Trump’s warped war logic – If you start more, you can end more!

Hello and welcome to American Friction.

On Saturday morning, I decided I was going to take the dog out for a walk and just ignore

the news and listen to an audio book.

When I got back, I checked my phone and christened message me and said, well, this is terrifying

and that's why I opened social media to a raft of World War III posts alongside the

news that America had launched strikes on Iran.

This has long been rumored, but now it's a reality.

So why now?

What does Trump actually want from this and what will the reaction in America be?

The situation only appears to be getting worse.

How bad can it get?

To discuss all of this, I'm joined by Nahal Tussi, senior Foreign Affairs correspondent

for Politico.

Nahal, thanks for joining me.

Hey, it's great to be here.

So nahal, Trump promised no more walls.

How is he justifying breaking this promise?

I mean, is this technically a war or is it just major combat operations?

Is it just military strikes?

Is it just a campaign to deal with a potential preemptive post-emptive?

I don't even know if that's a word.

Yeah.

Attack.

I mean, we're hearing so many different versions of this that it's really

really messy.

And so how is he justifying it?

Well, he and his people have laid out an array of reasons, potential alleged reasons, that

they consider doing this.

And they are really all over the map.

A main thing I just want to ask, there seems to be the big question over here that, you

know, our Prime Minister is asking and has been getting a barrage of insults for doing.

So is there any legality to this, whatever, where you're trying to square it?

Is there any way they've even tried to actually justify it in a legal manner?

International law experts say, no, this is illegal.

I mean, I'm sure there's, you can find one or two out there who say that it's fine.

The administration seems to be at times trying to make the argument that the President had

to act because there was an imminent threat from Iran.

Now, the idea is that the President does have the right to move quickly against imminent

threats, that that doesn't require congressional approval, and that otherwise, you would have

to go to Congress.

And Congress is the one in our constitution that has a power to declare war.

Now the question is, what is an imminent threat?

And the Trump administration has said all sorts of things about, oh, well, the Iranians

were building out their ballistic missile program.

They were planning to come after us.

Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, was kind of, said the most astonishing thing, which

was he basically said that Israel was going to attack Iran anyway.

And we knew that if they did that and when they did that, the Iranians would attack us.

And therefore, we had to attack first to prevent them from attacking us after Israel was

going to attack them anyway.

So I have not heard a lot on the side that says, yeah, here's some very, very clear reasons

that this was completely legal and the President could do it without Congress as approval.

It seems like the administration is still trying to figure out an actual argument that can

fly for that.

When it comes to the idea of congressional approval, anyone sane who seems to be talking about

the situation says, you know, Congress should be approving war actions and they are the

arm of government that has the power to do that.

But has that idea been proven to be for the birds, just I can't remember the last time

it seems like something like this was started and there was congressional approval.

Well, I mean, we've had, you know, Congress vote on things, for example, related to the

Iraq War that effectively authorized the U.S. to take military action in Iraq that authorized

the U.S. take military action after we were attacked on 9-11 in places that harbored al-Qaeda.

There is this one argument that Iran has in the past harbored some al-Qaeda fighters and

that maybe we could use that legal rationale as a reason to do what we just did.

I don't think a lot of people are going to buy that.

But if you're asking me whether Congress has this great track record of really being on

top of this and, you know, exercising their power, no, the answer is no.

I mean, for years and years, Congress has been seeding its power to the president.

Whenever they have been given, not whenever, but at times, such as in the case of Syria,

when Barack Obama went to Congress and said, hey, give me permission to go and strike

Syria over the chemical weapons, I want you to play your role in this, they wouldn't

do it.

Right?

And so we have this very partisan polarized Congress where Republicans are pretty much going

to do whatever the president wants and Democrats don't have any power to stop them.

And they cannot seem to find compromises on hardly anything.

I mean, maybe they can, you know, name a post office now and then.

This is just not a Congress that can really function on any level.

So I mean, I can understand why a president would say I really don't want to deal with those guys

on Capitol Hill, but do you still go launch a massive war in the Middle East?

