Chapter 1: What are the reasons behind the Trump administration's war with Iran?
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Please visit MentallyHealthyNation.org to learn more. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, we're at war with Iran. Violence is spreading all over the Middle East. American soldiers are losing their lives. The administration is struggling to explain why it's happening. And Democrats are struggling to explain why it shouldn't be happening.
We'll talk about what we know and don't know and where we are on all of it. We'll also hear from Senator Ruben Gallego on how Democrats are responding and how he's thinking about the midterms. Also, beyond this show, we'll be covering all the developments around the war in Iran and the political fallout across the Crooked Network.
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Chapter 2: How did Trump's initial remarks impact public perception of the war?
We are gonna spend tens of billions of dollars at a minimum on weapons and it could play out for years. So like, I think the neocons are back. Like we might as well have Dick Cheney in charge given this policy. I was worried that over at the Bulwark, Bill Kristol would be like reactivated like a Manchurian candidate.
And all of a sudden kind of like his body moving in ways he doesn't totally understand it is not a control of kind of like going back to the old Dick Cheney controls. He's very upset. I'd be very upset about it. Must be a conflict in there.
I will say that it is mostly stylistic, the communications critique here, but there's something substantive about it too, which is like- No one knows what you're doing. We could talk about Obama, but it's like, I don't know, George Bush, Biden, anyone. You send Americans to war You talk to the American people about it and you take questions from their representatives in the press.
Like that's just what you do.
And the fact that they don't do that, the fact that he spent 300 words towards the end of a two hour State of the Union on Iran, not even bothering to make the case, not bothering to make the case in the lead up, not even bothering to try to make the case to the rest of the world, not responding to any questions from the press about this, doing a couple of tape messages from Florida while this is happening.
It just goes to show like they don't give a fuck what we think. They don't give a fuck what anyone thinks. They think that they're in charge, they make the rules, and everyone else can go fuck themselves. Well, and also, look, it goes to the lack of any kind of real congressional debate, any sense that Congress ought to weigh in as our representatives. Yes, it's a process question.
It's not about the substance of whether or not this is right or wrong. But the way those things connect is, in a democracy, We are supposed to weigh in because we understand that the stakes of an action like this are very high.
Trump's not really a details guy, which is why he's left the nitty gritty of explaining his government's rationale for starting this war, as well as their objectives in Iran, to the substitute weekend Fox host who now runs the Pentagon in between a push-up contest with the Health and Human Services Secretary.
Pete Hegseth held a press conference on Monday alongside the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Raisin-Kane.
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Chapter 3: What are the conflicting rationales for the U.S. involvement in Iran?
The idea that Iran could have enough ballistic missiles to prevent the U.S. from intervening to take out a nuclear program is just made-up bullshit. A magical force field. Yeah, and the reason it's made-up bullshit is because the U.S. and Israel over the past year have had their way with the Iranian military whenever they wanted.
They bombed them repeatedly, and no conventional deterrent has changed that. So I don't know why they're trying these new lines. I don't know why they're trotting this bullshit out. The messaging changes are so stark. Like you were saying, like on Saturday, we're talking about a regime change and the people rising up. Now that's gone. Trump's like clearly has no plan for the future.
He talked to like 10 reporters and one of them, he was like, oh, I got a list of three guys who should take over. Then he called another reporter. It's like, oh, those three guys are dead now. So they're just winging it. Yeah. Why do you think there's all these shifting explanations for the rationale for this war? Who fucking knows? Well, so Rubio also underscored what Hegsad said.
He said, Iran in about a year or a year and a half would have crossed the line of immunity. I don't know what the line of immunity is. There's no such thing. They would have so many missiles that they could hold the whole world hostage, which is, of course,
quite a claim because I have, are we suggesting that the Iranian conventional arsenal would have been unable to be defeated by the United States of America? I don't think that's what our military would say about it. But then, okay, that's a year and a half. And so then he's asked, Rubio's asked, like, is it imminent?
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Chapter 4: How are Democrats responding to the war in Iran?
And he says, yes, because we were aware of Israeli intentions and understood what it would mean for us and understood what it would mean for us and had to be prepared to act as a result of it. So he's saying it was imminent because Israel was going to strike imminently. And if Israel striked Iran imminently, Iran would strike back at us.
But Cain, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, says in that conference with Hegseth that Israel acted on US intelligence when it did the strikes against Iran's leadership. We were not only aware of it, we were instrumental to it. And so the argument is now from directly from Rubio, we had to strike because Iran was going to strike after we struck.
Like that's where they're at, which feels like actually the closest to the truth. Well, we talked about this in the last episode, but that random administration source or it was in and around the administration source to Politico that basically said the hope within the administration was that maybe Israel would go first because then Iran would retaliate and we could retaliate against Iran.
