Good morning, all. I hope everyone is enjoying a lazy August. At the bottom of this piece are some recent works, including Marc’s and my summer podcast book series. If you’re like me and always looking for the next read, I think you’ll love it.

It will come as no surprise to regular readers to hear of my growing concern with the mainstreaming of extremist ideas at the centre of the Democratic Party, with similar talk creeping, almost inexorably, into the GOP as well. But we homo sapiens have roamed the Earth for 300,000 years. And there is nothing new, as my dad liked to say, under the sun. That said, ignorance of history is rampant, and some who spout insidious evil do not hear or recognise its echoes. In the interest of illuminating those echoes, I share some quotes below. I've taken out some identifying words, but otherwise left the quotes as I found them. There's an answer key at the bottom. Let me know how you did.

On the rejection of equality, liberalism & democratic citizenship

A.

“Liberalism has taught the West to turn its principles into tactics to deceive the people. The west dubs this ‘democracy,’ though it has become evident enough how ill men thrive on a political diet of...”

B.

“The spirit of our National Socialist idea has to overpower the spirit of liberalism and false democracy if there is to be a third Reich at all! Deeply rooted in organic life, we have realized that the false belief in the equality of man is the deadly threat with which liberalism destroys people and nation, culture and morals, violating the deepest levels of our being! We have to reject with fanatical zeal the frequent lie that people are basically equal and equal in regard to their influence in the state and their share of power! People are unequal, they are unequal from birth, become more unequal in life and are therefore to be valued unequally in their positions in society and in the state!

C.

“The structure today fraudulently called a state knows two kinds of people: citizens and aliens. A citizen is generally any person born within the frontiers of the state—and this takes no consideration of race, so a Negro, Jew, Pole, or Oriental can be declared a German citizen... Scarcely anything can be more stupid than our state citizenship law, which allows all this rotten poison to be incorporated into the nation every day.”

Critiques of unfettered capitalism, finance & oligarchy

D.

“We National Socialists want the economic revolution involving the nationalization of the economy…We want in place of an exploitative capitalist economic system a real socialism, maintained not by a soulless Jewish-materialist outlook but by the believing, sacrificial, and unselfish old German community sentiment, community purpose and economic feeling. We want the social revolution in order to bring about the national revolution.”

E.

“The Capitalist system with its exploitation of those who are economically weak, with its robbery of the workers labour power, with its unethical way of appraising human beings by the number of things and the amount of money he possesses, instead of by their internal value and their achievements, must be replaced by a new and just economic system, in a word by German Socialism.”

F.

“If we call these money-powers ‘Capitalism,’ then we may designate as Socialism the will to call into life a mighty politico-economic order that transcends all class interests, a system of lofty thoughtfulness and duty-sense that keeps the whole in fine condition for the decisive battle of its history, and this battle is also the battle of money and law. The private powers of the economy want free paths for their acquisition of great resources. No legislation must stand in their way. They want to make the laws themselves, in their interests, and to that end they make use of the tool they have made for themselves, democracy, the subsidized party.”

G.

“But the capitalist idea of profitability actually becomes an economic nonsense in the branches of our economy that today rule everything, in the banking and stock-exchange system. The fact of the ruling position of the banks proves most strikingly the economic senselessness of the capitalist idea. With the ‘productions’ of the banks and stock-exchanges never yet has a child been fed, never yet has a freezing person been clothed, in general never has even the smallest requirement...”

H.

“The uber-capitalist economic system is not merely unjust, it is grossly immoral. It is a system driven by greed and the maximization of corporate profits, completely detached from the needs of ordinary people. We live in a nation where three individuals own more wealth than the bottom half of our society, while millions of workers struggle to put food on the table, pay rent, and access basic healthcare. This is not a functioning democracy; it is an oligarchy. There is nothing more American than questioning the systems that have failed us and demanding the fundamental changes we need in order to create a society that works for all, not just the 1 percent.”

I.

“The myth of the free market is used to hide a reality where a handful of giant conglomerates control our healthcare, our media, our energy, and our political system. Capitalism is working exactly as intended for the wealthy, but it is failing miserably for the working class who have seen a massive transfer of wealth upward over the last fifty years.”

J.

"Capitalism is unbridled greed. It is built on exploitation and the idea that some people are disposable... We have to be willing to call out capitalism as the root cause of so many of the crises facing our communities—from housing to healthcare to environmental degradation."

K

“Housing is a human right, not a vehicle for speculative corporate wealth. When we allow real estate developers and private equity firms to dictate urban policy, we aren’t running a city for its residents—we’re running an investment portfolio. We have to de-commodify basic needs.”

On economic nationalism, protectionism & domestic industry

L.

“The nation must sacrifice and give up a measure of material property in order to gain culture, skill, and powers of united production; it must sacrifice some present advantages in order to insure to itself future ones. If, therefore, a manufacturing power developed in all its branches forms a fundamental condition of all higher advances in civilisation, material prosperity, and political power in every nation... how can anyone possibly undertake to prove by arguments only based on the mere theory of values, that a nation ought to buy its goods like individual merchants, at places where they are to be had the cheapest—that we act foolishly if we manufacture anything at all which can be got cheaper from abroad—that we ought to place the industry of the nation at the mercy of the self-interest of individuals—that protective duties constitute monopolies, which are granted to the individual home manufacturers at the expense of the nation?”

M.

“Cheap labor has become a ‘drug’ that too many American firms have become addicted to. It can inhibit innovation because it’s too easy to make a product more cheaply than to innovate.”

N.

“Until you [have immigrants assimilate], you’ve got to be careful about any additional immigration, in my view. We cannot have an immigration policy where what was good for corporate bottom lines dictated our national borders while ignoring whether our schools, our hospitals, and our communities could actually handle the weight.”

On civilizational decay, imperial decline & cultural crisis

O.

“You are dying. I see in you all the characteristic stigma of decay. I can prove to you that your great wealth and your great poverty, your capitalism and your socialism, your wars and your revolutions, your atheism and your ­pessimism and your cynicism, your immorality, your broken-down marriages, your birth-control, that is bleeding you from the bottom and killing you off at the top in your brains—I can prove to you that those were characteristic marks of the dying ages of ancient States—Alexandria and Greece and neurotic Rome.”

P.

“What we have literally doesn’t work anymore. ...we have a system where global capital, the international business community, and powerful foreign agents control the leadership. We have moved from a republic into what can only be described as the imperial phase of empire, where power is increasingly concentrated in the executive branch while Congress loses its strength and lawmakers are completely disregarded on significant national decisions.”

Q.

“Somebody needs to begin work immediately on one question, which is what unites all of us. ...We must stop mass migration, stop fighting unnecessary wars, and focus on rebuilding our own domestic production. We have abandoned our moral foundation, and by doing that, America did not just weaken its global standing; it undermined the very ideals that once made it exceptional.”

On religious, ethno-nationalist & historical commentary

R.

“We are not yet free of peril from the Arabs, who long seriously threatened our existence, and their creation, [Islam], is the greatest of all hindrances to every progress of civilisation, hanging like a sword of Damocles over our slowly and laboriously rising culture in Europe, Asia and Africa.”

S.

“But the Teuton has not, unfortunately, kept up his guard. Magnanimously, he conceded to alien blood those same rights which he had gained for himself as a result of his great sacrifices through the centuries. He carried tolerance of religious diversity and scientific speculation into areas where he would have done better to lay down strict limitations; the areas involving the creation of the national state and of the folkish type... Surely it is obvious that there is no equivalence of rights as between the stock market manipulator and the heroic man; or those who follow the immoral and non-Germanic laws of the Talmud cannot be accorded equal rights in shaping the national life.”

T.

“According to the Syrian Christian preacher Ephraem (4th century) Jesus’ mother was a Danaite woman (that is, someone born in Dan) and he had a Latin as father. Ephraem sees this to be not unhonorable and adds: ‘Jesus thus derived his ancestry from two of the greatest and most famous nations, namely, from the Syrians on the maternal side and from the Romans on the paternal.’”

U.

“It is not lost on us that Mary, too, was a Palestinian woman giving birth under occupation. In the Qur’an, she cries out in anguish, ‘I wish I had died before this and had been long forgotten’”

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I’ll put the answers in the first comment.

RECENT WORK

WTH Should I read this summer? Twenty Times I Almost Died by John Spencer

WTH Should I read this summer? The Arab Case for Israel by Husain Abdul-Husain

Why France Has No Right to Lecture the US on Human Rights, with Brett Schaefer

Luckily, politicians have already so discredited themselves, we need little further evidence.

Check out the entire conversation, in which we take apart that problem, noodle the whole Saudi Arabia nuclear question, wonder where we’re headed on Iran, and more. Thanks for joining us. And yep, Dany still hasn’t figured out how to make this a podcast. Sigh, sorry. Soon.

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SHOWNOTES

Cosmopolitics by Elise Labott

The Israel litmus test

For half a century, Israel was the water’s edge issue — the one place bipartisan consensus actually held, even as everything else in Washington came apart. That’s over. And what’s ending isn’t support for Israel. It’s the assumption that support for Israel could sit outside the realignment reshaping everything else in American politics…

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a month ago · 18 likes · 2 comments · Elise Labott

Cosmopolitics by Elise Labott

A more European NATO

Three decades covering foreign policy has taught me one thing: the story is almost never as simple as your side wants it to be. That’s why I call balls and strikes without keeping score…

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2 months ago · 29 likes · 3 comments · Elise Labott and Ivo Daalder

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Every now and again, I go back and read my old articles. Sometimes its to admire my prescience or cringe at my unforced errors (“Libya may well be out of the business of sponsoring terrorism” right before the downing of Pan Am 103 was a highlight), but mostly its to make sure I’m learning, and not growing in office, “evolving,” or otherwise drifting with the political winds. Because there is little more execrable than the absence of guiding principles.

A story: A journalist friend whom I rather liked, enjoyed her company, and generally saw eye to eye with. She didn’t like Barack Obama, found him to be one step short of anti-American, and I agreed. I happened to check out her work recently and discovered that she has lost her mind. It’s not just that she’s now a Democrat; she’s now a Mamdani/Trotsky Democrat. Indeed, the selfsame folk she reviled in the Obama administration look like moderates next to her anti-American, anti-Israel ravings.

You will ask yourself why you should care about the inconsistencies of my friends, and here’s why: It is excellent to grow, deepen, and learn based on bad bets, wrong guesses, experience, and maturity. Some who once advocated for the Iraq War believe they were mistaken, and regret their support. Some who believed Donald Trump was an excellent choice for the GOP now sense they were wrong. This isn’t apostasy, and it isn’t to be condemned.

Then there are others who, for example, regret their support for the Iraq War, their support for Israel, their support for capitalism, their opposition to the Soviet Union, their opposition to DC statehood, and, well, everything they once purported to believe. A few — a very, very few, have been persuaded of the error of their ways and can explain their path. A large, crushing majority of such radical converts, left to right and right to left, are simply people who never believed anything at all. They shed their beliefs like yesterday’s soiled shirt and moved on with their new ones with a shrug.

We all know these people, but too often we fail to call them on their lemming-like behavior, their desperate grasp of what my Hot Takes Happy Hour pal calls “the bundle.” But it is unacceptable to blow with the political winds, becoming ever more radical in service to a party or an ideology, or, God forbid, an individual. Yet, increasingly, it feels that our political class is made up of these people. They were always there; political whoring — those “forced, in order to maintain the state, to act contrary to fidelity, friendship, humanity, and religion” (guess who?) — is as old as politics. Ever more, however, they are crowding out the decent, the honest, and the fair.

Of whom do I speak? There are plenty to choose from, Dems and Rs. Let’s start with the Dems because I reserve a lot of ink on this page to criticize White House denizens. And then we’ll return to the White House.

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Recently, the House voted on a Thomas Massie (R-KY) amendment to “Prohibits funds appropriated by the Act from being used for Israel, and accordingly [reduce] the Foreign Military Financing Program account by $3,300,000,000.” The amendment failed by a vote of 314-104. 103 Democrats voted for the amendment, 98 against. Every Republican in the House voted no, barring Massie, whose personal animus towards the Jewish people is the stuff of legend.

Many have written eloquently and informatively about the turn of the Democratic Party against Israel, the implications and the dangers. Today, however, I’d like to shout out about some of the people who voted with Massie.

18 Democrats who last month would have been labeled “pro-Israel” voted with the Kentucky Republican: Gabe Amo (D-RI), Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), Julia Brownley (D-CA), Katherine Clark (D-MA), Laura Friedman (D-CA), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), Josh Harder (D-CA), Steven Horsford (D-NV), Glenn Ivey (D-MD), Julie Johnson (D-TX), Bill Keating (D-MA), Seth Magaziner (D-RI), Richard Neal (D-MA), Joe Neguse (D-CO), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Brittany Pettersen (D-CO), Pat Ryan (D-NY) and Adam Smith (D-WA).

Most of these members have a solid record of supporting the U.S.-Israel relationship, and a consistent voting pattern in favor of U.S. taxpayer support for Israel. Now, I have written previously and said many times that the United States should stop providing aid to Israel. Hell, even Bibi Netanyahu has now said that the time for American subsidies for Israel’s defense should come to an end. But that is not what this is about.

One can support Israel and the U.S. - Israel relationship and believe in the Jewish state and Zionism and much more and still argue credibly that with Israeli GDP per capita among the highest in the world, and the IDF’s standing as one of the world’s most formidable militaries, Israel can work with the United States in productive ways that do not require an annual infusion of $3.3 billion — even if most of that money is actually spent here at home. But again, that’s not what this amendment was about.

Remember who Thomas Massie is. This is the man who suggested after losing his primary that his opponent couldn’t be there because he was in Tel Aviv. Who manipulated a photograph of a local rabbi with House Speaker Mike Johnson to imply Jews/AIPAC were plotting against him. Who said that “a coalition of Israel’s lobbyists and donors is spending tens of millions of dollars in a blatant attempt to buy a KY congressional seat.” And that’s just last month.

In 2021, he tweeted an image suggesting that vaccine passports recording COVID shots were the same as the identification numbers tattooed on Holocaust victims.

Some of the Democrats who voted for the Massie amendment insisted they knew it wouldn’t pass, but wanted to “send a message” to Israel. Some criticized the Netanyahu government. Others moaned about the “status quo.”

Here’s the thing: If you are a member of the House of Representatives, you have a million ways to express your views about aid to Israel. Write an oped. Make a statement. Author your own amendment. Speak at a town hall. Go on MSN. Post on Instagram. Get a tattoo of Bernie Sanders. What you do not have, if you are a person with a shred of integrity, an ounce of consistency, or a soupçon of principle, is the option to stand with a known and proud hater of Jews. Because you are doing more than “sending a message;” you are telling us that you support Thomas Massie.

Or let’s ask this question another way: Would you retweet a Hitler recipe? Would you share Putin’s views on the best borscht? Would you applaud warmly at Graham Platner’s hints on tattoo removal? Echo Tucker Carlson’s restaurant recs for Florida? And there’s a reason for that. But Massie, he’s cool. Let’s by all means “send a message.”

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My late boss always liked to recount the chestnut about the woman seated at a hotel bar. Approached by a suave, Rolex flashing businessman, she smiles and they begin to chat. He asks if she might be willing to head upstairs with him for an evening romp in exchange for $5000. She smiles coyly and nods. He continues sitting and asks pleasantly whether she might offer a more expedited service in the nearby cloakroom for a $20. “Sir,” she hisses, “do you think I’m some kind of whore?”

“Well,” he responds, “I think we’ve already established that. Now we’re negotiating about the price.”

+++

I liked Hillybilly Elegy. It taught me a great deal about the state of rural America and helped me understand a lot about why so many voted for Donald Trump in 2016. It was thoughtful and moving, and reflected a man who had thought deeply about where he came from. That man bears precious little relationship to the J.D. Vance who then took a gig at the American Enterprise Institute, my own bastion of interventionist anti-Lindberghism.

That J.D. Vance was quoted describing Donald Trump as Hitler. No, not a bad guy, a grifter, a showman, a sideshow. Hitler. The author of the Holocaust. Now he’s his vice president.

Indeed, J.D. Vance has transformed completely. A quick internet search of articles about “the transformation of JD Vance” yields endless ink devoted to his cracker-cum-Yalie-cum-traditionalist-cum-MAGA-cum-Carlsonite-cum-Catholic (his latest costume). Does the man believe in anything? You bet he does. He believes in J.D. Vance; everything else is up for sale.

One of JD’s supporters recently took issue with my labeling the Vice President’s recent antisemitic dog whistles as an effort to mainstream Jew-hatred in the GOP. He was very sincere that JD can’t hate Jews because he would never work for a man who hates Jews. I believe him. I don’t think JD hates Jews; he just accepts the antisemites, makes excuses for them, and welcomes them with his own coded antisemitic language. (See here for a piece on how he is socializing his audiences to the idea that Israel is to blame for the Iran War.)

How is J.D. Vance different from the Maggie Goodlanders, Jake Auchinclosses, and Nancy Pelosis who voted for the Massie amendment? He isn’t.