That's a different thing.

Even though in Congress, as you say, it just appears that the Democrats are powerless

and the Republicans will do whatever, whatever he says privately.

What do they, what their feelings seem to be?

Because I just don't see how anyone can be, can be happy with this.

Even if you are a complete lapdog, you must be quite frustrated looking on at this situation.

Plenty of people in Congress don't like the Iranian regime.

I really can't think of any who do, right?

This is a tyrannical regime that has been anti-American for more than almost 50 years.

It's been a thorn in our side.

So you're not going to get a lot of members of Congress shedding any tears

over the death of the Iatola or anything like that.

So I think privately, there's a sense of, well, at least,

you know, we'd struck a blow.

But the fallout that's happened since, the question of the legality, the question of,

for instance, right now, when a huge erupting issue is the question of the safety of American

citizens in the region, which this administration apparently did very little to prepare for.

So, you know, there's a lot of unhappiness with the process and there's a lot of unhappiness

with the rationale.

And there's a lot of questions about the end game and how long this is going to last,

how much is going to cost, and what kind of a Middle East are we going to leave behind?

I mean, we don't know what's going to replace this regime.

The president does not know.

So it's a real mess.

It was not really, it's not really well found out.

When it comes to that, I mean, clearly, Trump and allies don't see there being a moral

responsibility to make around stable.

They don't seem to see that sort of due to care for maybe the people of Iran in that way.

But should they not just see a self-interest in making around be stable?

Because to me, it seems like just the country being a complete power vacuum and potentially

breeding ground for masses of anti-American sentiment just doesn't seem to make any sense to me,

even if you don't care about the people there on much of a human level.

So one of the questions right now is, are we going to have potentially what people call

regime collapse?

And so that is this idea that the government effectively falls into a million pieces in Iran,

and you have different factions grabbing different bits of power, perhaps different territory,

perhaps even leading to skirmishes, civil wars, ethnic malicious mobilizing, things like that.

Yeah, Iran becoming a broken-up failed state, kind of like Libya, right?

And so there is this concern among definitely the Gulf Arab states and a number of other countries,

many US allies in Europe, and of course, people in the United States who will at some point,

whether they're lawmakers or not, have to deal with the fallout from this.

But there's also this other way to look at this, which is Iran's regime has been such a danger

to other countries in the region through its proxy militias, through its efforts to get a nuclear

program or nuclear weapons alleged. They say they don't want nuclear weapons.

And it's growing ballistic missile programs, which Israel in particular saw as a threat.

So some might argue that a failed Iran is less of a threat to, for instance, Israel,

and perhaps even some of its neighbors. I am not convinced of that. I think it could

become a terrorist playground. A lot of bad things can emanate when you have a place that large

with that many people in such chaos. So yeah, people need to be concerned. And I think one of the

goals of the Trump administration is to have some sort of a stable government remain there, even if it

means dealing with the remnants of the regime. You wrote about a regime change, but also this idea

of behavior change. You've been potentially what they're trying to push there. And that

came, that phrase came from a source you were speaking to within the Trump administration. Could

you kind of describe to me what you think they they meant by that? What the difference is there

from regime change to behavior change? As I've been looking into this, I've heard like a wide array

of terms, regime change, regime transformation, regime collapse. I kind of regime modification,

regime adjustment, right? And when you look at Venezuela, for instance, that that's kind of a

model of, you know, it was a first I was like, this is regime change. And then I realized, oh,

it's kind of just partial regime change. The difference though, when you look at behavior change

versus regime changes, you can have most possibly all, but probably most or at least some of a regime

is institutions, even its personnel, even its process and its allocation of power remain the same

as long as when it comes to the United States, the regime acts differently toward the United

