Dana Stroll analyzes the U.S.-Israel joint operation against Iran, noting Ali Laridjani's death likely hardens the regime while shifting risk to allies under President Trump. She addresses the 1953 Mossadegh coup and current tensions, including the killing of 140 girls at a school and strikes on Karg Island's oil infrastructure. Stroll clarifies rumors of ground operations targeting 400 kilograms of uranium, refutes claims of a 2,000-year enmity, and highlights Hamas control over 47% of Gaza. Ultimately, she argues that military action must be paired with political processes to achieve regional stability despite constitutional debates over war powers. [Automatically generated summary]
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Welcome back to Washington Journal.
Joining us now is Dana Stroll.
She is research director for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, former Assistant Defense Secretary for the Middle East during the Biden administration.
Dana, welcome to the program.
Great to be here with you.
So just start, please, by telling us about your background in the Middle East and your role at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Sure.
So as the research director, I'm responsible for everything we're doing at the Washington Institute.
We have an amazing group of scholars and fellows, many who are subject matter experts in very specific issues related to the Middle East, and many who have served in both Republican and Democratic administrations in very senior policymaking roles, Defense Department, State Department, National Security Council, you name it.
So we bring all of that expertise together and try to make the best recommendations for U.S. policy going forward in the Middle East.
And your specific backgrounds, what you bring to this.
So before the Washington Institute, I was the top civilian official in the Pentagon in the previous administration, responsible for U.S. defense policy in the Middle East.
And I've also served for many years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
So always Middle East policy, but from different vantage points from the Senate, from the Department of Defense, and always working across a big U.S. government team working with the State Department, working with the National Security Council, and our intelligence community.
Well, I want to start with the latest news to come out of Iran, which is Israel announcing the killing of Ali Laridjani.
Can you tell us who he was and the significance of his killing?
Yeah, it's quite significant.
So he's the Secretary of Iran's National Supreme Council, and he has both been one of the lead negotiators for Iran on the nuclear file designated by the now deceased former Supreme Leader Ali Khomeini, and he's been one of the most loud voices of the Iranian government both before this current war and this war, toting very hard lines about the Iranian government's approach to this war, its threats across the Middle East,
and the attitude of the regime going forward toward negotiations.
And this is significant because in the context of this current war, both what Israel has been doing and the United States, part of this is about weakening and even collapsing the Iranian regime.
For the first day of the war, one of the big operations that Israel did was a decapitation strike, which both killed the Supreme Leader but numerous other, up to 40 top officials.
And since then, the Israeli government has been quite clear they are going to continue to target Iran's top military and political leaders.
And this is another one this morning.
So what impact will his death specifically have?
You called him hardline.
Is there anybody in the regime that's not hardline?
It's very unlikely at this point.
If you think about it, for the Iranian regime, they were weakened before this current war, both because of the last two and a half years of grinding war across the Middle East, and they're more vulnerable and exposed domestically inside Iran.
They just perpetrated the largest massacre in the history of this regime against the Iranian people in mid-January.
So they're vulnerable, and now they're under a massive attack.
Most of their conventional military capabilities are being wiped out.
And historically, the previous supreme leader played more of a moderating or balancing role between the different power centers in Iran.
But as the ranks of the senior leaders are thinned out and given this experience of war, what we're left with is more hardline and more of an IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which are the protectors of this religious, religious government, religiously motivated government in Tehran.
So we're likely actually to see more hardline people without these voices that have experience engaging with the West.
We've got a question for Dana Stroll, Dana Stroll, on the events of the Middle East.
You can go ahead and start calling in now.
Lines are bipartisan.
Democrats are on 2027488000.
Republicans 2027488001.
And Independents 202748802.
We will start taking your calls shortly.
You wrote a piece for Foreign Affairs earlier this month focusing on the fact that the U.S. and Israel are in now a truly joint military operation.
What's the significance of that?
Well, generally, the U.S. military works in coalitions.
So if you think about a little over a decade ago when ISIS, the world's most fearsome terrorist army, took over parts of Iraq and Syria, or you look back to the first or second Gulf Wars, it was really the U.S. military who designed the entire operation, was providing all of the intelligence, figuring out what was going to happen when, and then looking to coalition partners to plug in wherever they could in a U.S.-designed U.S.-led operation.
