Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
We gave Times employees a preview of Crossplay from New York Times Games. And here's what they had to say. I can finally play with other people. I'm pretty competitive. It's fun to beat friends and coworkers. I have a J for 10 points. I'm guessing tanga is not a word. Let's see. Tanga is a word. Oh. As an English as a second language speaker, I like to learn new words.
Crossplay, the first two-player word game from New York Times Games. Download it for free today. Bye. Over the weekend, the United States and Israel launched a massive military assault on Iran. Within hours, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was dead, along with much of his senior command. As I record this on Monday, March 2nd, the Iranian Red Crescent says over 550 people have been killed in the bombings.
We know of at least six American service members who have been killed. There will likely be more as the war rages on. There appears to have been a girls' school that was bombed. The picture is from that. The grief of the parents is, it's almost unbearable to look at. I just think it's so important to say it's not all geopolitics.
These are people, civilians, their lives, their homes, their children. The attack on Iran came less than two months after the United States military captured Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, in an overnight raid on his compound in Caracas. America has deposed two sitting heads of state eight weeks apart. I have seen a lot of commentary accusing Donald Trump of hypocrisy.
After all, he ran against wars of regime change, and now he's changing regimes left and right. We believe that the job of the United States military is not to wage endless regime change, wars around the globe, senseless wars. The job of the United States military is to defend America from attack and invasion here at home. But I think this is not quite a policy of regime change.
There's not America invading Iraq or Afghanistan and restructuring the government ourselves. Maduro's regime was left intact, aside from him. In an interview with The Times, Trump said that, quote, "...what we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario." He said, "...everybody's kept their job except for two people." ... ... ... ... ...
I don't think what we're seeing here is a policy regime change. I would call this head on a pike foreign policy. America is proving that we can easily reach into weaker countries and kill or capture their heads of state.
We will not be dissuaded from doing that by international law or fear of unforeseen consequences or the difficulty of persuading the American people or the United States Congress of the need for war. On that, we won't even try. We don't particularly care who replaces the people we killed. We will not insist that they come from outside the regime, nor that they are elected democratically.
We care merely that whoever comes next fears us enough to be compliant when we make a demand, that they know that they might be the next head on a pike. Trump's belief appears to be that he can decapitate these regimes and control their successors and do so without events spinning out of his control.
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Chapter 2: What military actions did the U.S. and Israel take against Iran?
Why didn't you do that then? Because we were worried about what the potential costs and consequences of a military action could be, what it could unleash across the region. Kind of a version of what we're seeing. Just a lot of unpredictability. And frankly, we thought that the principal U.S. security interest in Iran... was the nuclear program.
That doesn't mean we didn't take seriously its support for proxies and its ballistic missile program, but the existential issue to us was the nuclear program. So if you could resolve that diplomatically and avoid a war, that was preferable to the alternative. And, you know, a lot of people actually... complain that we made that argument.
You may remember, Ezra, that it's either a war or diplomatic agreement. And tragically, you know, here we are. What were you worried about what happened? You said a version of what we're seeing play out now. But, you know, if you're in the U.S., you're seeing reports of missiles being fired in all directions. But it doesn't seem completely out of control, at least at this moment.
So talk me through the scenarios you all considered then. Well, it's interesting. We did, you know, war games, essentially, scenario planning, right, where you anticipate what might happen in the event of a military conflict.
And, you know, part of what I just say at a macro level is having been through Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and the Obama administration, we had just seen the uncertainties that are unleashed in any kind of military conflict in the region. And even in the case where you bombed Iran's nuclear facilities, right,
First and foremost, what we determined is you couldn't destroy the Iranian nuclear program from the air. They know how to do this. They know the nuclear fuel cycle. They could rebuild. And so at best, if you're trying to deal with the nuclear program, at best, you could set it back in a very successful strike, maybe a year, right? And what are the risks that you're taking?
You're taking the risk that Iran will strike, as we're seeing now, try to strike out and lash out at U.S. military facilities across the region, try to strike out at energy infrastructure, which could be very difficult for the global economy, strike Gulf allies, strike civilian populations in Israel.