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A final note on these unprincipled surfers on the political wave of the moment. Laura Loomer, who has risen to fame as a Trump whisperer, MAGA-darling, personnel outer, and conspiracist has undergone a massive transformation.

Has she “grown in office”? Am I impressed because Loomer has abandoned views I find anti-American and come over to my way of thinking? Well, duh. I am a human being. And it may well be that having made a 180 about face on the headline national security issues of the day, what we must conclude is that she never believed anything at all. I appreciate very much that she tries to explain why she’s changed her mind. Then again, we’ll have to see whether this is just another twist in the wind.

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When Donald Trump tore up the JCPOA — the Iran nuclear deal inked by Barack Obama — he made clear that he thought his predecessor had been taken. Perhaps the details of Obama’s concessions to the Iranian regime were foggy to the new President, but he sensed that the United States had given too much for too little. He was right, and it’s edifying to understand why Team Obama was indeed outmanned by Tehran.

Without diving too deep, the simple facts were these: Obama had decided, not without reason, that the logic of U.S. foreign relations in the Middle East was upside down. For decades, America stood with the Sunni powers and Israel, together against the Shia and Iran. And what had we reaped? War, war, war. Perhaps, he implied on more than one occasion, it was time to approach the thorny question of the region via Tehran.

The problem with this approach, as we now know all too well, is that it takes two to tango. The Iranians played a shrewd game, at first underestimating Obama, but after waves of punishing sanctions, signaling their openness to a negotiation. Without indulging too much in cliché, a lifetime of working on the Middle East, and yes, the purchase of many, many, many carpets, has taught me an invaluable lesson: the buyer must have a firm price, and be willing to walk away if it is not met. Persians need not be taught this lesson, which comes in the water. Americans. not so much.

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Obama’s team, particularly his leads John Kerry and Wendy Sherman, liked the Iranians. They enjoyed conspiring behind the backs of Congress and America’s regional allies, they enjoyed the suave blandishments of Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif; and I daresay they liked the tea and the charm, too. Persians are nothing if not charming. And Kerry, Sherman, not to speak of Obama and his acolytes, were taken to the cleaners.

In exchange for short term concessions, Iran got access to vast sums, was allowed to keep its advanced centrifuges, successfully rebuffed more intrusive inspections, and went to town with the cash, stocking up on everything from terrorist proxies to longer range missiles and deeper tunnels for their nuclear experiments. The deal wasn’t appalling, but it was terrible, and there was one lie that the Obama people kept repeating: it was the best deal to be had.

That was manifestly untrue. Rather, after going in with stiff demands about enrichment, giving up nuclear technology, and more, the Americans gave up on critical aspects of the longer term Iranian nuclear project. They gave away — for free — restrictions on missiles and conventional arms purchases, some of this as the Iranians held out at the last minute. Did the Americans know the Iranians were lying? Possibly not, because unlike their Iranian counterparts, the Americans had bought into the process. They loved it, loved the back and forth, and were allowed to believe they were getting more than they were by skilled bazaaris. At the end, they wanted the deal too much, and were willing to pay most anything to get it. This is how you strike a bad deal.

That is the history, and while, again, the specifics may be foggy to Trump, the overall “they got taken” vibe is not. And yet, his negotiators, and as a consequence, he, fell into the same trap.

Trump’s sudden about face, his bizarre attitude reversal, and his concessions to Iran — missiles? sure! — have been well rehearsed, not least by me here and here. Indeed, at a particular moment it seemed that DJT would ink a deal worse than the JCPOA in exchange for vastly more lucre for Tehran. How did that happen?

The story is the same: Trump, fearing high oil prices and persuaded by an as yet unidentified economic buffoon, feared a “global depression.” This counterfactual may have been the father of the terrible Memorandum of Understanding or a rationalization, but either way, the MOU was an abomination. Dumping the entire debacle on JD Vance to defend was the only silver lining, a laugh line in an otherwise dour season.

Whatever the reason, Trump wanted a deal more than the Iranians did. They knew it, most of us knew it, and as a result he ended up with a machine made carpet of questionable design. (Yes, yes, I’m beating it to death, but it’s kind of funny to picture the parable.) His only luck was that the Iranians, who live in their own kind of fantasy world, misread how far he would bend to defend his escape from war.

The Iranians want to end this sorry period with control over the Strait of Hormuz, and they will not accept that it cannot be so. They believed, likely based on the jelly-like nature of their American counterparts and the blandishments of Arabs who have bought and sold those selfsame negotiators, that Trump would not stand firm. He may yet cave. But thus far, he has stuck to his nominal red lines: No control of Hormuz and meaningful concessions on Tehran’s nuclear weapons program.

For now, the United States has returned to the program of forcing open the Strait and taking out key weapons sites and coastal defenses. Will there be another 11th hour cease fire because the Iranians “want a deal,” per the endlessly gullible Trump? That feels likely. But what should happen? How should the United States negotiate?

1. Finish the necessary military campaign, taking out Iran’s capacity to control and threaten the Strait of Hormuz. Finish the strikes on Iran’s nuclear and conventional capabilities. And possibly, end Iran’s ability to export oil.

2. Then, and only then, ask the Iranians if they want to come back to the table.

3. Present Iran with an MOU drafted in the United States, not Tehran or Islamabad, and explain that it is a take it or leave it offer. If Iran will export its stock of highly enriched uranium, dismantle and export its nuclear weapons infrastructure, and accept verifiable limitations on nuclear power and on conventional weapons, then the United States will, after a period for verification that will involve no sanctions relief by any party, consider the question of lifting some sanctions.

4. If Iran does not accept, walk away. The devastation of the military campaign and the continuation and sharpening of sanctions will progressively tighten the noose around the regime's neck.

5. In parallel, work to dismantle Iran’s network of proxies in the region. This is underway, quietly, and the Israelis, Lebanese, Iraqis, and others can help. These must be the final nails in the coffin of Iran’s plan for regional hegemony.

That’s it. Walking away is not hard. There is no imperative for a deal if the United States can keep the Strait open. Iran has very little to offer the United States barring the necessary concessions Trump has been, with some waffling, demanding. The United States has the power in this relationship, and must act accordingly.

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Note: Good morning everyone. Please forgive the quiet on the WTH front. June is our hell month — three birthdays, graduations, Father’s Day. Nothing bad, but little free time. Below is a very personal post. While Iran has been on my mind (WT actual H?), increasingly, I find myself despairing about the new war on the Jewish people in our country and around the world. So, not for the first time, I’m sharing a little of my thinking with you. Dany

My niece was preparing for her Bat Mitzvah, and like any normal 12 year old, she was nervous to the point of tears. We sat down on her bed, and I tried to talk her through the moment. We Jews, I told her, carry the fate of our world on our shoulders. More than 5000 years ago, we were the lone believers in one God. Then the pagans and the worshipers of many gods hated us. In the years since, our enemies have multiplied: The empires that opposed the people of Israel. The Christians who silenced those they didn’t convert. The Muslims who silenced those they didn’t convert. The occupiers, the exilers, the oppressors, the killers, the inquisitors, the segregationists, the tyrants, the Communists, the Nazis, and the run of the mill conspiracy theorists and haters. Our numbers have been winnowed down ruthlessly; but you stand on the shoulders of every Jew that survived, resisted, held on, and believed… for millenia. Just as those who come after you will stand on yours. Imagine the heritage, the honor, and the incredible uniqueness you hold in your hands. This is a great moment of tradition that millions have struggled to present to you. These few words in your Bat Mitzvah are just a tiny hill to climb; there are no Romans, no Nazis, no Communists. You can do this, and easily.

And so she did.

You’ll notice there isn’t much religion in my little speech of encouragement. Of course, Judaism is first and foremost a religion. But Jews are also a people. Over centuries, we have been forced or encouraged to abandon our faith and our lands, and many, many did so. Yet in most instances, even that act of abnegation was insufficient for our enemies. To the inquisitors, to the oppressors, to the Nazis, and now to our enemies on the Left, and increasingly, on the Right, there is no act of self abnegation that is sufficient.

The story of California State Senator Scott Wiener lays bare the problem, per Jewish Insider:

The language used by protesters who accosted and harassed California state Sen. Scott Wiener at a transgender pride march last week left little doubt that they harbored a deep-seated hatred toward Israel and Zionists. “F*** you and your Zionist handlers. F*** you and your Israeli masters,” one person shouted at Wiener as he walked toward a Pride Shabbat event, according to a video posted by one of the activists.

Wiener, who is gay, said in a social media post that the protesters were so “physically and verbally aggressive” that he had to leave the event, which he has attended every year since its inception in 2004, entirely.

He told CNN on Monday that the incident was “absolutely” antisemitic. “There were elected officials in that march who have not taken the positions that I’ve taken, and they were left alone,” said Wiener, who is running to replace retiring Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in the San Francisco-based seat.

Wiener’s most ostensible sin is his religion. This is a gay man of the California Left. He has accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza, a key condition of admission into the new Democratic Party. True, he supports the U.S.-Israel relationship and the existence of the Jewish state, but that was not at issue. San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie (D-Jewish), Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Jewish), and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Christian), all labeled the attack antisemitism. San Fran Supervisor Connie Chan, who’s also running for Pelosi’s seat, would not. Ditto Pelosi, Rep. Ro Khanna (who instead used the event to promote antisemite Rep. Thomas Massie’s amendment to end all U.S. aid to Israel), CA Gov. Gavin Newsom, Xavier Becerra (running for CA gov), and Steve Hilton (R, also running for CA gov).

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The Wiener incident is only one data point, but the rise of the Mamdani Left, and its recent primary successes (a guy with an SS tattoo, FFS?), the rise of the Tucker Carlson Right (and our own Vice President’s admiration for it), and the increasing prevalence of naked antisemitism in everyday life are a horror for Jews of every political stripe, even those who act as enablers for these bigots.

What so many who have excused and accommodated antisemites forget — or lie to themselves about — is that the new class of Jew haters is much the same as the old: What they hate is not your support for Israel; not your support for Zionism; not your support for aid to Israel; not your defense of the IDF. What they hate is the Jew; and for the hater, that Jewishness cannot be washed away with pious anti-Zionism or Leftism or strident Tucker-philia. In their world view, Jewishness is a permanent stain that can never be removed.

Still, we Jews like to lie to ourselves. We like to think that the 21st century is different. We like to think that the knock on the door will never come for us. Our forefathers were suckers, marginalized; we don’t hide, we don’t fear, we don’t cower in the face of our proliferating enemies. But we do.

Today, our cowering looks less like Anne Frank hiding behind a false door and more like the inquisition. Today, too many are converting politically, if not religiously — ahem, Chuck Schumer — in the hopes of outrunning the Jew haters. Today, we explain: We don’t love Israel. We don’t believe in a homeland for the Jewish people. It’s just Bibi. It’s just the war. It’s just Trump.

What crap. The onus to explain is not on us. It is on the people who hate us. The onus is not on us to change. It is on those who hate us. There is no shame in being a Jew, whether Zionist, or conservative, or liberal, or gay, or straight, or black, or white. The shame is in being a Jew-hater, no different from hating black people or Hispanics or Catholics or Muslims or gays or anyone else.

It’s time to start fighting antisemitism for real. People think AIPAC does it, and they do, sort of. Similarly, they think the Anti-Defamation League does it, and the Conference of Presidents, and all of the other myriad Jewish organizations. But, like any population in peacetime, these organizations spend more energy on defeating each other and currying favor than they do naming and shaming each and every antisemite. AIPAC is starting to do the work in primaries, but that has brought the ire of the Jew-haters — many veterans of the Obama administration and the Mamdani Left — down upon them.

Sure, there are other, smaller organizations. Stand With Us. CAMERA. Stop Antisemitism. Canary Mission. I appreciate their efforts enormously, and love their man by man, woman by woman, assault on the Jew-haters. But we need more systemic efforts to shame as bigots these rising stars of the political Left and Right. It should be as disqualifying to scream against Zionism (the new euphemism for Jew) as it is to scream to N word.

We also need to out the handmaidens of the Qataris and the Chinese and Iranians whether they be in the White House, on podcasts, or at universities. They stir the pot in service to their anti-Jewish and anti-American paymasters. It should be as disqualifying to take their coin as it once was to serve the Soviet Communists.

And in every single damned case, we need to call it out for what it is: Jew hatred.

This is a war. It is, of course, a war for the values that America stands for, a war for our rights and our heritage, and a war against our — all decent people’s — shared enemies. Because, as I have said more times than I want to count in recent years, first they come for the Jews. Who will they want to destroy next?

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It’s a cliché to call a moment the first of the next presidential campaign. But if you’re curious how J.D. Vance is going to set himself up as a loyal vice president on the question of Iran, yet opposed to what increasingly looks like a debacle for the Trump/Vance team, here’s one element of the plan: It was Israel’s fault. More specifically, it was Bibi Netanyahu’s fault. Helping him cement that narrative will be United States Special Envoy to the Middle East and Special Envoy for Peace Missions Steve Witkoff and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner.

The set up

Allow me to walk you through. Here are Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman in the New York Times “scooping” how the Israeli Prime Minister got Trump to go to war:

The black S.U.V. carrying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the White House just before 11 a.m. on Feb. 11. The Israeli leader, who had been pressing for months for the United States to agree to a major assault on Iran, was whisked inside with little ceremony, out of view of reporters, primed for one of the most high-stakes moments in his long career.

U.S. and Israeli officials gathered first in the Cabinet Room, adjacent to the Oval Office. Then Mr. Netanyahu headed downstairs for the main event: a highly classified presentation on Iran for President Trump and his team in the White House Situation Room, which was rarely used for in-person meetings with foreign leaders.

Mr. Trump sat down, but not in his usual position at the head of the room’s mahogany conference table. Instead, the president took a seat on one side, facing the large screens mounted along the wall. Mr. Netanyahu sat on the other side, directly opposite the president.

Appearing on the screen behind the prime minister was David Barnea, the director of Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, as well as Israeli military officials. Arrayed visually behind Mr. Netanyahu, they created the image of a wartime leader surrounded by his team.

Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, sat at the far end of the table. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who doubled as the national security adviser, had taken his regular seat. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who generally sat together in such settings, were on one side; joining them was John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director. Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s special envoy, who had been negotiating with the Iranians, rounded out the main group.

The gathering had been kept deliberately small to guard against leaks. Other top cabinet secretaries had no idea it was happening. Also absent was the vice president. JD Vance was in Azerbaijan, and the meeting had been scheduled on such short notice that he was unable to make it back in time.

The presentation that Mr. Netanyahu would make over the next hour would be pivotal in setting the United States and Israel on the path toward a major armed conflict in the middle of one of the world’s most volatile regions. And it would lead to a series of discussions inside the White House over the following days and weeks, the details of which have not been previously reported, in which Mr. Trump weighed his options and the risks before giving the go-ahead to join Israel in attacking Iran.

Who leaked that highly classified meeting? Why? Shortly thereafter, there was another meeting with only Americans present. Per Swan and Haberman, the CIA rated Netanyahu’s regime change scenario “farcical.”

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The war

Notwithstanding strongly expressed doubts from JD Vance — per Swan and Haberman again — Trump was all in. The war commenced. In its original plan, there were to be American and Israeli and Iranian elements, with Israel taking care of regime decapitation, the US taking on Iran’s nuclear, missile, and defense industrial complex, and Iranian minorities (Kurds and others) beginning to take enclaves within the country.

Might the plan have worked? Possibly. The United States is notoriously bad at regime change. Israel has never managed a similar operation. But in the event, we were never to find out, because Trump called off all internal elements of the plan, and proceeded with the air strategy.

Iran then closed the Strait of Hormuz. Contrary to the protestations of armchair generals the world over, the US military had a clear plan to wrest control away from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. But Trump was spooked. Gas prices were headed up, naysayers were whispering in his ear, and the president’s political advisers — if not the president himself — were worrying about the impact on the midterms. It was time to talk offramps, and Trump’s omnipresent negotiator for everything, Steve Witkoff, was there to take the reins.

The offramp

Behind the scenes, Witkoff, Jared Kushner and their cronies in the Gulf — Qatar in particular — began floating the shape of a deal. Pakistan — !! — was deputized as middle man. A cease fire was called, called off, called again, called off again; and all the while, Trump was becoming frustrated. He was angry at the Iranians for being unserious. Angry at his allies and his critics. Angry at the Israelis for continuing to goad him to prosecute the war.

Notwithstanding repeated Iranian violations, the April 8 ceasefire kept being extended. JD Vance headed to Pakistan to seal a deal on April 11, and returned empty handed. The peace talks weren’t going well. It was unclear who was in charge in Iran, and the proposals Trump’s minions kept bringing back were serially rejected by Iranian officials.

Two things happen at this juncture: Leaks begin socializing the political class to the idea that Donald Trump is incandescently angry with Netanyahu. And Iran begins to effectively leverage Lebanon with its American negotiating partners.

Bibi

Let’s start with Bibi. Here’s the leak to favored Witkoff leakee Barak Ravid with Axios:

President Trump lashed out at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel’s escalation in Lebanon in an expletive-laden call on Monday, two U.S. officials and a third source briefed on the call told Axios.

