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Transcript: Trump Has No Idea How To End the War Against Iran

This is a lightly edited transcript of the March 19 edition of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch the video here or by following this show on YouTube or Substack.Perry Bacon: We’re going to talk about this war in Iran, where it’s been almost three weeks. Let me start with, maybe, a positive way to frame this. Have we achieved any successes? Is there anything you would say is successful here?Matt Duss: We’ve blown up a lot of things. We’ve killed a lot of people—killed a lot of Iranian leaders, including some who could, from my understanding, have helped negotiate an off-ramp and an end to this war. It’s unclear to me that we’ve actually advanced American security at all.I think we’ve done the opposite. Clearly we’ve managed to raise the price of oil.... Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz and threatened shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which raises the price of oil even more. But again, if you ask me what we’ve achieved: The problem is that the Trump administration has not really articulated any clear goals here, other than this nonsensical claim that we’re trying to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon.Iran was nowhere close to having the capability of producing a nuclear weapon. Our own intelligence services believe that Iran had not decided to pursue a nuclear weapon, even if they were keeping that option open. Unfortunately, this war could make that decision for them. So again, you ask what we’ve achieved—I think we’ve achieved, unfortunately, nothing good at all for the American people.Bacon: Even three weeks ago it wasn’t totally clear from the Trump administration why we were doing this at this time. But let me ask: There’s been some reporting that Israel maybe pushed us into it in a certain way. From the Israeli perspective, they had goals—talk about their goals for this war.Duss: Israel’s main goal here is to destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles, their missile launchers, their missile manufacturing capacity. This is really what is driving this war right now. This is something I heard from Israeli officials myself when I was in Israel back in October. In the wake of last June’s brief war, the 12-day war, Iran was rebuilding its missile capacity much quicker than expected, and that was very concerning. Obviously these missiles are a retaliatory measure for the region—but also, particularly, in Israel. They did enormous damage to Israeli military sites and in Israeli cities, far more than was reported, given that there is very strict censorship of the news in Israel. I don’t think Americans quite understood how damaging these missiles were.But again, these missiles are a form of deterrence—not to defend the use of missiles launched into cities. That is indefensible. However, Iran sees them as part of their deterrence: If you attack us, we understand that we cannot face off militarily head-to-head against Israel, and we certainly cannot against the United States. However, we do have the ability to create enormous pain in other ways. This has been part of their strategic doctrine for a very long time: the use of missiles, and the relationships with militant groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and militias in Yemen and Iraq. To say that while we cannot prevail in a conventional conflict, we have other ways to raise costs for you. That’s the role the missiles play here.Unfortunately, Israel’s military view of the region—backed by the Trump administration, and unfortunately, originally backed by the Biden administration—is that Israel desires and believes it is now entitled to complete freedom of action across the region. Anything that might constrain Israel’s ability to strike wherever, whenever, for whatever reason is now seen as an unacceptable and imminent threat.That is an absolutely insane policy. It’s absolutely insane that the Biden administration supported it—though we should acknowledge that the Biden administration did restrain Israel from attacking Iran, and did restrain it from doing a few things the Trump administration has allowed. Even though the Biden administration obviously gave Israel essentially a free hand to obliterate Gaza and commit a genocide there, which is still ongoing. And the Trump administration has pretty much backed Israel in doing whatever it wants.Bacon: Both the U.S. and Israel wanted regime change—for lack of a better way to say it—and that has also not been achieved, right?Duss: I think the Israelis want regime change. It’s unclear what Trump wants. They’ve said so many different things, and it is in character for Trump to just throw out a bunch of different goals and objectives out there to see what sticks. A few weeks ago he was literally cold-calling journalists to workshop different goals like he’s in a comedy improv group—let’s remember, Trump is first and foremost an entertainer. This is also so that no matter what happens, he can always point to: This is what I wanted to happen. Because, of course, Donald Trump can never fail. As far as the Israelis are concerned, I think their goal is regime change, or just complete state collapse. Their goal for Iran—as it is for the region—is just weak states. We see this in Lebanon, we see this in Yemen, we see this in Syria—just to keep