Washington Journal on April 9, 2026, examines a fragile U.S.-Iran ceasefire just over 36 hours old, featuring IMF Director Kristalini Yorga and Justice Sonia Sotomayor. President Trump threatens retaliation if the deal fails while claiming the Strait of Hormuz will open, despite conflicting reports on minefields. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirms troop readiness, yet Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer plans a War Powers vote amid a $100 billion Pentagon budget request. Experts like Ben Taliblu argue for regime change over management, while NATO allies express concern over unilateral actions. The episode concludes by linking the conflict's origins to the 1979 hostage crisis and questioning if current strategies prevent nuclear escalation or merely prolong strategic instability. [Automatically generated summary]
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Ceasefire Deal and Military Readiness00:09:07
Global Entrepreneurship Policy and Engagement with Iran and Venezuela.
Then at 10 a.m., International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalini Yorga 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.
Coming up on Washington Journal this morning, along with your calls and comments live, we'll talk about the latest on the U.S.-Israel actions in Iran, including the two-week ceasefire and efforts to negotiate a peace deal with Foundation for Defense of Democracy's Benham Ben-Talabloo.
And 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 Times senior political correspondent Eric Cordelessa discusses President Trump's approach to Iran amid the two weeks ceasefire.
Washington Journal is next.
Join the conversation.
Good morning.
It's Thursday, April 9th, 2026.
The Iran ceasefire is now just over 36 hours old.
Yesterday, Vice President JD Vance called the agreement a fragile truce as he prepares to join a negotiating team that will meet with Iranian officials on Saturday to try to find a way to end the conflict.
But as major questions remain over Israeli attacks in Lebanon and the status of shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, blessing our viewers this morning, do you have faith that the two-week ceasefire will hold?
Getting your thoughts on phone line split as usual by political party.
Republicans, it's 202-748-8001.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
You can also send us a text, that number 202-748-8003.
If you do, please include your name and where you're from.
Otherwise, catch up with us on social media on X, it's at C-SPANWJ on Facebook.
It's facebook.com slash C-SPAN.
And a very good Thursday morning to you.
You can go ahead and start calling in now.
Here's the headline from USA Today.
Their front page, developing fractures shows ceasefire fragility.
The story noting that the Strait of Hormuz and Lebanon remain at issue.
President Trump mentioning the Strait of Hormuz in an overnight truth social post.
It's a lengthy one.
This is how it reads.
All U.S. ships, aircraft, and military personnel with additional ammunition, weaponry, and anything else that is appropriate and necessary for the lethal prosecution and destruction of an already substantially degraded enemy will remain in place in and around Iran until such time as the real agreement reached is fully complied with.
He said, if for any reason it is not, which is highly unlikely, then the shooting starts bigger and better and stronger than anyone has ever seen before.
It was agreed, he said, a long time ago, and despite all the fake rhetoric to the contrary, no nuclear weapons and the Strait of Hormuz will be open and safe.
In the meantime, the president said our military is loading up and resting.
Looking forward, actually, he said, to its next conquest, America is back.
That was President Trump in an overnight truth social posting.
He had a few overnight this morning.
We want to hear from you.
Talking about the ceasefire deal.
Again, it's about 36 hours old.
And your sense of whether this agreement will last.
What you think will happen come Saturday when negotiators meet in Pakistan.
2027-8001 for Republicans.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
And Independents 202-748-8002.
Do want to show you one other ex-posting, this from one of the other major players here, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
His posting just an hour ago talking about continued Israeli strikes in Lebanon.
He writes in his post, we continue to strike Hezbollah with force precision and determination.
In Beirut, he said we eliminated the personal secretary of Hezbollah's terror organization, Secretary General.
At the same time, he said overnight the IDF struck a series of terror infrastructures in southern Lebanon, crossings used to transfer thousands of weapons, rockets, and launchers, as well as weapons depots, launchers, and Hezbollah headquarters.
He said, our message is clear.
Whoever acts against Israeli civilians will be struck.
We will continue to strike Hezbollah wherever required until we restore full security to the residents of the north.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, again, that was just about an hour from his ex posting.
It was yesterday at the Pentagon briefing held by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that Pete Hegseth talked about U.S. military assets staying in the area here until the job is done.
This is the Defense Secretary from yesterday.
Yeah, we'll be hanging around.
We're not going anywhere.
We're going to make sure Iran complies with this ceasefire and then ultimately comes to the table and makes a deal.
So we'll stay put, stay ready, stay vigilant.
As the chairman laid out, our troops are prepared to defend, prepared to go on offense, prepared to restart at a moment's notice with whatever target package would be needed in order to ensure that Iran complies.
As far as the strait, you saw the initial agreement that was struck, which is Iran's letting ships go through.
So that will be happening.
They will be sailing.
And ultimately, as the president, we've done an incredible job militarily inside the Strait of Hormuz.
What Admiral Cooper, I failed to mention Admiral Cooper's name.
He's done a phenomenal job along with everybody at AFSENT, NAFCENT, and ARCENT and all the components down there, laying the groundwork for Iran.
Iran doesn't have the same ability to defend it the way they did before.
And so as the president has pointed out to the rest of the world, we barely get any of our energy out of the strait, just a tiny fraction.
It's time for the rest of the world to step up and ensure that that stays open after President Trump and the War Department brought Iran to the place where they are voluntarily opening it right now, as was announced last night.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth yesterday from the Pentagon talking about movement in the strait.
It's been a limited amount of movement.
And then the Iranian armed forces shutting down the strait again.
The status of that remains unclear.
Again, as we move towards negotiations set for Pakistan on Saturday, though the limited movement in the strait yesterday did cause some market movement.
This is the headline, the Associated Press reporting, oil plunging and markets leaping worldwide with a rally following the ceasefire in Iran.
Oil plunged below $95 a barrel.
The SP 500 leapt 2.5 percent.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average yesterday rallied 1,325 points or 2.8 percent.
The NASDAQ composite soared 2.8 percent following even bigger gains in Europe and Asian stock markets.
That coming yesterday in the markets.
The markets are back open today, and we'll continue to watch what happens there.
And we'll hear from you this morning asking you, do you have faith in that ceasefire deal with the U.S. and Iran?
Dennis is up first in Florida, Republican line.
Dennis, good morning.
Thanks for calling.
Good morning.
It's a pleasure being with you this morning.
I appreciate all the information you share with the world.
I'd like to ask the question I had.
It's been kind of covered that militarily we've dominated with sinking their Navy and paralyzing their Air Force.
But the question I had was: if we had control with our Navy and everything over there, how were they controlling being shutting down the Strait of Hormuz?
It just never made, it didn't make any sense to me that if we had taken care of them militarily, who and what were they controlling over there?
Dennis, not a military expert, but the biggest fears are drones, missile strikes, and an age-old weapon, sea mines, as well, that the Iranians could still place.
And the concern would be whether the United States could move those Iranian forces far enough away from the Straits of Hormuz, whether it would take ground troops to do that to make that passing safe.
Mixed Messages on Hormuz Strait00:15:22
Okay, very good.
I appreciate your time.
And like I said, hopefully we'll get things open and business as usual.
God bless America.
That's Dennis in Florida.
Rhonda is in California, Independent.
Rhonda, what are your thoughts this morning?
John, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
John, I got to tell you something.
I'm here in California, and day before yesterday, we had gotten a warning from the FBI stating that we should be vigilant, that there's a possible threat to the state of California.
The White House from Hexet, Trump, and you name it, they're saying one thing.
And all the news broadcasts are saying different things from CNN, NBC, ABC, you name it, right?
So what have I been doing for the past month, John?
I've been watching Al Javier news, and it's up through YouTube, correct?
It's through YouTube.
And I've been watching that to try to get a sense of what is really going on, right?
And the last thing I want to say to you is: I thought it was very inappropriate for our president to be using the words that he, inflammatory words.
So that's my, that's what I got to say.
And that's what I got to say.
Rhonda, thanks for the call.
Thanks for being up very early in California.
This morning, we talk about messages from the news media, the editorial boards of various newspapers weighing in on this ceasefire deal.
This is the conservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.
You know them well, C-SPAN viewers.
This is how they began their lead editorial today.
Did the war with Iran that began with Aurora end with a whimper?
That's the way it looks in the cold light of Wednesday after President Trump's announcement late Tuesday of a two-week ceasefire.
Mr. Trump achieved some of his war aims, but the Iranian regime remains a threat in the strait of Hormuz, and the job is far from finished despite what he promised last week.
They write: if the regime behaves as it always has, it will claim it wants to reach a deal, but it never will.
The talks will stretch through two weeks, then three, then months.
Iran will bet that Mr. Trump won't resume bombing as the midterm elections approach.
The rest of the world and Republicans in Congress will lean on Mr. Trump not to resume the fight.
The next test for Mr. Trump, they write, will be whether he takes his two-week ceasefire deadline seriously.
If he does, and Iran plays the usual games, and he really will have to finish the job.
Wall Street Journal today.
This is Alda in Philly, Republican.
Alda, good morning.
Yes.
Hi.
I just wanted to say that I don't believe the ceasefire is really going to last because I think Iran, what they're doing, and all the other people are trying to delay it till 60 days because then Congress can come in and put their little two cents in it.
And as for, you know, us or Donald Trump saying what he says and doing what he's done, at least we can wake up and not have a bomb in our window.
You know, because if he hadn't done this, who knows how long it would be before they start sending missiles to us, you know.
And that's it.
That's my opinion.
That's ALDA in Philadelphia in terms of Congress getting its two cents in.
Yesterday it was Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who held a press conference in New York and told reporters that he's going to force a fourth war powers vote when the Senate is back in next week.
Here's Chuck Schumer from yesterday.
A commander-in-chief who is truly in control would never have gotten into this colossal mess to begin with.
That is exactly why I am announcing.
I am announcing that today the Senate will vote next week on the war powers resolution.
Congress must reassert its authority, especially at this dangerous moment.
No president, Democrat or Republican, should take this country to war alone.
Not now, not ever.
Republicans will once again have the opportunity to join Democrats and end this reckless war of choice.
The public must demand that Republicans join with us to approve the War Powers Act.
The War Powers Act will cease hostilities and require the administration to get an AUMF before going to war after the hostilities cease.
And the bottom line is this.
From day one, this war has never had a satisfactory answer to what is the goal, what do we want to achieve, what is the timetable, how much will it cost in both lives and treasure.
He has never had an answer.
In fact, his answer varies from day to day to day.
It almost looks as he wakes up in the morning, looks at the oil market and the stock market, and determined that day's actions over in Iran.
It's erratic, but worse than erratic, it's dangerous.
Let this be a warning.
If Trump starts a new war, we will be in worse shape given his lack of planning and focus.
Trump must end the war now.
The only viable solution is a lasting diplomatic one.
A two-week ceasefire, especially one as fragile as this, is not a strategy.
It's not a diplomatic solution.
It's not a plan.
Trump needs to stop posting on the social media and start doing the hard work of building a lasting peace.
Trump chose this war.
He owns the consequences.
And next week, Congress will act, has the opportunity to act to make sure it cannot happen again.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer yesterday from New York, we're asking viewers this morning on the Washington Journal, do you have faith in the ceasefire deal with the U.S. and Iran?
A lot of weighing in on that on social media from leaders around the world.
Here's a few of those reactions.
Kier Starmer, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, posting that the two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran today is welcomed by the U.K. and our allies.
The goal now must be a lasting end to the war alongside our international partners.
The U.K. will work to ensure a return to freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.
And then there's French President Emmanuel Macron noting on his social media that he spoke with the Iranian president as well as with President Trump.
He said, I express my hope that the ceasefire will be fully respected by each of the belligerents across all areas of confrontation, including in Lebanon.
This is necessary, a necessary condition for the ceasefire to be credible and lasting.
It must open the way to comprehensive negotiations capable of ensuring security for all in the Middle East.
He goes on to say that any agreement will have to address the concerns raised by Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile program, as well as the regional policy and its actions obstructing navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.
Some of French President Emmanuel Macron's posts.
We especially want to hear from you this morning.
Phone lines for Republicans, Democrats, Independents, as usual.
Stephen's an independent in Lexington, Kentucky.
Good morning.
Yes, good morning.
Thank you, John, and thank you, C-SPAN, for allowing me to seek my opinion.
I could have told you so.
It's just that simple.
This ceasefire is never going to work.
It didn't work.
It's just a moment to manipulate and prepare.
I mean, we've run over thousands of troops, thousands of pieces, tens of thousands of pieces of equipment, and you think it's over?
No.
And it's not over until Israel says it's over.
So it doesn't matter if it's a U.S.-Iran deal.
That third party right there is just sitting saying, what the heck is going on?
On it not being over, Stephen.
How do you read the last sentence of President Trump's true social post from midnight last night?
In the meantime, our great military is loading up and resting, looking forward actually to its next conquest.
Which means the Strait of Hormuz.
And this is the thing.
Joe from Missouri didn't get tricked.
Tracy from New York didn't get tricked.
It was the media.
It was the investors listening to the administration, listening to the White House.
None of us believe it.
It's so blatant.
And it's the media's fault, too.
And it's kind of C-SPAN.
I have a little gripe with you guys.
You guys never really talk about what's going on in Israel or the deaths there or how much destruction has happened.
It's like maybe APAC or some Zionist organization has gotten to you.
But back to the topic.
Iran, Iran is never going to stop this.
The bottle is open.
You can't put the cork back in.
The first thing the U.S. did was bomb a school full of children.
And you think a 10-point plan is going to actually find some peace for some families?
No.
This is going to be...
This is the regional war that's going to start World War III.
So don't ever believe the president.
Don't believe the administration.
And they're going to hold on to this until the impeachment starts and they're going to pull a Zelensky and we're at war and Trump can't leave.
It's just all strategic.
There's no way this ceasefire is going to...
There is no ceasefire.
It's a lie.
It's a lie.
It's all fake.
Thank you, John.
That's Stephen in Lexington, Kentucky.
The headline from the Washington Times today on what's happening in Lebanon and specifically Beirut.
Israeli airstrikes hit Beirut kill at least 182.
Trump defends the move that came after the ceasefire agreement as, quote, a separate skirmish.
Mitchell is in New Jersey, Democrat.
Mitchell, go ahead.
Good morning, John.
I'd like to confine my comments to the Strait of Hormuz and the incoherent messaging.
that we're getting out of the White House.
Now, I don't trust the Iranians in terms of what they're saying, but I can't trust this White House.
And let's look at the strait for a moment.
First, you know, we heard from the president that straight of hormuz is not a problem for us.
Americans, we drill, baby drill.
They've got plenty of oil here.
That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.
They don't understand.
They're trying to, you know, pretend that there's no commodities market with oil, that the United States government owns this oil that is being drilled here.
No, whoever drills here is going to sell it to the highest bidder.
It's their international companies.
If North Korea or South Korea is going to pay more for the oil, that's where they're going to ship it, not the United States.
And the Strait of Hormuz absolutely has an impact on the United States.
Then he goes and tells the Europeans that, well, this is your problem.
It's not ours.
Again, we're fine, whatever.
Which, again, he's not getting any cooperation.
First of all, he's going to the wrong channels on that.
I mean, because he's trying to have NATO get involved.
NATO's a defensive organization.
He should have approached the individual countries.
But these are individual countries that he's damaged through his tariff system.
So they're not going to be too happy to cooperate with us at this point because they can't trust us either.
This is straight.
Then they're telling this morning, I was listening to the press conference from the White House just prior to the journal starting.
And they're saying that there's, you know, the ships are getting through now.
There's regular shipping.
Meanwhile, I read an article in the Times online this morning.
I'm a subscriber.
And they said that, you know, they're getting information from shipping companies that only four ships passed through yesterday and they were in oil tankers.
So we're being sold nonsense, just ridiculous nonsense.
This is absolutely, and even if they do get the Strait of Hormuz open, having the pipelines, you know, blocked up and damaged the way this war did is going to cause repercussions and problems for quite a while.
If you remember during COVID, it took us a long time to finally get our backlog of shipping traffic through.
So it's really unbelievable that we can't get a straight story from the administration.
Mitchell, you bring up a few points.
So let me just note some of them on NATO.
NATO Secretary General Mark Ruda was at the White House yesterday meeting with the president.
That happened yesterday afternoon.
This morning, he'll be making remarks and joining discussions about the NATO alliance in D.C.
It is being hosted by the Reagan Institute.
You can watch live at 11 a.m. Eastern to see the latest on what NATO Secretary General Mark Ruda has to say.
In terms of the Strait of Hormuz, which you also bring up, it was yesterday in remarks with reporters that Vice President JD Vance talked about the Strait of Hormuz, the status of it.
This is what he had to say.
I actually think, and there's a lot of bad faith negotiation and a lot of bad faith propaganda going on.
I think this comes from a legitimate misunderstanding.
I think the Iranians thought that the ceasefire included Lebanon, and it just didn't.