And it turns out they thought that that was a possible scenario and then said, yeah, instead of letting Israel go first, let's just go with them because that's going to happen anyway. Yeah, that political leak was that they thought it would be better politics for the Israelis to strike first. Which was also insane. Yes, completely insane.
And then Rubio today, there was a leak over the weekend that there was an imminent threat, right? That the U.S. had to preemptively strike Iran because the Iranians were going to hit us or hit our bases in the region and lead to a mass casualty incident. And who's that idiot over at CNN, that fucking goober who's always yelling on the panels?
Scott Jennings tweeted this out credulously, which was like ā Not believable, not credible in any way. And what Rubio did today to clarify it was to say, we knew the Israelis were going to strike, which meant the Iranians were going to strike back.
So we had to be involved on the front end to preempt that or, you know, keep American forces safe, which I think kind of like cuts out the step where maybe you could talk Israel out of doing something that would put, you know, U.S. personnel in the region at risk. Well, also you...
Traditionally, the United States doesn't publicly say we are only going to full scale bombing across a Middle Eastern country because kind of Israel dragged us into it. Let's get that in a second. But on this missile point, like the Iranians have a lot of missiles, but they do not have an ICBM.
The Defense Intelligence Agency did an assessment last year that found that if Iran decided to have one, they could have an ICBM by 2035. So that assessment has basically been the same since the 90s, that they're a decade away from having this technology. So the suggestion that that Iran was on the cusp of having a missile that could hit the United States is a lie and it is undercut by the U.S.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of the war on American lives and foreign policy?
Vance, of all people, convinced Trump to do this because he was leaning towards. Remember, he was thinking about doing a quick strike and then maybe saving the big one for later or he was going to do the big one. And Vance was like, well, if you're going to do it, go big and go right away.
And then Trump apparently after that meeting started thinking about what Vance said and was like, OK, that was a good idea. The other part of this too is- J.D. Vance, who wrote that op-ed. Yeah, all these fucking- Well, the best part, what was the best part about Donald Trump is that he's not going to get us in any more foreign wars. Yeah, no new wars.
Yeah, and then I do think part of this too is Trump, you have Rubio out there saying they were a year away from having a, a hyper advanced conventional umbrella that would made them immune. But meanwhile, the lesson they took from Operation Mid, I don't remember what the fuck. Midnight Hammer. Midnight Hammer. You got it.
Is that actually Iran's capabilities are not something we have to worry too much about. They're actually in a weakened position. Now would be the time right in the wake of these protests. The idea that like Benjamin Netanyahu with U.S. intelligence is not decapitating the entire Iranian regime without U.S., if not encouragement per mission. Right.
And so even Rubio going out there and saying, well, Israel was going to do it. So we had no choice. They needed encouragement. Well, I'm not saying they would need encouragement, but they're not gonna start the campaign unless they feel pretty confident that the US is- You mean support. Yeah, support, encourage. Yeah, I mean, support.
Right, and like, so Rubio going out there and saying, well, the Israelis were gonna do it, and therefore that was gonna create some kind of imminent threat. I don't understand why in this moment they feel the need to act as though they were dragged into it.
Maybe that's in part because of their own politics about not wanting to seem like they were just choosing a random day to start a giant new conflict in the Middle East. Maybe they are worried a bit about their own,
But that's the only way I can see to kind of undercut the idea that we weren't dragged into this in part because Benjamin Netanyahu has been gunning for war with Iran for the entire time he's been in public life.
I thought another notable detail in that story was that intel officials had predicted that a popular uprising against the regime after a strike was a remote possibility, which is interesting in that Trump, when he first announced this, was like, take your country back.
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Chapter 6: How does the political landscape affect the Democrats' stance on the war?
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So looking forward, Trump's been all over the map on what an exit strategy might look like, and has basically had a different answer for every reporter who has randomly dialed his number, which apparently happens quite frequently now.
There's the, as Tommy mentioned, the Venezuela-type outcome, where he gets his Delcy Rodriguez of Iran, who's willing to work with the US, I guess, because I don't know what they're promised. Oil money, corruption gets them, gets to grease the wheels there, and then they just oppress their people.
There's also, you know, telling the Iranian people to overthrow the regime entirely, which, as we discussed, is pretty remote. And then it's like, well, maybe it's fine if we just degrade their military capabilities to the point where they can't cause any real trouble for at least a few years.
Do you think, Tommy, that the administration is trying to be strategically ambiguous, is there any chance, on the outcomes? Or do they just have no fucking idea what they actually want? No, I mean, look, I sort of think I walked here a second ago what I think. I don't think they have a plan. I don't think they have a plan for what comes next.
As Trump, you know, like we were saying before, Trump called a reporter and said, I have a short list. And then he said they're all dead to the next reporter he talked to. So even if they find a Delcy Rodriguez type, I think that person is likely to get killed by the IRGC or other existing power structures unless we have boots on the ground to support that person.
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Chapter 7: What role does public opinion play in the current conflict with Iran?
