helps us maintain the petrodollar and the access to Iraqi oil fields, Shafaq notes, quote, "Data from the US Energy Information Administration, or the EIA, shows that Iranian natural gas fuels power plants responsible for roughly 30 to 40% of Iraq's electricity generation, placing Tehran at the center of Iraq's energy stability."

The ties go beyond oil and gas. They're deeply rooted in the Iraqi security state as well. The Popular Mobilization Forces, or the PMF, in Iraq are a state-sponsored paramilitary network with nearly a quarter of a million fighters. So according to intelligence analyst from Alcon Intel, the PMF entrenchment is nearly irreversible at this point.

So the question isn't whether Iran will fill this power vacuum, it already has, and every historical precedent suggests that Iran will use post-deal liquidity to deepen this institutional grip. So despite the bluster from Washington, Iran's reach into Iraq never abated, and now it's strengthened as a result of our strategic failure and our desire to just pull up stakes from the region.

Margaret Evans is the CBC's senior international correspondent, and in a Canadian exclusive, she has been reporting from Iran with permission of the government, which imposes restrictions on international journalists.

However, they do not check our material before it's published or broadcast. I reached Margaret Evans yesterday in Tehran and began by asking her how people in Iran are feeling about the prospect of this conflict coming to an end.

I think it's something that people really, really, really want to believe is coming to an end, but there's a lot of skepticism because, of course, , it's four months of war now, but last year, last June, there was the 12-day war when, , the country experienced US and Israeli, , airstrikes again.

So, and, and in both instances, Iran and the United States were involved in negotiations, so there are a lot of people saying, "What's different now?"

There was an internet blackout. There have been restrictions on journalists getting into the country, and I want to talk about some more of the specifics, but just what is it like there in, in, in the wake of everything that, that has happened over the last three and a half months?

Well, , , we're... It's... Iran, as , is an enormous country and, and Tehran is an enor- nor- an enormous city. So, and our visas are good for eight days, and we have to spend a few days traveling in and out of the border. So it's not a long time to get, , a really in-depth view. Life goes on, , in terms of, , bustling, busy streets.

There are people out in the cafes at, at night. But of course, there's not active bombing taking place right now. We have been restricted in terms of what we can actually film in terms of damage because many of these buildings are sensitive buildings, government buildings, security forces buildings. It's difficult to see the scars of the war up front.

When you talk to people- They are there. More than 3,000 people have been killed, more than 3,000 Iranians. So that's there. And then when you talk to people on the streets here, they will tell you the stories about people having to make choices about, , whether they can buy school books for their kids because the economy is just so dreadful.

, People choosing, , saying, "We can't afford to buy meat anymore." We met a carpet seller, , who... A proud businessman who ha- , described the slow decline of the carpet industry here, , a huge part of Persian culture, , not just because of the war, but because of decades of US-imposed sanctions when it pulled out of the, the nuclear agreement during Donald Trump's first term.

As you mentioned, there are these restrictions on, on international journalists and who you can speak with. How difficult is it? Have you been able to speak with, wi- with those who are critical of the regime and critical of, of where the regime has led them?

You have to be careful because we are accompanied by government minders.

They're not always e- extremely obvious. , So you don't want to get anybody into trouble, but people don't want to be filmed. , I was speaking with a woman this afternoon who, , I asked her how did she feel about the future of Iran and she said she hopes that this agreement sticks. It's not everything that they would like, but she said, y- , "W- I hope that we will be able to one day have accountability for all of those who died in the protests."

And my translator, who, , is, , I trust that the translator is being, , accurate and we check it, asked her, , to, to clarify did she mean those killed in the, by US Israeli airstrikes or did she mean protesters killed in January. Mm. As , thousands of, of people were killed. , The numbers disputed obviously by the Iranian government and human rights groups.

But, , she said, she said, "It's the protesters. They need accountability." , She talked about, , w- what people are doing to continue their protests safely and one of the things that we've seen is even more women... We were here last May- Yeah ... and a lot of women were starting, they were not wearing their, their headscarves.

Now everywhere you look there are women not w- not only not wearing their headscarves, but not even with scarves around their neck that they could pull up over their head if the religious police were turn up, t- to turn up. And another thing we've seen is women driving motor scooters or, , Cessnas and it's, it's illegal and that's something that they've carried on and, and we spoke to a couple of teenagers who said, , we said, "What are you doing?"

And they said, "It's because the protesters died for this. It's for our freedom." , Another group of women said, "Well, , th- those days are over. They're not gonna put the scarves back on our heads." But when I said, "Could I take a picture?" They said, "Oh, no. No. No, no." So the fear is still there and they, they said, "We think right now that the regime, the, the, the government forces," , , f- government is fighting a war.

"They're busy with other things. They're not worried about us now."

What are they hoping, and just broadly the people that you speak with, what are they hoping is in this deal and that they get out of, out of this deal as it comes together?

I think they want stability. , Obviously everybody wants the economy to, , go back to normal.

I think a lot of people also really want to see Iran, y- , to, to, for the isolation of Iran to end, and for the country to be understood and in, and in more sophisticated terms than we sometimes see it in the West or is, is presented in the West. , The images that you get on television are, , people chanting, "Down with Israel, down with the United States."

And there is that element of society here, but, , it's not universal. And, and people... This same woman that I was talking with you about earlier, I had asked her about football because, , Iran played this match in Los Angeles, , as a part of the World Cup soccer. Mm. And I asked her if she supported the national team, and she said no, because the national team to her represents the Islamic Republic.

But she also said to me, "I'm really-- I was really happy to see Iran's name out there taking part on the world stage." Because That's what we want. It might not be under the flag she wanted it to be there, but she wants Iran to be a part of the, of the world again. And, , and then, then there are others on the other side of, of, of the coin.

, The, the regime has a huge number of supporters. This is a country of 90 million people, and the Islamic revolution of 1979 is integral to their sense of self and being, and they don't want to see it diluted. But of course, that i- clerical regime is an authoritarian one and can impose its will on, on those who don't see the future of the country this way.

And I think one of the things that you're seeing right now is that for the people who did protest and, and want to see change, they're worried that the outside world doesn't have a very good attention span, and that what will happen or what is happening is that people think that the conflict between the United States and Iran being, I won't be optimistic enough to say resolved with this p- this peace agreement or this interim agreement, is overshadowing or, , the internal conflict and strife that existed here previously that, that the world will think, "Oh, everything's okay now," because the United States and Iran have, have, , are back on track to negotiations.

And those would be the people who, who perhaps were hoping that, that Donald Trump might have meant it when he said he wanted to have regime change in Iran. And, , the other thing I, I need to say is that, , many people who might want regime change doesn't, that doesn't mean that they want to see their country bombed, and there's a real n- new nationalism here as well.

They have been aggressed by an outside power, and it's not acceptable, and people have had to worry about where the strikes are gonna hit, how to talk to their children. , Going back to football, the Iranian national team, when they went to, when they went to the World Cup, they wore badges that said 168, and that's a reminder of the 168 children killed in a US airstrike in Ninew in the early days of the war.

I think it's important to hold two ideas in your head. The first idea is that the Iran war, this illegal, criminal war of aggression by the United States against Iran, who although it's a regional adversary, had not precipitated a strike, right? They had not engaged in formal hostilities. We launched a preventative strike, which is another way of saying an aggressive war, on Iran.

The Iran war, unbelievably stupid. , Truly unbelievably stupid. The main consequence of the war, which is that Iran has control over the Strait of Hormuz, easily predictable. You don't even need to know that much about the region. If you could just look at a map and see that Iran controlled this strategically vital area, you would assume that in the event of a conflict, they would, they would seize it, and that's what happened.

And so strictly on that level alone, the United States, by attacking Iran and then being unable to achieve any of its political or strategic objectives, has suffered a humiliating defeat and handed Iran an incredibly valuable strategic asset. From here on out, unless something meaningful changes, Iran could essentially cause political disruption in the United States on command by closing the Strait of Hormuz and precipitating a supply shock in the United States, whether that's energy, food, what have you.

Huge strategic misfire by the US. Unbelievably stupid decision. Iran hawks who have been clamoring for a full-scale war against Iran for, for decades now, , find themselves in this position of having to insist that this was a good idea even though it's clear just looking at the situation that it was not.

And given the extent to which Iraq w- hawks were not chastened by the failure of that war, I, I doubt that Iran hawks will be chastened by the failure of this war. But it remains to be said, the decision to attack Iran was unbelievably stupid. It was idiotic, and, and this is key, the United States lost that war.

We started a war and then we, we lost it. Did Iran strike the US? No. Did Iran necessarily win any battlefield engagements? To the extent that there were some, not really. We had overwhelming military force. But, and I think this is against the assumption of Pete Hegseth and many people in the White House who seem to see war as basically an occasion to puff up one's chest, talk tough, and commit some war crimes War is not actually about that.

War is about trying to accomplish a political goal. The famous formulation, war is politics by other means. You're trying to achieve a specific political goal, a specific strategic goal, and if you do not accomplish that goal, no matter how many people you kill, no matter how much equipment you destroy, no matter how many armaments you expend, if you do not accomplish that goal, then you've lost.

And worse for the US, in addition to straightforwardly losing, we've revealed some key weaknesses in our own military. We've revealed the extent to which we may not actually be prepared for the asymmetric warfare that seems to be, , standard in the 21st century. So a huge mess all around. We've probably been revealed to be something of a paper tiger So that's the first idea: stupid immoral war, bad idea, strategic defeat, unambiguous loss.

This provisional deal reflects that, but it also leaves the status quo that is quite bad. That status quo, as I've already said, is Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz. It also requires for the end of hostility is the US to contribute or help arrange $300 billion in reconstruction funds, , ending sanctions against Iran, unfreezing billions of dollars in funds.

If it happens, this deal, right, is a victory. It's, it-- not just a defeat for the United States, but a straight-up strategic victory for Iran. It is the equivalent of Iran dictating terms to the US. That's how badly we've lost. And so the reason why I say to have, hold two i-ideas in your head is because thinking politically about how you engage with this, I think you should be able to say this war was stupid and also this deal is obvious surrender.

And although morally we deserve it, , politically we probably deserve it too, in terms of making the political case against the administration, I think you should be able to say, "Bad war, terrible deal. We could probably get out of this without sacrificing so much," ? , But it really is striking the extent to which this is just...

This deal represents the administration surrendering. They're spinning it as a great victory for the American people, but it is, it is unambiguous surrender. A good analogy here is the Russo-Japanese War in the big turn of the 20th century, when Russia, , a large, powerful country, , fought a conflict against what it thought was a weaker, inferior power for both, , strategic reasons, thought it was a weaker, inferior p-power, and for racial reasons, and you have the same dynamic here.

It's very clear that Hegseth in particular, , saw the Iranians as easy to beat for basically reasons of racial and religious nationalism. So it's kinda same, same dynamic, and then Japan, a middle power on the rise, , embarrasses Russia, , and Russia essentially has to admit defeat and surrender on Japan's terms.

Two final thoughts. The first is that they could've just left the Obama agreement in place. The Obama agreement was pretty successful. The only reason why it was torn up is for the president's own neuroses, his, , desire to show up Obama, but as has often been the case when the president has tried to do this, he ends up making the situation so much worse, and here he has made the situation so much worse, in addition to killing lots of innocent people.

First thing. Second thing. Who else, , made a terrible decision here? Netanyahu. That's right. Israeli hardliners also hated the Obama deal for reasons that I think have a lot to do with their antipathy towards Obama, which was political, but also was, , kinda racial, and because they were maximalists.

They truly wanted to decapitate the Iranian regime and have regime change. And so they had very much been maneuvering in ways to try to get their preferred outcome from the United States, and Trump gave it to them. Trump was Netanyahu's preferred candidate. , Trump followed basically Netanyahu's policy prescriptions here.

, It's important to say this wasn't a case of the tail wagging the dog. There are, again, a lot of Iran hawks in the United States, in the American government, , who've been pushing for this thing for some time. Mike Pompeo, , the secretary of state under Trump's first term, wa- is- was and is a huge Iran hawk, and he is just a guy from Kansas.

So a lot of cooks in the kitchen here, to be clear. But Netanyahu wanted this. He thought it would be better for Israeli national security, and as it turns out, it's not. Iran's gonna come out of this arguably stronger than it's ever been. So if nothing else, this deal, bad for the United States, terrible for Israel, and a real testament to the shortsightedness and stupidity and idiocy of right-wing hawks, both here and abroad.

Really incredible stuff. Just the beginning, I'd say, of the mess the US under Trump is making in the world, because next on the list for this administration is a war in Cuba. They're planning it. They really wanna do it, and they probably are gonna strike sometime this year. So we have that to look forward to, more needless destruction for no reason at all other than to satisfy the ideological obsessions for the people who happen to run government.

They said he was gonna be the peace president. Not so much

We've just heard clips starting with

On the Media examining how Lindsey Graham and fellow Senate Iran hawks worked to cast J.D. Vance as the fall guy for a U.S.-Iran deal that fell short of their stated goals.

Heather Cox Richardson laid out how Iran secured an immediate end to U.S. sanctions and access to $24 billion in frozen assets, while leaving Strait of Hormuz access unguaranteed after 60 days.

THE DAILY BLAST documented a brutal stretch for Vance, grilled on The View over Trump's "I love the inflation" comment while pro-Hegseth and pro-Rubio insiders leaked to Axios that he was the deal's internal fall guy.

Unf*cking The Republic traced how Trump's failed military confrontation with Iran has eroded Gulf Arab confidence in U.S. protection and accelerated a regional shift toward accommodating Tehran.

The Current brought a ground-level report from Tehran detailing how Iranians weigh relief at a potential ceasefire against fear that any deal will erase the protests, the poverty, and the body count.

And Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie contended that the provisional Iran deal represents outright American surrender, with the U.S. agreeing to facilitate $300 billion in reconstruction funds and sanctions relief after failing every strategic objective.

And those were just the top takes, there's lots more in the deeper dives sections,

But first, speaking of getting far less than you bargained for, we're still squarely in the middle of our financial troubles here at the show. We even had to put our new YouTube project on indefinite hiatus before it was able to take root due to sudden economic instability and ad dollars drying up, cutting our budget by about a third.

It's not obvious from the outside but I'm working harder than ever right now, reimagining our entire social media strategy, experimenting with the idea of launching a newsletter, all while also rethinking what our members-only content looks and sounds like.

So, to our members supporting the show, you're really getting us through right now and we appreciate your patience while we figure out what's next.

