Chapter 1: What led to the perception of Trump's surrender in the Iran conflict?
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Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show, contributing writer at The Atlantic and senior fellow at Brookings. His most recent book is Rebellion, How Anti-Liberalism is Tearing America Apart Again. It's Bob Kagan. How you doing, Bob? I'm great. Thank you. Yeah.
Well, how does it feel to just be on your, you know, one man victory tour while America is on a one country surrender tour? You know, it creates some internal tension.
No. Yeah. I mean, I'm not thrilled that we're losing. We've lost this war. So maybe something for the therapist. No, I know it's a problem. I mean, I do. I do want the world and Americans to see what Donald Trump has done to us. And I think that is useful to point out. But I take no pleasure, obviously, in our suffering a major defeat in a major strategic region of the world.
I want to get deep with you on Iran and some related issues. Real quick, we were live last night on The Next Level during the Texas Senate results where John Cornyn just gets absolutely annihilated and humiliated in his primary with Ken Paxton. So if you want the long sermon on that, go check out TNL. I have a couple additional thoughts.
I mean, John Cornyn would, in a different world, be a Bob Kagan senator. No thoughts on his demise or how that relates to our broader agenda? issues?
I have no strong feelings about John Cornyn one way or the other. I feel like he's been a block of wood in the Senate for decades. I'm sure he may have voted at times in ways that I would agree with, but I'm unaware of it. I really have no strong feelings about John Cornyn, and I think it's wonderful we're going to get a chance to get pure MAGA on the ballot. I mean, you know.
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Chapter 2: How has the U.S. withdrawal impacted Israel's position in the Middle East?
It's kind of what I wanted to bring up. So we were doing this live last night. A lot of conversation about Tallarico, and I think we assessed... You know, he's the underdog still with Paxton. It's a better option. But worth noting, Beto only lost by basically two and a half to three points. Never led a poll in 2018. That was a really bad political environment for the Republicans.
But there's a chance this one ends up being worse. A big issue is Hispanics. One thing that jumped out at me last night, there's this kind of star county, which is near McAllen. There were 6,000 Democratic votes in the primary, only 100 Republican votes. This was a Trump flip county. Just a really bad sign for Republicans right now among Hispanic voters in this key group that they gained.
And Paxton, I liked this from Tallarico. They posted this, an image of his mugshot. Have you ever had a mugshot, Paxton? So far, no. Sorry. Okay. I've never seen mine. I'm hoping it just disappeared. I did get one from a minor in possession of alcohol in Boulder, Colorado once, but I've never seen it. Hopefully, I looked better than Ken Paxton did in his because he looks rough. One eye is closed.
Tallarico puts it up. Was indicted on three felony counts for investment fraud. Reported to the FBI by his own staff for bribery. Different case. Was impeached by 60 Republicans in the House for corruption. His personal life makes Trump look like a good Christian. I don't know. You know, if there's going to be a chance in Texas, this feels like it's going to be it.
So an interesting race last night. More on that over in the next level. I was trying to think of a good transition from Cornyn's humiliation to Trump's surrender. I guess that's going to be it. You wrote for The Atlantic five days ago that Trump's endgame in Iran is surrender. This is what we have this morning. that I think tells the story pretty well.
This is what the Iranian news media is saying is part of the memorandum of understanding. So take this with a grain of salt, just like you would anything that Trump bleats. But the Iranian media is saying this. One, U.S. military forces withdraw from the vicinity of Iran. Two, the U.S. Navy will lift its blockade.
Three, Iran is committed to restoring the number of commercial transit ships to the Strait of Hormuz to pre-war levels within one month. They say military vessels are not included in this agreement. The management and routing of ship traffic through the Strait will be handled by Iran and Oman.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of Iran's control over the Strait of Hormuz?
And if the deal is reached within 60 days, that will be approved in form of a binding UN Security Council resolution. So, woof, that's what's coming out of Iran. What's your sense of the state of life?