We never made that promise.
We never indicated that was going to be the case.
What we said is that the ceasefire would be focused on Iran, and the ceasefire would be focused on America's allies, both Israel and the Gulf Arab states.
Now, that said, the Israelis, as I understand it, again, I'm supposed to get a fuller report when I get on the plane, have actually offered to be, frankly, to check themselves a little bit in Lebanon because they want to make sure that our negotiation is successful.
That's not because that is part of the ceasefire.
I think that's the Israelis trying to set up us up for success, and we'll, of course, see how that unfolds in the next few days.
But look, if Iran wants to let this negotiation fall apart in a conflict where they were getting hammered over Lebanon, which has nothing to do with them and which the United States never once said was part of the ceasefire, that's ultimately their choice.
We think that would be dumb, but that's their choice.
Trusting the Sincerity of Negotiations00:07:03
Mr. Vice President, Iran is continuing to block the Straits of Hormuz.
Do you have an expectation of when that strait is going to be open?
Well, we've already seen an increase in traffic today.
Hopefully, we'll see an increase in traffic tomorrow.
We actually think that we are seeing signs that the Straits is starting to reopen.
I think you guys have probably seen oil prices have come down, so I think the oil markets, the gas markets are seeing the same thing.
But the President's very clear.
The deal is a ceasefire, a negotiation.
That's what we give.
And what they give is the Straits are going to be reopened.
If we don't see that happening, the President is not going to abide by our terms if the Iranians are not abiding by their terms.
Vice President JD Vance, yesterday, this is a story from the Jerusalem Post out of Israel on the status of the Strait of Hormuz as of today.
Iran's Iranian Republican Guard Corps Navy issues a map to guide ships around Hormuz mines, according to Iranian media.
The status of the straits is unclear, though, after Iranian media outlets released conflicting reports regarding whether or not oil tankers were being allowed to transit the waterway on Wednesday.
Again, a very closely watched point of contention here in this conflict, and we'll continue to watch that today.
This is Vicki next out of Seattle, Washington, Independent.
Vicki, good morning.
Good morning.
As far as trusting the ceasefire, I don't trust Donald Trump.
I don't trust anyone in his administration.
They've done nothing but lie.
This whole thing is a fiasco.
We had a treaty President Obama established.
It took a long time.
They're not going to get a treaty in two weeks, so I don't think Jared Kushner needs to be over there.
All he wants is money.
Actually, that's about all they all want is money.
But I just don't trust the sincerity of it on the Trump administration side because they're building up troops.
And it's just disgusting because he doesn't have a clue what he's doing.
And neither does Hechet.
Thank you very much.
That's Vicki.
This is Sandra, Brooklyn, New York, Democrat.
Go ahead.
Good morning.
As far as the ceasefire, unfortunately, I don't think it's going to work.
Here we have Pakistan that, if I'm not mistaken, came together with the United States and Iran to try to make this ceasefire work.
But I don't see Pakistan leaving out Lebanon and Israel because they're more part of the problem starting stuff.
Israel, for some reason, cannot let things stand.
They will negotiate and they will bomb.
They will negotiate and they will bomb.
And unfortunately, the United States is caught up in this mess because of Israel.
How in the world can we look to have any kind of ceasefire and Israel is bombing Lebanon, killing up people?
They don't want peace, and that's what the people have to understand.
Not only that, I am so afraid that we have sleeping cells in the United States of America.
And if Israel keeps pushing buttons, they're going to cause the destruction of the United States of America.
They don't give one damn about this country.
Because if they did, they would try to negotiate along with the United States and with Iran and Lebanon.
That's Sandra in New York on the negotiations that are set to start on Saturday, hosted by Pakistan.
It was yesterday in the White House briefing room that Press Secretary Caroline Levitt talked about how the ceasefire deal came together.
Here's some of what she had to say.
An Iran, it's been reported that the ceasefire was struck after the involvement of two unlikely factors, JD Vance and China.
What role did those parties play in striking a deal?
Well, Vice President Vance has played a very significant and a key role in this since the very beginning.
Of course, he's the president's right-hand man.
He is the Vice President of the United States.
He's been involved in all of these discussions.
And as I just announced, he'll be leading this new phase of negotiations in Islamabad later this week.
With respect to China, there were conversations that took place between top levels of our government and China's government.
The president has great respect for President Xi and a great working relationship with him and with that country.
And he looks forward to visiting China in just a few weeks.
On China's involvement here, this ceasefire being touted on the front page of the China Daily, it is the Chinese state media, and they deliver their newspapers, drop them in front of news organizations' offices around Washington, D.C., picked it up this morning, and this is what it has to say on the front page.
China and the EU welcome the two-week ceasefire deal in the Mideast.
The Chinese state media noting that the Strait of Hormuz reopens.
That's one of the sub-headlines on their piece today.
Again, it's the China Daily Global Edition, and we can show you that headline as well as we hear from Gidget in California, Independent.
Gidget, go ahead.
Hi there.
I am really intrigued.
And I have a question which I know that you guys don't comment.
However, it's like opening up the straits.
Didn't he actually cause the close?
I mean, how are you celebrating things that you actually caused?
I mean, this is so incredible to the world how you have a whole crook, an administration of crooked, I mean, so much corruption that it's like out loud and there is no stopping.
And you're negotiating and talking about trivial things that have nothing to do.
This guy doesn't talk to Congress.
He talks to nothing.
He does everything and then people are having negotiations.
I'm so outside of the bubble of the United States.
We are looking like total, like someone I was on a trip recently with a sister, and we were in Canada, and they wanted to give us a hug.
You know, on those trips when they say who's from the United States, they wanted to give us a hug and offer us, you know, you could come stay with us because we are empty nesters.
I mean, it's incredible.
No one stops.
He's a whole criminal.
The whole administration, undeniably, without question, convicted several.
The Pentagon Budget War Racket00:02:33
And that's not a topic.
It's not even anything to be said.
And that's beyond bizarre.
That's Gidget.
This is Garr in Georgia Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning, John.
You remember what General Smedley Butler said in I think it was 1934.
He said war is a racket.
And I mean, he broke it down.
He's the most decorated general in American history in the Marines, and he called war is a racket.
And President Dwight Aldenhau coined the phrase military-industrial complex.
And with that said, the United States of America, our country's been in over 75 wars in 250 years, and we've been at war with somebody two out of three years since World War II.
Garr, how much attention have you paid since Friday to the release of the 2027 budget from the White House?
I mean, you mean that $1 trillion?
It's $1.5 trillion.
$4.5 trillion, a 44% increase in the Pentagon's budget, the Pentagon budget, by far the biggest increase.
The Pentagon Justice and Veterans Affairs departments seeing major increases in their budgets.
The Labor Department, State Department, and EPA seeing the largest decrease.
We're going to show viewers the chart from inside Trump's 2027 budget.
This is from the pages of today's New York Times.
But there's that 44% increase and the additional funding, the war funding request from the White House.
At this point, it's pegged at $100 billion to help pay for this conflict, down from $200 billion from original reporting.
The reason, according to the story, is because there's been such a large request for the fiscal 2027 budget that they don't need the $200 billion.
They just need $100 billion.
What do you make of all that, Garr?
I mean, one bomb, one bomb that's dropped.
What, $1 million?
One bomb?
The plane to drop the bomb I read was $14 million.
An aircraft carrier to carry the plane to drop the bomb cost $16 billion.
Come on, that's it's a business.
War is a racket.
Thank you.
That's Garr in the Peach State.
We will head to Vermont.
Iran's Political and Religious Mix00:15:24
Joe, Republican.
Good morning.
Come on, John.
Come on, John.
What's going on?
John, I just have to say, I am so disappointed in the Democrats of this country.
It is completely unbelievable.
First of all, there ain't a one of them knows what the heck is going on.
Oh, he lied.
He did this.
He did that.
He's been in a news conference almost every day.
This little fight here has been going on for 47 years.
And Trump has finally stood up and has finally done something.
And what's everybody whining about?
Oh, I got to pay 50 cents more, a dollar more for gas.
You know, it's like, come on, get it together.
These people.
And look at how Iran is acting right now.
I mean, they're like the Monty Python nut in the thing where he's got one arm cut off, one leg cut off, and he's hopping around saying, come on, I'll take you on.
I'll take you on.
These people don't know when they're d when they've been destroyed, you know, to quote Xerxes out of the 300 movie.
God almighty.
That's Joe in the Green Mountain State to Steve in Pennsylvania, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning.
This should have been done a long time ago.
Iran has been a foreign oppressor of the world anyhow with terrorist organizations and stuff like that.
We need to be energy independent.
Tell these people, go fly a kite, start drilling oil, do it safely, be more independent.
We wouldn't need them that.
But I see people don't understand Islam.
This is a religious thing also.
Steve, what the Western world does not understand a true thing about Islam.
Steve, what does this mean?
It's a mix between politics and religion.
Will this ceasefire do any good?
No, it's going to explode.
Because what the Muslims do, not all Muslims are the hardliners.
They'll say one thing to get what they want, but their goal is still the same thing.
This thing will explode.
We have to have a military.
There's no question.
What place in this world, a nation cannot have a military, should not have one?
You've got China on hands with Taiwan.
But this is going to continue.
I wish it wouldn't, but it will.
And it's going to explode.
Got your point, Steve.
This is John in Fairfax, Virginia, Republican.
Go ahead.
Hey, good morning, John.
Thanks for taking my call.
You know, listen, I'm listening to all your callers.
And, you know, obviously the Democrats and independents are whining about what Trump's doing.
I think big picture, you've got to look at this strategically.
I was in the military for 20 years.
We did this type of planning all the time.
And the big thing we take away from this is that the enemy is China.
The more we can deter China, the more we can take away the surrogates of China, like Iran and Venezuela, and get these regional partners involved.
You know, Saudi Arabia needs to step up.
UAE, they're getting attacked.
We've got to leave a presence there that's totally deterring and continuing to prevent Iran from having influence.
John, what do you think about the president not even being able to get NATO involved in this?
Well, you know, that's a great point because I think deep down NATO is involved with regards to getting their energy from Iran.
So they've got to tiptoe.
And I think that, you know, they see Iran, I believe, I still believe, as a strategic partner for energy.
So we've got to get the EU off of that.
We've got to get EU on board with us helping them with energy.
And we've got to help them understand that Iran is an enemy.
They want the West to be destroyed.
So we've got to work with the EU.
Asia's got to understand that they can't rely on Iran for all that oil.
They're going to have to fund it elsewhere, whether they come to us.
So I think the president's very smart.
At the end of the day, though, John, I think that we've got to have some sort of force that stays there to make sure, because Iran's going to continue to do their shenanigans.
It's not going to end.
So that's kind of how I see it.
A force that stays where, John, patrolling the Straits of Hormuz on the ground in Iran.
You know, I talked with my friends who are in the military about this.
You know, we have a staging base, whether it's in UAE or it's an island south.
There's an island there.
I don't know if it's Kairo.
There's an island there in the straight south where we can have a staging force where we can isolate any type of attack in the straits of Hormuz and basically obliterate anything that's surrounding that.
Of course, mines are the biggest thing there.
That's kind of potential danger.
But look, we control that area.
And until we can really have the regional partners play and help us, we have to have a staging force there.
That's John in Fairfax, Virginia.
This is Jonathan Panikoff in the pages of today's Wall Street Journal, director of the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative.
The headline of his piece, What Victory Looks Like in Iran.
This is how he ends that piece.
For there to be a U.S. victory, the deal reached must encompass a resolution to Iran's nuclear program and the remaining highly enriched uranium.
It must also ensure freedom of navigation without an Iranian toll on the Strait of Hormuz.
If this outcome comes to fruition, then the U.S. will have gotten more than it could have achieved with diplomacy alone, because the war addressed, for the medium term, Iran's ballistic missile capacity over which the regime was never previously willing to negotiate.
If he writes negotiations end with Iran still in control of the strait or of the highly enriched uranium stocks, then the war will have been a series of magnificent operational successes, but a strategic failure.
The nuclear threat will remain, and a new global economic danger will have been created.
Jonathan Panikoff in today's Wall Street Journal.
Time for more of your calls.
About 20 minutes left here.
This is Gary in Georgia, Republican.
Gary, go ahead.
Good morning, John.
You know, I used to like listening to C-SPAN, but anymore it's filled with nothing but hatred for Donald Trump.
And y'all now getting to where Republicans won't even call in, and y'all having to fundraise.
So y'all can't see what y'all are doing to your own program.
Y'all are ruining it.
Gary, I appreciate the feedback.
What do you think about the ceasefire deal?
I think the ceasefire is politics, and there's always going to be politics with politicians.
That's Gary in Georgia.
This is Nolan in Louisville, Kentucky, Independent.
Good morning.
Thank you.
Thank you, John, for accepting my call.
I appreciate it.
I'm listening to the callers that are calling in about the conflict in Iran, and a lot of them forget.
In August of 2013, the CIA publicly admitted for the first time it was involved in a 1953 coup.
I never hear anybody talk about that publicly.
In 1953, the CIA was involved in Mogan, I think his name is Mosaddique.
They were involved in overturning their prime minister, and they staged a coup in Iran to take over the oil.
And the reason why they staged it, we did it on behalf of Great Britain, because it was nationalized.
Great Britain stole their oil.
And guess what?
Mosadique, he put Great Britain out of his country.
He wanted to keep the oil for his own country and to benefit his people in Iran.
So, Nolan, bring me to 2026.
Okay, let's go to 2026.
What's going on?
Reason why I mentioned 1953, we have been fooling around with the people in Iran since 1953.
So I'm bringing you today.
It still needs to stop.
The military action needs to stop.
And we need to be, if we're involved in a country that has not attacked us, and you got to realize, we're also on the anniversary of the military conflict we had in Baghdad.
So I'm bringing it to today.
A ceasefire needs to start today, and they need to leave that country militarily and quit attacking those people because they're only defending themselves from the United States.
We're the aggressor in this situation, and I think people need to realize that.
Here in Washington, D.C., it's Kevin, Line for Democrats.
Kevin, good morning.
Morning, John.
I think if Henry Kissinger could get a peace prize, Trump could too, if he could solve the crisis in the Middle East.
And he can't do it without reigning in Bibi.
And the nuclear issue is really fake because Iran couldn't make a nuclear weapon without us knowing it because nukes have a signature.
Bioweapons are the new big threat.
Nukes are kind of the boomer WMD.
The problem with bioweapons is there's no signature.
And COVID should have been investigated by the FBI, not the intelligence community.
The CIA is going to cover up their secrets.
And the FBI would have a real investigation that would show that Fauci was in charge of bioweapons since the Bush-Cheney administration took the budget away from Fort Dietrich and gave it to NIAD.
And he was a big champion for canoe function research.
All right.
That's Kevin in Washington, D.C. More of your phone calls.
Also, want to show you yesterday, JD Vance.
JD Vance, who's going to be leading the negotiation team that heads to Pakistan and those negotiations begin on Saturday.
He was in Hungary ahead of the elections there, campaigning, Victor Orban, and he was asked about the future of the two-week ceasefire during one of those events.
This is what he had to say.
Now, here's what I'll say about this.
I've learned a lot about the Iranian system and a lot about the way the Iranians negotiate.
Because the president told me last night the Iranians are better negotiators than they are fighters.
I'm sure they don't like to hear that, but it's true.
But here's a couple things.
So, one, just in the response that we've seen from various segments of Iran, you have on the one hand, people within Iran who have responded very favorably.
The foreign minister who said, look, we agreed to the United States' terms.
We'll do a ceasefire.
We'll do a negotiation.
We'll open the straits of Hormuz, and then we'll see if we can come to more agreement down the road.
So some of the people have responded favorably and have said the right things.
And then you have some people on social media within their system who are basically lying about what we've accomplished militarily.
They're lying about the nature of the agreement.
They're lying about the nature of the ceasefire.
And so you have just even within their system, and this is why I say this is a fragile truce, you have people who clearly want to come to the negotiating table and work with us to find a good deal.
And then you have people who are lying about even the fragile truce that we've already struck.
And that's just an interesting thing about their system.
And the final point that I'll say about this is the President of the United States has told me, and he's told the entire negotiating team, the Secretary of State, the Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, he said, go and work in good faith to come to an agreement.
That is what he has told us to do.
If the Iranians are willing in good faith to work with us, I think we can make an agreement.
If they're going to lie, if they're going to cheat, if they're going to try to prevent even the fragile truce that we've set up from taking place, then they're not going to be happy.
Because what the president has also shown is that we still have clear military, diplomatic, and maybe most importantly, we have extraordinary economic leverage.
So the president has told us not to use those tools.
He's told us to come to the negotiating table.
But if the Iranians don't do the exact same thing, they're going to find out that the President of the United States is not one to mess around.
He's impatient.
He's impatient to make progress.
He has told us to negotiate in good faith.
