Trump’s Gamble - with Walter Russell Mead

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Our religious enthusiasts and naive believers. Some of them may have actually decided

on an in it for power and money, and their calculation might flip to the point of, well,

let's see, which is better for me being dead in a bunker or having millions of dollars in Switzerland

and the Americans giving me a free pass for all my past crimes.

It's 7 p.m. on Wednesday, March 4th, here in New York City, it is 3.30 a.m. on Thursday,

March 5th in Tehran, and it is 2 a.m. on Thursday, March 5th in Israel as Israelis turn to a new day,

and hopefully we'll have a quieter night. Before we start, I am thrilled to share that on April 20th,

I will be interviewing Rachel Goldberg-Polen at the Striker Center at Temple Emanuel to discuss

her upcoming book called When We See You Again. This event will be the official launch of her book.

I invite our New York listeners to join us and we'll be posting a link for buying tickets to the

event and registering in the show notes. On Wednesday, Iranian media reported that state officials

are weighing a strike on Israel's demon and nuclear facility.

If the United States and Israel attempt to topple the Islamic Republic, the threat comes as

the war seems to spill beyond the Middle East as an Iranian warship near Sri Lanka has been sunk

apparently by a torpedo fired from an American submarine. According to Iranian reports,

101 sailors are missing and at least one is dead following the incident. Inside Iran,

the United States has reportedly been covertly engaging with Iranian Kurdish militias in

mounting a ground assault to destabilize the regime from within. Some of these groups have

been harshly targeted by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in recent days. Adding to the pressure

on Wednesday Saudi Arabia vowed to retaliate if Yemen's Iran-backed Uti rebels target the Saudi

Kingdom. An official in Riyadh told Israel's Khan broadcaster that the Kingdom will not tolerate any

agitation from Iranian proxies, but that quote right now we are letting the U.S. and Israel

conclude their steps in Iran. Close quote. In the past 24 hours, the United States has identified

and released the names of the four American soldiers tragically killed in Kuwait during an

Iranian attack. Their names are Captain Cody A. Cork, 35 years old of Winter Haven, Florida,

Sergeant First Class Noah Tijans, 42 of Bellevue, Nebraska, Sergeant First Class Nicole Amor, 39

years old of White Bear Lake, Minnesota, and Sergeant Declan Cody, 20 of West Des Moines, Iowa.

May their memory be for a blessing. On to today's episode, where we will be taking a step back to

consider the broader geopolitical implications of the war. What considerations are driving American

strategy? How will they redefine the Middle East? What does victory, or failure, or something in

between look like? And where does China fit into all of this? To answer these questions, I'm pleased

to welcome back to the podcast, our Geopolitics guru, Wall Street Journal columnist Walter Russell

Meade, who's also the host of the podcast, what really matters? Walter is also at the Hudson

Institute. He teaches at the Hamilton School at the University of Florida, a big fan of the Hamilton

School. And he's the author of several books, most relevant to today's conversation, the arc of

the covenant about the history of America's relationship with Israel and special providence,

four historical patterns that shape American foreign policy. Walter is a key interpreter of how

presidents make decisions on foreign policy and what influences their thinking and shapes their

thinking on their foreign policy and national security strategies. And he's been doing that for

all of the Trump years, and we are excited to dive into this conversation, which is especially

relevant. Walter Russell Meade on Trump's gamble. This is Call Me Back.

And I'm pleased to welcome back to the podcast, Walter Russell Meade, who's also host of the

What Really Matters podcast. Walter, thanks for being here. Good to be here, Dan. So I want to

think about what's going on right now with regard to the US war against Iran, not just from a strategic

perspective, but also in the context of this, you know, we're in an even year, which means we're

heading into midterm elections in 2026 in November. So there's also a political calendar. It remains

to be seen whether or not this is a popular war. It's hard to measure that right now. But Trump

is clearly, I think, seeing something that many Americans don't and certainly many of his critics

don't. So in that sense, he's making a bet. How would you define the bet that he's making?

What's a huge bet? Half the people who voted for him, perhaps voted for him because they thought

a vote for Donald Trump as a vote against endless wars against US interventions all over the world.

