148. Can Europe Salvage its Relationship with Trump?

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TRIC10.

Hello and welcome, everybody, to this very special livestream from therestisclassified.

We've just been finishing a two-part series, examining what's been going on inside Iran,

CIA operations, the issues of rescues of pilots, but in particular, the issue of what an

operation to snatch Iran's highly-rich uranium might look like, and to complement those

episodes, as well as examine some of the bigger issues about Iran and US foreign policy

in more detail, and how the Trump administration might be thinking about its next moves.

We're very lucky, aren't we, David, to be joined by a journalist who really sits at the

nexus of Washington Intelligence and National Security?

Indeed, we are very fortunate to be speaking with David Ignatius, who is a best-selling author

and prize-winning columnist for the Washington Post.

He has been covering the Middle East and the CIA for well over 25 years.

He lives in Washington, where in addition to doing all of that, he manages to write some

absolutely fantastic spy novel.

He's the author of a dozen of those, his latest Phantom Orbit, is an exploration of the

modern-day race for supremacy in space warfare.

One of them, Body of Lies, which is a fantastic book, was made into a film starring Leonardo

DiCaprio and Russell Crowe, and his first novel, Agents of Innocence.

I have to say, as perhaps the best novel ever written about CIA operations in the Middle

East and was on the in-house required reading list that I received when I joined the Central

Intelligence Agency as an intern in the summer of 2006.

The CIA, at one point, called that book, a novel, but not fiction, which is a high piece

of praise indeed for a novelist.

And David and I also, just in a personal note, shared the same editor at WWE Norton, the

legendary Star Lawrence, before his passing.

And David wrote a wonderful piece for the post after Star Died, which I would commend

to all listeners who are curious for a peek into the author-editor relationship, the title

of that piece, which made me both want to cry and laugh at the same time, was these

editors' notes are poison I learned from every drop.

So we share a similar awe and reverence for the man who poisoned us over many books.

So with all that said, David Ignatius, welcome to the rest is classified.

Thank you so much, David, such a generous introduction.

I must say, I've heard for so many years about all the CIA officers who read my first

novel.

And I've come to the conclusion that you must have all taken it out of a library, a library

because it's never shown up.

I purchased it.

Who had bought it?

It was passing around the copies.

Or the Reddit.

It's obviously me that he didn't buy it.

But thanks, we did share a great editor in Star, the lead of my piece about him after

he died was all in quotation marks, ugly, cleave, must-wee, the series he'd written in

the margins of my bad writing.

It made me feel better to know that we had received similar treatment from Starling.

We are, unfortunately, not here to talk about spy novels, which I think you and I could

talk about all day, but to Gordon Carrera should grin, but we are here to talk about

Iran.

And I thought, David, the first question I'd put to you is to set up one of the key, if

not the key character in this drama, which is President Donald J. Trump.

Now, I suspect that many listeners to this maybe you have a sense that over the past

few months, he has been acting rather erratically and impulsively.

And I'm curious how you think the President sees his position right now amid the ceasefire

and the negotiations that are ongoing in Pakistan.

Now, is Trump a man under pressure to do a deal or what, how do you think he's feeling

about the situation that he's in right now?

So the first thing that I've noticed about Trump since Venezuela operation is that he's

just flying, he's a T-Toldler famously, but it's as if he's intoxicated with the excitement

and power being Commander-in-Chief.

And I thought to myself, there can't be anything quite like it in the world to be a stride

that massive military power, the ability to operate so self-selfly as in Venezuela.

And he's just roaring with it.

He's good at the big boom at the beginning of something, and he's good at the big show

at the end of something, but he isn't very good in the middle, and he isn't very good

at the aftermath.

I'm just struck by how many of these peace steels he touts and who's not in favor of peace

in our miserable world.

Don't get finished.

The Gaza deal, actually, if you look at the particular details, it's pretty good.

They recruited first-rate people, the person who's the executive director, Nikolai Malodinov,

as good as you could find them, at least.

I've talked at length with the Palestinian who's there to oversee the technocratic

and the first-rate person, but nothing's happened.

I just have a feeling that the follow-up that should be present, if Iran is really going

to make a transition from this revolutionary country to something different, some kind

of managed IRGC run state capitalism, that's going to need more work than this team can

put in.

I mean, just watching it here from Europe where I am, David and London, the perception

is that Donald Trump has partly because he didn't have clear aims going in to this conflict,

and they had all these multitude of different aims, whether it's regime change, whether

it's the nuclear material, whether these other things.

On the one hand, they gave him a kind of flexibility at one point about declaring victory, but

it's also now making it very hard to see what the end game looks like.

