CSPAN - Washington Journal 03/09/2026
Aired: 2026-03-09
Duration: 03:00:58


=== Iran Conflict and Campaign 2026 (04:12) ===

[00:00:00]  As well as the future of the Iranian regime.
[00:00:03]  And then Naomi Lim, Washington Examiner White House reporter, will talk about the week ahead at the White House and the latest on the Trump administration's actions in Iran.
[00:00:12]  And later, Chris Steyerwalt, host of The Hill Sunday, will discuss the political fallout from the ongoing conflict in Iran and how it might impact campaign 2026.
[00:00:22]  Washington Journal is next.
[00:00:24]  Join the conversation.
[00:00:34]  This is Washington Journal for Monday, March 9th, day nine of the Iranian conflict.
[00:00:41]  U.S. and Israeli forces continued their air assault on that country at this hour, with Iranians retaliating with strikes on U.S. interests throughout the Mideast, threatening a wider regional escalation.
[00:00:55]  This morning, we want to hear from you.
[00:00:57]  Are you satisfied with the Trump administration's rationale for these strikes on Iran and the ultimate goals of the operation?
[00:01:05]  Here's how you can join in on the conversation.
[00:01:08]  Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000.
[00:01:13]  Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001.
[00:01:19]  Independents, your line is 202-748-8002.
[00:01:25]  We have a special line today for active and former military.
[00:01:29]  That phone number is 202-748-8003.
[00:01:34]  And you can also reach us by text message at that same number at 202-748-8003.
[00:01:41]  You can reach us on facebook.com forward slash C-SPAN or on X with the handle at C-SPANWJ.
[00:01:50]  We start this morning with Iran.
[00:01:52]  Oil prices are rising across the country in response to that conflict, and the Iranian Assembly of Experts has chosen a new supreme leader.
[00:02:03]  I turn now to a New York Times article.
[00:02:05]  The headline is, in the first week, a punishing military campaign with no coherent endgame.
[00:02:11]  If you scroll just a little bit further down, it says that the Israeli strike among the Israeli strike also killed a group of Iranian officials who had been meeting in a different part of the compound.
[00:02:23]  Among them were people the White House had identified as more willing to negotiate than their bosses, who might help bring a swift end to the conflict, according to American officials.
[00:02:34]  That was after those blasts by the U.S. that killed Iran's supreme leader, by the Israelis, excuse me, that killed Iran's Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Alakhameni.
[00:02:43]  Now it goes on to say that the strike on the compound in Tehran was emblematic of a muddled reality of the war's first week.
[00:02:49]  A withering air campaign by American and Israeli forces against an overwhelmed enemy, but few answers about what victory might look like.
[00:02:58]  Iran, its government still in place, has remained defiant and expanded the battlefield across the region, inflicting the first American casualties of the conflict.
[00:03:08]  Defense Secretary Paete Hegseth was asked last night on 60 Minutes what a military win would look like for the president.
[00:03:18]  Take a listen here to his answer.
[00:03:19]  President said recently there will be no deal with Iran except unconditional surrender.
[00:03:24]  What does that look like?
[00:03:25]  Unconditional surrender?
[00:03:26]  How will you know it's real?
[00:03:28]  It means we're fighting to win.
[00:03:30]  It means we set the terms.
[00:03:32]  We'll know when they're not capable of fighting.
[00:03:34]  There'll be a point where they'll have no choice but to do that.
[00:03:36]  Whether they know it or not, they will be combat ineffective.
[00:03:39]  They will surrender.
[00:03:40]  Typically, the understanding of a surrender is person to person.
[00:03:43]  Is that what would be required in a matter like this?
[00:03:46]  Well, there's a lot of different ways.
[00:03:47]  Whether they want to admit it or not, whether their pride lets them say it out loud or not, it's President Trump who will set the terms of that.
[00:03:55]  The President of Iran said yesterday that the U.S. demand for unconditional surrender is, quote, a dream that they should take to their grave.
[00:04:04]  There was a very long war between Iran and Iraq, almost eight years, and they never surrendered in that war.
[00:04:10]  And I'm just wondering if that factors into your calculus of the president's capital.

=== Mutual Surrender in Iran (15:36) ===

[00:04:13]  I mean, there was a really long fight that I was a part of, and my generation was a part of in Iraq and Afghanistan, where a lot of foolish approaches were used.
[00:04:21]  This is war.
[00:04:22]  This is conflict.
[00:04:23]  This is bringing your enemy to their knees.
[00:04:26]  Now, whether they will have a ceremony in Tehran Square and surrender, that's up to them.
[00:04:33]  Something evolving today, of course, will be oil prices.
[00:04:38]  An Axios article published six hours ago.
[00:04:42]  The headline is, oil tops $100 per barrel as the Iran war escalates.
[00:04:47]  If you scroll just a little bit further down, it says oil prices on Sunday crossed into triple digits for the first time since 2022, a stark sign of how the Iran war is throttling global surprise and raising consumers' costs.
[00:05:02]  Why it matters?
[00:05:03]  The psychological important $100 a barrel mark is going to increase pain for consumers, many of whom don't support the war and didn't have any real warning that it was coming.
[00:05:13]  It's also a political setback for President Trump, who has relished in touting lower gasoline prices on his watch.
[00:05:20]  Energy Secretary Chris Wright was on Face the Nation earlier today, or excuse me, yesterday morning, where he was asked about whether or not oil prices will continue to rise.
[00:05:31]  Take a listen here.
[00:05:33]  Well, but you have the moment we are in right now.
[00:05:36]  And as you know, gasoline prices up 14% in the past week, according to AAA reports.
[00:05:42]  The national average is $3.45.
[00:05:44]  We've seen oil prices spike.
[00:05:46]  How high do you think oil and gas are going to go?
[00:05:52]  They shouldn't go much higher than they are here because the world is very well supplied with oil.
[00:05:58]  There's no energy shortage at all in the Western Hemisphere.
[00:06:02]  The United States is a net exporter of oil, a large net exporter of natural gas, but refineries in Asia, in Europe, are seeing an interruption from the normal crude flows.
[00:06:12]  But there is massive energy stores around the world.
[00:06:16]  What you're seeing is emotional reactions and fear that this is a long-term war.
[00:06:21]  This is not a long-term war.
[00:06:23]  It's a temporary movement.
[00:06:26]  Sorry, go ahead.
[00:06:27]  Temporary movement.
[00:06:30]  No, I'm saying, look, we've seen previous administration have done everything they could.
[00:06:34]  They've begged, bartered, and bribed the Iranian government to stop its nefarious activity, stop its murderous behavior.
[00:06:42]  And it simply hasn't worked.
[00:06:44]  And now they're expanding missile and drone program that are rapidly growing to protect their desire to build a nuclear weapon.
[00:06:53]  We're going to cross a threshold where we can't put them back in the box.
[00:06:56]  Now is the time to end their risk to America and the world.
[00:07:01]  That was Energy Secretary Chris Wright talking yesterday about rising oil prices.
[00:07:07]  Now I want to invite more of you guys to call in and join our conversation.
[00:07:10]  We're talking about Iran this morning.
[00:07:12]  Your phone lines, Democrats, 202-748-8000.
[00:07:16]  Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001.
[00:07:21]  Independents, your line is 202-748-8002.
[00:07:26]  And for our active and formal military, your special line today is 202-748-8003.
[00:07:34]  All right, Sid from Pennsylvania and Independent.
[00:07:38]  Good morning, Sid.
[00:07:40]  Good morning.
[00:07:41]  I don't support this war, really, because President Trump has enough challenges at home.
[00:07:49]  I think he's put not only our country, but also our citizens at risk in the Middle East.
[00:07:57]  And I don't know, instead of reducing the debt, he seems to be putting us more in debt.
[00:08:04]  And also, at the same time, putting, he's thinking about putting boots on the ground in Iran.
[00:08:10]  Iran is a lot different than Iraq and all the other wars that we have fought.
[00:08:15]  It's going to be a big mistake.
[00:08:18]  And that's really going to cost us dearly.
[00:08:22]  And he doesn't seem to negotiate with our international partners.
[00:08:26]  He seems to just do whatever he wants.
[00:08:29]  And really, Congress really needs to do something here, really hold him accountable.
[00:08:36]  Thank you.
[00:08:38]  Sid from Pennsylvania.
[00:08:40]  Dave from California, Republican.
[00:08:42]  You're next.
[00:08:43]  Good morning, Dave.
[00:08:44]  Yes, good morning, and thank you for everything you guys do for us.
[00:08:47]  I really do appreciate it.
[00:08:50]  Basically, what I want to say is this: please don't hang up on me.
[00:08:54]  Let me finish what I have to say.
[00:08:56]  Go ahead, Dave.
[00:08:57]  Career politicians, they are great in only two things.
[00:09:02]  They're perfect at it, and that's career politicians.
[00:09:06]  The first thing they're better than anybody else at is getting re-elected.
[00:09:11]  I mean, you got to be the best at it to keep getting re-elected over and over and over again.
[00:09:20]  Hello?
[00:09:21]  You're so long.
[00:09:22]  What's your second point?
[00:09:24]  And the second point is they are great at kicking the can down the road.
[00:09:30]  Now, as we see, when President Trump came in, what did he do with Panama?
[00:09:37]  Quit kicking the can down the road.
[00:09:39]  What did he do in Venezuela?
[00:09:40]  Quit kicking the can down the road.
[00:09:43]  What is he doing in Iran?
[00:09:45]  Quit kicking the can down the road.
[00:09:47]  And look at what's going on probably in Cuba.
[00:09:50]  I'm 59.
[00:09:51]  My whole life, I've been hearing about Cuba.
[00:09:55]  Starting at age 12, I think.
[00:09:57]  When I was in sixth grade, I started to hear about the Iran stuff, and just the cans kept getting kicked down the road.
[00:10:03]  Finally, you have a president with a backbone that doesn't really care about getting reelected or definitely doesn't kick the can down the road.
[00:10:12]  He's a problem solver.
[00:10:14]  And finally, these problems are finally getting solved.
[00:10:18]  I bet if you ask people why the gas went skyrocketing up between 2021 and 2024, half the country won't know why.
[00:10:29]  But here it goes up 50 cents a gallon, and I guarantee you the whole country knows why it went up 50 cents a gallon so far.
[00:10:37]  But they will not be able to tell you why it went up here in California to $7.50 a gallon during 2021 through 2024.
[00:10:47]  Now, I know why it went up.
[00:10:49]  It was simple.
[00:10:51]  Right?
[00:10:52]  Okay, Dave, I'm going to give you 20 more seconds if you want to finish your point there.
[00:10:57]  Okay.
[00:10:57]  My point is this.
[00:10:58]  I didn't get into politics till 2016.
[00:11:02]  So I'm new at this.
[00:11:03]  I'm 59, so I've been in it for only about nine years, and I get all this stuff.
[00:11:08]  I don't understand why everybody doesn't if they watch this stuff.
[00:11:12]  And you have to watch all of it.
[00:11:14]  You can't just watch what you know is true.
[00:11:16]  Otherwise, you're being brainwashed.
[00:11:18]  You have to watch both sides, everything.
[00:11:21]  I want to thank you for everything that you do for us.
[00:11:24]  You rock.
[00:11:26]  I really appreciate it.
[00:11:27]  And everybody have a BEAU to full day.
[00:11:32]  Bye-bye.
[00:11:33]  That was Dave from California.
[00:11:34]  Chris from Baltimore, calling on the former military line.
[00:11:40]  Good morning, Chris.
[00:11:41]  Hey, good morning.
[00:11:42]  How are you doing?
[00:11:43]  I'm doing well.
[00:11:44]  How are you?
[00:11:45]  I'm doing wonderful.
[00:11:46]  I think, like the gentleman said, everybody that worked on C-SPAN has done a wonderful job informing the nation and also giving each American an opportunity to hear what the other Americans think.
[00:11:59]  Thank you.
[00:12:01]  You're welcome.
[00:12:02]  My thought on this situation is when President Trump started placing tariffs on all of our allies, I thought that was a dangerous thing because now we're in a situation of our own that I don't think they want to do anything to assist us in this attack right now.
[00:12:24]  But the thing is, the gentleman was saying that the gas prices went up.
[00:12:31]  He didn't never explain why.
[00:12:32]  When you cut off the Strait of Humus, that's where I think 10 to 20% of our oil come from.
[00:12:39]  Not only does that stop the oil, it stops a whole lot of things that products go through that straight.
[00:12:46]  But I just hope that somebody will have the sense to put some guardrails on Mr. Trump.
[00:12:53]  A lot of people, they love him.
[00:12:55]  And I really pray for him.
[00:12:57]  I don't agree with a lot of things that he has done.
[00:13:00]  You want to annex Canada, Iceland, then you go, I don't see any changes in Venezuela.
[00:13:08]  You release a crime lord, then you give Argentina $80 billion.
[00:13:16]  Everything is putting our country deeper in debt.
[00:13:19]  And every time, I think we're spending $80 billion a day.
[00:13:24]  That's not putting America first.
[00:13:26]  That's putting us last.
[00:13:28]  And like the gentleman said, what he got to lose?
[00:13:30]  He's almost 80 years old.
[00:13:31]  And his time is running.
[00:13:33]  He's at the end of his life.
[00:13:34]  So I think all this is for his name going down in history.
[00:13:39]  And the money, and I'm not trying to, I'm going to say allegedly, the money that him and his cronies are making during this war and throughout his whole presidency is for his children, his children's children.
[00:13:52]  It's not for the people, the hardworking people like myself and a lot of people in America.
[00:13:58]  I just say thank you and have a wonderful day.
[00:14:01]  All right.
[00:14:01]  So that caller mentioned two things I want to point out.
[00:14:06]  First is the estimate of the daily costs of the Iran war operations.
[00:14:10]  This is from the Center of Strategic and International Studies, CNN here.
[00:14:14]  You can see air $30 million, naval $15 million, ground $1.6 million.
[00:14:21]  Of course, we don't have boots on the ground right now, but the first 100 of the hours of the war cost $3.7 billion.
[00:14:27]  So there is a cost estimate for you.
[00:14:29]  And another thing that caller mentioned was the allies of the U.S.
[00:14:33]  I point now to a two-social post from the president from March 7th.
[00:14:38]  It says the United Kingdom, our once great ally, maybe the greatest of them all, is finally giving serious thought to sending two aircraft carriers to the Middle East.
[00:14:48]  That's okay, Prime Minister Stahmer.
[00:14:50]  We don't need them any longer, but we will remember.
[00:14:53]  We don't need people that join wars after we've already won.
[00:14:58]  President Donald J. Trump.
[00:15:00]  John from Ithaca, New York, a Democrat.
[00:15:03]  You're next.
[00:15:04]  Good morning, John.
[00:15:05]  Good morning.
[00:15:06]  So the problem is we have too much foreign influence in this country.
[00:15:11]  We have, you've heard it before, the Israel lobby, but now it's a real problem because now we have Americans dying overseas for a war that doesn't involve us.
[00:15:23]  You have Bakoff, Kushner.
[00:15:26]  You have Edelson, who donated all the money to him.
[00:15:31]  And then you have Stephen Miller.
[00:15:33]  They're all Jews.
[00:15:34]  And when Tucker Carlson mentioned something about the Chabad movement.
[00:15:39]  I'm going to go to the next caller there, Bill from Illinois on the former military line.
[00:15:46]  Let me quickly.
[00:15:48]  Oh, hi, Bill.
[00:15:49]  Good morning.
[00:15:50]  Good morning.
[00:15:51]  I would like to remind people something I have not heard in the last several weeks, and I don't know why we're allowing Israel to lead this band, but I would like to remind people of the fact that it was Israel as we found out that Netanyahu and his hard-right coalition there in Israel were the ones that were giving Hamas the money to fight this war.
[00:16:15]  People have forgot that.
[00:16:17]  These people were funding both sides of the war so that they could continue a war for political reasons.
[00:16:25]  And we have been caught up in this, and it's not right.
[00:16:29]  We should not be where we are at.
[00:16:31]  Now, which war are you describing that Israel was funding Hamas?
[00:16:35]  Which war are you talking about?
[00:16:36]  This is when they attacked.
[00:16:39]  This was on the news.
[00:16:41]  You guys covered it yourself.
[00:16:43]  When they had the attack from Hamas here last year, it came out in public that Netanyahu and his hard-right cabinet were giving Hamas, secretly giving them money so that they could fight this war with Israel.
[00:17:00]  Israel was funding both sides of the war.
[00:17:06]  They're perpetuating this war for political reasons, and we have been now caught up in it.
[00:17:13]  And this is not where we need to be.
[00:17:16]  If Israel wants to fund both sides of the war, then let them fight the whole war.
[00:17:21]  That's their problem if they're going to do that.
[00:17:24]  Have a nice day.
[00:17:25]  Thank you.
[00:17:26]  All right, that was Bill from Illinois.
[00:17:28]  I'll bring up an article that was from over the weekend from the Times of Israel.
[00:17:34]  It says an interview with President Trump.
[00:17:36]  The headline is, well, there's an article on your screen there that was referring to what the gentleman just said, but I'll point to a different article from the Times of Israel.
[00:17:44]  It says, Trump to Times of Israel, it'll be, quote, a mutual decision with Netanyahu regarding when the Iran war ends.
[00:17:52]  The U.S. President in a phone interview clarifies that he'll make the final call to end operation, quote, at a right time.
[00:17:58]  Says him and the prime minister, quote, work together against the Islamic Republic.
[00:18:02]  We've destroyed a country that would have destroyed Israel.
[00:18:05]  I'll just scroll down for a second to read you that full quote.
[00:18:10]  It says, the U.S. President told the Times of Israel that the decision of when to end the war will be a mutual one that he'll make with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
[00:18:19]  He also asserted in a brief interview that, quote, Iran was going to destroy Israel and everything else around it.
[00:18:24]  We've worked together.
[00:18:25]  We've destroyed a country that wanted to destroy Israel.
[00:18:28]  The president was asked whether he alone would decide when the war with Iran ends or if Netanyahu would have a say.
[00:18:35]  I'm just going to scroll here.
[00:18:37]  The quote is, I think it's mutual a little bit.
[00:18:40]  We've been talking.
[00:18:41]  I'll make a decision at the right time.
[00:18:43]  But everything's going to be taken into account, he responded, indicating that while Netanyahu will have input, the U.S. President will have the final say.
[00:18:52]  James from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Independent.
[00:18:55]  You're next.
[00:18:56]  Good morning, James.
[00:18:58]  Good morning.
[00:19:01]  All right, you're on the line.
[00:19:03]  I'm strictly speaking to this 30-35% of these MAGA Republicans who love him to death.
[00:19:13]  We like to get on this program right here and brag about how much money they've been making in the stock market because of Donald Trump.
[00:19:23]  All you're doing actually is thinking about yourself.
[00:19:26]  You ain't thinking about these eight men and women just are no longer with us anymore because we have a man who wants to call himself a president.
[00:19:39]  But as far as I'm concerned, he's just an immature 78-year-old child surrounded by weak, spineless people.

