Adam Weinstein critiques the U.S.-Israel military operation in Iran, arguing that Pentagon claims of success contradict the reality of a more radicalized regime under younger leaders following Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's death. He highlights the disconnect between Iran's 10-point demands and the Trump administration's 15-point list, suggesting face-saving motives rather than genuine peace. While defending the potential for JCPOA reintegration over punitive sanctions that hurt civilians, Weinstein warns Israel may act as a spoiler in Lebanon and Iran. Ultimately, the conflict has worsened conditions for Iranians without achieving regime change, while straining American finances through rising oil prices and expanded Pentagon budgets. [Automatically generated summary]
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Building on the Deal00:15:10
Club host David Rubinstein about the presidency, Congress, and the state of the economy from the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University.
There's a lot of talk these days, David, that these necessary components of a functioning democracy are faltering and are failing us.
And that is why some people are concerned larger than the presidency about the state of things today.
I believe that the government of the United States has functioned reasonably well.
Think about this.
When this country was created in 1776, when really 1789 under the Constitution, we were a tiny little country and no one in the world thought we'd be a power.
And because of many things, natural resources, talented people, immigration, entrepreneurial spirit, a whole variety of things, this country became the most powerful country and most envied country in the world.
Watch our special edition of America's Book Club with an interview of our host, David Rubenstein, Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAM.
And welcome back to Washington Journal.
We're joined now by Adam Weinstein.
He is the Middle East Program Deputy Director at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Adam, welcome to the program.
Thanks for having me.
You just heard the Pentagon press briefing.
What was your reaction?
My reaction is they're trying to, I don't want to say spin because that's too strong of a word, but they're trying to sell this ceasefire in the last month of operations in Iran as a win while simultaneously claiming that they destroyed Iran's industrial capacity, but they're also standing with the Iranian people.
But at the same time, it made sense to allow the regime to remain.
So I found it very inconsistent.
And your reaction to the announcement of the ceasefire yesterday, were you surprised?
Did you welcome that?
What do you think?
I welcomed it.
Part of me was surprised, but these negotiations had been going on for two weeks through Pakistani mediators.
So I do welcome the ceasefire because I think this war didn't have a clear end, end state that the administration was seeking.
I don't think they had clarity on that.
And actually the briefing I just heard only solidifies that point.
And the deal that is, I guess, going to be negotiated, we've seen the 10-point deal, the 10 points asked for by Iran.
We've seen the 15 points asked for by the Trump administration.
They're very far apart.
So where do you see this kind of shaking out?
Is there a middle ground?
What do you expect out of a deal, if there is one?
Well, I think the most important thing to the Trump administration is the deal needs to allow for face-saving and needs to allow the Trump administration to sell this war as Success at home, that in some way they made the Middle East more peaceful and they defanged the Iranian regime.
That's the kind of language they like to use.
I think for the Iranians, what's most important is they need to have money to rebuild the infrastructure that was just destroyed, and they want to have some kind of assurance that this kind of war won't happen again.
And so, for the Iranians, the most important thing is some sort of leverage over the Strait of Hermuz and possibly a toll booth in which they can collect money through the ships that pass through, use that to rebuild the infrastructure that was destroyed and also enrich their regime, and also retain leverage over that strait so that if the United States or Israel decides to conduct attacks again, we're just going to repeat the same cycle.
And the Israelis and the Americans know that.
I think that's what the Iranians want.
I don't think the Iranians trust a third-party guarantor, and I don't think countries like Russia or China or Pakistan are interested in playing that role.
So the only leverage the Iranians really have is the Strait of Hermuz.
So when you say operating it as a toll booth, what kind of a precedent do you think this could set for other waterways in the world and commercial shipping through those waterways?
Well, it would set the precedent of tolls.
Of course, having a toll booth doesn't necessarily mean that Iran completely controls the waterway.
There's similar precedents in other parts of the world.
Think about the Suez Canal as an example.
Now, granted, that goes straight through Egyptian territory, but that's a precedent.
It would be likely jointly operated with the Omanis because both Oman and Iran have equal claims to the waters that go through the Strait of Hermuz.
But yeah, it would create some precedent.
Although I think we have to remember that the Strait of Hermuz is unique in many ways.
It's extraordinarily narrow in which Omani and Iranian waters extend out almost to the middle of the waterway.
And it's a place where one-fifth of oil and liquefied natural gas pass through.
We'll take your calls for our guest, Adam Weinstein with the Quincy Institute.
If you would like to weigh in, ask a question, you can do so now.
The lines are Republicans 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002.
Adam, I want to ask you about the role of Israel in this conflict and in the ceasefire.
Where do you see things going with that?
Well, I certainly don't think Israel welcomed the ceasefire.