And I think if they negotiate in good faith, we will be able to find a deal.
But that's a big if.
And ultimately, it's up to the Iranians how they negotiate.
I hope they make the right decision.
The Vice President will be in Pakistan on Saturday for those negotiations.
He'll be joined on the U.S. side of the negotiating table by Steve Witkoff, the special envoy, Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of the president.
And we will see what happens as we move towards those negotiations.
Again, we are about 37 hours into this ceasefire.
It's a two-week ceasefire announced on Tuesday nights, as you'll recall, about 90 minutes before the president's deadline that he had said.
Taking your phone calls on it for about another 10 minutes or so.
This is James in California, San Diego, Republican.
Go ahead.
Good morning, John.
Number one, we went into this war to get the nuclear ability of Iran to diminish it and not have them put a bomb, a nuclear bomb, in the United States and kill us because that's what they've said for 47 years.
They want to kill the United States as a great demon.
Number two, if this war was so bad, then why is recruiting going out of the sky?
Everyone from this administration since this administration has come into office, recruiting has gone over the hill as high as it can.
We don't have enough spaces to train all these recruits that want to come into the United States.
Maybe they want they, the youngsters 18 to 25, want to make sure that there is a United States of America when they become 50 years old.
These folks that are 50 years old and want Iran to have a nuclear capability, congratulations, folks.
Thank you very much.
Have a great day.
And I also agree with the gentleman that called in as to the Washington Journal and where the Washington Journal is nothing but has been doing nothing but savoring hatred for the President of the United States.
Thank you, John.
It's James in California.
This is Diana Michigan, Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Number one, I pray that our government does the right thing, but I see no progress in that.
Everything that Donald Trump says is a lie.
President Trump's Foul Mouth Claims00:05:22
He's got a ceasefire in his own mind.
He's got his vice president over meeting with Victor Orban, which is an evil person as well, and in with Russia and Putin.
I don't understand why the mega people think that it's okay, that those people are okay, and we can jump from Venezuela.
He wants Greenland, he wants Cuba.
Does that sound not like Russia to you?
And just to take over, these people are fighting back, and they're not good people in Iran.
They will put kids on the bridges where we're claiming we're going to bomb.
They're putting them all over the place.
And we're doing it.
And the president has a foul mouth.
And how is he negotiating with what we hear on what he tweets out?
Who would negotiate with that?
So I don't believe there's a ceasefire treaty.
Iran claims there is not.
And what is Jared Kushner doing over there?
He is not a hired person by us.
Because all he does is get money from them governments.
It is a joke.
And that's all that Trump is doing.
Meanwhile, telling everybody that they cannot have daycare, Medicare, any of that.
If you look at his budget, it's all that stuff is way down.
And the other is way up.
And these mega people that think that this war is like, they will follow him whatever he says.
And it's insane.
That's Diane in Michigan.
This is Richard out of Keystone State Independent.
Good morning.
Hey, how are you doing?
Hey, I just want to make a point of I'm a Vietnam veteran.
And I remember when we were in Vietnam with our ass on the line, and the people back here were supporting the Vietnamese or the Viet Cong.
And I look at this now as nobody is helping the United States as long as they're saying that the Iranians are great people.
The oil industry, I mean, it's all a bunch of BS.
I mean, we need to support this country.
We need to show that we're together and that we're against anything that is a threat to us.
And that's about all I got to say.
I guess one more point.
Maybe we ought to all vote for Democrats so we can open the boiler up to let anybody in, legal or illegal, to let drugs go crazy again.
I think that's probably the best bet for all you good people that are against Trump.
Make everybody a Democrat.
Thank you.
It's Richard in Pennsylvania to the Granite State.
This is Patrick, Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning, Jonathan.
Hey, so what is taco?
Do you know what taco is?
The word they're using on CNN?
An acronym, I mean?
Do you know what it means, Patrick?
They say Trump always chickens out.
So I got one for the Democrats in CNN.
Nacho, not afraid to confront hard obstacles.
And if Trump cured cancer, they wouldn't even come on here and say one good thing about him.
That's just the truth.
For four years, when Joe Biden did anything wrong, I would come on here and hope a Democrat would say one bad thing about him.
Not one time did I hear Democrats ever put down Biden.
Not one time.
Not say one bad thing.
And there were numerous things.
It was like, oh, and he didn't even do a press conference.
He never did a press conference.
So how did you ever get any information from that administration?
So, Patrick, bring me to 2026.
Nacho, Trump, he's not afraid to confront the hard obstacles.
This is one of them.
Iran is one of the hardest obstacles.
Every president before him should have done something to slow this machine of building up a nuclear arsenal and building up ballistic missile arsenal that can overwhelm anybody's defense systems.
It's just not a good thing.
And now he's finally doing what's right by me, by my children, my two boys, 8 and 11.
I'm 38 years old.
My mom, she lives with me too, 65 years old.
We're all happy and excited that he's finally someone sticking up for us and fighting for us and going to try to keep us safe for the long term, not just for today.
That's Patrick in New Hampshire.
One more call.
This is Susan Clarksville, Tennessee, Democrat.
Go ahead.
Good morning, John.
Top Takeaways from Ceasefire Hours00:03:37
I just wanted to tell you, C-SPAN is great.
Don't fall for their propaganda about the news stations because what's happened, Trump owns the news stations.
Susan, what do you think about the ceasefire?
I don't think it's real.
I think Trump is just talking, and I do believe it's Bibi Netanyahu's war.
It's the billionaire's war that they're trying to clear the Middle East with our crowd so our crowd can take over and build their luxury vacation spots.
It's all about money, and the strait was open before this.
And supposedly, according to Trump, they did decimate nuclear.
So why are we there?
It makes no sense other than to support whatever Bibi Netanyahu wants to do.
Stay strong, John.
Thank you.
That's Susan in Tennessee, our last caller in this first segment of the Washington Journal.
Stick around, plenty more to talk about this morning.
A little later, we'll talk about U.S.-NATO relations.
We'll be joined by Sophia Besch of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
But first, after the break, it's Benem Ben Tableau from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
We'll take a closer look at the ceasefire deal and whether it will stick ahead of the negotiations.
We'll be right back.
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Washington Journal continues.
Back with us today to discuss the Iranian ceasefire is Benem Ben Taliblu.
Exiled Crown Prince Opportunities00:15:54
He's a senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
He's has a background in nonproliferation, human rights issues.
36 hours into this ceasefire, which are top-line takeaways right now?
What's your biggest concerns?
Actually, the biggest concern is about Saturday when the U.S. and Iran finally meet.
You know, these two countries on all of these issues were worlds apart before the fighting started.
Then the fighting took off and pushed them off even further.
So I think the chance of an actual good diplomatic agreement right now is slim to none.
That doesn't mean that there isn't a chance for some sort of framework for deconfliction, how you pull away from the table, how I pull away from the table.
But as it respects to the final status issues, Iran's so-called right to enrich, that's what they say, with respect to the uranium that is still buried in many of those sites that were struck last June, with respect to what the future of their missile program could or should or should not look like, I think that'll be darn near impossible to get a good deal on in this short order.
In terms of what's being put out ahead of this deal, what do you make of this 10-point Iranian plan that we've seen?
It's a different plan when it appears in Farsi versus when it appears in English.
That's a classic, by the way.
A lot of demands here.
What's your takeaway?
Listen, I think even the president himself may have had the old switcheroo on us, where I think in his tweets or his posts a few days ago, he talked about the basis being the 10-point plan.
Then, no, the basis has the actual 15-point proposal.
Then the White House press secretary actually says that the 10-point plan that the Iranians submitted is very different than that which is being discussed in public.
And I think even the president's statements on social media within the past 12 hours also talking about this difference.
And I think what you're getting at with the translation issue is that allegedly in the initially reported, even in the Persian language press, of the 10-point plan was not the right to enrich.
That was translated into English.
That became the basis for all of these things.
And then later on, it kind of slid its way back in there that, oh, no, first, America has to recognize this right as a predicate to talks.
Showing some of the points of that 10-point plan to viewers as reported by the Wall Street Journal, the English version of that plan.
What, in your opinion, must the U.S. have when these negotiations are done for a good deal to be reached?
I might push away from the table here and say that I don't think negotiations are the best idea right now.
The U.S. has sunk considerable time, considerable treasure, considerable human treasure, considerable blood, considerable national reputation in this conflict.
And it doesn't behoove American deterrence.
It doesn't help us with our non-proliferation goals.
It doesn't help us with respect to all the things that you and I spoke about when we sat here about two, three months ago with respect to standing with the Iranian people that the president himself said in January, if we are in a position where in the morning the president will say something with immense respect that I think was absolutely incorrect about civilizational erasure.
And then 12 hours after that, say, actually, I'm looking to do a deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
That 180 doesn't serve us.
Is regime change necessary in Iran?
I think if you're talking about solutions, again, there's a very big difference in Washington to push away from the table, to kick the can down the road.
That's managing the problem.
But I think we're at the point now where we've tried to manage this problem from the Islamic Republic so long, it ended up managing us.
It's confounded several American presidencies.
I think President Trump in term one, he hit the nail on the head in terms of the right approach.
Now he has actually the opportunity to multilateralize that.
The very interesting thing is that Europe hasn't been throwing a fit over the actual fight itself.
Yes, there's issues over the Strait of Hormuz.
Yes, there's issues over NATO.
But actually with the fight against the regime itself, Europe hasn't been really throwing a fit there.
So to that end, I think we have to align ways, means, and ends to actually get the public to understand that it's not the trigger.
It's not the gun.
It's the finger on the trigger.
And this is a finger run by a group that have been chanting death to America and death to Israel for 47 years.
And the people in their own country are their longest suffering victims.
And those people actually tend to be the most pro-American and the most pro-Israeli in that entire region.
And if that group is ever empowered, that's when lawmakers in Washington, that's when the public actually gets what they want, which is us to do less, not more, in that part of the world.
Are you surprised that some sort of popular uprising has not happened in the past six plus weeks here?
Oh, it would be impossible to happen in the middle of a war.
I mean, the thing is, literally, the speech that commenced the conflict, I think President Trump's 3 a.m. speech on February 28th, he told Iranians to stay home.
Then later on, exiled Crown Prince Reza Parlabi told Iranians to stay home.
Then later on, I think even Admiral Cooper, in a longer television interview, told Iranians to stay home.
I think everyone right now rightly understands that no one comes out in the middle of a conflict, because if you go out, that's basically a suicide mission.
The challenge now, ex post-conflict, is as the fog of war begins to dissipate, where will the opposition be?
What will be the relative balance between the street and the state?
Especially because just two, three months ago, we had the biggest nationwide uprisings in Iran, but also we had the most violently suppressed ones in Iran.
And the question is, what did the conflict do to that fight?
And here the answer may not lie with America.
It may lie with Israel.
Where I would say in the past maybe 11, 12 days of the conflict, looking at the stuff that they have been putting out, they have been targeting this thing, this cocktail that I call the apparatus of repression.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Basij paramilitary, the vigilante groups, the law enforcement forces.
And this is the group that every time there's a protest, the Islamic Republic takes a different proportion of them, shakes it up, and throws it at these protesters.
And they violently suppress these protesters, like we saw in the month of January.
So the question now is: if you are worried about what comes next, it's not what percentage of missile launchers did America destroy.
It's how much of that apparatus of repression did Israel degrade and spook and set back such that the next time folks come out, is there at all even a slightly different balance?
And we just don't know that yet.
The next time folks come out, who's most likely to be the leader of that group?
What is the face of the resistance right now in Iran?
Well, there is no one leader inside the country.
But if you're talking about outside, we saw the exiled crown prince of Iran be able to draw massive crowds on January 8, January 9, even crowds that per European diplomats based in Tehran reportedly had 1.5 million just in that city alone.
You know, Mashhad, Iran's second biggest city on that longest boulevard in that city, were also chanting pro-Path Labi slogans.
But this isn't about some kind of monarchist restoration or anyone's rich diaspora family member trying to do something to come back.
This is about the people in that country coming out and trying to draw as sharp a contrast as possible with the regime.
And if the regime is Islamist, what's the ideology?
And it is a sharp 180 degrees opposite Islamism.
It's nationalism.
And that is actually why the exiled crown prince is more popular than ever before.
And that is actually why he's been able to galvanize such a group of people to come out more than ever before.
Benem Ben Taliblou is our guest.
Viewers know him from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
He is taking your phone calls on phone lines as usual.
Republicans 202-748-8001.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
Independents 202-748-8002.
Before we take the calls, come back to the negotiations.
I know you're talking about perhaps it not being the time, but if and when the Vice President and Jared Kushner and Steve Wickop sit down with the Iranians in Pakistan on Saturday, who is most likely going to be on the other side of that negotiating table?
It's an excellent question.
Even I believe the vice president mentioned the parliament speaker, who, given the way power is structured in Iran, being head of parliament doesn't necessarily give you a certain kind of capability.
But in Iran, it's also taking the line that we have here in Washington, personnel is policy times 10 or times 100.
And that person is a veteran of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
He's a veteran of the 1980, 1988 Iran-Iraq war, which really birthed the generation of people that are running that state today.
He is a close confidant of the former Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.
He was previously the head of the IRGC Air Force.
He was previously the head of the IRGC's construction arm.
He was mayor of Tehran, I think, for two terms.
He kind of envisions himself as like an ambitious, a fairly ambitious guy, I would say.
My fear is that Washington may be reading his ambition as pragmatism or moderation, and there's a real difference between those things.
But nonetheless, given what this parliament speaker has said really throughout the course of the conflict, there's no moderation there to be had.
I mean, he's really boxed himself in.
And more importantly, even if you do think that this is someone you can hang your head on.
I mean, I had a piece in the Washington Post with a friend that said that this guy is not the Del Codriguez of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
But even if one does believe that, even if one does want to project that, the question is, well, the structure of power is fundamentally different today.
This is much more of a coarse, brittle, hardline, national security deep state than ever before.
Hypothetically, even if you do think he's Del Codriguez, how could he deliver?
So my problem with the negotiating team is, how do you know that that regime will be able to deliver at this point in time, given how successful America and Israel have been dealing body blows to the regime over the past six weeks?
Come back to personnel is policy.
What does it say that JD Vance is leading these negotiations and not Secretary of State Marco Rubio?
Well, I think this was a request by the Islamic Republic, if I'm not mistaken.
It's a request that seems to have been granted by Washington.
I don't know how we want to read the Washington tea leaves into it.
There's two ways to do it.
And again, sometimes it's easier to understand what's going on in Tehran than it is to Washington where you and I live and work.
But nonetheless, let's take a stab at it.
The first is this is the president's blessing.
You know, this is a very, if you have the vice president of the United States, it's literally just one step away from the president.
So this is a very, very high-level delegation.
So it's a measure of American seriousness.
The other is, given that negotiations haven't gone on too well, too far in the past with the Islamic Republic, perhaps this is a way to actually limit it and to say, hey, look, we tried, we tried to send a very high-level person, and it didn't go anywhere.
And because the president may not have the patience for diplomacy, I think even the clip you played of Vice President Vance in Budapest saying that the president is impatient will play to his advantage if someone like that who has the president's ear, who has publicly sunk costs about how much limited time there is for this, if he goes, and he was framed in a very recent New York Times piece as being very skeptical of the military operation and rightly pointing to the costs of the military operation over the past six weeks,
if he goes and if he says that the Iranians are not negotiating in good faith, well, you have maximum legitimacy to go back to the shooting.
And that gets us to the president's tweet or post from this morning.
He's like, that's when the shooting starts.
And then two other questions on the negotiations front.
Why in Pakistan and why is China involved at least in some way in this?
Well, let's go in reverse because the Pakistanis do call China an all-weather ally.
Despite the very tormented and turbulent and kaleidoscopic U.S.-Pakistan relationship over the years, and sometimes that's being generous, the Pakistanis do look to China as a strategic partner.
You saw that in the Cold War.
You see that in spades now.
Why Pakistan?
Pakistan, less so Turkey, less so Egypt.
But also you broaden the aperture a little bit here.
There are these countries that for a long time have auditioned to be mediator or moderator between Trump and Tehran.
And a lot of them have failed.
And sometimes when they fail, they double down.
In the past, you saw Prime Minister Abe of Japan.
You saw Merkel, Chancellor Merkel of Japan.
I don't want to be that person.
You want to nest your own bilateral issues into the U.S.-Iran relationship.
Second, it's you as a rising power, as a middle power, as a different kind of power.
You want the status.
Want the boon of having delivered these two very different sides.
But every time it fails, there's a whole new constellation of countries that come out and try.
I mean, just before this conflict, we saw the GCC, the Gulf Cooperation Council states, much more so Oman, slightly less so Qatar, trying.
But both of these countries were hit by the Islamic Republic during this conflict.
So it's interesting to see the constellation of countries that are willing to come in.