It's fair to say that there is unreliable as Trump about what the likely terms of a deal are going to be, except that I actually think they have a better chance of actually getting the terms that they're laying out than Trump, since Trump has no ability to affect them at all. I mean, two things are true, and I just think somehow the news media has managed to miss these two things.
One is that we effectively lost the war after March 18th. Trump has done nothing since March 18th, basically, since Iran retaliated to an attack in the Pars oil field by hitting the guttery gas industrial plant. And fear of what Iran can do to the region has stymied Trump, and that's been the end of it.
So we basically lost the war back in March, and Trump has been spending all these months trying to delay that reality. And therefore, as a result, Iran has not made a single concession on any point. The Trump administration keeps saying that they're making concessions. They keep saying that there's a deal. They keep saying that they've agreed to do something with their uranium, et cetera.
The only people who've never said that are the Iranians. And since they're the ones who are completely in the driver's seat right now, I think their deal is the one that is going to emerge. And mostly right now, what's happening is Iran is just shaking Trump down for money. And by the way, money for nothing. I mean, basically, they were demanding unfreezing of billions of dollars worth of assets.
The reporting on this has just been terrible. This is where they will open the strait. And so the New York Times keeps blaring the headlines, deal to reopen the strait. And I really just think it's very important to focus very specifically on what the Iranians mean by opening the strait. It'll be open under new management, under Iranian control.
which whether they choose to charge tolls or not in the first 60 days, they're going to wind up charging for it. And in any case, more importantly, they're going to use their control of the strait as leverage against every single nation in the world, which is a disaster for Israel and the United States.
A couple of media shots there. Do you have any other media criticism? Some of our commenters were concerned. We, you know, I think have been quite appropriately skeptical and hostile to all information coming out of the Trump administration.
But I will acknowledge like on Saturday, I was a minor victim of the media reporting because, you know, essentially the reporting was that Trump had all of the Arab nations in Pakistan and everybody on board and this deal was almost done. And the Times and everybody, Axios, obviously was reporting this as a done deal. And it seems like we're no close are today than we were then.
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Chapter 4: How is Trump's negotiation style affecting U.S. foreign policy?
My question has always been, when does reality just become unmistakable? And I think we're getting pretty close to it right now.
Just kind of expanding on that, so your more recent article is talking about kind of the surrender in these terms of negotiation, and then previously to that, kind of the broader strategic defeat. So just focusing on the negotiation for now, you wrote this five days ago when they were discussing basically like a 30-day continuation to kind of iron out the deal.
In 30 days, the new Iranian straight regime will already firmly be in place. As the Institute for the Study of War reports, Iran has been using the ceasefire period to normalize its control over the straight by compelling oil importing countries to establish transit agreements with Tehran and charging fees on vessels from nations without such deals.
And this is kind of the detail of what you're talking about, about how this thing has already been done for a while now. You mentioned South Korea, a couple other countries that are already working with them on how to do this.
Right. Because the whole world could see where this is going, even if the New York Times can't. The fact that Trump even is talking about a 30 or now 60 day truce, people don't see that for what it is. He wants to walk away and hope that nobody notices that he just gave away a fundamental strategic position to one of the most dangerous powers in the world. That is the reality.
And again, I don't know what what it's going to take for people to fully realize that.
One of the limits on his ability to do that, I'm interested in your take on this. Like you mentioned that in any other time, if it wasn't Trump, certainly if it was a Democratic president, but even if it was a Republican president they weren't scared of domestically, the Republican hawks would be the loudest people talking about this, right?
Like talking about how big of a disaster this is, how it's empowering Iran. I was interested over the weekend when he signaled that what you just described was basically coming, like this kind of surrender mast as negotiation. There was some pushback in MAGA world and in Republican world. Lindsey Graham's tweeting, Levin is tweeting, criticizing this.