I mean, do you think opening the straight, maybe saying there's a nuclear deal, that's

what he's looking for now, just to basically get out of this?

Yes.

So I think Gordon that he wants an exit ramp, I was told that he had come to understand

that the deeper you get into this conflict, the more it's like a quagmire.

Certainly he's warned to his career about the danger of that, and now he found himself

in one, and he wants out, but he wants out, thunderously, victoriously, so you have this

weird oscillation between claims that the war is already over, and we've won, they're

dying for a deal, and something has up today, I think we have 10,000 additional troops heading

to the Middle East.

So this undamped oscillation is a feature of Trump, and I think it's increasingly, Gordon

and David, undermining Trump's belief to get the success he wants to have as president.

I think the world's really kind of wised up to it, that people are sick of it first,

Europeans are sick of all his bad mouth, and NATO, and crazy talk about seizing Greenland.

I think the China's and Russia's the world are kind of going, yeah, yeah, you know, and

some of that too with the Iranians.

So I think he wants out, I think he is close to a deal.

I got a very detailed read out of the negotiations that took place in the song about, which I published

in my column, gosh, you get any of the week, and it's turned out pretty much as people

said it would.

It was a very generous offer on the table from the US, surprisingly generous.

It's not all that much better than what the JCPOA offered for all of Trump's talk, but

it does provide what I'm told Trump negotiators said to Mohamed Galibach, the Iranian representative,

would be a golden bridge, that was their phrase, into a new era for Iran.

Iran, as I know having, this is their perhaps, Gordon, you've been there as well.

Iran is poised to be a fantastically successful modern country.

It has great intellectual capital resources, you know, it is one of the most civilized cultures

I encounter.

So that's, that's been part of the Trump team's pitch.

Walk with us into this future, you're going to be superstars, we'll help you, you know,

we'll find capital for you, and Galibach was no stranger to big time deals from what

I know was pretty, pretty receptive to that.

David, what do you think the shape of that deal would be?

What would the Iranians have to give up and what would they get?

First, the highly enriched uranium stockpile that they have, the question is how they

give it up and what they were pretty much prepared to offer before the war started was

a process where the IAEA would supervise dilution of the stockpile from 60% down to some very

low level of enrichment.

So I think that's already out there.

Trump seems to want the IAEA to supervise removal of the canisters that contain this material.

That would be better for sure, but they seem ready to do that.

Trump has said in the last several days that the Iranians have agreed to know nuclear

weapons.

Well, it's kind of crazy formulation because they don't A, they don't have a nuclear weapon

B, they've said for decades under the thought law of the previous Supreme Leader that they

didn't want a nuclear weapon, nobody believe that, but that's in their official policy.

What I think Trump means is that they've agreed to give up what they've always claimed

is their right to enrich uranium for civilian nuclear purposes, which is a pathway to a bomb.

And my guess, I don't have this hard enough to, I'm just described as a guess, is that

they're ready to sign on to some kind of international consortium that would include other

Gulf countries that would get enriched uranium together, so they wouldn't be enriching inside

Iran that they would have enriched uranium.

So I can say, we still have the right to it, we're exercising that right to this consortium.

And there'll be various, various other aspects of the deal, but those, those I think are

the principal ones.

And then the straightforward moves, I mean, as of today, they're already agreeing to open

it.

But the problem is that once you've unshielded that weapon, it's always there.

It's like, you know, the guy who pulls back his coat and you see, he's got a gun.

I mean, Iran going forward is always going to have the opportunity to use its straight

of Hormuz bomb.

It's a better deterrent, frankly, than the nuclear weapon would be.

Yeah, use the nuclear weapon.

You can close the straight of Hormuz again, and this is not the last time we'll hear

the Iranians say, unless you listen to what we want, such as that, we're going to close

the straight of Hormuz.

Which makes it feel like that Iran comes out of this stronger with a more hard line regime,

maybe having been militarily battered, but actually with this new weapon and, you know,

with the potential to use it in the future.

I mean, that is a world away from the regime change that had been talked about.

It's certainly not a regime change.

It is a leadership change.

I think it's a mistake analytically to say they come out of it stronger because they

really have been battered.

You know, their network of proxies staggers forward, but the damage done to Hasbola is so

enormous that Hasbola is accepting the Lebanese government negotiating openly with Israel

for ceasefire.

And my money is on the Lebanese government moving forward with disarmament in some more

meaningful way of Hasbola.

The proxies in Iraq, I think, are on their back heels some, and internally, we haven't

gotten every weapon that they possess, but don't offer a lot of them.