Why it matters: Earlier on Monday, Iran threatened to abandon the negotiations with the U.S. over Israel’s actions in Lebanon. On the call, Trump called Netanyahu “crazy” and accused him of ingratitude, according to two of the sources. He also put the brakes on Israel’s plan to strike Beirut.

Behind the scenes: One U.S. official said Trump told Netanyahu that following through on his threats to bomb the Lebanese capital would further isolate Israel around the world.

•Two of the sources said Trump claimed he’d helped keep Netanyahu out of jail — a reference to his support during Netanyahu’s corruption trial.

•Summarizing Trump’s remarks to Netanyahu, the U.S. official said: “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”

•A second source briefed on the call said Trump was “pissed” and at one point yelled at Netanyahu: “What the fuck are you doing?”

Some privy to the call insisted Trump, while irritated with Netanyahu, never used the language cited. However, when asked, Trump did not deny he was “a little bit perturbed.”

Lebanon

Two days after American-Israeli strikes on Iran began, Hezbollah began renewed attacks on northern Israel. These were the first Hezbollah attacks since November 2024, and Israel responded with force, hitting multiple Hezbollah targets as far north as Beirut. But under U.S. auspices, unprecedented direct Lebanon-Israel talks began on April 14. On April 16, a ten day ceasefire is declared in Lebanon, announced by Donald Trump; Hezbollah refused to comply. Five days later, the government of Lebanon files a complaint with the United Nations against … Iran.

Fighting continues, with sporadic ceasefires, largely ignored. And on June 5, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun gives an interview to CNN, and speaks directly to the IRGC: “It’s not your country. It’s our country … It’s not your job to interfere in our country,” Aoun said. “Our people are being killed. Our house is being destroyed. They are using Lebanon as a bargaining chip in their negotiations with the United States. It’s unacceptable.”

But what does Lebanon have to do with the Iran nuclear problem? Simple. Iran has begun claiming that it can neither negotiate nor abide by any ceasefire if Israel does not withdraw from Lebanon and leave Hezbollah alone. Yesterday, a day after Donald Trump announced a deal with Iran, foreign minister Aragchi said, “Without the withdrawal of Israeli forces from [Lebanon], a full end to the war has not been achieved.”

In other words, Iran has leveraged Trump’s desperation for an offramp into a win not simply for its own survival and domination, it has leveraged it against Israel.

Or as Trump himself said, “Without the US, there would be no Israel. Without me, there would be no Israel because no other president was willing to do what I did. I have had a great relationship with Bibi. Now Bibi has to be more responsible with respect to Lebanon.”

Not Iran. Bibi.

And, according to Iran’s claims, its deal with the United States envisions a full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. Replete with continued Iranian support for Hezbollah and its mission to destroy the State of Israel.

Don’t believe it? Read this report about Vance’s call to Netanyahu demanding Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon.

So?

Of course, all of this could fall apart. Trump may actually have no idea what was promised to Iran in America’s name. But Iran is already exporting oil freely in the Strait. And the United States is reportedly promising to support $300 billion in “reparations” to Iran. And sanctions relief.

Indeed, the entire deal looks like a massive capitulation to Iran. And how will Vance, who has made this deal his own, explain how his administration expended billions in order to get less than the Obama JCPOA in exchange for a complete rehabilitation of the Iranian regime?

How will Vance reconcile himself to the Tucker Carlson wing of the party he has embraced?

The Jews made us do it.

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What is so terrific about Donald Trump — a large part of the reason he got elected, really — is that he will do and say things most politicians won’t. Unfortunately, that’s also what’s so terrible about Donald Trump.

Say what you will, the indifference of seven presidents to the threat posed by Iran has been intolerable. Each has professed to address the problem of Iran’s threat to its own people, it’s missile program, it’s sponsorship of terrorism, or its nuclear program, while in reality kicking the can to the next commander in chief.

So, while there’s a lot to condemn in the Trump presidency, several things have kept many of us going. The first, and most important, is that the choice was never between Donald Trump and a better candidate. It was between Trump and one of the most feckless twits to run seriously for the presidency in many a year.

Then there were the tough issues that almost any other Republican, and definitely every other Democrat would have tolerated, if not also exacerbated: immigration, crime, woke insanity, climate rubbish, European free riding, etc.

And of course, there’s Israel, and the insanity of rampant antisemitism: Trump wasn’t buying any of it, and even if his VP liked to swim in Tucker Carlson’s swamp, DJT wasn’t having it. And with Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran. Donald Trump didn’t like the Islamic Republic, he didn’t trust the Iranians, and he ripped up the lousy JCPOA Iran deal. And he was willing to back up his instincts with military force.

Now, there’s a lot — a LOT — on the other side. The tariffs, the flirtation with Russia, the soul selling to Qatar, the incapacity to recognize the threat from China, the disdain for allies and friends, and damn, the incredible corruption. And the shallow vanity propitiated by toadies across the government. So awful; so wrong; so embarrassing for our country.

But, we remind ourselves, it’s not a choice between someone who wants his name on the Kennedy Center and Ronald Reagan. Or even Bill Clinton. It’s a choice between Trump and a Democratic Party that would be unrecognizable to its forefathers. On balance, one is less awful than the other. Which brings us to Iran.

Here are the reported elements of the deal that the President says will be signed on June 19 in Switzerland:

1. End to US blockade of Hormuz and reopening, Iranian demining

2. 60-day ceasefire

3. 60-day negotiations regarding Iranian nuclear program

4. Discussion of sanctions relief and release of frozen Iranian assets

5. End to fighting in Iran and Lebanon

6. Agreement to be signed June 19

Here’s what Iran says is the deal:

1. Permanent and immediate cessation of war on all fronts, including Lebanon

2. The US commitment to non-interference in Iran’s internal affairs and respect for the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

3. Complete lifting of the naval blockade within 30 days

4. The US commitment to withdraw its forces from around Iran

5. Reopening of the Strait of Hormuz within 30 days under Iranian arrangements

6. Suspension of sanctions on the sale of oil, petrochemical products, and derivatives, and full access of Iran to its financial resources.

7. The necessity for the US and its allies to present reconstruction plans for Iran amounting to at least 300 billion dollars

8. 60 days of negotiations to reach a final agreement based on nuclear issues and the complete lifting of primary and secondary US sanctions, and UN Security Council and IAEA Board of Governors resolutions

9. Reiteration of Iran’s commitment under the NPT treaty not to produce nuclear weapons

10. During the negotiation period, the US has committed not to add forces in the region and not to impose new sanctions.

11. Release of 24 billion dollars of Iran’s blocked funds during the 60-day final negotiation period. Half of this amount must be made available to Iran before the start of negotiations.

12. Formation of a supervisory mechanism to implement the agreement.

13. The final agreement will be approved by a UN Security Council resolution.

14. Final negotiations will not begin before the release of half of Iran’s blocked funds, suspension of Iran’s oil sanctions, and lifting of the naval blockade, and the final agreement will only cover the fate of enriched materials and enrichment, lifting of sanctions, and Iran’s economic reconstruction plan. Discussions about Iran’s missile program and support for resistance groups are definitively removed from the agenda.

These are two very different deals. There is no public version that has been seen by anyone reliable. Journalists report that the Trump administration is frustrated by Iran’s lying. But they won’t call it “Iran’s” lying; just “inaccurate reports.”

Let’s ignore the Iranian claims, and stipulate that the American version is accurate. (I doubt it, but that’s another story.) If this is the case, then the United States has agreed to cease combat operations against the Iranian regime in exchange for the opening of the Strait of Hormuz and the commencement of negotiations over the degree to which Iran is willing to give up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for sanctions relief. A few points:

• Iran gave up its quest for a nuclear weapon when it signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

• Iran again gave up its quest for a nuclear weapon when it signed the JCPOA.

• Iran has never admitted to having a nuclear weapons program, yet has had a nuclear effort that is inconsistent in any way with peaceful nuclear energy.

• Iran has no legal right to control the Strait of Hormuz.

So, basically—assuming everything the Trump Administration is saying is accurate and everything Iran is saying is inaccurate—we have an extension of the ceasefire and an agreement to reopen the Strait, along with hope this will pave the way for an agreement to give up, send off, or otherwise address certain elements of Iran’s nuclear program. Maybe.

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Certainly, the 13,000+ strikes on Iran’s military industrial base are not nothing. Iran’s ability to reconstitute its weapons programs is set back. Iran’s access to its nuclear materiel is unclear. However, its support for Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and others remains intact. Its stranglehold over Lebanon remains intact. Its missile program has not been mentioned. And the 42,000 Iranians murdered by the regime earlier this year? Not a mention.

Absent a nuclear deal of the kind no Iran expert of any stripe believes Tehran would agree to, it is safe to say that while the new regime in Iran has not come out of this confrontation stronger right away, it appears clear that shortly it will be much stronger. The old guard has been swept away; the IRGC is firmly in charge; Iran’s leadership has proven it can withstand the combined might of the United States and Israel; its proxy warfare is untouched; and the new Iran that rises from the ashes will be more dangerous to the United States and its allies.

Worse yet, the United States will have betrayed each of its regional allies, whether Israel, the United Arab Emirates, or Saudi Arabia, and empowered the worst of the worst: Qatar and Turkey.

Perhaps it’s not as bad as it looks. And perhaps Donald Trump will be wise enough to do what’s necessary to eliminate the threat the regime poses. But is doesn’t look like that right now. What it looks like is that version of Donald Trump that had the courage to do what was necessary to stop Iran has lost out to the Donald Trump who got bored and gave up on a war that wasn’t going as quickly as he would have liked. That bodes ill for the future.

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Meanwhile, here are the… 🎵

SHOWNOTES

• What the Hell Is Going On Podcast

• Cosmopolitics: Iran’s New Atomic Bomb

• Wondering WTH Is Going On With Iran

• Axios: Trump-Netanyahu Israel-Lebanon Call

• New York Post: Trump Confirms Netanyahu Comments on Pod Force One

• Variety: Scott Pelley CBS Evening News Work Environment

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DP: Let’s agree that neither of us has the vaguest clue what’s going on with Iran. We have a cease-fire that has been violated repeatedly, including efforts to directly target US bases. We have a President who has said Iran wants a deal, an Iran that has walked away from the negotiations, a contretemps between Trump and Bibi Netanyahu that may not have happened as described, a cease fire in Lebanon that isn’t… confusion reigns.

EL: Sigh. It’s frustrating. But what really makes me want to vomit is watching the press allow itself to be used to perpetuate the confusion, parroting Trump’s blather about how great the talks are going as if any of it actually means something. I honestly don’t know how he finds time to do any president-y stuff when he seems to spend all day on the phone spinning journalists.

And yes, Iran was stalling. But last week Trump walked away from what appeared to be an imminent deal because he was getting internal pushback over the lousy terms. Though I’m not convinced this deal is going to get any better by continued dithering. It’s only giving space for the cease-fire to fall apart.

DP: So, first on the journalist stuff. There’s a venerable, but nonetheless repulsive tradition of Washington journos being pass throughs for officials eager to shape a narrative. We know who they are, and generally, we know who’s leaking as well. But historically, such leaks are spin, not outright lies intended to propagate a false narrative. That’s now happening regularly, and there’s one particular pass through who is doing little to question whether the tales he’s being told are true. One day there will be a reckoning, I hope.

Then on the ceasefire… it has fallen apart. It’s a ceasefire in name only. Today, someone asked me what it would take for Trump to restart military operations in earnest. I had no serious answer. Now imagine what that says to the Kuwaitis – whose airport was attacked overnight – or any of our other Gulf allies in the line of fire. I get that Trump didn’t like the deal he was offered, but doesn’t want to abandon the ceasefire. But the people he should be offloading are not those providing military options to persuade Iran; he should be offloading Steve Witkoff, whose main job appears to be leaking spurious stories to Axios.

EL: What has he been telling them for the past month since he agreed to the ceasefire while Iran has continued to strike across the Gulf? We’ve discussed this before: Trump agreed to a ceasefire too quickly without securing much of anything in return and clearly has little interest in returning to serious military strikes. I think some of our allies will end up seeking their own accommodations with Iran to avoid further attacks. That doesn’t just weaken our leverage over Iran – but our broader position in the region, and probably the world.

DP: Totally agree. This is why our allies in the Gulf and in Israel are beside themselves; and why Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman is making a lot of bad bets on Turkey and Egypt. Because everyone is worried that Washington is completely feckless. Frankly, it’s not clear to me how this ends well at this point. Trump is getting the JCPOA minus. And while he thinks we can continue to sit in the region and let Iran twist in the wind, attacks like the one on Kuwait suggest the Iranians will use the opportunity to shape attitudes.

EL: Let me close the loop on Iran shaping the narrative. Trump is doing the work for them. The other day he said he “didn’t care” if negotiations were over because they were getting “boring.” (BTW, this is exactly what Putin predicted would happen with Ukraine.)

On Netanyahu, Trump sees Lebanon as getting in the way of a deal with Iran, at least for today. And Bibi isn’t doing what he wants, which clearly infuriates him. Both sides have acknowledged it was a tough conversation, but I’m not convinced the call was quite as profanity-laced as advertised. My guess is the WH is channeling their inner Trump to portray him as tough.

DP: No need to guess. Someone on the call labeled the narrative a lie. And this is less about Lebanon and more about screwing Netanyahu in the coming Israeli election. Here’s the bottom line on Iran: Either the President restarts kinetic operations and opens the Gulf, hits Iran’s remaining targets, and chokes a deal out of Tehran, or we end up in limbo with the war looking for all intents and purposes like a crazy idea. That’s apparently what the House of Representatives thinks, and it’s hard to blame them. Fixing this is up to DJT.

EL: I vote for #1 but fear we are headed toward #2. Like many things with him, the original idea isn’t always crazy, but the execution, and the messaging, almost always are. Sigh.

And don’t forget…

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Let’s assume most of this article’s readers think the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 was a bad thing. Perhaps you don’t like Israel’s response. Perhaps you wish Israel had gone further. But generally speaking, you frown on wanton murder, rape, kidnapping, and terrorism.

Let’s also assume that as a taxpayer — and most of us are — you frown on subsidizing the aforementioned murder, rape, kidnapping, and terrorism.

Let’s round out this litany of virtues and note that you probably like the idea of justice being served to those who engage in murder, rape, kidnapping, and terrorism. Maybe you’re the kind of person who applauds Israel hunting down every single Hamas terrorist involved with October 7, and killing them. (I am.) But at the very least, you think that those accused of such crimes should face a jury of their peers, a judge, or some legal equivalent.

Guess who disagrees? Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations. Guess who helps pay Mr. Guterres’ $420,000 per annum salary? If you guessed the United States taxpayer pays the biggest chunk, you’d be right.

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But let’s begin at the beginning, with less click-baity lures. Israel provided significant information to the United Nations indicating that employees of the United Nations Relief Works Agency, a UN aid agency that works solely for Palestinian “refugees,” were commanders and members of Hamas who participated in October 7.

After substantial resistance, the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS, the UN’s own internal inspector general) opened an investigation, ultimately targeting 19 individuals who worked for UNRWA. Nine (or perhaps 11, more on this later) were dismissed; two were dead; one was a case of mistaken identity; and the remainder were deemed kosher due to lack of evidence.

Here’s what Brett Schaefer and I wrote on the topic of UNRWA complicity in a recent Dispatch article 🎁:

The remit of the Palestinian-focused United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) includes assistance, basic education, healthcare, and social services, but its collaboration with Hamas has long been well known. Hamas stored weapons in UNRWA schools and hospitals and located its tunnels and headquarters below them for protection, and has done so with ease given the overlap between UNRWA officials and senior Hamas militants. More recently, however, documentary evidence shows extensive Hamas infiltration and manipulation beyond UNRWA to include other international humanitarian organizations and non-governmental organizations.

Notwithstanding pressure from the United States, it was clear from the outset that OIOS wasn’t into the mission to investigate UNRWA. Better still, OIOS investigated only direct participants in October 7. Other UNRWA employees who are card carrying Hamas members, replete with military rank etc, were ignored.

Why aren’t we sure how many UNRWA employees were fired? Because OIOS, notwithstanding having agreed to share the results with the US, refused to share an unredacted version of their investigation. All the names have been blacked out. But the UN’s own desultory investigation was enough for the International Court of Justice, which claimed that Israel has not “proven” UNRWA complicity in October 7, and therefore must allow the group access to Gaza.

It’s all something of a farce.

Luckily, an office that is unfamiliar to most is on the job. The U.S. Agency for International Development — USAID, abolished under Trump and subsumed into the State Department — has its own IG that has its own independent authority and can’t be abolished. It now works within State and is investigating UNRWA’s role in October 7. Marc and I hosted USAID OIG acting Associate Deputy Inspector General Adam Kaplan on the pod to go through chapter and verse.

USAID OIG is not only scrubbing all of the available video and documentation to investigate UNRWA complicity, it’s investigating whether UNWRA officials were simultaneously working for Hamas. So far, reports suggest there are more than1500 UNRWA employees who are also card carrying Hamas members.

Listen to the whole pod for all of the sordid details.