States. So if you are say Iran, and Trump might be perfectly happy with leaving the same people

in place, the same system, not real elections, the opposite, whatever, as long as they can in a

verifiable way show that they're not going to be a threat to the U.S. and its allies. They can

completely mothball their nuclear program, cut back or end their ballistic missile program,

and also just, you know, cut the funding and support for proxamilicious. I mean, if they really

take steps that the U.S. is happy with, then I think he would say, well, this is a total behavior

change. You could even argue, in many ways, if you change its behavior enough, it's a different

regime, right? Now, there are plenty of critics of this idea, right? I mean, for a long time,

in particular in the Iranian diaspora, you know, used to be that people thought we could reform

the regime. But over time, there grew to be, has grown to be this belief inside the Iranian diaspora

that there's no way to reform this regime. You have to pull it out by every root, every branch,

every stem. It has to completely go, this is not a reformable crowd. They're not going to change

their behavior. And I think in particular among Israelis as well, there is this belief that

this group of people, this system is just designed in a way that it is inherently untrustworthy.

And you have to change it to such an extraordinary degree that is basically unrecognizable.

They don't really buy the behavior change idea. The Israelis don't. But I think the Trump

administration, seeing what it's done in Venezuela, seeing what it hopes to do in Cuba, still thinks

that it's possible with Iran. With Israel, Mark Eribe airport forward, as you say, the kind of

preemptive, preemptive strike theory that they had to go to war for Iran because Israel might

launch a preemptive strike on Iran, which would then get America. It just seems it's a really

you have to travel. It's a lot of sort of mental gymnastics you have to make there. But let's say,

okay, that is the reasoning for it. What does that mean for the US and Israel relationship?

Because to me, it just seems like I'm struggling to see how that isn't becoming much more

strained than it is. I think that Trump, having seen what happened in Venezuela, the kind of

way that the operation worked and succeeded, felt emboldened. And I think that he

agreed with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, that the Iranian regime is

unusually vulnerable right now. And so if we were going to strike, we might as well do it now

when they are so weak. I think in a sense, this was going to happen no matter what. But there was

definitely a sense of, well, the Israelis have to be involved. They want us to be involved.

And they have to put some skin in the game too. And we just need to all do this together. We

reported that there was some talk that maybe they would have preferred the Israelis to

stage out the first strike so that the Iran would respond so that the US could right back.

Now, I will also say, Rubio has sort of been trying to walk back what he said a little bit

today, trying to muddy the question of whether he even mentioned Israel, even though we have the

transcript. But in terms of the future, I think it's about how far Israel wants to go in terms

of the bombing and this regime change idea and how much patience the US has on that front. So far,

it's Israel that's been doing most of the actual assassinations. We've been basically, the US has

basically been striking facilities and capabilities, things like that. And as this operation goes on,

is it possible that Israel may want to go further than the US, especially when it comes to

destroying the regime? Israel has largely been the one that's been carrying out the assassinations,

whereas we have been striking the facilities and the capabilities of the Iranian system.

And so the Israelis may say, look, we want to just kill more and more people in this system.

We want to go for the police chiefs. We want to go for the besiege leaders. We want to get absolutely

everyone that we can. And in the meantime, the US might be seeing mounting American casualties.

We've already had at least six troops die, not to mention growing political discontent in America.

I mean, Trump at some point may feel the political pain and we've got a midterm election just a few

months away. And so the question might be, will they at some point split with the Israelis saying,

no, no, we got to keep going and Trump saying, no, it has to stop. And believe me, everyone is

watching for that potential split down the line.

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This is possibly one of many sort of million dollar questions here now. But why

why is it that it would have to get to a point where America and Israel, there would be,

there would be a kind of split there as opposed to America is in what seems to be an uneven

relationship when it comes to terms of power, just saying you have to stop. I don't really understand

why there isn't more of that. And Trump seems so prepared to leverage his power against certain

people. But then it would appear particularly with Benjamin Netanyahu, he does not seem to have

that sort of that gravitas to do so. This is a very sensitive question. And answering it is

you have to be very nuanced because it's a very complicated issue. It goes back decades Netanyahu

has been the prime minister for so long that it's largely been about him and the relationship with

