Ben Rhodes

We are in a forever war with Iran.

One way to think about this is the 12-day war was not a 12-day war.

This is still part of the war.

Once you start bombing a country, this is the same war as the 12-day war that's happening.

Just because you periodically stop bombing doesn't mean you're not in a forever war.

And so Trump can spin it however he wants to MAGA supporters from Tucker Carlson to his own vice president who have political identities based on opposing this.

But the reality is that we are in this and the world is going to see whatever happens in Iran next,

they're gonna see as the responsibility of the United States and Donald Trump personally.

And as we talked about, whether it's civil conflict, refugee flows into other countries, major energy disruptions in the Straits of Hormuz, periods of calm followed by periods of dramatic violence.

I mean, this could go all kinds of ways,

But the one thing we know is that Iran is now added to that list of forever wars.

And it's the biggest country yet that we've tried to do this in.

And we're doing it with no boots on the ground.

And we're doing it in conjunction with Israel, which we've also never done.

We've never done a regime change war, like literally with the Israelis.

So that is going to create impressions in the world too.

And I just think, you know, there's no real discussion of this by Trump.

Yeah, I mean, the first point is that, you know, Arachi, it's not clear, you know, who he even reports to at this point.

And negotiation, the Iranians have been bombed now twice in the middle of a nuclear negotiation where they were making concessions.

So the idea that that's a pathway to de-escalation seems less likely to me.