So the idea that Iran is stronger, I don't agree with, because I don't like the regime,

I think it's done enormous harm to Iran and the region for the whole time that I've

been following them at least.

A good riddance is what I feel about the Iranian regime.

My concern is that the process of evolution into some post-revolutionary Iran that is a

modernizing player, but also just a less rigid, a more

competent regime that's faithful to its people.

I worry that that's been set back.

That was, that process was happening for an ambassador, served many, many years in

Tehran, said to me once, this regime is on a one-way street down toward its end.

And I think that's still true, but I worry that the street is lengthened, that weirdly

we may have put some time on the clock.

I told it was going to die soon anyway.

From everything I know, there was increasing dissension, factional fighting, jockeying

for a position, all sorts of opportunities for the transition process we all awaited

in Iran.

That stopped as soon as he was killed.

Gali Baaf seems like the strongman for the moment, but I'm told by friends in touch

with people in Tehran that he's getting a lot of pushback from, harder liners.

I haven't fallen.

Gali Baaf literally for 20 years, I wrote my first column about him in 2006.

That's how long he's been kind of hanging around, you know, making convincing people like

me that I'm a really a modernizer.

But anyway, that, that, that would be my worry.

I don't think Gordon that they're stronger, by the way, as I would define that, but I

think they might be more durable because of regime cohesion.

David, this, the series we did this week on the, on the pod was looking at the, the prospects

for and how a special operations mission to go after the highly enriched uranium might

happen just to kind of lay out what it, what it could look like.

My sense is that a few weeks ago that was on the table inside the White House, do you

think it's still on the table or do you think that it is unlikely to happen?

So I think it's such a crazy idea, to be honest.

I mean, it is a mission destined for failure.

I think it was more, probably always more talk, you know, special operators always want

to do the impossible.

I'm not sure there was, you know, chatter and options were prepared and submitted.

But the idea of seizing and securing enough space for, you know, to build a little, you

know, many airport and get the trucks to run back and forth to the site and load the

stuff.

And meanwhile, you, yeah, entire faith is net army around you, someone shooting at you.

Yeah, it just doesn't really seem all that realistic.

I mean, I'm sorry, if it were me and I wanted to have a really kind of nasty option, I

just mine everything in the area and say, okay, boys, you know, you still got the HU, if

you try to go get it, you're a boy who saw us up and if you get through the mines, we're

going to shoot you from the air and just leave it there.

But what do I know?

You're a seasoned observer of the intelligence world and its relationship to politicians.

I just wonder when you look back at how Donald Trump got into this and what he does next,

how much does he listen to those voices and does he have voices around him who are giving

him kind of serious advice?

Because obviously, Tuftsie Gabbard wasn't, doesn't look like she was in the room, his

DNI, you know, is there, are there people who are telling him what is realistic and what

the consequences are, who have an impact and who he will listen to?

So you two might well have better sources on this than I, but I'll tell you what my

impression is.

First, you worry that this was an intelligence failure as October 7 was for Israel.

I don't think so.

I think our intelligence analysts is battered as they are, basically got it right from what

I've been told by people who read the assessments from the National Intelligence Council and

other analytical work.

It was stated clearly, decapitation will not lead to regime change.

The IRGC will backfill and that strategy that Trump obviously believed, much as Putin

believed that within a week of going into Ukraine, the regime would fall.

Trump, I think, believed that they would capitulate when faced with this overwhelming decapitating

power.

He was told, sir, not likely, he ignored that.

He was told that it was a significant possibility that Iran would strike at the Gulf countries

of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates.

They don't seem to have really believed that.

I think they were shocked by the degree of Iranian offensive attacks.

But again, Trump was warned about that.

He was warned that the straight of Homo's might be closed.

So I think the intelligence agencies and General Kahn and the joint staff did a pretty

good job.

I've come away from both Venezuela and this operation with increased admiration for

General Kahn as a chairman.

And on the CIA, again, this really is, what do I know, land?

But I am told by a number of people that Ratcliffe has protected enough of the people and

the capabilities and prevented the sort of crazy, you know, cash, Patel, score settling,

house cleaning.

A lot of people left because they just weren't comfortable with a situation, a lot of older

generation.

But, you know, just to last comedy, if you're a young operations officer, what could be

better than this, you know, you got two wars, you got all kinds of crazy stuff that people

want you to do.

I mean, how cool is that?

So I'm sure operations officers think, you know, this is great.

And thanks boss for helping us out.

For analysts, this is a terrible time.