Now let’s take all of this UN indifference one step further. Certain members of the United Nations staff enjoy privileges and immunities under a treaty with the United States. Others, however, should enjoy only what is called “functional immunity.” In essence, full P&I means if Guterres chooses to murder his wife and his undersecretaries general, he has immunity from prosecution. Others, however, only enjoy immunity for their work; so if someone in the United States wants to sue UNRWA teachers for teaching antisemitism, they can’t, because teaching (antisemitism is just the bonus education) is indeed part of UNRWA’s remit.

However, UNRWA’s remit says nothing about murder, rape, terrorism, or kidnapping. So, presumably, those UNRWA employees doing the murdering, raping, terrorizing, and kidnapping weren’t actually acting as UNRWA employees. And thus, arguing they have full immunity is a stretch. Nonetheless, that is what the Biden administration argued when suit was brought by American October 7 victims and their families. Trump’s Justice Department reversed that claim, only to see the judge in the case, Judge Analisa Torres (Obama appointee), assert UNRWA has full immunity.

Congress is now working overtime — no, really — to ensure that no more money goes to the United Nations absent a commitment to full disclosure of any and all information requested by the USG. And Congress is mooting legislation requiring all signed agreements on disclosure prior to disbursement of grants to the UN.

One final note: Some are uninterested in the crime and punishment of UNRWA. But the United Nation’s argument for impunity extends to charges of rape and abuse against World Health ORganization officials in ebola response; human trafficking, rape, and abandonment by peacekeepers; embezzlement; and more. In some of these cases, officials have been fired or forced out. But the United Nations and development organizations are free to hire them notwithstanding. Because the UN is one big get out of jail free card. And we’re paying for it.

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TRANSCRIPT

Q: So, is it true that employees of UNWRA were members of Hamas and were participating in the October 7th attacks? Give us the details. What do we know, and what has the UN done or not done about it?

AK: It’s a great question. USAID Office of Inspector-General and just a little housekeeping here. I speak personally and my views do not necessarily represent the views of USAID IG, but happy to talk about this important issue. UNWRA, we got involved in mid to late 2024, and while UNRWA was not funded by USAID, it was funded by the Department of State. The reason that the USAID Inspector-General, which is a statutorily independent law enforcement agency distinct from USAID and we continue to be in existence, we appreciate the support of Congress in ensuring that this work that we’ll talk about today can continue.

With UNRWA in mid-2024, our fear is based on what we have seen in past humanitarian responses where the same individuals who had committed misconduct with either fraud, corruption, sexual exploitation and abuse in the case of WHO doctors during the initial Ebola response in the DRC, that they would recirculate. So, they may be punished by whatever UN agency they worked for and committed the misconduct if discovered. But then they would jump around and you’d start to see them at World Food Program. You start to see at UNICEF and jump one to the next to the next to the next or into the NGO sector.

And I use these as organizations hypothetically, but you could see them next to Save the Children or Mercy Corps or IRC. So, when we saw the reports on UNRWA, again, not funded by USAID, but their very real fear was that these same terrorists would jump from UNRWA to organizations that USAID could conceivably fund in the Gaza response. So, we initiated an independent investigation. First, we went up to New York. We asked the UN OIOS, their investigative body for a copy of their report. They gave us a highly redacted version where the subject’s names were redacted, which was totally useless for us. So, we opened up our own independent investigation where through various sources-

Q: So, we are funding a quarter roughly of the UN’s budget and they wouldn’t give us the names of the people involved in our inspector-general office in charge of investigating this?

AK: That is correct. They also wouldn’t share it with the US Mission to the United Nations. They would not release the names of individuals that they had found and it was a convoluted legal description that may have potentially possibly conceivably participated in the October 7th terrorist attacks. So, we got nothing from that other than a bunch of redactions of names. Again, useless to us, which is why we opened up our own matter and through our own sources, methods, channels, independent means, we have thus far referred 21 individuals that were either affiliated that we, the USAIG deems were affiliated with the October 7th terrorist attacks, including the murder of Americans and Israelis and/or Hamas members.

And that investigation is expanding, this was the first 21, the suspension debarment officer blacklisted the first, for the first time ever, blacklisted a UN official Hafez Mousa Almusa, who was a UNRWA school principal who also commanded the East Jabalia Battalion on October 7th.

Q: Reports from Capitol Hill claim that up to 1,500 members of UNRWA, are also members of Hamas. Is that what you have found?

AK: Yeah. Well, let me put it this way. I will not contradict that congressional source on that. I will also say this, back to the OIOS investigation, what they only looked at was potential UNRWA affiliated staff’s involvement in the October 7th terrorist attacks. The scope of the investigation was narrow in that they did not look at Hamas membership within ... If you’re a dual hat, you’re a Hamas military member and/or you’re a UNRWA staff. They limited their investigation, the UN investigative body, which reports to the secretary-general, limited to October 7th participation. Our investigation does not needlessly narrow the scope.

If you’re a member of Hamas and you work for a US funded aid organization, and what I said before to Marc, that you could jump around to one, to the next, to the next, next. No US taxpayer should be funding the salary of a Hamas member whose moonlighting is an aid worker. And remember on their resume, it may be a great resume. They may be a food distributor, there may be a logistician, they may be a principal and educator, have a great resume. They probably won’t put on the top of it that they’re a Hamas card carrying Hamas member of the East Jabalia Battalion on that resume. So, our investigation goes far beyond what the UN looked into and only in their case found nine out of 19 and 10 out of 19 participate in October 7th terrorist attacks. We believe it’s many more than that, but our broader investigation to Dany’s question, it is more expansive, it looks at Hamas ties.

Q: According to the United Nations, Hamas is not a terrorist organization, right? So, card-carrying membership in Hamas for the United Nations is not job-disqualifying, is it?

AK: I will give you an example. I remember being in Jerusalem in January 2025, USAID IG investigators, we held a fraud awareness forum for UN agencies and NGOs that were receiving over $1 billion of aid for the Gaza response. We had previously identified that USAID did not vet UN staff performing US government funded awards. The UN was exempted from going through USAID’s partner vetting process that NGOs and contractors had to go through. So, we asked the question to the UN agencies. We said, “Well, if the US government is reliant on you all to do your own vetting and screening for terrorist ties, describe it a little bit.”

And if an applicant for a position had in his Zoom background, a big Hamas flag that said, “Long live October 7th,” would that preclude that individual from being hired? A couple said, “Yes, this would be a problem with the neutrality.” One agency said, “No, that would flat out not preclude us from hiring that individual to work for us on an aid project because Hamas is not a UN designated terrorist organization.

Q: Why not?

AK: They would say that it’s up to the member states to go through the UN Security Council to put Hamas on the sanctions list, which we know the challenges in doing so. But the fact remains that because Hamas is not on the UN sanctions list, therefore a UN agency could reasonably make a decision to bring that person on board despite a Hamas affiliation. They’ll tell you they won’t do that, but we know it’s happening.

Q: Congress requires vetting to take place, and yet vetting isn’t taking place. So, how is Congress writing checks when that legal requirement is not satisfied?

AK: I think Congress can tighten further and include language about international organizations. So, there’s certain vetting legislation that was taken on by USAID, which I’d say was more expensive than what State Department had that required NGOs and it was partner vetting is only in seven specific locations. So, if you’re out of those seven, then there’s no vetting at all. If you’re within the seven, which would include Gaza and the West Bank, Syria, Afghanistan, Lebanon, et cetera, you would only get this, have to vet if you’re an NGO, you’re Save the Children, you’re key personnel, so, you’re C-suite people.

If you’re a contractor, your general counsel to see if they’re affiliated with a terrorist group. If you’re the UN, nobody, nobody has to get vetted. If you’re a UN staffer, you do not have to go through the US mandated screening processes. I think you will see legislation very soon. Folks on the Hill have identified this gap that the USAID IG has presented in its reports. We just did one specifically to the West Bank in Gaza flagging the high risk that is presented by a lack of vetting of UN personnel. And I imagine there will be a response to that.

Q: How much US taxpayer money has, in various ways, gone to Hamas?

AK: It’s a great question, I’ve seen several statistics on it. What I’ll tell you, there’s a lot of reliance and especially places like Gaza where no US diplomats can get to on a routine basis, if at all. Same applies for Eastern Ukraine and other what we call non-permissive environments. I’d say the flaw in relying, the challenge is relying on implementers. So, eight organizations included in the UN to self-report instances of diversion to Hamas and other terrorist organizations. I saw a piece last year in Reuters where it was some non-OIG officials were saying, “Well, Hamas, there’s never been any reports of Hamas interference of aid diversion in Gaza.”

And we said, “Hang on a second. If you’re only relying on a sanitized report from an aid organization, which maybe for good reason out of fear, out of security reasons, don’t want to identify that the guys with guns who commandeered the convoy were Hamas, they didn’t wear an H on their jacket that said they were Hamas, but come on.

Hogwarts, Harry Potter, it could be anything, but they solely rely on a sanitized disclosure is incomplete. And when we have aid workers or other organizations or whistleblowers coming and say, “Of course, this was Hamas that interfered, or there were Hamas members on staff.” In this particular program, whichever region of Gaza, then we intake that information. So, we received independent ... You have to draw a contrast between what the UN is going to self-report, which again, they may have reason, political reason or security reasons and not saying the H word. But we get that information from other sources, especially those brave enough to come forward.

Q: Even with the UN’s special “privileges and immunities”, can they be taken to court by the United States if they are responsible for killing Americans? What’s the position of the UN, and what’s the position of the US government?

AK: We’re certainly going to try and I think there’s willing folks on the Department of Justice and Department of Justice who are going to look very carefully at this issue. We face it every day though, Dany, every single day, because it comes not in the instance of the drunk driver in Turtle Bay. It happens in the UN agency’s performance of what we call voluntary contribution. So, these are grants and these are grants for UN agencies, World Food Program, UNICEF, IOM, you can go down the list to execute US funded humanitarian assistance programs across the world. And when we feel the most frustration is when we receive pushback from UN agencies or UN lawyers.

I’m a lawyer myself, I love this battle and I like winning this battle or presenting the challenge to those who in Congress who can fix it is where the immediate reflexive answer to, “Hi, we are the USAID Inspector-General with oversight jurisdiction of foreign assistance programs. We believe there’s been a massive sexual exploitation scandal in the DRC during the Ebola response where doctors are involved. Can you please share their names and all accompanying information related to your investigation?” If the answer and when the answer is, “We cannot because of privileges and immunities,” you really take a step back.

It shocks the conscience that they would not share information related to individuals who have defrauded, scammed, abused, harmed, physically harmed, engaged in terrorist activities. And when the response is, “We cannot share information with the member state, the primary member donor state funding this particular agency. We can’t share it with the oversight arm. We can just tell you it was Mr. X, he did a bad thing.” Well, what are we supposed to do with that? So, it’s a constant source of frustration.

Q: Are there any success stories you can share?

AK: I’ll tell you a little bit of good news and I was just in New York this week meeting with UN Office of Legal Affairs and presenting this idea that the UN agencies don’t, if they’re going to share information with OIG investigators, they can do so and they should do so without prejudice.

They can assert their privilege and immunities some other day into some other court forum. But for our purposes, we want to do the initial investigation. We want to get boots on the ground, we want to look at whether there’s been embezzlement, fraud, corruption, diversion, trafficking, abuse, all of those elements of misconduct and get an initial sense. We don’t want to rely on the UN investigative bodies to take 14 to 16 months to share information and then tell us they can only share this much because of privileges and immunities. We don’t want evidence to be destroyed, we don’t want people to leave or we want to interview.

So, we want the UN to accept this novel agreement where they share information with us, the IG at the outset of an investigation. They can do their privileges and immunities discussion later, give it to us now.

Q: How do privileges and immunities protect you if you are a murderer? How can that be?

AK: It’s bizarre. If you’re a criminal investigator working for the USAID IG and you can receive information readily because there’s strings attached to funding through NGOs, there are strings attached applying to contractors with the UN when they consider themselves special. But remember, Dany, they are a grantee, they should be subject to the same oversight and accountability mechanisms as a NGO based in Oregon or Missouri or New York or a contractor based in D.C., but they are asserting as a grantee those broader privileges and immunities that apply to the UN without regard to the member state oversight body’s interest in conducting its own investigation into misuse or abuse of US taxpayer dollars.

Q: How are “privileges and immunities” justified?

AK: Sometimes they’ll be more transparent when it’s related to a sub-awardee. Some third-tier sub-recipient committed, there’s a bidding bribery collusion scheme in East Africa. They’ll say, “Okay, we’ll give you the information related to that sub-awardee.” The issue is, Marc, is the closer, the higher up you get on the UN flagpole, the more resistant they are really to protecting their own staff and those equities. So, when it’s some random NGO in Africa that committed the crime against involving US dollars, more open. Less open or the Ethiopia food diversion scandal, it took 14 months to pry information where we strongly believe that UN officials were complicit in a wide scale pre and post distribution scandal involving US donated commodities to Ethiopia.

Q: So, what tools do we have to compel them for information? We’re the biggest donor, right? Can we not leverage their finances?

AK: Yeah, this is why I may as well set up an office on Capitol Hill because these are the exact questions that members of Congress are authorizing committees or appropriating committees are asking us routinely. And what does Congress need to do to make condition awards to the United Nations on transparency, accountability, cooperation, not asserting privileges and immunities in certain cases, especially when it involves the October 7th terrorist attacks and obtaining names of those who murdered Americans on that day. We are here to inform policymakers and based on our years of investigations in this space, a lot of successes, a lot of frustrations, but either way we provide that information to those in power and they can do what they’re empowered to do and create appropriations or authorizing language to fix it.

Q: So, who has been looking into this? Is this something that the State Department IG was theoretically tasked with?

AK: I don’t know, I can’t speak for the State IG. I know that the USAID IG has been very aggressive. House Foreign Affairs Committee recently said, “We’ve been at the forefront of these investigations involving UN accountability and misuse of US taxpayer dollars that have gone towards fraud, corruption, those who have been raping beneficiaries, those who’ve been brought on staff that have conducted terrorist attacks.” We’re really proud of this work and it comes with a lot of frustrations, but we also, the USAID IG, we do not take no for an answer. So, when a UN attorney comes back and says, “There’s no conceivable way we can share information about rape in Congo during the Ebola response or to UNRWA terrorist affiliations with Hamas on October 7th.”

We’re going to always take that next step, we’re always going to dig deeper. We have sources, methods, channels across the world. We’re the only IG with foreign service investigators and audit staff in overseas posts, including Israel and Ukraine, that you have to be on the ground to catch this stuff and identify it and know the people problem schemes that impact US taxpayer funded aid. So, we are very happy to be at the forefront in this role, even if frustrating at times.

Q: Is this just another matter of anti-Israel bias in the UN? Are they protecting the Jew haters?

AK: Look, in the case of UNRWA, we asked at the outset, they said,” Well, they fired a number of staff.” And we said, “Well, can you share the names of who you fired?” And they said, “Sorry, we’re unable. Here’s the template of the termination notice.” And we said, “Well, that does us no good.” And I would say it’s the same level of resistance to the rapists in Congo, sadly or not sadly, that when it comes to those who’ve committed gross misconduct and we know that it ties back to US taxpayer funded assistance, the guardrails go up and the propensity to just say, “No, it’s not possible to share information with US law enforcement.”

We’ve heard every excuse and rationalization in the book. Some UN agencies are more transparent than others. We’ve had recent positive discussions with World Food Program and UNICEF, but there are other agencies who will just say, “Not possible.” It’s going to be a 14-month period before we conduct our own investigation at which point we’ll have a massive dispute over privileges and immunities and maybe three to six years later you’ll get the results. That does no one any good, it does’ no one any good and there’s [inaudible 00:30:59]-

Q: Can we not just withhold their finances for the same amount of time they delay investigations?

AK: There’s certainly language in the House Appropriations Bill that gets very close to that.

Q: The Trump administration signed a memorandum of understanding with UNOCHA? What is it?

AK: Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Q: They have given over $2 billion, no strings attached, to UNOCHA. What do you make of that?

AK: We’ve been vocal in identifying general challenges with humanitarian assistant going through UN agencies, whether it’s their vetting, whether it’s the independence of their investigative bodies. We’ve been very vocal, including in testimony I gave to the House Foreign Affairs Committee in March about the challenges with aid through UN agencies. Certainly, happy to ... We have informed them on challenges with OCHA and all UN agencies in terms of their capacity to investigate their vetting procedures, their level of cooperation specifically with the inspector-general. We have been the ones doing these investigations over the years of UN agencies. So, we have quite a dossier of those who have been cooperative and those who have not. So, we certainly share that information with those interested.

Q: So, who would you say are the worst miscreants of the corruption of foreign aid distribution?

AK: The further away you get from a US-based implementer, so when I say implement, it’s the creative way of just the industry way of saying aid organization. The further away you get, the more challenging it is and there are more games that people can play. And I said this last month at House Foreign Affairs, if you’re Mercy Corps and you’re based in Oregon, well, there’s clear jurisdiction, we can subpoena you for your records. We can haul you into court in almost any venue in the United States. Your second bucket would be foreign NGOs. And we hear from British NGOs all the time, or we can’t possibly share information with you because of the European general data privacy regulation.

