Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey, it's Ryan.
Chapter 2: What triggered the U.S. and Israel's attack on Iran?
Overnight, the US and Israel launched a wave of strikes against Iran. So we wanted to bring you a special episode from our Wall Street Journal sister podcast, What's News. It has the latest on what's going on. Here it is.
Hey, What's News listeners, it's Saturday, February 28th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal, and this is What's News Sunday, coming to you early this weekend to dig into the big questions after the U.S. launched major combat operations against Iran earlier today. In coordination with Israel, American strikes have targeted Iran's leadership and its military assets.
the prelude to what President Trump hopes is an end to the regime in Tehran. Unsurprisingly, Iran is heading back, firing missiles and drones at Israel and at U.S. bases across the Middle East. While it's still early hours, the attacks that various factions in Washington and abroad have either feared or longed to see for decades are risking a wider conflict.
Today, we'll get the very latest on the US attacks and Iran's response, and look at the likelihood of just such an escalation. We've got a lot to cover, so let's get right to it. For weeks now, we have been watching the accumulation of U.S. military assets in the Middle East, and overnight, the U.S.
military pulled the trigger, using sea and air-based platforms to launch strikes across Iran, including the capital Tehran. Iran's supreme leader was among those targeted, though his condition is currently unknown.
as is a lot else at this hour, which is why I want to introduce now a pair of journal colleagues who are here to help us cut through the fog of war and help prepare for what we report could be days of intensive strikes. On the line from Washington is journal national security reporter Alex Ward, and from Istanbul, we're joined by journal Middle East correspondent Jared Malson.
Alex, let me start with you, and let's hear from President Trump here, who this morning made the case for these attacks and offered something of a history lesson, really.
For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted death to America and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder, targeting the United States, our troops, and the innocent people in many, many countries.
Alex, so much of the focus on Iran lately has been about its nuclear program, its missile program. These things were the subject of negotiations just a few days ago. How significant is it then that the president here is citing something quite different, invoking all of that history?
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Chapter 3: How did Iran respond to the strikes from the U.S. and Israel?
If they do go out and try to overthrow the regime, ordinary Iranians, that is, they'll be putting their lives at risk.
I mean, do we have any early answers, signals we can see from these attacks about how well they line up with those goals?
From our reporting, we know that the Americans are striking, along with the Israelis, who have targeted the senior leadership of the regime. We don't know exactly what the outcome of those strikes were. And then, of course, we have the list of targets that Trump himself outlined in his video that he released early this morning. Beyond that, we don't really know.
We can assume that the administration is looking at the Iranian regime, understanding that they are more vulnerable than they've been in years as a result of the war with Israel last year, the economic crisis in Iran, and of course the protests themselves inside Iran. That said... There are very few examples in history, really, of any regime falling as a result of an air war.
And so it raises questions about what the endgame of this is.
It seems like a lot of work, safe to say, remains to be done here if the U.S.
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Chapter 4: What are the potential risks of escalating conflict in the Middle East?
really does intend to follow through on all those goals the president sketched out. And I want to play another clip of what President Trump said speaking this morning about this major combat operation. He really sought to emphasize patience, endurance is going to be needed here, including potentially comfort with the loss of American lives.
The Iranian regime seeks to kill. The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. that often happens in war, but we're doing this not for now, we're doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission.
Alex, for those listeners, you know, kind of trying to hear parallels between what's playing out today and the operation earlier this year to remove Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro, here's one area where it just seems like the messaging is already very different, preparing people for the potential loss of American lives.
Yeah, I mean, Venezuela and Iran are very, very different. Those are more sort of one and done or at least lower risk operations. There is nothing low risk about this. There'll be days of airstrikes that could put American pilots and, of course, American troops in the Middle East in harm's way. Who knows if the U.S. will at some point have ground troops in the form of special operations forces.
And that's even before we get to the fact that this could spiral into a broader regional war if not contained. So this is by far the biggest risk by President Trump in either of his terms. And it is likely going to be the defining moment of his presidency, whether it ends with some sort of toppling of the regime, because that's what he's after.
or what could be a mess that doesn't necessarily lead to the toppling of a regime, or even if it does, a vacuum that could cause chaos. So it's a massive gamble by the president here.
And it's interesting to hear him talk about the casualties because he's trying to avoid certain pushback because, of course, the MAGA movement that he leads, he has promised for many years he would not execute a regime change war. And here we are.
Trying to borrow some excess political capital should it be necessary. But just operationally, what do we know about the extent to which the U.S. can sustain a potentially prolonged military campaign like this?
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Chapter 5: How is the U.S. military planning to sustain its operations in Iran?
So the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Kaine, has advised Trump that it's unlikely that this could go on for weeks, as was sort of initially discussed. It could probably go on for days, maybe a week or two. In terms of munitions, in terms of weapons, weapons the US has.
So the president's going to want to have to achieve his goals in a relatively short amount of time compared to what they were initially signaling.
Jared, over to Iran. What have we seen in terms of their response so far?
Well, the Iranians promised a harsh response, and they are delivering to some degree on that response. So far with missile strikes, they say targeting U.S. bases across the Persian Gulf region, and of course, also hitting Israel. You've had strikes on bases in the United Arab Emirates, in Qatar, and in Saudi Arabia. So across the Gulf region,
And for those Gulf countries who, by the way, diplomatically for weeks now have been pushing behind the scenes very hard to try to de-escalate, to try to find a diplomatic off-ramp from this crisis, because they were worried about precisely this scenario. There's obviously still questions about how long the Iranians themselves can sustain their own response.
Their supply of missiles is depleted after the 12-day war with Syria. Israel last summer, and their military sites, we presume, are also under attack right now.
Nonetheless, it is already a very disruptive event for the region and for the global economy because obviously the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz being perhaps the world's most important energy shipping lane that's now in the line of fire.
That would be kind of their trump card, right? Closing down the Straits and probably activating their network of proxy groups around the Middle East, too. Neither of which we've seen yet, but those are cards they conceivably retain.
Those are cards that they can still play, and we haven't seen that yet, obviously. But even with this initial response, we've already seen that they can inflict damage and they can cause casualties across the region.
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