Their analytical work is ignored and for everything I know, they're demoralized and but they kept

telling the truth and nobody listened to them in the White House, but that doesn't mean

that they were, you know, the fear would be that they would end up producing bad

in to all the suit their customers.

And I don't think that's happened.

David, we started this conversation talking about Trump being intoxicated with the use

of military power and the promise of it.

What do you think is next for him?

What is it?

Cuba?

Is there, is there somewhere else that he's going to turn his energies if, if indeed he

does get a big shiny deal with Iran that gives them a golden bridge into a better future?

Where does he turn next?

Clearly a concern, this is a Florida group that surrounds him, Marco Rubio, most prominently,

Rubio is passionate about Cuba.

But I think that the Florida centric nature of this administration means that Cuba until

it's resolved in some way will be always be a big issue.

My guess is that he'll make one last big push on Ukraine.

I think he understands that that's the most dangerous issue that he faces and the one

where he's had the least success.

My fear is that he's going to try to muscle Solinsky into accepting a concessionary deal

to Putin and that would just have terrible consequences.

I wrote a column this morning about the looming danger of a Russia Europe confrontation

and the possibility that Trump basically would join Putin in stuffing a dangerous settlement

down Europe's throat.

So that's what I think is the most likely in terms of a big project and the most dangerous.

Yeah, because I think here in Europe definitely the feeling is that the Iran war has had a

significant impact on NATO on those issues of trust and alliance and reciprocity and

the arguments over basing and which bases can be used, but whether it's between Spain

but also the UK and the President's criticism of the UK and people who are worried is Greenland

going to be back on the agendas.

I do think Iran almost more than Ukraine recently is contributed to the sense that NATO

may be in crisis actually and that the relationship is in a really bad way.

Europe frankly made a mistake in not involving itself more directly in thinking about ways

to reopen the Strait of Homo's.

I think there was a moment where European disdain, in particular, Starmars was overdone.

I get it.

I was in Davos when Trump was just on a tear all spun up about Greenland and people just

got sick of it and that they've stayed angry.

I remember Alexander Stubb argued with Ruta Mark Ruta, Trump's best friend in Europe.

He just had it enough and so I think it was that that led them to take a very stand-off

as a position on the Strait of Homo's beyond what was reasonable.

I know that's probably an unpopular view for your viewers but that's what I think.

No, but it is interesting to hear that because I think it's obviously been quite popular

at home for Starmar and others.

It plays well domestically to be standing up to Trump and there's a certain view which

is, okay, we've had enough and the better policies to stand up to him but there may

well be implications of that and consequences for that which I really like to tell.

The question I would ask your viewers and both of you, if you're actually really ready

to go it alone in security terms, you know, okay, wetter rep, I don't think that's the

case.

No, yeah.

I mean, given that, you have to be careful.

Yeah.

Yeah.

David, there's a question from the chat here about Congress, the role of Congress and

potentially enabling or constraining Trump's foreign adventurism.

Do you see that as a factor in his decision making or any kind of potential hurdle for him

going forward or is it just a non-issue?

I don't think it is going to be a hurdle because the Congress is just determined to check

it out.

The willful surrender of its Article 1 powers is amazing.

It's a, you know, Gorsuch in his, I guess it was a concurring opinion, put it right to

Congress.

Like, where are you?

Why have you given up the role of the Constitution mandates?

And it's become increasingly clear to me that although Congress has been ducking more

decisions now for more than 20 years, they don't want to make these decisions.

They don't want to go on record.

They need to that the whole reason that it's so important for Congress to declare wars

that once you're in a war, you need to keep the public with you.

And what America increasingly does is start wars that the public isn't prepared to see

through.

And then it bails out with, you know, real damage that's been the theme of almost every one

of my novels to be asked is we start, we start things that were just, we, President's

right checks, the public isn't prepared to cash.

So that's why you need a declaration of war.

So that is a Congress and the people are on board.

And until you have that, I think we're going to be a pretty feckless superpower that has

trouble following through because we don't go through our own process.

One more question we've got from the chat about maybe restraint or constraints on Donald

Trump is the economy.

And I think there was a lot of assumption that that would be, that's the thing which

will change his policies, you know, when, when, whether here, whether it's fertilizers

and fuel prices or whether it's China, when it did, you know, kind of threaten tariffs

itself, that he will respond in those kind of situations.

I mean, does that, does that work in the current crisis or do you think he is kind of legacy

building and thinking, I really want to do, I want to expand American power, whether

it's Greenland, whether it's Cuba and do these things, even if there is a cost to them.

He does now have this heroic, self-image legacy building, as you said.