And it’s like you can’t share the information of a guy who we believe stole $300,000 of US aid in Syria. You can’t share that information, we’ve found ways around that, we’re very creative. I’m like, “Why don’t you look at these derogations under the GDPR to do it. You can do it.” Just think outside the box because we need that information and if you don’t share it for us, we can’t come and beat it out of you, but we certainly can tell Congress and we certainly can tell those.

Q: Who is the least transparent?

AK: The least transparent though is the United Nations and for all the reasons I described and aid that’s also going through foreign governments, additional challenges. So, that’s why you need an aggressive IG that is on the ground in places where if we’re not getting information from the recipient aid organization, we still can get it from whistleblowers. That can be a disgruntled spouse, it can be a fired employee who was terminated for reporting internally through the UN’s hotline. We’ve heard aid workers working for the UN saying, “We’ve been told directly we can’t share information,” this is in Somalia. “We can’t share information with you guys, otherwise we’ll be fired. We have to go through our own internal channels.”

Why? You should have a direct line and we’re very aggressive in marketing in many, many different languages. The ability of aid workers and individuals who want to come forward and do the right thing safely confidentially report allegations to us, USAID IG, so that we can independently investigate and bypass a lot of the resistance discussed today. So, a lot of missed grants is really sad when you see people trying to exploit aid designed to assist the most vulnerable people on earth, but there are those creatures out there. I’ve seen some of the most vile predators who are trying to steal, abuse from beneficiaries or use their positions to embed themselves with aid organizations, but being terrorists on the side.

Q: When you look at our overall aid dollars, how much of that money is actually getting to people versus paying comfortable salaries for the aid bureaucracy?

AK: Look, they call it NICRA as the Negotiated Indirect Cost Rate Agreement. It’s probably one of those least sexy, least understandable things done but it’s critical because of the vast amount of overhead charges that occur. And it’s vital that any agency that is the primary US agency responsible for setting that overhead rate across the government is really watching it closely and understanding that there’s no double dipping, there’s no time sheets that are being grossly inflated for work that has nothing to do with the US funded award, just we have cases on both. So yes, there’s the product substitution where you’re giving spoiled animal feed in substituting that for edible things that refugees or IDBs can actually eat.

We’ve seen the product substitution blankets that are falling apart intended for Syrian refugees in the winter. There’s that actual fraud and corruption in the program itself. But to your point, Marc, yeah, on a structural level, and this is where you need the right people to oversee the specific grant or contract to ensure that a very complex indirect cost rate scenario is that there’s compliance with it, there’s tracking of it and that there’s not illegal or untoward charges that are being foisted back on taxpayers and taking away from intended recipients.

Q: Do we dictate the percentage of the money that has to actually go to services versus their overhead when we do these contracts with NGOs?

AK: Yeah, they set a rate, it’s negotiated. USAID with the large NGOs was setting that rate as a whole, we did an audit where I think about a year and a half ago where we found that USAID, after setting the rate, their means of tracking and verifying costs built to overhead or indirect costs was really lacked accountability and lacked a verifiable means and we urge the agency to tighten up, hire more people to track this stuff. It’s highly complicated and when anything, something’s highly complicated involving a lot of math, you have outside parties who want to try and play games. And again, absent in that organization is not going to be the one to report it to us.

It’s going to be whistleblowers aid workers who say it could be something called a qui tam under the False Claims Act where if you blow the whistle, you get a cut of the government’s recovery. Great, that’s a great incentive and people do come forward, especially on those indirect cost cases. So, if you’re an aid organization and you’re listening to this, know that you have staff who are very smart and are tracking indirect cost rates and will come forward and report it. So, you may as well self-report before we get it from another source.

Q: During the last year of the Biden administration, we gave the UN $18 billion. And that money is not institutionalized, is it, Adam? How do we prevent waste, fraud, and abuse?

AK: No. When you have money that’s going out to highly complex, non-permissive, unreachable environments and it’s being administered through either an NGO, a contractor, or we didn’t even talk about the World Bank with Ukraine. And billions of dollars that may go through World Bank trust funds where you can keep saying the magic words while there’s oversight built in and there are mechanisms built in to it. We just did an audit of USAIDs programming in Ukraine and funding for Deloitte and KPMG to conduct programmatic audits and financial statement audits either were grossly delayed or just not done at all.

So, you do need an independent and aggressive IG looking at foreign assistance programming who again knows the implementers and knows the problems and schemes and can call out misconduct at just a hunch that a allegation about a $3,000 loss in Nigeria reported by an implementer can become $30,000 and probably is $300,000 and probably quite possibly we’ll get to $3 million if not detected early and investigated early. And just because it’s a $3,000 loss doesn’t mean that you just can’t look into it because there’s no criminal ... It can expand very rapidly and we have to get the bad actors out of the aid sector. They are absolutely compromising aid intended for those most in need and creating massive reputational risks for the United States government that’s funding these programs.

Q: How about the famous case where UNRWA paid hundreds of millions of dollars to build a water system for Gaza and then used it to build rocket launchers. Did you guys investigate that? How much of just the aid that we gave through UNRWA to Gaza for humantitarian needs went to support terror?

AK: I’ll tell you this. UNRWA was funded by the Department of State. If UNRWA was funded by USAID, so I would defer all those questions at the time to the State Department IG as to what they looked into. The reason we got involved in UNRWA from the USAID perspective is if UNRWA was say World Food Program, we would have been all over that from our side, all over that misuse taxpayer dollars.

But with UNRWA, the reason we got involved is the high likelihood in that we’ve led this investigation. We’ve been the IG looking into this is the very real risk of recirculation given the United Nations lacks vetting and screening procedures. And we also conducted an investigation called Operations Stop the Carousel where we ask UN agencies directly, six of them plus ICRC. We ask them, “Can you share the names of your staff so we can run them through our own US vetting mechanisms?” Do you want to guess what the response was? It’s two letters, privileges and Ps and I’s. We are unable to share information regarding staff despite their likely working on US funded awards.

So, I expected that. I packaged it up, we sent it to Congress and they are considering all remedial measures to ensure that we have access to that information and there’s no reason that the USAID IG should lack information from the UN just because the UN, if we can get it from Save the Children, we should be able to get it from a UN agency.

Q: This has been going on for decades, though. Are we to blame for ignoring it and continuing to subsidize it?

AK: Well, look, as long as USAID IG is around to conduct these investigations and do this important work, we are absolutely going to continue pursuing this critical work and flagging shortcomings, vulnerabilities, abusers, fraudsters, terrorists, sex traffickers, anyone who violates the trust of American taxpayers whose generosity is exploited by these folks. We are here for this work, we are statutorily independent, we have law enforcement authority and we’re more than happy to do this on behalf of the American people.

Listen to the pod here.

Full transcript here.

SHOWNOTES

UN Watch Welcomes U.S. Appeals Court Order Reinstating Sanctions on Francesca Albanese (UN Watch, May 23, 2026)

UN Watch (Twitter, May 19, 2026)

UN Watch Urges Security Council to Block Bachelet’s Bid for Secretary-General (UN Watch, May 19, 2026)

UN Watch Twitter (March 18, 2026)

Written Statement of Adam D. Kaplan, Associate Deputy Inspector General, for U.S. House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Intelligence Hearing on “Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in Foreign Assistance: Lessons Learned and Charting a Path Forward” (Written Testimony, March 17, 2026)

The U.N. Still Refuses to Police Itself (Danielle Pletka and Brett Schafer, The Dispatch, May 20, 2026)

Leveraging US Funding and Influence for Reform in the United Nations (Brett Schafer, Written Testimony, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, April 29, 2026)

SHOWNOTES

• Ceasefire Selfies in the Strait

• What the Hell Is Going On?

• New Study Confirms the Right — and the Center — Have Nearly Disappeared from Faculty Politics

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But on Thursday, we’re going to hit the IRS slush fund, the Paxton endorsement, the results from Tuesday’s Massie primary, doubtless more Iran, and maybe even a cocktail. If anyone knows where we can find Umenoyado Lychee liquor, there’s some HTHH love in it for you. 🍸

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SHOWNOTES

• Trump, Xi, and History’s Oldest Trap

• WTH: No, We’re Not Losing in Iran... Yet

• This Is Who Nicholas Kristof Is

• The New York Times’ Miscarriage of Journalism

• America250 | American Enterprise Institute

• Meet the Future by Kevin Cirilli

COSMOPOLITICS

WTH

No, again, the war with Iran is not lost. It could be, but it ain’t over yet. As usual, all is in the hands of President Donald Trump. And as usual, the most serious obstacles to victory are to be found in the choices Trump makes: People, planning, and purpose.

People

Beyond the machinations within the Trump administration (JD Vance, his cronies at DoD, their concerted leaking campaigns), once again, the President’s choice for key negotiator on some of the most critical national security threats of his term is costing him time, costing the United States taxpayer money, and risking defeat. Steve Witkoff, who may not be a terrible person, is nonetheless a terrible negotiator, immodest when modesty is imperative, ill-advised by his sole key adviser — himself, inexperienced on basic questions (the nature of the Iranian regime; the nature of Vladimir Putin), and a serial leaker, too often manipulating his audience against the President’s objectives. (And yes, Mr. Witkoff, journalists are dreadful gossips.)

Similarly, on the tangential, but critical question of Lebanon and Hezbollah, Donald Trump’s go-to guy, Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, gets almost everything wrong. He’s a big fan of Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He’s insufficiently critical of Syrian leader Ahmad al Sharaa. He’s confused about what matters in Lebanon. And like so many inside the Trump team, weirdly, he can’t stand Bibi Netanyahu, and he lets it affect his judgment. Ranting in favor of a ceasefire that allows Hezbollah to rebuild isn’t solving the Lebanon problem; it’s exacerbating it.

Meanwhile, it is not clear who chose Pakistan as the main interlocutor between the United States and Iran, but Pakistan (the country that hosted Bin Laden for years) is clearly on Team Iran. That’s an own goal by the Trump administration, and whether or not Pakistan was recommended by Saudi Arabia, the bottom line is that someone should have known better.

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Then there are the folks at DoD. Generally speaking, I have the highest regard for our men and women in uniform, and somewhat less regard for the civilian leaders in this administration. Too many inside DoD are spending time propitiating the President and his whims, catering to their various cronies inside the White House, and otherwise not doing the necessary job of prosecuting the war, selling the war, and defending the war inside and outside the administration.

And then there’s the top guy himself. Unlike so many, I am deeply grateful to Donald Trump for making hard decisions. He deserves enormous credit for making the call on Iran in the first place. But his waffling is frustrating and counterproductive. Because there is no chain of command or process within the Trump administration, the President is buffeted by his mates and cronies, swinging wildly from one position to the next. Are we in a ceasefire or not? Is Hormuz important or is it not? The nukes must all go, or not? We support the Iranian people, or not? Iranian sponsorship of terrorism matters, or doesn’t? Hezbollah must be eliminated, or not? Kharg? UAE and Saudi security? Regime change? Unconditional surrender?

In every instance in the list above, the President has taken one and the other position, often sequentially. It’s exhausting for those of us watching; imagine being in the Gulf, or being in the military, or, honestly, being in Iran… I get that the President likes to keep his enemies on their toes. But our allies are also whiplashed from side to side.

Planning

There’s too much loose and uninformed talk going around Washington DC about a failure to plan the campaign in Iran. Most of it is hogwash. The Pentagon has been planning for an all out war in Iran for at least two decades. That, after all, is their job. And contrary to the far left media narrative, Hormuz wasn’t a surprise. There was a plan. But we are a democracy, and that plan needs to be approved by the Commander in Chief. See above.

Similarly, we have neither run out of nor are we going to run out of interceptors. Yes, we have a serious problem with ammo, and yes, we should have solved it long ago, and yes this is a wake up call for a war with China. But no, Iran isn’t about to have control of the air, or much else, anytime soon. Note that the “interceptor stockpile” narrative that was on the front pages has now disappeared.

Indeed, the bottom line about America and Israel’s progress in the war against Iran is that the country and much of its leadership have been devastated. As one of my favorite Substack authors, John Spencer, writes, survival and victory are two different things. Here’s an snip from his excellent analysis:

The scale of military destruction alone is extraordinary. Much of the senior leadership structure that spent decades constructing Iran’s regional military network is dead. Senior IRGC commanders, missile force leaders, intelligence officials, nuclear scientists, operational planners, and even the Supreme Leader himself have been eliminated. Mohammad Bagheri, Hossein Salami, and other senior figures who represented the institutional backbone of Iran’s military strategy are gone. Entire command relationships were shattered during the opening phases of the war, leaving surviving leaders scrambling to maintain continuity while under constant pressure.

The damage extends far beyond personnel losses. Nuclear facilities that represented decades of investment and strategic ambition now sit buried under rubble after sustained strikes on enrichment sites, underground complexes, centrifuge production facilities, research centers, and supporting infrastructure. Analysts continue to speak as though Iran can simply restart enrichment at industrial scale in a matter of months. That misunderstands what was destroyed. Advanced centrifuge production depends on precision manufacturing, specialized tooling, secure facilities, trained personnel, supply chains, and protected infrastructure. Large portions of that ecosystem no longer exist.

Planning-wise, if the aim was to weaken Iran and its proxies across the board, that has happened. There is no sector in which Iran is prevailing, and its clear that the regime is beset by internal fighting that is handicapping decision-making and leadership. Slips in the timeline have been driven by mixed messaging from Trump and the inevitable realities of the gap between planning and combat.

But planning is not simply military strategy and tactics. Planning is informed by the intentions behind the war. And thus, planning cannot be distinguished from the other problem endemic in the Trump administration:

Purpose

It remains unclear what the President of the United States wants from this war. And that endgame is critical to our military war-planning, and the planning for an end to the war. Similarly, the President appears to have few plans about how to keep the American public on side about the conflict. Sure, we can ride the economic storm, which is far less significant than most newspapers of record would have you believe — the last time gas prices were “this high” was, er, 2022, when prices topped $5 a gallon; we can also manage the bickering among allies; the fracturing political alliances, such as they are, and more. What will be harder to manage is an outcome that looks little like the one Trump advertised.

If we don’t get the nuclear “dust”, don’t permanently stop uranium enrichment, don’t get limits on missiles, don’t actually “change” the regime, don’t end up with Iran yielding back control of Hormuz, and don’t end up with much at all — something that seemed highly possible last week — then it won’t just be Donald Trump who sacrifices his credibility. It will be the United States of America.

In short, it would be good if we had a clear and public plan. A speech would be nice. Apart from anything else, a clear and decisive speech from the President would give him a roadmap to set his own expectations, a clear set of bones on which his administration could hang its policies, and our adversaries and allies alike a sense of what the future may bring.

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I have written that should the war with Iran end with the transformation of the regime, the end of the regime, or, at the very least, a clear plan to remove Iran’s nuclear weapons materiel and manufacturing, limit the range of its missiles, and eliminate its support for its terrorist proxies, Donald Trump could count himself as one of the most transformational and consequential presidents in decades.

But the reverse is also true. If the President simply loses interest, decides it’s too hard, settles for a JCPOA-style deal with Iran, or otherwise punts on what he has suggested are his essential goals, then Iran, Russia, China (our enemies), and Israel, the Gulf, Europe, and non-Chinese Asia will be persuaded that the United States is indeed a paper tiger. Remember that Trump himself told us that had he been president in 2022, Putin would not have invaded Ukraine. That is believable, but should Iran end poorly, Trump risks being a Biden all over again.

If our adversaries become satisfied that America’s president no longer has the appetite to manage the security of the global commons in times of crisis, Ukraine may well be the least of our problems. Putin could eye the Baltics. China will take Taiwan. Europe will be at risk, as will South Korea, Japan and beyond. The domino effect was real in the Cold War, and Trump signaling weakness could start the pieces falling once again.

Much depends on Trump’s decisions in the coming weeks. He has the guts and the vision to carry victory through. He also has the capriciousness and the ADD to screw it up royally. It would be good if someone he listens to could help him see that America’s role in the world and his place in history hang in the balance.

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SHOWNOTES

• A war with Iran could be the end of Islamism

• Elise Labott on the shifting dynamics of Middle East diplomacy

• Live with Elise Labott: Lebanon on the Brink

• The War Powers Resolution won’t stop Trump from going to war with Iran

• The Quiet Work of the King’s Speech

• Moving on from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

• WTH: X vs. Bluesky—The Battle for the Future of Social Media

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Above is a fabulous summary of my recent article in the Washington Post (with excellent additions on the Biden immigration legacy), created by my friend Freedom’s Avenger (definitely subscribe) . My piece was prompted by the arrest for deportation of the late IRGC Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani’s niece Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter. Now, on the face of it, a family member of someone with American blood on his hands does not necessarily represent a threat to the United States. She could oppose everything Soleimani stood for, and have sought asylum. Indeed, she did seek asylum — falsely, it appears — claiming she feared persecution back home. She then returned to Iran repeatedly, all the while propagandizing for the regime. Here’s one of her instagram pix below:

Perhaps she was simply avoiding Iran’s basij, who in 2022 murdered Mahsa Amini for having her headscarf askew.