And so here he is offering up a war in Iran in the Middle East, one that so far, who knows how long

it's going to last. So if this thing goes well and it turns out that American public opinion and

Trump's supporters think he did a smart thing in the right way, then I think it solidifies his

authority as almost nothing else could. But on the other hand, if it turns into a quagmire,

a long war, no obvious exit strategy or in some other way, some kind of unspendable setback,

then Trump is going to enter the midterm elections wounded, then moves into his lame duck period

wounded. It could really be a decisive moment in his presidency. So you really think it's that

binary, like the scenarios that you can envision could really go wildly in either direction.

And it's very hard at this point to predict which direction it goes. Well, certainly, you know,

maybe if you're sitting in a skiff somewhere in Langley or the Pentagon and you're looking a lot

of information than the UNI don't see, maybe it's predictable, but I have to say from where I

said, I can see a lot of different directions this thing could go in. And the point you've made

is that no matter how good and promising a war looks, there's always surprises. They may not

all be bad surprises, but they're always surprises. They're very often setbacks. Those setbacks are

not always determinative of the war's final outcome, but there's just a lot of twists and turns

in every war. We're already seen several in this war. We've seen the decapitation strategy.

You know, it was very effective at knocking out, knocking off leaders of Iran, but it doesn't seem

to have stopped Iran's ability to continue to counter attacks. So the decapitation strategy

didn't fully decapitate their ability to fight. At the same time, the Iranians thought that their

missile attacks in the region would be so disruptive and caused so much of an economic crisis globally

that it would split the American coalition and maybe force Trump to step back. That hadn't

happened either. So both sides have already seen at least one kind of big surprise.

Okay. So one of the most common criticisms out there, and I've been getting this question a lot,

as I'm sure you have, is that there's no clear straightforward answer as to why the U.S.

is at war with Iran, a hot war, right now in the way that it is. So Walter, I put the question

to you. Why are we at war with Iran right now? Well, two parts. One, of course, Dan, you know,

as well as I do, we're not at war. We are in the middle of a combat engagement with Iran because

the president has just done this. Congress hasn't declared war. Congress has taken no votes

on this. So we are in this situation of hostilities because Donald Trump decided it was the right

thing to do. So then if we want to get to why did he think that we're in the zone of speculation

here because President Trump is not the kind of person who thinks that the way to communicate

is to just put all your cards down on the table so everybody can see exactly what you're thinking.

President Trump actually comes out of a sort of school of business negotiations where you really

don't want the other side to know what you're thinking that diminishes your leverage and you give

them information, you give them power. So when Trump is speaking, we should always remember, yes,

he's speaking to domestic audiences, but he's also speaking to the Iranians and he is trying to

create impressions, ideas in their minds that will lead them to behave in the way he hopes they will.

So that makes it really hard actually. And people who say, well, I'm not quite sure why we're

at war with Iran right now. In this sense, the combination of Trump in exact relationship to the

world of facts throughout his career plus his strategic approach to information all mean that we're

speculating. And there's sort of two different questions. One is, why is he doing it at all? And the

other is, why would you do it now rather than a month ago or three months from now or whatever?

Those are actually quite different questions. So let's hit both of them. So first of all, why

and then we'll get to the why now? Okay, so why is he doing it at all? I think there's several

reasons. One, Dan, you may have noticed this too, but there's a real generational difference in the

way that a lot of people, even people on the right see this war. When I talk to some of my younger

friends, conservative many Trump voting, their instinct tends to be, no, not another war in the

Middle East, not another war for regime change. And when you talk to folks my age, there's a kind

of a sense of, well, I don't know if it's going to work and that worries me. But if anybody on

planet earth needs to be whacked, it's Iran, the Iranian leadership. And what makes for those

differences two things. One, people under let's say 40 have never seen an American success

involving the use of force. War in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, Libyan intervention, maybe you could

argue sending some folks into Syria helps stop ISIS from running wild. You got to be old.

Remember a time when America successfully used force. So that is one big generational difference.

The other one is about Iran itself. I remember the 1979 revolution. I remember the hostage crisis.

I remember a whole long string of murderous Iranian attacks on Americans and on our friends

around the world. And not just on Israel. And I've been listening to cries of death to America.

And I've seen them patiently assemble instruments of foreign policy aimed at actually making life

worse for us and more dangerous for us. And I absolutely agree with President Bush, Obama, Biden,

and Trump, all of whom said at least Iran cannot have a bomb, a nuclear bomb. So that's my background.

