3.2.26 Iran war update, Supreme Court on “just compensation,” why sanctions failed in Iran, and the national anthem’s unlikely rise

Good morning, war in Iran, we'll talk with the leading military strategist.

Also today, legal docket, if the government comes after you for back taxes, does it get

to take your house?

At some point, doesn't the constitutions have something to say under the rubric of what

it just compensations?

Also today, the Monday money beat will talk about why economic sanctions were not enough

to bring Iran to heal.

Later, the world history book How the Star Spangled Banner captures the American spirit.

There's no country that plays its national anthem more than we do.

It's Monday, March 2nd.

This is The World and Everything In It from Listener Supported World Radio.

I'm Mary Reichard.

And I'm Nick Einker.

Good morning.

Up next, Mark Mellinger with today's news.

President Trump says the U.S. will likely mourn the deaths of more members of the military

as strikes against Iran continue for the next several weeks.

His comments came in a social media post Sunday afternoon, honoring the first three U.S.

service members killed in the campaign known as Operation Epic Fury and five others

seriously wounded.

We pray for the full recovery of the wounded and send our immense love and eternal gratitude

to the families of the fallen.

And sadly, there will likely be more before it ends.

That's the way it is.

Likely be more.

The three service members killed were part of a unit in Kuwait, handling supplies and

logistics to support the strikes.

The president says Operation Epic Fury is necessary to stop Iran from developing long-range

missiles that could hit the U.S. to prevent Iran from resuming its nuclear program and

to end what he calls a decades-long, unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder against

the U.S.

The U.S. and Israel have bombed more than a thousand targets in Iran since the operation

started Saturday, killing supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Hamani and a total of four dozen

top Iranian leaders in its first day.

Iran has since launched retaliatory strikes across the Middle East, on countries like Israel,

Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates resulting in at least a dozen and a half deaths.

The militant group Hezbollah and Ali of Iran also traded retaliatory missile strikes

with Israel Monday morning.

Meantime, we're learning details of just how the operation came together.

The CIA spent months tracking the movements of Iranian leaders and sharing intelligence

with Israel.

That information sharing allowed the two countries to pull off a surprise, initial flurry of devastating

attacks in broad daylight, three strikes in three locations within a minute, killing dozens

of Iranian leaders.

Now President Trump is hoping such displays of force will convince Iran's military and

police to stop opposing the U.S. and Israel.

I once again urge the revolutionary guard, the Iranian military, police to lay down

your arms and receive full immunity or face certain death.

Though there is no clear successor to the Ayatollah, a three-member council has formed to

temporarily lead Iran.

President Trump says he's open to dialogue with the new leadership.

Democrats on Capitol Hill are mostly criticizing the Trump administration's strikes on Iran.

They are calling for a swift vote on invoking the War Powers Act this week.

Democrats like Virginia Senator Tim Cain say the president should have asked Congress to

authorize a military strike first, and that Iran did not pose an imminent threat.

All of the intelligence I've seen in 13 years on the armed services and foreign relations

committees tell me there was no imminent threat from Iran that justifies sending our sons

and daughters into war.

When talking to Fox News Sunday, on the same program, Republican Pennsylvania Senator

Dave McCormick disagreed, saying Operation Epic Fury was needed to stop a dangerous adversary

of America.

There is no regime in the world that has more blood on its hands than Iran.

It's killed thousands of Americans through the previous operation we took out and set back

their nuclear program significantly, but they have thousands of ballistic missiles, ballistic

missile launchers.

Like referring to the Operation Midnight Hammer strikes of last year, invoking the War Powers

Act would restrain the president's power to further carry out the operation in Iran,

giving him 60 days to withdraw troops or else ask Congress for further authorization.

With the GOP in charge on Capitol Hill, though, any such legislation is likely to fail.

In just a few minutes, Lindsey Mast and National Security expert Bradley Bowman will dig deeper

into the White House's rationale and goals for Operation Epic Fury.

The FBI is looking into whether a fatal mass shooting early Sunday morning in Austin,

Texas might have been an active terror motivated by the situation in Iran, a gunman wearing

one shirt that said property of Aula, along with another bearing an Iranian flag design

drove by a bar in an SUV and opened fire, killing two people and wounding 14 more.

