Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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One free breakfast item per box for one year while subscription is active. Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Great to see you. We're in studio. Have we been in the same room since I was in Auckland and Australia? Welcome back. You were in Munich. Welcome back to you, pal.
Yeah, well, I didn't miss a pod in the studio, man. I flew Tuesday night. That's how dedicated I am. I left Tuesday night and came back Tuesday morning.
One up in me.
I'm usually the one in the hotel, so I know that is.
Oh, you're staying in the studio. Well, I mean, I skipped the second one. I don't know. I was just too. That time change is wild. LA was negative 19 hours from us, I think. Anyway, it was fun to be on the road, but good to be back. We're recording this a few hours before Trump's State of the Union.
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Chapter 2: What are the implications of the U.S. military buildup against Iran?
And like there, I think there's a lot of people who feel like when you assemble this much military hardware, like kind of on the brink of war, it almost becomes inevitable that is going to happen. Do you agree with that theory? Because I'm certainly concerned about it.
I think it'd be very hard for him not to do something. First of all, on the deals, we should note that Witkoff said that the nuclear program is one week away from developing enough fuel for a nuclear weapon, which completely contradicts the claim that they had obliterated the nuclear program.
Then, you know, a face-saving enrichment capability, we used to call that the Iran nuclear deal under Barack Obama. I know.
Chapter 3: Why is Trump's foreign policy towards Iran concerning?
So amazing that we have to go through multiple wars to get back to a deal that he just pulled out of. Yeah. And look, the other things that have come out for negotiation are beyond the nuclear program that Iran has to give up its ballistic missile program. They won't do that. To them, that's their insurance policy to survive. That's what allows them to defend themselves.
That has been a major ask for Israel since the Iran nuclear deal in 2014. People may remember when Bibi flew to... Washington to give a speech opposing the Iran nuclear deal in front of Congress. And he said, no enrichment capability, no ballistic missile program, no support for proxies. And that is essentially a deal. And we said this at the time, so I'm not just saying this now.
That's Bibi wanting to go to war with Iran because he knows that the regime will never agree to that. And so if those are the terms that they're trying to negotiate, they'll never get that.
Chapter 4: How does the Supreme Court ruling on tariffs affect U.S. foreign policy?
They could get a nuclear deal. They don't need a massive armada to get a nuclear deal, though.
Or another like pinprick tiny strike. Like you bombed them last year, dude. You bombed them in June.
Yeah. And this is what's so strange about this is that let's – should we break this into two things? One is what are the negative consequences that could happen and why we're doing this?
Chapter 5: What did Tucker Carlson's interview with Mike Huckabee reveal?
Because I think it's worth it. I think people have begun to digest just how catastrophic this could be. I'm not saying it definitely will be. But essentially if you do the regime change strike –
Or even if you do the limited strike and Iran hits back this time because they are tired of getting bombed and feel like they have to hit back or else they're going to keep getting bombed, then you could have an implosion of that regime. There's not going to be some scenario where in a couple of weeks Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah, goes and manages a democratic transition.
This is a country of over 90 million people. heavily armed factions, Basij militia, Revolutionary Guard Corps. These are not people that are just going to step aside for a democratic transition. The place will probably descend into some kind of civil conflict with a lot of violence.
They could also strike and lash out with those ballistic missile capabilities and hit Qatar, hit Jordan, hit Israel, hit just whatever, just fire in every direction in the Middle East to kind of send the point that like, we're not going to go down without a fight. This is existential. We're ideological people.
Or hit like, you know, Saudi oil infrastructure. Yes. Or, you know, I was talking to a smart person yesterday who reminded me that Iran is really good at offensive cyber operations. And there was concerns in previous administrations about them doing things in the U.S. homeland or critical infrastructure. They also pointed out that Iran's Navy was pretty much left unscathed in the 12-day war.
It makes you wonder if that will be put to use in the Strait of Hormuz, which could shut down, you know, what was it, 20% of the world's oil goes through the Strait of Hormuz. So, you know, maybe the U.S. is just so much more powerful than the Iranian military and they are so decimated that they will just... It's possible to get a missile off the ground or maybe something really bad will happen.