This is different.
This is two partners equally sharing the risk.
Israeli lives both over Iran, the Israeli military, and Israeli civilians in Israel are very much at risk.
U.S. military forces are at risk.
We've already had several casualties since the beginning of this war.
But what's clear is that there's a division of labor.
You have Israeli defense forces going after certain targets, U.S. military going after other targets, U.S. refueling tankers, refueling Israeli aircraft, but really working in a partnership.
And that is different than how the United States traditionally or historically fights, especially in the Middle East.
Does this mean that this will be a new way of fighting globally, or is this just kind of a one-off?
Is this a unique situation?
I think it remains to be seen.
So what's clear from President Trump and what he said about wanting allies and partners of the United States to put more risk, bring more to the fight, is that what he's talking about is something like what we're seeing here.
And he would like to see that in other theaters.
And most administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have always pushed for our the United States network of allies and partners to bring more to the fight.
But I think this one is unique at this moment in time.
And the other element of the piece I wrote is that while the military partnership is deepening, there's more political criticism of this relationship on the right and the left.
Well, one criticism and what critics of this war will say is Netanyahu got Trump into this war and that this is all kind of Israel's doing.
Do you agree with that?
Do you agree that President Trump's hand was kind of forced or coerced into joining this war?
I don't.
First of all, President Trump, it's very clear, he's the decider on everything.
No one is telling him what to do or when to do it.
Secondly, it was Trump in January who made the decision to do this massive military buildup that we saw happening all through January and February until the point in which he decided to start these hostilities.
And number three, the threats from Iran are actually not new.
We've always been, when it comes to the Middle East, really concerned about Iran's nuclear program, Iran's missile program and drone program, its support for terrorists and non-state groups all over the Middle East.
And this is something the United States has been focused on for decades, working with our partners in the Middle East, outside of the Middle East, and with Israel.
All right, let's talk to Sam.
He's calling us from Thousand Oaks, California, Independent Lines.
Sam, you're on with Dana Stroll.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
My question is on the origins of this tensions between the U.S. and Iran.
I know that frequently the media says it started in 1979 with Khomeini coming in and overthrowing the Thra, but as someone who lived there, I grew up there in the 70s.
The people I spoke to there, they trace it back all the way to the 50s when the CIA overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadique.
So I'd just like to hear your views.
That's their perspective.
What is your perspective?
Thank you.
Thanks for that question, Sam.
So I think the United States has a very fraught history when it comes to the Middle East and dictating political outcomes about how societies and governments across the Middle East should or should not govern and organize themselves.
And certainly U.S. involvement in Iran from 1953 and the Oster of Mossadegh, as you note, I think is a very troubling episode in the U.S.-Iranian relationship.
But at this point in time, what I think is really important to focus on is what are U.S. national security interests.
And what we want is a stable Middle East at peace with itself, peaceful relationships between countries, where societies and governments can figure out and self-determine for themselves.
And with the Iranian regime that's been in place since 1979, what they've done is cultivate a network of terrorists and non-state groups, and then Bashar al-Assad in Syria, who kept societies across the government weak, and they were arming and funding and training them to attack the United States, to attack Israel.
And now what we're seeing is they're actually attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure across the Middle East.
So at this point in time, I think the question is, what should the United States be doing to leave the Middle East in a more stable situation?
And is what the United States doing right now going to leave the Middle East in a more stable situation?
I think it's very unclear what the outcome is going to be.
Is it going in that direction?
So the problem is if you listen to the U.S. military, they have reports about the destruction they're causing to Iran's nuclear program, to Iran's missile program and drone program.
The Navy, we keep hearing from Secretary of War Hegseth and President Trump himself that we've sunk the Iranian Navy.
Except the threats to the Middle East are there.
There's still missile attacks and drone attacks that are successfully causing fires across the Middle East and destroying infrastructure and death.
The Strait of Hormuz is still closed.
Basically, unless you cut a deal with the Iranian regime, nothing is transiting and it's having tremendous negative impact on global commerce.
And now we have the likelihood that the regime right now in Iran looks intact and is likely to be more hardline, more angry, and less willing to negotiate with the West.