Thanks to everyone who is a member or has made one-time donations. And if you haven't signed up yet but are thinking about it, each episode of Best of the Left takes about 25 hours of human labor to produce and essentially every dollar we can spare right now beyond basic costs will be going toward finding new listeners.

So, if you get value out of the show - and think others would too! - and want to get it delivered ad-free to the new, members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support - there's a link in the show notes - through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcasts app.

The quickest change I made in this rebuilding phase is the relaunch of our listener voice message segment which people regularly said was their favorite part of the show.

I've been asking a discussion question in each episode to kick things off but you should also feel free to respond to anything you heard on the show, including other voice messages.

So, here are today's questions:

We've been pretty open about how the destabilized global economy over the past six months has wreaked havoc on our advertising revenue for the show. So the question is, has the cost of the war shown up directly somewhere in your life? Please share.

And the fact that Trump signed this deal in Versailles is a pretty good troll of how badly he lost on his own terms, echoing Germany's loss in World War I, but does the symbolism of things like that ever make a difference or feel important to you? 10 years in, and with authoritarianism in full swing, hollow dunks and symbolism are feeling pretty inadequate right now. Maybe I'm missing something, and in the modern age where most politics are messaging wars, maybe the value of symbolism is greater than I'm giving it credit for. What do you think?

If you would like your comments included in the show you can record a voice message - re-recording until you're happy with it - by tapping the link in the show notes.

As for today's topic,

Well, the Masters of War are now saying that the war is over, and so the reviews are beginning to trickle in, and they are not good by almost any metric unless you're rooting for the chaotic collapse of the American empire.

The oppressive Iranian regime remains in place. Their geopolitical position has been elevated, and it's looking like they're gonna get some cash infusions coming from multiple directions that will help bolster the regime further. In exchange, they made some boilerplate concessions that were either the same or worse than what they agreed to a decade ago.

Now I'm not surprised by any of this and was on the record back in episode 1777 arguing that, if you oppose the regime in Iran, the only evidence-based position was to be against the war. The main reason is that getting attacked tends to bolster the regime in power thanks to the rally-around-the-flag effect. Trump managed to do that and so much more to entrench the theocracy.

When I look across the political spectrum in the US, I see a couple of camps that mirror each other in a specific way. The central through line is the almost inevitable backfire that comes from acting out of impatience. The first camp is the much louder and much more obvious camp of Trump and all the war hawks. They made the case that we could go in with tough talk and swinging fists with the expectation that we would quickly achieve our stated goals.

That's a pretty silly position on its face, when you stop and think about it, but war-launchers like Bush, Trump, and Netanyahu don't tend to stop and think about things like that.

The other camp I want to highlight is much smaller and not very influential in the country, but it's a camp that I think some of our audience may be attracted to, so it's worth pointing out what's wrong with it. This camp is the version of anti-imperialism on the left that doesn't take the time to allow for nuance and ends up adopting the overly simplified perspective that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

They begin with the absolutely correct premise that imperialism is bad and that America is the current global hegemon, concluding that they should work to oppose the continuation of American imperialism. So far, so good, but then reality sets in. Regimes like Putin's Russia or religious dictatorships, such as the one in Iran, oppose America, and this particular wing of the anti-imperialist American left quickly adopts these governments as friends in the fight against imperialism.

At its core, the fight against imperialism is a fight against oppressive forces writ large, and understanding it that way makes the contradiction immediately clear when left-wing Americans begin to identify with and defend oppressive foreign governments who also undermine the type of liberation those lefties claim to be seeking.

That contradiction is built on impatience and hope rather than a coherent strategy, just like the neocons of the Bush era and Trump who are all hope and no strategy.

The key error for this small group on the left is treating states such as Iran, Russia, or China as opponents of oppression just because they oppose American imperialism.

Just as we would distinguish between the Iranian regime and the Iranian people, or hope that others would understand the difference between the American people and the American regime, it's better to understand that it's the people's struggles against oppression in any given country that are the real vehicles for anti-imperialism.

The tide has been turning on both the populist right and the anti-war left in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan. A Vanity Fair article we featured last year highlighted the Steve Bannon-style "blow it all up" form of anti-imperialism.

Also interviewed for that article was Ben Rhodes, an Obama foreign policy advisor who was even involved in Obama's misadventure in Libya, and his stance on American imperialism sounds closer to the far left than you'd think. He just comes at it with more patience. The article writer frames it this way, "The divide is between people who want to try to bring things down to a soft landing and people who want to blow it up." And then he quotes Ben Rhodes, "The challenge" is that "nobody has shown me you can blow it up absent a war and a mass disruptive event."

Even though the intent of Trump and Netanyahu's war in Iran was imperialist in nature, it was managed with such buffoonish impatience that the fallout is essentially the kind of mass disruptive event that Ben Rhodes warned about.

The anti-imperialists on the right, like Steve Bannon, warned against this war out of fear that it would weaken the U.S., because Bannon's anti-imperialism takes the shape of wanting to disengage from the world with the vision of America becoming stronger for doing so.

The left-wing anti-imperialists are cheering America's defeat, seeing it as an imperial nation taking a hit on the theory that a weakened United States will lead to a better world. This is based on the idea that a multipolar world in which the U.S. is cut down to size and challenged by other great powers will create more opportunity for people to seek their own liberation from oppression without the fear that, should they, for instance, elect a left-wing socialist government, the United States would promptly stage a coup.

That's not an entirely irrational framing. The U.S. having too much unilateral power does tend to give it the feeling that such power should be used to influence the politics of other countries. Think Iraq and Afghanistan. But it's not ironclad thinking either, because the last time the U.S. was vaguely matched in global power was before the fall of the Soviet Union. And if anything, that competition with the Soviets drove the U.S. to tamper even more with foreign nations, using the fight against communism as the blanket excuse for anything they wanted to do, from coups in places like Iran and Chile up to the ground wars in Vietnam and Korea.

So, striving for a multipolar world is insufficient at best if you want to keep imperialism at bay, but there's also a specific gamble that comes along with cheering on the "blow it up" strategy rather than working toward the "soft landing" strategy. That gamble is that chaotic unraveling almost exclusively leads toward oppressive authoritarianism and away from all the progressive ideals the left regularly espouses.

History is littered with examples, and the pattern is pretty clear. The decimation and humiliation of Germany, solidified by the Treaty of Versailles to end World War I, gave direct rise to Hitler. The collapse of the Soviet Union created the conditions for Putin's eventual rise, and the chaotic wreckage the U.S. created in Iraq paved the way for ISIS.

Given what we know about this pattern, we should understand that if U.S. imperialism falls in a chaotic way that makes people suddenly desperate, like with spiking inflation, we are all the more likely to continue down the path of electing autocrats who promise to restore the glory of America's past. Cheering the end of American imperialism at the hands of a wrecking ball like Trump is missing the forest for the trees.

However, the world is drifting toward a multipolar world regardless of what anyone on the left wants. What's left to decide is whether we want a chaotic collapse or a managed wind down? Impatience and hope or strategy?

Patience is really just another way of describing a willingness to use strategy, and any movement or military would do well to put a lot more weight on strategy than on jumping impatiently at any perceived opportunity.

As for the anti-imperialists looking for ways to fight oppression, I think a cleaner metric to measure our actions by is the standard of whether real human beings end up freer than they were before. Did we reduce suffering? Being on the side of anyone experiencing oppression around the world is much more straightforward than the bank shot of aligning yourself with a foreign despot just because they oppose the actions of the U.S. government.

If you want to reduce oppression and suffering, get acquainted with the real mechanisms by which that happens.

Take our own revolution as an example. It did require a bloody war, but it also happened with the help of international solidarity from France. However, they couldn't have freed the U.S. from England on their own. There always has to be an active movement on the ground where people are working to free themselves.

Our job needs to be to focus on the real people fighting for their own liberation all around the world, rather than the frequently authoritarian governments facing off against the U.S. Finding ways to be supportive of freedom movements wherever they may be is the clear-eyed path to always making sure that you're on the side of the oppressed and the right side of history.

And now, we'll continue to dive deeper on 4 topics today. First up;

Section A, THE DEAL ITSELF

Followed by Section B, THE STRATEGIC LOSS

Section C, VOICES FROM THE REGION

And Section D, WHEN THE STRONGMAN FAILS

And we are back to report peace in our time.

That's right. Donald Trump did

it.

Yes. Somehow, somehow he finally brought an end to a long lingering conflict that he started a couple of weeks ago. Yeah,

yeah.

God.

Yeah.

Oh.

Yeah, they're calling him the peacemaker.

This is, this is three or four days after a really long bender-

when I, I, I'm like, wow, it's... I actually haven't gotten fucked up at all, and it's been s- 96 hours, yeah. I think I've learned a couple of things about sobriety. I've reached a new level of wisdom that's allowed me to transcend. Yeah. That's, that's, that's w- how I, what I compare to Donald Trump right now.

Yep. Is, he announced, that, quote, "Oil will flow on both ends again, for the region and the world." So we initially learned about this de- this deal via Truth Social, right? And I initially wrote this based on what we didn't know then. This morning, after a lot of people complained that nobody knew the details of the deal, a State Department spokesperson read the text of the deal aloud to reporters on a conference call.

So this is a memorandum of understanding, right? The MOU is titled, quote, "Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding between the United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran." It'll be signed on Friday, so that'll be the day, if you hear this the day it comes out, that'll be that day. It's already been electronically signed.

Apparently it's still unclear if it's Trump or Vance who's gonna sign it on behalf of the US.

I lo- I love the idea that they've got a DocuSign that's pinging back and forth. Yeah. Yeah. Some dude in fucking Tehran is like waiting there "I've, I refreshed my phone, man. I'm like, I'm still not seeing it.

I'm still not seeing it." "Did you... Okay, how did you spell my email address?" When you...

Yeah. Let me check the spam, dude.

Trying to get the Trump administration to spell your name right in an email as any Iranian politician, my God.

Yeah.

Quick update here. Turns out Trump signed the memorandum of understanding right after we recorded on Wednesday in Versailles.

So it is an MOU of Versailles. Back to James.

Once they sign it, they're gonna do a 60-day intensive negotiation period, which will certainly focus on the nuclear issue. We can get to that in a bit. The MOU begins, quote, "The United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran, and their allies in the current war, are signing this MOU to declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon."

The final deal will confirm the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon. We're gonna get on to that, don't worry. Probably the headliner, right, is the nuclear stuff. This is point eight. Quote, "The Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons."

There's still negotiation on enriched uranium, but, CNN had a leaked version of a previous version of this draft, and it didn't have the following. So this has been added at a relatively late stage, and it seems that there is a, quote-unquote, "minimum methodology" for, degrading their enriched uranium, which is to downblend it under IAEA supervision.

That seems to have been added very late. So that, that's their, lowest threshold that the US is willing to accept, I guess, which would be not transferring that uranium, but downblending it. The United States has committed to withdraw down its blockade and its force posture within 30 days.

Today, we saw Iranian tankers cross the USA's blockade without any issue. Claims about the Strait of Hormuz on Trump's Truth Social account and those that we see on Iranian state media in the document diverge. Trump has claimed unequivocally that the strait is open without tolls. This is not something we see in Pakistani PM Shehbaz Sharif's statement or in Iran's Fars News Agency.

Fars News Agency seems to say that the, strait will be administered by Oman and Iran. And I'll just read from the, from the, MOU here. "The Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa.

The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start, and considering the need for removing the technical military obstacles and demining by the Islamic Republic of Iran will be instated within 30 days. The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman to determine the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states in line with the applicable international law and sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz."

Not entirely clear there. It does seem to perhaps leave open some Iranian-Oman toll agreement.

Yeah. They're definitely gonna start charging- ... a service fee, man. They're gonna make a shitload of money off this.

Yep, let's talk about a shitload of money- ... 'cause, 'cause that's only unfortunately some of the shitload of money-

Yeah

They're gonna make off this. So the document includes $300 billion in reconstruction funds in total sanctions relief.

Art of the deal.

Yep, that's why they call him Deal Man.

This, this is tough because we have destroyed massive parts of their infrastructure- Yeah ... and we should- Yeah ... pay for that.

But also- Yeah ... dude, you started this war. Yeah. Spent billions of dollars. Mm-hmm. And now are gonna give them 300 billion more dollars. Give them $300 billion. What is wrong with you?

And fucking 10 years ago he was like, ", the only thing that stopped Iran from falling off the brink was that Obama's, that deal gave them $150 billion."

Yeah.

All this circled back- - ... to another version of some Iran nuclear agreement.

Yeah.

All we've gotten is they say they won't.

But now, but now they get to rebuild all their infrastructure using our money. Yeah. Because we used our money to destroy their infrastructure.

Yeah. Yeah, there's supposed to be, an international monitoring thing, but, Yeah

fuck. Yeah. That's not new.

And, and, and I, I think more importantly for, America strategically it's Trump has managed to end the American protectorate of open trade lanes, a, the, a thing that has been the core of American power since, World War II.

And that no one was even thinking about taking away.

Iran, and no part of Iran's strategy- No ... was to do this. No. This was not in the, this was a move they made- No ... because they were in a tight spot and they had to fucking pivot. Yeah,

this was always in their if shit hits the fan we will do this. Right. And now we've normalized

it. Right, right. This has always been an option for them.

Yeah. And they were put in a bad enough position- Yeah ... that they had to do that, right? This was their Helm's Deep thing. Yeah. Is well, we can strangle global trade,

yeah.

This, this wasn't even, a thing in, the, the... I guess it was- They have done

it previously

in, the worst nightmares of, Israeli phantasmagoria- Yeah ... about Iran getting a nuke. But, this wasn't even a thing that was like, oh, they could, Iran could do this. It, it's, it's astonishing what, what they've, what they've managed to do.

I feel like it's a good time, and every- everything's very fine.

So let's talk about it, 300 billion. Just because, I'm interested in the preconditions for fascism, and of course, paying reparations for a war that you started, was one of them first time around in Germany. It- it does, if you do the math, calculate to a lot less than the reparations- Yeah ... that, that Germany had to pay after World War I.

Of course. Yeah.

The document labels the 300 billion as reconstruction funds, but does not give a source other than, quote, "The United States of America undertakes with regional partners to develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least USD 300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran."

A separate line item details the United States of America undertakes to make fully available for use the frozen or restricted funds and assets of Republic of Iran upon implementation of this MOU. So they also get sanctions relief, right?

Yeah.

So they are getting all of the funds that the US has had frozen.