all these states off balance and essentially incapable of defending themselves. The old statement was “Israel has a right to defend itself,” but the new doctrine seems to be that only Israel has the right to defend itself. Again, this is insane. This will not produce durable security. This is dangerous for the region, ultimately dangerous for Israel, and certainly dangerous for the United States.Bacon: Talk about Iran’s perspective here. As a non–foreign policy expert, I [gather] Iranian leaders are being killed as walk around each day. How do you keep a regime going if everyone is under threat of assassination that day and that hour?Duss: That’s exactly right—you don’t. That’s the goal. We should also say here: One doesn’t have to be a fan of these Iranian leaders. I’m not. These are cruel, repressive, often corrupt leaders. But there is a set of norms against assassinating foreign state officials that exists for a reason—you don’t have to be fans of them to understand [that]. And we have simply broken through this. Now Israel, with U.S. support, is simply assassinating leaders all over the place and openly bragging about it. There are social media posts of pictures of these figures with x’s across their faces. They’re proud of this. This is just the latest in a set of international norms that were painstakingly created over the course of many devastating wars that have now been broken. This is a trend line that we really saw accelerate during the Gaza genocide—unfortunately, with the backing of President Biden.Bacon: We’re going to be close to week three. Do you have a sense of how long this will last? Does anybody?Duss: I really don’t—I wish I had a better answer. It’s going to last until President Trump either gets bored or is disciplined by the bond market, because this is something he pays close attention to, that ticker that scrolls at the bottom of the screen on Fox News. If he starts to see that getting too bad for him—Bacon: So this time, oil prices—Duss: Oil prices, the stock market. This is how Trump thinks. He’s always been known to be very conscious of this. But the question is always: What information penetrates his little bubble? He sits there drinking Diet Cokes, watching Fox News. Who knows who’s getting to him. He talks to Benjamin Netanyahu almost every day, according to Netanyahu. We know that Netanyahu just lies and manipulates him. He’s surrounded by yes-people who don’t want to give him bad news. That’s the real question: Who can give him the bad news? Or who can, at least, give him some taste of reality that makes Trump understand he needs to get out of this war, needs an off-ramp? He can declare victory, he can do whatever he wants—he just needs to wind this thing down very quickly.Bacon: Do you think he will?Duss: I don’t. This is already escalating. Their answer to Iran escalating is to further escalate. I thought that when we saw JD Vance leaking a couple of days ago that Vance opposed this. My view on that is: JD Vance understands that he cannot get too far from Donald Trump. His entire political future depends on his proximity to Donald Trump. So the fact that Vance was leaking his opposition to this suggested to me that maybe Donald Trump is OK with that—maybe that suggests Donald Trump is wanting to distance himself from this. But that doesn’t appear to be the case right now.I would add, as we saw yesterday—or was it the day before? Time has no meaning anymore—the Iranian official Ali Larijani—a brutal Iranian leader, but one who was understood to have real authority with the security services, someone who could have overseen some kind of third-party negotiation to bring an end to this war—now killed by Israel. I haven’t seen firm evidence on this yet, but it does make sense to me that he would have been targeted precisely because he could have negotiated an off-ramp. That is something that Netanyahu and Israel clearly do not want.Bacon: There’s been debate the last few days about whether Israel drove us into this war or we decided on our own. I’m not sure that matters, but I wanted to ask what you thought about that.Duss: Joe Kent resigned—everyone’s reading this letter he posted. I think some of what’s in that letter is right, some of it is wrong. I think it’s clearly the case that this war would not have happened without the urging of Netanyahu, without being pushed by Israel. At the same time, there is a faction of hawks in the United States who work very closely with colleagues in Israel who have been pushing for war with Iran for decades—literally, decades. Netanyahu is part of this. They work closely together, they often share sources of funding, they operate in various think tanks—the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, to name two. And they share a vision of U.S. and Israeli regional military hegemony.It’s not necessarily that Israel is just pushing for its own interests—these people do share a vision. They believe U.S. interests are involved here too. Now, I think that’s absolutely wrong, catastrophically wrong. But while it’s important to acknowledge that yes, Netanyahu played a major role, putting all the blame on Israel really lets U.S. policymakers and U.S. analysts off the hook. We need to understand that this is very much a Washington problem, not just an Israel problem. This is a problem of very well-organized and well-funded policy machinery, who drove us into the Iraq War.The Iraq War, I