Let's just sum it

up.

One, Trump has not accomplished a single one of his objectives.

The regime is still there.

It's stronger than ever.

It's more hard-line than ever.

Two, the Iranian people have not been liberated.

What's your take on the extent to which the stupid war and the damage it's done to our military and the weakness of America that it has exposed – enhances or increases the chances that Putin will become more adventurous in former Eastern Europe and that Xi will do the same in Taiwan and that Trump's stupidity thus could be leading us directly into World War III.

Especially since one of the biggest betrayals of Trump's last term was of the Kurds.

Yes, yes, yes.

When, when, when George H.W. Bush b- o- encouraged the Kurds to rise up against Saddam Hussein, they did, and they got slaughtered, and we didn't lift a finger, okay? So there's a long history here, um, that p- people old enough will remember.

Regional war.

Well, of course they're regionalizing the war.

People were surprised at this because they thought, "Why are you g- why are you bringing other countries into the war?" That is the point, understanding that they can't win militarily.

There's no way Iran is gonna win militarily.

Yeah

But give us a sense, if you would, please, of where Biden is on this.

You know, if you ask most Americans, how many nuclear weapons do we need? You know, you'd get an answer somewhere between zero and a few hundred.

And we have 6,000, 5,850.

So- Why? This is the question presidents often ask when they come into office and they're first briefed and they're first showed how to use the nuclear football.

They go, why do we have so many? And the answer to that question quickly moves away from the effects of these weapons to abstract theories of deterrence and controlling the escalatory ladder and targeting and all this.

And basically, it's a lot of gobbledygook.

And Joe Biden's a president who's been through all this.

But what do you see and what's next?

What is the history of Saudi Arabia's nuclear ambitions? For instance, Saudi Arabia did not benefit from the Atoms for Peace program under Eisenhower in the nineteen fifties, although Iran did.

Right.

In the nineteen fifties, Eisenhower thought that the way to solve this problem of sharing nuclear technology without giving people the means to make nuclear weapons was this Atoms for Peace program, where we would sell s- technology for peaceful nuclear purposes so they could build reactors, et cetera, do medical research.

Saudi Arabia w- wasn't at all interested at that point.

The Shah of Iran was.

You know, we had installed the Shah of Iran in the nineteen fifty-three coup, where we overthrew the government of Iran and put the Shah in.

And in the nineteen seventies, the Shah of Iran was very interested in building up a nuclear program in Iran and made deals with the United States that included not just building nuclear reactors, but also plans for uranium enrichment, plans for plutonium reprocessing.

But I guess, uh, that was then, this is now?

So what do you think, Joe? Where are we heading in this?

Well, first, the threat...

And the actual implementation of the destruction of purely civilian targets, a bridge, a power plant, is a war crime prohibited by multiple international agreements.

And it's not justified if the other side commits war crimes as well.

So there's... a president of the United States is blatantly committing war crimes and promising to commit more.

But the greater strategic picture is even worse.

While it is difficult to predict when you have two volatile authoritarian regimes involved, the Iranian regime and the Trump regime, my best guess is that we are in a new forever war.

It may sound fanciful, but I don't know that that's off the table.

Go ahead.

I do, but that's, I mean, that's what they are.

These people have, uh, Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff, have, have no experience, don't understand Iran, don't understand the nuclear issues, don't understand how to negotiate, don't understand foreign policy.

All they know is, you know, how to take money from these, these Arab state m- m- monarchs and tyrants that they're friends with, and that's their whole point, and th- and they, and they have an inflated opinion of their own skills.

But they in part got us into this mess.

We're in this mess n- not because Trump lost the war, which he did, not because he negotiated a surrender document, the MOU.

I think we did a podcast that, where y- you aptly titled it, David, this is a fig leaf for surrender.

while this is just an open wound?

And I'd like you to get your analysis of what's happening and this conflict over the Strait and whether the United States can be its guardian and who it's going to charge tolls to.

Well, the fighting is flared up again basically because after President Trump lost this war and sent Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to negotiate a very tricky memorandum of understanding to end the war and to open up the strait again.

It's very clear that they botched the job, that paragraph five of this MOU gives Iran clear authority over the strait, that Iran is charged with opening up the strait, and that any passage through the strait has to be coordinated with Iran.

I don't know if they intended to do that, but that's what the MOU says.

About three weeks ago, President Trump just seems to have decided that he wanted to open up another channel through the Strait of Hormuz, one that hugged the coast of Oman, the state on the other side from Iran and on the strait.

And the Iranians objected.

They said that was a violation, that all shipping had to go through their authority.

That's a little bit of shade that the Iranian foreign minister is throwing at the president of the United States.