They're getting sanctions relief, and it seems like it's conceivable with these two sentences that they're trying to include the unfrozen funds, but also highly conceivable that they're not. They don't seem to have restricted ballistic missiles. They don't seem to have mandated anything about changing in the, in the w- regime of Iran human rights, women's rights, rights for minority ethnic groups in Iran.

Iran, since this, since we first learned of this MOU, Iran has continued drone strikes against, Kurdish groups in southern Kurdistan, Iranian Kurdish groups who are currently in southern Kurdistan. Yeah, and then, then, it's, it's not over yet because let's talk about what Israel has to say.

Oh, boy.

Yeah. Israel, it seems to be showing no signs of, feeling itself to be in any way restrained by this. Many Israeli politicians have publicly broken with the US on this. Israel's National Security Minister Ben-Gvir, famous for many terrible things, took to Twitter to announce that he had other plans, saying, quote, "Trump's agreement does not bind us.

Israel is not subject to United States. We are an independent sovereign nation!" Exclamation mark. "Our duty is to the citizens of Israel, to the soldiers of the IDF, and to the Jewish people, and our historical duty to the persecuted and murdered Jews over thousands of years of exile to provide security to Jews in the land of Israel.

Every time we succumb to international pressure at the expense of Israel's security, we pay the blood price with interest." So I don't think Ben-Gvir feels bound by this to stop aggression in Lebanon, which will make the implementation of the whole thing very difficult. Oh, boy. We've seen Trump really break with Bibi in a, in a way that, we'd, we'd heard before, but there have now been several more reports of Trump being very annoyed at Netanyahu continuing to, effectively sabotage these negotiations, right?

So yeah, great times, very successful war,

Nick, I'm just gonna go through the, the details, some of which are public and some of which, , I've been privy to, , over the past 24 hours. Just gonna go through this. So it's not even an agreement to end the war, it's an extension of the ceasefire. Iran is gonna get up to $24 billion unfrozen The US is going to withdraw all of its forces.

, Iran has 30 days to open the Strait of Hormuz. Israel has to end the war in Lebanon. And by the way, Nick, here, here's a fun little tidbit. If we are to engage in peace talks, the United States of America will pay Iran a minimum, not maximum, a minimum of $300 billion in reparations. And all of this is not to end the war, it's to pause the war even further in order to have further negotiations.

I gotta tell you, I call balls and strikes, Nick. I am a, I'm a severe critic of the Trump administration and, and the, , United States of America and foreign policy. You gotta call it a win when there's a win.

I gotta tell you, it's amazing how many can find enough people to do that for him. , You wouldn't think you could find more than, , 10 people in the country that would be like, "Yeah, great job," pat him on the back.

Excellent work, everybody.

, And it's gonna... , listen, there's a quote that Trump has on one of these shows he called in, he goes, quote, "We'll get the nuclear- nuclear dust later on when we're ready to go in and do it." Sure. "I assume in the next month or two. There's no rush," he said. He called it harmless.

What are we doing here? How can he possibly have gone from it's worth going into Iran to, , get all, to stop them from getting a bomb, to now it's harmless, whatever they have. "Oh, we'll get it next month, two months, whatever." , The, the guy isn't well. He can't even stay awake during a fight, , to the death, , , in front of him, and yet-

His big boy muscles birthday party.

Yeah. Yeah, , it was... It's, it's so sad. I- if it wasn't the United States and something I actually am, am invested in, I would feel just sad, right? It would be pathetic. It would be pity on people who would be involved with this thing.

So there's a couple of things I wanna talk about, about why this happened, and then I wanna get into some of the details here.

First things first, Nick, always, every time, always put your money on it, market manipulation. Yeah. That's all that it is. Trump and everybody around him made an absolute mint today. We, we're recording this on, , Monday, June 15th, , and the stock market is hitting new highs because of this bullshit, quote-unquote, "peace proposal," which isn't a peace proposal.

Second of all, he wanted this on his birthday. That's it. He wanted to announce on his 80th birthday that he had signed this agreement. And let's go over this. Nick, can I give you a quick pop quiz? Are you ready for this?

Yeah.

Do you know what Iran's GDP is?

Oh, jeez. , No.

Thir- $300 billion.

Okay.

So we have agreed to pay war reparations to the tune of doubling Iran's GDP

That's a pretty good deal if, if I were

Iran That's not a bad deal if you can get it.

And it's literally, it's literally the United States of America, and of course, J.D. Vance is all over the place being like, "Oh, we don't need to talk about that right now. We just need to celebrate this win." What is Iran doing here, Nick? It's what I was talking about, I think the week before last, what everybody who actually is linked in on this has been saying, which is they understand full and well that they can keep this situation going on for months and years and indefinitely.

So what is Iran doing? They're like, "Yeah, we can agree to a deal to make a deal." By the way, Strait of Hormuz, 30 days that they have to open this thing. July 1st, July 2nd, somewhere around there is where strategic reserves of oil run out. So they don't even have to, , delay opening the Strait of Hormuz.

They just have to go along with the framework, which will then set off the next round and the next level of economic and energy consequences. Then, meanwhile, do you think Israel's going to stop fighting in Lebanon? No. So they can just say, "Hey, thanks for all of the money. Don't know what to tell you."

Meanwhile, they... We would've given them tens of billions of dollars. Maybe we wouldn't even give them the 300 billion-plus in reparations. This right here, this is Donald Trump being let loose in a casino with money that isn't his. It's, it's a blank check with him to do whatever he wants with my money, your money, everybody listening to this's money, and all he did was throw himself a little secret birthday party and also make this situation escalate and become worse and worse.

This is... It's really hard to wrap the brain around how bad of a situation this is.

Yeah, the, the... , this is not an agreement. This is what, , what they called it, a memo of understanding, which I think is hilarious because that's about as far as Iran would be willing to go in terms of saying, , what they're willing to, to agree to.

But y- to show you how far they're willing to go to prop this guy up, J.D. Vance went on one of these shows and said that every one of these wars ends in some version of negotiation. This is how much they have to cope to, to, , explain away what they're trying to do, and he referenced World War II. Going back to World War II, we've had negotiations with the other side.

Do you wanna know what the negotiation was with Germany, Jared? It was Hitler putting a fucking gun in his mouth. That was the negotiation for that.

It was, it was the people of Japan getting on a battleship, , and just being like, "We'll sign it. That's fine. You've committed so many crimes against humanity against us."

Well,

and by the way- Yeah, that, that's the negotiation. Yes.

I appreciate you not really suggesting, , filling in what we did to make Japan unconditionally surrender because who knows if that's on the table

at this point. I don't

even wanna go down that road, no. Yeah. And so, so this is insane, , , and, and 'cause we know J...

Are you willing to say that J.D. Vance is educated?

, , S- ugh. Are you...

I don't want- How

dare you? You're supposed to be my friend. Am I supposed to say this? Well, ,

yeah, -

Yes, he has a modicum of intelligence. Sure ... yeah.

So it's for him to get out there, , it shows you how much they're going to, , kowtow to them, to this ideology of whatever, , of Trump, , to try and, and rationalize this whole thing.

But, , I'm old enough to remember where the Republicans wanted to impeach Obama for sending $400 million, , of cash, which they were already legally compelled to return to Iran anyway. , And you're ta- now you're talking about billions.

Billions.

More than hundreds of millions, , sent to them in cash, I'm sure in pallets.

It's , 'cause again, , this is, this is... A- and, and the nu- nuclear dust gets to stay there under this, , thing. A- again, the whole thing was ridiculous, and I think it honestly hinged on, yeah, we'll just kill the one guy in the country they think that leads the country, and then that'll be it, and they'll give up, and we'll have control over it.

I literally think that was the plan.

Oh, yeah, for sure. There was nothing beyond that. And, and quite frankly, , this is, again, a running theme that we've been talking about lately. This is what happens when not only you have criminal fascists, but criminal fascists who have absolutely no investment in making the country work in a, in a way that's good for anybody but themselves.

Mm-hmm. , The... Literally, Nick, the, the thing I, I feel like the blood vessels in my eyes are going to burst watching the coverage of this. There is no analysis of it. There is no forward thinking. That $300 billion, which by the way, is the minimum, minimum, again, that America has to pay for this, does that just materialize out of thin air?

No. It worsens the situation within America that is on top of the compounding consequences of the stoppage of oil production and shipment, and all of the downstream economic consequences. We are talking w- , , about one of the worst compounded situations. I said this the other day, with the Iraq War and the War on Terror, the 2008 financial crisis was linked directly to that.

The trillions that we spent on those operations then affected everything that happened around the terrible structures that led to 2008. This is a situation, it's immediate. We're already feeling the consequences of this thing, and they're only going to get worse. And I just want to reiterate, because our media doesn't talk about this, Nick, this isn't even a peace plan.

Right. This is, this is a plan to negotiate peace later. There's no-- there are absolutely no considerations when it comes to Iran's nuclear, , , capabilities. By the way, Nick, I don't know about you, I've been alive now for 44 years. I was told that Iran was always a couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks at the most, away from developing a nuclear weapon.

Now it doesn't matter. Now we just need this extension of a ceasefire, and we're not even getting any considerations for that

it's worth pointing out we, we might not even have an MOU right now. We might have a letter of intent to have an MOU.

, And I say that because, , not only have we not seen the text, , which would be useful for us to evaluate this, , but the description of what's actually been agreed is, is even fuzzy, that, , there are still, , to quote the, the Pakistani prime minister, "pre-implementation discussions that need to take place before Friday."

, This is MOU, right? It's supposed to be fairly straightforward in terms of we're going to halt the US blockade, the Iranians are gonna release the strait. If you can't say that in pretty clear sentences as of today, Tuesday, and you need a few more days to iron that out, do we even have an MOU? So I, I think that just is worth acknowledging at the, at the, at the start.

And then, of course, you've got the issue not only of what could happen, , in the immediate environs of the strait, but you've got, as you pointed to, the, the, the question of Lebanon. And, , this speaks to, I think, the broader issue of spoiling factors. , The reality is that, , as Israeli officials have said, they don't consider themselves bound by the Lebanon portions of the ceasefire.

The Iranians have said the Lebanon portions of the ceasefire are essential. Well, that's a problem, right? That's a friction point. And, , we've continued to see, , , , military action between the Israelis and Hezbollah of Lebanon. , The Almost persistent threat, , that there is going to be some , , mine or other incident in the straits.

, You add all these up, and you basically, , have a situation in which, , there, there are too many different, , pressure and friction points that could potentially spill this all out, and that's before we even get to the whole 60-day thing. , As you pointed out, 60 days is supposed to resolve everything.

It's supposed to put the nuclear program definitively in the box. From the Iranian perspective, it's supposed to result in sanctions relief. , , There are open questions as to whether or not, as some U.S. officials have said, this will involve, , missile and drone related restrictions on the Iranians, restrictions on Iranian proxies.

The Iranians, of course, have said that they're not doing all those things. And if you get to 60 days and you haven't resolved that, what do you do? Do you extend this? , Do you keep this going? Or, as the president has intimated, , are we back at this? Now, I'll give you my, my, my, my personal take on this.

I think it is, , very infeasible that at this point the United States reverts back to active hostilities. The president's been signaling like mad that he doesn't want to. Even as he's been saying he's gonna unleash massive attacks on the Iranians, he keeps, , finding a different reason to back away, even with the Iranians essentially saying, "We didn't agree to anything," but the president claiming otherwise.

, So I think what instead you have is just, , an extension of the extension of the extension of this MOU in perpetuity with the fragility that comes along with it. And all that adds up, as I look at this, to a likelihood that most of the strategic objectives the United States brought to this conflict are not gonna be achieved.

We'll have reopened the strait, but with potential new administrative ownership, , which will be a, , complicating factor not only for industry, but certainly for government. , And, , a possibility that it could fracture again with the Iranians having newfound confidence that they can close the strait at will.

And those, those are factors that all go back to, I think, Karen's central point. , Th- this is the beginning of a ride still. This is, this is not the off-ramp even, , , from, from my perspective, unless you see major philosophical changes really in the U.S. position and the Iranian position that I don't think are terribly likely.

Thanks. Let me, , dig into some of, of that, this is both for, for, for you and for Karen, around what Iranian, I don't know if management is the right word over the straits, but, , whatever this influence, , they're going to be exerting. - , They are saying they won't have explicit tolls during these 60 days, but they've made it clear that they intend to be monetizing this in some way.

They've, they've also said, , we haven't seen the text, but, , maybe there's some line in there that says Iran and Oman, , as the littoral states, are going to decide what happens here. , And the Omanis have been going out of their way to say, , "No, this is an international waterway, and we haven't agreed to any of that."

So I'd be curious to understand what you both think is going on there. And, , beyond that, how are Saudi and the UAE looking at this? Especially, a- and, and Qatar as, as well, especially in light of the reports about their payoffs potentially to Iran. , Pragmatically, are they all just going to accommodate themselves to Iran monetizing this thing, and that's going to be the reality, or, or no?

, Maybe Karen, do you wanna take that first?

Sure. Well, I think first and foremost, Iran intends to, , have access to money as a result of, , of, of this agreement. How they receive funds, whether it's through tolling or through bilateral agreements or payoffs or, frankly, extortion, , really doesn't matter, I think, to them.

They just want to see an inflow of cash, , that they're, they're desperate for. - And the region is, yes, , thinking about a new politics of accommodation. And, , , this is something that I think is, , quite familiar and, and I would even include it as, , tools of economic statecraft of the Gulf States.

They are familiar with using, , the carrots of economic statecraft. , , And that will be, that will play out in the way that, , Iran opens to investment opportunities, the way that Iran, , tries to, , to be more of a, a, a source of both oil and gas, , , within the region. They're gonna be a disruptor to OPEC.

They're gonna be a disruptor to, , to the GCC, and, , and they have this authority now. , So to me it doesn't even really matter, , and I have little faith in their ability to create an administrative function, but the threat allows them, , to profit, , from, from essentially intimidation. And, , and the Gulf States, I think already are finding ways to protect themselves, and, , and this will, this will just be part of the, the dirty politics of accommodation to come.

Yeah, I agree. And, and, and I'll just add a couple elements to this. , , , Control over the strait has two potential meanings here. You've got this administrative function control, and then you've got the de facto, we have the ability to rain drones and missiles down on the strait, , at will, , , function of this, too.

And, and I think what's interesting, , about the conflict, disturbing in many ways, is that, , until now, the Iranians had really feared what would happen if they did this. , And then they did it, and they got to see what would happen. And what would happen is the United States Navy was unwilling to sail up north.