And I think the history of Middle East, of U.S. experience in the Middle East, is that nothing ends with the military instrument and nothing ends when the fighting stops.
There always has to be a political process on the other side of that.
And right now, I just don't see where that off-ramp is.
Sue in Georgia has a question for you.
She says, I absolutely despise the Iranian theocracy as I do all authoritarian regimes.
With that being said, is it not fair for the Iranian populace to regard an illegally nuclear-armed Israeli government as an existential threat to them?
Well, I think if you listen to what Israel and the United States are articulating as their goals in this war, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has said he wants to collapse, he wants to create the conditions for regime change in Iran, and he's actually spoken directly to the Iranian people and said that he wants to create space for them to rise up, overthrow the rest of the regime, and figure out what they want for themselves.
President Trump has largely said the same thing.
The challenge is right now, the Iranians aren't going to come out on the streets because there's bombs and airstrikes all the time.
And a lot of the kinds of tools you would want to provide a society the opportunity to figure out what comes next, organized opposition, ability to communicate, are not the tools that either the United States or Israel are bringing to bear.
Another part of your question I think is important here is that Iran has directly said it wants to wipe Israel off the map.
So Iran and its activities are an existential threat to Israel.
Israel has never said it wants to wipe Iran off the map.
What it said is that the actions and behaviors of this regime are an existential threat to Israel.
Let's talk to Ted.
He's calling us from Buena Vista, Colorado, Independent Line.
Hi, Ted.
Yeah, good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
You know, we have no business going through war with Iran.
You know, the problem is that Donald Trump wants to build his facilities in Gaza.
And by building his facilities in Gaza, we cannot have peaceful contractors going in to Gaza and Palestinian territory while Iran and all their proxies are running around and will attack all the contractors.
Palestine should become a separate state, like Israel should be a separate state.
And we have a problem in the Persian Gulf right now.
High-Risk Persian Gulf Ops00:16:05
And our leadership in the military is just what the language is.
I mean, they bombed that island in the North Persian Sea and where they distribute the oil out of Iran.
And the other day, Trump said, I'm going to go back and keep bombing that place just for fun.
I mean, you know, and then Cory Booker in last night, he said it's sorry about what the American soldiers have died in the planes and American deaths, but he did not mention the 130 girls that got killed in Iran.
He should have said just as much about the girls that got shot in that school, and they're depending on AI to do the intelligence when the intelligence was bogus.
I mean, we should be listening to leaders like Leon Panetta, who knows the world mechanics of war.
And we need, you know, the biggest problem we have right now is this is a destruction and we're leaving Alaska vulnerable.
I mean, who used to say Russia and China could just land in Alaska because we're not taking care of our whole countries.
Okay, Ted.
Ted, you bring up some really important issues.
So first of all, I think all casualties, all civilian casualties in war are terrible.
And there is not as I don't think there's sufficient focus on the level of casualties.
And I agree with you that American leaders, both our political leaders and our military leaders, should be consistently expressing condolences for the loss of life.
In particular, with the episode in, I think, one of the earliest days of this war on the school that killed 140 Iranian girls, which was next to an Iranian military base.
First of all, these things happen in war all the time.
It is something that the U.S. military has unfortunately had incidents like this in many wars.
In Afghanistan, this has happened in Iraq.
This has happened.
But they say that in this case, it was outdated intelligence.
Right.
So let me just say first of all.
That was like at least 10 years old, though.
I agree.
So first of all, there is a process for investigating how these accidents happen.
And there's a process of both investigating how it happened, holding those accountable, and being transparent and public about the mistake, and then what is happening to rectify that mistake, and also offering payments to the families.
One of the challenges in this case is that we have a political administration who, rather than say we're going to hold on any public commentary and let that investigation happen, came out and said it wasn't us.
And now we have a lot of outside chatter about was it an AI target, what exactly happened.
The U.S. military has actually appointed a general officer to investigate this outside of the responsibility of the U.S. forces in the Middle East to look at the entire incident, figure out how that intelligence was wrong, how the decision-making occurred, and what should happen next.
My personal view as someone who served in the Pentagon is that we should let that investigation take place.