think, would have happened with or without Israel’s support—the George W. Bush administration decided to do that very early on. I think it was January 2002 when they made that decision. But that was a decision supported by many of these same people. It’s clear that the urgency, the moment, the reason this war happened right now as it did, was largely because of Netanyahu and Israel.Bacon: Talk about Britain, France, and the international community, because right when we started the war, a lot of these foreign leaders said they supported it, or at least didn’t oppose it. Now it seems like their populations have caught up. What’s your sense of where the world is on this?Duss: We saw this with Venezuela, too—clearly an illegal action, clearly an act of war, completely unjustified by any rational or remotely credible interpretation of international law. Yet a lot of European leaders said, We urge all sides to observe international [norms]. Just completely cowardly, craven nonsense. But they got away with it because it didn’t last long—it was essentially a one-day operation, actually a matter of hours. Still completely illegal, but had it lasted as long as this did, we might have seen them shift as they have done now. Initially, their response was much the same—a blatantly illegal act of aggressive war, which is one of the gravest international crimes any country can commit, and yet they were like, We urge all sides to [show restraint]. Totally cowardly. Yet as this war has gone on, as its consequences have become clear, as the price of oil has continued to climb, as their own populations have started to criticize them, we’ve seen them slowly—painfully slowly—get to a better position.Bacon: Is the Venezuela parallel relevant here? Two questions: Did the U.S. have someone they thought would take over after the ayatollah was killed who was favorable to us? And did Trump think this would go well because of what happened in Venezuela, which was pretty quick and relatively bloodless?Duss: I think he did. Venezuela and last summer’s 12-day war were both relatively short. Venezuela was very short, as he saw it. He’s someone who has enormous confidence in his own abilities, regardless. But he saw at both of those operations and [figured]: Sure, people might not have liked it, but the naysayers were proven wrong—let’s go do it again. He knows nothing about Iran to start with, and he’s surrounded by people like Netanyahu, Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton, and some of these other goofballs who were telling him: It’s going to be easy, we’ll just knock them out, it’ll go just like Venezuela, American military power is magic, you should just use it, it’s going to go great. You look at some of the comments he’s made in various news conferences: He’s like, Oh, we didn’t know they were going to close the Strait of Hormuz. That’s really surprising. The Pentagon has been war-gaming this for decades. We absolutely knew they were going to do this. Iran has said they were going to do this. There is absolutely no excuse not to know this. But as we already know, Trump doesn’t do the reading. That’s how we got here.Bacon: The thing that captured a lot of my attention was the bombing of the school—160 people [and 60 or more children] dying. How do you assess that? Is this the worst thing that’s happened in this war so far? Does that change things, because of this very memorable killing of children at a school by the U.S.? How does that make this war perhaps different or distinct?Duss: I don’t know that it makes it distinct from war—this happens in war. That’s why we should avoid war unless there is absolutely no other option. That’s certainly not the case here. But the fact that this happened literally on the first day, within the first hours of this war, has characterized this war from the very beginning. This is an unnecessary war, it’s an illegal war, and it reveals exactly why we avoid war. You can come up with all the justifications—was it an error, was it not—and we’ve certainly spent the past two-plus years watching the Israeli military essentially murder children by the thousands in Gaza. So it’s unfortunately not surprising. Nor is the fact that no one is really being held accountable. And this is not a problem that began with this administration. This is a problem of our foreign policy establishment generally—a bipartisan problem, a problem of elite impunity, a problem of zero accountability.Bacon: A couple of questions, pivoting a little away from the Iran situation. Do you think we’re going to go into Cuba now? How serious do you think that is? It’s was reported a little bit, and Trump’s been hinting at it for a while.Duss: I don’t know. Trump has his eye on Cuba now. I can imagine him being frustrated with Iran, so this idea that I need another win to balance out Iran—unfortunately, that seems to be how he thinks. Now, if he becomes convinced that Cuba will not be as easy as he imagines, I don’t know. But from the way he’s talking, he does seem intent on making Cuba next.Bacon: You mentioned this is a U.S. foreign policy issue, not necessarily a Trump issue. I want to talk about that frame a little bit.I assume you think the Biden administration should have worked harder to restart the Iran nuclear deal, or something like that?Duss: Absolutely. Joe Biden, before he was elected, said that he was going to do that. He wrote a piece in October of 2020—or at