But remember, it only takes one missile getting through the missile defense systems, which, by the way, are badly depleted both on the U.S. and on the Israeli end.
Yeah, that's right. I mean, of course, it's possible it could go well. But I think we need to surface these consequences before war because that's what we haven't done in the past. One other thing I talked to some people in the region that they they've been pointing out, which is that you could have a massive refugee crisis. I mean, something that dwarfs even the Syrian one.
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Chapter 6: What are the potential consequences of AI use in military operations?
This is a country four times the size of Syria. If Iran implodes into kind of civil conflict and violence, I mean, you could have 10 million refugees. You know, people flowing into Afghanistan and Pakistan, people flowing into Turkey and into Europe. You know, how would that go in today's politics, right? There are... ethnic groups, minority groups that have separatist ambitions, right?
The Balochistan region of Iran, for instance. Well, Pakistan could come involved because they don't want to see a separatist Balochistan movement that could spread across their borders. I mean, this thing, shit could get real very fast. I think what's happened is a lot of the countries in the region, basically everybody except Israel and the UAE, and we'll come back to them.
So that's Saudi, that's Turkey, that's Egypt, that's Qatar. They're calling Trump up, and Trump listens to those guys, and they're saying, this is fucking crazy.
Chapter 7: What happened during the ISIS detention camp collapse in Syria?
You're putting our stability at risk. You're putting this whole region at risk. This is totally unnecessary. Why are you doing this now? And it's at least causing him to pause. But Tommy, this gets to the why, and I think we have to just – deal with this, because what you're seeing is a lot of leaks about who does not want this to happen. So we- General Cain.
So yes, because we already know like MAGA doesn't, like Tucker Carlson, MAGA doesn't want this to happen, right? We also know that these countries in the region don't want it to happen. Now we see these leaks that I thought are important that said General Cain was warning Trump that this could go very badly, like we were just saying.
Like even a well-executed military operation could end in disaster and draw us in more. Trump denied that, but it seems pretty clear based on the number of reports that this is the case. You look at Trump's cabinet. Marco Rubio does not seem that jazzed about this.
Chapter 8: What is the significance of El Mencho's death in Mexico?
No, he's reportedly kind of keeping his cars close to his vest and J.D. Vance is pushing back. I mean, I think they all realize that this is a much tougher operation than Venezuela was.
Yeah. And so the question is, like, who is for this? And there are really only two—
factions i can think of but i'm really curious what you think there's in this country there's this kind of absolute hawkish dead enders who just like neocons yeah they just they've had it in for the iranians since 1979 and the same way they've had it in for the cubans is 1959 uh and you know this is lindsey graham this is just your kind of garden variety hawk or neocon who's just like we got to finish the job because they're weak and so the timing is
They're weak now. Trump can do whatever the fuck he wants and we won't have a president like that again. So let's do it now. And then the other one is Bibi. And again, like we have to talk about this. The Israelis are interestingly being pretty quiet about this because I think they know that this is unpopular.
But in the physical reality of this world, I can tell you that Bibi Netanyahu has wanted the United States to remove the Iranian regime for as long as I've been in politics.
And there was a lot of reporting, I think, back in December when Trump initially threatened to bomb Iran again, that the Israelis were saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't do it. And that was interesting and surprising. And now it's clear that that was only because we did not have the force posture in the region to defend Israel from an Iranian response.
Again, this person I was talking to yesterday said part of why you want the USS Gerald Ford there is because of the warships that travel with it that have tons of missile defense capabilities and can fire up interceptor missiles that take down ballistic missiles fired at Tel Aviv. And now we are postured there. And there's also –
F-15s and F-16s and Patriot missile batteries that have all been moved into the region that can do what the Biden administration did when there was that massive, you know, barrage fired at the Israelis, which is try to shoot down basically everything.
That's right. I mean, a lot of those assets in the region are there for defensive purposes as well as offensive. And look, I just think that there's something fundamentally broken when, what, the polls show 80% of people are against this in this country. That we're going to do this because, like, some hawks, like, want to get it done. Lindsey Graham, yeah. And Lindsey Graham in this country.
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