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But the larger problem is that Afshar is the tip of an iceberg, with hundreds and likely more relatives of foreign murderers, terrorists, and kleptocrats living happily under the freedoms denied their countrymen. Here’s how my Washington Post piece begins:

The military killed Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani in a January 2020 airstrike but for years let his kin live in the United States. It made no sense. Immigration and Customs Enforcement resolved that issue on April 3 by detaining Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and Sarinasadat Hosseiny, the niece and grandniece of the late Iranian commander. The operation was part of the Trump administration’s effort to target for exclusion and deportation visa holders “from high-risk countries of concern.”

The underlying questions: How did they get in, and how did they stay?

Afshar arrived on a tourist visa in 2015 and soon applied for asylum, citing fear of persecution. She received it in 2019, got a green card in 2021 and reportedly returned to Iran at least four times thereafter. Like the recently deported Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, daughter of Iran’s slain national security chief, Afshar continued to support the mullahs while residing in the U.S. On her Instagram account — encrusted with jewels and often in attire that would run afoul of the Islamic Republic’s morality police — she has echoed anti-American propaganda and denounced “homeland sellers,” expat Iranians supporting the regime’s overthrow.

Read the rest here.

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There’s a lot of rubbish being written about the war with Iran. Partly that’s because of the partisan warfare masquerading as mainstream journalism. Partly that’s because of schizo leaking by senior administration officials. Partly that’s because Donald Trump says one thing one day, the opposite the next, and something entirely different the third.

Just another day in the capital of the free world.

Let’s try for a reasonably impartial (and yes, I support the war) look at the blockade, what it can and cannot do, and what options it provides to the United States.

Where did the blockade come from?

Iran has for many years threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz. Most observers (self included) doubted those claims for the simple reason that the Strait is Iran’s lifeline to the world. Yes, the are other ways Iran can take delivery of things, but the vast majority of Iran’s earnings come from the sale of oil, and in turn, 90 percent of those exports happen via the Strait.

Days after the breakout of war with Iran, on March 2, senior IRGC officials announced the closure of the Strait. Traffic had already dropped substantially due to risk. Weeks later, Iran announced that traffic would be closed to “belligerents,” and Iran’s majlis (parliament) passed a “Strait of Hormuz management plan” formalizing a $2 million per ship “toll.” The coverage of that step bordered on hysterical, with headlines the world over catastrophizing oil prices, the world economy, the war, Trump, and anything else they could think of.

What did the United States do?

Here’s Marc’s piece on Trump flipping the script on Iran:

What a difference a week makes. Last Tuesday, Donald Trump’s critics were crowing that Iran had achieved a strategic victory in its war with the United States, leveraging control of the Strait of Hormuz to force the president to accept a ceasefire and return to the negotiating table. Now Trump has flipped the script — by using the ceasefire to seize control of the Strait of Hormuz.

While the U.S. was meeting with Iranian officials in Islamabad, Trump ordered U.S. destroyers to travel through the strait into the Persian Gulf to help enforce a military blockade of all traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports. Before, Iran had been allowing its own ships to pass through the narrow waterway while preventing U.S. and allied vessels from transiting.

Now, technically, Trump can say that the Strait is open to all but traffic serving Iran. And ships are not getting in or out of Iranian ports; several have been turned around. You can watch and listen to the warning the United States is serving up to Straits traffic. 👇🏼

Here’s a nice little explainer from the Wall Street Journal about how the interdictions work, with a handy dandy map from our own Critical Threats/ISW fam.

Is the Strait actually open? Not really. There’s a ceasefire in place that Iran is respecting. If the ceasefire ends, will Iran be able to threaten traffic again? Not without consequence, but… yes. This is something to consider — a trump card Iran still arguably holds. For the moment, the U.S. blockade is strangling Iran. But it hasn’t “opened” the Strait to normal traffic.

One last bit on this: Some have asked why the United States didn’t flip the script sooner? First, I believe the President wasn’t persuaded of the wisdom of acting first to disrupt shipping in the Persian Gulf, knowing that Iran would likely respond by threatening non-Iranian shipping that remains vital to the world economy. But once Iran declared that it was closing the Strait, the way was open for Trump to respond in kind. Second, by the time Iran had done this, CENTCOM was ready to go because all of the necessary neutralization of Iranian offenses had taken place. In other words, had Trump tried such a blockade earlier, Iran would have been able to use its substantial shorter range offensive weapons against American forces.

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What’s the impact on Iran?

As our pod guest Miad Maleki told us, the impact on Iran’s economy is devastating. First, he explains, airstrikes have hit metals and petrochemicals exports, which were among Iran’s most important overland sales. So, the Iranian economy became much more dependent on the Hormuz route. In addition, the Iranian government pays its armed forces in oil, which then must be exported. No exports, no money for the Artesh, the IRGC, and all those other folk. Miad estimates the blockade is costing the Iranian economy north of $400 million per day. And as time passes, the costs will increase, as Iran cannot store all of the oil it cannot export. It has in the ballpark of two weeks of storage. After that…

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So, has the blockade focused the Government of Iran’s attention? In short, yes. Like a hanging. So…

What is Iran doing now?

Per the latest CTP summary (paraphrased), Iran is attempting to leverage its control over the Strait of Hormuz to extract major concessions from the United States, offering limited maritime access—such as safe passage via the Omani side—while implicitly threatening disruption if its demands are not met. These demands extend beyond navigation to include unfreezing funds and securing a lasting halt to US and Israeli strikes, raising concerns that conceding would legitimize coercion via the strait. At the same time, nuclear negotiations remain stalled: the US is pushing for a long-term halt to uranium enrichment and full removal of highly enriched uranium, while Iran seeks shorter limits and to retain (downblended) part of its stockpile. Despite some claims of progress, Iranian factions appear divided, with the IRGC playing a prominent role and publicly contradicting more conciliatory narratives.

On the military front, Iran is using the ceasefire to restore missile operations at a tactical level, but extensive damage to its production infrastructure will make long-term recovery difficult.

What should the US do, now that Iran is paying attention?

This is the question. The President insists Iran “wants a deal.” Where he is almost certainly wrong is that Iran wants any deal. Iran wants what most would label a bad deal. Reporting indicates that the Islamic Republic hopes for a five year moratorium on enrichment. Trump, conversely, wants all the “nuclear dust,” the term he weirdly insists applies to Iran’s illegally enriched fissile material. And he wants limits on Iran’s missile production and range, perhaps.

Remembering that Iran’s paramount goal is regime security, here’s what Trump should demand:

• An end to Iranian uranium enrichment, and the confiscation and removal of all enriched uranium and related equipment by the United States. Too much? Well, that’s what George W. Bush got in Libya. Trump cannot get less.

• A verifiable end to any other pathways towards a nuclear weapon.

• A regularly verifiable limit on missile range and missile and drone production.

• An end to Iranian support for regional proxies, with a public commitment to same, enforceable by the continued application of sanctions, with sanctions only lifted after a period of verification.

• A release of all political prisoners (unlike in, say, Venezuela, ahem), and a commitment to broader political participation, and respect for human rights.

• All conditions must be enforceable by surveillance, drones, and the threat of resumption of military action.

What are the odds?

Unclear. There are limits on the United States’ ability to sustain the blockade, though it remains unclear whether those limits are cost or readiness based. And just as there are limits on Iran’s ability to function economically under the blockade, Iran’s disruption of other shipping through the Strait imposes costs o the United States and its allies. The hope is a good deal. The fear is a bad deal. It’s as simple as that. The prevailing side is likely to be the one that can better withstand the economic pressures. Even odds on both.

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Because of images and length restrictions, please find the transctipt of our pod with Miad Maleki here.

SHOWNOTES

• X Post Rebuttal to Those Saying Iran Can Survive Blockade, Miad Maleki X Account, April 14, 2026

• US Begins Blockade of Iran’s Ports After Peace Talks Fail, CNN, April 13, 2026

• US Imposes Blockade on Iran, CNBC, April 13, 2026

• Mideast Experts Discuss How the US Blockade Could Pressure the Iranian Regime, PBS, April 13, 2026

• X Thread on the Blockade, Miad Maleki, April 12, 2026

• I Fled Iran’s Terror – Trump’s Courage is an Answer to My Prayers, New York Post, February 28, 2026

• State of US Blockade is Unclear as Some Ships Transit Strait of Hormuz, NYT, April 14, 2026

• Trump Flips the Script in the Strait of Hormuz, The Washington Post, April 13, 2026

• Coercing Iran: Why Trump’s Hormuz Blockade Has a Short Fuse, CFR, April 14, 2026

We haven’t got the inside skinny on what’s going to happen in Pakistan, but we’ll see soon enough. Meanwhile, Elise talks to former NSA John Bolton, Dany talks to NATO SecGen Rutte, and we both read Trump’s minorly unhinged Truth Social posts. Kids these days!

Bottom lines: Iran could end very badly; a lot is still up to Donald Trump. JD Vance may have hurt Orban more than he helped him with a creepy visit to Hungary. America didn’t pull out of NATO, so whoever told you we would should go to the bottom of your list of “trustworthy reads”… and so much more. See you next week!

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SHOWNOTES 🎶

• John Bolton on the Iran War’s Strategic Drift In this interview with Elise Labott, former National Security Adviser John Bolton critiques the lack of clear strategic objectives in the recent military actions against Iran. While acknowledging tactical successes in degrading Iran’s military infrastructure, Bolton argues that without a goal of regime change, the results remain temporary and “jumbled.”

• WTH Is Going On With NATO? Secretary General Mark Rutte Explains This podcast episode features NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte discussing the alliance’s future under the pressure of “Operation Epic Fury” and President Trump’s demands for better burden-sharing. Rutte details his “candid” conversations with the President and the shift toward European defense independence.

• Trump’s Foggy War Elise Labott and Nancy Youssef analyze the ambiguity of the conflict with Iran, describing it as a “war of improvisation.” They explore the disconnect between the administration’s high-stakes rhetoric (including threats of civilizational destruction) and the sudden pivot to a brokered ceasefire.

• WTH: The Ceasefire — Real? Fake? Good? Bad? Danielle Pletka provides a breakdown of the 39-day bombing campaign’s results, listing the extensive damage to Iranian air defenses and leadership. She questions the logic of the sudden ceasefire, noting the massive disparity between the U.S. and Iranian “10-point plans” and expressing concern over the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

• WTH: Is NATO Really an Alliance Anymore? This piece examines the existential tensions within NATO as European allies grapple with a U.S. administration that is increasingly transactional. It focuses on the outcomes of the Hague Summit and whether Europe can effectively project power without total reliance on the American military umbrella.

• Meet the New Faces of the Iranian Resistance This article from The Free Press highlights the emerging leaders and activists within the Iranian opposition movements. It profiles the individuals attempting to capitalize on the regime’s current military and political vulnerabilities to advocate for a secular, democratic future for Iran.

Mere hours before President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire with Iran, he was confiding to friends that the Iranians were unserious, and that the bombings he had been threatening would likely go ahead. And then, 💥, ceasefire. Here’s exactly what the President said at the time:

What does success look like?

Before parsing whether there has been a “complete, immediate, and safe opening of the Strait of Hormuz,” a “double sided” ceasefire, and a “10 point proposal” which POTUS believes is a “workable basis on which to negotiate,” it will be helpful to review what was achieved in 39 days of bombing Iran with the Israelis. Per Gen. Dan “Razin” Cain, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff yesterday morning, the United States has taken out:

• ~80% of Iran’s air defense systems (>1500 AD targets)

• 450 ballistic missile storage facilities

• 800 one-way attack drone storage facilities

• >200 C2 nodes

• 90% of the Navy (150 ships) and half of IRGC small attack boats

• 95% of naval mines

• 90% of weapons factories including every factory that produced Shaheds and their guidance systems

• 80% of missile production facilities

• >20 naval production and fabrication facilities damaged or destroyed

• 80% of nuclear industrial base

Great.

Meanwhile, the Israelis have taken out, per a neat little list from the Washington Examiner:

• Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - Supreme Leader

• Ali Larijani - secretary of Iran’s National Security Council

• Esmaeil Khatib - Intelligence Minister

• Majid Khademi - IRGC intel chief

• Gholamreza Soleimani - IRGC Basij commander

• Ali Shamkhani - former head of Defense Council

• Mohammad Pakpour - IRGC leader

• Abdolrahim Mousavi - Armed Forces CoS

• Alireza Tangsiri - IRGC naval commander

• Aziz Nasirzadeh - Defense Minister

• Mohammad Shirazi - Supreme Leader’s military office

• Hossein Jabal Amelian - head of the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research

• Reza Mozaffari Nia - former head of SPND (nuclear weapons)

• Majid Mousavi - IRGC Air Force

• Mohsen Darrebaghi - Deputy, Armed Forces

• Gholamreza Rezaian - police intelligence chief

• Bahram Hosseini Motlagh - armed forces general

• Mohammad Baseri — senior intelligence ministry official

• Salah Asadi — head of intelligence department.

This is not just the top tier of Iran’s political and security establishment; this is several layers in. And don’t forget nepo-ayatollah Mojtaba either. Neither he nor his cardboard avatar have been sighted recently.

For 39 days in the air, with remarkably few (though certainly lamentable) casualties, the United States and Israel have achieved a great deal. And while Iran can certainly build back better™, it will take some time. Much as the killing of Qassem Soleimani devastated the IRGC Quds Force planning and management, with the super-lame Esmail Qaani not even beginning to fill Soleimani’s shoes, removing experienced leaders is a difficult blow from which to recover.

So far so good. But then what happened?

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So why the cease fire?

Here, I pause for some brief speculation: I believe the President has been frustrated by Iran’s unwillingness to bend, air campaign notwithstanding. I also believe he did not anticipate the impact of Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Neither of these things are sins, and for a man as impatient as is Donald Trump, one can see he was hoping for something decisive by now. So he upped the ante.

Let us set aside what we can amicably agree was unnecessary and inappropriate hyperbole in threatening to annihilate Iran’s “civilization,” while at the same time sparing a scornful WTH for those lefty (and some righty) critics who have accused him almost in the same breath of being a war criminal, and being too chicken to be a war criminal.

Let us instead consider what Trump hoped would happen when he went to DEFCON 1 on the Iranians: Either, he hoped they would agree to come to the table to seriously discuss his demands for “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,” or he hoped they would simply capitulate and open Hormuz.

These were both fantasies that no serious member of the Trump administration would have suggested to the President. He simply, to use another fun numerical metaphor, went to 11, and then when the Iranians stared glassily, needed to make a call. Either hit them or go for a ceasefire. He chose to go for the ceasefire. There are two possibilities: Either Iran or Pakistan lied that the mullahs/IRGC would agree to Trump’s 15 point plan, or the President simply decided to say they had. I don’t know which it is.

Is the ceasefire real? Good? Hormuz? Is this the end?

The ceasefire is clearly real, in the sense that the United States has ceased firing on Iran, as have the Israelis. Iran has continued to lob missiles and drones at the Israelis and its Persian Gulf neighbors.

The Strait of Hormuz is not open, and Iran, having declared it open, then declared that all transit would pay Iran $2 million per ship in crypto, and then said the Strait was closed. Asked about Iranian extortion, the President said, “We’re thinking of doing it as a joint venture. It’s a way of securing it — also securing it from lots of other people.” Alrighty then.

Meanwhile there is some confusion about what sort of meeting of the minds there has been between the United States and Iran, in light of Ttump’s claim that “almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to." Iran has released three ten point plans, all variations on this one published by IRNA (Islamic Republic News Agency):

1. An American guarantee of nonaggression with Iran.

2. Iran maintains control of the Strait of Hormuz.

3. Ending the regional war on all fronts, including against Iran’s ally, Hezbollah, in Lebanon.

4. Withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from all bases and positions in the region.

5. Reparations to Iran for war damages.

6. Acceptance of Iran’s right to nuclear enrichment.

7. Lifting all primary sanctions on Iran.

8. Lifting all secondary sanctions on Iran.

9. Termination of all resolutions against Iran by the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

10. Termination of all United Nations Security Council resolutions against Iran.

This bears, and I use the word advisedly, literally no relationship to the 15 point plan offered by U.S. negotiators. None. So what was the President talking about when he said there was a good basis for discussions based on this plan? Hooey. He was talking hooey.

Among the U.S. demands in its own 15 point plan are the complete elimination of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, the giving over of all nuclear material, limits on Iran’s missile program, an end to all support for regional proxies, and guarantees for the security of the Iranian people.

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[As an aside, this reminds me of when I was a kid, and another kid said to me, “I have that exact same jacket, but striped, and two different colors, and not a parka, but wool, and full length, not short, but the same. And Iran and America also have the same, if we agree that they both have something that says “plan.”]

So, tell me what’s going to happen?

I don’t know. VP Vance is heading for talks in Pakistan on Saturday. (Who the hell picked Pakistan, btw? And Egypt and Turkey, the other two middlemen? Pakistan is a nuclear proliferator and was the home to Osama bin Laden. What can a country do to get disqualified these days??)