And was unable, , , as part of a broader US military and, and coalition support to, to stop Iranian drone and missile attacks. And so from the Iranian perspective at this point, I think they think that they've got the ability to do this as much as they possibly want. Obviously, everybody else knows that too, but that also gives them a little bit more confidence, , I think as they approach any dispute that, that they think that they've got their, their fingers on the pulse and they can press as, as hard as they can, and they are probably right.

So until there is some very significant change in that military and defensive balance in the Strait, which is not gonna happen anytime soon, that level of control is gonna be there. So it's always a question of how can we disincentivize the Iranians from, from doing this? There are a couple ways.

One, you could punish them, and the other way is incentivize them. And it looks like that first part of control, them having administrative control over the Strait and collecting some administrative fee is going to be how the rest of the world decides to deal with this. And, and I think it's, at this point it's interesting to think about the limits of US power, , because the United States has been saying for months now, "We don't want to see people paying money.

We don't want to see people paying these bribes and paying these fees." , Plenty of reports that people both are already and I suspect would be willing to if it meant that there was stability, and if it meant that there was going to be regular flow and regular order going through the Strait. , I think people would be willing to look at it and say, "Well, what, what's $500,000, , per ship that's going through?

What's a million dollars per ship going through if the value of cargo, value of transit is, is so much more?" There are ways the US could interfere with that , , sanctions are still an element of this. , , Notwithstanding the fact the Iranians are apparently asking for it in crypto, which, oh, by the way, is a good advertisement for more regulation and sanctions enforcement around crypto.

But I, I think the, the sanctions element of this, , is gonna be the only lever I think the United States will have to push back. , It seems, based at least on what we're hearing, that the MOU's gonna go the other way, and it's essentially gonna green-light not only Iranian traffic, , but potentially will even allow some level of, of, of Iranian collection of these fees, at least if you believe what the Iranian story is in this.

So all this comes back to ultimately, , I, I think people will be willing to pay these things because they recognize where the Iranian control levers are, and, , the US ability to push back is gonna be cabin-ed by how much we're willing to use sanctions and what's the text of the MOU. Pretty useful if we got that MOU text out so we can know exactly where it is.

Now again, a memorandum of an understanding is not the final word. Normally, it's just a, "Hey, we have a good idea. Let's see if it goes forward." There is very specific language here, and sanctions against Iran and their ability therefore to sell oil on the open market happened immediately. So there are things the US is already doing under this, which to me raises another issue, and that's that, , Trump owns this war.

He explicitly excluded everybody from any decision-making power to go in. But Our Constitution says the Senate, by a two-thirds majority, has to ratify any treaties. And I don't know what's gonna happen either, whether g- they're gonna go forward with that, 'cause certainly Republicans don't wanna put their names on this, and Democrats simply are not going to.

But also, there's a $300 billion price tag in that, that, , s- I, , again, I, I, here I am stammering as a political historian. Y- you can't commit... The president cannot commit the United States to backstop whatever their plan is for where that money's gonna come from, to backstop $300 billion without Congress.

Congress is the only body in our system that can appropriate money. So I, I just, I just, , d- I don't know what's gonna happen with that. I don't even know what to do with that. But what you have seen since yesterday has been this attempt to sell this as a win. Now, I wanna set that up, because one of the things that I thought was really, really surprising yesterday in the, , in the, the whole, this whole event was, first of all, how furious not only Democrats but also Republicans, especially Republican senators are.

They had nothing to do with going into this war, although some of them clearly were cheering it on, people like Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South, , Carolina, or Tommy Tuberville, a Republican of Alabama. But now that it has completely blown up in their faces, now they gotta live with this right before an election.

And the f- that was a surprise, is how angry and vocal they were about this. But then I really wanted to call this out. First of all, Trump looked terrible at the G7, where he was yesterday. I'm not gonna talk at all about the G7, so don't bother trying to remember what the G7 versus the G20 is. The G7 is informal.

It's a meeting of seven industrialized democracies plus the European Union. But, y- , that's my great example. Everybody thinks I know this stuff really well. My great example of the fact I have to look everything up is I could not tell you what's the G7, what's the G s- 20, and what's, , the other one I can't even remember, , that I write about all the time, even after all these years.

So if you can't remember, don't feel bad about it. I'm literally doing it all day, and I can't... I have to look them up every single time, which is which. Anyway, Trump was not gonna sign the memorandum of understanding, which it was appropriate. , Y- y- presidents don't usually sign things until the very last minute.

That's... You're, you... As a, as a negotiator, n- one of the things negotiators do is they, I hate to say this, but they kinda stall. A, a, a really good negotiator, , you, you take time and, , you let people get mad and walk out of the room and then come back and so on. So you don't want your principals there because they don't have that wiggle room.

This is one of the problems that Woodrow Wilson got into after World War I, is he insisted on being there for the negotiations. And really you wanna be able to say, "Oh, well, , I, I'm afraid I have to do that because my principal says that I, I need to do it," or whatever. Th- i- so all that to say that it's unusual for, for Trump to have signed it.

He said he was gonna have JD Vance sign it, and then he joked that then if it was bad, that he could just blame JD Vance, which by the way is very clear what MAGA is trying to do is blame JD Vance for this. Anyway, last night he went to dinner at, , the Palace of Versailles with, , the, , President of France, Emmanuel Macron.

I'm sorry, Emmanuel Macron. And, , and Macron got Trump to sign it himself at the Palace of Versailles. And that's... That is an epic, epic troll of Trump, and he didn't even know it was happening. It's, it's, , , , what Xi said back earlier this year or late last year making a reference to a historical thing that Trump didn't understand that made...

It was just he was making fun of him basically. In this case, it was at Versailles that Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles after World War I which was a complete surrender and forced Germany to pay reparations for World War I. So for Trump to have signed it at, at Versailles was , literally when it came across social media, I, but also every historian was like, at least was horrified.

I thought it wasn't real, that n- nobody could have made that bad a mistake. And, He did. So that I think shows you at least where our European allies consider the power of this memorandum, , memorandum of understanding to have lain. It is with, , Iran, not with the US, which they certainly are implying was an unconditional surrender of the US which made us pay reparations.

, It was, it was really quite a moment. I, I couldn't-- I absolutely couldn't believe it. So, so I wanted to set all that up to go somewhere else today, because today, and I, I think maybe this week, is a really important moment in the way we think about the United States of America. Because while that was happening, essentially Trump flexed his, the, the muscles of the United States and said, "We don't need negotiations.

We don't need allies. We don't need all these things we've built up for all these years. I'm just gonna be a strong man and I'm gonna go pound this country into oblivion. I'm gonna do what nobody else could do." And he took a huge loss on that, and America took a huge loss on that

Next, Section B, THE STRATEGIC LOSS

where to begin with Iran? They went head-to-head, toe-to-toe with the world's most formidable military, the world's superpower, the strongest military force in the Gulf, with a Fifth Fleet naval, in Bahrain, with, air bases in almost, I think, every country, in the Gulf. And so for them to be able to walk away with demands that have been met, criteria that they did not bend on, including, billions of dollars that will be coming their way, not just from the lifting of sanctions, but from funds and from overseas bank accounts, to be able to, insist that Israel comply with their demands in Lebanon, to be able to insist that, the United States lift its naval blockade in tandem with them opening the Strait of Hormuz, which by the way, they said would take 30 days, give or take, to fully open, whereas the U.S.

naval blockade has to be lifted on their ports immediately. It's just so many different ways in which this country has shown itself to be able to, in their own words, become a superpower. They call themselves a global superpower in some of their statements now. And I think what's really fascinating is also the way in which their propaganda machine operated and their media messaging in this war, whether it was the Lego videos that I think almost everyone who's been online has seen at some point, the trolling that they were able to do to just tap into the culture, the, The, just trending viral stuff online, the, the trolling of Trump through their official accounts, their unofficial accounts, the amount of statements.

They were always just, it always felt like they were a few steps ahead of even the Gulf countries, the Gulf Arab states in their messaging. So they certainly come out being able to suggest so that they're stronger than they were when they started, I think.

So that's one way to look at it, that militarily they've survived.

You're saying diplomatically and perhaps in public messaging and rhetoric, Iran, has actually perhaps emerged stronger from this. I do want to note one of our other colleagues, Duri Buscarin, who is based in Istanbul, she's been getting, Iranians on the line from inside Iran telling their reaction to this, tentative deal.

And she raises a point that, that feels worth injecting. She spoke to one woman, this is a retired bank manager, asked NPR, "Please don't share my name out of fear of repercussions for speaking to foreign media." But she, this woman inside Iran told Duri she was reacting to this initial deal. This was a woman who had joined anti-government protests, and she said, "Let's remember this deal.

Again, it's preliminary, but it doesn't reflect any of the protesters' demands." And she said, "Our hope was if the US and Israel were going to bomb, with all of the hardships that that brought to our lives, we hoped it would topple the regime."

There was the massive inflation and the high cost of living, the strange and overwhelming hardships, and the lack of food. These are the things we endured in the war, and we were willing to endure twice as much, several times as much, just so they would go away.

They meaning the, the existing leaders within Iran's regime, which again, just to note, there are quite a few things that haven't changed in Iran, despite these months of war.

I think that just g- yeah, goes to the point of what I was trying to say, which is that this regime is more entrenched now than it was maybe before. There were risks to it being toppled before this war began. There were those massive protests. They had to literally shut down the internet, during some of those protests in order to contain them.

They killed thousands of people. But even with small Revolutionary Guard speedboats and drones and pretty cheaply made drones and some missiles, they've been able to keep the world's oil hostage this entire time.

Greg, let's shift to where you are and Israel. Notably, the US and Israel launched war on Iran together.

Israel's signature is not on this memorandum of understanding. It is signed by the president of Iran, the president of the United States, the Pakistani mediator who helped broker the deal Israel has not gotten everything it wanted from this war

Far from it, Mary Louise. In fact, just the opposite. Every day you look in the papers, in the media, and there's some variation of this headline, "Good deal for Iran, bad deal for Israel."

You can start militarily where they wanted to continue the war. They didn't want to stop the war. Now they're being told on a second front that they need, to stop fighting in Lebanon, where the, the, the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to keep fighting, against Hezbollah. It's, it's a broadly popular war in this country as well.

And Israel was not part of the negotiations. In fact, they were requesting, a copy of the memorandum this week before it came-- was disclosed, and apparently they couldn't get it. They were, they were shut out to that degree. And on top of that, we've seen President Trump speak as harshly toward Benjamin Netanyahu as, as maybe we've ever seen a US president speak towards an Israeli leader.

Say, "I was very angry with him. He almost undermined this deal by, by striking heavily in Beirut and other parts of Lebanon at a time when we were close. He needs to take it easy." He raised several completely out-of-the-box suggestions. Trump saying maybe the Syrians could go in and, and, and deal with Hezbollah.

Stuff that was just What

could go wrong with-- What could go wrong there?

Yeah. Well, Syria spent decades controlling Lebanon, so I'm not sure the Lebanese would, would welcome, Syrians, back, even if it's a, if it's a different, government at this point. But, the Israelis are really trying to figure out which way to go here.

We still have Netanyahu saying, "We're not leaving southern Lebanon." There's still some shooting going on there at a reduced level. But Trump is the only real ally they have, so they can't completely, walk away or go against Trump because they don't have anybody else, supporting them, and yet they feel that Trump has, given them orders that they, are, are really struggling with right now.

I think it's so fascinating, too, that Netanyahu and Trump entered in this war together It was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in conversation with President Trump that led to this war in the midst of negotiations between the United States and Iran on their nuclear, program in February. And this war has driven a wedge between these two leaders, these two men, in the span of under four months.

And as somebody who closely watches the Middle East, it's very clear to me that Israel's interests are not always, or even most of the time, aligned with America's interests, whether that's the war continuing for so long in Gaza at such a high human cost, including a man-made famine. That was never in America's interest to continue that for so long as it did.

But now we're really seeing how this Iran war also dr- drove a wedge between them when they had entered into this war in lockstep together.

So in terms of geopolitical positioning, Iran already has access to the Red Sea through its alliance with Yemen, maintains pipelines and infrastructure into and through Iraq, and now it has two new points of strategic leverage it didn't possess before the war. The demonstrated weaponization of the Strait of Hormuz and the proven ability to directly threaten Gulf state civilian and energy infrastructure.

These are permanent additions to Iran's deterrence posture, regardless of what the 1680 negotiations produce. Of course, having a stranglehold on strategic territories is only one part of the power play. The real win for Iran lies in the potential financial windfall that waits on the other side of Trump's surrender.

So until now, Iran has had to work extremely hard to find ways to monetize its chief export, and it's done this through shadow networks of tankers and agreements with Russia and China and India that have long frustrated Washington. But they've taken a s-- a pretty significant haircut and discount on the prices compared to the market.

So even before sanctions relief materializes, Iran's oil position has been quietly strengthening for years, and the deal dramatically accelerates this trajectory. So prior to any deal, Iran was already exporting around one and a half million barrels per day through a sophisticated parallel market, primarily to China's teapot independent refineries in the Shandong province, and that's per the Tehran dispatch.

So this is among the highest export levels since the JCPOA era. A sanctions-relieved Iran can now strategically modulate supply to influence prices and reward or punish trading partners and use oil revenue to fund rapid reconstruction and proxy network reconstitution simultaneously. And now any country or any company that seeks to navigate the Strait of Hormuz will basically do so at the pleasure of the Islamic Republic.

Moreover, according to the EIA, if all oil sanctions are lifted, Iran could return to full production capacity of three point eight million barrels per day. That's an increase of two million barrels from its current output. So this is a key geopolitical point that Western coverage consistently undersells.

Iran doesn't need to maximize output right out of the gate. And despite the optimistic crude pricing in the markets right now, commodity analyst consensus remains decidedly pessimistic for structural reasons. So the present euphoria surrounding the dripen pr- drop in, well, crude oil prices is temporary, and it will give way to the harsh reality of empty SPRs and crisis pricing as the world reboots.

Remember, this disruption is way bigger than it was during COVID, and it took two years to recover from that shock. So the takeaway here is a sanctions-relieved Iran will be flush with cash from its normal operational capabilities and the massive pent-up demand from allies like China and India, who are heavily dependent on Iranian oil and gas.

But this doesn't even address the more striking and frankly shocking financial aspects of this tentative agreement. The dollar figures surrounding this MOU are as varied as the sources that offer them, but the big-ticket item is this nebulous $300 billion fund that no one wants to confirm that-- but everybody's talking about.

Vice President Vance said that US taxpayers won't be on the hook for any funds directed to Iran, but that a fund might be set up for others to invest in for the benefit of Iran. Now, for its part, Iran claims that it-- $24 billion in frozen assets are supposed to be released, another point, by the way, that Vance denies.