=== Securing Iran's Nuclear Stockpile (15:09) ===

[00:19:50]  Russia is helping Iran with technology to let Iran know where our ships and where we firing our missiles from.
[00:20:10]  Ukraine, Zelensky, is helping us.
[00:20:16]  We're there.
[00:20:17]  Ammunition that they need bad because we got Donald Trump's best friend, our worst enemy, helping kill Americans.
[00:20:29]  And Donald Trump says it don't matter.
[00:20:32]  C-SPAN bring it up.
[00:20:34]  Is right there on the plane.
[00:20:36]  All right, James.
[00:20:37]  I'm actually going to turn now to that article.
[00:20:39]  Thanks for calling in.
[00:20:42]  AP headline says: Russia has provided Iran with information that can help Tehran strike U.S. military.
[00:20:49]  AP sources say.
[00:20:51]  If you scroll just a little bit down here, it says, Russia has provided Iran with information that could help Tehran strike American warships.
[00:20:58]  The officials who were not authorized to comment publicly on this sensitive matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity caution that the U.S. intelligence has not uncovered that Russia is directing Iran on what to do with the information as the U.S. and Israel continue their bombardment.
[00:21:14]  And Iran fires retaliatory salvos at the American assets and allies in the Persian Gulf.
[00:21:19]  Still, it's a first indication that Moscow has sought to get involved in the war that the U.S. and Israel launched on Iran a week ago.
[00:21:27]  Russia is in the real club of countries that maintains a friendly relationship with Tehran, which has faced years of isolation over its nuclear program and support for proxy groups that have wreaked havoc in the Middle East, including Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.
[00:21:42]  Cornell from New Jersey, a Democrat, you're next.
[00:21:46]  Good morning, Cornell.
[00:21:48]  Good morning, Jasmine.
[00:21:51]  All I can say is deja vu again.
[00:21:55]  Just like the weapons of mass destruction, what Benjamin Netanyahu has done is what he's done over the last so many years.
[00:22:07]  He's wanted to attack Iran going back to Obama.
[00:22:12]  He disrespected Obama and addressed the Republican Congress, and he wanted us to attack them then.
[00:22:22]  There was something in place that Iran wouldn't have gotten nuclear weapons.
[00:22:32]  And everybody at the time said it was a good deal.
[00:22:36]  Donald Trump ripped that agreement up.
[00:22:40]  He actually created this problem.
[00:22:43]  And this is a bigger problem, which nobody talks about.
[00:22:48]  The whole debt and deficit were under Republican presidents.
[00:22:55]  Go back to Ronald Reagan.
[00:22:58]  Every Republican president has increased the debt deficit.
[00:23:04]  The only time it was decreased was under Democrats.
[00:23:08]  And to say that Iran was going to attack us, no, Iran is not that dumb.
[00:23:17]  Just like what they did in Gaza with the Palestinians, it's how history, history is, Jasmine, history is going to frown on us because We fell for it again.
[00:23:35]  They're silent.
[00:23:37]  We're silent.
[00:23:38]  And we're letting this happen when it shouldn't happen, especially when they cut health care.
[00:23:46]  They would not extend the Affordable Care Act.
[00:23:49]  And the reason why the Affordable Care Act was not successful is Republicans put things in place to make it fail after decades of saying we're going to replace it with nothing to replace it with.
[00:24:06]  But like I said earlier, the biggest thing is look at the debt deficit and you could link it to every Republican president with the auspices of we're giving tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans.
[00:24:22]  All right, Cornell.
[00:24:24]  Take your point there.
[00:24:25]  Thank you.
[00:24:26]  Chris from Alexandria, Virginia, calling on the former military line.
[00:24:31]  Good morning.
[00:24:32]  Good morning, Jasmine.
[00:24:35]  I guess if the question is, has the administration been clear on its Iran war goal?
[00:24:43]  I don't think that it has.
[00:24:44]  In fact, one of the big problems I have with it is the flippancy that it appears to have taken this action.
[00:24:55]  I don't see it as being provoked.
[00:24:58]  They didn't do anything to us.
[00:25:00]  And I think Americans don't really remember, or they choose not to remember, that in 1953, we installed the Shah against the democratically elected leader, Mossadegh, or I may be mispronouncing his name.
[00:25:17]  But I mean, that precipitated the 1979 Islamic Revolution that gave us these religious fanatics in the first place.
[00:25:25]  And I think that, you know, one, without a clearly defined goal, we're just going in circles.
[00:25:33]  And I see nothing but problems economically, and not to mention the countless civilian Iranian lives and American military lives that were going to happen.
[00:25:46]  I saw a story this weekend that Trump is talking about.
[00:25:50]  He's considering putting ground forces, U.S. ground forces on the ground for Israel's war.
[00:25:56]  This is Israel's war, and somehow we got lassoed into being their muscle machine.
[00:26:02]  But that's my take on it.
[00:26:05]  Chris from Virginia, the president was talking about sending in special forces.
[00:26:09]  While I pull up that clip to tell you guys more about that, let's take a listen now to Senator Tom Tillis, a Republican, sometimes ally of president, sometimes critic of the president, making a case for the administration's rationale for the Iranian conflict.
[00:26:23]  Take a listen here.
[00:26:24]  Well, I think that the administration needs to be clear on what the goal is.
[00:26:28]  You know, at one point we were talking about regime change, and then we heard Secretary Hegset say something different.
[00:26:35]  I think that we need to articulate our objectives and our goals, because the American people right now are questioning whether or not we should be in this war.
[00:26:44]  Latest polls see unaffiliated voters and even many conservative voters just questioning what we're doing there.
[00:26:51]  Let's be very clear on what the objectives are.
[00:26:53]  And I think the president owes the American people that.
[00:26:56]  He owes Congress that.
[00:26:58]  Because with that clarity, then we can start building support for an engagement that could go on for more than the two months.
[00:27:04]  That I think beyond that 60-day period within the War Powers Resolution, there has to either be a very clear commitment long-term and a request of Congress, or I believe a cessation of hostilities.
[00:27:15]  One of the two have to occur.
[00:27:17]  This morning, Barack Ravid and Mark Caputo are reporting for Axios that the United States, the Trump administration, is weighing sending in special forces to Iran to seize Iran's enriched uranium.
[00:27:29]  That actually would constitute boots on the ground.
[00:27:32]  Do you think that would cross a line where congressional approval is needed, or do you think that falls within the 60 days that you referred to?
[00:27:42]  When you start putting boots on the ground and those boots on the ground may need reinforcement, that starts looking like a longer-term conflict.
[00:27:50]  And the last thing we want to do is live paycheck to paycheck if we believe that we need to ultimately do what Obama failed to do, and that is to keep Iran in check in terms of their nuclear capabilities.
[00:28:03]  So, Jake, I feel like if we're starting to ramp up in that direction, it makes the 60-day window look less likely to achieve.
[00:28:12]  So, let's just be straight up with the American people.
[00:28:14]  Let's move with a discussion about what an authorization for the use of military force looks like and provide the legitimacy to the president.
[00:28:23]  That was Republican Senator from North Carolina, Tom Tillis, talking about how he believes that the administration needs to make more clear what their rationale for war is and what success looks like.
[00:28:37]  In that clip, Mr. Tapper from CNN mentioned this Axios article.
[00:28:41]  I want to read it to you.
[00:28:42]  The headline here is, U.S. Way sending special forces to seize Iran's nuclear stockpile.
[00:28:49]  If you just scroll a little bit, it says that the U.S. and Israel have discussed sending special forces into Iran to secure its stockpile of highly enriched uranium at a later stage of the war, according to four sources with knowledge of the discussions.
[00:29:03]  Why it matters, preventing Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon is one of the president's stated war objectives.
[00:29:08]  The regime's 450 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium convertible to weapons grade within weeks is one key to that goal.
[00:29:17]  Big picture.
[00:29:18]  Any operation to seize the material would likely require U.S. or Israeli troops on Iranian soil navigating heavily fortified underground facilities in the middle of a war.
[00:29:29]  It remains unclear whether it would be an American-Israeli or joint mission.
[00:29:33]  It would likely only take place after both countries are confident Iran's military can no longer mount a serious threat to the forces involved.
[00:29:43]  Secretary of Defense Pete Hegg says was asked about boots on the ground during his 60-minute interview, which aired last night.
[00:29:50]  Take a listen to this exchange.
[00:29:53]  Is it possible to achieve the objectives President Trump has set before you if we don't locate and obtain and extract the highly enriched uranium?
[00:30:02]  There's a lot of different ways we can get after that.
[00:30:04]  They've used a conventional umbrella of missiles that was growing every single day, their production capacity, to try to cover over their nuclear blackmail ambitions.
[00:30:14]  As far as how you get at that nuclear option, we'll make sure that their nuclear ambitions are never achieved.
[00:30:20]  Will we take it out ourselves?
[00:30:22]  Oh, I would never tell you or anybody else what our options are.
[00:30:24]  See, that's another thing.
[00:30:25]  People keep asking a very fair question.
[00:30:29]  People ask boots on the ground, no boots on the ground, four weeks, two weeks, six weeks, go in, go in.
[00:30:35]  President Trump knows, I know, you don't tell the enemy, you don't tell the press, you don't tell anybody what your limits would be on an operation.
[00:30:44]  We're willing to go as far as we need to in order to be successful.
[00:30:47]  Do we have any overt or covert forces inside Iran now?
[00:30:55]  I wouldn't tell you that if we did.
[00:30:57]  The only reason I ask is earlier this week you said no.
[00:31:01]  Is that still the answer?
[00:31:02]  Yeah, that's still the answer.
[00:31:04]  But we reserve the right.
[00:31:06]  We would be completely unwise if we did not reserve the right to take any particular option, whether it included boots on the ground or no boots on the ground.
[00:31:14]  That was Secretary of Defense talking about whether or not the administration would put boots on the ground in Iran.
[00:31:20]  Haas from Huntingtown, Maryland, a Republican?
[00:31:26]  For Paul, and thank you for what you're doing.
[00:31:32]  I want to start by saying it is not fair that we say this war is against Iranian regime or against Iran, or we are in a war with Iran.
[00:31:45]  We are in a war with an extremist Islamic regime that their ambition is not limited to any country or any region.
[00:31:58]  And in fact, the Iranian people are their first victims.
[00:32:02]  Looking at the previous 47 years, the Iranian people are the ones who paid the heaviest price.
[00:32:11]  We can all see in the latest demonstrations that more than 35,000 Iranians killed in a matter of two weeks by that regime.
[00:32:22]  What this war is exactly the same as the war we waged against ISIS.
[00:32:31]  ISIS has or had the same vision as this regime.
[00:32:38]  It's to expand, is to spread the ideology, is to do as much damage as they can to every region and every country they can reach at.
[00:32:50]  And the fact that ISIS resources was so limited compared to what this regime has in their arsenal.
[00:33:01]  We have a regime that for 47 years utilizing the wealth and the resources of one of the richest nations on earth to export their revolution and expand in the region.
[00:33:17]  It is in that regime constitution.
[00:33:19]  And again, I'm not saying the Iranian constitution, because this is their constitution.
[00:33:25]  It has nothing to do with Iran.
[00:33:27]  In the constitution, expansion is a must.
[00:33:31]  Their goal is to dominate all the Islamic world and subject every nation they can to this.
[00:33:41]  So let me ask you, since you're giving us this context, the question of the morning is whether or not the rationale from the administration and the goals of the operation are clear from this administration.
[00:33:53]  I wonder what you think about that.
[00:33:55]  I really feel that the administration is not giving the right rationale for this war.
[00:34:07]  It can gain much more support from the American from both sides of the aisle and from the international community if they present all the facts and reminded people what we are dealing with here.
[00:34:24]  A lot of critics now, it's about the cost of the war.
[00:34:28]  It costs almost $1 billion a day.
[00:34:32]  We should not forget that we spent about $3 trillion in Iraq to bring democracy to that part of the world.
[00:34:44]  And it was all wasted and undermined because of that regime.
[00:34:50]  Okay, Haas, I'm going to actually turn now to some polls about whether or not people are supporting this war.

=== Polls on Overthrowing Iran (07:16) ===

[00:35:00]  First, I'll point to one from The Economist YouGov poll that was released on March 4th.
[00:35:06]  It was taken between February 27th and March 2nd.
[00:35:10]  And it says 32% support the use of U.S. military force to overthrow the government of Iran.
[00:35:17]  45% oppose it.
[00:35:19]  Another poll from another question from that same survey says 32% of all U.S. adult citizens support the use of the U.S. military to force military force to overthrow the government of Iran.
[00:35:35]  If you break that down by party, it's 8% from Democrats, 23% by Independents, 64% by Republicans.
[00:35:43]  Ricardo from Philadelphia and Independent.
[00:35:46]  You're next.
[00:35:47]  Good morning, Ricardo.
[00:35:49]  Good morning, ma'am, and thank you for accepting my call.
[00:35:52]  I just want to make two quick points because I'm sure there's many others in line.
[00:35:56]  The first point is I was listening to, I don't know if it was your station or another, and Ambassador Huckleby seemed to be the first one to actually spoke truth about what this was all about when he said Israel should be able to claim all of the Arab land.
[00:36:19]  But if you use that as an analogy, wouldn't that be the same as saying the Native Americans should have full claim to all of America from the north to the south?
[00:36:33]  The second part is we got into this war because America keeps jumping sides.
[00:36:39]  Originally, we were for the Iranians and we backed the Iranians against to keep their neighbors in check.
[00:36:50]  Once the Shah fell, CIA starts selling crack into the different communities of America to finance backing Iraq to keep Iran in check.
[00:37:04]  And that's how it's been ever since.
[00:37:07]  No change.
[00:37:10]  All right, Ricardo from Philadelphia.
[00:37:12]  Paul from Maryland and Independent, you're next.
[00:37:15]  Good morning, Paul.
[00:37:17]  Yes, thank you for taking my call and good morning.
[00:37:20]  I want to say that once again, we've entered another endless war.
[00:37:27]  This president has us on a warp speed path of destruction.
[00:37:33]  God is not going to bless America.
[00:37:35]  America was founded on crime, corruption, rape, murder, brutality, slavery.
[00:37:43]  America has yet to repent and be accountable for these actions.
[00:37:48]  Why would God bless America?
[00:37:52]  Not going to happen.
[00:37:53]  Smile and copy.
[00:37:55]  Thank you.
[00:37:57]  Will from Mississippi, calling in on the former military line.
[00:38:01]  Good morning, Will.
[00:38:04]  Yes.
[00:38:06]  I'm a Vietnam veteran.
[00:38:08]  And war is nothing but profit.
[00:38:10]  But I want to stick to your subject, you would military use.
[00:38:16]  But the true field, no.
[00:38:20]  And when you go to the games and stuff this year and you gather in crowds and state just like George Bush brought you 9-11, believe me, you better be ready for because we have no business there.
[00:38:38]  Before George Bush, we knew stay out of the Middle East.
[00:38:44]  I'm sorry, I can't hear you.
[00:38:46]  No, go ahead.
[00:38:47]  Well, you're still on the line.
[00:38:52]  Okay.
[00:38:53]  Yes.
[00:38:54]  And the true field, the biggest drugs in this country is religion.
[00:39:01]  And they're using this as some kind of passage from the Bible to say that these are Europeans calling they self-Jew and Ninyahu is nothing but a devil.
[00:39:16]  Let's actually turn now to the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Michael Waltz, who yesterday was defending the administration's actions in Iran and giving a rationale for them.
[00:39:28]  Take a listen.
[00:39:29]  In many ways, we are seeing tremendous success in our military objectives on this war.
[00:39:37]  Iran's Navy is largely sitting at the bottom of the ocean with over 40 ships now sunk.
[00:39:46]  Major degradation to their ability to produce the ballistic missiles that have been striking so many of their Gulf neighbors, Israel and elsewhere.
[00:39:55]  Major degradation to their ability to produce these missiles.
[00:40:00]  We already took down the nuclear enrichment program back during Operation Midnight Hammer last year.
[00:40:10]  Air Force largely destroyed.
[00:40:12]  Air defenses largely destroyed.
[00:40:15]  Major leadership figures decapitated.
[00:40:19]  So in terms of our military objectives, the president is right.
[00:40:23]  We are not only ahead of schedule, we are winning.
[00:40:28]  You are winning, but he said we have already won.
[00:40:32]  What else do you have to do and how long will it take?
[00:40:37]  Well, look, we'll just let the statistics from our Central Command Commander, Admiral Brad Cooper, speak for themselves.
[00:40:46]  We've seen ballistic missile launches from Iran largely degraded.
[00:40:54]  The figures that they're putting out around 90% reduction from the first days of the war a week ago.
[00:41:02]  Drone launches down 70 to 80 percent.
[00:41:06]  Those are still significant.
[00:41:08]  We're still seeing Iran lash out in all directions at its neighbors, at our allies, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, and others.
[00:41:20]  So, at the end of the day, what the president is focused on is an Iran that can no longer pose a threat to Americans in an American first foreign policy, but also no longer pose a threat to our allies in the region.
[00:41:36]  I was U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Michael Waltz, defending the administration's conflict in Iran and giving an update to some of the military successes that the administration believes they're having.
[00:41:49]  I turn now, before we get back to your calls, to something that developed over the weekend, which is that the U.S. sanctioned Moshaba Khameni is named Iran's next Supreme Leader after his father's death.
[00:42:01]  This is a Fox News article.
[00:42:03]  If you scroll down, it says, Iran's Assembly of Experts has elected Mohammed Khameni, the son of the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni, as the country's new supreme leader, according to Iranian state television.

=== Why We Want Iran Down (08:25) ===

[00:42:16]  The 56-year-old is the second eldest son of Ali Khameni and born in Mashhad in 1969.
[00:42:23]  It goes on to say more about the new Supreme Leader, including that his early childhood coincided with his father's rise as a revolutionary figurehead, opposing the monarch of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavani, Pahlavi, excuse me,
[00:42:39]  and that after the Islamic resolution in 1979, Ali Khameni moved from a dissident cleric to a senior government official holding key posts in the regime, including deputy defense minister, and more about their family care, including, I believe, that his wife, the new supreme leader, was killed in some of the airstrikes.
[00:42:59]  Christine Hyattsville, Maryland, an independent, you're next.
[00:43:05]  Good morning, Christine.
[00:43:06]  Stay in the line.
[00:43:07]  Good morning.
[00:43:08]  Yes, can you hear me?
[00:43:10]  Yes, we have a little bit of feedback.
[00:43:12]  Is your TV muted?
[00:43:15]  Can you take yourself off speakerphone?
[00:43:19]  Let me see.
[00:43:20]  I could have to cut it down, I guess.
[00:43:24]  Yes, I hope that's better.
[00:43:26]  I had cut it down.
[00:43:27]  Okay, go ahead.
[00:43:29]  Yeah, I just want to say I'm sick and tired of this country sending our young men, these young, not that much knowledge that, you know, they're in the prime of their life.
[00:43:42]  I mean, they're so young, 18 years old.
[00:43:46]  It doesn't matter to this government that we lose as many thousands of young men who a lot of them go involuntarily.
[00:43:56]  I mean, they're very strong.
[00:43:57]  They, you know, they love their country, but, you know, when they're in there and they're being killed, thousands come back in these body bags when they're in a war like this that's going on.
[00:44:09]  You know, and nothing is said, even about 9-1-1.
[00:44:13]  3,000 some people died.
[00:44:16]  And do you think people are even saying anything about it other than just saying the blessings of flowers and things that was put there to remind us of that incident?
[00:44:29]  You know, it's sad because people are just selfish.
[00:44:32]  You know, that's what's wrong with mankind and womankind.
[00:44:36]  They're selfish.
[00:44:36]  They're conceited in themselves.
[00:44:40]  And God has nothing to do with it.
[00:44:42]  You know, I agreed with the man earlier.
[00:44:44]  God, I don't believe, has any inkling of putting a special attention to America.
[00:44:51]  He created everyone, you, me, the whole world of people.
[00:44:56]  You know, so we got to look at it realistically if you want to speak about religion.
[00:45:00]  You got to speak of it in the terms of everyone was created in the image of God.
[00:45:05]  You know, and Jasmine, that's pretty much all I had to say, but I had to say it because it's time to say it.
[00:45:11]  We got to think of our young men and they come back.
[00:45:15]  We take your point there, Christian.
[00:45:17]  Debbie from Florida, a Democrat, you're next.
[00:45:21]  Good morning, Debbie.
[00:45:22]  Hi, good morning.
[00:45:23]  Hi, good morning.
[00:45:25]  Obama signed a deal to keep Iran from producing a nuclear bomb in 2015.
[00:45:33]  It was, I remember inspectors going in there.
[00:45:38]  It was known, Trust, Verify.
[00:45:42]  And then he, in trade for this deal, Iran got funds back that were held up.
[00:45:52]  I'm a little nervous.
[00:45:54]  But then Trump comes in and he tears up the deal.
[00:45:58]  He has a pattern of tearing up peace deals and trying to come out as a hero through military action.
[00:46:10]  We had a border agreement bipartisan in March of 24, and he told Republicans, don't sign it because I need this problem for my campaign.
[00:46:20]  So we have a selfish president.
[00:46:23]  He's not thinking of the whole world.
[00:46:24]  He's thinking of himself.
[00:46:26]  On Friday, two Fridays ago, after the Clintons spoke to the commission for Epstein, next day, we're bombing Iran.
[00:46:36]  We're left tons of Americans in the region.
[00:46:39]  I don't feel that this was planned at all.
[00:46:42]  We're very nervous here.
[00:46:44]  He does things erratically on the spur of the moment.
[00:46:48]  And a lot of people, young men and women have died already maimed for the rest of their life because this guy wants to protect himself from who knows what he did with Epstein.
[00:47:03]  We're in this war because of Trump and Epstein.
[00:47:07]  And thousands of people are dying because of it.
[00:47:11]  And Americans, and we're spending a billion dollars a day.
[00:47:15]  I heard from Fox News viewers with $38 billion in debt.
[00:47:20]  And now it doesn't matter because we're starting this war.
[00:47:24]  So that's all I have to say.
[00:47:25]  We're very, very nervous about what Trump's going to do to protect himself to get out of this.
[00:47:32]  Okay, Debbie, I think we take your point there.
[00:47:34]  James from San Diego, Republican, you're next.
[00:47:38]  I would request the C-SPAN redirect the question to more simpler.
[00:47:43]  Do we want Iran to have a nuclear weapon at this time?
[00:47:48]  Or do we want Iran to have a nuclear weapon and blow up a city in the United States before we do anything?
[00:47:56]  I think that would make it much more simpler for everybody to comment on.
[00:48:01]  When do we want Iran to have a nuclear weapon?
[00:48:04]  Now?
[00:48:05]  And we prevent it?
[00:48:07]  Or when they blow up a city in the United States like the Twin Towers?
[00:48:11]  Thank you very much.
[00:48:14]  James from San Diego.
[00:48:15]  Let's take a listen now to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham talking about the ongoing conflict in Iran on Fox News yesterday.
[00:48:23]  A billion dollars a day.
[00:48:25]  Oil prices up 27% in a week.
[00:48:28]  You've got the president wanting a $1.5 trillion defense budget in 27.
[00:48:34]  The idea that the Pentagon is about to come to you for $50 billion on these strikes to Iran.
[00:48:40]  How are you going to answer?
[00:48:43]  Best money ever spent.
[00:48:45]  What's it worth to America to take down a religious Nazi regime who's trying to build a nuclear weapon to deliver to America?
[00:48:52]  That's a really good investment.
[00:48:54]  They're going to fall.
[00:48:55]  It's not if the regime falls.
[00:48:57]  It's a matter of when.
[00:48:59]  And you didn't mention today, and nobody has, quite frankly, we now know they had enough 60% enriched uranium to make 11 bombs.
[00:49:09]  What's that worth to America to make sure they don't have 11 bombs?
[00:49:13]  All of this money is to make sure they never go nuclear.
[00:49:16]  They can't hit us with ballistic missiles.
[00:49:19]  And they stop terrorizing the region.
[00:49:21]  When this regime goes down, we're going to have a new Mideast.
[00:49:24]  We're going to make a ton of money.
[00:49:26]  Nobody will threaten the Straits of Hormoons again.
[00:49:30]  But Donald J. Trump saved the world from real chaos.
[00:49:34]  Witkoff, the negotiator, was told by the Iranians openly that they have stockpiled enough 60% enriched uranium, 460 kilograms, to make 11 bombs.
[00:49:47]  Thank God Trump did this.
[00:49:49]  Can you imagine a year from now?
[00:49:51]  What would it cost America if Iran had 11 nuclear bombs to threaten us?
[00:49:56]  They would hold us hostage.
[00:49:58]  We would be held hostage in perpetuity by this terrorist regime.
[00:50:02]  So the money we're spending is a good investment to take down a regime that's been the largest state sponsor of terrorism, has got American blood on its hands.
[00:50:11]  And when this regime falls, it's not if-when.
[00:50:14]  We're going to have a gateway to peace.
[00:50:16]  And the next thing that will happen is Saudi Arabia will recognize Israel.
[00:50:20]  And that will be the biggest change in 2,000 years in the Mideast.
[00:50:24]  And Donald J. Trump is the man to make it all happen.
[00:50:29]  That was Republican Senator Lindsey Graham defending the administration's conflict in Iran.
[00:50:35]  Of course, he was influential in being one of the people to convince the president to strike Iran in the first place.

