Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Bye.
All right, welcome back to Pod Save the World. This is a bonus episode to update you guys on the major developments in Donald Trump's insane regime change war of choice with Iran since we recorded on Saturday. So we're going to take through the latest operational details. We'll dig into Iran's surprising response that's regional.
We'll play some clips from Trump and then Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who finally spoke today and covered the administration's bizarre messaging strategy and incoherence. policy and coherence as well. And then finally, we'll talk about the Democratic Party's response so far, the good, the bad, and then really what we'd like to hear.
We will record again on Tuesday for a Wednesday morning release per usual. And we'll use that episode, I think, to geek out on Iranian succession plans, maybe concerns about sectarian violence and civil war and much more. So if you have not yet, please subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.
Because as we said on Saturday, Ben, a lot of the coverage of this war so far has been Absolutely horrendous. It is giving me PTSD from 2003 and watching the Iraq war coverage.
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Chapter 2: What are the latest developments in Trump's war with Iran?
I don't know if you caught Pete Hegseth's press conference with Raisin Cane, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but seeing him there take questions from like the new fake Pentagon press corps was absolutely demoralizing.
We got a little taste of what it's like to have a compliant state media with a Fox & Friends weekend anchor as your secretary of defense. The convergence of those threads was not very reassuring, Tommy.
No, it was profoundly demoralizing. So again, please subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts, because we're trying to do real coverage here. So we're recording at midday Pacific time on Monday. CENTCOM says that U.S. forces have destroyed more than a thousand targets so far, including Iranian ships, subs, IRGC command centers, missile sites.
The Israelis have hit hundreds of targets as well, especially that first wave of regime change targets that included top Iranian political and military officials. Since we recorded Saturday, Ben, Iran has confirmed that the Supreme Leader is dead. He was killed, I think, in an Israeli strike with intelligence provided by the US or that's what's been reported since.
Chapter 3: How has Iran responded to the military operations?
So this is a seismic event in Iranian history as this guy has been in charge since 1989, and it will now set off a succession process that will probably take a little while. It also seems like the President of Iran was incapacitated in the strike to the point where he can't run the country anymore as that authority has been delegated to somebody else. Four service members are confirmed dead.
American service members, I believe, all were in the army and were hit by an Iranian drone in Kuwait. Three American F-15s were shot down over Kuwait as well, reportedly in a friendly fire incident. They were shot at by Kuwaiti air defenses. Thank God all six of them ejected safely. Trump and his various messaging opportunities. We'll get into that in a minute.
i said the operation could last four more weeks or maybe five more weeks so he refuses to put a specific timeline or goal behind that estimate he's also refused to rule out putting u.s boots on the ground in iran so that's something to look forward to could certainly imagine some sort of future u.s or israeli like commando operation to get uh iran's nuclear materials for example um hezbollah is now involved they're firing rockets at northern israel the israelis are responding in kind
There have been some very scary incidents at US embassies and consulates where those facilities have gotten attacked in places like Lebanon or other Muslim countries like Pakistan. Hundreds are dead in Iran. At least 10 people have been killed in Israel by Iranian missiles and drones.
Chapter 4: What incoherence was revealed in Trump's press conference?
Iranian drones also killed three people in the UAE, injured dozens more there. They killed one person in Bahrain, two in Iraq, one in Kuwait, and dozens in Lebanon. I assume the Lebanon casualties, Ben, are a combination of Israeli and Iranian fire. A number of people have been wounded in Qatar and Oman as well. And by the way, those casualty stats were coming from a running tally by Al Jazeera.
President Trump did not deliver a major address to the nation about Iran over the weekend. The White House did not book any senior officials on the Sunday talk shows. They just released these bizarre video messages from Trump. And then Trump sporadically took calls from reporters and offered sort of incoherent lines of messaging.
Trump finally did an event where he spoke publicly today, as did Secretary Hegseth and Chairman Kaine. We'll play all that for you in a minute. But this really has been like a case study in how not to communicate. So, Ben, we'll get into the Iranian response deeper in a minute. But any initial reactions to from you to like what you've seen since Saturday?
I think the initial reaction is that all of our concerns about this war are playing out in the sense that there's a total lack of coherence from the US, from what Trump's saying, what Hegseth is saying about what the objectives are. And there just seems to be a lot of momentum to keep doing stuff. that the Iranian response is chaotic but widespread.
It's like a machine gun being dropped on the floor, firing in all directions, and that nobody knows where this is going, which is what happens when you decapitate a regime with no plan for what comes next, and that regime is much deeper and more heavily armed than, say, the Venezuelan government was. It's a very unsettling moment right now, Tommy.