But also that it sustained $29 billion in infrastructure damage. So other reports have Iran's frozen assets somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 billion. So Either all of it's on the table or none of it is, but nobody will say for sure. But this much is absolutely certain. They're going to get tens of billions of dollars in cash one way or another.

And if we force this fund to come into existence, you-- dollars to donuts, we're gonna compel our Gulf State allies to pay into it in some circuitous funding route. So what seems to be certain is that the combination of the US potentially coercing investments into this slush fund to pay for damages to Iranian infrastructure, the lifting of sanctions on economic activity, and the unfettered access to price Iranian crude at market value means that Iran is waiting for a windfall of capital.

Now, the reason we're rushing to get this deal across the finish line has nothing to do with nuclear arms or Israel's protection, energy and infrastructure, or control over shipping lanes. It has everything to do with the fact that the world is literally going to run out of oil and gas if this doesn't end, now.

Moreover, there's nothing we can do about it, and Iran knows it. So if strategic stockpiles aren't refilled soon enough and refineries aren't built in short order, we could be heading to this point anyway, and that would mean a potential bloodbath for Trump in the midterms because raw crude prices and the input prices of everything that depends on fossil fuels will increase exponentially throughout the summer and the fall.

We're already seeing it in all of the data releases, and this will be the undoing of the GOP Which is not to say that he gives a shit about Republicans. He just can't be bothered with two straight years of inquiries and impeachment articles. Now, the Western framing that Iran gave up its nukes but got a payout misses the point entirely.

The regional reading is almost the inverse, that Iran absorbed the full weight of US and Israeli military power, preserved its political establishment, retained its proxy network, secured a financial rehabilitation pipeline, demonstrated the ability to threaten the Gulf infrastructure and the global energy flows, and emerged with two permanent new instruments of strategic leverage.

The deal didn't constrain Iran's regional ambitions, it actually funded them, and the new ayatollah said it best. He said, quote, "History will record that the Iranian nation sank the superpower of America in the Persian Gulf." So yeah, he lost more than this war. He fundamentally altered the geopolitical landscape that took a century to construct.

Now, Section C, VOICES FROM THE REGION

President Trump is at the G7 summit today in France, where he was asked a crucial question about his agreement with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Can this deal survive if Israel attacks Lebanon?

It can, and , I consider that the minor war. Iran's a big one, but we have that, a little pinprick out there that constantly rears its head, and that's Hezbollah

Israel has said it's keeping troops in Lebanon, which threatens to derail peace talks between Iran and the US.

The actual text of that memorandum of understanding, the preliminary agreement that opened the door to those talks, by the way, is still not public. So how is this all going over elsewhere in the region? Negar Mortazavi is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, and she has some thoughts.

Here's her conversation with Scott Tong.

You're in Qatar on the Persian Gulf, just across from Iran. The country has been caught in the crossfire as Iran has launched attacks on targets there, including an American air base. How are people there responding to news of this framework deal?

There's a lot of happiness and relief because, as you said, this is a country, the host of the largest US base in the region, a very close ally of the US, but also a close ally of Iran, and it's essentially caught between a powerful ally and a powerful neighbor that has been there, will always be there.

And so they have been trying to manage this fight and these relationships. This memorandum is really bringing some relief, and we know Qatar played a very key role, especially towards the end.

You, of course, are, are, are watching Iran very closely. How do you read how Iranian leaders are framing this temporary deal a- a- and, and whether they will indeed sign the memorandum of understanding, which is expected Friday?

All signs indicate that they will sign it, and they have already started selling it, both sides, and they are presenting this as an absolute win and an absolute loss for the opp- opposite side, and it's something that's happening both in Tehran and Washington, and it was very much expected. And frankly, for them, winning wasn't hard.

For them, winning was just not losing because they didn't have any of these grand goals that the US set, regime change, destroying their army, destroying their navy, , , and then eventually- Mm-hmm ... the problem that wasn't even a problem, which is reopening the Strait of Hormuz, that was created because of this war, and that's now the core basis of this memorandum.

So for the Iranians, permanently ending the war, including Lebanon, having the US lift the blockade, and some economic relief down the line in exchange for a nuclear deal is something that they're presenting as a win that they got because they showed a lot of strength and deterrence on the battlefield.

One topic still very unclear, likely up for future discussion, is Iran's nuclear program, including its enriched uranium, which President Trump has said the US will destroy. At this point, are, are there realistic options as to What the future of Iran's nuclear program will look like?

So the Iranians have committed publicly, privately that they're not going to weaponize.

They're not after a nuclear weapons program. The details of a civilian nuclear program, the levels of enrichment, , , the nuclear stockpile that they have, which is beyond what a civilian program needs, all of that is to be discussed later. One sticking point that I will be watching is Lebanon- Yes

because Iran wants Lebanon very much involved, and Israel does not want that.

Well, let me jump in and ask you about this question. Iran's foreign minister has said the deal requires Israel to withdraw from Lebanon, where it has been attacking the Iranian-backed militia, Hezbollah. On Morning Edition today, Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Leiter, defended Israel's actions in Lebanon.

We're not going to withdraw from South Lebanon, and the madmen of Tehran have no business poking their nose into Lebanon. This is precisely the issue that we're dealing with, Iran being a regional hegemon.

So is this question of Israel and Lebanon going to be a deal-breaking issue?

It can be. So what happens here is Israel, who's not a party at the table, and Lebanon, also not a party at the table, are very much part of this deal.

So right now, the ball would be in Washington's court. The inclusion of Lebanon in this peace deal is something that Iran is not going to drop, and that it can only happen with pressure from President Trump. Yeah.

Briefly, Negar, do you sense that this, this process will hold? We have a ceasefire, and the idea is it will lead to a memorandum of understanding being signed, and then longer term peace talks, this whole process.

Is it your sense that it, it will hold and continue on?

I have hope because I feel like both sides are done with the war. They want to exit the war, and they have shown a lot of seriousness. , President Trump has said that he actually himself signed the memorandum. That shows seriousness. The vice president is going for the signing, the Iranian speaker of parliament.

All of these are signs of seriousness, but at the same time, there's so much that can go wrong, so many spoilers, so many parties that have interest in making this go the wrong way, one of them being in Lebanon, Israel, that whole situation. So yes, I have hope, but at the same time, , this is going to be a long process.

It's going to be very complicated and difficult. The nuclear talks are actually the most complicated, difficult part of this, and I don't know if two months is enough. It requires a lot of technical expertise, all hands on deck, essentially, that both sides need to assemble. So I hope it continues. I hope it holds.

People in the region, across the region, here in Doha, in Iran, in Lebanon, all over place, want this war to end, but, , it's just going to be a difficult road ahead.

The deal and this new tone have shaken Israelis and Benjamin Netanyahu's government, which has seen its relationship with Donald Trump deteriorate over the past few months.

We've had an amazing partnership. He's been an amazing prime minister. We have a little dispute over Lebanon.

The president at the G7 Summit in France this week.

They say, "You can do a little softer touch, Bibi. You don't have to knock down a building every time somebody walks into it that's from Hezbollah."

The MOU calls for an end to Israel's combat in southern Lebanon, which is still occupied by Israeli troops. It also doesn't lay out a plan for regime change in Tehran, or stymie its use of ballistic missiles and proxy militias.

A far cry from the total victory over Iran that Netanyahu promised earlier this year.

By and large, there's a disappointment.

Oren Persico is a staff writer for The Seventh Eye, an independent website devoted to journalism and freedom of the press in Israel. He's been tracking the Israeli media's response to Trump's rhetoric and the Iran deal, and what all this tells us about Netanyahu's political future.

The pro-Netanyahu media and the anti-Netanyahu media were convinced and portrayed to the public that we actually won on the first day. It's gonna change the Middle East. We will remove all the threats from Iran, Lebanon, Gaza. And now that Trump has pushed for this deal, people realize that it's not what they were sold.

All the horrible times that Israelis suffered for the past year were for nothing.

It's hard to spin this as a success for Netanyahu and his followers.

Right.

Over the last few weeks, President Trump has visibly been souring on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. This week, at the G7 Summit in France, Trump said...

Israel's fighting Hezbollah too long, and too many people are being killed, and you don't have to knock down an apartment house every time you're looking for somebody, because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses, and they're not all Hezbollah, that I can tell you. And I suggested to Israel to let Syria take care of Hezbollah 'Cause to be honest with you, I think they do a better job of doing it

And earlier this month, when Iran threatened to abandon negotiations with the US over Israel's actions in Lebanon, Trump lashed out at Netanyahu over a call and reportedly said, "You're crazy.

You'd be in prison if it weren't for me. I'm saving your ass," referring to his ongoing corruption trial. "Everyone hates you now. Everyone hates Israel because of this. What the are you doing?"

I attend usually the Netanyahu trial. For the past year and a half, he's being interrogated. Usually, there is a pro-Netanyahu crowd that when the court adjourns, take advantage of the situation and shout to him, "We love you.

Everybody loves you." Last week, I shouted to him, "Trump says everybody hates you."

Wow. What, what was the reaction to that?

They were just stunned, and he left, like always. It does shatter the image of Netanyahu that he's this leader of international stature. Previous elections, they had banners of him and Trump holding hands as a sign to the voters that if Netanyahu wins, we'll have the biggest ally possible.

That is just not the case anymore.

I wanna talk about Channel 14, a pro-Netanyahu propaganda broadcaster. According to a recent piece in The New York Times, the leading figures of Channel 14 have been ardent admirers of Trump. But lately, they've dramatically shifted their tack and have started openly criticizing Trump in ways they never have before.

For example, Yaakov Bardugo, a political commentator who's known to be close to Netanyahu, described Trump and Vance on air as modern Chamberlains, a reference to Neville Chamberlain, the former British prime minister who was known for appeasing Hitler. Another leading star on the channel, Shimon Ricklin, wrote that Trump represents total surrender to the ayatollahs in Iran.

Tell me a little bit more about this sudden shift and what you think it reveals about the changing relationship more broadly between the US and Israel.

So we have Yinon Magal. He's the biggest star of Channel 14, and he called Kushner and Witkoff "Jew boys." That's a really offensive antisemitic word, and he called J.D.

Vance a scumbag. There's a chief diplomatic correspondent for Israel Hayom, the Miriam Adelson free newspaper, and his profile picture on Twitter/X used to be a picture of himself with Trump. On the morning of the agreement, on Sunday, it was Trump's birthday And he published a double spread in the newspaper celebrating Trump, stating that Trump has really put America back on track.

And later that day, when Trump announced the deal, he made a 180-degree flip. He took down his profile picture with Trump, even took the effort to tweet again, "I changed my profile picture. Enough is enough." If you look at another editor who edits a ultra-Orthodox magazine, he published on Twitter/X an AI caricature of Trump accepting bags of money from Emirati-looking people and turning his back to the poor Israeli Jew sitting in the ruins of his house.

They're really portraying Trump as a villain now. He's either so stupid that he was duped by his advisors, or that he is really a corrupt villain, and we were mistaken about him. What they don't do is blame Netanyahu. Yeah. They don't think that Netanyahu was wrong to gamble really the strategic future of the state of Israel and its geopolitical standing on this president.

JD Vance said this about the anti-Trump turn in Israeli politics.

To some of these cabinet members in Israel who are attacking the President of the United States, the other thing that I would say is that over the last three months, two-thirds of the defensive weapons that have protected your homeland have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars.

The problem for Israel is not Donald J. Trump, and anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the President of the United States needs to wake up.

If you look at the next president, it doesn't look like there will be anyone like Biden, like Trump, in the White House in the context of supporting Israel.

And that might be even a good thing for Israelis in the long run. They might force Israelis to deal with the core problem, which is not Iran. It's the Palestinians. We might have to reconcile the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without the blind support of the US, and that might force Israeli governments to do things that they're not willing to do right now, and were not willing to do for the past generation.

You mean making meaningful concessions to the Palestinian people?

Yeah. It sounds out of touch of current Israeli government plans and actions, but we might just not have a choice.

We're back, and Jane Arraf, you are up. You're in Lebanon, which has been dragged into this war. Israel, of course, has been fighting Hezbollah. That has complicated US diplomacy with Iran. I know you have been on the move. Just give us a little, taste of where you've been reporting from, what you're seeing, what you're hearing.

Well, it's a lot of southern Lebanon because that's where most of the fight is. That's where the border area is with Israel. Mm-hmm. And Israel is fighting Hezbollah, Iran-backed Hezbollah. So it's incredible devastation. When we go out there, a lot of times what we're covering is the aftermath of Israeli strikes.

So we go to- How do you get there? You just, you're in

a car, you're on the road, you can

drive? We can drive. It has to be carefully plotted because a lot of the airstrikes actually do happen on the roads, and some of the roads around the places where fighting is can be dangerous as well. But as we take managed risks because that's where we have to be to actually report on what's going on.

So even when we're there, it's, it feels a bit precarious sometimes. When we're going to these places, a lot of these strikes, whether they're airstrikes or drone strikes or artillery, are in residential areas. And so when we get there, a lot of times there's still bulldozers that are trying to clear out rubble to get some of the remains that are there to capture some of the bodies.

And we attend a lot of the funerals as well.

There have been an incredible number of people killed in this war on the Lebanese side, 3,800 according to the Ministry of Health in Lebanon, and 600 of those at least are women and children. So it's a very different picture from Beirut. Here in Beirut, you can sit here and you can hear the drones and it's really annoying.

But we were in the city of Tyre, for instance, a few days ago, and we were in one neighborhood that was still under threat by Israel.

And the drone was flying so low that the policeman we were with got really scared and said, "We have to leave here." 'Cause, here it's annoying, there it's deadly. And it's just part of the feeling that you get that the South is increasingly disconnected from the rest of the country.

So circling back to our central question of who are emerging as winners, losers in this war, Lebanon It's comp- it's complicated, I know

It's complicated.

And I think that's shorthand for it's got such a complicated history, right? Small country. It has a system set up where top posts are divvied up according to religion. And what this war has done, in some sense, is upset what was a precarious balance. It didn't always balance by any means. This country has been through a lot of wars, some of them through Israeli invasions, some of them through some c- civil war.

But really what this has exposed is just a huge disconnect between people who, and politicians, who feel that Hezbollah is the only thing standing between them and being permanently occupied by Israel, and others who see Hezbollah as part of the problem.

Mm. So I've, I have a big-picture question, which I'll throw to you, Greg, and Jane and Aya, feel free to jump in.