And so you could have a situation where you essentially have a regional war instead of just, you know, you bomb the nuclear program and get out. I think inside of Iran... There was just also the question of if the regime were to implode in some fashion, what happens next? The likelihood was that you could have protracted civil conflict.
And we've seen all of the unpredictability that can unleash in terms of refugee flows or conflict migrating across borders. And we didn't see some pathway to... you know, a quick transition to a democratic Iran or a different kind of stable government there.
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Chapter 3: How does the Iranian conflict compare to the situation in Venezuela?
You can change these regimes without changing the regime. You can capture Maduro. You can use air power to kill Khamenei. And what you're going to do next is not insist on democracy, is not insist on rebuilding something you like. You are going to simply insist on somebody who is afraid enough of you that they are more pliable when it matters.
What you've created is not exactly a puppet, but someone who is inclined to follow your orders when you give them. And that maintains a limit on how involved you need to be. Is he right? Has he figured something out? I don't think he's right. I think you're right that he believes that he's figured this out. But I think there's a number of flaws with his thinking.
I mean, the first thing in the case of Iran is... For all the focus on Khamenei, who was a reprehensible leader, and by the way, I'm not sure how many years he had left. If we're just decapitating him, I mean, time was about to do that. But this is a deep, deep regime with ideological institutions that go far beyond even the Chavista regime in Venezuela, right?
Because what you're talking about is he's sitting on top of this edifice that has been built since the 1979 revolution that includes... Millions of people under arms, right? The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, the Basij militias that are usually responsible for the crackdowns that we see when there are peaceful protests, the Iranian military and police.
There's a lot of depth to this regime. So taking out even the supreme leader... doesn't in any way change the regime. And in fact, if you talk about people that might be afraid, you know, the IRGC has sometimes been kind of more hardline, even certainly than the political leadership that Americans usually see in things like negotiations. And then it's also the case that
You know, Trump thinks, I truly believe, you know, he kind of thinks in news cycle increments. So, you know, I'll kill someone, it'll look like we changed the regime, we got rid of the bad guy, we kind of slayed the dragon here. And there's no, you know, what happens in one year, in three years, in five years. I mean, I was, I'll be self-critical here, Ezra.
Like, you remember the Libya intervention. We did the same thing, essentially. Qaddafi was killed through a mixed, well, there was an airstrike and then he was killed by people on the ground, right? Terrible guy, reprehensible leader. When that regime was removed, nothing was able to fill the vacuum except for the most heavily armed people in Libya, which were a series of different militias.
And that civil war spread across borders, and suddenly that part of North Africa becomes an arms bazaar. Conflict is spreading to neighboring states. So if the regime itself stays in Iran... I don't think it's fundamentally different just because Khamenei is not there.
And if the regime implodes completely, I worry about a Libya type situation at scale because this is a much bigger country, right, with over 90 million people. So, you know, Trump, the Venezuela operation, I think I saw that and it made me worried about this. One of the things you have heard repeatedly from Donald Trump is an exhortation to the Iranian people that now is your chance.
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Chapter 4: What is Trump's 'head on a pike' foreign policy?
munitions, particularly our air defense systems, are going to run lower and lower and lower. And In a way, they may be able to hit more targets the longer this goes. I mean, the best case scenarios, because I was trying to, as someone who's been critical, I want to inhabit the best case scenarios, right?
It feels like the best case scenario may be a chastened regime that just wants to hunker down and will agree, at least for the time being, to not have any nuclear program that is active and lick its wounds. And maybe that provides some opportunity for that regime to be less repressive. I mean, I guess that's the landing zone here that Trump is trying to meet. But...
At the same time, like, we've bombed them twice now in the middle of nuclear negotiations. And so if you have hardliners in the IRGC or in Iranian circles, and they're being told, well, let's stop and negotiate with the Americans. Like, they're not going to believe that they can negotiate in any kind of good faith with Donald Trump. And so...
I think that there's this kind of strategic incoherence about what the objective of this whole thing is. And that's seen not just by the Iranians, it's seen by the Gulf Arabs who are now, you know, they're furious at everybody. I think they're furious at the United States and Israel for launching this war. And we can talk about that.