The real question is whether Israel will act as a spoiler to the ceasefire.
So if Israel were to continue to conduct strikes in the coming days in Lebanon and in Iran, it would risk undermining the ceasefire.
Because of course, the Iranians view Israel and the U.S. as being in cahoots with one another.
So I don't think they would accept the United States ceasing strikes, but Israel continues these strikes.
In terms of the origins of this conflict, I think ultimately it was President Trump's decision and he needs to own it.
But I do think Netanyahu certainly tried to convince him and persuade him that now was the time to conduct strikes on Iran.
The interests of the U.S. and the interests of Israel diverged a bit.
I think the Trump administration wanted to weaken the Iranian government and the Iranian military and their industrial base.
But I think for Israel, they want regime change, and nothing short of that will really satisfy them.
Now, you've heard the President and Secretary Hagseth say the regime has changed, even if that wasn't an explicit goal of the United States, given the amount of people that have been killed from their top leadership.
So what do you think of that?
Do you think the regime has changed?
And what can you tell us about how stable the regime is currently?
Well, unfortunately, I think the regime has changed, but it's likely changed for the worse, not for the better.
I mean, you look at the former Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.
He was 86 years old.
He was somewhat ineffective in his latter years.
And he's dead now.
And we don't know the condition of his son, actually.
But if his son does recover, Mushtaaba, Mustafa is much younger.
His wife has been killed.
His mother has been killed.
His father has been killed.
I don't think this is going to be someone who's amenable to the United States or necessarily more pragmatic.
Younger leaders tend to be more ideological and more hardline.
Some of the more pragmatic figures in the regime were killed, such as Larajani.
And most importantly, the more moderate people in the regime, their narrative has been completely sidelined.
I mean, for years, they pinned their political careers on this idea that you could negotiate with the United States and that would be the best path forward, whereas the hardliners within the regime said negotiation wasn't possible and that you could never trust the United States.
And since the Trump administration was negotiating with Iran last summer and then initiated strikes and then they were negotiating with Iran once again earlier this year and then initiated this war, I think the view of the hardliners has been vindicated in some way.
And so it's going to be a more difficult regime to work with.
Even though we've managed to get a ceasefire with them now, I think it's going to be a more difficult regime to work with.
They are weakened for now.
But remember, after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, they experienced a brutal war with Iraq that killed something like 200,000 Iranians.
It was a much more brutal war than what we've seen over the last month.
And they were able to rebuild from that.
And so I think the regime is likely more radical than it was before.
And for the Iranian people, I don't think their conditions have improved.
I think their conditions are worse now than they were two months ago.
When you say more moderate elements of the regime that have been taken out and replaced with more radical, even when there were those more moderate members, as you say, we were not able to reach any diplomatic negotiation with them.
So how moderate really could they have been?
That's incorrect.
We re-reached the Iran nuclear deal with them under the Obama administration.
We reached the JCPOA.
I mean, that took months and months and months and months.
I forget the exact timeframe.
I think it took something like 15 months to negotiate.
And it was years in the making.
We negotiated a complex nuclear deal with them in exchange for sanctions relief.
And it wasn't perfect, but it was setting the path towards something better.
And the first Trump administration ripped up that deal.
And I don't mean this in a partisan way, but I think that President Trump, he didn't want to have any legacy of the Obama administration.
And rather than build on that deal and create something bigger and better, he decided to rip it up.
So while it's true that the word moderate when it comes to the Iranian regime is relative, the reality is we have negotiated agreements with them.
So one of the, let's talk about the Iran nuclear deal of the Obama administration, because some of the major criticisms are this.
One, it gave Iran access to funds, which they then used to fund their proxies and terrorism around the region.
And then the other one is the expiration dates on the limitations to their nuclear ambitions.
So how do you respond to those two criticisms?
Well, the way I would have responded to those two criticisms is no deal this forever.
The deal could have been built upon.
And by reintegrating Iran into a U.S.-led global economy at the time, at least, I think it would have given them a stake in having good relations with the West and not undermining their own development.
Ripping up that deal didn't prevent them from developing their ballistic missile capacity or their nuclear program for that matter.
And it didn't prevent them from funding their proxies.
I mean, they still have ways.
There's a dark economy within Iran.
There's a black market economy.
Look, the regime is corrupt.
That's no secret.
They're able to fund their proxies regardless of whether they're integrated in the global economy or not.
But by completely isolating Iran, I think it actually encouraged their worse inclinations.
It punished the Iranian people.
It didn't punish Iranian proxies.
All right, let's hear from callers, and we'll start with Bob in Pennsylvania, independent.
Yes, I'm an independent, and I'm also a Vietnam vet.