Police Chief Lisa Davis, at one point he put his flasher on, rolled down his window and

began using a pistol shooting out of his car windows, striking patrons of the bar that

were on the patio and that were in front of the bar.

Police returned fire and killed the shooter a 53-year-old legal immigrant from Senegal.

International reaction to the operation in Iran has been mixed.

U.N. leader Antonio Guterres condemned both the strikes from the U.S. and Israel and

the subsequent retaliatory strikes by Iran.

We are witnessing a grave threat to international peace and security.

Military action carries the risk of igniting a chain of events that no one can control

in the most volatile region of the world.

The U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting on the strikes over the weekend,

but it ended with no resolution.

Meantime U.S. adversaries have predictably reacted negatively with China calling the

assassination of the Ayatollah a violation of the Iranian government's sovereignty and

Russian leader Vladimir Putin characterizing it as a cynical murder.

In Karachi, Pakistan, 22 people were killed and more than 120 hurt as protesters tried

to storm the U.S. consulate there Sunday.

U.S. allies like Canada and Australia have expressed explicit support for the operation

while leaders of several European nations urged caution and restraint going forward.

While there have been protests and gatherings of mourners across the world in response to

the U.S. and Israeli air strikes, there's also been a lot of celebrating.

We love you!

We love you!

That's the sound of people holding Israeli, Iranian, and U.S. flags near the U.S.

U.N. building in New York, celebrating the collapse of Iran's government, hundreds

of Iranians and Iranian Americans joined them for a march to Times Square Sunday where

they danced and celebrated some more while also demanding democracy and an end-to-oppression

in Tehran.

Social media was saturated with similar videos of people celebrating on the streets of

Iranian cities.

I'm Mark Mellinger, straight ahead military analysis of the U.S. strikes on Iran and later

the economics of the attacks.

This is the world and everything in it.

It's Monday, the second of March.

Good morning.

I'm Mary Rygerd.

And first up on the world and everything in it, the war in Iran.

Our producer, Lindsay Mazd, has been following and she joins us now with more.

Thanks, Mary.

When he announced Operation Epic Fury Saturday, President Trump laid out both reasons for

the strikes.

Iran is the world's number one state sponsor of terror and just recently killed tens

of thousands of its own citizens on the street as they protested.

It has always been the policy of the United States in particular, my administration, that

this terrorist regime can never have a nuclear weapon.

I'll say it again, they can never have a nuclear weapon.

And goals.

We're going to destroy their missiles and raise their missile industry to the ground.

It will be totally again obliterated.

We're going to annihilate their navy.

We're going to ensure that the region's terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region

or the world.

Joining us now to tell us more about the strikes and what it will take to achieve those goals

is Bradley Bowman.

He's the director of the Center for Military and Political Power at the Foundation for

Defense of Democracies.

He previously served as a national security adviser to members of the Senate Armed Services

and Foreign Relations Committees.

Bradley, good morning.

Good morning.

How are you?

I'm doing well.

Thank you.

Walk us through to start off with.

Walk us through the days leading up to the strikes.

There were talks, but the president apparently decided those weren't working.

Why?

Right.

So we had these protests start in Iran in December and really build strength in January.

And President Trump warned the regime not to harm the protesters.

And he basically said, don't hurt them or else.

And then the Islamic Republic of Iran, the regime there essentially shrugged and proceeded

to kill slash murder thousands.

Some estimates are above 30,000 of them.

So in my world of foreign policy now security, that's basically the president issuing a

red line and then an adversary regime saying, so what?

And they proceeded to blow right through that red line.

And so when that happened, I think both because of the personal political interests of President

Trump, but also the national security interests of the United States, one of two things in my

view had to happen, either the president needed to get a good deal at the negotiating table

or there was going to be a US military action.

And I believed that a good deal, or as President Trump said a few weeks ago, a meaningful deal,

would have the following three or four elements.