American presidents that he has had. Look, I think the US who is a major provider of aid,

military assistance to Israel has definite, I mean, we're the superpower. And I think that the

Israelis know that. But I also think the Israeli prime minister also knows he can make a very good

argument. Like the argument that this regime is unusually weak right now and we need to strike

is a legitimate argument. And the argument, for instance, last June that look, you might as well

go and strike their nuclear targets now because they're so weak after we just bombed them for 11

whatever days. That's something that that Trump agreed with. So I don't think this is something

where it's a question of like who's the more powerful one and who's not. I think the US

is a more powerful one. But I think sometimes Netanyahu who often has also played the partisanship

game in the United States by very much leaning on the Republicans has just managed to make pretty

solid arguments. And let's not forget that if there is one president that can put leverage and

power over Netanyahu is Donald Trump. Remember what he did when I came to Gaza and he basically

pulled together that that peace agreement the 20.1 and he basically made Benjamin Netanyahu

call the countries and apologize to them for staging a strike in Qatar. And not a lot of American

presidents have been willing, frankly, to do something like that to someone they consider a

really important ally in the Middle East. And President Trump very much can stand up to Netanyahu

when he chooses to. But he also gets some of the arguments that Netanyahu makes.

On the on the timing of this operation, if we're calling it that,

does it and I know we're dealing with real world logic and then Trump logic? Does it seem like

logical the timing of it or is there some sort of logic within Trump's logical frame as to why

now, why he chose now to be the time to go forward with this?

I mean, you know, he he wanted to strike earlier. He wanted to strike in January when

there were protesters in Iran hitting the streets and the Iranian government was cracking down on

them. And he was told, look, we don't have the assets in place. So weeks and weeks later,

after all of the there's two carrier strike groups and other assets are in the region,

the biggest build up of US military force in the region since 2003, the US invasion of Iraq.

He had them there. He tried the diplomatic route as well. You know, everybody's bringing up that

check out the play where like the check off's gun, right? It's like if there's a gun in the first

scene, it's going to be used by the 13. And that kind of was how it felt when you had all of these

military assets in place. You go like, okay, he's going to use this, right? And I think the only

question was, was it going to be like a small approach, a medium approach, or an all-out approach?

And it was Donald Trump. So of course, he went for the all-out approach.

So, so Trump referenced when he was criticizing Geist Army reference, Winston Churchill. And he

talks as though he does have these reference for these great men of history. Do you think he cares

about how he looks and how he will stack up at some point in that sort of way?

I think he really does like the idea of being seen as someone who liberates a group of people.

Like he does like thinking that he can help the Iranian people or the Venezuelan people or the

Cuban people. It's, you know, it's strange because people have this belief that Trump just doesn't

care about humanity or whatever. And I think though that, you know, he has this thing where

maybe he doesn't actually care about the people, but he likes being seen as a liberator of people.

So it's more about him, right? So I guess, you know, if that's what it takes to liberate people,

it's to satisfy Ziko then okay. So so Trump, Pete Hegsiff and Marco Rubio who you would expect to be

the sort of free most important players on the American side on this. Don't completely don't have

their stories straight. Don't seem to agree on why they did it. Don't seem to know exactly

what the the reasoning was there. To me, that seems to indicate maybe they either they're just,

if they're not on the same page and that that's one thing or there are other characters that play.

Who else in this story should should we be looking out for, you know, if there is Jared Kushner

important person to look for is Steve Whitkoff an important person to look at like who are the

who are the power brokers beyond the the obvious figureheads. I think you named some of them. I

would say the chairman of the joint chiefs, Dan Kane is also an important player. He he tries,

you know, he does his job in the sense that he gives the president an option. He tries not too much

to voice opinions. That's not really the role per se, but he he does say look, he has said

we we could face a lot of casualties. It's not going to be simple. But when he when he is asked

to come up with a plan as we saw in Venezuela, he comes up with one and it's and President Trump

really seems to to trust him. I think the CIA chief John Ratcliffe also probably played

a more important role than people know. And also, oh man, the kind of influencer types and Lindsey

Graham as well. Senator Lindsey Graham, a big player in this, some of the conservative talk show

type hosts and look ultimately Netanyahu played a really big role from in the conversations.