And I'd just like to say how proud I am of our country for finally stepping up and doing something for those barbarians that have treated their people and the world the way they have.
And I think it's pretty appalling to hear about this great nuclear deal we had.
Had no teeth in it, no follow-up, nobody really getting engaged in this.
And we've seen what that has done, and we've seen what that has brought to the world.
It could be on a brink of war, cut the oil supply off.
So, you know, it's very nice to hear all these things about what you're saying about the deal.
But instead of blaming other people, what would you do?
What would your plan be to be in there to get a deal to ensure that, number one, that government doesn't mutilate its own people like it has, treats people like they should, and runs as a country, a real country that's not going to be sneaking around?
And what type of controls are the rest of the world going to have to make sure that that funnel of water that we get all of our oil through will not be shut down again?
So I'm going to hear your plan.
Sure.
Go ahead, Adam.
Well, first of all, thanks for your service.
I was a Marine myself.
But, you know, look, I think we have to remember that the Strait of Hermuz was open before this war was launched.
Iran hadn't closed it before.
They closed the Strait of Hermuz as a response to what they viewed as an existential threat after the United States assassinated their supreme leader and engaged in a countrywide bombing campaign.
So, of course, I think the Strait of Hermuz should remain open, but I don't think that Iran would have chosen to close it but for a war that was essentially imposed on Iran.
In terms of how the Iranian regime treats its people, you're preaching to the choir.
I mean, they've killed thousands of protesters.
They've imprisoned activists.
They've robbed the country of economic development through their policies.
There's no doubt about that, except that this war wasn't about liberating the Iranian people.
Strategic Military Beliefs00:15:10
It just wasn't.
The Iranian people rose up in a mass protest back in January and appealed to the Trump administration for help then.
That's not when the Trump administration chose to conduct these strikes.
You have to look at the timing.
They waited until those protests were completely subdued, and then they engaged in strikes.
And I don't think that, you know, if you listen to the president himself, he's time and time again said that he's not interested in true regime change.
And I also don't think that the United States has a history of successful regime change.
I mean, just look at Afghanistan.
We fought for 20 years just to bring the Taliban back.
So I don't think we have a credible history of successful regime change.
But even if we did, President Trump was clear that that wasn't really his goal here.
So I don't think the Iranian people have been helped.
Now, in terms of criticisms of the Iran nuclear deal, every deal has its weaknesses.
I truly believe that if the deal had been given more time to succeed and Iran had had a greater stake in being part of the global economy, they would have been incentivized not to be funding militias around the Middle East, or at least not at the same levels.
Bob said that the agreement had no teeth and no follow-up.
Well, that's not true.
Inspections were part of the agreement.
Russia was part of the agreement.
China was supportive of the agreement.
Our European allies were part of the agreement.
I mean, these countries wouldn't be part of this process if they didn't think the agreement had teeth.
What's happening right now is that we've been at war with them for over a month and we haven't been able to remove the regime from power.
And they've been able to, unfortunately, they've been able to place the entire Gulf region in chaos.
And it's actually made us look weaker than we would have otherwise.
And they've shown that they can use the strait as leverage.
So unfortunately, I think we've emboldened the regime in a way that the Iran nuclear deal didn't.
David, Align for Democrats in Palm Beach, Florida.
You're on with Adam Weinstein.
Yes, thank you.
I wanted to comment that I think Bob of Pennsylvania was way off base about the agreement.
The agreement had potential.
It was a good starting point.
Trump trashed it, just like he threw the diplomacy to the side.
But my real reason for calling is to ask, what should we believe from Heg Seth and Kane?
I heard them this morning in their press conference crowing about the wonderful military operation.
And that's all well and good, but that's not what this was about.
The United States was desperate at this point, almost on its knees, to get some type of an agreement to avoid committing war crimes.
I'm not sure whether our military would have gone forward with any order to waste the civilization, a 3,000-year-old civilization in Persia, now Iran, if that had been ordered.
It's hard to know what the truth is from the Trump administration, but I'd like to know exactly what we should believe was accomplished, what will be accomplished, because Mr. Hegseth makes it sound like we've had a great victory, and he used the word the victory in his statement this morning.
So please clarify if you can.
All right, David.
Well, administrations always claim victory.
All of you remember that President Bush claimed victory shortly after our invasion of Iraq, and then we know how that went.
But, you know, Kane claimed that 90% of the industrial base was destroyed of Iran.
I don't know that that's true.
I think the industrial base of Iran has taken a significant hit.
I'm not sure that that makes the region safer.
But, you know, militarily speaking, at a tactical level, yes, the U.S. military performed quite well.
I mean, it's clear that we have incredible intelligence.
The Israelis also have good intelligence.