And on Sunday, they had a call with all of these kind of MAGA influencer types. You know, our old friend Scott Jennings. And they're all tweeting the same thing, right? Which is basically, no, this deal isn't as bad as it seems. You know, one talking point they all had is that, like, there's going to be no dollars for Iran without dust. No dollars, you know, without dust was their line.
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Chapter 5: What role do the Gulf states play in the current geopolitical landscape?
He does it all the time. Everybody who's worked for him, he's thrown under the bus at one time or the other, various Republicans he has. And, you know, like you said, it's been two months that he's been mired in this quagmire. It's not doing him any good, politically speaking. The fact that he hasn't yet makes me a little skeptical that he is going to, but I don't know.
What makes you think that he is?
Whether he's denouncing Israel is one thing. I don't know. I don't expect him to denounce Israel. The defense of Israel is too much in the blood of this sort of administration right now. I don't think he can just do that. But if you just look at the way he's treating Netanyahu and Israel, I think that's the biggest picture.
They've been excluded from these negotiations, even though they are the most vitally concerned with how this agreement comes out. I mean, look, we fought this war. The United States fought this war for Israel. Everybody can see that. Unfortunately for Trump, the Gulf states and the Arab states can also see that, which is why the Abraham Accords, far from expanding, are now dead.
But it was clear that we were doing this for Israel. And now that he wants to get out, Israel is the victim. Israel is going to pay the biggest price by far. You know, the United States is a big, strong, wealthy country. We can take a major strategic blow even and still survive. But Israel is right under the thumb of an Iran that is now going to be very powerful.
By the way, I think Israel is going to do everything it can to make sure this deal never happens. And, you know, some of that is what they're already doing in Lebanon right now. You know, the Iranians insist that Lebanon is part of the deal. And Netanyahu is announcing that he's intensifying strikes in Lebanon. I think that Netanyahu has every desire to kill this deal.
So, by the way, and also Trump saying Netanyahu will do what I tell him to do. I mean, that was pretty disrespectful for a partner to say about a partner leader. And again, this is one of those situations where if Netanyahu weren't deathly afraid of admitting that he's having a breach with Trump, which would be a disaster.
I mean, I think he's in trouble anyway, but it would be a disaster to say that this guy who, you know, Bibi put everything on his relationship with Trump to say that Trump is now dissing him publicly would not be in Bibi's interest. But that therefore we're downplaying, I think, the degree to which Trump is moving away from Israel right now.
Interesting. Yeah, I don't know. His bragging about being at 99% in Israel, at some level, maybe there's a psychological desire to feel like maybe this is the place where I'm loved still.
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Chapter 6: How has the American-led world order been challenged recently?
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That's www.joindeleteme.com slash bulwark code bulwark. Let's just stay in the region then for a second because you had a couple of interesting points. One was on the Gulf states. And I feel like this was an area where maybe there was some bad information out in the public sphere that I bought into about the degree to which the Gulf states were for this action.
I was talking to somebody over the weekend, last weekend, who had been in direct conversation with the Qataris. And it seems that...
mbz was for it initially for a variety of reasons and that mbs and the countries were skeptical from the start and that some of the information going out there that mbs was for it was kind of an attempt to manipulate the media to try to pressure him to be on on the side of of action so what's like your sense for for the gulf state kind of positioning and all this well first of all i'm
I'm pretty sure that the action, the initial action, was taken without consultation with the Gulf states. It was something that Israel and the United States did. They didn't consult with Congress or with anybody. Or NATO. Or NATO, needless to say. But I think they also didn't consult with the Gulf states. So the Gulf states, I don't know how much they supported it. They obviously fear Iran.
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Chapter 7: What are the potential consequences of a shift in U.S. policy towards Israel?
The on Thursday, something I thought was really astonishing, which is the United States used up more of its interceptor THAAD missiles and other interceptor missiles defending Israel than Israel used of its own missiles to defend itself.