=== The Gateway to Peace (15:54) ===

[00:50:42]  Now, before we get back to your calls, I turn now to something that happened over the weekend.
[00:50:46]  A New York Post headline says, Somber Day as Trump attends ceremony for six soldiers killed in Iran.
[00:50:53]  Quote, great heroes in our country.
[00:50:56]  If you scroll down just a little bit, it says that President Trump joined the solemn ceremony at Dover Air Force Base Saturday to mark the final homecoming of six Army Reserve soldiers killed when an Iranian drone struck a U.S. facility in Kuwait.
[00:51:10]  On your screen there, you're seeing some of that video from Saturday.
[00:51:15]  It says Air Force One touched down on the tarmac at Dover at 1:09 p.m. Saturday for the arrival of the six flag-draped transfer cases, and Trump deplaned about 20 minutes later, bearing a solemn expression.
[00:51:26]  He slowly descended down the stairs of Air Force One, greeted military members, and made a gesture with his fist to reporters who followed him up from Florida.
[00:51:34]  Trump, who wore a white USA baseball camp cap and stood next to First Lady Melania Trump for the somber moment, saluted as soldiers carried the flag-draped cases passed.
[00:51:46]  Quote, It's a sad part of war, the president later said aboard Air Force One.
[00:51:51]  Quote, It's a bad part of war.
[00:51:54]  The parents were so proud of their boy, as they called him, Trump added.
[00:51:58]  In one case, a young lady, the parents are so proud.
[00:52:02]  Also taking part were Vice President JD Vance, Second Lady Usha Vance, Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wells, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Army Secretary Dan Jisko, and others.
[00:52:17]  So that was Saturday.
[00:52:19]  Bill from Buffalo, New York, calling in on the former military line.
[00:52:24]  Good morning, Bill.
[00:52:26]  Good morning.
[00:52:29]  Do you need me to tell you the question again?
[00:52:32]  Okay.
[00:52:33]  Everybody gets to see our say.
[00:52:36]  And anyhow, I agree with James that called for Myrtle Beach.
[00:52:41]  I was stationed at Myrtle Beach, and we worked out A-10s, and we didn't sell A-10s to other countries.
[00:52:49]  But anyhow, what this administration is doing is I can't believe it.
[00:52:56]  I mean, I can see right through it.
[00:52:59]  And I think a lot of people do too.
[00:53:01]  I mean, it's gone beyond belief.
[00:53:06]  It's upsetting.
[00:53:09]  You know, I'm 66.
[00:53:12]  I don't see any relief for our senior citizens or disabled vets.
[00:53:17]  So, and I don't like what Trump's doing, and that's all I could say.
[00:53:23]  I'm sure he's a nice guy to go out to dinner with, but as far as running the country, I don't think he's worth that.
[00:53:29]  Hoot.
[00:53:31]  And thank you.
[00:53:35]  Vincent from Gaithersburg, Maryland, climbing in on the former military line.
[00:53:40]  You're next.
[00:53:40]  Good morning, Vincent.
[00:53:42]  Good morning.
[00:53:43]  Salute to the six soldiers who passed, and condolences to the families.
[00:53:49]  You see, the first thing we sign up for or sign when we enlist, used to be drafted, is you will die.
[00:54:00]  You are expendable.
[00:54:03]  We go in to defend our country, knowing full well we will be killed or worse.
[00:54:13]  And that's what we true military folks, men and women, are about.
[00:54:20]  Okay?
[00:54:21]  War is a condition of life since the beginning of time.
[00:54:29]  And it's not going to end with President, my commander-in-chief, President Trump, who you folks so rudely every day disrespect.
[00:54:42]  And if the Democrats ever get back in, I'm not talking about, I'm talking about the political Democrats.
[00:54:50]  I'm not talking about the Democrat people, okay?
[00:54:53]  But if the Democrat Party gets back in, we will be paying more than just 50 cents to a dollar more for gas, which is a small price to pay now to fund the war when the six soldiers gave their lives.
[00:55:11]  Small price to pay.
[00:55:14]  And they will continue on, double down, triple down, quadruple down Hakeem and Schumer and the entire Democrat Party.
[00:55:24]  Men and women, sport the whole bit.
[00:55:27]  General to child mutilation, the whole bit.
[00:55:30]  Infants killed up to birth and then 28 days after birth.
[00:55:33]  That was put in law by Governor Democrat Newsom.
[00:55:38]  And It's just preposterous to think that we would think a sacrifice of 50 cents to a dollar more temporarily.
[00:55:49]  It's such a big thing.
[00:55:52]  Anyway, to all my C-SPAN family, you C-SPAN, especially you, Miss Jasmine, you're very good, but it would be great if you could focus more on facts, not just opinions.
[00:56:06]  Anyway, everybody have a good day.
[00:56:09]  Vincent from Cathersburg.
[00:56:11]  Jennifer from Massachusetts, an Independent.
[00:56:14]  You're next.
[00:56:15]  Good morning, Jennifer.
[00:56:17]  Good morning, Jasmine.
[00:56:18]  Can you hear me out there?
[00:56:19]  I sure can.
[00:56:21]  Okay.
[00:56:22]  I really, I want to say I do appreciate the way you host this show also.
[00:56:27]  Thank you.
[00:56:28]  Any complaints about, thank you.
[00:56:31]  Any complaints about how C-SPAN runs their business is the fact it's to be taken up with the editorial bias of the media that they're reporting.
[00:56:46]  They're just presenting what the media is printing.
[00:56:49]  If you have a problem with what the media is saying, take it up with the editorial boards of the Independent.
[00:56:58]  I'm sorry, I'm stalling.
[00:57:01]  We're talking about Iran this morning.
[00:57:03]  Yeah, I want to say thank you to every single veteran out there for your sacrifices and your service.
[00:57:11]  But Trump does not respect the military.
[00:57:15]  It's not a value in his family.
[00:57:17]  They dodged, his grandfather dodged the draft before he left Europe.
[00:57:21]  Trump dodged the draft.
[00:57:23]  He was sent to military school for his dysfunctional behavior as a child within his own family system.
[00:57:31]  And that's why he resents the military.
[00:57:33]  He did not dress in black.
[00:57:35]  He wore an informal baseball cap.
[00:57:39]  He has no respect for the military.
[00:57:41]  The man does not know how to pray.
[00:57:43]  He has no faith except money and greed.
[00:57:47]  And I just want to remind everyone that the God of the Declaration of the Independence is not a Christian God.
[00:57:55]  It is nature's God.
[00:57:57]  That is a post-Enlightenment understanding of humanity being created by nature itself, not any formalized religious God.
[00:58:08]  Thank you so much.
[00:58:09]  And I don't know.
[00:58:10]  Everyone, take care of yourselves.
[00:58:12]  This is a very strange time in history.
[00:58:15]  Thank you.
[00:58:17]  That was Jennifer from Massachusetts.
[00:58:21]  I want to point quickly to an ABC news article from an interview that President Trump did over the phone over the weekend.
[00:58:29]  The headline is: Iran's next supreme leader won't, quote, last long.
[00:58:34]  Without my approval, Trump says.
[00:58:36]  It says, as the Iranians get closer, this was obviously before the latest Supreme Leader was selected.
[00:58:42]  President Trump said Sunday that the new leader, quote, is not going to last long if the Iranians don't get his approval first.
[00:58:48]  He's going to have to get approval from us.
[00:58:50]  The president told ABC News over the weekend: if he doesn't get approval from us, he's not going to last long.
[00:58:54]  We want to make sure that we won't have to go back every 10 years when you don't have a president like me that's not going to do it.
[00:59:00]  He added, I don't want people to have to go back in five years and have to do the same thing again, or worse, let them have a nuclear weapon.
[00:59:08]  When asked if he would be willing to approve someone with ties to the old regime, the president replied, I would in order to choose a good leader.
[00:59:15]  I would, yeah, I would.
[00:59:17]  There are numerous people that could qualify.
[00:59:21]  Seeming to offer yet another justification for the war, Trump said Iran was planning to take over the entire Middle East and suggested he stop them from doing so.
[00:59:30]  They are a paper tiger.
[00:59:32]  They weren't a paper tiger a week ago, I'll tell you.
[00:59:35]  And they were going to attack, he said.
[00:59:36]  Their plan was to attack the entire Middle East to take over the entire Middle East.
[00:59:42]  Manuel from Houston, a Democrat.
[00:59:44]  You're next.
[00:59:45]  Good morning, Manuel.
[00:59:46]  Good morning.
[00:59:47]  Thank you for accepting my call.
[00:59:49]  Well, this Iran issue has many layers, but the core of the layer is when the United States in 1953 installed the Shah of Iran.
[00:59:58]  We set that in motion and we're paying the price now.
[01:00:01]  Now, this issue has many layers to it.
[01:00:04]  One of them that I haven't heard is all those billions and billions that Trump has received from Arab nations, he's paying the piper.
[01:00:16]  He is also doing this because the money he's received, it's like a payoff.
[01:00:22]  Don't you see what's going on here?
[01:00:24]  And then Lindsey Graham, he said it outright.
[01:00:28]  I mean, out loud.
[01:00:29]  Once all this is done, walking, I made money.
[01:00:32]  It's all about money.
[01:00:33]  These people don't care.
[01:00:34]  Trump don't care.
[01:00:35]  Trump don't care about nothing.
[01:00:38]  I'm so disgusted with what's going on.
[01:00:40]  This man here, Trump 147, believes.
[01:00:44]  I truly believe that his dementia hasn't believed that he did it.
[01:00:47]  All right, Manuel, I think we take your point there.
[01:00:49]  Richard from North Carolina, Independent.
[01:00:53]  Good morning.
[01:00:54]  Good morning.
[01:00:55]  First, I wish to pay tribute to the seven fallen soldiers and their families.
[01:01:00]  That is most important.
[01:01:02]  Secondly, on this Mosdek thing, it's always people call in and say it was our fault, and there's very little context that people understand around that.
[01:01:11]  But we were in the midst of a Cold War at that time.
[01:01:15]  You're talking about 1953.
[01:01:17]  1953.
[01:01:19]  We were in the middle.
[01:01:20]  We were losing the Cold War at that point.
[01:01:22]  We had lost Eastern Europe.
[01:01:23]  We had lost China.
[01:01:24]  We had lost North Korea.
[01:01:25]  We were having problems all around the world, including Latin America.
[01:01:29]  We could not allow Mossadegh, who was pro-Soviet, to have us lose the Middle East.
[01:01:36]  And people should just understand the context.
[01:01:39]  If he was such a reformer, the revolution of 1979 did not correct that.
[01:01:45]  It made things a whole lot worse.
[01:01:47]  On the making money thing, I did see that Lindsey Graham.
[01:01:50]  That was on a financial show.
[01:01:52]  And he was asked a question about how much this was costing.
[01:01:56]  So he was responding in that context.
[01:01:58]  But lastly, I just wish, this is obviously all war is terrible and people are losing their lives.
[01:02:05]  I just ask people to keep in mind the alternative.
[01:02:08]  And there's a notion that, well, we just keep pushing the ball down the road and Obama had it all fixed.
[01:02:16]  And things truly got worse even when that JCPard me the five six-party deal got thank you.
[01:02:26]  God got approved.
[01:02:28]  Things were still getting worse.
[01:02:29]  People just don't understand that.
[01:02:31]  Maybe not on the nuclear side, but they were building more centrifuges for a future use, which they did end up using, as well as missiles and other things.
[01:02:40]  Please, I just ask, yes, the news right now is difficult, but I just ask people to consider the huge set of issues and understand that nothing is complicated.
[01:02:52]  I support what he's doing, Mr. Trump, and I support our military.
[01:02:58]  And I hope we have a swift victory where the people of Iran are free.
[01:03:02]  The Iranian exiles all around the world, or diaspora, all around the world are celebrating.
[01:03:09]  And I really hope we can just keep it together and get this thing over with a victory as quickly as possible.
[01:03:16]  Thank you.
[01:03:17]  Richard from North Carolina.
[01:03:19]  Thanks for calling in.
[01:03:20]  John from North Carolina as well, calling on the former military line.
[01:03:24]  You're next.
[01:03:25]  Good morning, John.
[01:03:27]  Good morning, Jasmine.
[01:03:27]  How are you feeling this morning?
[01:03:28]  I'm doing all right.
[01:03:29]  How are you?
[01:03:30]  I'm doing great.
[01:03:31]  I'm doing great.
[01:03:32]  I'm calling on behalf of all the servicemen and women that's out there serving and the seven that's the seats and gone to guard the gates.
[01:03:43]  My concern is: if they decide to put boots on the ground, as you can see on the news, that a lot of the natives have left the country.
[01:03:54]  The thing of it is, if the ones that's still there boot on the ground, those young men and women, as soon as they hit the beach, how are they going to hit the beach first of all?
[01:04:09]  They got to penetrate and get inside of Tehran and all that.
[01:04:14]  It's going to be real.
[01:04:16]  We're going to lose a lot of men and women.
[01:04:20]  You've got to look at it like this.
[01:04:21]  A lot of them signed up thinking that it wasn't going to be a war.
[01:04:27]  But now we are being thrown into something that I don't think that we need to be involved in.
[01:04:35]  The natives, the Iranians, I believe they can take care of themselves.
[01:04:42]  And what about the Iranians that's here in the United States?
[01:04:46]  Do you see them running to the recruiting station to sign up to help our fellow patriots fight this war?
[01:04:56]  Me and the women.
[01:04:58]  All right.
[01:04:58]  John from North Carolina, thanks for calling in.
[01:05:01]  Jeff from Missouri, a Republican.
[01:05:04]  You're our last caller of the section, Jeff.
[01:05:06]  What you got?
[01:05:07]  Good morning.
[01:05:08]  Good morning, America.
[01:05:09]  Well, I got a lot, but everything is.
[01:05:12]  Okay, give it to me in 30 seconds.
[01:05:15]  Everything's based on hypersonic missiles and how far they can reach in a short period of time.
[01:05:22]  Hemispheric defense is what President Trump is trying to work towards.
[01:05:26]  The hemisphere over in the Arab nations has always been uprooted by Iran.
[01:05:33]  His baby is the Abraham Accords.
[01:05:36]  They're defending the Abraham Accords and the people that have joined the Abraham Accords is helping Israel and the United States defeat Iran.
[01:05:45]  The idea that he's shutting off China's oil, he's bombing Russia's supply of drones and missiles that they get from Iran.
[01:05:56]  The idea that he is killing three birds with one stone, most of America can't even conceive.
[01:06:04]  The idea of rebuilding trade routes and eliminating China's power and reasserting ours just scares the hell out of all the useful idiots because they cannot understand we have a leader, Donald Trump, who is a visionary and has a plan.
[01:06:24]  And he is putting the plan to work.
[01:06:28]  He knows how to finish a skyscraper.
[01:06:31]  He knows how to work with other people.
[01:06:35]  The Saudis.

=== Bridging Government and Middle East (04:23) ===

[01:06:36]  Okay, Jeff, I'm going to give you 10 more seconds and then we've got to wrap up.
[01:06:40]  Okay.
[01:06:41]  They all are working with him because they had worked with him while he built for them years ago.
[01:06:48]  They trust him.
[01:06:49]  They know he's a man of his word, which most people in politics are not.
[01:06:55]  God bless.
[01:06:55]  Jeff, thanks for calling in.
[01:06:57]  Later on this morning on the Washington Journal, News Nation host and AEI senior fellow Chris Steyerwalt joins us with the political followout from the Iran conflict.
[01:07:07]  But first, after the break, a conversation with Alex Vatenka of the Middle East Institute with the latest in the U.S. and Israel's conflict with Iran and future of the Iranian regime.
[01:07:27]  T-Span is as unbiased as you can get.
[01:07:31]  You are so fair.
[01:07:32]  I don't know how anybody can say otherwise.
[01:07:34]  You guys do the most important work for everyone in this country.
[01:07:39]  I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices.
[01:07:42]  You bring these divergent viewpoints and you present both sides of an issue and you allow people to make up their own minds.
[01:07:49]  I absolutely love C-SPAN.
[01:07:51]  I love to hear both sides.
[01:07:53]  I've watched C-SPAN every morning and it is unbiased.
[01:07:56]  And you bring in factual information for the callers to understand where they are in their comments.
[01:08:03]  It's probably the only place that we can hear honest opinion of Americans across the country.
[01:08:08]  You guys at C-SPAN are doing such a wonderful job of allowing free exchange of ideas without a lot of interruptions.
[01:08:15]  Thank you, C-SPAN, for being a light in the dark.
[01:08:23]  Who's your representative?
[01:08:24]  Who sits on which committee?
[01:08:26]  Where do you even start?
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[01:08:48]  Stay informed.
[01:08:49]  Stay engaged.
[01:08:52]  Washington Journal continues.
[01:08:55]  Joining us now to talk more about the war in Iran is Alex Vatanka of the Middle East Institute, a senior fellow there.
[01:09:01]  Alex, thanks so much for being with us this morning.
[01:09:04]  Thank you for having me.
[01:09:05]  Great to be with you.
[01:09:06]  All right, let's start off.
[01:09:07]  Tell our viewers what your mission at the Middle East Institute is and how are you funded?
[01:09:13]  Sure thing.
[01:09:14]  So the Middle East Institute is the oldest think tank in the United States with a focus on the Middle East.
[01:09:20]  We are trying to, to the best of our ability, and if I may, so I think we're doing a good job being a bridge between the peoples of the Middle East and the people of the United States.
[01:09:30]  You know, going back to 1946, right after the Second World War, a group of American diplomats come back to the U.S. and decide, you know, there's this important rising region in the world with strategic importance, including a presence of much of the world's oil at the time that we need to get to know better.
[01:09:48]  So they start, you know, the Middle East Institute 1946, as I said.
[01:09:53]  And we are still around in downtown Washington, D.C.
[01:09:58]  We work with various government agencies here in terms of being a source they can use.
[01:10:04]  We are non-partisan, we are open source, we deal with various government agencies, so we provide briefings and so forth.
[01:10:11]  And we also, you know, as I said, act as a bridge between U.S. government, U.S. institutions, and institutions and people over in the Middle East.
[01:10:19]  So, by the way, we have a policy program, we produce articles.
[01:10:23]  People are more than welcome to go to mei.edu, that's mei.edu, and see our articles.
[01:10:31]  We cover this war, there's analysis.
[01:10:33]  Usually, they're around 1,000, 1,500-word articles.
[01:10:36]  Pretty easy to read, but you will get a rich sort of a level of substance in terms of what's going on, who the actors are, the bigger context.
[01:10:44]  We also have a wonderful art program bringing Middle Eastern art, including paintings, music, literature, to again downtown DC.
[01:10:53]  And folks are welcome to look up our website and show up and see what we have brought for the region for them to enjoy.