It would include an end to Iran's nuclear program, including no enrichment, addressing its

ballistic missile program, the means by which Iran has habitually attacked Arabs, Israelis,

and American troops, would also address their systematic support for terrorist groups,

which they've been doing since 1979, and an end to the systematic murder of Iranians.

And if you believe that this regime was going to agree to that, then I got a bridge I'll

sell you in New York because there is no way they were ever going to agree to that because

it would require them to be something they are not.

I was worried that President Trump's negotiators, his son-in-law and Steve Whitkopf, might

get bamboozled, if you will, that's a technical term at the negotiating table.

Thankfully, that didn't happen, and they wanted to see if they could get the deal.

They couldn't get the deal, and so military action was coming, and the only question was

how robust would be the American national security objectives here?

What would they go for?

Maybe just a pin-prick strikes, like a messaging strikes, if you will, are something more robust.

And we now know that the President and the United States, along with our Israeli partners,

have gone for a much more robust campaign objectives.

Well, they are robust, so what are some of the challenges to achieving, destroying the

missiles, raising the missile industry, annihilating the Navy, and more?

What sorts of challenges do we face there?

The primary means by which the Islamic above Iran has retaliated or lashed out are missiles,

so ballistic missiles mostly, but also cruise missiles and now drones, terrorism, maritime

aggression, and cyber attacks.

And so, both from the 12-day war last June, and also, again, now I predict it, and what

we've seen in the early hours, is that the first thing you go for is the radars and air

missile defense capabilities in the offensive strike capabilities of the Iranian, so they

have less of ability to defend themselves, and you have more ability to conduct strikes,

and you can get off after their launch capabilities, so their ballistic missile arsenal, their

launch capability, their ability basically to hit our bases to sink ships and shoot down

aircraft.

That's what we've seen this do, and that we've also seen the involvement of B2s.

These are the stealth bombers that were involved in the last day of the 12-day war in June

that hit the hearted and deeply buried targets at Isvahan, Natanz, and Fordo, and so what

we're seeing is just breathtaking a scope.

This is the largest war any war Iran has had with any country since 1979.

These are combined operations with the Israelis, so what we have now, we just have the Israelis

declare that they have air superiority over Tehran, over Iran, and so that essentially

is like playing soccer against an opponent that doesn't have a goalie.

So we have already seen American casualties, which are tragic.

These are U.S. service members who will not be returning home to our families.

We're not talking about a game of checkers here.

This is life and death.

I suspect this will take longer than most people think, and the costs will be higher, but

generally speaking, it's just our matter of time until the United States accomplishes

its military objects and interns are destroying things.

But in the end, though, what we've had is a decapitation of the Iranian regime, the

death of the Supreme Leader in all his other key military leaders by and large, but that

is not the same thing.

A decapitation of a regime is not the same thing as regime change, and regime change,

unless we're going to send in American ground forces, which I would strongly advise against,

is going to have to come from the Iranian people, and there's some real challenges associated

with that.

Can you go into some of those challenges?

I can.

So the Iranian people are an incredibly impressive people, well educated, but generally speaking,

they are not armed, and this regime, while decapitated, still has thousands of men with

guns who are true believers in a sick ideology who are ready to murder as many Iranian civilians

as necessary to maintain their grip on power.

I want to turn to the broader geopolitical situation, specifically, how will this affect

Iran's terror proxy groups?

Sure.

Terrorist groups.

October 7th, that's the horrific Hamas terror attack on Israel, which constituted the

worst single-day murder of Jews since the Holocaust, and let's remember Hamas was a proxy

of Iran.

And then on the next day, October 8th, Hezbollah started attacking Israel.

So Israel is essentially decapitated the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah, and they severely

degraded both terrorist organizations.

So in many ways, they are not completely out, but they are certainly down in their shadows

of their previous self.

But you still have the Houthis in Yemen, and you have militias in Iraq.

Iran still has a regional and global terror network, and I will be surprised if we don't

see terror attacks coming, whether they be lone wolf or something more systematic.

We've actually seen Iran linked individuals trying to do things within the United States.

I don't want people to be afraid, but we should also start with the truth, and that is true.