And while we let it take place, it is really unhelpful for our leaders to be talking about it and speculating when we know that there's an investigation taking place.
He also mentioned Karg Island.
Yeah.
So let me again say, so Karg Island both has Iranian military infrastructure and it has economic and oil infrastructure.
And it is a very important element of how Iran exports its oil to market.
What President Trump announced last Friday night was that the U.S. military had taken strikes on U.S., sorry, on Iranian military installations on Karg Island, but it had intentionally not targeted the economic and energy infrastructure because that is for the Iranian people and for the future.
But what they were also signaling the United States is that we could target that energy infrastructure if we want.
So you, Iran, stop targeting energy infrastructure in the Gulf, in the Middle East.
And what we saw immediately after those strikes on Karg Island is that that is not what happened.
The Iranians actually continued to target energy infrastructure in the UAE and other places.
And Israel is targeting oil facilities in Tehran.
So last week.
So there seems to be some disconnect between the U.S. and Israel.
I do think this is an area of divergence and an area of disagreement between the United States and Israel.
And what we saw last week is that Israel said it had targeted Fuel storage facilities that were used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, these IRGC, in order to facilitate their operations, and that these were fuel storage depots that the Iranian regime was profiting from.
So that was the Israeli explanation.
And we actually saw the U.S. administration come out, the Trump administration come out and say, we don't support this.
The oil infrastructures for the Iranian people stop.
And we haven't seen Israel do that since.
Darryl, Independent, Gwen Oak, Maryland, you're on the air.
Good morning, first-time caller.
Excuse me.
My question to your guest is: last year, the Israelis attacked Iran and bombed a lot of their missile sites.
And B.B. Netanyahu came to the White House where Donald Trump was caught on a hot mic and stated that it would be spring for his attack for Iran.
So B.B. Netanyahu basically came to the United States last year and basically begged, urged Donald Trump to go to and attack Iran because he said it was basically defanged.
Their missile sites had been taken down.
And it was caught on a hot mic with Donald Trump at spring.
So now we're in spring.
So how does your narrative adjust to all of this?
Thank you.
Thanks for that question.
So you're talking about the 12-day war last summer, which was mostly Israel, an Israeli-designed operation that lasted for 12 days.
And you're right.
They went after a lot of Iran's missile infrastructure, some of its nuclear program, and some decapitation strikes.
And essentially, Israel eliminated most or degraded most of Iran's air defense over the course of those 12 days and enabled the U.S. Military to come in with one specific operation, because only the U.S.
Military has B-2 bombers that can carry a very special munition, that can go deep into the deeply buried nuclear enrichment facilities that the Iranian regime had buried under mountains where it was enriching all of this uranium which you need to make a nuclear Weapon.
And so in this case, and I want to make a distinction about what I said earlier about the U.S. and Israel in this joint operation now, is that last summer it was an Israeli operation where the United States came in for 24 hours.
This is different.
And I agree that there's something problematic from the language used last summer till now.
Last summer, President Trump said we obliterated Iran's nuclear program and that there were claims about the degradation to Iran's missile program.
And what we saw since last summer is that the Iranian regime, rather than try a different course of action, doubled down, was working to rebuild its missile program.
And it was going to rebuild its missile program in order to then try to reconstitute its nuclear program, which is why Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu came to Mar-a-Lago in January, December of this past year to speak to President Trump about what should happen next.
So I think there were some estimates of how much damage had happened last summer.
And given the level of threat and destruction we've seen from Iran's missiles and drones now, clearly we need to go back, I think, and ask our leaders in the United States what the assessments were from last summer and why they were off and why we're seeing such potent threats now.
And there's about 440 kilograms of enriched uranium in Iran.
Are we able to reach our objective of Iran never being able to have a nuclear weapon if that enriched uranium stays in the country?
Well, if the U.S. objective is to prevent Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon capability and they have, as you say, 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, then we haven't accomplished our objective of making sure that Iran is pushed so far back from that.
And so I think this is a big element of the debate right now.
Everything that we're doing militarily doesn't have an answer for what to do about those 400 kilograms.
And it's going to be challenging for President Trump to say, to the extent that he can say, mission accomplished, I've prevented the Iranian regime from destabilizing the Middle East if he doesn't have an answer for the disposition of those 400 kilograms.