=== Mobilizing Iran Against the Regime (15:02) ===

[01:10:59]  All right, well, let's get into some of those details about who the power players are here.
[01:11:03]  Developing over the weekend is that Iran's Assembly of Experts has selected a successor to the former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameni, his second son, Mushaba Khameni.
[01:11:15]  He will become the new supreme leader.
[01:11:17]  Tell us about this succession and what do we need to know about his son?
[01:11:24]  So, Jasmine, first thing I say is: remember, the Islamic Republic was created in 1979 by the revolution that happened at the time.
[01:11:31]  It was a big revolution, including many different components.
[01:11:34]  Much of it was leftist, much of it was nationalist.
[01:11:38]  There was an Islamist part to it.
[01:11:40]  And the Islamists won that internal struggle in Iran.
[01:11:43]  Ayatollah, then founding father of the system, Ayatollah Khomeini, became the figurehead.
[01:11:49]  He lasted till 1989.
[01:11:51]  He died in 1989.
[01:11:53]  And Ani Khamenei, the supreme leader who was killed on the 28th of February by the Israelis and Americans, he was in power as the second supreme leader for 36 years.
[01:12:05]  And now his son, Mujtaba Khameni, has taken over as the third supreme leader.
[01:12:10]  I say that just to point out that in the history of Persia or Iran, country that's been together for 5,000 years, there is no precedent for a supreme leader until 1979.
[01:12:22]  So this is a man-made, man-made.
[01:12:25]  A lot of things are man-made, but this is not a religiously deep, kind of grounded function role.
[01:12:31]  It was made up essentially in 1979 by Khomeini and his people.
[01:12:36]  There have only been two supreme leaders until now.
[01:12:41]  The Muchtaba Khamenei supreme leadership is nothing to do with the man having any religious credentials.
[01:12:50]  He's 56 years old.
[01:12:52]  He is not a religiously recognized figure.
[01:12:56]  He's a political operator.
[01:12:59]  I can tell you, Jasmine, there are about a couple of videos online where we actually have his voice and what he has to say.
[01:13:05]  Low-profile, behind-the-scene operator, very different from his father, who was a speaker, would give speeches every so often.
[01:13:15]  And final point I make is he's got big shoes to fill, not necessarily good shoes, but he's got his father's 36 years of reign to continue.
[01:13:25]  But I will say he is a man who is the front of the front man, the face of the Islamic Republic to maintain the sort of idea of this being a theocracy, which it is.
[01:13:37]  But really, the main power broker here is the entity called the Revolutionary Guards, the IRGC.
[01:13:44]  And they have pushed for Mujtaba to take over.
[01:13:46]  And now Mujtaba is in this position.
[01:13:48]  He will need some time if he's not assassinated by U.S. and Israel.
[01:13:52]  He needs some time to find his way.
[01:13:54]  And the big question is, which way does he, but actually more importantly, where the revolutionary guards decide to go, depending on how this war unfolds and whether the regime survives or not.
[01:14:04]  Yeah, President Trump told ABC News over the weekend that he wants to have a say in who comes to power in Iran once the war is over, adding that the new leader is not going to last long without his approval.
[01:14:17]  I wonder, obviously, I know the Islamic Revolutionary Guard is kind of the real figure in the area, but does Mushab Akhamini have support within the region?
[01:14:29]  Excuse me, within the regime?
[01:14:32]  Within the regime.
[01:14:33]  So Mujtabo Khamenei is known, we've known him as an operator since 2005.
[01:14:40]  If your viewers, listeners, remember that there was an Iranian president called Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who made a lot of news by saying oftentimes pretty outlandish things.
[01:14:50]  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was essentially, in many estimations, put in that presidential office.
[01:14:57]  And I have to also point out Iranian elections are hardly free and fair.
[01:15:01]  A lot of it is political theater.
[01:15:02]  But nonetheless, in that context, Iranian elections, Mujtabukhameni and his circle were known back in 2005 to having pushed Ahmadinejad as a candidate.
[01:15:12]  So we've known about him, Mujtaba Khamenei, for at least 20 years as a political operator.
[01:15:19]  And most of the kind of impressions that people in Iran have about Mujtaba Khamenei, I would say, are negative.
[01:15:27]  This is a guy who works behind the scenes.
[01:15:29]  He's a hardliner.
[01:15:31]  He is sort of essentially much more focused on tools of repression than looking to the Iranian people and trying to figure out what it is they want.
[01:15:39]  So not a good image in the eyes of Iranians.
[01:15:41]  I think most Iranians today are demoralized, frankly.
[01:15:44]  A vast majority of Iranians do not like the Islamic Republic by all accounts.
[01:15:48]  So Mujab Khamenei coming to power is a terrible piece of news, I think.
[01:15:53]  If this is going to be the legacy of this war so far, I would say this has been a strategic defeat.
[01:15:58]  But obviously, it's way early to judge where this war is going.
[01:16:01]  We're less than 10 days into it or about 10 days, so who knows where this war is going.
[01:16:05]  But Muchtabo Khameni fundamentally also has to, with the revolutionary guards, make a decision.
[01:16:10]  Do they want to continue down the path of the policies of Ali Khamenei, his father, who brought Iran to this point of disaster, or do they decide to actually go in a different direction?
[01:16:20]  And from what you just told us and we've heard, President Trump seems to be open to that.
[01:16:27]  But you know, the problem we have here is this.
[01:16:29]  President Trump is so much into optics.
[01:16:32]  He wants the other guy to pick up the phone and say, listen, I'm sorry, I give up.
[01:16:37]  That's not going to cut it with this Iranian regime.
[01:16:39]  So if you really want to work with someone like Gojabu Khami Revolution Guards, you can't do it from the cameras.
[01:16:44]  You've got to cut deals with him quietly.
[01:16:46]  How do you de-escalate if that's what you decide to do?
[01:16:49]  Obviously, the alternative is you can cut a deal with this regime.
[01:16:52]  It doesn't matter if it's Muchtabo Khamenei or somebody else, that the regime has to go, which is the Israeli position, which is fine as a policy objective.
[01:17:00]  But the problem is it requires a lot of investment.
[01:17:02]  It's not going to be done in a couple of weeks or a couple of months.
[01:17:05]  So the president has to essentially make his case for a long, protracted potential conflict with this Iranian regime and argue why it's worth it, because the cost will be pretty significant going forward.
[01:17:16]  There's no way this regime is going to just collapse under its own weight.
[01:17:21]  Again, unpopular as they are, they still have capabilities to sort of, if you will, hit back.
[01:17:28]  I want to have you listen to this clip from over the weekend.
[01:17:33]  It was Iranian foreign minister on Meet the Press speaking as reports continue to come in that Israel has threatened to target any Iranian successor.
[01:17:43]  Let's take a listen to the foreign minister right now.
[01:17:47]  We allow nobody to interfere in our domestic affairs.
[01:17:51]  This is up to the Iranian people to elect their new leader.
[01:17:55]  They have already elected the Assembly of Experts, and the Assembly of Experts would do the job.
[01:18:01]  It is only the business of the Iranian people and nobody else's business.
[01:18:08]  Would Iran ever agree to a ceasefire to get back to the negotiating table to end all of this military conflict?
[01:18:20]  Well, they have to explain why they started this aggression before we come to the point to even consider a ceasefire.
[01:18:28]  Of course, nobody wants to continue this war.
[01:18:31]  This is not our war.
[01:18:32]  This is not the war of our choice.
[01:18:35]  This is imposed on us by the United States, by Israelis.
[01:18:41]  They have started this war unprovoked, unwarranted, illegally.
[01:18:47]  And what you are doing is an illegal, is illegal act of self-defense, and we have every right to do that.
[01:18:53]  So it is not fair that if only it stops the aggression and asks us to stop too.
[01:19:00]  You know, as I said, this time is different.
[01:19:03]  So how does the Iranian regime and the Iranian people respond to threats like this?
[01:19:07]  That, you know, if the if a new successor doesn't get approval from President Trump or perhaps from Prime Minister Netanyahu, that they could be killed?
[01:19:19]  Look, I think obviously for the regime supporters, and again, I want to point out, nobody knows exactly what percentage of Iran's 90 million people support the Islamist regime.
[01:19:29]  Nobody really knows.
[01:19:30]  There are no surveys allowed, Jasmine, to go and ask freely, do you support this regime or not?
[01:19:35]  It's not like nine states where you can see every second day where people's opinions are on a given issue.
[01:19:40]  But I mean, I've been doing this for 25 years.
[01:19:42]  I happen to have been born in Iran.
[01:19:44]  I speak the language.
[01:19:45]  I read between the lines.
[01:19:46]  I know the culture.
[01:19:48]  And I can tell you, my estimation is 15, 20% of that 15, 20%, many of them are just supporting the regime, not because they believe in the ideology anymore, but because that's where the paycheck is coming from.
[01:20:00]  And nobody's giving them an alternative or way out of it.
[01:20:02]  So the regime is got its base.
[01:20:05]  And for that base, the sort of ideological core, which probably isn't more than 5%, they make a lot of noise.
[01:20:12]  They're in the, obviously, media quite a bit.
[01:20:14]  You see them waving the flag and so on.
[01:20:16]  But that's not the majority of Iran.
[01:20:17]  The majority of Iran gave up on the Islamic Republic a long time ago.
[01:20:21]  I mean, this is a country that has produced seven, eight million immigrants.
[01:20:24]  People don't leave their countries because they love the system.
[01:20:26]  They leave because they don't like the system.
[01:20:28]  So I think the base takes what President Trump says as an insult and they will do anything to prove President Trump wrong.
[01:20:36]  And in a way, they have.
[01:20:37]  They've already chosen Mujaba, even though President Trump said he didn't want to see that happen.
[01:20:41]  I don't know why President Trump insists on selecting the next Iranian supreme leader.
[01:20:46]  Again, that takes us back to optics.
[01:20:48]  But the fundamental decision, and this takes me back to what Abbas Arafsi, the foreign minister, was saying just earlier.
[01:20:55]  Yes, you could make the argument that the United States attacked Iran unprovoked during a round of diplomacy.
[01:21:01]  Nobody's going to deny that.
[01:21:02]  That's just obvious.
[01:21:03]  We know what happened.
[01:21:04]  But what he doesn't say, and he was later on talking about permanent peace, he doesn't say that the Islamic Republic for 47 years has made it into a pillar policy of theirs to essentially stand up to the United States, not just stand up, actively try and undermine the U.S. in the region, certainly in the Middle East, and U.S. ally, in this case, Israel, which this Islamic Republic doesn't even recognize the right to exist.
[01:21:29]  So, you know, that's in the best case scenario, if this regime stays in power once the conflict is over, the very least that whoever is back hasn't been assassinated needs to do is which way do they want to go?
[01:21:42]  Because as I said earlier, Yasmeen, the Ali Khamenei legacy has been a disaster.
[01:21:46]  They need to go in a different direction.
[01:21:48]  They need to focus on building better lives for their own people in Iran, as opposed to what I think has been a disastrous, ideologically led foreign policy.
[01:21:56]  And I want to ask you a quick question before we turn to some calls here: can you just lay out for us how the war is escalating, which countries that it is going into, and talk to us a little bit about civilian casualties.
[01:22:10]  How many do we believe or do we know there to be so far?
[01:22:15]  So the Iranians are not telling us exactly how many of their sort of security forces have been killed so far.
[01:22:21]  At least from what I remember last, I checked over 1,400 civilians dead, massive devastation to the city of Tehran, city of 10 million.
[01:22:29]  Some of the civilian infrastructure being hit, particularly by the Israelis, is going to go down really badly.
[01:22:34]  What they're doing, they're shooting themselves in the foot.
[01:22:36]  They're turning the people of Iran that hates the regime now and gives the regime narrative space because this is like this, Israel is not here to bring peace to you, will be the regime's argument.
[01:22:46]  They're trying to make this country collapse, which would be terrible for the Middle East, would be terrible for the Europeans, the country of 90 million.
[01:22:54]  That's the narrative.
[01:22:55]  The Israelis have to be very careful what they're targeting here, because it's very quickly going to go from a war between Israel and a regime that's hated by its own people to a war between Israel, a country of 9 million people, against a country of 90 million people.
[01:23:09]  And that's not a good place for Israel to be.
[01:23:11]  And that could be a generational fight.
[01:23:13]  So I hope the Israelis really think hard about next time they hit an oil refinery or port because they're hitting the livelihoods and lives and the future of people of Iran, not the regime only.
[01:23:21]  So that's, I think it's important.
[01:23:23]  But look, going back to how this war is going, as long as it's the regime that's getting hit, many Iranians might see this as a liberation moment.
[01:23:34]  But if they start dying in larger numbers, that's when you can say, well, they're no longer seeing this as a war of liberation.
[01:23:42]  This is a war by foreign adversaries, aggressors.
[01:23:46]  And again, that's why it's so important.
[01:23:48]  I heard Senator Graham, or I read Senator Graham saying on X, somebody's probably been the biggest champion of this war, saying to the Israelis, be careful what you're hitting now because you don't want to turn the people of Iran against US and Israel.
[01:24:03]  And I have to also add a final point, Jasmine.
[01:24:05]  If there is one thing here that suggests the U.S. has a long-term strategy, because I'm not sure if the U.S. does, is that one thing that could point to some sort of a strategy is a capacity to mobilize that angry Iranian population against the regime, because then the regime is lost.
[01:24:22]  But you've got to make sure that angry population rises against the regime and not against the United States and Israel, because then your entire policy is backfired.
[01:24:31]  Yeah, some of the photos on the papers this morning illustrate after the Israelis hit those oil fields in Tehran, smoke coming from it.
[01:24:43]  This is a Times article.
[01:24:45]  I'm going to put right quickly a journal photo over it.
[01:24:48]  So those photos were pretty dramatic looking at the sky basically covered in smoke.
[01:24:53]  Okay, let's turn to some calls.
[01:24:54]  Quickly, Tony from Pennsylvania, an independent.
[01:24:58]  You're next.
[01:24:59]  Good morning, Tony.
[01:25:01]  Yeah, good morning.
[01:25:02]  So I'd like to share a few concerns.
[01:25:05]  One is just the economics of this war.
[01:25:08]  Iran is producing drones that cost $50,000, and we're needing three missiles that cost a million each to shoot them down.
[01:25:15]  That's a concern economically.
[01:25:16]  The Strait of Hormuz, before the war started, we knew that Iran was going to shut that down and oil prices were going to spike.
[01:25:23]  The whole region is pretty fragile.
[01:25:25]  Saudi Arabia needs a desalinization plant that Iran could take out.
[01:25:29]  Iran has been very calculated and calibrated in its response.
[01:25:32]  It's using older weapons.
[01:25:34]  It's depleting our defense missiles.
[01:25:37]  So the whole region, including the U.S. bases that would protect it, have been largely deemed sort of inoperable at this point, and the U.S. is falling back.
[01:25:47]  So our military strategy is horrible.
[01:25:50]  Putting ground troops in.
[01:25:52]  The Pentagon ran war games and simulations and said, don't do this.
[01:25:56]  Don't do this war.
[01:25:57]  Don't do this.
[01:25:58]  I have no idea why we're in the Middle East doing a war at Iran.