So that's a big thing we're all watching. There's the economic cost, which is the Iranians said they would close the Strait of Hormuz. They haven't mined it, but they've been firing at ships. 20% of the world's oil goes to the Strait of Hormuz. That will have a huge economic cost. Including to their allies, by the way. What's that? Their allies also rely on the Strait of Hormuz as well.
Yeah, the Chinese and everyone does. Yeah. And then, you know, the longer term, like the longer this goes on, the more likely there is to be civil war, sectarian conflict, some sort of failed state, some sort of refugee flow. And again, we're talking about a country of 90 million people.
And the administration from Trump on down has repeatedly in the last couple of days since this started refused to rule out boots on the ground in any like significant capacity, which is also pretty terrifying. They won't rule it out. They won't rule it out. Trump didn't just refuse to rule it out. His comments were very weird. He said, I don't have the yips with respect to boots on the ground.
Like every president says there will be no boots on the ground. I don't say it. I say probably don't need them or if they were necessary. So I don't know what he's trying to signal there. Like I could imagine a commando raid that includes the US and Israel that is designed to get the HEU or the nuclear materials that they think are somehow buried somewhere.
Beyond that, though, it's like, what are we talking about? I really like, so much of what this is is in response to the things they don't like about Democrats, right? And they always felt like the date-certains around Afghanistan were kind of projecting what we were gonna do to our enemies. And so I think they're incredibly reluctant to put like a,
troops on the ground not to like excluding kind of short sort of like tactical like deploying small units to do small tasks but boots on the ground trump is clearly worried about it but he kind of feels as though in order to project strength i'm not going to tell you what i'm going to do i need to have that is i think him trying to be um kind of leave his options open to not sort of forswear a a scary option to the iranians but or it means we have boots on the ground right now
And I think there's a very good chance that they're like special forces contingents who are on the ground and then maybe they're not, maybe they're deployed under like title 50. So it's deniable. And, you know, that's kind of what he's getting at here. I agree with you that like in Venezuela, there were boots on the ground, right? It was very short term.
And I think what JD Vance focuses on, what Trump tries to focus on is we're not doing long-term occupation and nation building. But I think the response to that is it's not necessarily up to you. Yeah. If Iran remains a threat, if they keep firing drones and missiles, if this regime in some form or fashion stays in place and the threat is not gone, the threat is not gone.
The Israelis won't see the threat is gone. So what then? I mean, also, you know, George W. Bush kept saying that they were going to get troops out of Iraq by the spring and summer of 2003. Sometimes like these the intentions to not have boots like one thing leads to another.
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Chapter 8: How is the media landscape changing with the new ownership of CNN?
No one wants to be spending money this way. It's not a popular thing to be doing. And then I think we should just highlight the chaos around the world. Since this action, the war is not happening in Iran. It is terrorizing populations in Israel and Lebanon.
in the gulf uh american diplomats are less safe embassies are getting overrun um americans either the gunman in texas might have been inspired by what happened in iran like trump is making us less safe and like just hammer him on that go for talk about the substance yeah yeah i asked ago about this and he he said the same like we should be focusing on like why are we at war with iran
Like why, what was the goals? What is the objective? Why is it worth risking American lives in this moment for this conflict? And all these people that are defending this, if you would have asked them a year ago, would you like to see the US in a regime change war with Iran in the next year, they'd all have said no. They'll say, of course not. And no one wants that.
And no one saying that Republicans want that should be believed. We never would want that. Of course not. But now that it's here and it's happening, all these people feel obligated on the Republican side to support it. And then Democrats who I think there are some that I think genuinely feel.
There are, I think, reluctant both because of the politics and because on some level they support the policy and they know that those politics aren't good either, right? Like they don't want to- They support the policy. I think on some level they're like, you know what? I wouldn't have done it this way, but I hope it works.
And I don't want to go out there and say, I think this is a bad idea if they can remove the Ayatollah. There's two flavors of that. There are some who just quietly do actually want to see the Iranian regime toppled. And a lot of them are kind of the closest individuals to AIPAC, for example. And then there's the other group
the old folks, of which there are many, who think about like Gulf War I in 1991 and the people who were against the first Gulf War and felt like they looked stupid afterwards when it was popular and successful and had 90% support. It's just like, have we not...
lived through enough of these wars that we're still thinking and responding in the binary here, which is like, oh, well, so then if you're opposed to this, you must love that Iran is the number one state sponsor of terrorism around the world and has killed Americans and has destabilized the region. Because if you if you're against that, then you'd be for this war.
There's no like, oh yeah, I want to see the Iranian regime topple too. I don't want to see the fucking Ayatollah there. I don't want to see a murderous regime in Iran. I hope that like, you know, the hamburger from heaven falls from the sky and takes out the whole regime and then democracy flourishes in Iran. Yeah, of course. That is something to hope for. Obviously.
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