And I think they're obviously furious at Iran for targeting them indiscriminately. They don't know what's going on here. What's the goal here? Are we trying to remove this regime? They're wary of removing the regime because they don't want refugees and chaos in their region. What you'd want, I guess, is everybody in the world, the relevant countries in the Gulf and the region and Europe...
being able to put some diplomatic framework around this. So it's not just this kind of Steve Woodcoff and Jared Kushner trying to talk to some Iranian in a room via the Omanis. But Trump's shifting goalposts of what he's for make it much harder to put any kind of framework around this.
This gets to something, I think, pretty deep in the Trump administration's thinking or lack of thinking, which is, it has often seemed to me if there's any global problem they are worried about, it is refugee flows and migration. They go to Europe and talk about how Europe is ceasing to exist as a civilization, in part because of Muslim integration and immigration.
There have been huge refugee flows to Europe from Syria as part of the Syrian civil war. If you imagine a scenario here where you end up a little bit between Trump's imagined options, which is simultaneously you do have opposition to the existing regime, and you also have a regime that has become more compliant to Trump himself on things like the nuclear issue.
but is trying to hold power and repressing those who are trying to attack it, you could very quickly end up in a significant refugee flow scenario. Iran's a very, very, very big country. You're talking about 90 million people. And how do the states around Iran handle that? What does the Trump administration think about huge outflows of Iranians coming after Iran? The U.S.
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Chapter 5: What are the potential consequences of Trump's military strategy?
Refugees away and in part to prevent the emergence of a separatist Balochistan on their borders, it crosses their borders. And then the other direction is Turkey into Europe. And you saw Turkey very aggressively being a part of the mediation efforts. This is one of the reasons why. They have a lot of fatigue with hosting millions of Syrian refugees there.
and Europe trying to keep those refugees in Turkey instead of getting Europe, they will find their way to Europe through Turkey. And so I don't think there's been any real planning for this. And that is, to me, like the worst case scenario of a civil war and even fracturing of the Iranian sovereign territory. You'd have huge refugee outflows. This is A.G. Sulzberger.
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Not asking you to click on any link. Just subscribe to a real news organization with real journalists doing firsthand fact-based reporting. And if you already do, thank you. We have not been planning for this. Israel has been planning for some version of this for a very long time. They're a full partner in this operation, which is distinctive about it. What do they want?
I think, first and foremost, they want to smash anybody who poses a perceived threat to them. And they're obviously been principally focused on this axis of resistance, right? So Hamas, Hezbollah, other Iranian proxy groups, and then ultimately the Iranian regime itself. Weakening that regime is, in their view, kind of obviously good for their security posture.
They're worried about ballistic missiles, worried about the nuclear program. If I was going to be cynical, and I know this is a view of some increasingly in the region, it's that Israel's okay with chaos.
That if there's an implosion in Iran and, you know, humanitarian disaster there and kind of chaos, that actually advantages their security situation in a way because that kind of Iran can't pose a threat to them. And that if you look at... Lebanon and Syria, where Israel's also been very active militarily, they're just kind of pushing out not just kind of the perimeter.
You know, they're literally occupying parts of southern Syria now. They want to just kind of buffer the zone in southern Lebanon. And I think the fears in the region is that they are just kind of methodically...
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Chapter 6: How did the Obama administration approach Iran and military action?
It had shown Iran to be weaker than people thought it was. And I think the push was made to Trump that you have this narrow window of opportunity to do what no other president has done, and at least in the way it was presented to him, permanently solve the problem and permanently avenge previous injuries and insults to America. I think you are exactly right. I think it's worth pointing out.
I mean, we were both watching at the time. I mean, this started coming up at the end of the Bush administration in 2007, 2008, when there was a push for Bush to bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities. Netanyahu has wanted to do this since I have been in politics, you know, very clearly. Wanted the U.S., not Israel alone, the U.S. to take out the Iranian regime.
And every president has resisted this except Trump. You know, we should say, like, obviously, there's people in the United States, the Lindsey Grahams of the world who want to do this as well. So it's not just Israel, but it's a pretty small set of constituencies. You know, the public is broadly against this. And you're right. They brought him in by degrees.