Jennifer in Illinois has this question for you.
How many Israeli soldiers have died in this war so far?
Are Israeli soldiers going to put boots on the ground in Iran like American soldiers are being sent to do?
First, do you believe that American soldiers will eventually need to be on the ground?
this again my personal view is it it's not the first question we need to ask is what is the objective can the objective are you not clear on that well Well, to me, the Trump administration continues to change the line about what the objective is.
When this started in January, when the military buildup happened, President Trump said this was about freedom for the Iranian people.
Then we had six weeks of nuclear negotiations.
Now it's changed to a military objective.
And if you listen to our military leadership, like the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Kane, he says the military objective is to prevent Iran from projecting power across the Middle East.
That is different from regime change, regime collapse, freedom for the Iranian people.
President Trump is now talking a lot about freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, this strategic choke point.
And so I think a challenge for the American people is to understand exactly what the objective is.
When it comes to ground forces, there's different kinds of ground forces.
And again, here, what we haven't heard is a clear articulation from the Trump administration about what they would need to do that would require ground forces.
There's been rumors in the press about occupying Karg Island, seizing Karg Island.
There's been other speculation about using ground forces for something related to that highly enriched uranium.
That's a very high-risk operation, and it's unclear what that would look like and how fast we could do that, given that the Iranians still clearly have missiles and drones and an intact security service.
So I think these are really important questions that Americans should be demanding answers to.
Ernest in Silver Spring, Maryland, Republican, you're on with Dana Stroll.
All right, thanks a lot.
I was calling because I want to express my opinion about what's going on in the Middle East.
My understanding for years and years and years, Israel have been taking, killing Palestinians, taking their land.
I'm not against war, period.
Let's face that.
I hate to see people die.
However, you cannot continue to take people's land and expect to have peace.
You're never going to have peace as long as you keep taking people's land.
I'm not going to let nobody take my house.
You would not let anyone take your house.
This is the major cause of the problem in Israel and the Palestinian area.
Gaza, guess what happened?
Right after the war started, they started moving over there taking the land.
Why?
Why do people need to take other people's land?
That is the major problem.
As far as the nuclear bomb goes, they preach and preach and preach about North Korea, North Korea got a bomb.
It's time to get noosed.
North Korea has been noose for, what, seven, eight years now?
And guess what?
Nobody talks about it.
It is not about the noose.
It's about taking land.
All right, Ernest, let's get a response.
So I think there's two separate issues here, Ernest.
First of all, when we're talking about taking land, I think it's important to be really specific about which land we're talking about.
Do we agree that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish democratic state in some of the land and that there are parts of the land that should be part of a future Palestinian state in the West Bank in Gaza?
What we haven't heard from Iran is any articulation of Israel's legitimate right to exist.
And actually, sometimes we haven't heard that from other parts of the international community.
The idea that Hamas's October 7th attack on Israelis is more important than Iran's nuclear weapon capability and what Iran has done all across the Middle East.
To me, that's a challenging way to look at this.
I think on the one hand, we need to insist that there's a viable pathway for a two-state outcome between Israel and the Palestinians.
And we can also condemn Iran's illegal pursuit of a nuclear weapon capability, Iran's cultivation of terrorist networks across the Middle East, and that Iran is using ballistic missiles and drones to attack civilians and civilian infrastructure across the Middle East.
We can do both of those things.
You talked about the idea of projecting power and the proxies.
There is currently a war going on between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Beirut is being hit.
A lot of people have been displaced and killed there.
How does this end?
How does this play out?
Does Israel keep going similarly to what they did with Hamas in Gaza and just do a scorch earth policy until Hezbollah is completely crippled?
Well, I certainly hope not because in Gaza right now, we actually have 47% of Gaza that's still controlled by Hamas.
And Hamas is stealing humanitarian aid.
They are ruling by brutality, shooting people in the streets, and in no way are accepting that Israel has a right to exist at all.
In Lebanon, you actually have leadership in Beirut, including the president, Josef Aoun, who's called for direct negotiations with Israel to stop this war and figure out a way for peace going forward.
So one is we have political leadership in Lebanon that we can work with.