But this all always comes down to Trump and kind of his instincts and what he wants to do.

And I think he just felt like he has the the bandwidth and he doesn't have to worry about

reelection. He's not he just he wants to change the world. I mean, look at what he did with

tariffs, right? He is willing to throw aside any constraints. And so he's like, let's just do it

in for a diamond for a dollar. Yeah, I always think Lindsey Graham is a good person to look out for

because whenever he's in the news, I know something really stupid is happening. So this can make me

incredibly, incredibly angry with how this is this is spreading at the moment. Obviously,

it's really hard to predict and it's hard to to know what's going on. And what do we what can we

can we say when it terms to when it comes to game plan that out, but also more importantly,

I suppose at this moment, what do we have to acknowledge that we we simply don't know what are

the what are the known unknowns going on? I mean, how the Iranian government is going to try to

maintain itself? Who's going to who's really going to rule the country? Is it going to be the

clerics or is it going to be the military, the IRGC in particular? How long this is going to last?

That is definitely an open question right now. And how far this conflict is going to spread? I mean,

the Iranians are launching missiles across the region. You've had Dubai get hit. You've had

Qatar and Bahrain. I mean, and if those countries decide they have to react and that they have

to hit Iran just to show their populations. Yes, we can do this to them. We're not going to just

sit here and take it. Then we could be talking about a broader regional war at some point. This

really does have the possibility, the potential to really get out of control.

With Trump, if it's his personal interests, what are the main things to look out for then? Are

the Gulf countries something we really should be focusing on? Because his own personal enrichment,

which seems to be one of his main driving forces behind being president, does seem to be very

tied to the Gulf states. So if nothing else is going to make him want to put on the brakes,

perhaps his bank balance might. So are they an area to look out for?

I think absolutely, but I also think if you're looking for President Trump to be logically consistent,

then you're just wasting your time. He says he's trying to free the Iranian people

and yet he's barred Iranians from coming to the United States. I gave up a long time ago trying

to find logic or consistency. There's only so much bandwidth it feels like any of us can have,

and I imagine yours as a foreign correspondent that's be incredibly full at the moment with the

amount of conflicts going on. What do you think this means for other conflicts? Is it going to

draw focus, resource away from them? What do they mean for all the other wars that are going

on around the world and all the other places that Trump just seems to be bombing at will?

I mean, I think you know, Ukraine might not get the attention that it deserves. Not to mention

there's potential munitions shortages that we're going to be suffering as a result of this war,

which means that we might not be able to sell as many to our partners such as Ukraine who are

facing conflicts. And Afghanistan and Pakistan right now are fighting each other and it's

barely making the headlines at all because this other war has gotten all of the attention.

And yeah, I mean, look, it's so funny. I feel sometimes I become very forgetful lately. I've been,

I just can't seem to keep anything in my mind. I just have like such a bad memory and I'm just

realizing, oh, it's because, you know, I have only so much bandwidth and there's so many different

things going on. And my brain is like, you know what? You're just going to have to forget about

that thing you saw the other day. You're just going to have to forget it because I don't have room

for that. I have to think about Iran. Just a final question on Trump. Do you think he's,

he's likely to start more wars and stop more wars over the next few, few months?

I mean, are we counting, ending the worst that he starts?

Yeah, that's probably a difficult one, isn't it? Let's say they don't count.

I mean, all I'm going to say is like, you know, it's just joke that it's been,

people have been saying it's, um, it's like the fief of peace prize just doesn't mean anything anymore.

Yeah. Yeah, it really is, it's not worth the, the gold it's printed on. Is that the phrase

with you? Who knows? But, uh, no, thank you. Thanks so much for joining me.

Thanks for having me. And thank you to all of you for listening to American friction.

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to the show. I'm Jacob Jarvis. Thank you for listening to American friction.

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