Among the point being that, A, we have now depleted our stocks to the point where we're extremely low, which raises all other questions about why Trump doesn't want to get into another round of conflict. But also, we did not give... the interceptors to the Gulf states even when they asked for them because we didn't have enough.
And now the Gulf states are turning to everybody else in the world, Turkey and others, to find interceptors because the United States doesn't have anything for them. So the bottom line is, The Gulf states must feel that they have picked a very wrong horse in the United States and Israel, and it has led to their being subjected to Iran.
And now they're staring down the barrel of Iran really being a much more powerful player in the region and controlling their fates through its control of the Strait of Hormuz. Guess what they're going to do? They're going to have to cut deals with Iran. And those deals with Iran are not going to be favorable to the United States and they're not going to be favorable to Israel.
So that's what's been accomplished. And for Trump to come out now, Lindsey Graham said it first, didn't he? I don't know. To come to come out now and say everybody needs to sign up with the Abraham Accords must be one of the most ludicrous statements even in this administration.
I do think it was Graham that said it first, and then Trump puts this out in a bleat that at the end of this negotiation, one thing is that even Pakistan is going to get on board with the Abraham Accords, all these countries. That was the other thing that piqued my interest in your response. So let's just talk about the Abraham Accords a little bit more.
I do think there was a feeling during Trump 1.0 – You know, the Abraham Accords was like the thing where if you asked, you know, a anti-Trump internationalist, like what was something that went well in the Trump term? It's like that was the thing that they would say, like, well, Trump was horrible and he attacked democracy and he's an idiot and he's corrupt.
But like the Abraham Accords seemed to work out pretty good. And then the narrative on that, I think, really started to shift after October 7th. And, you know, now we're sitting here today and it's still something Trump's trying to hang his hat on and Kushner is. And like you said, they're trying to claim that they're going to expand it.
Give me a little bit more on why you think the opposite is true.
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Chapter 8: What future challenges might arise from Trump's focus on Cuba and Venezuela?
In fact, Iran is the one now saying, we need Muslim, we need Islamic solidarity here. And I think that's going to be a more appealing situation Look right now, when you consider the fact that the United States has discredited itself in their eyes, when you consider the fact that Israel is now a losing power in the region, not the dominant power that it was before this war, by the way.
I mean, Israel was completely in a dominant position before this war, and now they are very weak. Who's going to be lining up to sign up with them, setting aside the hostility that most Arab and Muslim people feel toward Israel?
Yeah, I agree with you on the manner in which they have just pushed away potential allies and become a pariah for a lot of the countries in the region. The case for the Abraham Accords in the first term would have been that Israel was in a precarious and dangerous position, was surrounded by a lot of threats. And the more countries they had diplomatic relationships with, the safer they would be.
I guess it wasn't maybe an unreasonable thought, though it doesn't seem to have panned out.
Look, Israel was secure because Israel is the most powerful country in the region, backed by the most powerful country in the world. That's why Israel was secure. You didn't need a peace agreement between two people who were never conceivably going to go to war. You know, the UAE wasn't going to attack Israel.
The other problem, of course, and this is what we've said all along, is are we sure these dictators are going to be in charge forever? And that maybe someday there might be, I don't know, a revolution where they get overthrown? And then the true feelings... of the people will be expressed, and I'm confident those two feelings are not pro-Israel.
I mean, you know, this has been an Israeli strategy. Israelis basically regard Muslims as sort of subhuman, and they don't think they should be led by democracy. They want dictators throughout the region.
Why the United States signed up for this deal, and not just Trump, by the way, you know, every administration, the Clinton administration, the Obama administration, they were perfectly happy to work with these dictators, but I've always thought Over the long run and maybe even over the median run, maybe even the short run, I think it's a losing strategy.
Yeah. And to your point, the other kind of subtext of what you just said there was the thing that kept Israel secure was that they were the most powerful in the region, backed by the most powerful in the world. And the way that what has happened over the last two years has – created more enmity in the region, it has in America too.
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