And number two is that what's clear about right this minute is that Hezbollah at the direction of Iran chose to start attacking Israel again so that Israel would have to fight on two fronts, not just Iran, but also Lebanon.
Fighting on Two Fronts00:09:05
So I think there's differences and I certainly hope that what is happening in Gaza isn't what's going to happen in Lebanon.
There's other, there's paths here that include political processes and negotiations.
Elaine Savannah, Georgia, Democrat, you're on the air.
Good morning, Mimi.
Morning.
Good morning, Dama.
Good morning.
I'm a first-time caller.
Well, welcome.
Go right ahead.
Thank you.
I have more of a comment.
You know, I call because normally I just listen, but I'm kind of like the last caller in his perspective that, you know, why we take because we have, you know, power of the military to use them to pillage other foreign countries that have less viability to fight back against us.
All right.
We got your comment, Elaine.
And here's Buddy in Philadelphia Republican line.
Go ahead, buddy.
Hey, how are you doing?
I just want to say that they said, death to America, death to Israel.
They want to exterminate the Jews.
I'm a Christian.
And they want to exterminate the Jews.
They want to exterminate America.
And Palestini, they had schools, little kids, how to exterminate Jews.
They never mentioned that.
They think these people are innocent, but they're not.
And you have to keep on going.
When you go to war, you go to win.
And it's no joke.
My father was in Korea.
All right.
And if you don't hit the homeland and you don't hit the leaders, then you're not going to win.
But in World War II, when they went, because my uncles were in the invasion of Normany, you don't hit Hitler, you don't hit the Gestapo, you don't hit any of them, you're going to lose.
But, you know, no such thing as a fair fight.
All right.
And Buddy mentions the ideology behind the regime.
I mean, you can bomb buildings, you can bomb facilities, but how do you change the ideology?
I think one of the most important things we heard in Buddy's question is that we need to win.
And the challenge right now is what does it mean to win in this war?
So the ideology, exterminate the Jews, death to the United States, death to Israel is a huge problem.
Right now, some of the Iranian apparatus can be defanged, can be degraded, can be set back.
But can you change the ideology?
Can you change the orientation of the regime with military force only if this regime or like part of the regime or residual elements of this regime are left intact?
Here's the challenge right now.
Since on the first day of this war, the former supreme leader, now deceased, Ali Khomeini, was killed, his son has taken over.
His son, Mustabah Khomeini, in the first day of this war, lost his father, his mother, his wife, his brother, his sisters, and I believe some in-laws.
And he's rumored to be quite injured himself.
And he was responsible for cultivating the rise of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, their financial empire, and their direction of force both in the region and against the Iranian people.
So he's more beholden to the IRGC.
So is that ideology likely to change if he's left in charge of the Iranian government after this war?
And that is the huge challenge.
So what do we mean by winning?
And are we bringing the right tools to this fight in order to win and leave the Middle East, not just Iran, not just Israel, but the entire region in a more stable situation?
On the independent line in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, John, good morning.
Hi, Mimi.
I just wanted to make an observation and ask kind of a question or kind of comment question.
I just want to say, I saw that you never really entered the Twitter post about if Israel put foot on the ground and also how many Israeli soldiers have died on the ground.
You kind of deflected away from it.
But no, that's just a comment to you.
But it also seems to me a lot made between the alliance between Israel and the USA and the intelligence sharing that goes on.
But to me, it seems like a lot of the alliance supports Israel's own problems, a lot of the issues, and not all of them.
In the Middle East, we would have had, we kind of had because of Israel's stance within the Middle East, the kind of aggressiveness.
They're kind of like, you know, I'd say our bully kid brother beating up on little people.
And when they pick a fight with people who can defend themselves, they call on us and our soldiers to go and die.
I mean, how many children have died in Gaza?
And how many children will die in Lebanon?
And are you proud of your support for that?
Go ahead, Dana.
Thanks for that question.
And thanks for flagging the question about Israeli soldiers killed in action.
So there have not been any soldiers of Israel killed, right, or service members, I should say, because this is mostly an Air Force operation, killed in Iran in this current war.
But Israeli military have been killed recently in Gaza, in Lebanon, and obviously over the course of these years of fighting since October 7th.