So if this is truly an existential moment for the Islamic Republic of Iran, we should expect

them to use everything they have, and I've just described some of the things they have

in their terrorist arsenal.

Last question, one of the criticisms that's been lobbed so far since it has started is

that this is another quote-unquote forever war.

What do you say to that?

When we talk about forever wars, maybe they're thinking of 170,000 ground troops in Iraq.

That was the high watermarker, or 100,000 ground troops in Afghanistan.

The 12-day war was not a forever war.

It was 12 days, and the American involvement was one mission over one evening.

This war is just a few days in.

I pray that it doesn't last long, but I also pray that the Iranian people will finally

have a government march in their welfare than the export of terrorism.

So I think what we cannot have is Americans.

The core American national security interests here is you can't have the world's worst state

sponsor of terrorism with the world's most dangerous weapon, nuclear weapons, because

they would be all the more aggressive.

We can debate whether they would use it, but at a minimum, they will be more aggressive.

And so we cannot permit that to happen.

And even after the 12-day war, respectfully President Trump said we obliterated Iran's

nuclear program.

He's right that we severely degraded Isfahan, Fortunatans, but we did not obliterate the entire

nuclear program.

Otherwise, what is there to attack right now?

There wouldn't be anything to attack if that were true.

So we didn't know where all the centrifuges are.

We didn't know where all the rich material is.

So that right there alone, I think, justifies additional American military action.

When you combine that with their support for terrorism and building ballistic missiles,

including the use of their space launch vehicle program, where they could develop the

means to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that could someday hit the United

States, you put that together and this is not a peripheral concern for Americans.

This is a core national security concern, something that we have to address.

We can debate how to address it, but it's undoubtedly a problem that needs to be addressed.

All right.

Bradley Bowman is the director of the Center for Military and Political Power at the Foundation

for Defense of Democracies.

Mr. Bowman, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Time now for legal docket, three cases at the Supreme Court last week.

The biggest one asks, what happens when the government ceases your home for back taxes

and sells it for less than it's worth?

The court is deciding whether the Constitution forces the government to pay you the actual

market value.

It's a fifth amendment question arising from the takings clause.

It requires private property not be taken without just compensation.

The question is what is just interesting questions.

But before we get to it, two quicker disputes also involving confiscated property by the Castro

Cuba regime.

Well, that's right after Fidel Castro's communist revolution in 1960, Cuba confiscated a long

term contract, giving a company called Havana Docks the right to operate part of the Havana

cruise port, what's known as a concession.

The U.S. government later certified that loss at more than $9 million.

Decades went by, and then in 2019, the U.S. began allowing lawsuits under a federal

law known as Title III.

It lets Americans sue companies that traffic in confiscated property.

So Havana Docks sued cruise lines that used the port long after the communist takeover.

But there's a serious wrinkle in the timeline here.

The concession had a built-in expiration date.

It would have ended in 2004, but lawsuits under the Title III law did not even become possible

until a decade and a half later.

So the justices had to wrestle with this question.

If the property right would have expired anyway, does the right to sue survive beyond

it?

Just as Elena Kagan pressed that very point.

But once the concession expired, I mean, you no longer have a property interest, you're

just like that bystander that I was telling you about, which is like, you know, there

was property that was confiscated all over Cuba, but that doesn't mean that I have a

right to be here in court.

Havana Docks wins lawsuits over Cuban property could stretch decades beyond the life of the

original ownership rights.

If it loses, claims may end when the property interest itself does.

A second Cuba case raises a different problem under that same federal law.

Exxon's predecessors owned oil refineries and around 100 service stations in Cuba pre-communism.

Those assets were confiscated in the revolution as well.

The certified claim now totals tens of millions of dollars.

And with interest, Exxon says the figure exceeds a billion dollars.

So Exxon sued a Cuban state-owned conglomerate under that same title three law.

But the defendants invoked a different federal statute known as the Foreign Sovereign Immunities

Act.

FSIA generally shields foreign governments and their entities from being sued in US courts.

So the question here becomes, did Congress clearly override sovereign immunity when it

allowed these Cuba lawsuits to go forward?