But again, if you are under 40, Iran is just one of a bunch of characters wandering around

in the region. Yet, help with the IDs in Iraq. But your basic idea is well, we shouldn't have been

an Iraq in the first place. You don't have this sense of Iran as kind of uniquely dangerous hostile

actor. So if you believe American force usually doesn't work and regime change is just a

quick way to failure. And you don't have any reason to hate or fear Iran, the Iranian leadership,

you really cannot see the point of this thing. And I think that's gotten a lot of younger people

out looking for, okay, well, if there's no obvious explanation for why we're doing this,

what are the hidden occult explanations for this who paid Trump or who made Trump do this?

And that's one reason some folks get into the whole conspiracy thinking quagmire and

start chasing their own tails. And you see a lot of that. If you are under 40 and you have all

the observations and the history that you just described, do you think your view starts to change

based on what President Trump did in Venezuela at the beginning of the year? That's a real case study

of an operation that so far as it seems now had a beginning and an end, a very surgical operation,

very complicated, very impressive, but really no casualties for Americans. And I hate to use the

word clean with any military operation, but it was about as clean a military operation as we have

seen, certainly at that scale. I think what you think there is, yes, so why didn't he do that in

Iran? What he's doing with Iran is so much more like what Bush did in Iraq than what Trump himself

did in Venezuela minus the court of a million troops that we deployed. Originally it was a shock

and all raid and the ground troops went in later. And Trump is already saying in press conferences,

I'm not going to rule out ground troops completely. This is just affecting people based on their

life experience. And the Venezuela thing is just not a bit, it would take a whole series of

successes. For example, let's suppose that things in Iran work out. And from that point of view,

you know, there's a new government. It's at least reasonably pro-American or at least not

horribly anti-American. It didn't cost much. Everything seems to be working better. Well,

then you might have a little more confidence in a third incursion, but it happens just by the way

as the Gulf War, the success of the Gulf War under George H. W. Bush brought a lot of people out

of their Vietnam syndrome funk intervention never succeeds. Only then to have a lot of those

folks like Biden and Hillary Clinton sort of trapped into supporting the Iraq war, which then

didn't work. So you've got the kind of Vietnam syndrome all folks and Iraq syndrome young folks

and they're just not happy with this thing. Okay, so you got into the Y and then you explained

why the Y is not very compelling to people under 40. But I do want you to also address from your

perspective, the Y now. What's the rush? People say, what was the sense of urgency? Even if

President Trump decided us living with the Iranian threat was unsustainable and it had to be dealt with.

Okay, but why now? I think the answer is really very simple. I think it's missile production.

That's the main thing that the longer you wait, the more ballistic missiles the Iranians make,

and the more they accelerate their ability to make missiles. Already everybody is talking about,

oh my goodness, the big question is now, will the Iranians have enough missiles so that we and our

allies use all our missile interceptors? And then they've still got missiles and we're out of

interceptors, not only in the Middle East, but we've drawn down our stocks in Asia so that they've

made us helpless and now they keep firing missiles. All right, that's an unacceptable scenario.

I entirely agree with President Trump on that. That is an unacceptable scenario. And here I think

that the American and Israeli positions have come closer, that in the past, the Americans really

almost only looked at Iran through the nuclear lens and thought, well, Iran doesn't have nuclear

weapons. How bad would their ballistic systems be? And they saw, you know, for Obama and Biden,

that was the real choke point. But Trump, I think, is right that the ballistic missile program in Iran

is not just a threat to Israel. It's a threat to the Gulf. It's a threat to the American ability

to secure the flow of oil globally. It is a real threat. He saw them working hard on it. He saw

them refusing to negotiate. And so he knew that he did not have an infinite time period to just

sort of sit and patiently wait and say, how can we contain Iran? It's in a box. Why should we worry

that the time would come when it would be impossible to strike Iran because of their non-nuclear

ballistic missile capability. Under that cover, they'd be able to go ahead with the bomb and we

wouldn't be able to do anything about it because of the fear of their ballistic missiles.

Then if you add on top of that, the sort of cherry on top of the Sunday is obviously the Israeli

saying, well, you know, there's this group meeting schedule with the top Iranian leadership.