Yeah. The machine gun firing on the floor analogy is a perfect description of what Iran has been doing because they continue to target not just U.S. bases in the Middle East and Israel, but also these Gulf countries. On Monday, Iran attacked energy sites in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. And then over the weekend, Iran fired hundreds of missiles and drones at the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan.
And I think when we talked on Saturday, Ben, they had not fired at Oman yet, but now they have. And Iran even fired a drone at a British military base in Cyprus, although Britain, the UK is not involved in these operations. So the vast majority of these missiles and drones were intercepted by missile defense systems, but not all of them.
A lot of the targets were civilian infrastructure like high rises and hotels. Again, that's led to a bunch of casualties, including in Iran, Ben. But it just seems like again, it seems like the Iranian calculation here was. Shoot at all these Gulf countries, get them to pressure the US and Israel to stop the war. But like time will tell.
But this seems to have catastrophically backfired as far as I can tell, like countries that seemed initially wary of what the US and Israel were doing are now denouncing Iran. There's some sense that the Gulf countries that initially had barred the US from flying backfired. anti-Iran missions out of their territory or through their airspace might be reconsidering those views.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of Iran's missile defense strategy?
So there is kind of a strategic logic in the sense that they're creating an insecurity. So long as our regime is not secure, you know, we can burn it all down and nobody's secure, which, again, is dangerous. But there is some rationale. It's also the case that the Gulf is just closer, you know, so with drones in particular, it's an easier shot for the Iranians.
And then to your point about the interceptors, it's a bit of a race against time because I presume that what Israel and the United States are trying to do is just take out as many ballistic missile sites, whether it's production facilities, launchers, before they basically run out of interceptors.
Because the longer this thing goes on, if Iran can continue to fire things, ballistic missiles and drones and these kinds of waves, they're going to get through more and more of the air defense systems because the air defense systems are just depleted. And so that's a real risk to hear. I mean, Trump, you know, people keep talking about this as if when might Trump stop the war?
I also don't think there's any guarantee that Iran, like as in the 12 day war, although I think it's one more, that Iran just stops because Trump stops. If just because we may run low on interceptors and say, all right, time out, guys, let's pause. The Iranians could keep firing. So it is a question of how much.
their ability to manufacture or store or hide drones and missiles can weather this initial onslaught in terms of how much damage they can do going forward.
Yeah, we don't even know who would make the decision to stop if it were up to a run right now.
Well, I think the command and control point you made is essential because it feels like there were delegations made by the Supreme Leader anticipating he might be killed.
And I think Abbas Arachi said as much on like some TV show he was on that like, well, look, you know, we no longer have centralized command and control because we knew that if you killed, you know, top leaders that we wanted these guys to be able to act independently. So we really don't know what's happening.
Well, that's right. And look, I don't there was the inevitable story in The Times about the killing of the spring leader and all this great intelligence. I mean, he was in his office. I mean, I have no disrespect to the CIA, but it'd be like, you know, wow, we figured out that the president's in the White House, you know.
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Chapter 6: How have the military operations impacted American service members?
And the Russians were firing those drones at Ukrainian targets. And there were air defense systems there, too. I mean, these things, we've seen them on the battlefield in Ukraine have a huge amount of damage that they can cause. So this is the point about the law. This keeps dragging on. And it's going to be impossible to eliminate all their drones.
These are like toy airplanes, essentially, but can do a lot of damage. And so, yes, their ballistic missiles are a tool that is going to run out at some point, but I'm not sure that these drones will.
the ballistic missiles can do more damage but right in the long term like who knows um how long they'll have these drones so on monday president trump finally spoke about the war uh he started on saturday morning in public it was not a major address to the nation it was like a little iran war topper at a i think pre-existing ceremony to award the medal of honor to three people um here's a bit of what he had to say in his remarks i was very proud to have knocked out the iran nuclear deal by
President Barack Hussein Obama, that was a horrible, horrible, dangerous document. They would have had nuclear weapons three years ago and they would have used them. This was our last best chance to strike what we're doing right now and eliminate the intolerable threats posed by this sick and sinister regime. We're already
substantially ahead of our time projections but whatever the time is it's okay whatever it takes we will always and we have from right from the beginning we projected four to five weeks but we have capability to go far longer than that we'll do it whatever somebody said today they said oh well president wants to do it really quickly after that he'll get bored i don't get bored
There's nothing boring about this. We also projected four weeks to terminate the military leadership. And as you know, that was done in about an hour. So we're ahead of schedule there by a lot. We have a lot of great service members here with us, too, in this beautiful building. Isn't it beautiful? We're adding on to the building a little bit. We're improving the building. See that nice drape?