Justice Elena Kagan sounded skeptical.

But the cause of action doesn't aggregate immunity.

It just doesn't.

There are causes of action all over the place that rely on the FSIA as providing the jurisdictional

rules.

If sovereign immunity controls, many of these Cuba lawsuits could be blocked outright.

If title three overrides it, then the cases can proceed, and foreign state-owned companies

could face major liability in US courts.

Well, now on to the case we mentioned at the top, it begins with a $2,200 tax bill.

A home worth around $200,000.

And a foreclosure sale of that home at less than half that value just $76,000.

And here's the constitutional question.

And the government takes property to collect a debt.

Is it enough to run an auction or must it pay what the property was actually worth?

That is the fight.

The county says the family had noticed for years and chances to stop the foreclosure, but

the Pung family says it didn't even owe that tax in the first place.

The dispute began with a Michigan property tax benefit known as the principal residence

exemption, a rule that reduces taxes on a homeowner's primary residence.

A county assessor denied that exemption.

The state tax tribunal overturned the denial, but the assessor denied it again.

Before the family could fully unwind the dispute, the county foreclosed over that $2,200 bill

and the house sold at auction as you heard for $76,000.

The constitution says that when the government takes private property, it must provide just compensation.

The county argues that a fair public auction satisfies that requirement.

The price is what the market produced.

The family argues that wiping out nearly $100,000 in equity cannot be just compensation even

if the auction followed proper procedures.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor captured that tension.

They're fighting over a $2,400 tax debt that at least two courts said was an ode and

yet they plowed ahead and got a price half the amount of the value of the property.

At some point, doesn't the Constitution have something to say under the rubric of what

a just compensation is?

So what counts as just compensation here?

What the auction brought in or what the home was actually worth?

The family's lawyer, Phil Ellison.

The property interest here is the value of the equity that was taken.

Ultimately, is that there is a piece of property that has been uncontested by the government

to be worth approximately $200,000.

And so how can it be constitutional he argued for the government to erase $100,000 in equity?

Justice Neil Gorsuch asked what seemed an obvious question to the family lawyer Ellison.

I'm just curious, why would the county pursue a $2,200 debt that wasn't owed to this

extreme?

We can't figure that answer out.

We don't believe it's due and the reality is by the time the tax assessor actually informed

Mr. Pung that the price was actually, that she had put the PRE credit and taken it away,

that denied it once again, the very limited 35-day window in which a Michigan taxpayer can

activate the process of the tribunal to go back again.

After the already won.

I'd already gone.

For the county's side, lawyer Matthew Nelson argued that a fair public auction does reflect

market value.

After all, the auction process is lawful, so the price is just the price.

After all, the owners had years of notice to make things right.

A foreclosure is a forced sale as a result of the homeowners' actions.

Nothing in the Constitution says that the government has to act as a real estate agent to maximize

returns.

Justice Samuel Alito wondered why the family didn't just borrow the amount to pay the tax.

It had more than enough equity to get alone.

Ellison for the family noted the family wanted to keep the house, and he floated the notion

that the government could just have seized some personal property to resolve that debt, not

an entire home.

In this case, with a tax debt of about $2,200, they could have been the Peloton bike that

was in the house.

You think a Peloton bike today is worth $2,000?

Well, if you go on Facebook marketplace and you try to sell it, Peloton.

A Peloton bike today for $2,000, I don't think you're going to be very successful.

How are they going to know that he has a Peloton bike?

Traditionally, joking aside, traditionally, there are a lot of different options, or bank

accounts.

There's personal property, the vehicle.

There's lots of parties.

The kidding aside, the underlying question was a serious one.

How far does the government have to go to collect a small debt without wiping out a family's

home?

That created a scenario of just how messy a proportional debt collection might be, and

then Justice Amy Coney Barrett put it this way.

I mean, frankly, reading the briefs, it sounds to me like this tax assessor was like inspectors

of air, but it was even worse because John Belgaun hadn't stolen the bread.

You didn't even know the tax, and it's the small tax and the big loss of the family home

and of the money.

So it does seem that there's some unfairness there.

