Jeffrey Goldberg

So at the end of this war, the Israelis and the Arab states of the Gulf may not have what they were hoping for, which is a completely neutralized Iran.

They might have...

a hard-edged regime that has less power to project through ballistic missiles and through a nuclear program, but an angrier, more hard-line power that could harass shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, just for starters.

We don't know because we don't know what Donald Trump's ultimate goal is, because he's listed all of the goals and toggles back and forth among them without rhyme or reason.

I don't think he has a worldview.

I mean, there's no coherence to what he's done in recent months.

It's very hard to articulate this.

We've had a lot of conversations over the years about national security and international geopolitics and the post-World War II international liberal order.

And those conversations make sense because we're starting from a shared set of facts.

And we're also starting from...

basic, clear, ideological streams that aren't that different from each other.

Some are more hawkish, some are more dovish.

But here we have a guy who literally, to borrow the expression, he's literally just trying to get through the next 10 minutes.

He's just trying to get out of the conversation without being publicly humiliated.

That's my impression of what's going on here.

Is it surprising that the pro-peace, semi-isolationist president is invading Venezuela, invading Nigeria, invading Iran, invading possibly Cuba?

It's not surprising at all because nothing is surprising because it doesn't make sense.

There is a bias.

I always say this, that the real bias in journalism very often is not left or right.

It's a bias toward coherence.