And he says often when asked about short-term costs of things, you know, that when people

fear the tariffs would have a significant negative impact on the economy to turn out they

didn't.

But his response was, that's okay.

I'm ready for that because we needed him long run.

We need to rebuild American manufacturing, which is true.

His program for doing that was, was not a very good one.

But, you know, he, he, he buildings that, but that leadership requires you to take, take

it in the short run, and because it's the right thing to do, you know, even though it's

Donald Trump, I don't want to, I don't want to naysay the, you know, the, the, the commitment

of a leader to do on popular things.

I think, I think he, he's got that, the problem is that he just has none of the discipline

of leadership, just to see things through, to have conflict, avoid saying the next, opposite

thing the next day, he's just, you know, he's like a bouncing ball, you can't, as I said

earlier, undamped oscillation.

And he also, the role suspects, when he's about to take a short-term hit for all his talk

about willing to be willing to bear the pain, he isn't, you know, the Trump ball is checking

his out.

I don't like that phrase because it's sort of eggs him on to show what he's not, this

time, he's not going to check it out, and, you know, nuke somebody.

But I think he, you know, financial markets think he's going to end up settling, and

that's, you can see that reflected in the behavior of markets for the last two weeks.

Yeah, very last question from the chat, David, was, what do you make of, and this, I realized

this is venturing a bit into pop psychology here, so I asked with some trepidation.

But what do you make of Donald Trump's mental state now?

There's been obviously some speculation based on, I would say, some of the truth social

posts and general behavior that he is perhaps behavior more erratically than he was in the

past.

What, what, what do you think about that?

What are your contacts hearing on that front?

Well, I hear from every direction concern about his erratic statements, you know, what

picking a fight with the Pope, what a crazy thing to do, and, and, and, rather than letting

it go, it just keeps coming back to it, you know, why that's, you know, I don't know

that that shows, you know, chronic mental state, but it's just a dumb thing to do politically.

But he can't let, he can't let these things go, if he's in a fight, he's just going to,

he wants to have the last word, this sort of, you know, dress up thing, you know, releasing

AI images of himself as, I mean, you know, he's, he's done, Jesus Christ most recently

in creating people, but he's a doctor, right?

I mean, I was going to say that with a straight, straight face, oh, come on.

But, you know, he's, he's posed as a, I think, as a Star Wars guardian, he's posed as,

the Pope, he's posed as a king, you know, they're these, it's like, it's, it's, it's like,

you know, kids, it's, it's dress up, and, um, that part of his, um, behavior's present

is, is mysterious, um, and, you know, we're going to see what kind of shape our republic

is in, not just in terms of the machinery, the ability to have good, fair elections,

but in the, in the, in the quality of our electorate, because people have a chance to say what

they think about all this, everybody's watching the same thing that the three of us are,

and if people ratify that conduct by voting for people who support it, though all the

worries about the United States are justified, and it, but if people say, no, I've had

that's it, you know, and they, they don't turn out, and they, um, and there's a lot of,

expectation that this will be close to a way of election with a big public repudiation

of what we're seeing. Then I, I hope people around the world will feel a little bit better

about the United States, and that the, uh, that our machinery's a little more resilient

than it's a period this last year. Yeah, that's an interesting note to end it on,

because going back to, you know, the view from Europe, I think it is that feeling, you know,

as you raised about, well, you know, can Europe stand on its own two feet in the answer is,

you know, not yet. How quickly can it do that? Who knows? Uh, has it got the will to do it? Who

knows? You know, does it need to? I think that, you know, and, and, or can it, can something of

the relationship be salvaged? You know, I think, I think that still feels like a bit of an open

question, but an important one, you know, and as you said, I think people are watching what

happens within the US and some of those constraints and the elections and those things very carefully

to know, you know, it, I think, you know, things are never going to go back to where they were,

I think, but, but, but, but, but whether they'll be in a relatively stable place or really,

a really bad place, hard to tell, isn't it? Yeah. Indeed. Well, David, thank you so much.

Yes. So I am a big fan of both, both of your, uh, works, uh, on intelligence as really

privileged to be on your show. Thank you. Well, thank you. We enjoy your, thank you very much,

too. David, thank you very much. I would say unlike, unlike, unlike all of the CIA officers who

have checked David's books out of the internal CIA library, I would urge everyone to go and

purchase it at full price in hardcover. Phantom orbit is the latest one, uh, the first one,

agents of it is it's all of the, uh, other 10 in between, go and check them out, but David

Ignatius, uh, thanks for being with us today. Yeah. Thank you, everyone else for joining us. Thank you.