When that comes down right now, you see a very, very deep hole. But in about a year and a half from now, you're going to see a very, very beautiful building. I picked those drapes in my first term. I always liked gold.
Michael specifically led with the JCPOA criticism to trigger you. And as our greatest president said, mission accomplished, my friend. So, Ben, look, I think what listeners should take away from that supercut is just the incoherence. Like it gets worse when you look at the totality of Trump statements from Saturday till now. On Saturday, he talked about regime change as a goal.
He told the Iranian people to rise up today. That was just not part of the messaging. The Saturday video statement said, about the war, went through these greatest hits of Iranian aggression and grievances with the two countries starting in 1979.
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Chapter 7: What are the risks of wider escalation in the region?
I don't have a ton of faith in the team running the show at the moment.
No, I don't, Tommy. And actually, the Iran nuclear deal has never looked better, which may be why Trump is trashing it.
I think most Americans, almost all Americans, would rather that we be in year 10 of the JCPOA than we be in this kind of incoherent war with Iran that is costing us tens of billions of dollars, has already killed American service members, and is wreaking havoc on the global economy.
And just one quick point on that, Ben. People will be like, well, the deal would have sunsetted by now. The goal would have been to renegotiate it. And Trump could have gotten it a tougher deal if he'd wanted and if he did a good job in the negotiations.
Yeah. And the whole deal would have sunsetted. The strictest provisions would have sunsetted. But, you know, I mean, frankly, Trump could have negotiated it two days ago. I mean, it is worth just saying they are completely full of shit about the need to do this now. There was no imminent threat from the nuclear program.
There was no distinct threat from the ballistic missile program that was any different than the, you know, How many ever many years Iran has had busing missiles, you know, 20 years. This happened now because Bibi Netanyahu wanted it to happen now. I mean, there's no really other explanation. It was it was the Israelis who started going trumping like now's the time they're weak.
And then in Lindsey Graham going to Trump and saying you can be the man that took out the supreme leader, be historic and Reagan on steroids and all this. Like the timing was determined by kind of Israeli interest in Trump's ego like that. That's the convergence of timing here.
And by the way, Jonathan Greenblatt from the ADL called me an anti-Semite for saying as much during the last Iran war. And I'm sure we'll do so again to the both of us. But again, like it's fully reported. Netanyahu, like there's tons of reporting on this in The Times today and other places. Netanyahu is like taking credit and bragging about getting Trump to fight for him.
This is such an insult to our intelligence, Jonathan Greenblatt to the world, because Bibi Netanyahu put out a video like yesterday in which he said that he's wanted to do this for 40 years. And he finally got a U.S. president to do it. He said it. Not us. Not us. Are you going to call Bibi Netanyahu an anti-Semite? I guess so. Like, this is totally absurd. Does he have dual loyalty?
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Chapter 8: What should the Democratic Party's response be to the war?
He's not qualified to be managing this. He doesn't know. It's all buzzwords with him and no rules of engagement and this and that. What is the plan? I mean there's another thing I've been thinking about, Tommy, and we can talk about it on the podcast a little more.
Yeah.
if you're the gulf allies right who rely on the united states for your existential security if you're saudi arabia qatar and ua let's just take those three you're probably like making up plans to buy a nuclear weapon you know because you're like i can't rely on the these as are a lot of countries a lot of our adversaries probably are too yeah because north korea north korea's got nukes and an icbm and no one's messing with them
Kim looks, you know, like he's ripping cigs and looking at stuff and is just fine, right? And so the lack of, who wants this? Because the MAGA audience doesn't even want this war. Like, who is Hegseth talking to, right? That's not reassuring allies. That's not reassuring Americans. That's not intimidating Iranians.
Like, he's literally performing for Fox News and Lindell TV and whoever else is in that briefing room. Yep. without giving any coherence or clarity about, you know, because what he said about the mission, that it's not about democracy.
Well, I thought they'd been telling us for weeks that this is because of peaceful protesters that we had to come to their aid and Donald Trump telling the Iranian people to rise up. If you're one of the Iranian people that is thinking of rising up and then you hear Hexa say, this is not about democracy. It's about killing. It's about destroying their missiles and Navy.
Does that incentivize you to rise up? I mean, it makes no sense.
It is totally incoherent. Yeah. I mean, it's incoherent for the people in Iran who aren't clear whether Trump is fully pushing for regime change or not. The distinction in the goals is pretty important to the Gulf countries you just mentioned, too, because the worst case scenario for them
is, you know, we bomb a bunch of stuff, but then Trump kind of just gives up and leave some, you know, rump version of the regime or like a next up IRGC led government that hates, you know, their countries just as much and are just as caustic and terrible. I mean, maybe they won't have the capacity to support proxies.
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