So you have an opportunity here that is unmissable. So from your standpoint, the why now is

Trump believed this moment was fleeting in that Iran, at some point, the missile math was going

to catch up with the West in a way that would be unsustainable. A, not just with the West, but

with our allies in the Middle East. And B, then this opportunity is presented to him where we could

really get maximum advantage. If we're going to go to war anyways, then let's forget to do with

maximum advantage. And this scenario last Saturday morning was the ultimate maximum advantage,

at least for the start of the war. Right. And I think those are probably the two factors that had

the most to do structurally with this thinking. Having the chance of winning, if he thinks he's

really going to win, getting that done before the midterms so that next couple of months you wrap

up a big victory in the Middle East, that's not a bad way to start setting the table for the midterms.

Price of oil would come down very dramatically. So all of those kinds of things are probably in his

thinking too. Okay. So how do you assess how clear the president or the administration have made

the case to the American people? I don't think they've made the case at all. This is not about why

you would do it now, but why Iran might matter from the standpoint of American national security.

We've noticed, you know, when President Trump came into office, you had the sort of

axis of revisionist powers, Russia, China, Iran, with Venezuela, North Korea, tagging along after

and others like maybe South Africans and others thinking about jumping on. What we've seen

is that he's gone after the weak sisters, the lamers and the herd. He went for Venezuela.

He's putting the squeeze on Cuba. Venezuela is a country that is very far from Russia and China,

very close to the United States, hard for them to do anything really about American policy in

Venezuela. So he's got that going for him. You win something there and then you move to Iran. I

see that some people in Russia are noticing this pattern. He is, I think, tightening the screws

on Russia in ways that a lot of the American press doesn't get because they're sort of emotionally

committed to this idea of Putin and Trump are aligned in some way. But we've been cracking down on

Russian oil tankers, sanctions have gotten tighter. We've pushed the Indians to buy less oil from

Russia and so on and so forth. So pressure has been mounting against Russia as well. If this gamble,

gambit, whatever you want to call it in Iran succeeds, there will be the tremendous,

both a kind of is a psychological weakening of the axis of revisionist and a material weakness.

The weakest of the big three, but still one of the big three has been knocked out and Russia and

China just kind of sat there and issued strong statements to the United Nations when one of

their allies called on them for help. So if Trump can pull this off and pull Iran as he pulled

Venezuela into a different alignment, then you've actually sent a message to Russia and you've

sent a message to China and you've sent a message to any country anywhere that thinks that

its best interests might be served by aligning with one of those two. So I think Trump sees there's

a lot going on there, but I am not sure that Trump wants to broadcast all of these things to the

world. He believes that America needs for there to be a strong Russia at the end of the Russia

Ukraine war because if Russia were extremely weak or fell apart into a lot of small countries,

the only country that really helps is China, which would then have access to all of those minerals

and could kick Russia around or not have to worry about its back if it were involved in some kind

of confrontation with the US and allies by sea. He had hoped when he came into office that that

would be enough to get Putin to make a pretty quick deal with him over Ukraine and then move on.

And here's where some of Trump's critics are right and Trump is wrong and Trump is I think it's

come as close as Trump does to admitting that he was wrong. Putin is much more invested in Ukraine,

than Trump had realized and has been willing to pay a much higher price.

But Trump has been pushing the price up on Russia, on Russia's engagement in Ukraine and the

Iran thing is definitely another step in the tightening of the screw there. What we're hearing out

of the administration is fundamentally an Iran focus discourse about what's going on and not a

kind of, okay, here's America's position in the world. Here's what I've been doing. Here's

what I am doing. And here's what I'm going to do. He just doesn't think you share that kind of

information with the enemy. Okay. So if you're Trump and you're presented with possible scenarios of,

you know, let's call them quote unquote victory scenarios or successful scenarios ranging from