But, all three of you have covered wars in the Middle East for a long time. Greg, are you, from where you are perched right now in Tel Aviv, are you seeing a fundamental realignment in the region as a result of this Iran war of 2026, or is it too soon to say?

I, I think it's in progress, Mary Louise.

I really go back to the Hamas attack on October 7th '23 that just ignited this, this firestorm in the region, and we've been working our way up the escalation ladder from Israel and Hamas fighting in Gaza to Israel and Hezbollah fighting in Lebanon to Israel and Iran fighting and now the US joining in.

A 12-day war last year, a three-month war this year. And it just has gone up and up and up over the past three years. And it's, it's rattled the region. It's shaken every country in the region. Now we're at a point where we're trying, we're s- seeing this effort, the, to try to stop this and in a sense work your way down that escalation ladder of that, the US and Israel not going to attack Iran and vice versa under this agreement.

Trying to sort out, the Israeli presence in Lebanon. Gaza is still there as a festering sore. So the region has been thrown into upheaval. It's changing. It's going to be realigned. Every country has to, to rethink itself, whether it's, Israel carrying out powerful military operations but not getting any political gain from it, or from Iran and its proxies being, hit and weakened but still surviving.

But is that still a, a viable project? Does Iran want to, to continue to support these proxies? Is that the way forward? The Gulf States having to reevaluate, "Can the US protect us? Are we a safe, stable place that people want to invest in and come- Take a vacation in. So everybody is going through this transition.

We haven't come out on the other side yet.

The talks in Switzerland between the US and Iran to permanently end the war were dubbed the Lake Lucerne Summit. To understand the hurdles for the negotiators at Lucerne, we turn to Ryan Crocker. He's a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former ambassador to six Middle Eastern countries, including Lebanon.

Ambassador Crocker, welcome.

Thank you.

What is your read on what can come from these talks?

I think our expectations need to be firmly under control. It's not going to resolve itself in a day or two days, or even very likely not in 60 days. So I think the emphasis has to be on stabilizing the, , ceasefires in the, , Gulf and in, , South Lebanon, projecting a lot of patience, because this is gonna be a long haul.

Yeah. , One moment the president says that the deal is on track, and then the next moment the Iranians say that they've closed the strait. I- what is your take on why the back and forth?

Well, I think it reflects the, , fundamental volatility of the situation, and it also reflects the, , the control the Iranians now have over the strait.

, They don't have to close the strait. They can just say they closed the strait, and that is gonna put international shipping on edge. It's probably going to reduce the flow of traffic through the strait. , This war has changed a lot of things, none of them for the better as far as the United States is concerned.

Mm-hmm. So, so it's a strategy is what you're saying?

It is.

Yeah. The fighting in Lebanon is a recurring roadblock in achieving some peace. Israel and Hezbollah both agreed to, a- and then they reneged on a ceasefire deal just in the last few days. I'm wondering what negotiators can do if neither of these parties seem interested in a truce.

Well, the MOU is, is reasonably clear on this. It calls in its first paragraph for an immediate and permanent termination of hostilities on all fronts, including Lebanon, and that, , is unconditional. It means that Hezbollah, , has to terminate hostilities, and it means Israel has to terminate hostilities.

, Obviously, Iran has to deliver Hezbollah, and the US has to deliver Israel. This is where it could all fall apart.

Yeah. Regarding the US role here, JD Vance said before he left yesterday that the US would, quote, "Just have to manage Israel and Lebanon." Can the US just manage them?

We've, , got a long checkered history of, , dealing with Israel and Lebanon and dealing with adversaries of both the United States and Israel in Lebanon.

, I'm a, , a veteran of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. I was assigned to the embassy in Beirut then- Mm-hmm ... , in which, , Israel launched a full-scale invasion all the way up to Beirut, which it occupied briefly, , to eliminate the PLO.

That's the Palestine Liberation Organization.

That's right.

, They did that, but in the process, they helped give birth to Hezbollah, a far more formidable enemy that they have been engaged against on and off, , since 1982. So, , if we're going to enforce and sustain a truce, it's gonna take an awful lot of pressure on Israel, and, , again, Hezbollah and Iran are gonna have to reciprocate.

Israel is gonna be looking for excuses to continue its campaign into South Lebanon, and, , we're gonna have to exert an unprecedented amount of pressure to prevent that.

Mm-hmm. Both the president and the vice president have said that they're putting pressure on Israel to come to a ceasefire in Lebanon.

What do you make of that effort?

Well, it's been an extraordinary undertaking. I can't think of a previous US administration that has been willing to use that pressure on Israel, particularly in Lebanon. , Whether they will sustain it and how the Israelis will react remain to be seen. The Israelis have always said that, , they are the masters of their own destiny.

They will make their own decisions on war and peace, and that has certainly been the case in Lebanon. And clearly, the Israeli prime minister is not happy with the status quo. He's made that, I think, clear, and the Israeli public is unhappy with the status quo, and they're looking at elections in the near term.

So again, if, , if calm is to prevail in, , south Lebanon, it's gonna require an intensive, unprecedented, sustained effort on the part of the United States with Israel, and that can only have a chance of success if Hezbollah is similarly restrained.

You've emphasized that long-term stability depends on a sustained dialogue and not just military pressure.

What would you advise the president to do right now?

, I would advise the president to, , exert something that is in short supply with him, strategic patience. The Iranians have it in abundance. , They will settle in for a long haul here, and, , there are no quick fixes to this, , current crisis, not in the Gulf, and not with respect to Iran's nuclear capabilities, and not with respect to south Lebanon.

So, , we need some sustained patience, and again, President Trump is not noted for his sustained patience.

Tell me a little bit more about the strategic patience. This is, , a strategy that you've long advocated for in the Middle East. What does that look like? , What could that look like in this case?

Well, in this case, it's a long war. It began some forty-three years ago with the bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut. Iran has been, as it were, on a war footing with the US for more than four decades. The US is only episodically aware of that. So we've got to first adjust our sights here that this has been a long, sustained campaign.

It does not end with this MOU, , and we've got to think about the long haul. What does that mean in practical terms? What are our options? Again, to, , create a set of conditions that look like long-term, lasting stability, , in the Gulf and in South Lebanon. What would this do? Well, it could change the dynamic.

The current Iranian regime is very much on a war footing. Their new leadership is the hardest of the hard. They're all Iran Revolutionary Guard veterans. They're all veterans of the Iran-Iraq War. They know how to do war. What I'm not at all certain is that they know how to do peace, and we saw in January with the sustained violent demonstrations in, , Tehran and other Iranian cities, a resolve on the part of the Iranian people that they want a better life.

Now, with the conflict raging, those voices are silent. But if we can, , obtain a sustained truce, a s- long-term period of peace, we may see public opinion shift back again to, , that fundamental question, "What has my government done for me lately?" And what the Iranian government has done for its people, of course, has been repressive, violent, given them no economic hope, little chance for a better future for their kids.

That's what we want to get the focus back on.

At this point, do you think that any of the goals of the war have been met, in your view?

Well, it's, , hard to keep track of what our goals in the war have been. , Clearly we've done significant damage to Iran's infrastructure, including its military infrastructure.

Its, , surface navy has been virtually obliterated. , Its ballistic missile capa- capacity has been significantly reduced. But they have shown an ability, an incredible resilience and ability to keep on fighting.

The fighting in Lebanon has killed at least 4,000 people according to the country's health ministry.

And Ambassador Crocker, you were ambassador to that country many years ago. I'm wondering how you feel watching this war carry on.

It's heartbreaking. , Again, , the Lebanese people have borne the brunt of, , this conflict, whether it was the PLO in the '70s and '80s or Hezbollah in the '80s, '90s, and 2000s.

It's the Lebanese people who have paid the price. And, , with more than a million displaced now, the strain on the Lebanese government and the human suffering is just immense. And I would urge the administration to increase its funding for UNHCR for humanitarian reasons, but also to help stabilize the situation within Lebanon and to stabilize the Lebanese government.

UNHCR, that's the UN's refugee agency.

It's, yeah, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. Because ultimately, a solution in Lebanon can only come through central government control. Right now, they need our assistance. , And the best way we can deliver that would be through increased assistance to UNHCR for the displaced, again, both for humanitarian and strategic reasons.

And Finally, Section D, WHEN THE STRONGMAN FAILS

It's a memorandum of understanding, which is a fancy way of, it- to me, it's always a, a, , a plan to have a plan.

, So it's a- ... a preliminary, "Here's a thing about things that we're gonna do later." , It's like a committee on committees, right? When they have that, the committee to decide what committees you need to get stuff done. , It does reopen the Strait of Hormuz. That's the biggest, probably the, the biggest concrete gain for the Trump administration from this, is reopening the, the Strait of Hormuz.

They're really trying to make a lot of mileage out of that and claim victory and all that.

I can't... I can't remember, was that open before the $30 billion war or not? I just, I'm not a foreign policy expert. I, can you remind me? Yeah. Was that open last- You

know, - Okay ... ever since COVID, I can't keep time straight.

I don't remember. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was in fact open until- Okay ... the Trump administration went to war with Iran. , So this was a completely self-inflicted, , mistake by the Trump administration that they're now trying to claim victory for, for supposedly undoing. Also pledges $300 billion for a, a reconstruction of Iran.

The US is on the hook for that. I think a lot of that is the, wait for it, Brad, the same as with the Obama administration, , where they free up funds that had been frozen and lock- locked up and things like that. Mm-hmm. , And Iran says, "We won't have a nuclear weapon." , They don't actually do anything to not have one, they just say that they don't, and again, at some point they'll talk about it.

, They'll sit down and they'll talk. So a lot of problems and concerns with this that people are raising. , One, I think broadly i- is - hovers all of it, o- over all of this is just the lack of GOC- GOP support. The GOP is, , fracturing over this. , Critics will look at it and say, , "Wait, you were really critical of the Obama administration because they made a deal with Iran, and, , they, they had actual, , specific requirements about nuclear proliferation and so forth, but there was, , an end date to it, and they said we can't trust them, and you released funds to them, and we said that you, ...

We talked about plane loads of cash going to Iran and so forth, and you just did the same thing." , So there's that. There's the fact that it doesn't get at any of the supposedly core issues, , that they use to justify this. It doesn't do away with the, the nuclear program, , or the, the uranium enrichment program, I should say.

, Iran says it doesn't have a nuclear program. , It doesn't, it, it doesn't get rid of the leadership, all of those kinds of things. - , The Trump administration has even lowered expectations. They're not even calling this a big deal now. Sometimes they're like, "Yeah, we, we just, we had to get out."

It's like it's something that happened to him. , "This was a bad thing, Brad. We just... It was important to get out." , JD Vance, we'll get to in a minute, said, , "Well, , isn't, isn't, , a deal that might work better than no deal?" , . He's like, "We've, we've gotta try to know, don't we?"

, , That was his logic. So it's, it's a debacle. It's, like I said, the only concrete thing they have is that the Strait of Hormuz is open, which was not closed until they went in there. We've, you've got the, the issue of, , the blood and treasure, as they say, spent on this and so forth. , I talked about, , in the Daily Brief just the, the different wings of MAGA, right?

The anti-interventionist wings who aren't happy that this ever happened, the hawkish wings who are upset that, , that this, the, the, the US didn't go further, , other people who just feel like this was just a, , Obama deal 2.0. , I, I would argue it's much worse than anything Obama did. , Yeah, just on and on.

So a lot of things there, throw it your way for your thoughts or reflections on this.

So I think a couple things we wanna make sure to, to run through, everything we discussed today, are masculinity- Yeah ... and, , and also, , the, the , , only I can solve it mentality that, , that Trump and-

Only I can save you, right?

, He said this. He said this- Yeah ... about the country. Only he can do it.

Yeah. And so let's just examine that. I think, I think, , Jonathan V. Last, who I really appreciate and, and I think is just a really insightful commentator at The Bulwark, , wrote this this week about, about a lot of things related to Trump, Iran, the Reflecting Pool and so on.

"Here's how, here's how Trump works. Announce your intent to solve the problem, like America's trade deficit or Iran or whatever. Ignore all logistical challenges." Okay? Every logistical challenge that is difficult, complex, hard to figure out. "Try to solve the problem with the first idea you think of and then fail spectacularly and immediately."

This is, this is a really good summation of how- I repeat. Yeah. Yeah. Not only Donald Trump works, but I think the model of toxic masculinity that, , that, that Trump and the Trumpist regime have m- modeled for, , as long as Trump has been in leadership. I wanna ma- be clear, sometimes we only heard- hear the word masculinity in relationship to the word toxic.

There's ways- Yeah ... to be masculine that are not toxic. I think James Talarico said it really well the other day, that real men follow through on their promises. Real men do what they say they will do. Real men don't hurt the vulnerable, they protect them in whatever means that, , i- is possible. That doesn't just mean physical brute strength, it means protection in any way that you can be somebody who can protect those who need help.

, That's all ways to be a man. But here we have a classic, , , masculinist approach that says, "Only I can solve it, and all of you who've worked on this before, you eggheads, you nerds, you mathematicians, you foreign policy experts, you women, you're idiots. All you, all you need to do is walk in there, yell, scream, destroy, and punch, maybe drop some bombs, and it'll be fixed.

That's it. Just do it my way." I, that, just I'm tired of waiting, I'm tired of patience, I'm tired of talking, I'm tired of negotiating, I'm tired of all that. No more And we see that here with, with Trump and Iran. Now, I, one of the things that I wanna, , make sure we don't miss is that Iran was started, , the, the conflict was started, in my mind, as a pure and blatant distraction from the Epstein files.

The Epstein files got to a boiling point. If you go back right before, people, don't forget this. And that's the other aspect of Trumpist masculinity that has been on display for 10 years. Say that only you can save it. Say that only men are the solution to problems. But as those men, in secret, when you want to exploit others, abuse others, take advantage of others, prey on the vulnerable.

That is what this is all about. It is this entire thing, whether that's the reflecting pool we'll get to at the end of today, whether that is the, , the, the debacle with Iran. So I, I just wanna make sure we don't miss, , any of those things, okay? So, so that's there. , I think w- as we go into JD Vance, one of the reason- one of the ways that Trump is not proud of what happened here is he is not out front touting it.

He is not out front describing how much he is proud, what he did, what he accomplished. , He did a press conference. He, he basically did a 180 on everything he said before. "Well, Iran-" Mm-hmm "... deserves a nuclear program, and we can't prevent them from, , having missiles and defending themselves.

And, , if they wanna sell oil, they wanna sell oil. They're a country, after all." Do you all remember the, the Truth Social posts and the announcements of how we're gonna destroy their civilization in two hours if you don't do what we want? It's a- We're going to end you if you don't listen to us right now?