We're able to target specific leaders and leaders of the IRGC with precision.
There was a lot of emphasis placed on the fact that some jets were shot down over Kuwait and in one case over Iran.
But if you consider the volume of missions that were being flown over Iran, it's actually incredible that we didn't have more losses.
So at a tactical level, our military performed miraculously.
But again, our military was asked to engage in a war that had no clear end state, didn't really have congressional approval.
For a while, President Trump was saying it wasn't a war, and then now he says it is a war.
So which is it?
And they're just the end state kept shifting.
And now, unfortunately, one of the main asks in the negotiating process is for the straight of Hermuz to remain open, except this time the Iranians might be getting paid for it.
Whereas before this war, it was open and the Iranians weren't being paid for it.
So to go back to the JCPOA, we can criticize the weaknesses of the JCPOA all day, but the reality is that the terms that the Trump administration are negotiating now are actually much more generous to the Iranians.
The Iranians, if there is a deal made, are probably going to come out with a deal that they could only dream of during the JCPOA days.
On the Republican line in Silver Spring, Maryland, John, good morning.
Good morning.
I'd like to get Mr. Weinstein's take on some facts that haven't been brought to light.
One would be the Basic Brigade, what they are, how many of them there are, the fact that Iran is four times the size of Iraq, that it would not be realistic for any country to occupy Iran in any meaningful way.
I'd like to talk about the objectives too: the objectives to degrade the Navy and deplete the ballistic missiles.
I think there is some degree of consistency, not in Trump's rhetoric, certainly, which is ridiculous, but there's consistency in here.
You have a regime that was sniping protesters, killing tens, the thousands, maybe 10,000, 30,000.
And if it's not realistic to take over a country, wouldn't destroying the Army, Navy, destroying the ballistic missile shield, and severely targeting the law enforcement command, the Basic Brigade, wouldn't that at least be a helpful response?
You spoke of timing.
It was January when the atrocities happened, and then you have the 40 days later when they have the funeral celebrations, and then they get hit again.
The amount of precision that you described tactically, and I'd say strategically, that takes at least, shoot, you got to give them at least two and a half months.
So I'd just like to see you engage with the Basic Brigade, the sniping of tens of thousands of civilians, and kind of squared out, if you would.
Okay.
Go ahead, Adam.
Yeah, well, unfortunately, Iran is such an opaque country.
We don't know precisely how many protesters were killed.
We know it's at least in the thousands, potentially in the tens of thousands.
It was clear that there were massacres being conducted during that period, and they were engaging in indiscriminate killing of protesters.
The besieged operate as essentially a paramilitary.
I mean, you described them as peep police.
They're like paramilitarized police.
You might describe them as that.
And they keep the population in line.
They're less professional than the IRGC from a military perspective, but they're loyal to the regime.
And so the regime has a base of loyalists that are completely committed to it.
One, because they benefit from it, and two, because if something different were to come along, who knows what their fate would be.
In terms of destroying the military to achieve some kind of regime change, if you look at the senior military commanders that have been assassinated by either the U.S. or the Israelis, the majority of them have been IRGC commanders, not the regular conventional military.
I think that was done, that was done strategically, because I think there is a belief that a country cannot function very well without a military.
The IRGC are completely loyal to the system that exists now, but maybe the conventional military wouldn't be.
And I think perhaps they've learned that lesson from the Iraq war where they completely disbanded the military after the invasion only to get an insurgency instead.
Nevertheless, it's unpredictable how militaries will behave when there's a mass protest.
I mean, remember, in the case of the mass protests that occurred in Egypt during the Arab Spring, the military at least temporarily took the side of the protesters only to become a military dictatorship instead.
So sometimes militaries will side with protesters rather than the ruling elites, and sometimes they won't.
For the conditions to exist for a successful revolution, there has to be a huge demographic of the population that is willing to either engage in armed struggle or a mass protest movement that lasts for months or years and willing to take incredible heavy casualties.
The Iranian government is coercive, and although there's been mass protests in Iran every two to three years for years now, the government has been able to sort of destroy those protest movements as they happen by arresting and executing individuals, often young people, by arresting protesters en masse, by killing protesters in some cases.
And so you haven't seen the conditions emerge for a real successful regime change from within.
If you look at the case of Syria, where there was a successful regime change from within, albeit with a lot of support from abroad, that took 15 years and hundreds of thousands of Syrians died in the process.
I think there's many Iranians, and I don't want to speak for Iranians, but I think it's just the fact that there's many Iranians inside Iran who might not support the regime, but they're also not willing to engage.
They're not willing or they're not capable of engaging in an armed struggle or a long-term protest movement that would put their families or their livelihoods at risk.
And I think it's very difficult for the United States to create the conditions for regime change from abroad.