And we can even go back to the first Trump term, right, where... He left the Iranian nuclear deal. That was not something that his advisors were telling him to do. Jim Mattis, the secretary of defense, was against it at the time. You know, not even a huge fan of the Iran nuclear deal because he saw if you remove yourself from that deal, you're kind of on a slow motion movement towards this.
In a way, it's funny, Trump likes to say 12-day war, and it's been one war. Since he pulled out of that nuclear agreement, it's been like a slow-motion series of events that led in this direction. It begins with economic war, it begins with sanctions. Yeah, exactly. So you pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, you go to maximum pressure sanctions, you assassinate the Qasem Soleimani.
Those are all things that happened in Trump's first term. Couldn't get him all the way to bombing Iran itself. Biden clearly, and I've been very critical, as you know, of Biden's Middle East policy on Gaza. He was clearly not keen to go all in with Iran on a regional war. You know, he was supportive of going after the Iranian proxy groups, not this. Then Trump comes back.
And they do the nuclear strike. But I think you're right. I think that the Israelis saw the Venezuela operation. He's getting more comfortable with this and he's getting comfortable taking it to regime change.
And they see – and this is where the continued use of military force without any congressional authorization is connected to this because it's like, OK, there's a president and Donald Trump. who is willing to just bomb countries and take huge risks absent any congressional debate or discussion. I mean, we dealt with this in the Obama years. You must inhabit the scenario of a war.
If Donald Trump had tried to prepare the American people for this... they would have said no. If he had gone out and given a series of speeches, now is the time we must remove the Iranian regime, it wouldn't have worked. And so I think you're right. This kind of vainglorious, I'm Donald Trump, I will slay all the dragons.
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Chapter 7: What are the risks of a civil conflict in Iran?
Well, I think one reason this has fed conspiracies is it has felt to many people like such a... almost inexplicable break from how Trump sold himself.
So, I mean, you have, you know, back in 2023, Trump saying, these globalists want to squander all of America's strength, blood, and treasure, chasing monsters and fandoms overseas while keeping us distracted from the havoc they're creating here at home. Very on point. J.D. Vance writes a Wall Street Journal op-ed that year titled, Trump's Best Foreign Policy, Not Starting Any Wars.
Tulsi Gabbard, of course, sells No War With Iran t-shirts. Now you have Trump kind of start more as certainly conflicts, engagements left and right. According to Axios, Trump has now authorized more military strikes in 2025 alone than Biden did in all four years. So I think for a lot of people, there has been this, how do you reconcile this?
both Trump and the movement that was around him, right? All the people advising him with what we're seeing now. I got asked over the weekend by somebody, you know, what was a faction inside the White House that wanted this? And I found it actually hard to answer that question. We have not seen a lot of reporting saying Marco Rubio wanted this to happen. You know, J.D. Vance appears to have not.
Instead, we're talking about Israel and Lindsey Graham, who's not that influential anymore. Mohammed bin Salman, maybe. Yeah. I think a lot of people have been very confused with how to explain Trump himself taking this risk. I had the same mental exercise, Ezra. And... Let's just go through it. If you look at all these polls, it's wildly politically unpopular.
And by the way, that continues to hold even though the Supreme Leader got killed. And the Supreme Leader being killed will be the high watermark of this operation. You know, there's not another person that you can kill that Trump can say is a head on a pike, right? Then if you look at the people that want to inherit MAGA, right, who are looking ahead at the Republican Party... J.D.
Vance seems to want to have very little to do with this. Tucker Carlson is railing against this. You know, the Steve Bannons of the world, they're not enthusiastic about this. The Republican Party is not going in this direction. So this is not something that Trump is doing because it's going to be wildly popular. The military didn't want to join chief staff.
Joint Chiefs of Staff was clearly putting out, leaking out, you know, that they didn't want to do this. Marco Rubio is much more focused on this hemisphere, you know, Venezuela and Cuba, which they're trying to, you know, strangle through maximum pressure. The Democratic Party is not for this, and particularly the people anticipating the future of the Democratic Party. Who is for this?
And it's a very small set of constituents. It is basically Israel. And then it is kind of hardline, longstanding hawks in Congress or in kind of the national security establishment. By the way, the people that Trump said he didn't like for this. John Bolton, who he's trying to persecute, is out there defending it.
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