The fact that the Chinese, who we have, as you know, great issues with, a lot of strategic competition with, kind of poking and prodding the Pakistanis forward, but also reportedly trying to get the Iranians who are shutting down the Strait of Hormuz and are impacting the Chinese energy and economic trade coming out of the Persian Gulf, trying to get both sides to come together.
I think there may be more kind of great power dress rehearsal in the shadows than meets the eyes.
What is there to know about the Iranian-Pakistani relationship?
That is also a bit tormented.
I mean, if you're going to zoom out, remember, January 2024 is the first time that the Islamic Republic directly from its own territory, from Iranian territory, attacked the territory of a country that has nuclear weapons.
Pakistan has nuclear weapons.
There's that Saudi defense pact.
A lot of people assume or project, given the very long Saudi Pakistan defense history, that the Pakistanis would cover the Saudis in some kind of nuclear umbrella.
But the Islamic Republic attacked Pakistani territory because there's baluch separatists there.
The Pakistanis have also struck Iranian Balooch positions in response.
So there has been a real kinetic flare-up in the not too recent past.
Both countries have tried to manage very, let's just say, different Islamist ideologies at times.
They've been on very different sides of the pro-U.S. and anti-U.S. global war on terror.
And so sometimes they learn to live without.
And sometimes high neighbors, high fences make for good neighbors.
Benem Ben Taliblou, a very good person to have on this week.
And he's here to take your calls and questions on phone lines for Republicans, Democrats, and independents as usual.
Your first call from Hawaii.
Alan, up early, Independent.
Alan, you're on with Benem Ben Talibu.
Hey, good morning, John.
Ben, it's great to speak with you again on C-SPAN Washington Journal.
I think the last time I spoke to you was actually we talked about David Albright's assessment of this was probably six months ago or so.
But what I was curious about was your article in foreign policy recently about what you wanted President Trump to do to try to get a regime change.
Sorry, let me interrupt you.
Foreign affairs, you mean, right?
It was the February one.
Excuse me, foreign affairs.
Yeah, yeah, foreign affairs.
And then what I was curious about, that would be the first part of my question.
You can address that as you wish.
But obviously, like Mike Duran and everyone has their own concerns about how well this ceasefire is going to play out, and if it was a strategic decision to allow a ceasefire now,
if it was an economic motivation because of the Strait of Hormuz, or if it was basically there's tactical, you know, there's like tactics there where they're trying to assess who's actually in the leadership position and does that help them to decide if another attack is necessary, what needs to happen.
This type of modality.
I'm just curious because you're probably the best guy in the world to talk to about this.
So that's why I'm asking you.
Alan, thanks for the questions.
Thank you.
That's very kind of you, Alan.
Just to reference that foreign affairs piece, it came out actually after the protest, but before the fighting started.
Targeting Weak Regime Leadership00:15:50
What it will take to change the regime in Iran, the U.S. military must go big and then let Iranians do the rest.
The headline.
Yeah, so that's basically, it was my case for going big or going home with respect to U.S. military operations, that there is no baby bear approach to this.
You either go all in or you don't do this at all.
And in Goal In, we don't talk about ground troops, but we talk a heck of a lot about suppressing the various ways that the Islamic Republic can respond before you begin to go after that one group that we spoke about, which is the apparatus of repression.
You have to suppress their missile fire.
You have to destroy their air and missile defenses.
You have to target their leadership.
You have to shred command and control.
You have to spook even mid-level missile commanders.
You have to do all of these things.
You have to fight.
You have to play to the edge.
You have to win, because this is going to sound a little too hard for early morning and first or second cup of coffee conversations, but the definition of something that is in a national security interest is what are you willing to fight, kill, and die for.
And if you are not going to do that, by definition, that thing is not a core national security interest.
And I believe because this regime has been killing Americans for so long, because this regime has been sponsoring terrorism for so long, because it has been sucking us into a region that we've been trying to leave for so long, there is no way out but through.
And through means disabling this regime, kicking it to the curb, and creating the conditions for the people to come in.
And it's not some kind of a random humanitarian mission.
It's something that actually President Trump can do.
And in that piece, we talked about what he should do and what logistically that would look like.
Therefore, unlike with respect to some folks in Washington, I have not been surprised by a single thing in the past six weeks of warfighting.
The fact that the Iranians went for the straight, the fact that the missile capability was this resilient.
If you've been paying attention to why the Islamic Republic is a threat for so long, you should not have been surprised by how resilient they were.
Weak does not mean not lethal.
And I've been saying an iteration of this, the regime is weak, but it is still very lethal for the past three months now.
And I make the case why we have to deal with that lethality in that foreign affairs piece.
How close did we get to going all in?
I think we had a ways to go.
You know, America is a very interesting warfighter where there is as much politics and policy to the target selection and to the timeline afforded to this than anything else.
And there was as much negotiation throughout the six weeks of fighting with the president and himself than with the adversary.
And sometimes those deliberations were public, and sometimes even within a tweet or a statement, you saw different positions.
And I think this stems from the president's willingness to put everything out there, to quite literally do what every U.S. president said they would do, which is to put all options on the table.
And the president advances all of these options almost simultaneously, so as to have to avoid putting his entire political capital behind one, but also to provoke the adversary and see which one of these the adversary responds to.
Put it all out there, see what they will do.
It's talking and shooting, talking and fighting at the same time.
And so that is what we try to deal with in the foreign affairs piece.
The gentleman's second question about what follows.
I mean, that's a great question.
You know, what do you want to follow?
I mean, this is not the point about regime change, but what follows within this regime when you de-racinate it, you decapitate it, you have the longest-serving autocrat in the contemporary Middle East, Ali Khamenei, no longer at the helm.
You have Iranians inside Iran making jokes about we have an AI supreme leader.
We have a cardboard supreme leader now because Mujta Bah Khamenei, his son, has neither been seen nor any audio heard from.
There's all these rumors that he's very, very badly injured.
Is he cognizant?
Is he in a coma?
Is he in Tehran?
Is he in Qom?
Is he in Mashhad?
Where is he?
And in the absence of that supreme leader being not so supreme, forgive me, it is this deep state.
It is this body that is still running the country.
And that body is the veterans of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
That's the most important security organization.
And perhaps the most important political organization is the Supreme National Security Council.
So despite this regime calling itself the Islamic Republic, like a former Ayatollah who was defrocked and died under house arrest said, you know, this is neither Islamic nor a republic.
Who makes up the Supreme National Security Security Council and have they been targeted over the course of the past six weeks?
Well, as you know, the previous head of the Supreme National Security Council was indeed targeted, Ali Larijani.
That's perhaps a really key and very hard-to-penetrate and understand national security decision-making body.
It kind of functions like our National Security Council here, but then some.
It has a president, but more importantly, it has a secretary and it has a secretariat that basically functions as this executive council/slash think tank for the regime, passing ideas up and down the system, connecting the various overlapping Byzantine centers of power and getting folks together to deliberate.
And it has lots of military people, it has civilians, it has clerics on it.
It's not meant to say that it's representative, but it is perhaps a place where even this very hardcore authoritarian regime will consult with other centers and be deliberative.
And that's how even a regime as weak as this can kind of play to the edge.
And the previous secretary I've mentioned, Ali Larajani, was indeed targeted.
And many have said, hey, Vietnam, the new Supreme National Security Council Secretary is a hardcore IRGC veteran, which is true.
And he is a little bit different than Ali Larajani, and that's not mincing words.
But the problem is, Ali Larijani himself was an IRGC veteran, as was the previous secretary, as was the previous secretary.
So this talking point that exists out there in Washington that, oh, by President Trump taking these strikes or by Israel supporting these strikes, we have somehow reset the deck in Iran and the IRGC has come to the helm.
This was a movie we've been seeing in slow motion anyway.
Trump expedited with the military conflict, but we've been seeing this movie anyway.
And it is not because of an American or Israeli foresight or accident that brought the IRGC to the helm.
It is because of path-dependent decisions by the former Supreme Leader for 37 years to move the security forces into politics, into society, into the economy, even into religious institutions.
And that is what has made this state what you see now it to be.
Anthony, Greentown, Pennsylvania, Republican.
Good morning.
You're on with Benem Ben Taliblou.
Good morning, John.
Good morning, Mr. Taglou.
Talibu.
I agree with our friend from Hawaii that you're the foremost Moisa I want to hear on this at this point.
You're very intelligent.
You know all the players.
You know all the pieces.
And I seek you out when I'm looking for information on this.
I have a couple of questions.
One of them has to do with, I saw Chuck Schumer before talking about how Trump has messed this up and goes on and on and on.
And his useful rhetoric is only for the Iranian government at this point.
He has no useful rhetoric for the United States.
I can't stand listening to him downgrade and take this conflict and make Iran thank him for his comments.
He's just disgusted me, and a lot of Democrats do at this point.
However, my question is, in the beginning of this, the Kurds were considered one of the potential ground invasion forces we could use.
And I just wanted to get your opinion on if that's still a viable option or is there something else that we need to do?
Just we're taking Carg Island.
I don't believe we're over.
The ceasefire is not going to last.
The Iranians seem to be very smug about it.
And I like the guy's analysis about the Monty Python character getting his arms and legs chopped off and still wanting to bite the guy.
The Iranians have lost a lot of teeth, but they still have teeth.
Just let me get your comments on that and please explain to the public how Chuck Shuma is just a useful idiot to the Iranian government right now.
Thank you very much.
Anthony in Pennsylvania.
Thank you, Anthony.
That was very kind of you.
I'm going to work backwards.
You said three things.
Ceasefire, Kurds, and Senator Schumer.
The ceasefire.
You mentioned the Monty Python.
Let me also...
Let me give you a different analogy, but actually something that comes straight from Iran.
I saw it on social media, the limited kind of dribs and drabs of information you can get from that country when folks are able to connect with Starlink or via VPN, given the internet blackout there.
And it's essentially, it's a guy saying, man, I can't sleep at night due to the sounds of this ceasefire.
Meaning, the war is still very much going on.
Yes, today, for example, the UAE Foreign Ministry came out and said, yes, no missiles, no drones, which is historic.
You've had ships now go through the Strait of Hormuz, but even a lesser volume.
I think seven was the most recent number of people.
Six, six, or seven.
And I mean, that's even less than 10, which was at a high during the conflict.
So if during a ceasefire, peace looks more fragile than the economic trade looked during war, it kind of means we're not out of it yet.
So you're very right to be skeptical of the ceasefire.
Let me also just add, by the way, that there is a world in which there is a kind of a cold peace and no hot war, and it's really just a pause between the next round of fighting.
And I think that's the world that we've entered.
Whether I like it or not, whether you like it or not.
In fact, I actually think the limited rounds of fighting is not helpful.
I understand the logic of death by a thousand cuts, but the reason I wrote that in Foreign Affairs is I think Americans don't want to come and go and come and go.
And also more, you know, to the heart of the matter, given the fact of you and I again speaking last time in January, you will lose more of that great sea of Iranian support if you turn on and turn off and turn on and turn off because you'll lose more people because fighting necessarily will come with civilian casualties.
And the regime, the more you kind of slowly collapse the house in on the people, the more the people are not going to necessarily want to stand for that.
And there will be mistakes made.
So, you know, if we're going to do it, we should do it right.
And I actually think that this ceasefire approach and this thinking of a more minimalist way to solve the problem, push away from the table, that's not going to be solving us.
I think we have to understand that right now, the main shooting between America and Iran has stopped.
That's a good thing.
But this is nowhere at all close to being solved.
And we have to prepare ourselves for, if these guys remain in power, this is going to become a Middle Eastern version of North Korea.
So rather than talking about us helping them rebuild, we have to be talking about how can we contain them.
And that is the policy that Washington needs to be thinking about here and being prepared for if folks go into the streets again in that country to take down their tyrannical government, what is it that we can do to help them rather than us keep getting surprised every time people go out into the streets.
So that's the conversation we need to be having.
So that's how the ceasefire issue stands.
With respect to the Kurds, you know, listen, the Kurds have fought bravely with and sometimes even for America for two or three decades now, depending on the conflict in Iraq, more recently and perhaps more prominently in Syria, the fight against ISIS.
It's a very different issue with respect to the Islamic Republic.
You have not one Kurdish group, but various Kurdish groups, iterations of an alphabet soup of different groups, some of which want autonomy inside Iran, some of which want more than autonomy.
Some of them are separatist groups.
Some of them in the past used to have foreign backing.
You know, Masa Amini herself was a Kurd.
Masa Amini was a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman who was killed and whose death sparked the Women Life Freedom Uprising in 2022-23.
Masa Amini's mother would say, and it was public back then during the protests, that Massa, and I'll tell you it in Persian, Massa Dukhtara Irana.
Massa is a daughter of Iran.
It's not a daughter of one ethnic group or one sectarian group.
And so I'd say it's a mistake to keep, even though Iran is a mosaic, it's a mistake to try to look at the mosaic and try to fracture it.
There's no ethnic segregation in Iran.
Yes, you have places where majority Kurdish is spoken, majority Azeri is spoken, majority Persian is spoken.
But for us to come in and take a Yugoslavia-type approach or a separate-like approach like India-Pakistan or like a Kashmir-type approach, that adds to the problems of the Middle East.
It doesn't solve the problems of the Middle East.
And in Iran, where you have, again, nationalism now being felt by such a large swath of the population, if we default to ethnic insurgency rather than ride the nationalist wave, we're going to come out of it on the other end.
And I think no one said this better than the president himself.
When yes, I have questions about what he said, but he did say that allegedly, and we don't know to whom or to which group, he said, allegedly weapons were given and they were not handed back.
And many were looking to the Kurds then because would they have been this ground force, this potential ground insurgent force?
I don't think that that would have even armed them to be able to go take Tehran.
So it would be too weak to actually succeed militarily.
And the U.S. probably would have an issue with giving them air cover, as was clearly proven to be the case.
So you would once again be putting Kurds on the front lines of a conflict that they could not win, but also be fracturing a state that really should not be fractured, and then losing the great sea of support that you could have among the population.
So this issue of arm this ethnic group or arm that ethnic group, to me, it's a lose, lose, lose.
It's a lose on politics, it's a lose on morals, and it's a lose on strategy.
And then finally, you mentioned something about Senator Schumer.
I'll try very hard to be nonpartisan about this, but I think this goes to both sides of the American political spectrum.
Sometimes there's such a desire to own the other side that we can end up recycling adversaries' talking points.
And I don't mean an adversary from the left or an adversary from the right, because these are Americans, these are our neighbors, these are our compatriots.
But I mean an adversary like a foreign adversary.
And for us to kind of go so hard against each other, whether Schumer against the president or someone else against Schumer, that doesn't help any of us.
So let me just say, pushing away from the table here for a second, when Americans fight each other like that, it's not us who wins or the left who wins or the right who wins or the center who wins.
It's those foreign adversaries that win, that really want to sick us against each other and press upon our social cleavages.
Does it surprise you, amid this conflict, we've occasionally shown viewers several minutes of press TV, the English language television, the Iranian state-owned TV to see how this is playing in Iran, or at least how they're playing it for their people in Iran.
Does it surprise you when they will occasionally show tweets and social media posts from American politicians, Democrats criticizing the president on this?
No, it's not surprising.
And in fact, it's something that's grown, and not just on press TV, but a whole host of others, because press TV is the primary English language outlet designed to kind of press upon our cleavages.
So naturally, there is more coverage of American commentary there that is believed to be fringe, that is believed to be counter the mainstream, so that they can use American voices to fight other Americans.
But you look at even in stuff that they have in Persian for their own audiences, even for the hardline, for example, like Tasnim News Agency, semi-official news agency believed to be tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
They will cover some American academics, some American professors, some American media organizations, some American politicians.
And it's not just news coverage of people said things that were newsworthy.
It is the selective slicing and dicing, and again, using of Americans in fights with other Americans.
It's to paint a picture of our society.
It's to use Americans as a shield to fight other Americans.
Cost-Free Conflict Alternatives00:15:12
So I really want to stress this point because the Soviet Union did it very well.
Now the Chinese, less so the North Koreans, do it very well.
But this is one domain, this information warfare domain, where the Islamic Republic is doing this very well, and we shouldn't simply sit back and let that happen.
To Philadelphia, this is Jonathan, Independent.
Jonathan, you're on with Ben and Ben Taliblou.
Great conversation today.
One thing I'll say about the former Soviet Union is they did not manage their debt load well.
And I think that the United States is falling into the same trap.
The empire is too broad, too many bases, and we're $39 trillion in debt and growing.
And this war is nothing but an economic quagmire.
And if you put boots on the ground, it's going to be a quagmire for a lot of dead soldiers coming home.
And I still don't know the reason we're there.
I understand that this is Israel's war.
I've heard that maybe there's Epstein files of Trump doing stuff the young girls that Israel has, and they're using that to sort of leverage him.
I don't know why we're there.
It's a terrible idea.
I really, really get offended by the way the media in this country does not cover this story.