We've seen that in Iraq.
We've seen that in Afghanistan.
And unfortunately, I think what we've done with this war is we've created a more hardline regime that's even more paranoid than before and is going to be worse on human rights.
I mean, the real losers out of this war are going to be the Iranian people.
The Iranian regime lives to fight another day.
The United States ultimately will be fine.
The oil markets will recover.
But the people of Iran are going to be inside Iran are going to be the people who really come out losing in this scenario.
Adam Axios is reporting that U.S.-Iran peace talks are expected Friday in Pakistan.
The article does say, though, that Caroline Levitt, the press secretary, said there are discussions about in-person talks, but nothing is final until announced by the President or the White House.
What can you tell us about the role of Pakistan in these negotiations?
Well, Pakistan, it's a country I visit frequently.
Pakistan was in a unique position to act as a mediator here.
Traditional mediators like Oman and Qatar in the Gulf weren't able to really act as a mediator in this case.
For one, they had been a mediator in the past in past negotiations when the Trump administration had negotiated and then at the last moments abandoned negotiations and bombed Iran.
So there was a trust deficit.
The Iranians didn't really trust Gulf mediators anymore.
Secondly, Iran, during this war, as a strategy, chose to launch missile strikes and drone strikes against its Gulf neighbors.
So those Gulf neighbors were part of the war.
They were victims of the war.
And in the case of Qatar, for example, Qatar hosts a massive U.S. military base.
So from the Iranian perspective, Qatar is actually part of the U.S. military campaign against it.
Pakistan, on the other hand, doesn't host U.S. troops.
The Army Chief of Pakistan has a great relationship with President Trump.
President Trump has praised the Army Chief.
The Army Chief has praised President Trump.
And that's the most powerful political actor in Pakistan.
The Prime Minister of Pakistan also has a good relationship with President Trump.
For whatever reason, they all seem to have a great rapport with one another.
And I think that comes down to personalities and other factors.
And also, Pakistan has a decent relationship with Iran.
But maybe the most critical factor is, one, Pakistan's a Muslim nuclear power, so it has a certain amount of credibility and cachet because of that.
It has a strong military.
It doesn't really rely on the United States for its own security.
It has a strong military partnership with the United States, but it doesn't rely on the United States for its security the way that some of those Gulf countries do.
And maybe the most important piece of the puzzle here is that Pakistan has some bad blood with both the United States and Iran.
I mean, in 2024, Iran and Pakistan were conducting missile and airstrikes against one another.
This was a dispute over armed separatists that exist in both Iran and Pakistan.
And we don't have to go into the details of that.
But the point is that as recently as 2024, Iran and Pakistan were fighting one another.
Iran and the United States have a long history of tension.
And this actually made Pakistan a more credible mediator because the view was Pakistan's not clearly on the U.S. side or clearly on the Iranian side.
Pentagon Budget Priorities00:13:00
It can act somewhat as a neutral mediator.
And it wasn't really a victim of this war.
Aside from being an economic victim, there weren't any strikes that were being conducted inside Pakistan.
So it wasn't a party to the conflict.
And so the Pakistanis jumped on this opportunity, I think, to have a closer relationship with the Trump administration by essentially providing a service, which is that we're going to act as a neutral mediator and help solve this problem.
The real question, though, is whether the Iranians and the United States can make the compromises necessary to come to an agreement.
Are you confident in that, Adam?
Do you think there can be an agreement?
I think it could go either way.
I think the Iranians, they've already paid a huge price up front.
One of the foolhardy aspects of launching this war is one of the most powerful pieces of leverage that the United States has is our military.
It's the threat of our military.
It's the fear of our military.
But once we deploy that threat and engage in strikes, actually the Iranians have already paid the military price.
And they've seen that despite the strength of our military, our military wasn't able to achieve regime change in a quick kind of way.
And so I think this has unfortunately given the Iranians some confidence at the negotiating table, and they're probably going to be more hardline in their negotiating positions.
I hope that a deal is achieved.
And I think that the Iranians and the Trump administration should be interacting directly.
I do, you know, I think I've been critical of the Trump administration on this program so far.
But I want to say something positive, which is I think that President Trump has always been willing to sit down with adversaries.
He's willing to sit down with Kim Jong-un.
He's willing to meet with Putin.
He's willing to meet with Xi Chinping.
He's not someone who is afraid to sit down with an adversary or a potential adversary and work out a deal.
He did that with the Taliban.
And I think there's even more bad blood between the Taliban and the United States in some ways than Iran and the United States.
So I think President Trump should go back to his instincts, which was to be a deal maker, to be a peace president.
This is what he campaigned on.
For some reason, in the last couple months, he's done in 180.