But I'm struggling to see how it fits into the taking framework.

Can you tell me of a case that we have that treats the foreclosure of a house as a taking?

Justice Sotomayor was even more pointed in her questioning.

Give me a holding from a court in our 250 year history, where we have said that the measure

of damages on a tax foreclosure is fair market value, not the auction price.

There has not been that specific holding up in this court's history, but there has been

the history of like parallel circumstances.

Oh, yikes.

That is the doctrinal chokehold, no precedent on point, which is why the county emphasizes

it.

Yes, foreclosure is a blunt way of clearing longstanding debts.

That's just reality.

But the family turns that 180 degrees and says if the government chooses a system that

destroys equity, then the constitution must step in.

And if the county takes in more property than needed to pay the bill, it must make the

property owner whole.

Lawyer Ellison for the family closed this way.

If the government is going to act like a confiscatory entity, if the family prevails here, counties

will have to come up with a closer market value or else pay the difference.

And if the county wins, it will let states continue a practice that some call home equity

theft by using fair process as a shield for unfair prices.

And that's this week's Legal Docket.

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Coming up next on the world and everything in it, the Monday Money Beats.

Time now to talk business markets and the economy with financial analyst and advisor David

Bonson.

David heads up the wealth management firm, the Bonson Group.

And he is here now.

Good morning, David.

Good morning, Nick.

Good to be with you.

Obviously, Iran is the story of the weekend and of the week to come, maybe of the month

to come, who knows.

But David, I think the place to start from an economic perspective is by noting that

we have had economic sanctions in place on Iran, pretty much since the Iranian Revolution

in 1979, just thinking of the immediate sanctions over the hostages to trade embargo to

U.N. sanctions over the nuclear program to maximum pressure more recently all the way

up to Saturday morning.

But bottom line for years, the U.S. and our allies have tried to contain Iran primarily

through the use of sanctions and not necessarily militarily and yet here we are.

So from an economic standpoint, David, why didn't sanctions change Iran's behavior?

And what does that tell us about the limits of using economic leverage to influence regimes

like this?

Well, economic sanctions are much more motivating for countries that value their own economic

well-being.

And Iran has ideologically been willing for much of its population to be impoverished.

And more so even than a country like Russia, which is also very willing for the vast majority

of its people to be impoverished, it does still value its self-preservation in Russia.

And Iran might even sure we can necessarily say that giving some of the Shia extremism.

So it's difficult to do a business deal with someone that doesn't respond to business

incentives.

And there's a geopolitical parallel here as well.

Well, still a lot of uncertainty, David, about how far the Iran attack goes and the fall

out from it, whether this remains contained or becomes something more sustained.

So I want to ask this, when markets look at a conflict like this, a big one, how much

of the economic risk comes down to duration?

I mean, what's the difference between a brief disruption and a prolonged one?

Well, so much of the answer that question is going to depend on the longevity and magnitude

of this, the president values hard strikes, decisive victories, but quick activity.

There hasn't been much that he has done geopolitically.

It may have surprised some people who are radically isolationist.

The president has certainly proven not to be that.

But he also has not done anything yet in either the first term or in this part of the

second term that suggested a tolerance for prolonged presence.

And my assumption is that this will be the same, but there's just a lot of uncertainty

here, Nick.

And then that's where the economic aspects come in, impact in straight-off or moves, impact

to Israel, where other trading partners come in on this.

What support Iran ends up getting from China and what that does in U.S.-China dynamics?

We need some time for these things to play out, because these are answers we don't have

right now.

Now, of course, one of the immediate pressure points we always watch in this region is

the straight-off or moves.

It's a critical artery for global energy and shipping.

Help us understand the real economic exposure there, David, not just for oil, but for global

trade more broadly.

Well, it's global.

It's not domestic.

And that's the issue that is given the president and any other U.S. president.

Significant leverage that we didn't have for many decades post-World War II.

The United States' dependency on oil is sitting in West Texas.

It is not sitting in the eastern part of the world.

And so to the extent that there was a lot of assumption that this might happen over

the last week or two, and that the quote-unquote prediction markets were presuming something could

end up happening in over a 50 percent chance.