They do not share any information that would help the American people understand the conflict, the risk, or why we're there and why we shouldn't be there.
But this is a war that we cannot win.
There's not a win in it for us.
It's just how bad do you want to lose?
A global recession, World War III, how bad do we want to lose is all that's on the table.
And these think tanks that come on and present one rosy side, one picture, always promote war as the answer to everything.
Man, I dislike them.
And the media, again, they only present one side, the rosy side.
They act like Iran was just bombing its neighbors for no reason.
We had bases surrounding their country.
That's why Iran bombed those other countries.
It was to take out our bases that were being used.
What do you make of the hotels being bombed in the UAE, sir?
What do you make of the gas fields being bombed in Kuwait?
What?
In Qatar?
Yeah, what I've heard is that Israel may have done things like that.
Israel is trying to.
Very interesting.
Listen, sir, you may not like some of the think tanks, and forgive me for being a little bit more forward-leaning in the line of questions and comments today.
But we will respect and support your right to say all of that which you've said.
That is fundamentally the First Amendment.
That is what makes us different.
You can't have that caller call in in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
That is what makes us different.
So now let me begin to respond.
You are correct about the debt load.
And here I'm not the scholar to focus on.
Niall Ferguson has a lot of really excellent stuff about how empires, how countries, how states in the modern era have failed to properly manage their debt.
And when the debt and the spending ratio and the amount of money that you spend to service the debt goes higher and higher, that's when there is a real recession.
And that's when these empires in the past and states in the present really do begin to fall.
And I guess it would be the time to point out that last Friday, the president released his fiscal 2027 budget, a 44% increase in spending for the Pentagon at $1.5 trillion in that fiscal year.
And that is still going.
My challenge with the U.S. system is even if there was no conflict, the lines would be growing.
And the question is, how do you get those lines to go in the opposite direction for the things that Americans have wanted, whether that's health care, roads, services, what have you?
But that's an entirely separate domestic policy conversation.
The reason I mentioned the Nile Ferguson commentary is I think that the caller would like it.
He would benefit from it because it's the same first line of argument that you made.
There are countries in the past, there are empires in the past that have failed to deal with their debt, and it has real world national security consequences.
So we are not here to say that the conflict with the Islamic Republic is cost-free, but it is to say that there are alternatives that are even worse.
So one, learning how to manage the debt is going to be number one.
Number two is, again, this is a 47-year war of choice by the Islamic Republic against America.
Funny story, after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and this has zero to do with Israel, we kept our embassy open there.
We tried to recognize the new revolutionary government, even though they tossed out the U.S. allied king.
How long?
From February 11, 1979 to November 4, 1979.
And not once, but twice, there were TIFs outside of the U.S. embassy in Tehran.
Sometimes the embassy would be able to work with the police against the revolutionaries.
Sometimes they'd be able to work with an armed faction against a different armed faction to secure the premises where the U.S. embassy was.
But ultimately, that led to the 1979 hostage crisis, and that's where we severed the ties.
And the relationship has only soured and soured from there.
And if you look, and again, this is not Israel or Jeffrey Epstein or Donald Trump or whoever else, almost every president has really tried to make bridges with these guys.
We didn't get here by accident.
Sir, if you want to make it personal, you can look at that foreign affairs piece I had.
In my 13 years at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, that's the first piece I had calling for overt military action against the Islamic Republic.
None of us rushed into this decision.
The United States of America did not rush into this decision.
If you look at the 47-year U.S.-Iran diplomatic history, you will see that it is Uncle Sam, the stronger power, even confronted with the loss of life to its own service people, pushing away from the table, pulling punches, and saying, no, I'm not going to strike.
And you have this buildup, you know, Beirut bombing, Khobar Towers, Iraq, Afghanistan, where these guys have baited, bleeded, and killed Americans, taken Americans, other dual nationals hostages for years, and we haven't been able to do anything about it.
So really, it's for the Islamic Republic.
It is the chicken that has come home to Rus.
So what are we trying to do?
At a sheer American patriotic national level, we are punching back for the first time in a meaningful way in 47 years against the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism.
And I couldn't think of a more red, white, and blue through line to what the president did than actually taking out the chief of that regime and actually dealing a body blow to the tip of that revolutionary spear at the IRGC and now defanging and trying to roll back the capabilities that they pose to our friends and partners and allies in the region, countries like the GCC.
You know, yes, Iran is firing ballistic missiles at Israel, but the real takeaway, the optics that the American public should know about this war in the past six weeks is that the Islamic Republic of Iran was at war with the Arab world.
That let that sink in.
Not once, not twice, not three times.
Four times the Islamic Republic of Iran fired directly at the territory of a NATO member.
Once the Islamic Republic fired two intermediate range ballistic missiles, which we didn't even know they had, 4,000 plus kilometers away from their territory towards Diego Garcia.
If you flip that geography, that means every NATO base now on the European continent can be targeted by Iranian missiles.
Should we have sit back and let the threat grow and grow and grow such that they could reach the U.S. homeland?
That would be a real strategic mistake, just like letting the debt issue go to be a mistake.
And let me connect the dots fiscally one more time with foreign policy here.
Yes, this is costly, but it will only get more costlier.
And if you are one of those Americans who says, to hell with all of this, let's sacrifice everything on the altar of the real competition for 2020s, sorry, for the 21st century, which is China.
It's not Russia, it's not the Islamic Republic, it's not Venezuela, it's not Greenland, it's not terrorism, it's not whatever.
It's China.
If you can't get this right, if we can't generate sufficient support right, if we are going to be penny pinchers over a fight with the Islamic Republic of Iran, who is basically the strategic pawn of Russia and China, how are we going to align ways, means, and ends to deal with a China challenge?
How are we going to deal with the economic shocks that will come in any kind of global competition vis-à-vis the Chinese?
If we're being penny-pinchers over interceptors and Tomahawk cruise missiles vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic, and we haven't gotten our defense industrial base in order for that, how are we going to deal with the arsenal of the People's Liberation Army when they come marching across for Taiwan?
Come back to this week.
What do you make of Israel's actions in Lebanon, especially in the time since the ceasefire was announced?
Well, the Islamic Republic is trying to connect the dots between these theaters.
As you know, there was a war in Lebanon between Lebanese, Hezbollah, and Israel that started one day after October 7th, and the Israelis were looking for a way to respond.
And for the first year or so of that conflict, there was an incremental escalation.
I don't want to use the word tit-for-tat, but the Lebanese would hit, the Israelis would hit, Lebanese, you kind of would go back and forth.
A lot of that changed with the Bieper stuff and the Pedra stuff in 2024 and the ceasefire there in 2024.
And then the Israelis being able to detect, deter, degrade, and destroy a lot of these Hezbollah capabilities really since then.
The Iranians now are trying to tie in the Israeli ability to still have a freer hand in Lebanon, to still move against its most important proxy, which is Lebanese Hezbollah.
They're trying to tie that now with the status of the ceasefire fight and the debate over what comes next with the Americans.
And this is, again, proof of the line that the Islamic Republic of Iran is a poor guardian of the Iranian national interest.
If these guys gave a damn about their own country, they would take the ceasefire opportunity.
They would take a president who's willing to trade and do deals with them and rebuild their country.
But no, instead, they're willing to run more risks of turning the fire back on, of sinking their country into a deeper war, just to try to bail out who?
The Iranian people?
No.
The Lebanese people?
No.
But their terror proxy in southern Lebanon, which is taking it from the Israelis.
And I think it would be an own goal of strategic proportions to let the Iranians disconnect the DAS for us and tell the Iranians to tell us to weigh in and weigh down on the Israelis.
It should be the reverse.
The loser doesn't get to set the plate for the winner.
Steve, New Jersey, Republican, you're on with Ben Ben Taliblin.
And thank you.
Thank you.
This is such a breath of fresh air.
But, you know, we talk about regime change in terms of regime changing in Iran.
But I think it's also important to talk about the regime change Iran and its proxies have done to Western democracies.
I mean, there has been a long-term regime change.
They've been very patient.
They've done an incredible...
I mean, just hearing some of these callers, everything gets blamed on Israel.
And, you know, the regime change in Western countries where Iran fires a missile at the UK 2,500 miles, and the UK still doesn't get involved in this conflict.
I mean, it's scary to see how successful the mind rot has happened.
I mean, the suicidal empathy.
I was at a protest the other day, and a reporter asked me whether Netanyahu ruins the case for Israel.
And I asked the reporter, do you ask Palestinians whether Hamas ruins the case for Palestinians?
And he says, no, I don't.
I said, why?
I mean, there has just been this mind rot that has gone on over decades.
And that's the problem we have right now.
That's the problem we have right now.
Can I ask what the protest was that you were attending?
I was protesting to free Iran, basically.
That's Steve in New Jersey.
Thanks, Steve.
Certainly, there is an issue now.
Again, this kind of gets to the mosaic of public opinion in America, which we should respect and let it speak for itself, but also understand that our adversaries are not sitting idly by and watching our very open system and admiring it.
They're looking to press upon it.
And this isn't about, oh, they paid one person to say one thing.
It's this phrase that I think goes, again, back to the Cold War, and this is not meant to denigrate anyone.
But there are folks who will say things that will end up being anti-American, and those are the folks that, again, within this context, you could call sometimes useful idiots, where they magnify the talking points of the adversary without the adversary ever having to make it, without there being any coordination or intonation or payment or anything else.
This is, again, how the adversary uses Americans to push anti-American talking points against other Americans.
And that doesn't mean that if an American is critical of their own government or an American is critical of a certain policy of a certain policymaker, that they necessarily are doing this.
No, they're not.
We have to also go the extra mile.
But we also have to be extra honest and understand that this is how these adversaries are playing this game.
So we can respect the right to free speech.
You know, just a funny story about protests.
I was actually at a university event.
I won't say where, but it was a university event recently.
And I was monitoring a conversation with General Petraeus.
And there was a gigantic protest outside the building.
And I turned to him and I said, sir, is this for me or for you?
And, you know, just because this is the nature of campuses.
But none of us were perturbed by it.
And we continued our conversation.
I think that's when the adversary wins if that protest takes over the entire conversation, if that becomes the orienting focus, or if we fail to actually have the conversation that we wanted to have today.
So listen, I'm not going to say that everybody who's skeptical of the U.S. mission is necessarily taking some anti-American talking points from our adversaries.
I don't believe all of them are useful at all.
I believe there's tons and tons and tons of American patriots who, for political reasons, military reasons, economic reasons, are skeptical.
And that's why I came on the show today to talk about the other side of the ledger.
I am not painting a rosy picture.
I'm saying that this is costly and that this is risky, but that everything else that got us here, taking the easier approach, kept making it harder and brought us to this juncture.
So good question, good point, but I have a slightly different spin on it.
But thank you for the kind words.
Time for one last call.
This is Don in Maryland's been waiting line for Democrats.
Don, can you make it quick?
Good morning.
Yeah.
My question is, I mean, how can you broke a peace deal or ceasefire when you're killing all the heads of state and you're bombing the country?
I mean, make that make sense.
It just doesn't make any sense.
And I'm Ben Taliban.
Sure.
So actually, there is a key linguistic difference between peace and ceasefire.
And that's why I said I think peace deal, a big actual good agreement, chances are slim to none.
But a ceasefire, a deconfliction, and a phrase I've been using a lot today, a push away from the table kind of moment, that is entirely possible with whatever consolation of folks come out of this regime.
Peace Versus Ceasefire Distinction00:03:58
The conflict began, as the caller mentioned, by going after leaders.
The conflict began by targeting, you know, quite literally the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, Ali Khamenei, who had been in that position for 37 years as commander-in-chief, the most important religious, political, and military position inside of that country.
But if you look at the other folks who have been targeted, the vast majority of them are not politicians or political leaders.
A lot of them are the national security, deep state, and military folks.
So even then, you can take the counter position, which is, are we even doing, this is not a regime change war because you're not going after the politicians of that system.
You're going after the military elite, the strategic decision makers.
And yes, that is designed to throw a wrench into command and control.
That is designed to throw a wrench into the ability of that system to be cohesive.
Because look, my goodness, if this is what this regime can do when it is off balance, imagine what it would do.
Imagine what it could do when it's on balance and it wants to fight you at a time and place of its own choosing.
So there's a difference between peace and ceasefire.
I think we got them off balance.
Let's find a way to lock in the win and push away from the table, understanding full well that so long as these guys are at the helm, peace, that other word that you mentioned, sir, will not spring out, will not be at hand.
The Foundation for Defensive Democracies can be found fdd.org, and that's where you can find much more from Benham Ben Taliblou, the Iran program senior director there.
We do always appreciate the conversation.
Thank you so much.
Coming up in about a half an hour, Times senior political correspondent Eric Cordelessa will join us to talk about his reporting on President Trump's decision-making when it comes to war.
But first, after the break, a conversation with Sophia Besch of the Carnegie Endowment on U.S.-NATO relations.
Stick around.
We'll be right back.
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Washington Journal continues.
A focus now on U.S.-NATO relations with Sophia Besch.
She's a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
And Sophia Besch, NATO Secretary General Mark Ruda, met with President Trump at the White House yesterday.
What do we know about what happened in that meeting?
Yeah, that was a very difficult trip for the man who is known in Europe as the Trump Whisperer.
NATO Solidarity and European Voices00:15:29
That's the reputation he won over the last year, de-escalating again and again between the alliance and the president.
And he had his work cut out for him after tensions ran really very high over the Iran war, where the president did not consult his European allies and then berated them for not supporting him or allegedly not supporting him.
So there was a lot for the Secretary General of NATO to kind of pick up on in that conversation.
What are you expecting the Secretary General to say?
He's speaking at 11 a.m. at the Reagan Institute in D.C., talking about NATO, talking about the Iran war.
What are you expecting today?
Yes, it's quite the balance act for him because he was rebuked by European allies for initially, in their view, supporting, embracing the war too much.
European allies have been very, very critical of this war.
At the same time, he has been holding the line and saying that the world is safer after the war or with the war because the Iranian conventional military program, at the very least, has been degraded.
I expect him to repeat something along those lines today as well.
His mission always, when he comes to speak with the president, is to give credit to the president for the way that NATO has been developing the fact that NATO allies have committed to spending 5% of their GDP on defense.
He credits President Trump with that achievement.
I expect that he will repeat something along those lines too.
But also, I think that he will acknowledge the president's disappointment with allies and probably try to make a case that they are now rallying to support freedom of navigation operations in the Strait of Hormuz going forward to try to get shipping going again.
Do you think that could mean some NATO involvement here in this conflict or in some sort of peace deal?
So this is not a NATO conflict, but I do expect that European militaries will want to contribute to a freedom of navigation operation and whatever shape that might take.
There have been conversations already between European allies to try and put something like that together because, of course, they have shipping interests too through the Strait of Hormuz and their economies are very affected by the fact that the straight has been closed.
So I do expect them to become involved.
And I should say also that, you know, the United States has been drawing on its military infrastructure in Europe, its bases, its logistics for rearming, refueling.
So Europe has been involved in this war.
Can you just talk through sort of the NATO process here for a NATO mission and what happened?
How did the United States try to get NATO support in this?
And what was sort of the official NATO line on the Iran conflict?
So it's been very unusual because the United States had not consulted its NATO allies at all before entering into this war, before launching the attacks on Iran.
Already, that is not how NATO usually conducts its business.
President Trump and members of his administration, Rubio Hekseth, have been referring back to Article 5 and responsibility for alliance solidarity.
Article 5 is an article that commits members to support other allies when they have been attacked.
It's a defensive alliance at its heart, NATO, and so it doesn't apply in this scenario.
There is sort of a broader sense of solidarity that you can tap into as a NATO ally that is a bit vaguer and that I think the president is referring to here.
And, you know, there have been different voices in Europe, allies who have been more supportive and have been trying to help a little bit more, and allies who've been very, very critical of the legality of this war and of President Trump not consulting them in the first place.
Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt saying NATO turned their backs on the American people, saying that in the White House briefing room yesterday.
In the wake of those comments, in the wake of what we saw in the escalation over Greenland, what do you think the future is of the NATO alliance?
Yeah, I mean, it is sort of astonishing that this is already the second major transatlantic clash this year.
Only Greenland feels like it was a long time ago, but it was only a couple of months ago.
I mean, the president came into this term, came into his last term, fairly hostile towards the alliance.
He's been threatening to leave for years.
These threats are increasingly ringing a little bit hollow in Europe, I would say.
But of course, the president is known or has created a reputation of being quite mercurial, maybe a bit unpredictable.
And so that is keeping Europeans on their toes.
They cannot afford for the U.S. to leave the alliance.
And when I say leave the alliance, I should clarify that UN allegedly withdrawing from the NATO treaty would be very difficult.
Secretary Rubio sponsored a legislation that would make that difficult for the president.