There is no overlap between Plan America and Plan Iran. None. So we can pretend there is a real dialogue. Or we can declare Iran unserious. That would require that America and Israel return to war in order to achieve… what exactly? The President has not told us.

Here’s what I believe we need to achieve:

1. A verifiable end to the nuclear weapons program.

2. Verifiable limits on the missile program.

3. An end to support for regional proxies.

4. Human freedom for the people of Iran.

Are we going to get there with an air campaign? No.

Can we get there with some additional effort? Perhaps, if we empower Iran’s minorities, take Kharg Island and the Tunbs, hold the island and take Iran’s oil earnings and exports hostage, and then ask the regime if it would like a cease fire and is willing to reopen the Strait. Are we going to do that? I don't know. Nor are those steps a slam dunk.

Can we disarm Iran and prevent a race for a nuclear weapon while allowing this regime to remain in power? I doubt it. And what will happen if the regime remains in power, eventually reconstitutes its programs, continues to support terrorism, and kills more of its own people? Simple: The war will have been a failure, and a waste of lives, credibility, and money.

These are the decisions and challenges that confront the President. Success will mean a new Middle East. Failure will mean a new, and weakened, United States.

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PS If you’re interested in what’s been happening with Iran’s nuclear sites, The Institute for Science and International Security has several good reports with satellite imagery. And some scary news about Iran working to aerosolize pharmaceuticals to create weapons. Yikes.

In polite society, there are things one does not say. And if one wishes to remain a member of polite society — The hors d’oeuvres, my dear! Sublime! — one embraces such politesses and keeps one’s opinions to oneself. Ditto for polite international relations. It’s the height of outré to mention your host’s 10,000 political prisoners or comment on his $200 billion bank account. It’s also best to mouth the pieties at the heart of international organizations, treaties, and alliances. Thus, we have been lying about NATO for years.

It’s time to stop.

An alliance is like a marriage — each partner brings something to the relationship, and recognizes that we are better together. But for decades in the NATO alliance, we have repeated that we are better together, notwithstanding that only one partner was bringing true commitment to the relationship. Here’s a graph in an earlier piece I wrote on the limp commitments of our NATO allies:

You might be forgiven if you thought the Cold War was won around 1952 based on this chart. Here’s another from that same piece, making clear that it was only the angry demands of Donald Trump that finally got our NATO allies to begin to live up to their own commitments on defense spending:

But, my friends, even this sad data set doesn’t tell the entire story. Let’s review the bidding, shall we?

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There are about 85,000 US troops stationed in our European NATO allied countries, most of them in Germany, Italy, the UK, and Spain. That’s less than 20 percent of the number that were there at the height of the Cold War, but it’s still a substantial chunk of servicemen and women. Why were they there? Because they were protecting our allies from Soviet predations. Why are they still there? Because we are protecting our allies and using convenient forward European positions to project power in our shared interests.

What have we done for our European/NATO allies recently?

Let’s see. We refueled and resupplied the Brits for their Falklands War. We’ve been supporting our pals the French with intel and more as they march about in their former colonies in Africa, sometimes for good reasons. We joined the Balkan war in 1995 when our European friends weren’t up to the job of stopping Slobodan Milosevič… on their own continent. And then some of our NATO allies stepped up for our own conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. We joined Europe’s feckless operation in Libya in 2011, at their request, leaving the country in al Qaeda’s thrall. And then there’s Ukraine.

Last I checked, Ukraine is not in NATO. Not in the European Union. Efforts to encourage Ukrainian membership in our alliance were pushed hard by Congress, but opposed by most of our European allies.

Last I checked, Russia invaded Ukraine and occupied Crimea in 2014, and our European allies refused to force Moscow to abide by either the Minsk I or Minsk II agreements that should have short circuited further Kremlin efforts in Ukraine. Not only did they fail to enforce Minsk, the Germans maneuvered to bypass Ukraine and build a direct pipeline to Russia, Nordstream II, that was stopped only by… Donald Trump.

Nonetheless, our European allies believe the United States should be doing more to help Ukraine repel the Russians, and keep Europe safe from Vladimir Putin. I agree with them. It is not in our interest to have the likes of Putin believe he can simply rewrite the map of post-Soviet Europe without consequence. Not only that, I’d like to see Europe mirror the Congressional legislation that allows our President to confiscate Russian sovereign assets and spend them on Ukraine. After all, there is nearly $300 billion of Russian dough sitting in European banks, most of it in Belgium, lately the EU capital and home to NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

Have the Europeans done that? No.

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So now, as we engage in a war to squelch the nuclear, missile, and terroristic ambitions of the Islamic Republic (not to speak of stopping them from killing their own people), is it presumptuous of us to ask — not for help, mind you — but to overfly or use bases in our NATO allied nations? We’re not asking for troops; not for planes; not for fuel; not for love. Just overflight and landing rights. And guess what? We had to bully our “bestie” in Europe, Sir Keir Starmer, to allow us to use Diego Garcia. Our pal Giorgia Meloni denied us landing rights on Sigonella in Sicily. The Spanish won’t let us fly over their precious Jew-hating country. France has reportedly refused us overflight to resupply Israel.

And these refusals have not been quiet or behind the scenes.

"Iran is not our war." — Keir Starmer

"The United States of America and Israel decided to launch military operations. They were carried out outside the framework of international law, which we cannot approve of." — Emmanuel Macron

"I'm just not convinced that what Israel and the U.S. are doing right now will actually succeed... I believe that at least the U.S. government—and probably the president as well—has now accepted that we [Germany] cannot support this." — Friedrich Merz

"[This war is] illegal... [the global system of international law may be] collapsing." — Giorgia Meloni

"[The strike] flouts international law and the conventions of a rules-based international order... [it is] by any fair measure, unilateral and illegal." — Mark Carney

These are our “allies.” These are nations in which Iran has conducted multiple terrorist attacks. These are nations that acted to refer Iran’s nuclear non-compliance to the UN Security Council. These are nations that import more oil via the Strait of Hormuz than the United States. Far more.

Tell me, as a supporter of NATO; as a stalwart of the transatlantic alliance; as someone outraged by Donald Trump’s earlier threats to withdraw from the alliance; what am I to say? How am I to defend the indefensible?

In short, I cannot. We should still help Ukraine, and Donald Trump is doing far more than many wish to acknowledge, though not enough. However, slowly, with regret and even dread, I am coming around to the view that it is time for America to reconsider whether our it still serves our interests to base thousands of troops in Western Europe. If Europe is not just going to sit out, but actually affirmatively obstruct America’s efforts to disarm an aspiring nuclear power committed to the destruction of the West, we need to ask whether our Armed Forces could more usefully be deployed elsewhere. More than 100 years after we first raced in to defeat shared enemies in World War I, perhaps it’s time for Europe to stand —- or fall — on its own.

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Normally, I try to share my analysis as an introduction to our podcasts. In this case, the details are worth a deep dive. There are a number of reasons for I hope you will take the time: There is a lot — A LOT — of disinformation out there. And it’s not the garden variety Russian/Chinese fanning the flames; there are active efforts to sow seeds of doubt about the success of Epic Fury, the relationship with Israel, the President’s resolve, the reality on the ground, and much more. Part of the problem is journalists looking to confirm stories they’ve already written; another part is aggressive leaking from inside the Trump administration in an effort to undermine public confidence, sow seeds of doubt in the President’s mind, and foment economic fears; and of course, there is the partisan divide that cannot assess anything done by the Trump administration because of antipathy towards the President.

Like many of our readers, I have lots of questions about the ongoing war. Is the President all in? Is he looking for an offramp? What are the supposed “talks” with Iran? Are we really winning? Do Israel and the United States share the same definition of victory? What about regime change? And can there be victory without regime change? What about the nukes? What about Hormuz? What about the Arabs? NATO? And so much more.

Marc and I hit our great friend General Jack Keane with every one of those questions, and more. Sometimes more than once. Jack remains very close to decision makers in Washington and Jerusalem, and I can’t fault his frankness. One of my dear friends told me that he learned more from this pod than he has from reading the paper every day. I have to agree. Thank goodness for people like Jack. And early next week we’ll post our wide-ranging interview with Israeli ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter.

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TRANSCRIPT

Q: So give us an update. How is the war going? Because we keep hearing that Trump is in a quagmire that he can’t get out of, he’s struggling to figure an off-ramp. Does he need an off-ramp or is this thing going much better than people expected?

JK: Well, I’m pretty familiar with where the IDF is and where CENTCOM is, given I speak to them every day. And quite frankly, it’s exceeding expectations. We’re making enormous progress here. There is no doubt in the IDF leaders’ minds or in CENTCOM leader Admiral Bradley Cooper’s mind that we will accomplish, the combined force will accomplish, all assigned objectives that Prime Minister Netanyahu has given to the IDF and Trump has assigned to the CENTCOM commander. Every single one of those objectives will be achieved to include opening the Strait of Hormuz by force and keeping it open.

So that is the path we’re on. The evidence speaks loud and clear about that. The reduction of their offensive capability is obvious in terms of what they can still shoot at us, which is minimal by comparison to what their holdings were. The casualties speak for themselves. In the US, casualties are extremely, very low. Obviously, we had seven killed in combat, six killed as a result of an accident. We’ve only had one serious injury since the first day of the war in combat. That is incredible, given we’re three weeks into this. The Israelis are at 14 KIA as of yesterday, and that in itself is astonishing.

Q: What can we attribute that success to?

JK: The reason for that is twofold. One is taking down the capability for Iran to retaliate in large salvos, which they wanted to do, 25 and 50, to overwhelm the system. And two, to the defensive capability that Israel has aided obviously by the United States as well. And the casualties on the Arab sides collectively are in the low double digits. So these are evidence of the success that is truly being achieved here. And the nuclear enrichment will be taken off the board completely by military operations.

That is the path that we’re on. If you ask me how long, I would say, talking to both... Remember, this is condition-based and this could change. It could go faster. It could go longer. About three weeks and we’re finished. So what we’re saying, we would finish an operation in less than 50 days, a complete operation that takes away Iran’s nuclear capability, offensive capability to be sure, and their future capability to manufacture these weapons of war. That would be a stunning accomplishment by anybody’s definition, except the people that are ideologically opposed to anything that Donald Trump does.

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Q: How can we open the Strait of Hormuz and keep it open?

JK: Well, first of all, Admiral Cooper’s been working on this for the better part of 10 days, and he’s taken away their capability to attack in close and at depth. As to drones, drones are always going to be a part of warfare here. And the technology advance that drones have are being brought into balance by countermeasures, and clearly what has been deployed into the region and is killing most of these drones are those countermeasures. In the beginning, true, some intercepts that cost millions of dollars were killing drones that cost thousands of dollars. But now, taking a play at it, taking the drone off the board, because you’re severing the relationship between the operator and the drone itself using electronic means to jam it.

Countermeasure is another drone, and that is a major, major effort. The thing that kills the Shahed drones in Ukraine, so our audience can understand, is a counter drone actually designed, the best one out there is designed by no less Eric Schmidt’s new company, Perennial Autonomy, which is Eric Schmidt of Google fame. And the system they’re using is Merops. It’s killed thousands of the Shahed drones, these so called one-way killer drones. That capability is employed in the Middle East as we speak.

Q: What is required for that capacity?

JK: So let’s take some ships. If we’re bringing warships down escorting, whether there are... And by the way, the reason why we want the Europeans to help us and others, there’s a major division of labor here. We have ships positioned in the region for offensive operations in certain locations based on where the targets are, and we move them around. Then we have ships based in the region for defensive operations to protect Israel, to help protect our US bases. Implied, obviously, also protecting our Arab allies where those bases are. And those ships are positioned and they move constantly, but they stay in the general area so they can do that offensive and defensive mission.

Well, here comes the Strait of Hormuz escort duty. We can’t do all of that. These are hundreds of ships that would have to be escorted a week. And we can’t take away that offensive-defensive capability. We can trick some of it, certainly, because the mission requirements have gone down, but we can’t wholesale do that. So we’ve gone out to our Arab friends and asked them for help, and they’re going to help. And we went to our European friends, and they will get around to helping us.

Q: How are our allies contributing?

JK: Mark Rutte, I know you spoke to him. Marc, he’s a great guy. I spoke to him a number of times. And his message said, he says, “General, since World War II, America calls, sometimes we are reluctant to answer that call. Sometimes we do it begrudgingly. But General, we always answer the call.” All right? “We get around to answering it for one indispensable reason. We absolutely need you. And that’s the end of the deal.” And that is happening as we speak.

I know the President got frustrated because he got stiffed, and they were overreacting. They weren’t consulted. All right? And I took Rutte to this. I said, “Listen, tell your guys to stand down over this nonsense. We didn’t tell our Congress. We didn’t even tell certain aspects of the military what we were doing. The people that were involved knew, but the other part did not know. And the reason is these are open democratic systems. We leak like hell. And so do you, Rutte, and your countries. So get over it.” And that’s just the reality.

I did say this to him. I said, “I think when we look back on it, it may have been prudent after we executed and committed to operations, when we were talking to the American people about that, Rubio should have been tasked to pick up the phone and call the Europeans and bring them into it and explain why we couldn’t consult them. ‘And this is what we’re doing. This is what our objectives are.’ And make them feel warm and fuzzy.” All right?

Q: How are we enhancing security?

JK: So that’s a longer answer to your question than what you had. But we will have countermeasures on the merchant ships as well as on our warships to deal with a drone or any other kind of capability, but the major thing we’re doing is prevention, taking that capability down systematically. And that is what is ongoing right now. And there are some other things that we can do to enhance the security operation, and those options are available to the president. He has to make that decision. And some of those examples you can see happening right before our eyes in terms of troops moving into the area to do various options that are available.

Q: A lot of media attention is surrounding Trump finding an off-ramp, and a supposed divide of objectives between Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump. Help us understand what the situation really is.

JK: Well, I just wish that Admiral Bradley Cooper was talking to the American people more frequently than what he is, because I talk to him frequently, sometimes a couple times a day, and I could tell you, I just report to you, and trust me, he is so confident about what we have achieved and what we will achieve. There’s no doubt in his mind that he’ll meet President Trump’s expectations in terms of military operations. And we are exceeding our own expectations in this regard.

In terms of Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump, I think the Israelis, when they heard about the movement towards negotiations, knowing full well how well they’re succeeding with military operations, knowing full well that the Iranians are pathological liars and cheaters and the very reason why we conducted this operation, at least part of the reason was there was no way to negotiate with these ideologues and tyrannical leaders because they were not going to budge, and what they were going to budge about, they’re lying anyway about it.

Q: What do you think of the negotiation with the Iranians that Trump has opened up?

JK: So it’s the basic mistrust that we all have in dealing with the Iranians and the idea that we’re going to work some kind of a deal with them. But I think a lot of that has eased in the last 24 hours because the president is very much aware of all of that. He doesn’t trust them. He knows they’re liars. And he is still all in on the military operation, make no mistake. He had the opportunity to go to a ceasefire, and the decision was no ceasefire. We’re going to use the military operation as leverage to assist in this deal. And in my mind, it is an open question whether this deal will materialize or not. I am highly skeptical of it for the reasons stated. You can’t trust these guys, number one.

And given what the deal is, and Marc and I both have a sense of what that deal is, I spoke at length to Steve Witkoff, I’m not going to get into revealing any of the terms, but in a general sense I can say this, the deal represents exactly what we’re trying to do through military operations. In other words, the deal would take away all of their offensive capability that we’re physically taking away. It would take away their nuclear capability as well, and would guarantee no manufacturing of those kinds of weapons in the future. So they would have to surrender to us in major concessions all the things that we are physically taking away from them to include keeping the Strait of Hormuz open. Whether there is an Iranian out there that’s willing to make that kind of concession I think really remains to be seen.

Q: Is regime change a military objective for the US or Israel?

JK: Yeah. Well, regime change has never been an objective for the United States or for that matter, Israel. What Israel has added is an additional task that we don’t have, and that is to put as much pressure in eliminating leaders and the entire organizational infrastructure that sustains the regime. For our audience, that’s the IRGC, huge organization, 32 locations outside of Iran. And the law enforcement command, the police infrastructure, and the Basij militia, which is the major suppression force, they are systematically not just taking leaders of those organizations down, but killing many of the members in those organization by the hundreds. So much so that there’s morale problems in the general sense in those security forces, not only chaotic decision-making process, which anecdotally Israel believes exists because they penetrated it. But their objective in doing all of that is to set the conditions for a potential regime collapse.

So that is the best we believed we could do from the outset when we made the decision to use air power. If you want to change political order, you have to take control of the country and you change the political order, and that takes ground forces to do that. That is the history of warfare. If your goal is change political order, you put troops on the ground, physically take the territory that they value and change the political order. And that is not our objective.

Q: What is your preference between the Iranian people overthrowing their weakened regime and potentially making an agreement with Tehran at the end of this conflict?