=== Iran's Calculated Regional Strategy (15:14) ===

[01:26:02]  I suspect it has a lot to do with Israel.
[01:26:05]  I've been told that the Epstein tapes may have been driving this and that they may have leverage on U.S. presidents dating back decades as part of a Mossad intelligence operation.
[01:26:15]  I don't know why we're there, but nobody with education and a clue thinks it's a good idea.
[01:26:20]  The other piece that I find to be very, very, very troubling is when we took out the Ayatollah, we created a martyr.
[01:26:28]  Maybe some of the Iranian people were not with Iran.
[01:26:31]  They are now.
[01:26:32]  We also bombed a school full of girls.
[01:26:35]  So the guests talked about Israel picking its targets and being careful.
[01:26:38]  But what Israel has demonstrated is that it loves bombing hospitals, reporters.
[01:26:44]  The target selection by Israel is infuriating.
[01:26:48]  The last piece I would say is I know you asked the guest from the think tank, hey, where did your funding come from?
[01:26:54]  He didn't list one source.
[01:26:56]  So I took the liberty of looking that up and I'll share it with the American people.
[01:27:00]  He gets his money from foreign governments, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
[01:27:04]  If one good thing could come from this, I hope that Iran does take out the desalinization plant in Saudi Arabia.
[01:27:10]  They deserve it.
[01:27:12]  Okay.
[01:27:13]  There was a lot there.
[01:27:15]  Yes, you can.
[01:27:15]  I'm glad Tony looked it up.
[01:27:17]  And I would encourage everybody to look up our website, MEI.edu.
[01:27:21]  And you look at our annual report, you'll see exactly the sources of funding we have.
[01:27:26]  Every year for tax reasons, you'll see that document.
[01:27:29]  Tony's right.
[01:27:30]  United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia have contributed.
[01:27:33]  I don't know if they did last year, but they certainly have contributed and hardly a secret.
[01:27:37]  But there are lots of other corporations that have as well and private individuals who have.
[01:27:41]  So again, it's a long mixed bag of things.
[01:27:44]  You find U.S. government agencies that backed us in the past, foreign governments, but they are not a majority of our sources of funding.
[01:27:51]  We have plenty of individuals, particularly Americans and Middle Easterners, who have an interest in understanding between peoples of the United States and Middle East.
[01:28:01]  And, you know, they contribute as well.
[01:28:04]  So we're not beholden to any interest group.
[01:28:07]  And I will challenge Tony to find an article where we say something that pushes some particular agendas.
[01:28:13]  I certainly don't do, and I don't know any of my colleagues who do.
[01:28:16]  Something else that Tony mentioned in his question was the bombing of the Iranian school for girls.
[01:28:23]  The president has said that it wasn't the U.S. Pete Hague said that the defense secretary says that it's still under investigation.
[01:28:29]  There are some reporting that it looks like it could have been an Israeli bomb.
[01:28:33]  I wonder what you've learned about that or do you have any insight into what that was?
[01:28:40]  Jasmine, pretty much what you said is the summary that I know or horrible what happened.
[01:28:47]  These are innocent little girls, innocent little girls that had nothing to do with anyone.
[01:28:51]  And they got, you know, I have 170 on them, 70 of them.
[01:28:55]  And you have a couple more examples like this.
[01:28:57]  And as I said, then you lost the country of Iran for another generation or two.
[01:29:00]  And yes, the Russians, the Chinese are going to go and benefit and probably many others around the world because this is going to be presented as American-Israeli imperialism.
[01:29:07]  So it's so sensitive that you don't do what we saw in this town of Minab in the south.
[01:29:13]  I don't know if the Israelis did it, Americans did it.
[01:29:15]  I thought the Americans had taken responsibility.
[01:29:18]  Minab is on the Persian Gulf Coast.
[01:29:20]  That's where the U.S. Navy is.
[01:29:22]  That's where basically the southern side of this war seems to be were dominated by U.S. military operations.
[01:29:29]  The Israelis, from what I understand, operate more in the West.
[01:29:31]  But I have really no idea who did this.
[01:29:33]  All I can tell you is have a few more incidents like this, then you can forget about the people of Iran rising up against Ayatollah, because when they're going to get killed anyways, what's the point of siding up with a foreign invader, if you will, a foreign power that's attacking them?
[01:29:51]  So very sensitive moment.
[01:29:52]  And I really hope for the sake of the United States image in the world that we are very careful and this stuff doesn't happen.
[01:29:59]  And hitting civilian targets, just obviously it's an international, you know, a breach of international law.
[01:30:05]  It's a war crime.
[01:30:06]  And we have to call it what it is.
[01:30:09]  If we claim we stand for being the good guys, if we go after the Russians for what they do in Ukraine, then we have no right not to say anything now.
[01:30:17]  All right, Van from Paris, Ohio and Independent, you're next.
[01:30:20]  Good morning, Van.
[01:30:22]  Hello.
[01:30:23]  Thanks for taking my call.
[01:30:25]  I would like to ask the guest speaker why he thinks Donald Trump entered the war.
[01:30:33]  If it was all just Israeli being threatened to be attacked and has never been attacked by Iran recently.
[01:30:40]  And I don't think they ever would have been.
[01:30:43]  And they were no threat to us.
[01:30:45]  And they were not attacking anything of ours or anything in NATO.
[01:30:51]  And I'd like to know if Donald Trump is maybe wanting to widen the scope of conflict.
[01:30:58]  He said he was the peace president going to stop the war in Ukraine in 24 hours.
[01:31:03]  It's been over a year.
[01:31:04]  He hasn't done a dang thing.
[01:31:07]  And he has invaded.
[01:31:09]  three countries now just the last couple weeks, counting Iran, Nicaragua, Venezuela.
[01:31:18]  And who else is he going to attack?
[01:31:19]  Is he trying to widen the scope of this war to make it a world war?
[01:31:24]  Okay, Van, let's get a response in there from Alex.
[01:31:28]  I think it's a very important question to ask.
[01:31:30]  What motivated the United States to attack Iran now?
[01:31:34]  You know, look, as somebody who works in a think tank all day long, I study one country, Iran.
[01:31:40]  That's all I do.
[01:31:42]  And I would have said if somebody from the White House had called me, and by the way, they didn't, the Trump administration has not reached out from what I know, except the few that work with them.
[01:31:51]  The think tank community were not the voices that led to this war.
[01:31:54]  If you listen, most people would have said this is not the thing you want to do.
[01:31:58]  And I heard some of your viewers earlier justified in terms of grand strategy, how you're going to get Russia and China at the same time.
[01:32:06]  Look, on paper, that might seem convincing, but in reality, that's not where this war is going right now.
[01:32:12]  Again, I don't want to be a doom and gloom and say this is a lost cause.
[01:32:15]  It might turn out and the regime might be gone and the U.S. will have an Iran that's pro-American like it was before 79.
[01:32:21]  That's a great place for the United States to be, but we're not there yet.
[01:32:24]  But look, I don't know.
[01:32:28]  And I don't believe in conspiracy theories, but I don't think it's a conspiracy theory to say that Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel has spent 40 years making the case for war with Iran.
[01:32:40]  And Israel can't go to war with Iran on its own.
[01:32:42]  So it comes to its closest ally, United States, and convinced Donald Trump, convinced Donald Trump.
[01:32:47]  I mean, I'm referring to, for example, an article that was in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.
[01:32:52]  Bibi Netanyahu had an audience of one, and that was Donald Trump, convinced the president, and here we are in this war.
[01:32:59]  So, but I would also point out, going back to 1979, the Iranians, even if, because the Iranians said for months, for months, for years, they said this is Israel trying to drag the Americans into war with us.
[01:33:10]  If that's how Tehran saw it, then I don't know why they didn't try harder to talk to the United States with Biden, with Trump first term and this second Trump administration.
[01:33:22]  You know, until this war broke out, the Iranians were refusing to sit and talk to the likes of Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff directly.
[01:33:30]  I think if they had sent a foreign minister or someone senior from Tehran to Washington to make their case directly to President Trump, they might have avoided this war.
[01:33:40]  But again, the Iranians have their own problem of optics.
[01:33:42]  They don't want to seem like they're bending a knee.
[01:33:46]  And that's terrible because it ends up in affairs like this war right now.
[01:33:51]  But yeah, I think fundamentally, U.S.-Iran had been on this path to conflict for a very long time.
[01:34:01]  We've seen many sort of skirmishes.
[01:34:03]  Iran, as we know, in Iraq in Plysis, did everything it could to undermine U.S. policy.
[01:34:09]  But would it have been better to approach the problem other than the military one that we're seeing right now?
[01:34:17]  I would have said probably so.
[01:34:19]  I think, and Jasmine, this takes me to one of the questions you asked me earlier, and I'll give you an answer in terms of how the region feels.
[01:34:25]  The region feels betrayed.
[01:34:27]  The region feels that the United States is not looking after them right now because they screamed, top of the lungs, please don't start this war with Iran.
[01:34:35]  Iran can reach the United States, but Iran can reach us in Saudi, in the UAE, in Qatar, in Bahrain, in Kuwait, in Oman.
[01:34:42]  And that's exactly what the Iranians are doing, which, by the way, they telegraphed months in advance.
[01:34:47]  None of the things we're seeing right now in terms of hitting tankers or hitting refineries.
[01:34:52]  None of this should surprise us because they've been saying it in their media for months.
[01:34:56]  If you attack us, we will retaliate in this way.
[01:34:58]  And it's exactly what they're doing.
[01:35:00]  I'm not defending it.
[01:35:01]  I'm just saying we shouldn't have been surprised by it.
[01:35:04]  There was an article from the Washington Post that came out over the weekend.
[01:35:07]  The headline is, Intel report warns large-scale war, quote, unlikely to oust Iran's regime.
[01:35:14]  If you go down a little bit further, it says that the classified report by the National Intelligence Council finds that even a large-scale assault on Iran launched by the U.S. would be unlikely to oust the Islamic Republic's entrenched military and clerical establishment.
[01:35:31]  A sobering assessment as the Trump administration raises the specter of an extended military campaign that officials say have only just begun.
[01:35:40]  The findings confirmed to the Washington Post by three people familiar with the report's contents raised doubts about President Donald Trump's declared plan to, quote, clear out Iran's leadership structure and install a ruler of his choosing.
[01:35:51]  The report completed about a week before the United States and Israel and Israel initiated the war on February 28th outlined succession scenarios stemming from either a narrowly tailored campaign against Iran's leaders or a broader assault as leadership and government institutions.
[01:36:06]  The people familiar with the findings said, I wonder, Alex, do you agree that a large-scale attack would be unlikely to oust the regime?
[01:36:17]  And are there signs that a large-scale assault is likely?
[01:36:23]  Jasmine, so much of this depends on whether you're actually doing the hard work in terms of trying to look for defectors inside the regime.
[01:36:30]  To my fundamental point that I think so much of my analysis is centered on, the regime is unpopular.
[01:36:38]  The regime has supporters, they're armed, they're angry, and they will fight, but they're a minority.
[01:36:44]  So, the question for the United States is: do you just go in with boots on the ground and start shooting in every direction?
[01:36:49]  Or do you first pave the ground for a political end here, which means it's not the Iranian opposition from outside that's going to go back to Iran and take over the country?
[01:36:59]  That's not going to happen.
[01:37:00]  Again, one of your callers said, you know, how many Iranians are going to go and fight?
[01:37:04]  That's a very good question to ask.
[01:37:06]  A lot of Iranians hate this Islamic Republic, but what are they going to go and actually fight it?
[01:37:11]  That's a different question entirely.
[01:37:13]  So, the burden will be on the U.S. military when it comes to boots on the ground.
[01:37:17]  And the Israelis don't even have the capacity.
[01:37:19]  The only country that can do that is Israel.
[01:37:21]  I'm sorry, is the United States.
[01:37:25]  But you can make life easier for yourself if that's the scenario that we're going to face, which is to say, how do I weaken this system from within?
[01:37:32]  How do I appeal to the many, many, and we know they exist, regime rank and file who recognize this is a sinking ship.
[01:37:41]  They want to get off.
[01:37:42]  They don't want to die.
[01:37:43]  How do you give them an off-rap?
[01:37:45]  Because that's how you go about it.
[01:37:46]  Before you put boots on the ground, you need to be patient in a sense.
[01:37:50]  You need to start having those conversations.
[01:37:52]  People like to talk about the Venezuela kind of scenario where you have, you know, the CIA leading the effort, you have some kind of a, you know, decision by the seniors in the regime to defect.
[01:38:06]  You can do that in Iran.
[01:38:08]  It'd be much harder than the case of Venezuela, much harder, much more investment required.
[01:38:13]  But that's what I think you should do before continuing down the path of military intervention because that just becomes an open-ended potentially quagmire, which is exactly what Donald Trump, you know, repeatedly in his political career warned us against.
[01:38:29]  And he said these wars in the Middle East don't pay off.
[01:38:32]  So for him to go and start the biggest of them all would be more than ironic.
[01:38:37]  Okay, James from Massachusetts and Independent.
[01:38:39]  You're next.
[01:38:39]  Good morning, James.
[01:38:41]  Good morning.
[01:38:43]  Yeah, on that note, I just want to make a prediction.
[01:38:47]  I like to bet in some ways, not money, but I do like to look at political and see if you can jump down the road and see what's happening.
[01:38:55]  With Trump, it's not very hard.
[01:38:57]  I mean, his long-term plan, once he began this campaign, was for boots on the ground.
[01:39:04]  And I think that will happen in less than a month.
[01:39:06]  And I'm not just talking special forces.
[01:39:09]  Eventually, it'll be regular army that will go in there.
[01:39:13]  And tailored with that, within a year, the U.S. will have the draft back.
[01:39:21]  And that's my comment.
[01:39:25]  Alex, you have a response?
[01:39:28]  Listen, I hope it doesn't get to that because that would be a major distraction for the United States.
[01:39:33]  It would help, you know, of course, it would help the likes of China and Russia.
[01:39:37]  What a distraction that would be.
[01:39:38]  And what a redirection of American resources to yet another open-ended conflict in the Middle East.
[01:39:46]  As I said, just on a personal level, I hope we don't get to see that.
[01:39:49]  I hope there will be a, and I say this as somebody who considered himself a victim of the Islamic Republic, but I'm not being personal about it.
[01:39:56]  I'm trying to be as objective as I can be as an analyst.
[01:40:00]  The Islamic Republic, you can't defend it for its track record.
[01:40:04]  If it disappeared, I think the people of Iran would be rough, Middle East would be better off, and the United States would be better off.
[01:40:12]  But again, as I said, there are smart ways to try and bring that about.
[01:40:16]  And then there are these sort of more risk-taking efforts, which I hope the White House, President Trump, will be not adopting and looking for different ways to go about this.
[01:40:32]  It's easy to get into a war, as we all know.
[01:40:35]  The U.S. has gone through that for the last two decades.
[01:40:37]  It's easy to get in, but getting out is a different matter.
[01:40:41]  Mike from Tampa, Republican.
[01:40:43]  Good morning, Mike.
[01:40:46]  Hello, good morning.
[01:40:47]  I got kind of a lot to go through here, so let me see if I can do this.
[01:40:50]  Yeah, we've only got about two minutes left, Mike.
[01:40:53]  So if you could try to minimize it a little bit, but I want you to get your points in.
[01:40:57]  So go ahead.
[01:40:58]  All right, perfect.
[01:40:59]  We're zooming out to the 50,000-foot level.
[01:41:01]  This is all about China.
[01:41:04]  For 20 years, China, Russia, and all these other countries have had a shadow economy with ghost ships, trying to get off of the petrodollar, which is the American dollar.

=== Turning Iran Into a Western Economy (09:17) ===

[01:41:17]  And by snatching Maduro 24 hours after the Chinese met with him, we signaled to them that we now are in charge of our hemisphere.
[01:41:28]  Iran was another part of that to cut off the oil sales to China, the weapon sales as well.
[01:41:41]  Same with Russia.
[01:41:42]  So this is all to stop wars by cutting off, by taking Iran, which is basically the hub for all of this turmoil that we've seen in my entire life.
[01:42:01]  Give a response to that, Alex.
[01:42:03]  I mean, very quickly, look, I mean, we have to be careful not to turn Iran into this big, capable adversary.
[01:42:10]  It's not.
[01:42:10]  It barely has an economy.
[01:42:12]  It's hated by its own people.
[01:42:13]  It's got a couple of things going for it, ballistic missiles, drones.
[01:42:18]  They have some offensive cyber capabilities, and they can always resort to terrorism if there's nothing else in their toolbox for them to do so.
[01:42:25]  That's pretty much it.
[01:42:26]  I mean, the United States right now, in about a week's time or less than that, had full control of Iranian airspace.
[01:42:32]  So that tells you quite a bit about how strong they were.
[01:42:35]  So there were, you know, this is not a regime that was going to be, you know, the Soviet Union of the past for the United States in terms of being a challenge.
[01:42:44]  It is for Israel, and the Israelis have every right to be fearful about Iranian intentions towards them.
[01:42:51]  They have gone through, you know, October 7th and so forth.
[01:42:55]  But for them to kind of sell this to the United States, it took Donald Trump to buy into that argument.
[01:43:01]  But President Trump is also someone who is known. to show that he can change his mind.
[01:43:07]  So again, I hope now this war has started.
[01:43:09]  The worst thing we could have, Jasmine, is that this war ends.
[01:43:12]  We'll have a younger, more hardline supreme leader into Iran with appetite for revenge, staying there for decades to come, ruling over a country of 90 million.
[01:43:21]  That would be the nightmare scenario.
[01:43:25]  So one way or another, you hope that either this regime goes, not at any expense for the United States, because I think that would be a mistake for the U.S. to be distracted like that.
[01:43:35]  But I wonder, Alex, though, because the caller asked about, you know, he said that this is because of China, but I wonder if you could talk to us about China's role in the region and to that extent, Russia's role in the region.
[01:43:45]  Obviously, there's been some reporting over the weekend that Russia has been providing Iran with intel during this war.
[01:43:53]  So I wonder if you could talk about these outside parties' role in the country.
[01:43:58]  Look, would you be surprised that the Russians are providing intelligence to the Iranians to hit U.S. targets?
[01:44:04]  Isn't that what the U.S. has been doing basically in Ukraine?
[01:44:07]  So they're obviously trying to get even here, and that shouldn't surprise anybody.
[01:44:11]  How far the Russians will go defending this Islamist system is a different matter because the Russians happen to have good relations across the Middle East.
[01:44:17]  They have relations with the Israelis.
[01:44:18]  They care about the relationship.
[01:44:20]  They have relations with the Gulf Arabs, with Turkey, with Iran.
[01:44:23]  So Russia's got friends across the board and has to do this very fine balancing act.
[01:44:28]  The Chinese are the biggest economic partner of every country in the Middle East, from Israel to Iran to Turkey.
[01:44:35]  They have over the last 20 years emerged as the biggest economic partner for every country.
[01:44:41]  And they are a major consumer of oil and gas and they bring a lot of exports to the region and investment, including AI.
[01:44:49]  So China is beyond any question the sort of largest economic partner.
[01:44:55]  But what China does not have is hard power.
[01:44:57]  China is not tested as a hard power power or superpower, if you will.
[01:45:04]  Certainly not in the Middle East.
[01:45:05]  And you see that.
[01:45:06]  You see their hesitation in terms of defending Iran, if you will, against the United States.
[01:45:10]  Russia, China, and Iran are essentially in an axis of sorts.
[01:45:14]  And yet every time Iran gets attacked by the U.S. and Israel, you don't see the Russians or the Chinese, at least not on surface.
[01:45:21]  I'm sure the Chinese are doing what they can to help the Iranians.
[01:45:25]  But again, both Russia and China will go so far to help Iran.
[01:45:30]  They do the fine cost-benefit analysis.
[01:45:33]  They'll help the Iranians to undermine the Americans, but they're not going to risk everything for the sake of a regime that is in Tehran and, as we know, is not even at all popular with its own people.
[01:45:45]  So, maybe they don't consider that as a long-term investment of such.
[01:45:50]  But for now, as far as I can see, Russia and China quietly see if they can preserve this Islamist regime because that seems to be the better outcomes for them.
[01:45:59]  Regime change would turn Iran into most likely a regime change that is fundamental would turn Iran into a pro-American entity in the Middle East.
[01:46:08]  And that's obviously a net loss for Russia and for China.
[01:46:12]  All right, William from North Carolina, Independent, you're our last caller.
[01:46:15]  You've got about 20 seconds.
[01:46:16]  Go ahead.
[01:46:18]  Okay, good morning.
[01:46:20]  This is all smoke and mirrors to anyone that thinks Donald Trump is actually running anything is ridiculous.
[01:46:26]  If you look up, Jasmine, Project 2025 on Iran, you will find that everything he's doing is once again according to a game plan that was set.
[01:46:35]  He did it with Nicaragua.
[01:46:37]  He's doing it with Venezuela.
[01:46:38]  The next target is Cuba.
[01:46:39]  He's just following a plan that someone else has set for him.
[01:46:42]  He's not running anything.
[01:46:44]  As far as the Middle East, a lot of Middle Eastern countries have already become a little more westernized.
[01:46:49]  Saudi Arabia's got Riyadh.
[01:46:51]  They do a lot of sporting events and things like that that bring in a lot of money.
[01:46:56]  So he's trying to get Iran out of the picture with its ideology because then he can turn the Middle East into, like your guest just said, another little American-based or Western-based economy and civilization based on our ideals as opposed to the ideals of a sovereign nation.
[01:47:17]  So that's my point.
[01:47:19]  I appreciate your allowing me to talk, and I hope you have a great day.
[01:47:23]  All right.
[01:47:23]  I wonder if you have any quick response to that, Alex.
[01:47:26]  No, look, I hear what the caller just said.
[01:47:30]  I will go back and look at that document.
[01:47:32]  I think it was by Hudson or Heritage Foundation, I'm sorry, and I'll have another look.
[01:47:37]  But, you know, listen, this is year 2026.
[01:47:40]  A lot of these countries in the region have agencies.
[01:47:43]  They can choose which way to go.
[01:47:45]  And right now, I can tell you, they're having a good look at the United States, what it's doing in the war.
[01:47:50]  And so far, they're extremely upset with this war because they're paying the price.
[01:47:55]  I mean, places like Dubai right now have been decimated.
[01:47:58]  And they had built decades building up the image of stability, a place where you go and holiday.
[01:48:02]  So I have all sympathy for those Gulf countries.
[01:48:06]  And they're going to make a decision in terms of what's best for them going forward.
[01:48:09]  So I would just say, yes, somebody in Washington, D.C. can sit and write a document.
[01:48:13]  But don't forget, there are about 500 million people in the Middle East who also have their own ideas in terms of what they want for their future.
[01:48:21]  All right.
[01:48:22]  Alex Fatanka of Middle East Institute, thank you so much for being with us this morning.
[01:48:26]  Thank you for having me.
[01:48:28]  And in about 30 minutes, we'll be joined by News Nation host and AEI senior fellow, Chris Stewalt, on the political foul from the Iran conflict.
[01:48:36]  But first, after the break, more of your phone calls and open forum, your chance to weigh in on Iran or any other political topic on your mind this morning.
[01:48:45]  Start calling it now.
[01:49:00]  Best ideas and best practices can be found anywhere.
[01:49:03]  We have to listen so we can govern better.
[01:49:05]  Democracy depends on heavy doses of civility.
[01:49:08]  You can fight and still be friendly.
[01:49:11]  Bridging the divide in American politics.
[01:49:13]  You know, you may not agree with a Democrat on everything, but you can find areas where you do agree.
[01:49:17]  He's a pretty likable guy as well.
[01:49:18]  Chris Kerns and I are actually friends.
[01:49:20]  He votes wrong all the time, but we're actually friends.
[01:49:23]  A horrible secret that Scott and I have is that we actually respect each other.
[01:49:26]  We all don't hate each other.
[01:49:27]  You two actually kind of like each other.
[01:49:29]  These are the kinds of secrets we'd like to expose.
[01:49:32]  It's nice to be with a member who knows what they're talking about.
[01:49:34]  You guys did agree to the civility, all right?
[01:49:37]  He owes my son $10 from a bed for a year.
[01:49:39]  And he's never paid for it.
[01:49:41]  Fork it over.
[01:49:42]  That's fighting words right there.
[01:49:43]  Glad I'm not in charge of it.
[01:49:45]  I'm thrilled to be on the show with him.
[01:49:47]  There are not shows like this, right?
[01:49:49]  Incentivizing that relationship.
[01:49:51]  Ceasefire Friday nights on C-SPAN.
[01:49:59]  In a divided media world, one place brings Americans together.
[01:50:03]  According to a new MAGIT research report, nearly 90 million Americans turn to C-SPAN, and they're almost perfectly balanced: 28% conservative, 27% liberal or progressive, 41% moderate.
[01:50:16]  Republicans watching Democrats, Democrats watching Republicans, moderates watching all sides.
[01:50:22]  Because C-SPAN viewers want the facts straight from the source.
[01:50:26]  No commentary, no agenda, just democracy.
[01:50:30]  Unfiltered every day on the C-SPAN networks.