But of course, the United States could withdraw troops, could just generally question their commitment to the defense of their allies, could question their commitment to the extended nuclear deterrence that is keeping Europeans secure.
So there's a lot that the United States presidents can say that would make European allies feel much less safe.
For viewers who are interested in this topic and have questions, now would be a great time to call in.
Sophia Bash is with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, joining us this morning for about another 20, 25 minutes or so.
202-748-8001 for Republicans to call in.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
Independents 202-748-8002.
And as we noted, we might get some more clarity on the status of the U.S.-NATO alliance with Mark Ruda speaking at 11 a.m. Eastern.
He will appear here on C-SPAN, C-SPAN.org, and C-SPANNOW's video app.
He's going to be speaking from the Reagan Institute.
So we will bring it to you live when it does happen.
Sofia Bash, what are the active NATO missions right now?
Where are the places where U.S. forces are serving as part of a NATO mission?
Right.
The most important contribution that NATO is, that the U.S. is currently committed to inside NATO is the defense of NATO's eastern border against Russia, deterring Russians and defending against Russian threats to NATO homeland.
And of course, the support of Ukraine through intelligence sharing and through weapons commitment sales.
Rather, Europeans are currently purchasing equipment from the United States for Ukraine.
And they rely on that support.
Ukraine needs that support.
And that is also a lever that the United States always has when it is threatening Europeans and try to get them to fall in line.
I should also come back to you were asking about Greenland earlier and I didn't really get into that.
I think what we're seeing now, The criticism from European allies, the reluctance to fall in line over Iran is also a lesson that they learned from the Greenland crisis.
That really, you know, that the president's threats to take Greenland, which is a Danish territory, sent shockwaves through Europe.
Europeans feel like that was a line crossed and that there's no going back there, really.
They also feel that their strategy of the first year of this Trump administration, which was sort of containment appeasement de-escalation, just trying not to provoke the president into withdrawing support from Ukraine or withdrawing support from NATO, that that hadn't really worked and that in fact it was maybe more successful when they showed their own leverage, when they stood up to the president over Greenland.
And so there are some voices in Europe right now that feel like Europe needs to sort of straighten their spine and stand up to the president a bit more if it wants to achieve its own interests.
How do those voices feel about Mark Ruda as Secretary General and as you noted earlier, his nickname, the Trump Whisperer?
Yeah, they've been very critical of this.
There really are, I would say, two camps right now in Europe with Ruta firmly in the appeasement containment camp and then somebody like the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez firmly in the other camp.
He's been very, very critical of the United States.
I think the best case scenario for what Wout is doing, for what he's advocating, is that Europeans have absolutely no interest in escalation in conflict with the United States.
They, as we said, need the US and Ukraine.
They need the US and NATO.
And while they are sort of keeping conflict at bay, they can quietly build up their own capabilities, build up their military capabilities, build up their economic competitiveness to become a bit more resilient and to become a bit more independent and increase their leverage in the background so that they are not in future going to be quite as at the mercy of the United States as they are now.
And then there are those who point out that this president seems to respond best when there is pushback, that he actually maybe treats his allies worse of all, and that those countries who have stood up to him, like China, like India, have been more successful.
And it's those European countries that are pushing for Europe to use its leverage, you know, that are pushing for European countries to refuse the U.S. access to its bases if it doesn't change tack on Iran, that are pushing to really highlight the economic dependencies also.
I think this is a conversation that is very much ongoing in Europe.
Europe is not a united actor in this.
And the fact that Wout is in DC now, I think, shouldn't cover up the fact that there are other voices in Europe who take a very, very different position.
He speaks for NATO.
And his mission really is to keep the alliance together and keep the United States in the alliance.
And that is the core task that he's come to DC with today.
Time for a few calls with Sophia Besch.
Bill is in Alabama, Independent.
Bill, we're talking about NATO, U.S. relations and involvement.
What are your thoughts?
Yes, good morning.
I keep hearing how Trump is doing things wrong, how he's adversarial to Europe, to Greenland, to everybody.
But isn't in Europe's best interest that Iran doesn't have a nuclear bomb?
And when we tried to use their air bases to fly over their airspaces to shorten our trips, we were told no.
But now it's, well, please support us at NATO.
Please continue to fund NATO.
Please continue to help protect Europe.
But when it comes our time to help you, we turned our backs.
Some of the countries turned their backs, not all of them.
but some of them did.
And I keep hearing negative, negative, negative about what the United States has done and what Trump has done.
But isn't this a positive for the entire world?
And shouldn't people be supporting this a little bit better?
Got your point, Bel Sophia Bash.
Yeah, thank you for that question.
Europeans, I think the short answer is that Europeans broadly do not believe that the campaign of the last few weeks has been successful or could have been successful in getting rid of the Iranian nuclear program.
And, you know, the enriched uranium is still there.
There is not really a plan how to get that out of the country.
I'm not, I think I said in my earlier answer, certainly Iran's conventional military capacity has been degraded, and that can be counted as a win.
But from a European perspective, that does not actually make up for the fact that now Iran controls the Strait of Formus and it's very unclear how we will get, that we will get shipping through there safely and predictably again in the weeks and months to come.
And so I think a really important point to raise here is the lack of consultation.
Had there been more of a conversation between the United States and their European allies, had the U.S. inside NATO made a case for what they were trying to achieve in Iran, how they were trying to get to that point, what they needed from Europeans, maybe there would have been more of a permissive consensus around it.
But the way that it went right now, Europeans were not convinced that this campaign was going to achieve their objectives.
Rather than keep talking about European allies writ large, can you break it down a little bit more?
In terms of this campaign against Iran, which European countries have been most willing to help the United States or at least facilitate our operations there?
And what countries have been on the forefront of being least willing to help?
So I think we've seen a little bit of an evolution there.
Initially, the split was quite geographical.
We had the southern European countries, Spain, Italy, the most resistant and the most critical.
And then northern and eastern European countries, who incidentally rely most on U.S. support against Russia, were instinctively more supportive.
The UK was instinctively more supportive.
But then as the bombing went on and as the berating started from DC, European countries became more and more united in their criticism of the legality of the war and their questions around the objectives of the war.
Go to Janet in South Carolina, Line for Democrats.
Janet, good morning.
Good morning.
This is Janet.
I'm calling concerning the President Pulling out of NATO.
And as far as I'm concerned, that's a president that does not read and does not know his history.
Defense Spending and Strategic Orientation00:11:34
And I think when it comes to this president, that is his biggest problem.
He does not read, which calls for deliberate ignorance when it comes to certain things to this country and for other countries too.
Thank you.
Sophia Besh, how would you respond?
Well, I think it's interesting for us to pick up on the idea of whether the U.S. can pull out of NATO, what that could look like.
President Trump is not the first president who is asking Europeans to do more inside the alliance to step up their defense spending, to step up their military contributions.
We've talked about more of a burden sharing inside the alliance for a long time.
And I think the trends inside the United States, not just in the MAGA camp, but broadly across parties, now point more to a burden-shifting approach, where really the U.S. wants Europe to take on more of the security burden inside the alliance.
That should be possible without withdrawing from NATO.
And as we've mentioned before, unilaterally taking the U.S. out of the alliance would be legally very, very difficult.
But the U.S. could gradually retreat.
It could gradually move troops out.
It could gradually move capabilities out.
The key point from a European perspective is that this process needs to be predictable and collaborative.
Europeans need to know at what point they need to be ready to take over which capabilities so that there isn't a big gap in their defense and their security that Russia could move into.
And that has been the issue with this administration in particular, that it has appeared fairly unpredictable what Europeans are able to rely on, what they're not able to rely on, because the president has made sudden announcements that at times have been contradictory with what his ambassador to NATO has said, with what his Secretary of Defense has said, that has been difficult for Europeans to navigate.
What is the level of defense spending for nations within NATO?
How many of them at this point are meeting their security spending commitments?
It's an issue that Donald Trump has long raised.
Yeah, it's not just an issue of Donald Trump, but it's an issue that many U.S. presidents have raised.
And rightly so, NATO used to have a commitment to 2% of GDP defense spending.
And we never reached a point where all European countries reached that goal.
They have now committed to 5% defense spending, made up of 3.5% defense spending and 1.5% infrastructure and logistics spending.
And the numbers are steadily rising of countries achieving that goal.
What is really important to note here is that overall, European defense spending relies on the big economies to spend a lot of money.
From an alliance solidarity perspective, it's important that everybody signs up to these targets and that everybody attempts to achieve them and does their part for the alliance.
But it is crucial that a country like Germany, France, the UK, Poland, that these countries spend the money because their GDP is just so much larger and them spending the money makes a huge difference to European rearmament.
And in that context, the fact that Germany is committed to this goal is spending so much more money than they have in the past, more than any other European NATO nation, is making a huge difference for European rearmament and the strength of European defense.
Jessica in Kansas, good morning.
You're next.
You're on with Sophia Besh.
Good morning.
How are you?
Go ahead, Jessica.
What's your question?
My question is, what will it take for Congress, NATO, and everybody to realize that Trump has not sent for all the time?
And Jessica, I apologize.
I just can't hear your question.
But give us a call back and let's try again.
We'll go to James in Lancaster, Virginia, Republican line.
James, go ahead.
Good morning.
How y'all doing today?
My question to the young lady there is, what has Europe done?
I mean, people fail to realize we got involved in Vietnam because of the French.
They were in charge there first.
I mean, if the America, I mean, there's 31, 32 nations in NATO.
If it wasn't for America standing in the corner there, Russia could just take it over.
I mean, I don't, and then you got European nations.
They constantly antagonize this president.
And he has the purse strings.
He has the power.
It is what it is.
I mean, the smartest politicians in the whole world right now, I think people need to take a page from her, is the mayor of DC Moshley.
She's able to work with the president, get things done right there, and not antagonize him.
NATO has done nothing since 2016 but antagonize President Trump and expect him.
He's a human.
Anybody that calls or sitting there, if somebody antagonizes me every day and I'm the one feeding you, I'm the one protecting you, I'm doing this, name something NATO has done.
Name a war or battle Europe has won since World War II without America.
That's James.
Sophia Bash, how would you respond?
So on the question of what NATO has done, I would probably just reference the fact that Article 5, the NATO Solidarity Clause, has been invoked once in the history of the alliance.
It's been invoked by the United States after 9-11, and NATO allies came to the aid of the United States in the wars that followed that.
I would also say that actually Europeans have tried very hard to respond to the president's demands, of course, on defense spending, but also on the strategic orientation of the alliance.
I will give the example of Greenland, where over the last year, up until the sort of tensions came to a head over Greenland, the U.S. had asked again and again Europeans to step up their defense of the island because they were concerned about China in the Arctic.
There were many question marks in Europe over the validity of those concerns in the short term, and still they shifted alliance priorities towards the Arctic.
And they really tried to live up to the demands of the United States there and try to do a better job defending Greenland against the threat that the U.S. had said was there.
They've also been really consumed with the defense of Ukraine.
That has been the one main mission of the alliance over the last few years, the defense of Ukraine against Russia.
Europeans have committed huge resources to the defense of Ukraine and are continuing to do so while the U.S. is steadily withdrawing, drawing down its support of the country.
And NATO's main mission is deterrence and defense of Russia, the territorial defense of Europe against Russia.
And European allies are deeply committed to that.
You mentioned Greenland, President Trump saying, remember Greenland, making it something of a rally cry.
It was a true social post yesterday.
It was after his meeting with Mark Ruda, the Secretary General.
Yesterday, he posted this on True Social.
NATO wasn't there when we needed them, and they won't be there if we need them again.
Remember Greenland, that big, poorly run piece of ice signing it, President DJT.
What did you make of that and the timing of that post last night?
Yeah, I think it's right.
I think Europeans do remember Greenland.
I think that's why we're seeing what we're seeing.
They remember the threats by the president to take the island, which is, of course, Danish territory, which was really unprecedented in the history of the alliance, and which had he gone through with that, I think would have broken NATO.
When that was walked down, you know, the president at the beginning of the year gave a speech at Davos, and then actually Mark Rucha, the Trump whisperer, engaged with the president in Denmark and they launched a process of negotiation, discussion over Greenland, de-escalated the tensions there.
But Europeans are very much concerned that that isn't over yet, that the president could at any point in time revive his threats to take the island, that that hasn't been solved.
And again, I'm not sure that we know that the alliance could survive something like that.
Last time this happened, Europeans for the first time began to consider using their economic leverage over the United States.
They started debating retaliatory tariffs, and the market responded to that, responded to the threat of a transatlantic trade war very, very badly.
And that was then read by domestic politics in the U.S.
And Europeans think that this is what led the president to step down, climb down from his threats over Greenland.
I really hope that we won't get to that situation again because the world economy really is not in a position where it could afford transatlantic trade spats over Greenland.
Just a couple minutes left with Sophia Bash.
It's the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
You can find them online, CarnegieEndowment.org.
We'll hear from Mark out of New York, Line for Democrats.
Mark, go ahead.
First of all, I'd like to apologize from the American people to NATO for this craziness that's going on.
How can the president bash NATO, degrade them, insult them, and then expect them to come to the table without even calling and not even having a plan, and then want to invade NATO countries and expect NATO to step up with them, aka Greenland?
It just makes no sense.
I don't understand how some of the American people follow him that way blindly.
It's just, it can't happen.
It's just crazy.
Thank you.
Sophia Bash.
Yes, I think that's how many Europeans feel right now.
At the same time, Europe cannot afford to stand aside, right?
This war is already reshaping Europe's security and economic outlook.
We've had Iranian drones hit the UK Royal Air Force Force Base in Cyprus.
NATO has intercepted missiles over Turkey.
We have rising terrorism risks, refugee pressures, rising costs in the economy, growth forecasts are being revised downward.
Interest rates might be driven up.
And all of that together risks fueling political instability across the continent and also risks distracting European efforts from the defense of Ukraine, the deterrence of Russia from its invasion of other European NATO allies.
And so, yeah, from a European perspective, this war so far has had many, many downsides.
For much more from Sophia Bash, you can check out her work at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Follow her on X at Sophia Bash.
Easy enough to find.
We appreciate your time this morning.
Thank you.
Bridging American Political Divides00:02:47
Coming up in our next 30 minutes this morning, we'll be joined by Times senior political correspondent Eric Cordalessa.
We'll talk about his reporting on President Trump's decision-making on the Iran war.
We'll be right back.
Sunday night on C-SPAN's QA, Northeastern University professor and author Carla Kaplan discusses her book Troublemaker about journalist Jessica Mitford.
She explores Mitford's aristocratic British upbringing, her famous family, including sisters linked to Adolf Hitler, and her eventual move to America, where she became a best-selling author, civil rights activist, and communist.
It was very difficult for her because she was the political outlier of, and very much so.
So, even as a young child, she was somebody who looked around her, and she was alone in her family in this attitude.
And she said, Wait, something is very wrong here.
I don't get this.
Why do we have so very much?
And everybody around us in the village has so very little.
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Bridging the divide in American politics.
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He's a pretty likable guy as well.
Chris Krunz and I are actually friends.
He votes wrong all the time, but we're actually friends.
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White House Factional Disputes00:08:39
There are not shows like this, right?
Incentivizing that relationship.
Ceasefire, Friday nights on C-SPAN.
Washington Journal continues.
Time magazine correspondent Eric Cordelessa joins us now.
The headline of his latest piece, Inside Trump's Search for a Way Out of the Iran War, takes readers behind the scenes the president's decision-making when it comes to the attack on Iran and what's happened in the weeks since.
Start, though, on the ceasefire this week.
How surprised were you on Tuesday evening, 90 minutes before that deadline that the president announced that there was a ceasefire?
I wasn't surprised.
I, based on my conversations with President Trump and conversations with others close to him, I knew that he was looking for an off-ramp for the war, that he did not want to intensify the conflict, that he didn't want to expand it, that he understood the political and domestic perils of putting troops on the ground.
And, you know, I saw some of his bluster, some of his rhetoric in the lead up to it, obviously threatening to wipe out an entire civilization, is kind of a manifestation of Trump's own practice of what, you know, Kissinger and Nixon used to call the madman theory.
I mean, he really believes that they need to be afraid of what he might do.
He believes that when he ordered the strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities last year, June of 2025, that he sent a message that made them really fear what he might do.
I mean, it goes really far back.
I had a conversation with a national security official the first term who talked about as they were deliberating the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the longtime IRGC general, he was told all the possible scenarios, all the possible consequences.
They might do this, they might do that.
And he said, well, hold on a second.
We shouldn't be worrying about what they're going to do.
They should be worrying about what I'm going to do.
And so I really saw some of this rhetoric, some of his attempts to really scare them, thinking he might just do the crazy thing as an attempt to reach some kind of a deal where he could bow out, declare victory, and hope that they come to some sort of accommodation that lets him end the fighting.
And I mean, most importantly for him domestically, and what his advisors were really hammering home is he needs the economic fallout from this war to stop.