We didn't know until we all woke up Saturday morning that it had happened, but there was

not like a shock to this, and yet oil had been at $66, $67.

There were times a few years ago, let alone a few decades ago, we're just the mere chatter

of this.

We would have been looking at $85 or $95 oil.

We'll see where it goes, but the world does not need Iranian oil.

And the U.S. most certainly doesn't need it.

And in fact, our ability to export even changes the game for global trading partners.

And it's also, by the way, those of us who believe in free trade, also believe in

a Navy, and our founding fathers, you know, understood this well, although they were doing

with barbaric pirates, right?

The United States will protect itself interest there, and I don't have any data in my mind

about that.

The issue on this question is more logistical.

Does it take a week?

Does it take a month?

What delays take place?

What reroutings take place?

We're going to look this week at shipping prices.

There's a few market signals we'll get, but the U.S. will protect its own interests.

Okay.

And before we go, and as we continue to watch developments, David, what should we be

looking for in the coming days to gauge whether the economic risks here are escalating or

stabilizing?

Well, I really don't know that the president is willing to put ground trips in.

And so that's where you start getting into quagmire talk, being there a long time, loss

of U.S. lives.

Could it be a prolonged air war?

Could it be a prolonged issue that affects Israeli safety?

You know, we right now do have a travel ban of any fights getting out of Israel.

And so those types of factors are all out there.

But assuming this goes to like a three or four year Iraq level war, I just don't see

it.

I don't believe it's on the table, but I don't know if you'll find anyone who believes

that the president has an appetite for that.

So you know, there's legitimate questions, regardless of what people think about the

propriety of this particular effort.

There's questions that we don't know the answer to right now, what the end game exactly

is.

But let's also not forget Nick, that when we talk about these things, there's an upside

and downside, right?

What if there is, unlike the case in Iraq, what if there is robust Iranian people waiting

for freedom to take over with self-government and open up markets?

And I mean, this is a very big country with a very big population.

There's all kinds of upside scenarios too.

I don't think they're likely, but I don't want to rule them out.

And I think that the left tail risk outcomes are pretty unlikely too.

So just from the economist in me, it's so hard to project this early, but I think we'll

have more clarity in the days and weeks to come.

All right, David Bonson, founder, managing partner and chief investment officer of the

Bonson Group, he writes at dividendcafe.com and at World Opinions.

David, I hope you have a great week, although I imagine it's going to be a crazy one.

Well, that's what we're here for.

Always good to be with you, Nick.

And I'm Nick Eiker, you're hearing your USA men's hockey gold medalist singing the anthem

down in Miami after returning from the Olympics a week ago.

There's been a lot of singing of the anthem lately, Jack Eichel, the American's top center

iceman.

Representing your country and we all take so much pride in wearing this red-white and blue

jersey and what it means to be an American and it's awesome.

I mean, it's incredible.

It's really hard to put in words.

You hear the anthem and you sing it together, it's hard to explain.

Well, today on the World History Book, we will attempt to explain it.

The Star Spangled Banner is so deeply embedded in American culture, it goes back even before

it officially became the national anthem, starting with the War of 1812.

Here is World's Emma Eiker.

September 13th, 1814, America and Great Britain are at war again.

British troops have just left Washington, D.C. in ashes.

Their warships are positioned in the Chesapeake Bay ready to attack Baltimore.

Fort McHenry stands guard between the ships and the city as the last bastion.

As the British prepare to bombard the fort, one of the ships, the HMS Tonnet, holds an

American hostage, Dr. William Beans.

They accuse him of being a spy.

And they arrest this dude named Dr. Beans and they bring aboard the ship.

That's Mark Ferris.

He's the author of The Star Spangled Banner, the unlikely story of America's national anthem.

Two Americans try negotiating Beans' release before the battle.

Francis Scott Key, a lawyer, and federal agent John Skinner.

They get into a tiny boat, I guess they're waving a white flag.

They're approaching the biggest warship in the world and they're like, hey, we want to talk about Dr. Beans.