=== Airport Delays and Edicts of Death (04:58) ===

[01:50:34]  Washington Journal continues.
[01:50:38]  Welcome back.
[01:50:38]  We're now in an open forum where you can call in about any public policy or political issue on your mind.
[01:50:44]  I'm going to start this segment off with some programming notes.
[01:50:48]  Today, government officials and tech leaders meet for a cybersecurity summit to discuss President Trump's new national cyber strategy, artificial intelligence, critical infrastructure, and supply chains.
[01:51:00]  You can watch that live at 3:45 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN.
[01:51:05]  And then just after that, at 4:30 p.m., the president will address House Republicans during their annual retreat held at one of the president's golf resorts in Doral, Florida.
[01:51:15]  You can watch his remarks there live at 4:30 Eastern on C-SPAN.
[01:51:20]  So we started this morning talking about Iran, but other things facing the nation today includes how major airports are grappling with hours-long security wait times.
[01:51:30]  Excuse me.
[01:51:32]  I turned to an NBC News article.
[01:51:34]  The headline is, Major airports grapple with hours-long security wait times and TSA staffing shortages amid partial government shutdown.
[01:51:44]  It includes William P. H. Hobby Airport in Houston.
[01:51:48]  was experiencing wait times of nearly three hours Sunday, federal officials said.
[01:51:53]  If you just scroll down just a little bit, it goes on to say that travel at major U.S. airports turned into a nightmare Sunday with up to three hour security wait times and a shortage of TSA workers at the start of spring break travel amid the partial government shutdown.
[01:52:11]  Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Lauren Biz said travelers are facing missed flights and massive delays.
[01:52:17]  She blamed the chaos on Congressional Democrats' refusal to fund DHS, which led to the partial shutdown.
[01:52:23]  That quote says, these political stunts force patriotic officers who protect our skies from serious threats to work without pay.
[01:52:31]  She said in a statement, these frontline heroes received only partial paychecks earlier this month and now face their first full missed paycheck, leading to financial hardship, absences, and crippling staffing shortages.
[01:52:44]  DHA's funding expired February 13th, with lawmakers locking horns over ICE and customs and border protection policies after federal agents killed two Americans in Minneapolis.
[01:52:55]  Democrats are seeking reforms to rein in those agencies, but Republicans have argued that changes were already made in response to the killings.
[01:53:04]  All right, let's turn to some of your phone calls.
[01:53:06]  Linda from Missouri, a Democrat.
[01:53:09]  It's open forum.
[01:53:10]  Good morning, Linda.
[01:53:11]  Yes, good morning.
[01:53:12]  Thanks for taking my call.
[01:53:14]  I'm calling I want First Iran.
[01:53:17]  I think Israel should fight their own war.
[01:53:20]  This is the first president that he can reel in like that because Donald Trump is so weak.
[01:53:25]  And all you got to do is give him a compliment and he will do anything.
[01:53:29]  And for as a draft, if that comes, then none of my kids would be going, that's for sure.
[01:53:35]  I would send them somewhere else before I would put them there because Barron should be number one up for the draft.
[01:53:41]  And then spending all of our money on wars and all these other things and want to redo buildings and putting your face all over the place when we have citizens out here that are suffering.
[01:53:52]  This man needs to go.
[01:53:54]  He needs to be in a nursing home somewhere because he had serious issues.
[01:53:59]  All right, that was Linda from Missouri.
[01:54:01]  Stacy from North Dakota, a Republican.
[01:54:04]  Good morning, Stacey.
[01:54:05]  It's open forum.
[01:54:07]  Thank you.
[01:54:09]  I'm a believer who sees everything through a Bible worldview.
[01:54:14]  Ecclesiastes 1:9 says that what happened before will happen again.
[01:54:20]  And the parallels to the Bible book of Esther are just amazing.
[01:54:26]  It's like it's repeating again what happened in Babylon, which is what Iran and also called Persia.
[01:54:33]  There was an edict of death to the Jews.
[01:54:37]  Now, the queen was a Jewish woman, and there was nothing she could do to stop that edict, but she could provide a pathway for them to defend themselves.
[01:54:46]  And they were victorious in defeating the people that wanted to kill them.
[01:54:53]  And then there's a celebration called Purim.
[01:54:57]  And this right now is a season of Purim.
[01:55:00]  And there's another person who is also trying to give a pathway to the people who, you know, there's edict death to Israel, death to America.
[01:55:13]  And the people there are Persians.
[01:55:16]  They're not Arab.
[01:55:18]  They're not Muslim.
[01:55:20]  And they're just tired of being oppressed.
[01:55:22]  And now our president is trying to do the same thing that the Queen did and give them a path for self-preservation to restore their heritage.

=== Iran Conflict and Political Messaging (10:32) ===

[01:55:32]  All right, Stacey from North Dakota.
[01:55:35]  Alan from Fayetteville, North Carolina, Democrat.
[01:55:38]  You're next.
[01:55:39]  Good morning, Alan.
[01:55:40]  It's open forum.
[01:55:40]  You can talk about whatever.
[01:55:43]  Good morning, Jasmine.
[01:55:44]  You had a gentleman to call in to say that the military signs up to die.
[01:55:51]  Now, I am a 79-year-old Vietnam combat veteran.
[01:55:57]  Okay.
[01:55:58]  I was with the first CAV, first of the 12 airborne unit.
[01:56:02]  We were the first helicopter assault team to arrive in Vietnam.
[01:56:08]  Excuse me.
[01:56:09]  Now, we don't sign up to die.
[01:56:12]  We sign up to protect this country.
[01:56:15]  And this is sickening.
[01:56:17]  This man is sick.
[01:56:19]  Didn't you people see it?
[01:56:22]  I got a lot to say, but that's it.
[01:56:25]  Let us go.
[01:56:28]  Alan from North Carolina.
[01:56:30]  Phil from Long Island, an independent.
[01:56:32]  Good morning, Phil.
[01:56:33]  It's open forum.
[01:56:35]  Good morning.
[01:56:36]  How are you?
[01:56:36]  You know, I'd like to thank your last caller for his service to our country.
[01:56:41]  I appreciate what he just says.
[01:56:43]  You know, if we go back to the 70s, right, how many hundreds of millions of billions of dollars have we spent in the Middle East to stabilize that region?
[01:56:54]  And would a state like Iran continually funding terrorist organizations to destabilize the region?
[01:57:05]  When is enough enough?
[01:57:07]  All right, pay now or pay later.
[01:57:09]  So at some point, we had it, and I'm sorry it took this long, we had to do what we had to do.
[01:57:15]  Now, we should be getting in and out of it as quick as possible.
[01:57:19]  But if you go back a couple years ago, there was a guy named Maui, and he was Biden's Iran.
[01:57:27]  He was the envoy for Iran.
[01:57:29]  And he was talking about back then, a few years ago, that Iran was close to being six months away from being nuclear weapons.
[01:57:39]  And he said, and you can go back on the BBC and check his interview with this guy, Stephen Secure, all right?
[01:57:45]  And he said we would have to have boots on the ground.
[01:57:48]  And that was under the Biden administration two years ago.
[01:57:52]  And what did they do?
[01:57:53]  They took away his clearance and they ran him out.
[01:57:56]  Okay, we got a lot of big issues going on there.
[01:57:58]  Mazar was clean house all at once.
[01:58:01]  Okay.
[01:58:03]  All right, Phil, I'm going to move on from you because we have a guest ready.
[01:58:08]  It's Naomi Lin, a White House reporter with the Washington Examiner.
[01:58:12]  Naomi, good morning.
[01:58:14]  Morning.
[01:58:14]  Thanks for being with us.
[01:58:16]  All right.
[01:58:16]  Everyone's talking about Iran this morning.
[01:58:18]  Let's get in to the latest.
[01:58:20]  Obviously, we know that the Iran Assembly of Experts has named a new supreme leader.
[01:58:27]  How is the White House reacting to that this morning?
[01:58:30]  From what I'm hearing is that they're sort of seeing that this is Iran sort of doubling down after the assassination of the supreme leader.
[01:58:37]  You know, it's not a change in direction, and I think we'll get that confirmed when we hear him speak for the first time later today.
[01:58:44]  And I think we're going to have to be watching that closely because obviously the president last week indicated that that wouldn't be acceptable and that there would be a sort of a doubling down on the U.S. side in terms of the strikes they're conducting against Iran, not only in country but around sort of their proxies around the world.
[01:59:01]  And so that's what I'm also watching.
[01:59:03]  What is the other interesting thing that's unfolding too is this idea of the human cost and the economic cost of the war.
[01:59:10]  We're seeing sort of confirmation that the seventh U.S. service member who was sort of injured in a strike in Saudi Arabia on March 1st finally sort of succumbed to his injuries.
[01:59:22]  And then we're also sort of seeing the industry side on the oil side of this with the stock market sort of, you know, the future stock market sort of indicating that it will be a turbulent day on Wall Street just with the oil prices and the way that sort of traders will sort of factor that into their decisions.
[01:59:38]  And so I think it's going to be Iran, Iran, Iran.
[01:59:41]  We're going to hear Trump sort of speak to that later today.
[01:59:43]  He's going to be addressing sort of House Republicans in Florida at their issues conference.
[01:59:50]  And I think that they'll sort of be discussing whether, you know, if there's a political impact to this as well.
[01:59:55]  Obviously midterms, the cost of living concerns are high on the agenda and the affordability argument that the Trump administration has said that they're countering.
[02:00:05]  But we're going to see the backlash, I think, from the Iran and the way that that sort of interacts.
[02:00:10]  I want to ask you a little bit more about the political backlash in a second, but the president has given a lot of interviews this weekend.
[02:00:15]  We know he talked to the ABC News, Times of Israel.
[02:00:20]  I wonder, are there any plans for a more formal press conference from the President?
[02:00:23]  I know we'll see him speaking in Daral later on today, but a press conference focused specifically on answering questions about Iran and the rationale.
[02:00:33]  Well, let's hope because I think there are a lot of sort of questions that need to be raised.
[02:00:36]  I think the likelihood though is that we'll sort of hear him speak sort of more informally with reporters on the plane when he returns to Washington, D.C. later this afternoon.
[02:00:46]  And I think to your point, I mean, there are interesting things that came out of the reporting with the Times of Israel when he sort of said, and also with the ABC interview, about whether, you know, he wasn't, you know, it sort of depends on the relationship between Israel and U.S. when there's an off-ramp to this fighting, because I think that's something that we're sort of watching as well because the aims and sort of the objectives of this operation have been vague and we don't really know what will be considered a success.
[02:01:14]  You know, they sort of say that we'll see it when we know it or we'll know it when we see it.
[02:01:18]  And I think that we need to sort of drill down on that.
[02:01:21]  And so hopefully we get a chance to sort of ask the president directly because obviously we know in this administration what the president says is usually we need to hear it straight from the horse's mouth as opposed to his aides.
[02:01:31]  Right, the president said to the Times of Israel earlier that it would be both him and Netanyahu who make the decision of when the war ends, although he then said that he would be kind of the driver in that decision.
[02:01:42]  In an interview with ABC over the weekend, the president basically brushed off concerns about any softening within the MAGA base over these Iranian strikes.
[02:01:52]  What are you hearing from White House officials on that?
[02:01:55]  And has there been any effort to reach out to bigger names within the MAGA base like Tucker Carlson, like Megan Kelly, who have so far voiced opposition to strikes in Iran?
[02:02:10]  I mean when we talk to sort of aides in the building behind me they sort of say you know they downplay it very similar to the president they echo the idea that you know there isn't division I mean the idea that you know this agenda that they're pursuing in Iran is America first despite you know the idea of the Tucker Carlsons of the world the Megan Kellys of the world saying that it's not that you know We don't want to be drawn into another Middle East war.
[02:02:31]  But then, sort of the numbers are also sort of interesting, too.
[02:02:34]  There is polling that is a little bit split in terms of whether the MAGA base is still with him.
[02:02:38]  Obviously, you know, there are die-hard supporters that are always with Trump.
[02:02:42]  But this idea that he's putting sort of another foreign war above the ideas of the issues that hit sort of his supporters in their hip pocket is really coming to the fore.
[02:02:54]  I mean, we've obviously seen the likes of Representative or former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene sort of speak to that as well.
[02:02:59]  And I think that we're going to need to see a little bit more outreach from the White House if they want to keep this sort of wide universe and coalition that he brought together in his elections if they can see and drum up that support before the all-important midterms in November.
[02:03:14]  Another part of that political message is, of course, oil prices, gas prices.
[02:03:18]  The president has touted in recent weeks before the strikes about how well his administration was doing with bringing down the amount of gas prices across the country.
[02:03:29]  Now we're seeing them rise.
[02:03:31]  I wonder what are you watching for the messaging of how the White House addresses a spike in gas prices because of the Iranian conflict?
[02:03:41]  I mean, we've already seen a hint of that from the president himself.
[02:03:43]  He took to social media and said, you know, it's a very small price to pay for this, you know, this overwhelming sort of, you know, the importance of this mission that they're doing in Iran.
[02:03:53]  And I think this idea of sort of downplaying it has never really been successful, both for Democratic and Republican presidents in the past.
[02:04:02]  We saw that with former President Joe Biden when he sort of tried to minimize concerns about the economy.
[02:04:07]  And so I think, you know, the Trump administration, the president has been encouraged by Republicans around them to really sort of, you know, try to be empathetic when people are sort of talking about the cost of living and how it affects them.
[02:04:19]  But we're sort of seeing that even though he kind of sort of dabbles in that sometimes, he hasn't really leaned in.
[02:04:25]  And I think that you'll sort of hear allies around the White House try to really amplify that concern in the coming week.
[02:04:31]  I mean, we're seeing he's expected to be in Kentucky and Ohio later this week to talk about Trump RX, this idea of sort of helping minimize the cost of health care.
[02:04:41]  And so maybe we'll see a little bit more economic messaging come into that.
[02:04:44]  But again, we saw sort of last Friday with a sort of a lower than expected jobs report, this idea that the economy might be on the back burner as this Iran war plays out.
[02:04:54]  But I mean it's not going to go away and particularly as you sort of said with the oil prices, it's going to come back to the fore and they really need to address it if they want to do their best in November.
[02:05:03]  And that trip is interesting also because it is Congressman Tom Massey's district, obviously Major Trump foe who he has been behind primarying to get him out of Congress.
[02:05:16]  My last question for you here, Naomi, is what else are you watching for this week when it comes to the White House?
[02:05:22]  And so, something that I'm watching for, which might not be on everyone's radar, is that this Saturday is actually the one-year anniversary from that sort of not unprecedented because presidents have addressed the Justice Department in the past, but it's been one year since Trump went to the Justice Department and sort of really, I guess, upended this idea that DOJ should be independent of the White House.
[02:05:44]  And so, I'm really interested in watching sort of, you know, obviously that's not going to be on the headlines this week, but I'm sort of doing my own reporting this week about, you know, how that has changed in the past year, the way that Trump has really used the Justice Department to go after his political opponents after claims that they did the same to him, you know, while he was out of office and even during his first administration.

=== Trump's Aggressive China Strategy (10:43) ===

[02:06:05]  So that's something that I'm watching that might not be on everyone's radar.
[02:06:09]  All right, Naomi Lin, a White House reporter for the Washington Examiner.
[02:06:12]  Thank you so much for coming on and chatting this morning.
[02:06:15]  Thanks for having me.
[02:06:16]  And now back to Open Forum where you can talk about any public policy or political issue on your mind this morning.
[02:06:22]  Jason from Baltimore and Independent.
[02:06:24]  You're next.
[02:06:25]  Good morning, Jason.
[02:06:27]  Howdy, good morning.
[02:06:28]  Thanks for taking my call.
[02:06:30]  I have a question or we'd love to get some thoughts about President Trump's aggressive foreign policy and if there's a bigger game afoot regarding China and what I've heard of alleged plans for them to invade Taiwan in 2027.
[02:06:51]  I have a lot of friends in the military community, and what they talk about that doesn't get mentioned on mainstream news is China's aggressive buildup, that they are, if not at peer level, militarily exceeded the U.S.
[02:07:06]  And if President Trump is using incursions like Iran or Venezuela and Nicaragua as ways to show he's not afraid to take on challenges, using these smaller conflicts or incursions as examples of That.
[02:07:24]  I'll take the answer off the air.
[02:07:26]  Thank you.
[02:07:28]  All right.
[02:07:29]  There's Jason from Baltimore.
[02:07:31]  One thing and just a quick search that I found is a Time article from March 6th.
[02:07:36]  The headline is the Iran war has distracted and depleted the U.S. military, but it may have also saved Taiwan.
[02:07:44]  It goes on to say at first blush, Thursday's opening of China's National People's Congress in PC looked ominous for Taiwan.
[02:07:51]  Taking the podium in Beijing's cavernous Great Hall of the People, Premier Lee Kuang unveiled a 7% bump on defense spending while using a strident language for a self-ruling island over which China claims dominion.
[02:08:03]  While vowing the People's Liberation Army would accelerate the development of advanced combat capabilities, Lee said China would resolutely crack down on separatist activities in Taiwan, a noted upgrade of last year's promise to simply oppose them.
[02:08:16]  If you scroll a little bit further down, It says that given that the ongoing war has depleted stocks of sophisticated weapon systems vital to defend the island, nerves were already jangling in Taiwan as well as Ukraine and indeed Washington.
[02:08:30]  Questions about U.S. weapons reserves were raised during a closed briefing between senior Trump officials and members of Congress on Tuesday.
[02:08:37]  Sources said, With U.S. military depleted and distracted by a conflict on the other side of the globe, observers worried that China's strongman, Xi Jinping, may never have a better opportunity on the Democratic island of 23 million, whose reunification he's called a great trend of history.
[02:08:51]  The fear is that Trump's transactional bearing and embrace of mind of right doctrine, both in his own actions and ambivalence regarding Russia's invasion of Ukraine, could be interpreted as a green light by Xi.
[02:09:02]  That's an article from Time.
[02:09:06]  You may go look at it if it is of interest to you.
[02:09:10]  And of course, the President will be heading to China at the end of this month, his first visit in his second term.
[02:09:16]  Kenneth from Newark, Delaware, a Democrat.
[02:09:20]  You're next.
[02:09:21]  Good morning, Kenneth.
[02:09:22]  It's open forum.
[02:09:23]  Yes.
[02:09:24]  My concern is this president continues to think that things going on around the world is more important than things going on here in America.
[02:09:36]  We need to do something better to understand where Congress is going to play a major role in the influence of this president to be able to make him understand he needs to work at policies here in America and leave the world stage because he is not prepared for it.
[02:09:59]  Thank you.
[02:10:01]  Well, the president will be speaking to Congressional Republicans later on today at Dural, Miami, in Dural, Miami for their conference.
[02:10:11]  And so we may perhaps hear more about domestic policies there.
[02:10:14]  Christian from Phoenix, a Republican, you're next.
[02:10:17]  Good morning, Christian.
[02:10:18]  Good morning, Dutch.
[02:10:19]  Good morning.
[02:10:20]  Thank you so much for taking my call.
[02:10:21]  I just want to quote Secretary of the War Pete Hegseth.
[02:10:27]  Quote, yesterday, the leader of the unit who attempted to assassinate President Trump has been hunted down and killed.
[02:10:34]  Iran tried to kill President Trump and President Trump got the last laugh.
[02:10:38]  Now, this is not a mission accomplished situation.
[02:10:42]  This is simply a reality check, end quote.
[02:10:45]  So I want to first congratulate the president for taking out the unit in Iran who tried to assassinate him.
[02:10:54]  Secondly, God protect our service members, military families, police, law enforcement, firefighters, first responders, every U.S. citizen and our allies, because this is just simply a reality check.
[02:11:11]  And then also, The people who love our country, we're not concerned about our gas prices going up for a week or a month.
[02:11:21]  It will be well worth it, folks.
[02:11:23]  We're taking out an evil, evil people who just have to be taken out.
[02:11:29]  It is what it is.
[02:11:32]  And then, lastly, Republicans in the U.S. House, in the U.S. Senate, if you don't pass the Save America Act, that act which protects our ability to have a fair election, you're going to have big problems come November.
[02:11:51]  So you better drop everything you're doing and pass that law and get it on Trump's desk and sign it.
[02:11:57]  We're not playing games.
[02:11:59]  Thank you so much, everybody.
[02:12:00]  Have a blessed day.
[02:12:03]  All right.
[02:12:04]  That was Christian from Phoenix.
[02:12:06]  He mentioned at the end Save America Act.
[02:12:09]  I'll point to the president's two social on it from March 8th.
[02:12:13]  It said, great job by hardworking Scott Presler on Fox and Friends talking about the Philip talking about using the filibuster or talking filibuster in order to pass the Save America Act, an 88% issue with all voters.
[02:12:25]  It must be done immediately.
[02:12:27]  It supersedes everything, must go to the front of the line.
[02:12:30]  I, as president, will not sign other bills until this is passed and not the watered-down version.
[02:12:36]  Go for the gold.
[02:12:37]  Must show voter ID, proof of citizenship, no mail-in ballot except for military, illness, disability, travel, no men and women sports, no transgender mutilizations for children, do not fail.
[02:12:50]  Signed by President J. Trump there.
[02:12:53]  Pete from Chicago, a Democrat.
[02:12:55]  You're next.
[02:12:55]  Good morning, Pete.
[02:12:57]  Hey, how are you, Jasmine?
[02:12:58]  I'm good.
[02:12:59]  How are you, Pete?
[02:13:00]  Good morning.
[02:13:00]  Good.
[02:13:01]  Good morning.
[02:13:03]  Listen, I want to suggest you have a guest on Wendy Sherman.
[02:13:12]  She was the undersecretary of the Barack Obama administration, and she was in on the deal that they cut during his term.
[02:13:28]  They had inspectors on the ground, and when Trump came in, he mixed the deal, and there were no more inspectors.
[02:13:37]  In fact, when we were in Iraq, Scott Ritter, the Atomic Energy Agency, was on the ground.
[02:13:47]  Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plain, were in Iraq.
[02:13:54]  There were no weapons of mass destruction, and they were proven to be right.
[02:13:59]  A barrel of oil is $102 a barrel.
[02:14:03]  By the end of the week, it'll be $150 a barrel.
[02:14:10]  Where are we going here?
[02:14:11]  The military-industrial complex, the energy and oil industries, they're all going to make money.
[02:14:18]  What's going to happen to the people here?
[02:14:21]  They're going to have to pay for all this.
[02:14:24]  And I think that the Americans should stand up out here, fight for your rights, fight to vote.
[02:14:32]  And I want everybody to have a good day.
[02:14:34]  Thank you.
[02:14:36]  All right, that was Pete from Chicago.
[02:14:38]  Up next, News Nation host and AEI Senior Fellow Chris Steyerwalt joins us with the political fallout from the Iran conflict and other political news of the day.
[02:14:49]  Stay tuned.
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[02:15:15]  You guys do the most important work for everyone in this country.
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[02:15:33]  I've watched C-SPAN every morning and it is unbiased.
[02:15:37]  And you bring in factual information for the callers to understand where they are in their comments.
[02:15:43]  This is probably the only place that we can hear honest opinion of Americans across the country.
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=== Effective Communication Strategy (07:40) ===

