Bob Kagan

speaker

1,471 appearances 4 recordings 1 series first heard Feb 2026 last heard 29 Jul

Bob Kagan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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The Bulwark Daily · Robert Kagan: We’re Transitioning to a Post-American World · 3 Apr 2026 podcast

But what what happened was.

Our intelligence showed that the mullahs and their whole leadership was going to have a meeting in the daytime.

And we passed that information on to the Israelis and the Israelis and Bibi basic said, look, I have an opportunity to take out the whole leadership.

Should we, you know, should we just go ahead and do it?

And I think Trump thought he saw a freebie here.

The interesting thing about this, we're all like beating our chests about how great the American military is.

And it is great.

And I'm not saying it isn't.

But it wasn't the American military that took the initial step of taking out Iran's air defenses, which is the most dangerous element of the operation and which the United States would not have done because it was too risky for the stakes.

Israel, because of October 7th, completely changed its risk calculus and was basically, we have to do whatever we need to do.

And so they did undertake the risk in the first instance of taking out the air defenses, which allowed us to then come in and prove how tough we were.

And then when they said we could take out the whole leadership, Trump just said, oh boy, do it.

And it's the Israelis who took it out, not us.

You know, they were the ones who launched a daytime raid, which is also very risky.

So I think Trump just thought I can come swooping in and I'll be the guy who took out the mullahs and it'll be over.

Exactly.

And despite his reputation for playing five dimensional chess, I don't think plays one dimensional checkers.

He didn't really go through the what the possible downsides of this action where he thought he saw an easy operation.

You know, this whole grand strategy.

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