JK: My preference would be not to enter into negotiations at all. Only to enter into negotiations if the regime truly was going to surrender and deal with the terms of surrender. And that’s not what they’re doing. Our terms are to take everything away that they value, but they clearly are staying in place. All that said, then my preference would be to conduct military operations, physically take everything away from them for sure, set them back years. And at the end of our operation, we should then take Kharg Island as the last thing that we do and absolutely force this on them. Either you step down and turn over, or we’re going to take Kharg Island and force an economic collapse of your country. That is how I would end this conflict, on those terms. And that I think is preferable to negotiating and end to the conflict.

Q: What remains to be done? What is the tick list of remaining tasks that need to be completed in the next three or so weeks both for the U.S. and for Israel?

JK: To us, the one that we’ve come the closest to completing is the destruction of the Navy. All the other objectives that we have assigned, we still have a ways to go. And that is why ... Look, we’re at this three weeks. The IDF commander and the CENTCOM commander are saying in a general sense, “We need a few more weeks to go.” So that means somewhere in this, we’re about halfway through in terms of time, not necessarily in terms of accomplishment. We’re a lot further along in terms of accomplishment, but it’s kind of like being on a 20 yard line, to use a football analogy. We’re in a red zone here and we’re trying to get into the end zone and score a goal. Well, the last 20 yards are hard because the Iranians are doing everything they can to protect their resources, to deceive us, to hide it, to do other things to thwart it, because they want to have a residual cut capability here.

The regime survives and they want to demonstrate at some point pretty quickly to their own people that they still have power and they can still hurt Israel or the Arab states or the United States. So the last remaining weapons that they have to do harm is the toughest part of this, but our commanders are resolute. They’ve got a plan to deal with that. And I’m absolutely convinced, so to speak, we’ll get into that end zone. Yeah. So the progress we made ... Listen, they can’t come out and give you all the details of all of that. It’s too revealing. And some details, they just don’t know because they don’t have that kind of objective criteria. At best, they judge by what Iran can still do. And obviously we do battle damage assessment.

Q: What can the Iranians do to deter this?

JK: The Strait of Hormuz is a case in point. Did we expect that to happen? Of course we did. I mean, when I was a division commander in the ‘90s and a corps commander in the latter part of the ‘90s and a four-star general in the early 2000s, we were dealing with that in war plans that I was involved in as an operational commander. The Straits of Hormuz is going to be, excuse me, is going to be blocked. And what are we going to do about that? And the war plan we’re executing is taking down Iran as a regime. And yes, so this has been in our plans for some time. There’s no surprise that Iran did this, but we also knew once it occurred, and I’ll admit, it occurred with very little military capability displayed on their part other than hitting some merchant ships, they did it mostly through intimidation and coercion. In other words, a threat. And that impacted the merchant owners, the insurers, and others.

So yes, that’s where we are. They voted on that. The Iranians did it. They accomplished something there and they extended our operation as a result of it. And that’s a condition that we expected and we’re executing dealing with that. And we’re going to roll that up for sure if our military operations continue, which I think they will.

Q: What do you mean that it was never the plan of the United States or Israel to execute via military means regime change? In other words, like we did in Iraq, to go in to get Saddam Hussein out, but that it was to provide an opportunity to the Iranian people to do this for themselves. Am I understanding you correctly?

JK: Yes. Yes. A couple of things. The Iranian people being unarmed protestors that we have seen evidence of and something we have not seen evidence of, and that is armed resistance. And by that I mean likely Kurds and likely Azeris, and that has not come to fruition. And I think the truth is, my own preference is that they should be green lighted to do that. I think there’s no failure in this whatsoever. I mean, the worst thing that could happen is an armed resistance group trying to take a city that’s in their vicinity and the IRGC is opposing them and maybe some Basij militia as well, and they fail to do it. I think it still demonstrates the commitment of the resistance to people that took up arms to try to overwhelm the local enforcements of this tyrannical regime that is so punishing them. Even as minorities who were living in Iran, I think we’re all familiar with the fact that they receive special attention.

The Persian people as a whole are tortured and killed. And we saw evidence of that on January 8th and January 9th, but the minorities come in for special attention and the likelihood that they would be able to grab a town or a city is quite real. And once that would happen, if the IRGC reinforcements came, close air support provided by Israel and the United States would likely defeat that unless it was a horrible weather day and they were able to penetrate because of the foul weather and the fact that we were not able to deal effectively. And that in itself could be a catalyst for other things to happen. Certainly in that city, let’s assume the Azeris or the Kurds are in charge now of a city. That would receive international symbolism of that. And guess what? Hundreds of thousands of people that live in that city, if not millions, would be on the streets because there is no oppression now.

There’s no force to take them down and they would celebrate the fact that their local city, they are now in charge of their own destiny. The symbolism of that would be magical in my mind, and it would be encouragement along the path that you’re getting at for the Iranians themselves to help take their country back, which is what the United States has encouraged and also Prime Minister Netanyahu has encouraged. But it is a fact that the Prime Minister and his people have come to the conclusion that it was a little unrealistic to be able to expect the people to be able to take down a regime that still is under arms and while they are not armed themselves in doing so. And I think that is a conclusion they have reached in the last couple of days. But yes, that is an acceptable byproduct of all this. If the regime is so weak and so vulnerable that something like that could happen, it certainly would be welcome.

Q: Should not our desired outcome be to create the circumstances by which the Iranian people topple this regime?

JK: How would we do that? I don’t have a clue on how to do that. I don’t know how you do it. This is an unarmed population and the regime stays in power and they’re under arms and they have the capability to kill anybody that comes near them. And I don’t think we can count on that happening. And the only other way you can do it is the way we described. And I don’t think ... And I wouldn’t have been an advocate for that. I’ve dealt with that war plan. I would not be an advocate for putting ground troops in to change the situation.

Look at it, even when we do that, when we did it in ‘89 with Noriega, ‘94 in Haiti, ‘01 with Afghanistan and ‘03 in Iraq [in] every one of those things we struggled. We took control of the country and we went about changing the political order to be in our image and what would be best for that country.

And we struggled every time in those three cases, even when we controlled the country. So even that outcome is not as predictable as it seems to us now, knowing that is not one of our objectives and it’s unlikely to happen. But I still think there’s unbelievable worthiness in taking away Iran’s offensive capability, which they continued to use.

To me, what shocked and surprised everybody was the [regime’s] degree of commitment after the 12-day war. The intelligence was quite revealing. They immediately began to build underground storage and manufacturing sites for ballistic missiles. They committed to extending the range of those missiles beyond what they had before. Not just what we just saw recently with the attack on Diego Garcia. I mean, that was a harassment attack just to demonstrate a capability and use it as a threat.

But to actually build ICBMs to go for our audience to understand that could transit an ocean, the same capability that Russia has pointed at us and China every single day and what North Korea has in threatening the use of an ICBM, which they have built themselves, admittedly, maybe not to the degree of accuracy that Russia and China have. But nonetheless, we know for a fact that they were on a path to do that. We know that they changed the network of financial distribution to the proxies, and they were pouring hundreds of millions of dollars through another network in Istanbul, changing the banking system. And all of that was pouring into the proxies.

They were not going to give up on ballistic missile development; drones, which is easy because they’re the best manufacturer of drones in the world. And they did that inside of Ukraine. They built the factory. The number one drone factory that Russia has was built by the Iranians, and they fully intended to recover their nuclear program. They had two sites that they went to, new sites that they were preparing to do just that. And it is a fact that they did have and still do have some enrichment that they would be able to transfer. So all of those things were happening with this regime post 12-day war. And we recognized, I think, without ever saying it, we probably should have kept going, and we didn’t.

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Q: Talk a little bit more about the aftermath of the 12-day war influencing this operation.

JK: It energized the Prime Minister and it energized our President. Once they saw all the intelligence and where the regime truly was, that it made sense to go back in there and stop them from doing this, knowing full well that the Israelis would have welcomed a regime collapse to be sure. We would welcome a regime collapse to be sure, but there was never an intent to put Israeli troops on the ground and US troops on the ground to change out the regime. I think the goal is absolutely worthy in terms of what we’re doing. I believe the messaging by the administration, it’s one thing to state an objective, it’s another thing to gain public support for that.

And if you’re going to gain public support to it, you can’t talk about it enough. You have to keep explaining it to them. There should be daily reports coming at a Central Command every once in a while. I’m talking about the Admiral in front of the camera, and then he has his subordinate in front of the camera on a regular basis. Every once in a while he shows up. Every once in a while, Hegseth and Caine show up. Every once in a while, the President goes into the press conference room and gives an update himself. We [should] never stop talking to the American people about why this war matters, why we need to do this, why we’re accomplishing this, why the United States has an interest, why it’s related to the security of the American people. We haven’t done that.

And that is why I think guys like Thiessen and Keane have taken up the cudgel a little bit here and are out there trying to do it, to be frank about it. The administration has picked up the pace on some of this, to be sure. So they got the message, but I just think that’ll be a lesson learned. The public support is absolutely important here, particularly when you have such a vocal opposition to the war, not based on facts, just based on who started it, largely. And so partisan and so political, it doesn’t have any objective reality to it. Then you need absolutely more energy around gaining public support for what you’re doing and certainly maintaining it through daily communication.

Q: Outside of boots on the ground, why is it so hard for us to arm the Iranian people and to arm the opposition? If they can arm their proxies and the Iranian people or our ground forces, our proxies on the ground, why can’t we arm them?

JK: Yeah. Well, we could. If we got ourselves properly organized. And certainly the Iranian people, the success that Mossad has had through years has so much to do. It’s not hard when you talk to Mossad leaders to convert Iranian people who oppose to the regime into a dissident who’s willing to take action. That is not a hard conversion, and they’ll tell you that upfront. So there are many of them who have just about every operation that they conduct, the Iranians that participated in those operations. When we hear about leaders being killed, scientists being killed, things that were blowing up before conflict operations began, all the sabotage and espionage that took place, Iranians were all over that. That would’ve taken a more aggressive approach on a part of our Central Intelligence Agency. Multiple administrations want to know part of that. Likely the only one that really would’ve had the stomach for it is Trump.

And I don’t know what those discussions were about that option, I’m not privy to it. I certainly would’ve been, if I was in those discussions, I would’ve explored those to the fullest in terms of what the opportunities are there. Given how much this regime is detested by the people and by the youngsters who are willing to go out there and get killed to stand in the street in the face of machine guns and snipers and continue to stand there. I mean, that is really quite extraordinary when you see something like that happen. Ukrainians did it back in 2014, which led to Yanukovych’s fleeing his country. It’s really quite something to see something that on display. Is that something we could have capitalized on and built into some kind of an opposition group? Sure.

Because the foundation is already there in terms of will, and then you have to, it’s a matter of education and training and organization and finding leaders who are willing to do something like that. But you got to recognize also, this regime is diabolically repressive of its people. So any attempt to organize, they would be on it at some point. And then they go out and they just don’t kill the specific people they believe. They kill everybody around those people, their family members, others. It is extraordinary what they do.

Q: Talk more about the oppression of this regime.

JK: After the 12-day war was over, they knew they had a lot of informants, but they didn’t know who all the informants were. They only had some hints about some of them. They went out and killed 12,000 immediately of the people just to demonstrate that they were not going to stand for people working with Israel to overcome the regime. And they did that and most of the people they killed likely had no involvement whatsoever.

So they would go out and do everything they could to defeat that force. So these things are easy to talk about, but they’re hard to build an organization that is relative in a sense of being able to survive and also have an organization that can be effective against a standing organization that exists by the millions, not tens of thousands, by the millions that’s under arms in Iran, mainly to repress their own people.

Q: The number one goal of this regime is to hang onto power. How do we think about that challenge and stopping it?

JK: Yeah. Well, I think that’s going to take real vigilance. We have done very good work in this area. The intelligence we have on what they’re doing, what they’ve done post 12-day war in June. So from June to now, we are pretty confident about just about everything they’ve done and where they’ve done it and how much there is of it, so we feel good about that. I think the intelligence apparatus is in place to monitor that. And if it takes physical interdiction and intervention, no one’s going to hold back. And not the Israelis, not Trump. I mean, this is the number one issue for sure that we’re dealing with here. And that is them having a nuclear weapon. That is an existential threat, obviously. And that is the number one concern that Trump has and also what Netanyahu has. Yeah. So I’m confident that, yes, I agree with you.

Their intent is to survive, but it’s more than that. If we are able to accomplish what we want to do militarily, they’re going to be in serious, serious condition here. It will take them years to recover. And if we do what I think we should do with Kharg Island, if we do what we should do, and that is take that island and force an economic collapse of this country as the last thing that we do, knowing that is going to have a near term impact on the people. But at the end of the day, that would be worth it because then there is a very good chance that we indeed have set the conditions for a regime collapse. And for something else to take over, we don’t know for sure what that would be, but it would likely not be these thugs and killers that have been running this place for some time.

I know we’re talking to army leaders (army, not the IRGC), the way we were dealing with people in Venezuela, but that hasn’t materialized yet. But the opportunity for that is there, and that’s going to take a presidential decision whether to execute that mission or not. And that option is there, and most people I talk to would want to execute that option.

Q: Should taking Kharg Island be our goal?

JK: I think so because the regime is in place, but they no longer have the means to recover. What they want to do is stay in power, recover and rebuild. So they stay in power, but they can’t recover and they can’t rebuild because you’ve completely taken away their economic viability to do that. And what does that mean? That means the clock is ticking. They just have so much time, and they’ll have to recognize it themselves. So could they implode as a result of that? Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Who wants to be a part of that? The dissension and the division that would create in the organization because there is no future. That’s why I think it’s such a decisive thing to do. It’s bold, but it gets us much closer to where we want to be if we’re willing to exercise it. And hopefully we are.

Q: They also can’t rebuild their nuclear program if they don’t have Kharg Island, right? They don’t have the money.

JK: They don’t have the resources, but listen, there’s people out there that could give them a weapon, all right? And Dany made that point before. It depends. At this point, if Iran is in that kind of a condition and they’re being watched like a hawk from Netanyahu and Trump, for a country to want to throw them that kind of a lifeline that we would be able to see the tentacles of, that’s a pretty bold move by China or by another country, North Korea, and willing to do something like that.

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Q: The thing I worry about is who comes after Netanyahu and who comes after Trump? Because what we’ve seen over years now is how much advanced they’re able to make when anybody takes the foot off their neck.

JK: Yeah, I totally agree with that. I mean, my conversation with Netanyahu when I was in Israel back in September, he said, “What’s your major takeaways?” And I had two major ones for him. I said, “One, you can never ever let proxies on your border have a capability to attack you at all. That was a mistake and that’s a major lesson learned.” He said, “What’s the other one?” I said, “You’ve got to work your way out of being dependent on the United States militarily.” He said, “What do you mean by that?” I said, “Because the political swings that take place in this country, you can’t afford that again. You can’t afford to go back to a Biden and Obama who are going to cut off your weapons or going to micromanage how you conduct an operation.”

I mean, he showed a list of what Biden had cut off. I mean, that was much greater than what the public acknowledged, and he certainly wasn’t going to bite the hand that was feeding him, so he wasn’t going after him publicly over it, but they actually wanted him to fail. They didn’t want the Gaza operation to succeed. And then they tried to micromanage him. Remember the tactics and sending these civilians over to the IDF leaders and telling them how to conduct an operation in Gaza? I mean, the absurdity of that. And he got up and he said, “What’s going on here? Some kind of telepathy. I’m on the same page with you on everything. I’m not even that way with all my advisors.”

We could have a complete turnaround here in one election and put ourselves back in a very dangerous situation again. That’s why we’ve got to complete this military operation to the fullest, in my view, and also do Kharg Island. And I think as a result of something like that, we really have returned the United States to a global stage as a world’s leader. And the leverage we would have as a global power throughout the world would be pretty significant with our adversaries out there. It would actually help us in Ukraine and it certainly helped us quite significantly with Mr. Xi and the Indian Pacific and his objectives as well.

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SHOWNOTES:

Live Updates (AP News, March 23, 2026)

Iranian Missile Strikes Injure 180 in Israel, Officials Say, Puncturing Air Defenses and Shocking the Public (NBC News, March 22, 2026)

Trump Says US is Postponing Some Strikes As It Negotiates End to War with Iran (The Washington Post, March 23, 2026)

Kremlin Says It Is Monitoring What It Calls ‘Conflicting Signals’ on Iran Situation (The Times of Israel, March 23, 2026)

Iran Update Special Report, March 23, 2026 (ISW-CTP, March 23, 2025)

Iran Update Special Report, March 22, 2026 (ISW-CTP, March 22, 2025)

Iranian Ballistic Missiles and Drones Launched at Saudi Arabia Between March 1, 2026 and March 20, 2026 (ISW-CTP, March 20, 2025)

Iran Can’t ‘Win’ This War. But It Can Force a US Retreat Using These 4 Insurgency Tactics (The Conversation, March 22, 2026)

Gulf States Opposed War With Iran. Most Are Now Pushing to Keep the Fight Going (The Times of Israel, March 22, 2026)

The Fate of the NATO Alliance Lies in the Strait of Hormuz (The Washington Post, Marc Thiessen, March 19, 2026)

Why Russia is Watching Iran Burn (Foreign Affairs, March 16, 2026)