[02:16:48]  Washington Journal continues.
[02:16:51]  Welcome back.
[02:16:52]  Joining us this morning to talk about Iran and all things politics is Chris Steyerwalt, News Nation the Hills Sunday host and senior fellow at American Enterprise Institute.
[02:17:02]  Chris, thanks so much for being with us this morning.
[02:17:05]  My friend, it is a treat to be here.
[02:17:07]  I'm excited to be asking you questions.
[02:17:08]  Yeah, I know.
[02:17:09]  This is a nice change in dynamic.
[02:17:11]  Okay, let's start with Iran.
[02:17:13]  Messaging by the administration on the justification and goals of the ongoing military campaign in Iran.
[02:17:20]  Are they effective?
[02:17:21]  Well, it depends on how long they need to be effective, right?
[02:17:26]  How effective was the messaging on Venezuela?
[02:17:29]  Not super effective, but it didn't need to be effective for a very long time because it was a quick in and out.
[02:17:35]  The president said last week that he, I think he was talking to CNN, but said that basically he wanted to do a Venezuela in Iran.
[02:17:45]  Take out this leader from, which is taking out this leader of this regime and choose or designate the successor from within the same regime and then do a new negotiation and get down to business.
[02:17:58]  That doesn't need a lot of, that's not like building support for putting ground troops in Iran.
[02:18:05]  So they have a communication strategy that worked for a week.
[02:18:09]  Does it, he initially talked about four or five weeks now says, we don't know.
[02:18:13]  We're not going to give estimates.
[02:18:15]  How long is it an effective communication strategy?
[02:18:17]  I do not know.
[02:18:18]  Is it a cohesive?
[02:18:20]  I mean, the president is saying one thing.
[02:18:22]  Pete Hagsatz is seemingly saying another thing.
[02:18:24]  Caroline Levitt at the press briefing last week said that we're just picking, and we as in the press are just picking and choosing the thoughts and trying to see that they're in conflict.
[02:18:33]  But I wonder, as somebody looking in, is it cohesive?
[02:18:36]  Well, there's a difference between management and leadership.
[02:18:40]  I think the president's supporters would say that he is a good leader, but he is not a manager.
[02:18:48]  And this is not a managed administration.
[02:18:50]  As the whole spectacle, the debacle around Christy Noam and DHS illustrates, there is not command and control.
[02:19:00]  You are young.
[02:19:01]  I am old.
[02:19:02]  I remember when previous administrations, messaging was controlled down to the head of a pin, right?
[02:19:12]  And it was frustrating because you would talk to different agencies.
[02:19:16]  You would talk to different this senator or that senator, this member of Congress or that member of Congress, and they'd all just say the same thing.
[02:19:23]  And it was infuriating because they were on message.
[02:19:26]  These people are not on message.
[02:19:28]  And in a way, they're pushing their own different agendas.
[02:19:32]  This is something that we saw in the first Trump administration.
[02:19:35]  Push your own agenda in the public space and see if you can win, right?
[02:19:40]  So Marco Rubio won Venezuela.
[02:19:43]  What's Venezuela?
[02:19:44]  Some people said it was for the oil.
[02:19:47]  Some people said it was for this.
[02:19:48]  Some people said it was about drugs.
[02:19:50]  Marco Rubio said, no, this is a law enforcement action.
[02:19:53]  This is what we're doing.
[02:19:54]  He stayed with that messaging.
[02:19:56]  And ultimately, that became the official line of the administration.
[02:20:00]  This time, were we doing it because Israel was going to make us do it?
[02:20:06]  Were we doing it because we were cooperating with Israel?
[02:20:10]  What was the cause of SpellEye?
[02:20:12]  Why are we there?
[02:20:13]  What are our ambitions?
[02:20:14]  What's going to happen?
[02:20:16]  It actually reminds me of the tariffs, which is, if you ask Peter Navarro what the point of the tariffs was.
[02:20:25]  The point of the tariffs was that we were going to creative destruction.
[02:20:30]  We were going to tear down the existing bad economic model for the United States and build in its place a shining city on a hill based on high-wage manufacturing jobs.
[02:20:44]  You remember when I think it was Howard Luttnick, but somebody talked about we're going to make iPhones in the United States?
[02:20:50]  That was Howard Luttnick.
[02:20:51]  We're going to have all these people screwing little screws.
[02:20:53]  Former Secretary.
[02:20:54]  And then the Treasury Secretary and others were like, no, We're not talking about building iPhones.
[02:21:00]  We're not talking about building $5,000 iPhones in the United States.
[02:21:03]  We're actually talking about getting to frictionless global trade, and we're going to use these tariffs to break down barriers in other countries.
[02:21:11]  They never, part of the reason the tariffs are so unpopular, they never got to a point of clarity on this.
[02:21:17]  And in Iran, why we are doing this, why the price of gasoline is up, why American service members are dying, why, why, why, we don't quite, the nuclear program is a sufficient explanation, and public opinion research shows Americans overwhelmingly were concerned about the Iranian nuclear program.
[02:21:41]  That is a political winner to talk about that.
[02:21:44]  But again, three weeks from now, four weeks from now, if the conflict is still going on, the rationalization still needs filled in.
[02:21:53]  Before we continue with more questions, I want to invite our callers to join in on the conversation.
[02:21:59]  Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000.
[02:22:04]  Republicans, your line, 202-748-8001.
[02:22:08]  Independents, your line is 202-748-8002.
[02:22:12]  I know Chris is really looking forward to your questions.
[02:22:16]  Just a few more from me here, though.
[02:22:18]  Obviously, you're very good with the numbers.
[02:22:20]  You talked a little bit about the support that people have for, or concern at least, that people have for the Iranian nuclear program in general.
[02:22:28]  The president has said in a series of interviews that he is confident that Americans are behind him with this specific conflict.
[02:22:36]  Polls so far seem to dispute that.
[02:22:38]  I wonder how you see it.
[02:22:39]  So we don't have a ton of good data.
[02:22:41]  We have basically two operant polls.
[02:22:46]  We've got Reuters and Ipsos do their surveys pretty frequently.
[02:22:51]  It's not my favorite methodology, but they are able to find a golden mean between frequency and methodology that lets it be useful.
[02:23:01]  And then there's the Fox News poll, which quite by accident happened to be in the field.
[02:23:08]  They were in the field for three days with the poll.
[02:23:10]  And the first day of the poll was the day that the strikes began.
[02:23:14]  And the Fox News has great pollsters because they use a Republican and a Democrat.
[02:23:18]  It's the same, it was the model they used when I was there.
[02:23:21]  It's a great team, and it's a useful poll.
[02:23:23]  So they just got very lucky.
[02:23:24]  And do you know what the polling said as the bombing began?
[02:23:28]  50-50 split.
[02:23:30]  And a 50-50 split on partisan lines, basically.
[02:23:34]  So then if you peel back the top, and this is not a coalition of voters that stands up to almost any scrutiny or pressure, because what you got was a snap reaction.
[02:23:48]  Do you like what the president did?
[02:23:49]  And you know the survey research, the research about research that says if you say to Republicans, what do you think about the plan to privatize Medicare?
[02:24:01]  I hate it.
[02:24:02]  What do you think about the plan to privatize Medicare sponsored by President Donald Trump?
[02:24:06]  He makes some good points.
[02:24:08]  So that's a sort of, and it's logical in its own way because people trust the members of their own coalition.
[02:24:14]  So when you look at independents, when you look at women, when you look at the suburbs, when you look at Hispanic voters, when you look at who are the swing voters for this midterm election, they are substantially less favorable than the nation as a whole.

=== Snap Reactions vs. Long-Term Bets (08:50) ===

[02:24:29]  And again, how long is the question?
[02:24:33]  How long and how much is the question?
[02:24:35]  Now, I want to ask you one more question before we turn to a phone call.
[02:24:38]  But oil and gas prices rising, that's obviously going to be a part of the political calculus for how long Americans are willing to trust President Trump in this.
[02:24:47]  Democrats continue to hammer home the issue of affordability.
[02:24:50]  The president told Reuters late last week he's not concerned about it.
[02:24:54]  Let me read you his quote.
[02:24:55]  He said, I don't have any concern about it when it comes to gas prices.
[02:24:59]  They'll drop very rapidly when this is over.
[02:25:02]  And if they rise, they rise.
[02:25:04]  But this is a far more important, but this is far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit.
[02:25:11]  What are you watching here?
[02:25:12]  And what is the exposure to larger Republicans that are obviously going to face some votes in the midterms?
[02:25:21]  The petroleum industry does not like low prices, right?
[02:25:26]  And one of the complaints that the petroleum industry has had in recent years has been that as American energy production has gone up and OPEC has become less restrictive.
[02:25:37]  They're like, where's the money, right?
[02:25:39]  There's a lot of stuff that's feasible when oil is $75 a barrel that is not feasible at $55 a barrel in terms of profits you're making and all the stuff that you're doing.
[02:25:48]  Is the juice worth the squeeze?
[02:25:50]  I think it's reasonable to say that the first run-up in costs, the initial spike here, yes, it's speculation.
[02:25:59]  Yes, it's people who are like, oh, this could, this, sincere people who say this could go badly and I'm going to hedge against future and long-term disruptions.
[02:26:09]  There's also people who are just trying to ride, trying to ride a predictable price.
[02:26:15]  It's like when the Federal Reserve cuts or raises rates, right?
[02:26:18]  There are people who are not making a long-term bet, but they're betting on the current reaction.
[02:26:22]  So this could be ephemeral, right?
[02:26:24]  This could pass through in a fairly, if the Strait of Hormuz reopened and everything got back to, how long would it take for energy prices to drop substantially?
[02:26:35]  I don't imagine it would be very long.
[02:26:37]  On the other hand, and I'm sorry that my answer to everything about Iran is tell me how long.
[02:26:45]  On the other hand, if people in the suburbs of these United States, and by the way, rural people, working class rural people, so use this as a metaphor or not as a case study.
[02:27:01]  Let's say you're a Trump coalition voter.
[02:27:04]  You voted for Donald Trump in 2024.
[02:27:08]  You are middle of the middle class and you live in a small town or rural America.
[02:27:14]  You drive a lot.
[02:27:16]  Gasoline prices are very material for you.
[02:27:19]  So let's say that you lived in rural Maine, for example, and gas is going at $3.50.
[02:27:26]  It's looking at $4.
[02:27:28]  Gas prices are high.
[02:27:29]  The party that asks you to fill up your truck, to drive into wherever you need to go to vote for Susan Collins in November, has a difficult argument to make to you about why, if it costs you $60 to fill up your truck, you should spend $30 to drive to the polls and vote for Susan Collins for a conflict that was, whatever else Iran is, it is a war of choice, right?
[02:27:58]  You can say it's a good choice.
[02:28:00]  You can say it's a bad choice, but it didn't have to happen exactly in the way that it did.
[02:28:06]  It could have been a week later or three weeks later, whatever.
[02:28:08]  This wasn't a act now because there's a bomb under the Super Bowl or something.
[02:28:14]  And the Republicans will be either credited with or freighted with the choice aspect of this.
[02:28:24]  And that will have serious ramifications when they ask their low propensity voters, remember the key to the Republican coalition.
[02:28:32]  They stole the Democrats' voters.
[02:28:34]  The people who had been the backbone of the Democratic coalition for generations, going back to the New Deal.
[02:28:40]  For the 2024 election.
[02:28:41]  The white working class, starting in 2016, said, you know what?
[02:28:46]  This guy, he's hilarious.
[02:28:48]  I'm sick of these people.
[02:28:49]  I'm sick of Hillary Clinton.
[02:28:50]  I'm sick of it all.
[02:28:52]  I'm ready for something else.
[02:28:53]  And these voters moved over.
[02:28:54]  They trusted Trump on the economy.
[02:28:56]  They liked him on immigration.
[02:28:58]  They moved over.
[02:29:00]  Those voters are great to have in a quadrennial election.
[02:29:04]  But in midterm elections, they don't show up.
[02:29:06]  That was a problem Barack Obama experienced when Democrats were in the last phase of their supremacy with that group of voters.
[02:29:15]  Getting those people to go to the polls is hard under any circumstances.
[02:29:19]  If they're frustrated with you about the economy, if they're frustrated with you about gas prices, they're not going out for you.
[02:29:26]  All right, Philip from South Carolina and Independent, our first call.
[02:29:31]  Good morning, Philip.
[02:29:32]  Hey, how are you doing?
[02:29:33]  Good.
[02:29:34]  How are you?
[02:29:35]  I'm doing good.
[02:29:36]  What I want to say is this.
[02:29:38]  When you have, when the head of a country is unstable, you're going to have policies that are unstable.
[02:29:47]  And we all know that the president of the United States is unstable.
[02:29:52]  Look at the situation in America and around the world.
[02:29:55]  He caused all of that.
[02:29:57]  So that's all I have to say.
[02:29:58]  Do you have a question for Chris here?
[02:30:01]  Chris, would you tell the people that the president is messed up?
[02:30:07]  I, if, Philip, let me tell you something.
[02:30:10]  If I went around Washington telling everybody who I thought was unstable and messed up, was messed up, I would never do anything else.
[02:30:19]  I would never get anything done other than going out and saying that about the people in Washington.
[02:30:26]  Look, I think your point, though, is there are good things about chaos, right?
[02:30:37]  Chaos can be creative, right?
[02:30:39]  We're talking about creative destruction, the idea that churn can lead to good things.
[02:30:46]  And that's true.
[02:30:48]  And I think the best argument that the Trump people that MAGA has made consistently is, oh, you don't want to tear down these institutions.
[02:30:59]  You don't want to blow this stuff up.
[02:31:00]  How's it working out for you?
[02:31:02]  And people say, I don't like it.
[02:31:05]  I call this the Arby's phenomenon.
[02:31:07]  The Arby's phenomenon is, if Jasmine says, we're all going to Applebee's for dinner, I can turn to the audience and I can say, hey, I think Jasmine's like, why are we going to Applebee's?
[02:31:21]  We don't really want Applebee's.
[02:31:23]  People are like, yeah, I'm sick of going to Applebee's.
[02:31:26]  I'm sick of Jasmine telling us we have to go to Applebee's.
[02:31:29]  And I'm like, yeah, so we all deserve what?
[02:31:31]  Something else.
[02:31:33]  We need something else.
[02:31:34]  And they're like, yeah, enough of Jasmine and Applebee's.
[02:31:38]  And then I say, okay, good.
[02:31:39]  Now get in the van because we're going to Arby's.
[02:31:42]  And they're going to say, we didn't want Arby's, Chris.
[02:31:44]  That's not what we were talking about.
[02:31:46]  Chaos and disruption is very appealing, especially in a wealthy, stable nation like the United States, where we take a lot of stuff for granted.
[02:31:55]  And we get sick of how it is.
[02:31:57]  We get sick and tired of being sick and tired.
[02:31:59]  You could watch Barack Obama's 2008 primary campaign.
[02:32:04]  You go back and look at how he ran and what he did.
[02:32:07]  Look at James Tallarico running down in Texas for the Democrats.
[02:32:11]  What is the message?
[02:32:12]  No more Applebee's.
[02:32:13]  We're not going to Applebee's anymore.
[02:32:15]  We're going someplace else.
[02:32:17]  Getting people attracted, this is why third parties, people always say, third, I wish there was a third party.
[02:32:23]  And then there is one and people go, not that one.
[02:32:26]  I didn't mean that third party.
[02:32:28]  I meant a different third party.
[02:32:30]  And I think the challenge of MAGA is good, stable, boring governance is not sexy or popular.
[02:32:41]  It does not get attention, right?
[02:32:43]  If you had a Republican Party that was full of Mitch Daniels's and Ben Sasses and these people who were really excited about soybean yields and wait times at the DMV, you could ask the outgoing governor of Ohio, right?
[02:33:00]  You can ask all of these Republicans who are boring and people like how they do.
[02:33:05]  You can't get in the news cycle and you can't get exciting.
[02:33:08]  You can't create excitement among your core voters if you're just good at your job.
[02:33:14]  For the record, I'm more of a Red Lobster TGI Friday Olive Garden type of girl.