I don't think the majority of his supporters like that.
So I think he should trust his instincts and try to hash out a deal with the Iranians.
Mohammed in Washington, D.C., Independence, you're on with Adam Weinstein.
Okay, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
Hey, Adam, I just saw one in Meridia.
Kemin and what do you call Trump administration claiming a victory when I'm listening?
Look, English is my sixth language.
I speak other languages way better than English.
Everywhere I'm listening to all in the Israeli world, including politicians, they say we lost this war.
Now, Trump, they claiming a victory.
Trump, he claiming a victory.
Today, what Iranians they ask him for, they never dreamed for it before this war.
They gave up everything.
Today, when I'm looking wherever they ask him for, and Trump willing to sit down with them, how am I going to believe really what Trump they say?
And then if always they telling us, Iran, Iran, Iran, we destroyed Iran democracy back in 1953.
Why always they go, they taking us to 79?
Why they don't go back?
We're not going there looking for democracy.
If democracy, there's no democracy in Saudi Arabia, you can't get easily killed for only coming on Twitter, for only coming on Twitter about any ministers, not even rulers.
So I don't know what, are we better today or before we went to this war?
Thank you.
Well, yeah, first of all, if English is your sixth language, I have to say that's quite impressive how well you speak it for it being your sixth language.
So I understood your question.
I don't think we're better off today.
You know, and you're right to talk about 1953 and Mossadegh.
And we don't have to go into the details of the history, and nor am I a historian.
But there was a democratic moment in Iran that was undermined by the West.
And I think a lot of Iranians resent that.
Nevertheless, look, I'm a firm believer that countries have to control their own destiny.
And ultimately, whatever future government exists in Iran, whether it's the Islamic Republic that exists today or democracy, that's going to be in the hands of Iranians inside Iran, not the diaspora, not Americans, Iranians inside Iran.
And, you know, changing your government oftentimes involves massive sacrifice.
In general, I don't think people inside a country are that amenable to outside forces imposing regime change on them, even if they dislike their own government.
I mean, surely every American who is listening to this call, we live in a divided society, unfortunately, either has strong opinions about the previous administration or strong opinions about the current administration.
Yet I don't think we would welcome outside meddling in our country.
We're still, most of us are still patriots at the end of the day.
And I think Iran has a strong history of nationalism.
And one of the real mistakes of the Trump administration's rhetoric, especially yesterday, was when he threatened to destroy Persian civilization.
I mean, why would he say that?
One of the huge criticisms of the current government in Iran is that it actually is alien to Persian civilization.
It's a theocracy with a strong military component to it.
And it actually is alien to what real Persian civilization is.
But unfortunately, what the Trump administration has done is it's tied the current government to Persian civilization and somehow made them the defenders of Persian civilization, which is, I don't know why they did that rhetorically.
It was actually a mistake to do, especially if you're trying to support Iranians who oppose the current government.
But in short, I don't think we're better off than before.
And I just don't think the United States can impose regime change on other countries successfully.
We couldn't do it in Afghanistan.
We sort of did it in Iraq, but at a great cost.
Dan in Oregon, line for Democrats.
Good morning.
Good morning, and thanks for taking my call.
I want to know about the $1.5 trillion request from President Trump.
And I want to say that I hope that it's not going anywhere because, you know, he said he wanted to make cuts to our democrat, you know, he wanted to take the money from cuts to the United States' people's stuff.
And I live on my Social Security, and so that's a worry for me.
So if we could hear about where that money's going, and I just want to say this war is costing a heck of a bunch of money that's coming from somewhere out of our people, then that's my call.
Thank you.
Adam, any reaction to the cost of the war?
Well, look, I mean, my first reaction is that two of my colleagues who are smarter than me have written a book that was recently published that you can purchase, or I'm sure you can find it at a library too, called Trillion Dollar War Machine.
If you just Google trillion-dollar war machine, they do a deep dive into this ever-expanding Pentagon budget, and you're going to learn a lot more from them than you will from me.
But yes, it disturbs me.
Two things disturb me, this sort of entropic, ever-expanding Pentagon budget, and also the way we're using it.
I mean, if we're going to have a bigger Pentagon budget, we should be investing in the future of warfare, not engaging in another sort of haphazard regime change war in the Middle East that actually makes us look kind of silly to China and to other countries around the world.
But I agree with you wholeheartedly that there's other things other than the Pentagon budget that the U.S. government should be investing in.
And I found it troubling when President Trump made recent remarks about that we can't afford any kind of programs that will help Americans because we have a war to fight.
It was a war of choice.
We didn't have to fight it.
And we're already paying for it.
I mean, anecdotally, I just filled my gas tank over in Jersey, which usually has cheap gas, and it was like 75 bucks to fill a gas tank.