A plus to C minus. So somewhere excellent outcome or not excellent, but still pretty good or

kind of mediocre. I won't go with like disaster. Just generally, what would those scenarios start

to look like from an excellent outcome to something middling? Well, excellence is Iranian society over

throws the Islamic Republic. Maybe some of the units in the army and so on desert and turn it,

but basically there's a contemporary quote of a color revolution in Iran and a democratic regime

takes over which doesn't see Israel or the United States as an enemy wants to pump a lot of oil

and gas as fast as possible. They name the main street in Tehran, Trump Avenue. It's just a big big

success and everybody's just amazed. That's A plus and it's not impossible. It is I in my mind

it's not the most likely scenario, but it could happen. And then a kind of a B scenario would be

the Venezuela option. I don't want to shock any of our listeners with any kind of cynical

rail polytick talk, but it's just possible that not all of the people in the IRGC are religious

enthusiasts and naive believers. Some of them may have actually decided on an in it for power and

money and their calculation might flip to the point of well, let's see, which is better for me

being dead in a bunker or having millions of dollars in Switzerland and the Americans giving me

a free pass for all my past crimes. And so the critical mass of people in Tehran or in Iran who

might be willing to take that option. In that case, the global press would do the usual like

bitter scolding. Why doesn't Trump love democracy enough and so on and so forth? But that just rolls

off his back like water from a ducky does not kill. And all of those people he's lost forever

anyway. But then you get the kinds of agreements. So that that for Trump would be a win, but it wouldn't

be a win with like angels descending from heaven and trumpets of glory everywhere. But it would be

a real win that I think he could present who the average American is like, isn't this better,

especially if the oil starts to flow and the price of oil having spiked goes down before, well

before election day. Nice thing. Probably the lowest level that could still be called or spun as a

success would be what you can call the Venezuela minus scenario where it's kind of clear to everybody

who looks hard that they're just pretending to be nice to Trump. You know, oh, yes, we're going

to change. Yes, we understand. But in reality, the minute the pressure is off, they're going to go

back to their old ways. And then podcasts like this and other people will start saying, well,

that's not the real thing. A lot of Israelis will say, wait a minute. We've been sold out. The problem

is not solved. But Trump will have the feeling that most people don't read the fine print. And so

that this would be spendable as a success from there, you start getting to degrees at failure.

What levers do the Iranians or does the regime have to prevent those achievements from being

reached by the US and Israel? The number one piece of leverage that it has is endurance.

It is not easy to force a regime change from the air using air power alone. Iran wants to

entangle Trump into a quagmire that he can't win basically make it look to everybody,

including possibly to Trump himself, that what he's done is blundered into another endless war.

You know, again, all the Iranians in a sense have to do is keep fighting to make that a very tough

scenario for him to avoid. This is probably the strongest argument against the war is that

air power historically just doesn't have that strong of a record of provoking regime change.

A little bit like Saddam. And you take out that top layer and there's nothing left. Iran is not

like that. The top layer of the leadership is gone, but it ain't dead. The regime ain't dead.

Now, how many times has Israel killed the head of Hamas or the head of Hezbollah and the organization

is still there? I think their strategy is, this is kind of their whole card, is to force Trump

to the place where he either has to get in and fight a ground war, which will probably kill him at

the polls, kill him in the midterms, maybe destroy the Republican Party, but wreck his reputation,

split the Magah movement, and ultimately probably not work just as the wars in Iraq and

Afghanistan didn't work. That's their thinking of what they think they can try to do.

And I don't see at this point any sign that they've given up on that as their strategy.

Now, that's vulnerable because there again, there's a critical mass of people there that might

want to take no. I want the money and the deal, rather than I want the long uncertain resistance

of guerrilla fighting with no assurance of a good outcome. And you'll notice that Trump

in his public statements is really trying to woo those people, the potential America supporters

in the room. He's not promoting the Shah's son as a replacement. And what do you think that is about

because he is very tepid in terms of how he talks about the Shah's son because that's the declared war

on kind of the regime, you know, everybody in the regime is to give up. If you're going to impose

somebody from the outside, it means that you're cutting out all the people on the inside.

And I think Trump at this point believes that the chances of cutting deals on the inside

offers a better path to success than bringing in this outside guy.

Okay. So if there is success, something that Israel, that the region and the US and Israel

all regard as a US Israel victory. What does that do to the region?

Paradoxically, I think in a way, it underscores what happened after the June war, 12-day war,

where a lot of regional countries moved away from Israel and also started moving out,

edging out from under the American umbrella because they felt less threatened.

The Trump card that America always has in the Gulf is, we're the people who, when the chips are

down or we're the only people who can and will defend you against all comers.