=== Fictive Independence and CIA Manipulation (15:37) ===

[02:33:20]  There you go.
[02:33:20]  That's right.
[02:33:21]  Mike from Florida and Independent.
[02:33:23]  You're next.
[02:33:24]  Good morning, Mike.
[02:33:26]  Yeah, hi.
[02:33:26]  Hey, look, this thing with Iran, this problem we have.
[02:33:30]  Now, I wonder why we never hear how we overthrew their government back in 1953 and installed a tyrant, and the people got tired of it after 25 years and overthrew him.
[02:33:43]  So here we are today.
[02:33:45]  So let's get real on what's really going on in Iran.
[02:33:48]  I can remember that Netanyahu came before Congress in the 90s and tried to get us to invade Iran.
[02:33:54]  He said they were going to get a nuclear bomb in two weeks.
[02:33:57]  Here we are, 30 years later, no nuclear bomb.
[02:34:01]  But for some odd reason, Israel is pulling the strength in this country.
[02:34:06]  Let's get really real here.
[02:34:10]  I mean, the Panama Canal, right, exists in a country that we substantially invented.
[02:34:20]  We can go around the world, and I'm not evading, like, the relationship between Iran, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the West, because Iran is in a very important strategic location and has got lots of oil.
[02:34:41]  You don't have to go back to 1954.
[02:34:44]  You can go back to Lord Balfour, and you can go back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War.
[02:34:51]  We, if by we, I mean the West, Britain and the United States principally, but the West generally has been meddling in Iran for longer than anybody alive on this earth has been alive, right?
[02:35:08]  This is a thing.
[02:35:08]  Since the internal combustion engine arrived, the West has been meddling in the Middle East.
[02:35:16]  Now, we could pick points along the continuum to say this was virtuous meddling and this was not virtuous meddling.
[02:35:24]  Hermit Roosevelt, the son, a presidential son, long ago took credit and claimed that the CIA had installed the government of Iran.
[02:35:35]  He was exaggerating.
[02:35:37]  There was truth in it, right?
[02:35:38]  But he was puffing up his own role in these things.
[02:35:44]  But of course, for conspiracy theorists, not that you are, but for others, it was like, yeah, see, we knew it.
[02:35:50]  The power of the CIA to manipulate and do these things.
[02:35:54]  Iran is a big, big, complicated, ancient culture.
[02:36:00]  And unlike Iraq, which has ancient roots but does not have the Saddam Hussein's government was the Western intervention in Iraq had created Iraq out of basically nothing.
[02:36:15]  And as we saw with after we took Saddam Hussein out, there was not a lot of strong national unity around the concept of Iraq.
[02:36:26]  Iran is different than that.
[02:36:29]  And there are more ancient, the Persian people, there are people, and you know people in the United States who, if you say you're Iranian, what do they tell you?
[02:36:38]  No.
[02:36:39]  I'm Persian.
[02:36:40]  I'm Persian.
[02:36:41]  And that's, we can go all the way, we can go back to the hanging gardens.
[02:36:45]  We can go to when there were Persian people sacking the hanging gardens.
[02:36:51]  We can go all the way back through 10,000 years of human history, and we can find this is a complicated, difficult, and rich and important place.
[02:37:01]  The United States, I'm sure, has screwed up a lot in Iran in the 50s, in the 70s.
[02:37:08]  I'm sure we've gotten it wrong multiple times, but you can't just pick one moment in history and say it was good and then it was bad or it was bad and then it was good.
[02:37:18]  Lewis from Colorado, Republican.
[02:37:20]  Go ahead.
[02:37:22]  Thank you.
[02:37:23]  Hi, Chris.
[02:37:24]  Hi.
[02:37:24]  Two quick points, two quick questions.
[02:37:27]  Point number one: it's easy to criticize when you don't have any solutions.
[02:37:31]  Point number two: Jasmine Crockett called Donald Trump an orangutan.
[02:37:36]  Question number one: What is Chris Steyrwalt's solution to Israel, Iran, China, Cuba, Haiti?
[02:37:48]  Question number two.
[02:37:50]  Can he, Chris Styrewald, explain the symbiotic relationship between C-SPAN hosts and CNN?
[02:37:58]  Thank you and have a great day.
[02:38:02]  I don't think he thinks that's a good relation.
[02:38:05]  Is there a symbiotic relationship that you'd like to discuss?
[02:38:09]  Not that I can think of, although I go on CNN and I used to work there.
[02:38:13]  But you also come on News Nation.
[02:38:14]  I go on News Nation.
[02:38:15]  Yes.
[02:38:16]  Yes.
[02:38:16]  I will fundamentally go on any network basically that'll have me, but that's basically where that is.
[02:38:21]  I express symbiotic affinity with Jasmine's television products.
[02:38:28]  What is my solution?
[02:38:30]  The best thing about being a journalist.
[02:38:34]  No, there are many great things about being a journalist, but the best thing about being a journalist is I'm not telling you that I know the answer.
[02:38:41]  I don't know what the answer is, and very often there isn't an answer.
[02:38:44]  The thing about foreign policy that people forget, and I think the caller alludes to this, there is not usually, almost never, is there a choice between two good, a good thing and a bad thing.
[02:38:58]  It's not, do we want Arby's or Applebees when you're talking about foreign policy?
[02:39:05]  You're talking about, do we want punched in the face or do we want kicked in the shins?
[02:39:11]  Which bad thing do we want?
[02:39:13]  Which outcome is the least odious to us?
[02:39:17]  There isn't a solution.
[02:39:20]  The countries the caller listed were Haiti, China, Iran, Israel.
[02:39:26]  Did I miss any?
[02:39:26]  Cuba.
[02:39:27]  Cuba.
[02:39:29]  I don't know a thousand years of history more.
[02:39:32]  And we'll like, it does.
[02:39:35]  These are long, big, complicated, multi-generational.
[02:39:41]  I don't know what's going to happen in Cuba.
[02:39:43]  I don't know what's going to happen anywhere.
[02:39:45]  And I don't know what the correct doctrine is.
[02:39:47]  Every administration that takes power comes in and their plans, it may have been Philip Sheridan.
[02:39:55]  And if it wasn't Philip Sheridan, I'm very sorry.
[02:39:57]  It may have been Stonewall Jackson, but some general once said that no battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy.
[02:40:07]  And when you are in power, when you have the presidency, you could have a plan.
[02:40:13]  You can have think tanks.
[02:40:14]  Shout out to my colleagues at AEI.
[02:40:16]  You can have plans for domestic policy.
[02:40:19]  You can have plans for all of this stuff.
[02:40:21]  And then you get to the dance and they're not playing the tune that you wanted them to play.
[02:40:27]  So if we think about what makes great leaders, it is a combination of being right, right, having the correct policies.
[02:40:36]  The reason Abraham Lincoln stands above all of the other presidents except for George Washington, who invented the presidency, so he's sort of DQ'd.
[02:40:44]  The reason Abraham Lincoln stands above is that he had the right idea, but he had this astonishing gift of leadership and an amazing character.
[02:40:54]  So that he didn't know, right?
[02:40:56]  When Abraham Lincoln was debating Stephen Douglas, he didn't say, here's my easy five-point plan for how we're going to eradicate the evil of slavery in America.
[02:41:08]  Here is how we're going to fix all of this and do all of this.
[02:41:11]  He said, this is who I am.
[02:41:12]  These are my principles.
[02:41:13]  And if you trust me, I will go forward.
[02:41:16]  As president, Abraham Lincoln faced a predictable disaster, but not a predictable disaster that would turn out exactly in the way.
[02:41:27]  So if he would have had a plan that he had carried forward, it wouldn't have worked.
[02:41:29]  So you have to choose as you go.
[02:41:31]  So I don't think it's about having a plan.
[02:41:33]  I think it's about having principles.
[02:41:35]  It's about having precepts.
[02:41:36]  And it's about being a good leader.
[02:41:37]  Talking about principles, I want to ask you one more question about Iran, and then I want to turn to DHS.
[02:41:42]  But on Iran, MAGA reaction, the president says that he is MAGA, MAGA is him.
[02:41:47]  He started it, that they have no problems with what he's doing.
[02:41:51]  But then we see some louder voices like Tucker Carlson, like Megan Kelly, voicing very loud opposition against these strikes.
[02:42:01]  Is there a rift right now?
[02:42:03]  I think if you think about political media as a sort of a calci bet, those are a lot of 2026 words.
[02:42:14]  Go ahead.
[02:42:15]  Which is, what is the position that I can take that will be early but not wrong and not too early?
[02:42:26]  Where can I put myself so that, and I have no idea what anybody believes about anything and don't care.
[02:42:35]  Everybody ought to think exactly what they want to think and live their lives is fantastic.
[02:42:40]  I highly recommend it.
[02:42:42]  But I think, so that going back to that Fox News survey, 16% of Republicans in that survey were not supportive broadly of the initial strikes.
[02:42:57]  That's not a very big number, but it is a significant number.
[02:43:02]  I don't think it's, I don't think, I think the people who are being very critical of this are ideologically, yes, that's their belief, but also they're betting on the come because they figure if this goes badly, as they believe that it will, because that sticks with their priors.
[02:43:22]  That's where they are.
[02:43:24]  If you believe that it's going to go badly, being clear in your opposition early on sets you up later to say, and I told you so, and that's why you should buy the beet powder that I'm selling, or that's why you should, whatever, right?
[02:43:39]  Like that's being right early, but not too early is very good for people who want to be successful, rich, and famous.
[02:43:48]  This is a good place to be.
[02:43:50]  The more significant part of the 16% is that the Republican Party is going through a reinvention of itself on foreign policy.
[02:44:05]  They had a foreign policy that had become an absolute boat anchor, right?
[02:44:11]  Donald Trump's success in 2016.
[02:44:14]  He looked at Jeb Bush and he said, hey, tell your brother thanks for the Iraq invasion.
[02:44:21]  And Republican voters for the first time felt when in New Hampshire, Donald Trump talked about how George W. Bush should have been impeached for not taking Iraq's oil.
[02:44:31]  The crowd loved it.
[02:44:33]  And I was like, oh, they've been waiting to have their revenge, right?
[02:44:39]  Just as Democrats did with Lyndon Johnson about the Vietnam War.
[02:44:42]  Like, oh, now we can finally say what we wanted to say is that we hate this.
[02:44:47]  But opposition to a foreign policy is not in itself a foreign policy.
[02:44:53]  So no new wars.
[02:44:54]  JD Vance wrote his Wall Street Journal endorsement back in 2023 of Trump for reelection, and it's because he never got us into a dumb war.
[02:45:02]  And all these other people are dumb, and he is smart, and he will not get us into any wars, is not a foreign policy.
[02:45:07]  And now the Republican Party is trying.
[02:45:09]  So it's like a post-neoconservatism.
[02:45:12]  It's a post-interventionism in which they say Colin Powell was wrong.
[02:45:17]  If you break it, you do not have to buy it.
[02:45:20]  It's sort of like the debate between Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld about the Iraq invasion is happening again, but this time Tim Rumsfeld is winning.
[02:45:30]  And the answer is, it's not a forward strategy of freedom.
[02:45:33]  We're not going to have a birth of Madisonian democracy break out across the Middle East.
[02:45:39]  What we're going to do is put passive clients.
[02:45:43]  We're going to put people in power around the world.
[02:45:46]  It's going all the way back to Ferdinand Marcos.
[02:45:50]  What was his name in Panama?
[02:45:53]  You know the guy.
[02:45:54]  Manuel Noriega.
[02:45:56]  Apologies to the Noriega fans.
[02:45:58]  To put Saddam Hussein himself, to choose bad people in a Kissingerian realpolitik kind of way to say like, we don't care.
[02:46:06]  This is not about something else.
[02:46:08]  This is about American interest very narrowly.
[02:46:11]  So they're trying that one out.
[02:46:12]  All right, Michelle from Los Angeles, a Democrat.
[02:46:16]  Hi, thank you for taking my call.
[02:46:17]  Hi, thank you for taking my call.
[02:46:19]  This is a little bit off topic, but I was wondering what you thought about the fact that Pamela Bondi is proposing a rule to limit or suspend state bar ethics investigations of DOJ lawyers.
[02:46:36]  When she first came into office, she dismantled the Office of Professional Management, which also investigates Attorneys General's misconduct.
[02:46:46]  So should we be alarmed?
[02:46:49]  Well, the struggle of life in 21st century America is am I too alarmed or not alarmed enough?
[02:46:58]  But it feels like we never have the right amount of alarm.
[02:47:03]  There was a fictive independence of the Justice Department that was created after Watergate, after the horrors of Nixon firing everybody at the Justice Department, all of that, all of that stuff, the abuses of power under the Nix administration.
[02:47:23]  And they put in guardrails and they said, we're going to be independent.
[02:47:26]  But we all know that attorneys general, federal attorneys general, are political kind of people and they're interested in this.
[02:47:36]  And so the wall was there.
[02:47:38]  The independence was there, but it was sort of a winked at independence.
[02:47:43]  The Trump administration has, just as we were talking about before, about chaos versus construction, the Trump administration correctly, truly said, this is false.
[02:47:55]  This is a false independence.
[02:47:56]  This is just part of the administration.
[02:47:58]  And it was true when Eric Holder was the attorney general.
[02:48:02]  And it's true now.
[02:48:04]  And we're calling it a lie.
[02:48:08]  And it felt really good.
[02:48:09]  But the fictive independence turns out to be politically useful.
[02:48:15]  And the political utility of the fictive independence is, it wasn't me.
[02:48:21]  I did not do that.
[02:48:23]  I did not do that.
[02:48:24]  That was the independent Justice Department doing that.
[02:48:28]  And I had nothing to do with it.
[02:48:31]  This administration, this president, cannot do it.
[02:48:34]  The Epstein files is a great example.
[02:48:35]  And he tries.
[02:48:36]  Exactly.
[02:48:37]  Epstein Files is a great example.
[02:48:38]  Like, I don't have anything to do with the Epstein files, but I do get to have a prosecutor detailed to the White House to investigate people for fraud when I want to investigate them for fraud.
[02:48:51]  They have torn down and eliminated the often fictive independence of the Justice Department.

=== The Utility of Fictive Independence (04:09) ===

[02:48:57]  And now everything is in his lap and everything is in the administration's lap.
[02:49:02]  If you saw the thing, I don't know anything about bar investigations.
[02:49:06]  No one would ever make me a lawyer.
[02:49:08]  But if you saw the thing about punishing these law firms, where the Justice Department said, we're going to crush you.
[02:49:17]  And then they lost and lost and lost.
[02:49:19]  They said, this is a waste of time and too expensive and we're not doing it anymore.
[02:49:23]  And then 20 hours later, it was like, oh, no, We're withdrawing the withdrawal and we are angrier than ever.
[02:49:30]  And you will do what we want to do.
[02:49:32]  It's a lot of plates to keep spinning in the air.
[02:49:35]  And one underrated part of all this, and this goes to the Department of Homeland Security, it goes to the Justice Department.
[02:49:41]  If the risk of terror attacks are high, if the risks of bad things happening are high, you don't want to have a public narrative that says we're doing 80 bajillion things.
[02:49:53]  The government's always doing 80 bajillion things, but you don't want to have a narrative that says we took our eye off the ball.
[02:49:58]  Yeah.
[02:49:59]  On DHS, obviously we know we're in a partial shutdown.
[02:50:02]  We read a story earlier in the show about long lines over the weekend at TSA as they're set to miss their first full paycheck.
[02:50:12]  And we know that over the weekend or on Friday, the president effectively fired and then moved her to a different role, Christy Noam, DHS Secretary.
[02:50:22]  Shield of the Americas.
[02:50:23]  Shield of the Americas and is putting in place Republican Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullen.
[02:50:29]  Do you think that this shift of moving Christy Noam out of this space is a signal that policy for DHS is shifting?
[02:50:38]  Yeah.
[02:50:39]  This is Tom Homan, the Borders Are, started a process.
[02:50:45]  We talked before about the struggle for message control being litigated in public.
[02:50:52]  Tom Homan, during the debacle in Minnesota, started saying publicly, this is not how you do this.
[02:51:01]  You are undercutting the message.
[02:51:03]  And he said it publicly.
[02:51:05]  And it was like, oh.
[02:51:07]  And then he won, right?
[02:51:10]  Noam was forced to withdraw her forces.
[02:51:13]  Greg Bavino was out.
[02:51:16]  And they went to old school Tom Homan, you know, a cop from a law and order episode kind of like, you know, we're being serious.
[02:51:28]  We're being grown up.
[02:51:29]  We're not the army.
[02:51:30]  We're police.
[02:51:32]  And that was the beginning of the end for Noam because she lost, she had lost her credibility and it was a political loser.
[02:51:41]  The idea that the American public opinion is absolutely crystalline.
[02:51:49]  It is perfectly clear on the question about immigration.
[02:51:53]  It is not a mystery what the American people want, nor is it a mystery what they have wanted for, no joke, 25 or 30 years.
[02:52:00]  They want strict enforcement of the law and they want a pathway to citizenship for people who are in the country illegally.
[02:52:06]  They want those two things, which are intention, but they want it resolved in that way where both of those considerations are carried forward.
[02:52:14]  And the idea that Stephen Miller and Christy Noam were putting forward, which was that we're doing it.
[02:52:23]  The worse the better.
[02:52:24]  The uglier the better.
[02:52:25]  The harder the better.
[02:52:26]  It's good because Noam's argument was they will self-deport.
[02:52:30]  And she really tried, and that's how she sold her ad campaign.
[02:52:34]  Which kind of spelled her doom.
[02:52:36]  Which kind of spelled her doom.
[02:52:38]  That's how they sold these military-style large-scale raids and all of this stuff was: we're going to save money and make it better because illegal immigrants, migrants will not try to come to the United States, and the people who are here now will self-deport.
[02:52:57]  I'm sure that is true in a large degree.
[02:53:01]  We've seen the numbers that show what's happening with the United States population.

=== Reforming the Primary Election System (05:56) ===

[02:53:06]  Some of that is going on for sure.
[02:53:09]  But for the voters who are living in that point of tension between I want the laws to be enforced, but I want us to be humane.
[02:53:18]  And I want the people who are here illegally and haven't committed other crimes to be treated mercifully and decently and be given a path to citizenship.
[02:53:28]  The GNOME approach blew past that and became this massive political liability for the administration.
[02:53:36]  Mark Wayne Mullen is a Rorschach test for whatever you want to see in Mark Wayne Mullen right now.
[02:53:45]  He's whatever you want to be.
[02:53:46]  If you're a progressive, if you're a Democrat, you've got this guy who is like, you know, MMA brawler and what does he know?
[02:53:56]  But if you talk to Republicans in the Senate, and by the way, some Democrats, and I know you do, they like him, right?
[02:54:02]  They find him honest.
[02:54:03]  They find him good to deal with.
[02:54:05]  He ran a successful plumbing company.
[02:54:07]  He's only been in the Senate.
[02:54:10]  Time goes so fast now.
[02:54:12]  I had to be reminded he's only serving out the unexpired term of Jim Inhoff, right?
[02:54:18]  He has not been in the Senate for a full term.
[02:54:20]  He was in the House for quite a while, but he is well liked and well thought of, certainly by in the Republican conference.
[02:54:26]  But plenty of Democrats will tell you, like, he's okay to deal with.
[02:54:31]  I think this is a pragmatic choice for the president and for this administration.
[02:54:37]  He'll get confirmed, lickety split.
[02:54:40]  There'll be no confirmation battle at all, number one.
[02:54:44]  And number two, Mark Wayne Mullen is a good politician.
[02:54:48]  And it's bad politics to turn what had been your party's chief political asset into its chief political liability.
[02:54:57]  So I don't think he'll do that.
[02:54:59]  All right, Sonny from New City, New York, an independent.
[02:55:03]  You're next.
[02:55:04]  Good morning, Sonny.
[02:55:05]  Hey, I really enjoy your commentary, and you have really good chemistry together.
[02:55:09]  You should have a podcast.
[02:55:12]  Noted.
[02:55:14]  Do you have enough on your schedule, Jensen?
[02:55:16]  I could fit a little podcast.
[02:55:18]  Go ahead, Sonny.
[02:55:18]  What's your question?
[02:55:20]  Well, the question is about the restaurant analogy.
[02:55:23]  I think you were painting with broad strokes, but I think there is some truth to it in that all these candidates run as an anti-John McCain type figure, but then once attaining the office, they become almost the John McCain on steroids.
[02:55:41]  And that is something that could be addressed.
[02:55:50]  That would be my only comment on.
[02:55:53]  But otherwise, everything you're doing today and.
[02:55:58]  And keep on doing it.
[02:56:00]  Right now.
[02:56:01]  Thank you.
[02:56:02]  Hey, this is the best caller of the day.
[02:56:04]  Why were you holding him back?
[02:56:08]  On this one, I do have a solution.
[02:56:10]  On most things, I don't offer my own opinion because I don't know anything.
[02:56:13]  I'm a person who started writing in a newspaper when I was 17 years old.
[02:56:16]  I do not pretend that this has gifted me with Solomonic wisdom to solve all the problems of the world.
[02:56:23]  But I have spent a lot of time thinking about politics.
[02:56:26]  And our primary system is trash.
[02:56:29]  We have a hot garbage system of these parties.
[02:56:33]  The way that these parties choose their candidates has all the wrong incentives.
[02:56:37]  It's new.
[02:56:38]  It's a new way, historically speaking.
[02:56:40]  It's a new way of doing this.
[02:56:43]  We did not really have these kinds of binding primaries until the 70s in large number.
[02:56:50]  And the 80s is when the regime that we now have came into effect.
[02:56:53]  And it's an impossibly stupid way to choose the people who will run for office.
[02:56:59]  Because in order, if only 11% or so of the electorate votes in primaries, who's in the 11%?
[02:57:09]  The most radical people, right?
[02:57:11]  The most extreme people are in the 11%.
[02:57:14]  And then those people go vote.
[02:57:16]  Do you know that there's about the same number of primary voters in a midterm year as there are in a presidential year?
[02:57:24]  The overall turnout goes up by 40 or 50 million people.
[02:57:27]  Primary electorate is about the same.
[02:57:30]  And I say this with love because you strike me as a voter.
[02:57:33]  I don't.
[02:57:33]  I'm not doing that.
[02:57:34]  But, oh, I had to vote this last time.
[02:57:36]  I'm sorry.
[02:57:37]  That's a lot.
[02:57:38]  But you're probably an active voter.
[02:57:41]  You're weird among weirdos because most of the people who are devoted primary voters are politically obsessed.
[02:57:49]  They're unusual or they have a policy obsession that they're really into.
[02:57:54]  And so they're going into this space and then they're choosing candidates who then go into a general election and say, now I want you to forget.
[02:58:04]  So like, what will James Tallarico have to spend a lot of time doing in Texas for the next several months?
[02:58:11]  Now, when I said that about a non-binary God, what I meant to say was da-da-da-da-da, about cleaning up and refocusing your messaging.
[02:58:22]  The solution here is we need to get rid of closed partisan primaries that have low participation and produce crummy candidates.
[02:58:34]  We are making it too hard for sensible, normal people to go through the political process.
[02:58:41]  Ranked choice in primaries is a great idea for some states.
[02:58:44]  California's system of a nonpartisan, watching Democrats in California freak out because they've got too many people running in California and they've got to get out for governor.
[02:58:53]  There's going to be like 20,000 of them.
[02:58:55]  So my answer is reform the primary election system in your state.
[02:59:00]  I think the caller was from California.

=== Reform Your State's Primary System (01:54) ===

[02:59:03]  You already did it, so you can rest easy and enjoy the sunshine.
[02:59:06]  But everybody else, fix the primary system in your state because it's garbage.
[02:59:10]  All right, we've got about one more minute left here, Chris.
[02:59:13]  Lightning round.
[02:59:15]  You had a great book, Broken News.
[02:59:17]  I did.
[02:59:17]  Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back in 30 Seconds?
[02:59:22]  How has the media landscape changed since you wrote that book in 2022?
[02:59:26]  Consolidation continues, and winners and losers are being sorted out, and the universe is filtering down to we went from this to that and now we're going to go back to this.
[02:59:36]  And C-SPAN is an important part of it and getting C-SPAN paid for by streamers is important and C-SPAN is essential.
[02:59:43]  And I'm here today because I'm stealing this coffee mug.
[02:59:46]  I'm here today because I'd like to hang out with you and I'm here today because C-SPAN is important.
[02:59:50]  All right, Chris, that's all we have for today.
[02:59:52]  Thank you so much for coming on the show.
[02:59:54]  Heck yeah.
[02:59:55]  We appreciate you, host of NewsNation the Hill and senior fellow at AEI.
[02:59:59]  Love to be here.
[03:00:00]  Love to be with you.
[03:00:01]  All right.
[03:00:02]  That's all we have today for Washington Journal.
[03:00:05]  Another edition comes at you tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern here on C-SPAN.
[03:00:35]  This morning, Vice President Vance will address the International Association of Firefighters here in Washington, D.C. We're planning live coverage of his remarks at about 10.30 Eastern on C-SPAN.
[03:00:46]  Also on C-SPAN now, our free mobile video app, and online at c-span.org.
[03:00:55]  Who's your representative?
[03:00:56]  Who sits on which committee?