What do you make of the dynamics here of who's going to be leading the peace delegation?
If we do get that far to Saturday, JD Vance, the vice president, is going to be at the head of the table.
Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner.
Marco Rubio is not leading this delegation.
Why?
What's the dynamics there?
Well, the Iranians, the Pakistanis, they all recognized that JD Vance was the most or one of the most resistant to this operation in the first place, and they just seemed to trust him more.
I mean, Marco Rubio has a reputation as more of a kind of neocon, someone who believes in interventionism.
He has been a long time proponent of the possible use of force to eliminate the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.
And I just think that JD Vance had a kind of credibility with these folks, and they saw him as a more good faith mediator.
Is that saying that the Iranians got some sort of say in who they sat down across the table from when it came to the negotiations to end a war?
Sure.
I mean, you know, first off, there's the complication of they didn't know for a long time who to negotiate with.
And when it finally came down to there was certain folks who could speak on behalf of the Islamic Republic regime, it was JD Vance who had the ability to carry out those negotiations, and President Trump delegated him for that purpose.
I think he also wanted to try to alleviate some of the reporting here in the United States about tensions that were brewing inside the White House, factional disputes about who supported the war and who didn't.
So come back to that.
And what have you been able to find out about what was happening at the White House behind the scenes on the President's decision to actually launch the strikes to begin with over six weeks ago?
Yeah, and this is in our report in Time magazine, the upcoming issue online now.
And, you know, essentially, you know, President Trump had been weighing this for months.
He'd had a series of conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu, who had been encouraging him to carry forward with these strikes, to finish what we started, in his words, in a situation room meeting several weeks ago, last time that Netanyahu was in the United States.
And essentially, there were a long list of members of Trump's own administration who kind of laid out the pros and cons, who said that they didn't support it.
JD Vance was the most sort of against this operation.
There were others who didn't necessarily want to tell him outright that it was a terrible idea or that they didn't approve it.
But, you know, President Trump really came to the decision when they had intelligence that located where the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was located, and they went forward with the strikes.
I think President Trump did not want to allow any possibility that the Iranians would inch closer to a bomb.
There was a fear inside the National Security Council and inside Trump's own administration that after they had been subjected to such crippling attacks in Operation Midnight Hammer that their response would be the only way to stop this from happening again was to go for a bomb.
And so President Trump took that sort of maximalist approach to launch a war.
He was also emboldened by the success of the Venezuela operation that led to the capture of Nicolas Maduro and believed that this particular strike or set of strikes would not lead to such a long and protracted war.
He believed the Iranians would follow their sort of past pattern of a very muted response that was only supposed to have kind of performative or symbolic retaliation, like when they assassinated Soleimani, like when they launched Operation Midnight Hammer.
But as we saw, that was not the case after the Iranians were subjected to this attack.
What was Vice President JD Vance saying then?
Well, my reporting says he was saying that, number one, you know, we ran on this promise not to get entangled overseas.
This has been a sort of staple of your political project.
He also believed that there were unforeseen consequences that could emerge from a war, and there was a possibility of getting dragged into this conflict and having it spiral out of the president's control.
He did say, look, I think it's a bad idea, but at the end of the day, if you do it, I will support you.
And, you know, as one of his White House aide told me that, you know, JD Vance made his thoughts clear as they were leading up to the decision and then said, you know, once it's done, I'll support you 110%.
But, you know, President Trump also knows that JD Vance was not a proponent of this operation as they were planning it out.
And then as the weeks went by, who were the voices saying, keep going, and who are the voices saying it's time for an off-ramp?
There haven't been that many voices saying to keep going.
I mean, Marco Rubio has been more supportive than others.
General Kaine was worried and deeply resistant to the operation.
In fact, there were some who inside the administration who he told he had reservations to who said, you need to be more forthright with the president about this.
Heg Seth has been a big proponent of it.
I mean, Hegseth was someone who, as I report in the piece, had said to Trump he did not believe the Iranians would want to escalate this conflict once you killed the supreme leader, once you embarked on a series of strikes.
He believed the past would be prologue, which turned out not to be true.
He was quite surprised and taken aback when the Iranians launched a series of counter-strikes all across the region, including to Gulf and Arab allies and other countries that he just thought would be off-limits, such as Qatar, Kuwait, and et cetera, Bahrain.
I don't know how much you can say about it.
Your piece, an in-depth piece about the president's decision to go to war and what was happening in the White House in the six weeks since inside Trump's search for a way out of the Iran war, it comes at the same time, during the same week in which the New York Times had a piece by Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, that also tried to pull back the curtain here.
What do you make of the timing of that?
Is there anything you can say about that without giving away sources?
No, I mean, I think the most I could say is, look, as the piece lays out, there are people inside the administration who are close to Trump who are deeply and profoundly concerned about the fallout from this war.
Mainly, they're concerned about how it might affect the world and international stability and the region, but they're really concerned about the domestic political consequences, that President Trump has a narrow timeline to finish this operation before the reverberations are going to be so widespread and so long-lasting that he's not going to be able to recover from it going into the midterms, and that it's going to affect Republicans all across the ballot, and that will lose them the House.
Domestic Fallout from War Operations00:02:12
It might put at risk the Senate.
They're less concerned about that.
The map is not particularly favorable to Democrats, but that will certainly change the landscape of the rest of Trump's presidency having to deal with a loss of Republican control on Capitol Hill.
It's a pretty big story in Time magazine.
Want to give viewers a chance to talk to the author of it, Eric Cordole, with us for about the next 15, 20 minutes.
So go ahead and call in if you've read the story or if you're reading it online right now.
Here's the headline that we're showing you.
202-748-8001 for Republicans.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
Independence 202-748-8002 will start in Florida.
Line for independence.
Okeele, I believe, is up first.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I'm just trying to mention that it's too bad this government went to war again.
As a Vietnam era veteran, I learned what it's like for fellow countrymen to get deferments and there you are in a battlefield and you got to build your own bunker by yourself because there's not enough manpower because not enough men or young men wanted to serve God and country.
They ended up with deferments.
I mean, back in those days, if you had the connections, you could get a deferment or you could pay for it.
Why is this government always got to be in somebody else's backyard making deals and then say it's for us?
Okeele, thanks for the call from Florida.
He brings up this sense, this idea of war weariness right now in the country and how much that weighs on the mind of the president.
You've talked to him.
Have you brought it up with him?
Absolutely.
And I think he may be less attuned to the kind of irony of the fact that his political rise was powered by war weariness, by the fact that he tapped into this great unease among the country about the Iraq war, about the Afghanistan war, and that this was a pillar of his political project, was that he was a president who did not get us into war.
Election Timing and War Weariness00:08:24
And, you know, I think if you talk to President Trump, he has basically come around to the view that the risk of inaction when it comes to the possibility of Iran obtaining a nuclear arsenal is greater than the risk of action.
And how he had that evolution in his mind remains somewhat of a mystery, but we know it's sort of a combination of having success with various other military operations that didn't lead to a sustained quagmire of sorts through the influence of Prime Minister Netanyahu, who made a series of very compelling arguments for why President Trump had to do this, and the fear that he could be remembered as the president who let Iran go nuclear.
He sort of alluded in a recent press availability to President Clinton not taking enough action to prevent North Korea from going nuclear.
And this is just something that has become a major preoccupation of his.
But there's, of course, this very profound irony that he is doing the exact opposite of what he built a political movement on.
How would you describe the relationship between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump?
You know, there's been acrimony at times.
President Trump was deeply upset with him by the end of his first term.
He said he pulled out of what was supposed to be a joint operation to kill Soleimani.
He, of course, did not like that Prime Minister Netanyahu was one of the first foreign leaders to congratulate President Biden on his victory.
They have a good relationship.
It's very much clear that Prime Minister Netanyahu is the junior partner.
I mean, some of the notions that he's kind of this puppet master behind the scenes is a bit overstated.
I would say it's off base.
But President Trump, this is one way in which he's been enormously shrewd at being able to exact political leverage by all the things he did for Israel in his first term and now his second, from recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and moving the embassy there, from recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, from pulling out of the Iran nuclear drill, from killing Soleimani, from attacking Iran's three nuclear facilities.
It was always the dream of Israelis to use force to take out the Iranian nuclear program, but it was really the dream to do it with American help.
He made that happen.
So with that, he has enormous leverage over Netanyahu because he is way more popular than Netanyahu is in Israel.
And for a lot of Israel's history, a lot of Netanyahu's history, right, it has been a strength for him to push back against an American president.
You know, if he fights against Obama, if he fights against Clinton, right, that gives him a kind of credibility with his right-wing base.
If he were to have a rupture with President Trump, man, that would be bad for him.
And that's especially powerful going into an election this fall for Netanyahu.
So if Israeli strikes in Lebanon get in the way of some sort of off-ramp peace deal, do you think President Trump could make a call to Netanyahu and stop the bombing that we've seen over the course of the past 38 hours since the ceasefire was announced?
You know, I asked President Trump about this, and he said yes, Israel will do what I tell them to do, and that they had been a good team player.
I do think Netanyahu would be particularly fearful of having any kind of daylight between him and President Trump become public going into this election in October.
I mean, he has been, or this fall, he has been...
What election are we talking about this?
The Israeli election.
Okay.
He has been, you know, it's been a remarkable trajectory for Prime Minister Netanyahu since October 7th.
Everyone thought he was out.
You know, he was six feet under and buried.
And he has resurrected his political life through a series of very audacious military interventions and operations in Gaza, in Lebanon.
He's decapitated Hezbollah.
He's attacked Iran.
And now, you know, he's positioned to potentially win yet again another term as Israel as prime minister.
And to have a problem with President Trump, who is so beloved and so popular within the Israeli public, that would be really precarious for him.
And I think he'd want to avoid that with everything he could.
New York City, this is Paul Independent.
Thank you for waiting.
You're on with Eric Cordelesa.
How are you doing?
Doing well.
Hey.
So basically, my question is, I was reading, I think, a magazine, a Time magazine article, maybe it was by you, about how Heg Seth didn't think that there was going to be much of a response on the part of Iran because previously in the bombing of the nuclear facilities, there wasn't that much of a response.
And then also that they sort of were surprised that the Hormuz Straits, others have said this as well.
They didn't think that that, or I think Trump said this, that he didn't think that the Hormuz Straits would be something that they'd want to shut down.
This just seems baffling to me because even as a little kid, you know, reading about this, it was always these straits were seen as this choke point that would always be an issue and a big risk.
And it just seems kind of unfathomable that they really didn't think about this or they didn't think it was going to be a big risk if you're going to be bombing the hell out of them.
Do you follow what I'm saying?
I'm just really surprised by that.
And I guess, and then I guess also it says like Susie Weil thought that he wasn't getting information about the risks, that the president wasn't, that he had rose-colored glasses or the people who just, if you could elaborate a little bit on this, I mean, is this really true?
Like, they didn't really think that would happen.
I just, why?
Let me have Eric Cordelesa weigh in.
I think Paul read your piece.
He did.
He did.
So the first part, yes, Hegseth was surprised by the extent of the Iranian retaliation.
He believed there would be a retaliation, but that it would be pretty commensurate to what we had seen on these past instances, mainly performative, mainly to send a signal to their own base, to their own domestic constituency, but not enough to incur any kind of escalation from the Americans.
And it might be time to remind people what happened after Soleimani's assassination, the killing of Soleimani after the Strike in Iran on their nuclear facilities last year.
Just explain what Iran did in response.
They attacked a U.S. base that had no personnel on it, and they had telegraphed that it was coming.
And so it was essentially, yeah, we're going to do something, but we're not actually going to harm any kind of American military personnel, and it's enough to give us an off-ramp and you an off-ramp as well.
So they believed that that would be similar to what they did last time.
And of course, the response was also very muted after we had attacked their nuclear facilities in June of 2025.
So they basically believed that there would be some version of that in this instance because they wouldn't want to keep fighting because they were so weakened, they were so degraded, as well as their proxies are so weakened and degraded, mainly through the work of the Israelis.
So that took them off guard.
And they didn't expect them to use what was really their main source of leverage, which was the Strait of Hormuz, you know, and which would humble the oil market in the United States throughout the world.
And it has, as we've seen, really hurt our own stock market and the Dow, which is something that President Trump really sees as a marker.
You know, usually he's very responsive.
When the Dow goes down, President Trump takes action.
So they have utilized their main source of leverage through the Strait of Hormuz.
They didn't expect them to be so strong in their response, which included not just the use of military force and armed confrontation, but of course economic leverage as well.
Point of clarification on the Susie Wiles point: her argument was not that he was getting bad intelligence or bad reports about the possibilities of the military side of the war, that he was not being given enough forthright evaluations of how this was playing domestically and how this was hurting him politically.
She was concerned about how this would affect the midterms, how this was going to hurt his presidency, how he was losing support, hemorrhaging support, and how it was dividing his own base, and that people were not giving him enough of a candid assessment of how the situation was playing out here domestically.
Pam Bondi's Candid Assessments00:04:23
Does she give him candid assessments of how this is playing out here domestically?
She does.
She's an enormously trusted advisor of his.
He really respects her.
I mean, the level of trust he has in her is pretty unprecedented, short of his family members.
And, you know, but she also doesn't tell him what to do.
I mean, my reporting says she's, you know, remarkably trusted, that she gives him candid assessments, that she is effective at steering others in his orbit from giving him their own evaluations, but that at the end of the day, it's the president's decision.
She doesn't try to steer him one way or the other, but that, you know, her job is to be honest and candid.
And once he makes the decision, it's her job to support him.
Gene, Mississippi Democrat.
Good morning.
Go ahead.
Yes.
I am a Desert Storm veteran from 1999-01.
And I believe, I think America needs to know about Trump's health mentally and physically since he is the president of the United States.
And the war with Iran needs to be examined before he can start a war.
And people around him that gives him advice, they don't tell him anything that he don't want to hear.
And the way he's thinking now mentally is we need to know about his mental health.
Eric Cordelesa, what do we know about the president's health?
Well, you know, I'm not a doctor, and I'm not in a position to diagnose the president.
Play one on TV fashion.
He did once challenge me to a cognitive test, I will say.
But I want to know that story, but finish this first.
So, you know, so no, I don't know.
I can't say anything about his physical or mental health.
You know, he's certainly very functional.
He's certainly someone who has remarkable energy.
I understand their concerns out there.
I'm not a doctor, so I can't say much about that.
One point, I would add to what the caller said was that, you know, President Trump, it's kind of a misnomer that all he wants are yes men around him.
He actually really likes argument, and he likes having his advisors in front of him, duking it out.
He likes people who have the confidence and assertiveness to tell them what they really think, but he does want you to support him once he's made a decision.
And so he kind of does enjoy a kind of team of rivals, and there's a lot of stories and anecdotes of him just kind of sitting back and love watching his own aides argue vehemently in front of him as they're trying to arrive at some kind of decision.
Come back to challenging you to a cognitive test?
Oh, it was just something he said in an interview around the 100-day mark of the second term, saying he had performed remarkably well in a cognitive test.
And he didn't quite like a question that I asked.
And he said, I'm not sure you could score as high.
We're 15 months into his second term.
We've seen Pam Bondi depart.
We've seen Christy Noam depart.
Who do you think the next cabinet secretary to go will be?
I certainly can't predict.
You know, I will say the fact that he has finally kind of unleashed the side of him.
There was obviously a lot of turnover in the first term.
He didn't want turnover in the second term.
He didn't want to give the media a scalp.
He didn't want to betray any kind of instability or dysfunction inside the White House.
But, you know, he kind of let loose with firing.
Christy Noam felt like she was not managing the Department of Homeland Security well, that there had been all these PR disasters under her watch and that she was responsible for it.
Same with Pam Bondi.
He was upset with her mishandling of the Epstein files and creating what turned out to be a big and damning story for him that he felt like she intensified and amplified through a series of missteps.
I don't know who would be on the chopping block next.
I know he's been frustrated with FBI Director Kash Patel for some of the same reasons he was frustrated with Pam Bondi.
He does not believe that they have been aggressive enough in pursuing some of the prosecutions that he wants of his enemies, real or perceived.
But I would certainly not be surprised if there were more firings to come in the weeks and months ahead.
Fragile Ceasefire Timeline Reality00:15:54
I just don't know who it's going to be first.
David, Vancouver, Washington, Independent.
Thanks for waiting.
Go ahead.
Good morning, Sister.
Good morning.
I just have one comment to make.
We need to focus on our country.
We need to focus on the veterans.
We need to focus on health care.
We need to focus on the economy.
We should stop wasting our money creating wars all over the place.
Look at China, our adversary.
They don't go and fight and waste their money on other countries.
And my comment is, it's like I feel like I'm living in Israel again, which everything is revolved around Israel.
Let's focus on our United States of America.
Spend the money here, make our beautiful country more prosperous, and enough focusing on somebody else's problem.