Well, if there are no comers, that card loses value. And so I don't think this is a war that will

out of which we'll see a kind of stable pro-Israel or Israel stably integrated in the Middle East

emerge. You mentioned Russia and China a few moments ago. I just want to return to them.

They, as you say, have not done much Putin and Xi do our knowledge, have not done much in

support of Iran, at least that is obvious that we can see. So what's going on there? What do

you imagine is going through their calculations? Well, imagine what they're hoping for is for the

US to get trapped into a quagmire that will both like suck in our munitions and our attention,

cost us a bunch of money and totally divide America and polarize even more than already is America

and society. So if that's where this thing ends, they've achieved a tremendous victory without

lifting a finger. Those are the best kinds of victories when your enemy does all the work.

And if they can find little ways of putting their fingers on the scale to make that outcome more

probable, I would expect them to look for opportunities to do that. But if on the other hand, the US

scores a real win and Iran moves from the Russia, China column into the America column,

then I think their calculations change a bit. It makes the Russians. I think it will probably

increase concern in Russia about the cost of the war in Ukraine and the path that they're on.

I think it'll cause even the Chinese to rethink some of their assumptions about

America is an inevitable decline and we are on an inevitable rise. I think either way,

real defeat or real victory changes the geopolitical situation in pretty significant ways globally.

Okay, I want to ask you in closing here about India, which you have spent a lot of time thinking

about and writing about India generally as a global power, as a geopolitical power, but also India

and Israel in that relationship. It was quite stunning in the last week that you had

Modi's historic visit to Israel for two days and then Modi leaves and then basically it felt like

within hours, Israel and the United States were jointly at war with Iran. It's just a lot going on.

What do you think Modi is seeing right now as he watches this war play out? What matters to him?

Well, I have to say, I do wonder what BB said to Modi while they were there. Did BB say,

listen, you know, I know you'd planned a shopping trip for tomorrow afternoon.

Right. Text me when you're on the ground in Delhi. Right. Exactly. I saw BB a couple of days before

midnight hammer and he said nothing to me, nothing to me about make sure you get out of there.

I hope Modi got maybe a little bit more of the red carpet treatment than I did.

But look, I think for India, this is just a huge mess and very worrying. First of all, oil.

There's no oil coming through the straits of hormones. India is a major importer of oil. They

need it and gas. This is their source. They don't really have a lot of alternative supplies. It's

bad. You know, anybody in India is going to be worried. What's this going to do to the currency? What's

this going to do to inflation? Am I going to have a crippling energy shortage? How long is this going

to go on? That's going to be one consideration. Another is there are almost 10 million Indian

citizens living and working in the Gulf. Contract laborers, professionals, a whole range of people.

Those people can't get home and they're in a war zone. And if you figure there's 10 million

there, that means there's like a hundred million people at home who are relatives or friends of

these folks who are calling their MPs and calling the government. What about, you know, how are

am I getting my cousin home? Right. Etc. Etc. Etc. And India's reaction a lot of is just going to

be focused around the immediate crisis that this is causing for India. Then there are other issues.

These days Pakistan and Afghanistan are basically at war. So the Indians have gone from seeing

the Taliban as really bad guys to being well, not all bad. I mean, they've got some redeeming

virtues. But on the whole, all right, stepping away from the short term issues, which are going to

be top of mind for Indian policy makers because they're important. If you had an Iranian Israeli,

you know, let's imagine a victory scenario which Iran actually is grateful to Israel for its help

in getting rid of the Islamic Republic. And we can't rule that one out. I would see the Emirates,

the Indians, the Israelis, really in a very interesting place. And India right now, as I believe

Israel's biggest foreign customer for arms exports, I would see more of that happening.

This war is a tremendous so far is a tremendous advertisement for both American and Israeli

defense capabilities and technologies. And it is so crystal clear that the side that relies on

Russia and China for military help is basically throwing rocks and spears while the side that is

aligned with the United States is just having the best stuff you could have. All right, Walter,

we will leave it there. Thank you. This is a tour de force of the region and global geopolitics

in light of this historic moment. And we will, I'm sure, coming back to you soon because your

sobriety is welcome. It's not all hopeful and optimistic and it's not all dire. Thank you for

doing this. Well, thank you, Dan. Good to see you.

That's our show for today. If you value the Call Me Back podcast and you want to support our

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