Luckily, I don't have to use my car that often.
But what if I did?
There's people who have to use a car every day.
And that's going to translate into everything.
The cost of groceries, the cost of flights.
And by the way, even they can achieve a deal tomorrow.
But oil prices, because of the way they're determined ahead of time, are going to remain high for the next couple of months.
So we're going to be paying this price for a while, regardless of whether the Pentagon budget expands or not.
So yes, I share your frustration with that.
And Jeff is in Glen Bernie, Maryland line for Republicans.
Go ahead, Jeff.
Oh, we lost Jeff.
I wanted to ask you, Adam, when President Trump announced this war from Mar-a-Lago over a month ago, he told the Iranian people, he said, once we're done, you should rise up and take your country.
It will be yours to take.
You could make the argument that now that there's a ceasefire in place and the bombs have stopped falling, that this would be the time.
Why do you think this is not happening or do you think it could still happen?
I think it's not happening because unfortunately we have a history in this country of listening to diaspora voices.
I mean, we listened to them ahead of the Iraq war.
We listened to them when it came to Afghanistan.
Look, I understand why Iranians in the diaspora, some of whom can't go home to visit Iran, are frustrated.
But many of them claimed that, well, if the U.S. engaged in these kinds of strikes, there would be this mass revolution inside Iran.
It's just not the case.
People can feel one way, but it doesn't mean that they take to the streets.
I mean, I'll give an American example.
Almost every poll that's been conducted suggests that the vast majority of Americans oppose this war.
Are Americans out in the streets protesting this war en masse?
No.
Why?
Because we have jobs, we have families, we have responsibilities.
You know, in the case of the Iranians, I know it's a much more extreme example, but it really is a lot to ask people to go out and engage in some kind of bloody revolution against a regime that you know is going to fight back in response and they're going to abuse your human rights and they're going to kill you and imprison you.
And I think there's a lot of Iranians who might decide, well, you know what?
Maybe I don't like the current government, but I have a job.
Yes, I don't get paid as much as I should because the economy in Iran is terrible.
But I have a family and I want to come home to my family, and I'm not yet willing to engage in that sacrifice.
Revolutions are the exception, not the norm.
And when they do happen, they're incredibly bloody.
We have this sort of fantasy in the United States and in the rest of the world that you can just have a mass protest movement and the government of a country will just leave.
There have been some cases where that happens, usually when that government is already extremely weak, oftentimes when the armed forces of that government stop supporting it.
There have been cases where that happens.
I think Romania was a case after the Soviet Union was on the way towards collapse.
But in most cases, it doesn't happen.
Most revolutions are our own revolution was incredibly bloody.
The Syrian revolution was incredibly bloody.
And the conditions simply aren't in place for that to happen right now.
That's Adam Weinstein.
He is Middle East Program Deputy Director at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Adam, thanks so much for joining us.
Global Threats and Policy00:02:43
Thanks for having me.
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 Thursday morning, we'll talk about the latest on U.S.-Israel actions in Iran, including the two-weeks ceasefire and efforts to negotiate a peace deal with Foundation for Defense of Democracy's Benem Ben-Taliblou.
Then, Sophia Besch, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, on NATO Secretary General Mark Ruda's visit to Washington and President Trump's threats to leave NATO.
And Time's senior political correspondent Eric Cordole discusses President Trump's approach to Iran amid the two-weeks ceasefire.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal joined the conversation live at 7 Eastern Thursday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-SPAN.org.
A look now at some of our live coverage Thursday on the C-SPAN networks.
On C-SPAN, our coverage of the annual National Action Network Convention continues at 10 a.m. Eastern with remarks by House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
At 11, NATO Secretary General Mark Ruda will give remarks and join a discussion on methods to sustain the NATO alliance and preserve peace through strength.
Other topics include evolving global threats such as the military operation in Iran and the Russia-Ukraine war, which is now in year five of the conflict.
And then at 3:30, NASA has an update on the current Artemis II lunar mission.
And later, the four astronauts will hold a news conference a day before their return to Earth and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
On C-SPAN 2 at 9 a.m. Eastern, industry leaders, scholars, and policymakers, including U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, will discuss development finance, democracy assistance, global entrepreneurship policy, and engagement with Iran and Venezuela.
Then at 10 a.m., International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Yorgeva delivers remarks on the global economic outlook and outlines key policy priorities for member countries and speaks with Council on Foreign Relations President Michael Froman.
And at 3.20 p.m., Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor will speak at the University of Alabama School of Law as part of a lecture series that features prominent legal experts.
And at 9:30 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3, the Arab Center hosts its annual convention focusing on the Trump administration and its impact on Middle Eastern tensions, human rights, and the U.S. and Israel war with Iran.