least it was published under his name—describing that as exactly what he was going to do. He had enormous support to do that. This was a deal that was negotiated by Barack Obama, Americans overwhelmingly supported it, it was a very good deal, and he campaigned on rejoining it. And then once in office he decided: No, I’m going to slow-walk it, we’re going to get a better deal. It was a horrible decision. Eventually they got around to trying to negotiate with the Iranians to get back into the deal, but by that time the administration in Iran had been replaced by a much harder-line one that realized it just could not trust the United States—either Trump or Biden. Biden squandered a hugely important opportunity early in his presidency to simply rejoin the deal. He chose to listen to some of the hawks in the party—people like Bob Menendez, people like Chris Coons—who offered him very bad advice: Oh no, let’s take our time. That is part of how we got here, because Joe Biden broke his promise.Bacon: You mentioned Gaza, and the last time we talked you mentioned the idea that we need some accountability for the people in the Biden administration who perpetuated what you’ve described as a genocide. Talk about what that would look like. Does it just mean Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken shouldn’t get jobs with President Shapiro, or President Buttigieg—or do you mean something more serious?Duss: God, yeah—for starters, let’s just say that. We need to ... declassify the information they had during the Gaza war. We need to know what they knew, when they knew it. We already have reporting indicating that they understood what Israel was doing—they understood that international law and international humanitarian law were being violated constantly, and they understood that U.S. law governing the provision of U.S. military support was therefore being violated. If they believe their actions in support of the Gaza war were defensible, they should have no problem standing by their decisions, letting this all be made public, and letting the American people and the world see what they knew and what was guiding their decision-making. And the same is true for the Trump administration. We need to know what information they had that led to these decisions—not just in Iran but in Venezuela.This is a problem that goes back to the Iraq War. Barack Obama was elected largely on his opposition to the Iraq War and opposition to the global war on terror. But once in office, he decided that we were not going to seek real accountability for the previous administration and the officials who broke laws regarding torture, kidnapping, and a whole range of important international norms and laws that the United States itself had very painstakingly helped create in the wake of two devastating world wars. If we’re going to rebuild any credibility—either domestically or on the global stage—we need to show that we are holding our own government officials accountable. This is not just for America’s credibility around the world; it is part of repairing our own politics, because the problem with our politics—whether on foreign policy or any other issue—is elite impunity. The fact that the wealthy, the powerful, the influential get to operate according to a different set of rules from the rest of us. That is part of what has led to this legitimation crisis we’re in the midst of.Bacon: You used the term “genocide” earlier to describe what happened in Gaza. I mention this because we’re now in the early rounds of the presidential primary. Gavin Newsom has written a book and is going around talking about it, and so is Josh Shapiro. Newsom used the term “apartheid” to describe what’s happening in Israel—and I think he backtracked, but not really.Duss: You’re telling me Gavin Newsom is trying to have it both ways? That’s crazy.Bacon: Shapiro said we shouldn’t use that word, but didn’t really disagree with it. To zone in: Do you think using the words “genocide” and “apartheid” are necessary for people running for president as Democrats? Is it important to use those words to describe what’s happening in Israel?Duss: I think we should have politicians who tell the truth. I’ve been to Israel and Palestine probably 30 times—I’ve seen it up close. I think the word “apartheid,” frankly, for the occupied territories, is too weak a word. I know there are people who lived under apartheid who agree. But it’s not just me and not just them: There are Israeli human rights groups, like B’Tselem, one of Israel’s most prominent human rights organizations, that use this term. Certainly Palestinians have said for years that they live under apartheid, and unfortunately we don’t allow Palestinians to narrate their own experiences the way that we should. The same is true for “genocide.” We were watching this unfold in real time on our phones. Multiple organizations and multiple credible scholars and experts on genocide have now affirmed that this meets the definition of the crime of genocide.Now, do candidates need to say this? It goes back to what I said: We’re in a moment where people have lost faith in our politics because our leaders just don’t tell us the truth. I want leaders to tell the truth. They should reflect reality as it is. This is something that Shapiro, interestingly, said—we should talk about reality as it is—and I agree. Bacon: But he’s not talking about reality on this issue.Duss: Right! If