Yeah, and he's not even the one who was gonna fly out to do the formal signing, right? He handed it to none other than JD Vance, right? But, , when, when the president is not the one wanting to put his signature, that terrifying, , demonic signature that Donald Trump has, when he's not the one putting it on there, that's a sign, right?

When he's sending somebody else, some surrogate to sign off on it, it shows you just how much he's not feeling really good or happy or proud about the, , the deal he supposedly made here.

Yeah, and it's really interesting, I think. There's... The, the same time as he's spinning that, you've got Congress now actually managing to pass a War Powers Resolution, the Senate did this, , yesterday, Tuesday, which essentially telling Trump that he can't continue hostilities against Iran without going to Congress.

If he was winning the politics of this in the United States, he wouldn't have lost a vote like that in the Senate, would he? Because he had Republicans voting against Trump for that.

Right. It was a handful of Republicans, four. , Some of the ones who have opposed Trump in the past, Susan Collins of Maine, who is in, as we've discussed, a tough re-election fight, , in November.

, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who has always, , been willing to break ranks with Republicans. We had, , Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has been very anti, , interventionist. And, and Bill Cassidy, who was defeated by a Trump-backed, , , Senate challenger in that recent Louisiana Senate primary. So they, they broke ranks.

And because Mitch McConnell, who normally votes, , against these sorts of things, is sick and in the hospital, didn't show up, that gave enough of a leeway for this thing to, to sneak through. It's a symbolic vote, , mostly, although there's a provision in the War Powers Act that could give this teeth.

Most people have concluded that it can't be enforced, and certainly Donald Trump is not going to, to abide by it. But it does show that there are Republicans, and all of the Democrats, who are willing to, , step forward and say, , this is, this needs to stop. This war is unpopular. They feel like they have the public at their back and, and that is, , a challenge for Donald Trump.

The public, according to polls, have never been super supportive of this war, and their dissatisfaction with it has been steadily growing.

So, , , there was a, a classic Truth, , , a post from Donald Trump on Truth Social last night after that vote, and I'll, I'll read it out to you. "So I have Iran on the ropes, ready to go down for the fall, willing to give us practically anything, and for the first time in decades respecting the hell out of the United States and its president, me."

And the U.S. Senate decides to have a poorly timed and meaningless War Powers Act vote telling the number one sponsor of terror in the world that the United States doesn't like what I'm doing to them and I must stop. By doing so has provided aid and comfort to the enemy, and he goes on to, , complain about the Republicans who voted with the Democrats.

Now, that form of words, aid and comfort for the enemy, is basically accusing them of treason, isn't it? Because that, that, that's taken from the, from the legislation that it would be prosecuted under if they were being charged with treason.

Right. He's accusing these Republicans of treason. He has accused the media of treason also for their coverage, which he says is, , too negative of the benefits of the Iran war, that it's downplaying the successes that the United States has, has had.

, He goes from, from talking about how, boasting about how Iran is respecting the United States to them, painting them as an enemy and, , and a sponsor of, of terror. So i- it is, it's a typical Trump tweet in that it meanders a little bit. , But it, it shows that even if this vote was meaningless, he does, does not like what it says about sentiment of, for the war here in the United States, and he does think it undercuts maybe his negotiating, , with Iran a little bit.

Let's, let's listen to, , to Bill Cassidy, one of those senators who voted for this War Powers Resolution explaining why he did.

We are left Weaker. Our allies are left weaker. Iran gets $300 billion to rebuild, which they'll use some of it to support things that we don't care for. I think that, , we had 13 Americans dead.

We spent anywhere from 25 to $100 billion in munitions, and turns out we've lost a credible threat of attacking them again. There's a lot of stuff in there, - It's

bad.

Yeah, Bill Cassidy never been a fan of this war, and as you pointed out, Anthony, free to speak his mind given that he's not standing, , for reelection again in November.

Now, it's a very different story with another Republican senator, Ted Cruz. He's always been one of Trump's closest Republican allies, but he also has been speaking out voicing his concerns about this deal.

If we give billions of dollars to Iran, that money will be used to murder Americans, and so I don't believe we should do that.

And, and the idea that, that we would have effectively a Marshall Plan for Iran and come in and rebuild Iran after they've been the leading state sponsor of terrorism for 47 years, they've murdered nearly 1,000 Americans, I, I, I don't think that makes any sense. Listen, I support President Trump, and I think his leadership on Iran has been extraordinary.

, I believe he is getting poor advice, , and I think sending billions of dollars to Iran is a mistake. The, the terms of the MOU that have been released start off at the outset with tens of billions of dollars immediately being released to Iran before they make a single nuclear concession. I, I, I think that's a mistake.

CLIP 1 END

So there, Ted Cruz talking about the, the lifting of sanctions. What Cruz also mentioned, and Cassidy mentioned in that earlier clip, was this $300 billion fund to rebuild Iran. That's another provision of the MOU that, , that we should mention. It's this fund that Trump says is not gonna be funded by American dollars at all, but it's this big fund that the United States is promising in this memorandum to be used by Iran as, , a rebuilding a- and infrastructure building, a almost a compensation for the war.

, Whether it's funded by other Gulf states, whether it's funded by corporations looking to invest in Iran, that's all unclear. But these Republicans are worried that somehow this is gonna be money that e- essentially will help secure the Iranian leadership, and they can use it in order to recover from the war that the United States started.

You spoke to Trump about this yourself, didn't you?

Yeah. Oh, on the tarmac, , in Paris after his G7 meetings in, in , of Air France. I asked him about this memorandum of understanding. And one of the first provisions in that memorandum of understanding was that neither side would use force, neither side would threaten to use force.

And just earlier in the day, Donald Trump had talked about dropping bombs on the heads of Iranians. And I asked him whether, , this, this threat of force violated the terms of the memorandum, and he dismissed my question, said he would do whatever he wanted anyway. , Let's listen to what he said.

If they don't, , if they don't come through, is it a threat that we bomb?

, You can call it whatever you want, but it'll probably happen. Thank you. I will see you at Versailles

I don't know what's more impressive from that, Anthony, the fact that you're standing on the tarmac talking to the President of the United States, or the fact that you were doing it in France. I'm very envious of that trip.

So Trump is under immense pressure right now to deliver. Let's listen to an exchange he had with a reporter who asked him about the news that the Pentagon has asked Congress for another $80 billion for the war. The reporter starts out by saying, "The Department of War has asked for this money."

Listen to what happens.

The Department of War is asking for 80 billion more dollars for the Iran war.

Do

you think Americans support this at a time when so many are financially struggling? Who are you with?

I'm with Newsy

Not a very good group. Not doing very well. , Not only do they support it, not only do they support it, they demand it because they won't allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. You wanna see trouble?

Let them have a nuclear weapon. We're doing very well with Iran. They've been decimated.

Nick, note how angry Trump gets at the notion that the American people are turning on him over both the war and the economy, and of course, the American people have turned on him over both. But he says the American people absolutely support spending 80 billion more dollars on the Iran war.

Your thoughts?

He says this about everything, that, , whether there is any public support or not, it's kinda his way of trying to either bully reporters or bully the public into believing it, if to create an aura of power almost, , , meme his way into more power than he actually has. , And it's really not gonna work in this instance.

, Congress will most likely fund the, , Pentagon's requests, at least, , in significant part because a lot of that is replacing munitions that the United States fired against Iran that is needed for a lot of contingencies, such as, , the event of a major war with Russia or China, war over Taiwan, anything like that.

, And, , so they will likely spend that money, but selling it to the American people as some positive thing, that's not gonna work at all, that, , people can see the economic effects, and those are likely to get worse rather than get better as the, , effects really reverberate out. , And they never supported the war in the first place, and so there isn't any particular reason why they would be excited to spend even more taxpayer dollars going there when they are more concerned about really many other issues, especially economic ones.

So you're really looking at a triple whammy for Trump. As you say, the public opposed the war at the outset, which is itself unusual, and then the public had a direct glimpse of the economic effects of the war when the Strait of Hormuz closed. With unusual clarity, Trump was directly tied to skyrocketing prices, and then on top of that, Trump is now asking for another $80 billion.

That's a triple whammy of sorts. I don't think we've seen something like that before, have we?

No, we haven't, and you can add on top of that, that the American public doesn't like losing a war, doesn't like backing a loser in a war, doesn't wanna throw good money after bad. So, , if there was perhaps some actual threat to the United States or there was some national interest that he was achieving in the process of the war, then maybe there would be an argument for the American people to sacrifice in some manner.

But there isn't at all. He's in the process of surrendering and making concessions to the Iranians and giving them more than they had before the start of the war, and so why would people be interested or, say, even excited or supportive of funding that war?

It really is bad for him, and just to underscore how badly the public has turned on him over this, listen to this snippet from a Fox anchor.

He cites a new Marist poll showing that only 33% of Americans approve of Trump on the economy, his lowest ever in Marist polling, with 60% disapproving. Check this out.

, We've only got a few months now until the midterms. This Marist poll shows that the president's not exactly firing on all cylinders when it comes to approval of his, , handling of the economy.

33% disapproving, 66... 60% rather. , His 33% approval rating is three points lower than Biden at his worst.

Nick, did you catch how the anchor said that Trump is now lower on the economy than Joe Biden was at his worst? That has got to be the thing Trump hates to hear more than anything else, and this is coming from Fox News, making it even more pointed.

I think this really illustrates very graphically the pressure he feels to produce a deal. The last thing he wants to be doing right now is asking for tens of billions more for the war when his approval rating on the economy is one-third of the country, right?

Yes, and he needs something really fast because, , the economic impact is very unlikely to turn positive in time for the midterms, in time to reduce that pressure.

That this was one of the things that got Trump to surrender in the first place, that, , , a good lesson of what is he actually afraid of? What can discipline him? What does he listen to? The answer, and, , has always been, , markets, that, , the oil market and others were on the verge of getting into a very serious crisis because of reserves running down and the ships not leaving the strait in time to replenish that.

And we still might see some of that because as much as Trump tries to sell this idea that, , the strait is totally open, ships are flowing through, , that Iran won't be charging tolls for it, none of that matches the facts on the ground. And this is the type of a big scale kinda supply, demand, a hard physical reality that he can bullshit his way through for some time, kinda delay for a time, but cannot totally manage to hoodwink people when there are ongoing economic problems, when costs are rising, when we saw recently inflation numbers in large part due to the war getting back to levels that we haven't seen in a few years.

, That all of that is the thing that people notice, and, , he really seems desperate about it, that, , where usually he's able to either bully people into saying that it's going well or turn it into a domestic political he said, she said back and forth, , or just somehow bullshit his way through it, change the subject, and this one is just stubbornly not doing it because the reality of it is too

CLIP 1 END

big.

All right, Dan, I know you're a scholar of religion, but I wanna just test your historical knowledge here for a minute, and then we'll, we'll get into JD, okay?

We'll, we'll go, we'll go to the drizzler They signed this treaty at Versailles. Now, , I, I, , I used to live in France. Me, I like the French detective novels. I'm, I, I'm somebody who's, who's spent a lot of time in France. I, I visited Versailles. Do you remember, any wars, treaties, things that were signed in Versailles?

Is there... Is that a, famous place for this action? , I know you teach a history class now, even though you're a religion professor. What, ca- do you mind answering my pop quiz here or would you, would you- I think

there, there ha- there's a very significant treaty that was signed at Versailles, and I think it's more than a little bit symbolic that they decided to try to make this sound like a really big deal by choosing the symbolism of, of signing, signing at Versailles.

I just, I laugh 'cause this, this memorandum is so vacuous. It's so almost empty, but it's just another, it's another, , smoke and mirrors thing like Versailles. Okay. Okay, that's real, right? We're gonna, we're gonna end a world conflict by signing it at Versailles, right?

Well, and, , I, I... For those of you who, who are, are , listening or doing the dishes or driving and you're catching the drift but you're not catching the drift, right?

World War I, the end of- Yeah ... the e- the end of, of the war that, the, this, the, the German surrender, the, the German humiliation is signed at Versailles. And as Trump , , allowed for this and the treaty was, or the MOU I should say, was signed there, a lot of people noticed. A lot of commentators online and people who are chronically online with the memes and everything else were just like, "I'm not sure Donald Trump understands the historical humiliation that they are, the, the Europeans and others are, are, are, , are rehearsing here by having him do this in this place."

He's signing a deal where the only things he get is the Strait of Hormuz is open, and it seems as if Iran, Iran can open that any, or close it any time they want now. It's a spigot they can turn on and off.

Mm-hmm.

Which is actually not even getting back to where we were before the war. The $300 billion payment, the, the lack of, , any actionable steps when it comes to not having a nuclear program, , so on and so forth.

It's a complete humiliation. And I think one of the things, though, that, that we should take away from this, and, and I'll get your thoughts on this before we move on, is just not only is Trump the man who rushes in and says, "I can fix this by punching and yelling and screaming," and then it doesn't work.

It just doesn't work. And, and I think you and I were talking about this before we recorded. Men like this yell and scream. You can do this to your kids, your four-year-old, your 14-year-old. You can do this to your partner. You can do this to your coworkers. You can do this at a little league game.

Wherever you want. You can run in, scream, grunt, yell, just like the UFC fighters that were on the White House lawn last week. And when it doesn't work out, when the, the problem is more complicated than just threats and force, a lot of times men like that go, "Well, yeah, it wasn't that big a deal anyway," or, "Oh, I wasn't that interested," or, "I wasn't..."

Do you ever play with this kid at, when at, when you were young, Dan? There was this kid named Chris. I'm not gonna say Chris's last name. I don't know if you're listening, Chris. But when I, when I

was- No, this is a hypothetical kid. This is a, this is, this is a story about Chris.

No, this is a real kid. All right.

All right. So , when I was... Well, I, I... Let me give you a little story here. Some of you are like, "Brad, come on." But there's, it's relevant, I promise, Your Honor When I was 12 and 13, right, I was, I was in very competitive soccer and baseball, and I was on the all-star team and really into it. It was a big deal in my life.

And there was a dude named Chris, he was a foot taller than me, but I had no fear of Chris, and we would go toe-to-toe, right? And I remember beating Chris one day in basketball in the neighborhood. One-on-one, just beat him up. I didn't beat him up, but I beat him really badly in the, in the basketball game, and all the kids were watching.

And as soon as I, as soon as I made the last basket and won, he was like, "I wasn't even trying, bro." Yeah. "I wasn't even trying."

Yep.