You can also watch these events live on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at c-SPAN.org.
Equality and Maternal Health00:07:27
This year, as we mark the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, C-SPAN's Student Cam documentary competition invited students to create short films exploring themes from American history, the rights and freedoms rooted in this founding document, and pressing issues of today, from the economy and immigration to criminal justice, education, and health care.
Nearly 4,000 students from 38 states and Washington, D.C. took part in this year's competition.
Throughout this month, we're proud to showcase our top 21 winners.
This year's second prize high school central winners are Zahra Conjwal and Sarah John, 11th graders from International Academy Central in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, where our local partner is Comcast.
Their winning documentary is titled Built Unequal: Black Women, Birth, and America.
So they talk about all men are created equal.
They really mean that.
No sense in the prevailing understanding, I should say, that women could really be equal.
The Declaration's promise of equality was never universal.
Women were denied political and legal autonomy, and enslaved Black women were excluded altogether, their bodies controlled, and their lives systematically devalued.
From the nation's founding, Black women existed outside the protections of both law and equality.
From the time of its signing on July 4th, 1776, the Declaration of Independence has set the standard for fair governance, both as far as individual rights and the common good.
From the very beginning of this nation, we have been guided by several principal values.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Yet the question remains, how successfully have we maintained the values our founders envisioned?
When we think about this being a state of crisis, we're thinking about it from a systems issue, that there are breakdowns in the system, there are breakdowns systemically that make these issues perpetuate for women over time.
If we go back to our nation's history and we think about enslaved Black individuals, we know that there were experiments that were done, particularly James Merriam Sims, who conducted experiments on slave women without their consent, without their knowledge, without any type of pain medication.
For Black women in America, these founding promises, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, were never fully accessible.
The starting line was unequal from the beginning.
And that inequality carried forward.
Slavery became segregation, then redlining, underfunded neighborhoods, fewer clinics and hospitals, maternity wards shut down or moved out.
These layers stacked up over generations, shaping today's care.
Who gets heard, whose pain is believed, and whose concerns are written off.
So when we talk about maternal mortality today, we can't act like it came out of nowhere.
It has a history and a very long one.
There's a lot of cultural ideas.
There's a lot of very gendered ideas about giving birth, which I think then plays a role in maternal mortality.
Are we listening to people when they're telling you something is wrong?
Are we listening to women when they're telling you that something is not right in their body because they know it?
Like I have a first cousin who she went to the hospital and she was pregnant.
When she was pregnant, she said she was in labor.
They said, no, you're not in labor.
She went home.
Within one hour of her returning home, she had her baby on her bed with her older daughter with no assistance.
And over the years, I've heard many stories.
Stories of women who were experiencing postpartum depression only to be dismissed.
Stories of women telling their doctors they were experiencing pain only to be ignored.
Stories of women who could not hold their newborn baby because that child had to be on life support.
Despite the sophistication of our healthcare system, these experiences remain more common than many realize.
In fact, over 80% of maternal deaths in the U.S. are considered preventable.
For one, talk about them.
Don't ignore them.
Don't act as if they don't exist or that talking about them is what makes them exist.
People need to recognize that not everybody is going through the same exact set of circumstances that they are.
Extending postpartum coverage.
Everybody is covered through the first year.
Funding doulas and midwives through Medicaid, through insurance.
It's not an option for insurance providers to not cover these services.
Emotional safety must be measured as an outcome, not an afterthought.
Because a lot of times you're like, well, you came out.
You look healthy to me, but the trauma and the emotional damage from the birth is something we usually can't see by looking at a person.
The Declaration of Independence articulated a vision of equality that America has yet to realize.
The maternal mortality crisis shows that history is not behind us.
It is still being lived in hospitals, delivery rooms, and communities across the country.
But history is also something we can change if we choose to value every life equally.
Black women deserve to be heard.
Their voices deserve to be respected.
And like all people, they must be treated with dignity.
Be sure to watch all of the winning entries on our website at studentcam.org.
C-SPAN, bringing you democracy unfiltered.
We continue our live coverage of the Artemis II lunar mission on Thursday with a NASA update on the moon flyby live at 3:30 p.m. Eastern.
And then the four astronauts will hold a news conference at 6:10 p.m., a day before their return to Earth and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
You can watch both of these on C-SPAN, C-SPAN now, our free mobile app, and C-SPAN.org.
Artemis II Mission Update00:00:15
White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt held a briefing with reporters a day after President Trump announced a two-week ceasefire deal in the U.S.-Israel war with Iran.
During that briefing, she announced that Vice President JD Vance would lead a contingent to Pakistan to hold Peace talks.