We created Israel in 1948, and that's the biggest mistake the world ever had.
In Washington, on this concern about not enough focus on U.S. domestic policy and how that might play come November in the midterm elections.
Well, it's certainly a perception, and the problem of perception is one that could seriously haunt President Trump and Republicans.
It's, of course, an American issue as well if Iran were to obtain a nuclear weapon.
They're one of our worst adversaries in the world.
They're a major state sponsor of terrorism.
They've killed innocent Americans.
They fund some of the worst terrorist proxy groups in the world from Hasmas and Hezbollah.
Israel certainly feels it more intensely because they're closer and the threat is more existential for them.
But presidents of both parties for decades have feared the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran.
And so it's, whether you agree with the war or not, there is a U.S. interest in the Iranian nuclear capability and the threat that it would pose.
I do think that a problem for Republicans is going to be that this war has divided their own base.
And it has led to a growing segment of the right that has grown increasingly anti-Israel, increasingly skeptical of this administration and the Israeli influence over its decision-making.
And if it fractures, if it splits that voting demographic, that's only going to benefit Democrats.
And of course, that will change the rest of President Trump's presidency.
And it will, who knows how it might reshape Republican Party politics in the foreseeable future.
Ralph, Las Vegas, Republican.
Good morning.
You're next.
Yes, hi.
You know, the idea of Iran getting a nuclear weapon, we didn't think it was such a good idea that North Korea got a nuclear weapon, but they have the same friends as the Iranians do.
And maybe they didn't want one before, but I think they sure want one now.
And with those kind of friends, I think they can get one.
Thank you.
Any thoughts on Ralph?
Well, that is certainly the fear.
I mean, you know, the sort of real historical point of context would be when the Israelis bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in the 1980s.
And at first, it was thought of as this example of how force could prevent a rogue regime from obtaining a nuclear arsenal.
But it was only after Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait and we had won in Operation Desert Storm and international inspectors were let back in that we had discovered that they had taken their nuclear program underground and they were much further along in developing a nuclear weapon than they were before we had bombed, before the Israelis had bombed actually the Osirak nuclear reactor.
And so what that says is once a regime like this suffers this kind of an attack, their main response is to go further and harder for a nuclear weapon because they believe it's the only way they can prevent being subjected to an attack like this again.
North Korea is obviously a rapacious and repressive and deeply, deeply problematic regime led by Kim Jong-un.
They starve and hurt their own people with enormous cruelty.
And there's very little that we can do about it because they're a nuclear power.
And the worry would be to let the Iranians, who have clear genocidal intentions and motivations.
This is not ambiguous.
This is not uncertain.
To have that kind of power would be deeply dangerous to the world.
I know we had you until 9:45 Eastern, and we're already past that.
Do you have to run?
I've got plenty of calls for you if you want to keep going.
I'll take some more.
Excellent.
Oliver, St. Louis, Missouri, Democrat.
Go ahead.
Hey, Eric.
Good morning.
I was kind of wondering if you had any insight into the administration's view on how the war is actually going.
I know they say all these things like we're winning, we're doing great, all this stuff, but a lot of reporting doesn't support that.
And I wonder if he's being, the President is being shielded from the press that's accurately reporting that we're not winning this war, that it's kind of a waste of time, especially now the American people.
Well, that's the full show.
So I just kind of wonder what the insight is on that.
Eric Cordalessa.
Well, you know, President Trump probably has more conversations in a single day than any of us have in a week, you know, and so I sort of don't think he's being shielded from the reporting or from certain information that's out in public.
I think inside the administration, the view is kind of mixed.
I mean, there's a sense that the military triumphs are real, that they are very seriously degrading Iran's military capabilities, that they've destroyed these naval vessels, that they can operate with a lot of liberty as they're trying to attack certain targets.
But the worry is that they're getting deeper enmeshed and that it's going to be harder to extract themselves from this conflict when they really want to.
So, you know, this fragile ceasefire that has been reached that President Trump has given his standard two-week timeline for is really going to show us a lot about how serious the Iranians are in terms of wanting to end this and how serious we're able to work with them to find an off-ramp that both sides can sell to their own people.
Can you just talk through the psychology of the two-week deadline, be it this or any other topic in which we've seen a two-week deadline?
Yeah, I don't know.
You know, President Trump looks at two weeks as a kind of, I guess, a good framework.
I mean, you know, it's something that he's clearly used for his entire political career.
I'll let you know in two weeks.
I mean, I remember once I asked him a question.
He said, oh, I'll have an announcement for this in two weeks.
Spoke to him again two weeks later.
I said, you know, do you want to make that announcement today?
He said, no, no, no.
I'll probably come out in another two weeks.
So I don't know the genesis of it.
I just know that, you know, if President Trump is in a bind, two weeks is his sort of his go-to.
We are going to, in about 10 minutes, Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, is set to speak, and we will bring you to that at the end of this program today, the event getting set to get underway.
But until then, Eric Cordelesa, kind enough to stick with us and take your phone calls and talk about his reporting on the Trump administration.
One other topic to let you know about today: NATO Secretary General Mark Ruda is going to be speaking at 11 a.m. Eastern at the Reagan Institute.
We'll also bring you live coverage of that on C-SPAN.
And then, oh, by the way, tonight, our coverage of the Artemis II mission continues.
The four astronauts on board the Orion spacecraft will hold their news conference ahead of their return mission to Earth.
And they're speaking again 8:10 p.m. Eastern Time on C-SPAN.
C-SPAN.org is where you can find it as well.
And we'll stream it for you on the C-SPAN Now app.
So lots happening today.
Hope you stay with the C-SPAN networks and hope you keep calling in for Eric Cordelesa, who's been kind enough to stick around until 10 a.m.
This is Bob in Pawpaw, Michigan Independent.
Go ahead.
Well, one of the things that surprises me is our lack of geographical knowledge of the country of Iran.
You know, did we not know that it's huge and it's the most populated country in the region?
By far geographically the largest and most diverse country?
I mean, how in the world do you it just looks as though we didn't do an ounce of even minimum geography study before we started this thing.
And it just is amazing to me.
It's amazing to me.
Eric Cordelesa, it brings up intelligence.
Your thoughts on President Trump's Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and her relationship with the President right now?
I don't really know too much about it, to be frank.
I mean, she is someone who, of course, was a vehement opponent of war with Iran, had said, in fact, on the campaign trail that the risk of a Kamala Harris presidency would be that she would start a war with Iran.
And so, you know, there are some indications that the relationship is strained in this moment as President Trump is launching a war that, you know, he and everybody knows she doesn't approve of in concept or theory.
I do think the intelligence of the U.S. government has been extremely effective as they've launched this war.
No one really doubts the intelligence capabilities, the military technical capabilities, the way in which we've been able to exert enormous damage in Iran, and that, you know, they stand no chance to win a war against us from a military standpoint.
But, of course, wars can take various different kinds of outcomes that have really nothing to do with how strong or powerful or mighty our military may be.
We learned that firsthand, certainly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
To Ron in Michigan, Democrat Ron, good morning.
Oh, I like to ask the young man, if the president didn't know that Iran would attack all these other countries, does he know now that Iran will control the Strait of Cormos forever?
And does he know now that from now on, dollars will be bought.
Oil will be bought in other currencies besides dollars.
Has anybody informed him?
Because I think that's the main reason that this war is going on, is because they want to get away from just a dollar, petrodollar currency for the war.
Eric Cordelessa.
You know, I think, I don't know if he would say that he knows that they will control the Strait of Hormuz forever.
I think he knows that it's something that they will not give up because they would be giving up all their leverage.
Why would they?
I mean, this is the guy who, you know, wrote the Art of the Deals, he would tell you.
Of course, Tony Schwartz was the ghostwriter.
But he understands that, you know, the Iranians have their play.
They have their interests.
And the Strait of Hormuz is not something that they're going to give up.
And so what it means is he has to come to some sort of negotiation where they will at least open the Strait of Hormuz or they will be, you know, he's now talking about some sort of joint cooperation.
It doesn't seem very likely, but that at the very least he needs them to open up the Strait so that oil prices do not go surging and that there is this shortage and that it doesn't affect markets because that of course has tremendous ramifications for global market capital markets here in the United States and abroad.
What's your understanding of what else at least needs to be in the deal?
There at least needs to be some resolution to the Straits of Hormuz, you're saying.
Does a deal also at least need to involve getting nuclear material out of Iran?
What else is a must-have for the United States in your understanding?
A must, well, that's the biggest thing would be, I mean, if he just says something broad like they cannot have a nuclear weapon, but what this means in practice is that, you know, Iran has canisters of uranium all throughout the country at secret sites.
They'd have to go and extract them.
That would be extremely hard and challenging.
There's no real way that experts think that that could be carried out.
You would need to at least put an end, the Americans say, to their ballistic missile program.
Iran says that they will not put an end to their ballistic missile program.
Did we not do that over the course of the past six or so weeks?
We haven't destroyed their capability entirely.
I mean, you know, they've certainly put a huge dent in it.
But the also possibility is that even if we did destroy it, they could rebuild it.
And so you'd have to stop that.
They have this knowledge that we can't kill.
You know, you can kill people.
You can destroy assets.
You can destroy military technology.
You can destroy their tanks.
You can destroy their vessels.
You can't destroy knowledge.
And they have knowledge deeply embedded throughout the regime.
The other thing is that they want to maintain some level of uranium enrichment.
And even if it's for peaceful, non-nuclear purposes.
And the Americans are, of course, against allowing them to continue to enrich uranium because they don't want them to cross the threshold where they can develop a nuclear weapon with it.
So there's a lot of points of disagreement where it's very hard to come to a deal.
Obviously, there was a deal in place that Trump ended that curtailed their ability to do some of these things.
The biggest concern for the Israelis, and President Trump has said this, was that it had sunset provisions, meaning that they would expire at some point, meaning the Iranians only had to wait it out before they could race to a bomb.
Proponents of the Iran nuclear deal would say all that means is that when you reach, when you get closer to that sunset period where the deal is going to expire, you then begin negotiations for a new one.
Does peaceful enrichment just mean we want nuclear power plants in our country?
That's certainly a part of it.
And, you know, if they didn't have nefarious designs, it would be not quite as threatening.
But the Iranians have proven over time that they're not trustworthy.
This is Loretta in Ohio, Line for Democrats.
Thanks for waiting.
Just a couple minutes left here in our program today.
Good morning.
Good morning, America.
Mr. Eric, I'm interested in the Israel part of this.
And I had another question, but this just keeps popping on my mind.
Why, if Churchill set this thing up, moving Israel to Palestine, how did America get hooked into paying for everything?
We've been paying for Israel for 75 years.
How much money is that?
And when are they going to start paying us our tax dollars back?
I don't understand what's the deal.
And also, with the USS Liberty, Israel attacked our troops back in 68, and American presidents have just shied it off.
They told the sailors and the troops never to speak about it.
And it's, I don't know, it's insane.
Let me take your question because we only have about two and a half minutes left.
And that could be a very long answer to a historic question.
A lot of components to that.
Israel Self-Sufficiency Concerns00:06:24
Obviously, you know, Israel was founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust Zionist project, began way before that.
The idea being that the Jewish people should have a nation state of their own in their ancestral homeland, or at least part of their ancestral homeland.
Don't need to go through the whole history there.
But, you know, right now the United States supplies, what, $3.8 billion a year through this memorandum of understanding that was forged during the Obama administration, 10 years long.
You know, it should be said that Israel has obviously remarkable intelligence capabilities, remarkable military capabilities.
They're one of the most sort of ingenious societies when it comes to tech and military and cyber and all of that.
And so part of what this relationship entails is a kind of mutually beneficial relationship where Israel is a stable ally in the region, right?
We may not agree with various policies that certain prime ministers have carried out.
We've long held administrations of both parties have had issues with the settlement movement, have had issues with the occupation, have had tried to come to some sort of two-state solution.
President Trump has been less adamant about that, although he did try to have an agreement in the first term.
And so I think that administrations of both parties have always seen there to be a benefit to this arrangement.
Also, we should say that part of this memorandum of understanding where we give them this money entails them buying some of their military technology from American manufacturers.
And so it is a very long-held relationship.
But because Israel has a certain level of stability, the Americans can trust them in a way that they might not be able to a less stable ally in the region.
But a big point was raised by her question, which is that increasingly there are people on both sides of the political aisle in the United States of all different kinds of ideological inclinations who are questioning this relationship, who do not believe that we are getting the benefit and advantage that we had long been promised, and that Israel had been sowing more chaos in the region.
And so that's certainly going to be a problem for the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship.
And if you're an Israeli prime minister, it's so important to have support from both sides of the aisle because there are vicissitudes to American politics.
The Republicans might be in power one day, the Democrats might be in power another day, and you want to be able to have credibility and support among both sides so that when you need the Americans, they're there for you.
It should be said, this goes back to sort of the origin of her question, which is the original Zionist ideal was that the Jewish people could not rely on the world for their own security.
That was the lesson of the Holocaust, and that the reliance on the United States was actually a dangerous thing.
Ben-Gurion would not support that.
So Netanyahu has basically made this calculation that they're losing the left, they're losing the right in the United States, and they have to get as much as they can out of Trump while he's in office, and then they'll have to deal with a new reality but be more self-sufficient than they have been for the rest of its existence, for the past existence, where they've definitely relied on having U.S. military support.
As we wait for Hakeem Jeffries to start speaking, he's going to be at Al Sharpton's National Action Network in New York and speaking there.
And we'll bring you that when he comes to the stage.
I know you had a previous reporting job at the Times of Israel.
What is your understanding?
Are there people in Israel right now questioning the relationship with the United States?
You talked about sort of the political questioning that was going on on both sides of the aisle with the U.S. relationship with Israel.
Is it happening on the other side of the Mediterranean?
Not as much.
I mean, I think there's definitely a segment of Israeli society who does not want Israel to be so dependent on the United States.
They think it's actually dangerous for their long-term health and sustainability, that Israel needs to be self-sufficient, and that weaning off of American military support and funding could, in the long run, work to their advantage because they're then not as reliant on the United States.
And, you know, if they have a disagreement with an American president, whoever he or she may be, they won't be held hostage to that.
As Netanyahu had felt at various times during the Obama administration and the Clinton administration, sometimes during the Biden administration, he often defied those presidents because it signaled strength to his own base.
But, you know, there's a certain segment of the Israeli political sort of Israeli polity, if you will, that does want Israel to be more independent.
So come back to this idea of endless wars, and we've talked about that and being a political consideration in the United States.
And for this president and an issue that he talked about when he was running, is the idea of endless wars, is that a concept in Israel that becomes a political issue or a political liability?
What do they feel about that issue?
No, no.
They see this as deeply existential.
They suffered the worst terrorist attack in their history on October 7th.
And, you know, that was such a debilitating moment for them.
I mean, it shattered all sorts of assumptions, right?
They thought Hamas would never do this because of what it would incur.
And so it also made them a lot more willing and able to go full throttle against the Iranian threat because if their assumptions turned out not to be true, that Hamas wouldn't do this because they were worried about what kind of retaliation it would lead to.
Maybe the Iranians aren't going to be restrained either.
Of course, most Israelis are deeply concerned about the existential threat that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to them.
But they see this as an existential war that is necessary for their survival.
And, you know, after October 7th, they're willing to do whatever it takes.
The war itself is not unpopular in Israel.
I mean, they basically believe this is what they have to do.
And people, you know, may have various problems with the way Netanyahu has prosecuted the war.
But it's also, I think, deeply known in Israel that it doesn't really matter who the prime minister is.
Every single potential prime minister would have, of course, gone to war against Hamas and would have done what they had to do to eliminate the possibility that the Israeli people would be subjected to such a vicious and brutal terrorist attack ever again.
Last question before I let you go start your day.
This piece for Time magazine for this month is getting a lot of attention.
What's your next piece that you're working on for Time?
National Action Network Convention00:01:38
TBD.
I'll let you know when it's ready.
Time.com, easy URL to remember is where you can go to find Eric Cordeles' work.
Thanks so much for the time.
Come back again.
We'll be glad to.
Thank you.
My pleasure.
That's going to do it for us this morning.
We'll be back here tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern, 4 a.m. Pacific.
We're now going to take you up to New York.
It is the National Action Network.
Hakeem Jeffries is set to speak this morning at that event in New York.
And a live look at the convention hall in New York City, where House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is expected to speak on day two of the annual National Action Network Convention.
He'll be making the remarks as Democrats try to pass a war powers resolution today by unanimous consent on the House floor.
We'll have coverage of that on C-SPAN 3 at 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time.
The resolution would limit President Trump's authority to conduct military strikes against Iran without congressional approval.
The U.S. and Iran have been working on a two-week ceasefire agreement.
Our founder and president, Reverend Al Sharpton.
Good morning, good morning.
Well, thank you and good morning.
And certainly we are excited about the second day of National Action Network Convention.