Number two, I agree with you, the death of all children is deplorable and terrible.
And one of the real challenges with protecting the lives of children is that the enemies, and by enemies I mean Iran, Iran supported Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran supported Hamas in Gaza, shield themselves with children in schools, in mosques, in other civilian areas.
And so they're deliberately putting civilians at risk in order to maximize the death and destruction when Israel takes these strikes to get either the weapons, the equipment, or the leaders.
And it's absolutely terrible.
And I wish that all, both enemies, well, I really wish that adversaries would stop using children as human shields.
Bill in South Carolina, Independent Line, you're on.
This me?
Yes, go ahead, Bill.
You're on.
Okay.
I'm a veteran of combat.
I was in Vietnam in 72.
You know, Israel, I think, and Iran are always going to hate each other.
They've been fighting each other for 2,000 years.
But when I see politicians say that Iran is dangerous, of course, and Iran is a rogue country, but they're not an imminent danger.
And we see that they have ICBMs, and they've got 60% enriched uranium, which puts them very close to a bomb.
At what point do we call them a danger, an imminent danger, when they've got a warhead or an ICBM that is nuclear?
You know, Israel cannot protect the world, and Iran is at war with the free world, from what I see.
Okay.
So we're running out of time, but we got your question.
Go ahead.
So, Bill, first of all, I want to thank you for your service to our country.
Second of all, I do not think that Israel and Iran will always hate each other and that it goes back 2,000 years.
In fact, in the time of the Shah, there were relations between the Iranian government and Israel.
And there's actually been multiple examples in the Middle East of political leaders taking huge risks for peace, from Camp David, the Egypt-Israel peace accords, Jordan and Israel, the Abraham Accords about six years ago, the United Arab Emirates in Israel, Bahrain and Israel, Morocco and Israel.
So I actually think that wise political leadership and a proactive vision for economic integration, peace between peoples is possible in the Middle East.
And finally, I think that the challenge right now is that Iran and its activities have always been a threat.
This regime and its activities have been a threat to the United States, to the Middle East, to the world, and that includes Israel.
But the issue of whether there was an imminent threat, which gives President Trump the authority under Article 2 of the Constitution to go to war like this without coming to Congress and seeking an authorization for the use of military force, is a real issue.
And in my view, we did not hear an articulation of the imminent threat.
You're right about the enriched stockpile of uranium, but one could make the case that there was more time to explore diplomacy or build a coalition before going to war.
Imminent Threat to War00:03:20
That's Dana Stroll, research director for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former Assistant Defense Secretary for the Middle East during the Biden administration.
Dana, thanks so much for joining us.
Thanks for having me on today.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington, D.C. to across the country.
Coming up Wednesday morning, Elise Labbitt of Global Affairs will talk about the latest on U.S.-Israeli combat operations against Iran and other news of the day.
And then the American Enterprise Institute's John Fortier on proposals to require identification and proof of citizenship to vote and the role of the federal government in elections.
And California Democratic Congressman Sam Lucardo will talk about the latest on the U.S.-Israeli combat operations against Iran, the spike in oil and gas prices, and other congressional news of the day.
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At 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, the House is in.
Members will debate a bill to prevent foreign nationals from entering the U.S. and another to allow federal agents to deport migrants convicted of defrauding federal programs.
At 8 a.m. on C-SPAN 2, British Prime Minister Kier Starmer appears before members of the House of Commons to discuss domestic and foreign policy issues during Prime Minister's question time.
Then at 10, the Senate convenes to continue debate on the Republican voter ID bill that would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID to cast a ballot in federal elections.
Over on C-SPAN 3 at 9:30 a.m., Senator Mark Wayne Mullen testifies at a confirmation hearing for his nomination to be Secretary of Homeland Security.
If approved, he replaces Christy Noam, who will be reassigned to a special envoy role.
At 2:30, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announces if there will be a change in interest rates following the Fed's open market meeting.
And at 7 p.m., a discussion on the changing landscape of sports media with Congressman Roger Williams and YouTube's global head of media and sports.
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Next, President Trump on the contributions of the Irish to America's history during the Friends of Ireland luncheon, hosted by House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Irish Prime Minister Martin also talks about the special friendship between the U.S. and Ireland.