They manage to convince the British troops that Beans isn't a spy, and the three of them

beat a hasty retreat back to their own vessel.

Then, at dawn, Britain blasts cannonballs and rockets at Fort McKenry.

Key watches the missiles light up the dark sky.

And he scribbles down some of the most memorable words in American history.

The rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air, the rampart.

That's Fort McKenry.

It gave proof through the night that the flag was still there.

With the stars and stripes flying triumphantly over the fort, the British sailed home in defeat.

He finished writing the piece the next day, titled The Defeat of Fort McKenry.

Many today consider it a poem, but he actually wrote the piece with music in mind.

Leresis invented new words to well-known melodies that were already part of the cultural conversation.

Mark Clegg is a professor of musicology at the University of Michigan.

He also wrote, oh, say can you hear a cultural biography of the star-spangled banner?

It's a tradition that was very common in the 19th century called the Broadside Ballad tradition.

So he imagines those words to the star-spangled banner,

already having in mind the melody to which we sing it today.

And was used for actually hundreds of other songs in American history.

Newspapers picked up the story, and suddenly the whole country was singing Key Song.

The ballad seemed to inject a shot of pride into the veins of the nation.

Reference for the nation's flag came along with America's newfound patriotism.

And after 1814 in Key Song, the song helps popularize the power of the flag for the American people.

The song joined the ranks of American classics, like Yankee Doodle.

And later, Catherine Lee Bates' America the Beautiful.

On March 3rd, 95 years ago, President Herbert Hoover considered which one should become the national anthem.

There were other popular songs in the running too, like Hail Columbia, My Country Tis of the,

and Columbia Gem of the Ocean.

Mark Ferris says there were issues with most of them.

Take My Country Tis of the, for example.

It's the melody of the British national anthem.

God saved the King.

And ask for Yankee Doodle.

Nobody takes Yankee Doodle seriously.

Clay says America the Beautiful wasn't a rallying cry for the nation.

The American Beautiful makes us feel great about, you know, America from sea to signing sea.

And America the Beautiful is wonderful when everything's going pretty well.

Hail Columbia was a runner-up, but the star-spangled banner was the clear choice.

It was always obvious to people that the star-spangled banner was the symbolic song of the nation.

And it was just a matter of making it official at that point.

The anthem is tricky for singers, with a sweeping 12 octave range.

Clay says that's part of what makes it great.

It takes a lot to sing this song well, and you have to sort of go for it.

And I think there's something inspiring about the tune, the melody,

that demands that America sort of be heroes.

Like you have to become bigger than yourself in order to realize that song.

And what would the star-spangled banner be without the flag itself?

The stars and stripes came with its own traditions.

Here's Ferris again.

In the 1890s, the man who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance,

introduced what was known as the Bellamy salute to the flag.

The Bellamy salute was taken from an old Roman tradition of standing with one arm raised to the flag,

palm down.

But that's where the Nazi salute came from.

So Congress revised it in 1942.

It changed to standing with a hand over the heart, hats removed.

The hats off part is a military custom.

It's an amazing cultural thing, and nobody around the world.

There's no country on this planet that plays its national anthem more than we do.

In America, flags are everywhere.

On front porches, high school gyms, and the biggest sporting events,

like the Olympics and the Super Bowl.

And where the flag is, so is the star-spangled banner.

Klaik says he believes the most important word in the anthem is you.

Like Osay, can you see?

And the reason for that is because it invites us all to be part of the story,

to have a kind of personal relationship to the song.

And I think that's, that to me is the magic of the song, and what it calls us to do.

I think it's a call to citizenship, as much as it is a symbol of nation.

That's this week's World History Book. I'm Emma Eiger.

Tomorrow, how pro-life advocates are using zoning ordinances to block abortion centers,

and a Senate race that could offer a glimpse of what's ahead for the midterms.

That and more, tomorrow, I'm Mary Reichard.

And I'm Nick Eiger, the world and everything, and it comes to you from World Radio.

World's mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says, six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest,

a holy convocation. You shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to the Lord in all your dwelling places.

Leviticus chapter 23, verse 3, go now in grace and peace.