Right? And this is what Chris would do. Anytime Chris lost, he was like, "I wasn't even trying. I don't even care about this." I didn't wanna win anyway. Yeah, I don't... This is du- I don't even care about this game.

That is exactly what Donald Trump is doing, is Donald Trump is so distracted by UFC fighters and the, the, a ballroom, and by everything else that he actually cares about, that this whole distraction of The Epstein Files is not even something that he's, he's invested in anymore. He's moved on. There's a new shiny object.

There's a new set of concerns. There's a new set of ooh, look over here. And he's done. And, and he is just like, "Yeah, JD, you go do it, and if it goes bad, it's on you. I blame you. You're gonna take the fall. You're gonna sign this in a humiliating deal in Versailles, and I don't want my name anywhere near it.

I'm not the guy who did this. It's not the Trump deal. This is the Vance deal." And that's how I look at it. So that's another trait of a toxic man. A, you abuse a- and exploit others behind closed doors. Two, you rush in to fix things by, by fighting, screaming, grunting, threatening. And three, when it doesn't go your way and you actually need all those nerds, eggheads, analytical people, women, everyone else who's like, "Hey, man, you should not do that.

It's a lot more complicated than you think," and it all blows up in your face, you just say, "Wasn't even trying. This is stupid. I don't even care about it. Who cares? I'm, I'm going home. Screw you guys." Final thoughts on this before we go to JD.

Well, just a couple, one, you mentioned this, that, and, and JD Vance said this, , this is based on actions.

They have to follow through. But there's nothing clear that happens if they don't, right? So it's not really based on actions. But this metaphor, , that I think is more than a metaphor, right? The, the masculinity theme that's running through this, the right, the, where, where, where power or authority or leadership is only violence and force and coercion.

That's the only shape that that can take. And you, you use the model of people who yell at their kids or whatever, and I think most of us know, even if that works for a while, eventually those kids grow up, or people become independent enough that they're like, " what? We're done. I'm done with that.

I'm not afraid of you anymore. You can't talk to me that way. You can't whatever." And they just, they're done, and they can be done. And I feel like on that metaphor, that's what we've seen from other governments and other countries over the last 10 years, who are like, " what? We're, we're done. We know this game, and we're not gonna let you yell at us anymore.

We're gonna do our own things, and we're just, you're, you're out." And I think it's the same thing- With this. We, we saw that in Iran, with Iran just holding the line and not capitulating to all these angry threats and, and tantrums that Donald Trump would throw. And I think now we're seeing it even, even in the GOP, we're seeing it among the American people.

, I think that, that, that, , raging, angry man model of leadership is just... It's, it- people are outgrowing it, and I think that that's part of what we're seeing afflicting the Trump administration right now.

But it- it's so, I, I... It's so appealing, especially to men, in the short term, to be like, "Well, yeah, why don't we just...

Let's just punch, dude. Let's just bomb. Let's just knock it down." And you can see the young men that voted for Trump being like, "Yeah, why not? Why can't we be men like that? I don't wanna be a man like Barack Obama, who seems to, choose every word carefully and talk slowly. I don't wanna be a man like, , , Joe Biden or, , or, or, or someone else, right?

I wanna be a man like Tr-..." And, and we're seeing in real time what happens when you, when you govern that way, when you act that way. It, it does not help you or anyone. Yeah. It... That, that, that's the problem, right? - I've,

I've said this before. , It, this is gonna sound like a weird statement to some people, but I think some people will understand it.

Rage and anger can feel really good.

Yes.

It can feel way better than not knowing what to do, or than feeling- Yeah ... helpless, or than having to acknowledge that something is beyond your power or control, right? It's a way of feeling like you have agency. But number one, it's not sustainable in any healthy way, right?

Anybody who's ever spent a lot of time being angry, and I spent, I've spent a lot of my life being angry, it's not sustainable. It's also just completely counterproductive to everybody around you, all the things that matter to you, your job, your family, your mental health, all of it. And I think that, I think that model's perfect for what we're encountering right now as we watch the Trump administration just continue to unravel.

Let's start with one of the most, , cowardly, craven, , scenes I've ever, , witnessed in Washington, DC, , which was, , yesterday, Donald Trump went to the Senate, , yelled at the senators.

, Senator Bill Cassidy stood up and, , said, , "I won't be bullied." , And then he changed his vote 'cause obviously he'll be bullied. , He's a perfect encapsulation of the Republican Party, , a doctor, , who is deeply concerned with RFK Jr.'s anti-science, , , beliefs, , and intentions but voted for him anyways.

, But yesterday Bill Cassidy, , changed his vote on a war powers, , resolution, , from Senator Tim- Tim Kaine, , that had recently passed, and it was because Trump bullied him into doing it. And this is a senator who's not even serving, , anymore, right? This is his last term, but he changed, , his vote, and he said, , "I really appreciate the quick invite to the White House."

, So I guess that's what it, , costs to buy Senator Bill Cassidy's vote, , a little bit of bullying, , and a little bit, a tiny bit of bribery with an invite to the White House. But, , I don't think this is getting reported correctly because, , this is one , , one-off, and, , I am all for every effort that shows that the power to declare war is with the Congress and not the executive.

, And we need to state that in as many avenues as possible. But what Bill Cassidy changed his vote on, , in the war powers walkback by the Republicans... And remember, this is a deeply unpopular war, deeply unpopular, , a- including among Republicans. So Bill Cassidy voted, , changed his vote against his constituents in the favor of the Trump regime, , with a little bit of bullying and a little bit of, of bribery.

, But that doesn't change the, , concurrent resolution that passed both houses, , of Congress, , and is the law of the land, , Concurrent Resolution 86. , And so this is really just something that was just to, , help with Donald Trump's- Hurt feelings, , which we know is actually the driving force of the Republican ideology right now, , is don't hurt this man's feelings, and whatever he says, we believe.

, , I, I disagree with, , , big C conservatism, , that, , the, the big government is the problem, and private companies are always operating, , more efficiently and effectively. All of it's hogwash, right? , But at least it was an ideology. , At least it was, , something built on ideas.

Right now, it's just follow the mad king wherever he leads, , including, , into doing whatever he wants in this deeply unpopular war. Now, I am praying for peace, and I am hopeful for the peace process. It's clear that, , Donald Trump and the regime, , accomplished literally nothing that they set out to do, , in terms of Iran.

The same murderous regime is in place. , They are gonna be $400 billion richer. The highly rich- enriched uranium is still in Iran. , And in fact, they've been shown to be able to use an economic nuclear weapon, which is closing the Straits of Hormuz, , with very basic technology that the entire might of the US military was not able to overcome.

, So I, I think on all measures, , the Iranian regime outplayed the Trumpian regime, and, , right now there's just a PR war. , And this bullying of Bill Cassidy was part of it.

And we should note here that this 36% approval, which is again dismal, is absolutely not an outlier.

The New York Times polling averages, which if anything are conservative and take in a lot of data, have his approval at 38%. That means that his actual approval is very plausibly in the mid-30s, 35, 36, 37. Those are terrible numbers, and I don't see them turning around, Nick. Do you? , Part, part of the problem here is that he's built into a situation with Iran where time isn't on his side, is it?

I think you're right that it is likely to get worse, and I can't really see a way that it gets better. I can think of a, a few different ways. One is that with the Strait still restricted, , that has been blocked for so long, a lot of supplies, not just energy, , but things like fertilizer is another good one, we're going to see over the next year or two the result of that supply crunch and higher prices reverberating through the economy.

So the economy is more likely to get worse rather than better, at least in, say, the midterm. With the war, it looks like it has driven more wedges into the MAGA coalition, to the GOP coalition, because, , it effectively broke some of the deal that various voting groups thought that they had with Trump when they were voting for him.

So you had, , some lighter supporters who thought that he was good for the economy, that he was going to bring inflation down, that the economy was gonna look more like, say, 2018, 2019, before COVID. And he didn't do that. He made it worse exactly along those measures in a way that's easy to link to the war.

And also, there were the people who voted for him because they thought that they, they bought into the image of anti-war isolationism, which was always bullshit, which, , had to willfully ignore a lot of his first term stuff. But nevertheless, some voters bought into it, and here he went and started a new Middle East war that is causing al- all sorts of problems and is not making better for anything for the United States or for its various allies or the world.

And so where some of them feel betrayed, and so where, , I would be extremely wary of ever, say, , giving credit to Tucker Carlson, so this is not credit, but where, , he is seeing an opportunity in taking this- Hmm ... , anti-war, isolationist, anti-Israel lane, , and that is creating these political problems for Trump that are very unlikely to reverse in time for the midterms or who knows what after that.

But, , I can't see what miracle thing would come along that would somehow reverse his approval decline.

I just wanna underscore your point by saying that Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene just this week said that they're leaving the Republican Party, or something to that effect. Again, we shouldn't trust these people even for a second or, or hail any , any nobleness on their part at all.

But there really is opportunity that they're seeing. They would not be doing this unless they sense that there are large constituencies within the Trump/MAGA coalition that will agree with them on it, right?

Right, exactly. That, , they are opportunists, a finger in the wind that they can... , it's almost like they're positioning themselves for a period of whatever happens after Trump, and that they wanna be in the lane that says, , m- various MAGA stuff , a lot of the racism, anti-immigrant stuff, for example, was good.

, But the Iran war and Middle East interventionism was bad, and try to capture a future of the right by doing that. But that also makes it a argument inside the Republican Party, because you also have another group that has been, , wronged, feels wronged by this, are the, , the arch-hawks, the, , ones who have been wanting an Iran war the entire time, the ones who are very strong supporters of Israel.

They're feeling betrayed by Trump surrendering and making all these big concessions to Iran, of, , giving Iran benefits up front and not getting anything for the United States, of, , leaning towards an absolute best case scenario, something like a weaker version of the JCPOA, the Obama nuclear deal, which they hated and wanted opposed in the first place.

So, , those are the people who maybe didn't love some other Trump stuff and, , , bit their tongue about it because they liked that he was gonna be so violently aggressive in the Middle East and, , so supportive of Israel and of Benjamin Netanyahu. And now when Trump is doing something that goes against those interests, and you have the Tucker and that other part of the coalition going in a different direction, it looks really difficult for anybody to possibly be able to hold that thing together.

, He's losing three different groups if you really bear down on it, right? He's losing the low engagement, young, non-white working class types who went to Trump because he's the Apprentice guy or whatever they thought. He's losing the diehard MAGA types who actually seem to have real, , anti-interventionist views.

I, I'm really skeptical of that, and I know you are as well, but still, people like Tucker and Marjorie Taylor Greene are speaking to some constituency out there that thinks that. And he's losing the Republican hawks who thought Trump would basically be their tribune

CLIP 2 END

to crush whatever enemy rose up in their path.

Yeah, I think he's losing, , some of the manosphere tough guy types also, in that, - Yeah ... he, he looks so weak, that the, , this was supposed to be some triumph of strength, and it's going terribly along those lines. And that's the thing that, , so many people, various experts on the issue could have told him in advance, that, , you can't just act like a reality show tough guy, do a bunch of bluster, do some bombs from afar, and expect a country to then capitulate to you.

That's not gonna work. But nevertheless, some people bought into that, and the embarrassment of it now with being part of a loser and one who is, , surrendering and flailing and, , going back and forth on it a lot, and just generally looks weak and being seen by a lot of people in those areas as weak, , just adds another part, another chip against that coalition that he built that got him back into the White House in 2024.

Well, let's wrap this up by listening to something Trump said at a rally in Pennsylvania, which I think shows again how angry he is at the media and everybody over all this. Listen.

Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, and they've agreed to that

But remember, this wasn't easy. We had 47 years worth of pre- presidents and other people, other countries too, we're not the only one that never did anything. They were the bully of the Middle East, and now we're leaving Iran with no navy, no air force, no anti-aircraft No missile capability, no nuclear program.

We're leaving them without any nuclear capacity, and they've agreed to that, and we're getting along quite well. Although, if you read the fake news, you never know. Think of it, the fake news. They have no army. They have no navy. They have no air force. They have no anti-aircraft. We can fly over Tehran just at will.

Nobody gonna do anything to us. And then I read the fake news that they're doing quite well. They're not doing quite well.

Nick, note how Trump says Iran has agreed to having no nuclear program when, in fact, all it has agreed to is what it has agreed to many times in the past, which is this boilerplate language about how it shall not buy or develop nuclear weapons.

And note how he rages at the media for telling people the truth, which is that Trump has gotten little to nothing on this front. What's the basic dynamic here going forward? Does this change any time soon? , Does it just drag on for many months? Well, how do you see it playing out?

I think it's probably dragging on for a while, that, , unfortunately, one of the really long-term problems with this is that Trump has given Iran this really powerful card that they can threaten to close the Strait of Hormuz when they don't like how things are going, either with negotiations with the United States or, , Israeli military activity in Lebanon or just about anything else, and they can stir it up as an issue.

I bet we're going to be hearing about this for years. Iran is also setting up a toll regime. They're building this out with Oman. They're charging people special insurance and saying they're gonna have to pay, and Trump is lying about that, and he's trying to sell that lie. , But that one looks like it's moving forward also, so he's gotten the Iranian government a big, new revenue stream.

, And they are not going to be giving concessions on their nuclear program, at least not ones that are more in the MOU. What it specifically says is, , they even use the language Iran reiterates. Basically, it says its old statement that they won't get nuclear weapons that nobody really believed before, which is why there were all these sanctions and pressure on Iran in the first place.

So, , he's going to keep on giving Iran these concessions to, , get, , just recently lifting sanctions on Iran, of allowing a lot of Iranian ships to leave and, , sell at market, or unfreezing Iranian assets is something that the Iranians said they talked about when they were meeting in Switzerland.

On that one, I believe him. So we'll see more economic concessions to Iran just to get Iran to keep the process of letting ships through the Strait of Hormuz because that's the real leverage that they have, where, , they've... Once they got ahold of that, they have had us. They have had the stronger hand, and they have been playing it better than the United States has.

So while Trump will continue prioritizing trying to lie to the American people about what happened, the facts on the ground and the actual shape of the Middle East, of the international system that is coming out of this, is going to keep on likely getting more and more in the Iranians' favor with Trump lying and threatening and blustering along the way.

That's going to be it for today.

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The additional sections of the show included clips from;

It Could Happen Here

The Muckrake Political Podcast

Columbia Energy Exchange

Heather Cox Richardson

Sources & Methods

Unf*cking The Republic

Here & Now Anytime

On the Media

Consider This

Straight White American Jesus

Americast

THE DAILY BLAST

and The Thom Hartmann Program

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