he perceives reality differently, I would love to hear more from him. Let’s have that conversation—let’s have this debate constructively and as respectfully as possible, without swinging invective at each other. But I think we have to acknowledge with both of those terms that there is a very large and growing consensus that they both apply.Bacon: You advise Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She went to Munich—I think that was last month, time is hard to keep track of—and you worked with her on her remarks. I wanted to ask about two things. The first is this idea that she answered some questions and ... a lot of the coverage suggested she seemed not up to it, as I would describe it. How do you respond to that? I didn’t feel that way, but some of the coverage was that she wasn’t up to it, she didn’t answer a question about Taiwan precisely. How did you view that? People were treating it as a test for her, and to some extent, there were questions of whether she “passed it.”Duss: I thought the obsession over her answer on Taiwan was just stupid. She hesitated and got to the right answer. Frankly, I wish more politicians would think for a minute before blurting out whatever pops into their head. There’s no question she’s very thoughtful on a whole range of issues. If you look at her other comments—both in Munich and at the public event she did in Berlin later that weekend—I think her remarks were tremendous. She’s offering a vision. And obviously I’m biased here, I’ve been working [on this], cards on the table. But the vision of a working-class centered foreign policy—to combat the right, to combat corruption, to combat oligarchy, to combat authoritarianism—is really the vision for the moment we’re in. I thought it was very inspiring.Bacon: The other thing I want to ask about—she made the argument that authoritarianism is growing because of income inequality.... It’s not entirely clear to me. If you look at India, the U.S., Brazil, we’re talking about very different economies. Authoritarian leaders are being elected in all kinds of different contexts. Le Pen is gaining in the polls, Farage in Britain—these countries’ economies are not perfect, but I’m struggling to figure out—are we sure? Is authoritarianism is growing because of social media? Or religion? Why do you think it’s about income inequality?Duss: There are multiple reasons, but on the issue of inequality, this is an analysis that goes back to John Maynard Keynes, and even further. Keynes, in one of his first famous books—The Economic Consequences of the Peace, about the end of World War I and the massive reparations imposed on Germany—his warning was: This is going to create massive inflation, massive inequality, people are just not going to be able to survive, and this is going to power very dark forces in these societies. It’s going to power authoritarianism and fascism. He was absolutely correct. That is the analysis she’s getting at, and I think it still holds.Obviously there are other causes: social media, sure; issues of identity, people who feel the character of their country is being undermined by the influx of immigrants; certainly racism is part of this. But she clearly has this understanding that there is a relationship between economic inequality and ethnic bigotry and people’s concerns about their own future and their children’s future. When you have demagogues like Donald Trump, like Le Pen, like Farage, who come along and say, It’s the immigrants’ fault, it’s the LGBTQ people’s fault, it’s whatever disfavored group’s fault—rather than pointing the finger where it belongs, which is at the economic elite who take power for themselves.Bacon: I think that’s a good place to end on. Matt, good to see you. Thanks for joining me.Duss: Thanks.

Trump Has No Idea How to End the War Against Iran

You can watch this episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon above or by following this show on YouTube or Substack. You can read a transcript here. The United States and Israel’s war against Iran has now been going on for about three weeks. President Trump sounds increasingly frustrated that Iran has not surrendered. In the latest edition of Right Now, Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy, argues that the war is failing by nearly every metric: Oil prices are rising; civilian casualties are up; the bombings by all three countries are getting more aggressive, destroying critical infrastructure; the Iranian regime remains controlled by leaders hostile to Israel and the U.S. Duss argues that what Trump and Israeli leaders see as successes, the killings of numerous Iranian officials, are really violations of international law. He says Trump is now grasping for a way to declare the war a success and end it. Duss, who was a foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders during his two presidential runs, says that America’s problems in the Middle East are not just the fault of Trump. He argues that it was a huge mistake for the Biden administration to not restart the nuclear deal with Iran and to support Israel in its destruction of Gaza over the last two years. He says 2028 Democratic presidential candidates should use the terms genocide and apartheid to describe the current situation in Israel and Palestine. Duss also discussed Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent trip to Germany. He advised Ocasio-Cortez on her comments there.