But why all this mixed messaging and what actually is or potentially was being debated in Switzerland, given how things have unfolded today?

Right.

This is yet another sign that this administration simply does not know what it's doing.

It doesn't have clear strategic objectives.

It doesn't have a strategy.

It doesn't have competent people in charge of the government on what you would believe to be some of the most fundamental and important issues.

priorities of any administration to safeguard this national security of the United States.

Does it?

But why all this mixed messaging and what actually is or potentially was being debated in Switzerland, given how things have unfolded today?

Right.

This is yet another sign that this administration simply does not know what it's doing.

It doesn't have clear strategic objectives.

It doesn't have a strategy.

It doesn't have competent people in charge of the government on what you would believe to be some of the most fundamental and important issues.

priorities of any administration to safeguard this national security of the United States.

Does it?

Can we just begin by putting this into a historical context by you reminding our listeners how long the U.S. has been trying to constrain Iran's nuclear program?

It's a very long history.

The United States actually sold Iran its first nuclear reactor in 1957 to the Shah of Iran, the dictator we had created.

uh imposed on the people after we overthrew the government in 1953 the shah had very ambitious plans to build reactors research reactors power reactors even uranium enrichment and we were happy to sell them that technology but we got into a trap because the government didn't last when he was overthrown in 1979 we had a very different view of the islamic republic and didn't trust them at all with this technology Fortunately, the program lay largely dormant until the 1990s when Iran started ramping up the program.

And that's when Western concerns really reached a peak.

Iran offered to negotiate its program with us in 2003 after the U.S. invaded Iraq.

But Vice President Cheney rejected that offer, famously saying, we don't negotiate with evil, we defeat it.

Where does this go?

Was Iran giving more in regards of their nuclear program in that agreement than in this one?

Vladimir, that's an excellent point.

This, this is...

Trump could have gotten more than he's getting in this deal before the war.

He could have achieved this without fighting, 'cause what the Iranians were offering on February 26th was a good deal.

I mean, that's when I was saying, "Oh, well, this might, you know, maybe he could get better than the JCPOA." Uh, [chuckles] and like, then they just bungled it.

They fumbled it away.

So if Iran eventually decides to move toward a nuclear weapon, what would be the first indicators that intelligence agencies would look for?

Joe, what are yours?

This is a complete humiliation.

This is a, a, a major defeat for, for Donald Trump, and now you understand why he kept the text secret, 'cause he wanted a few days to create this alternative reality by just the words he was saying that to, to portray this as a victory.

And this is the standard Trump approach.

He has great faith in his ability to hypnotize the American people, to convince them that the, his illusions are actually real, that his name is still on the Kennedy Center, that the reflecting pool is blue, not algae green, that he won this war, not lost it.

Well, this is a very difficult illusion to maintain because the reaction to this agreement has been shock across the political spectrum.

And the reason is that shock, is because Iran commits to very little in this one-and-a-half page memorandum of understanding other than opening up the strait, which of course just is the situation we encounter- we, we, we were in 108 days ago before this w- war began.

Which you would negotiate.

Joe?

Well, that is a completely absurd statement.

And first, it's, it's part of the president's attempt to shift the focus from the numerous failures of this war, the catastrophes, the disasters, the unfulfilled goals that we can talk about later, and shift it over to this frame, where he's trying to cast this as a tremendous victory because he's done two things, open the straits, which of course were open before he started the war, and that he's going to get a pledge from Iran never to develop a nuclear weapon, which of course has been in effect, and Jon knows this, since 1966, which is the first time Iran pledged never to get a nuclear weapon, and has renewed those kinds of pledges in all kinds of places, including the very first page of the 2015 JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, that [laughs] Obama signed then and Trump tore up.

So this, these are no victories.

These are just repairing the damage that he's done.

And so, and then to the question itself of whether this stuff is valuable, it is enormously valuable.

It has been the focus of all previous negotiations, and the reason is this.

Please just walk away," wouldn't that be, in military and diplomatic terms, what we would call a defeat and a surrender?

Anyway, Joe, go ahead.

Two things.

One, this is a larger discussion about the American way of war, which I believe is now ob- been proven to be obsolete, 'cause I agree with your point.

And in fact, T- Trump makes his point, even in the cabinet meeting yesterday.

He says...

He's complaining that people are impatient with this war.

He says, "Well look, what are you talking about? We've only been at this a few months.

We have a whole new strategic landscape, and there were all these little guys writing articles for, for different publications going, "Isn't this amazing?" Hey, guess what? None of it's true.

Right.

So [laughs] that's why I started laughing as, as I started telling the name.

So the Iran nuclear deal.

[laughs] The Iran nuclear deal wasn't just, you know, a, a good deal.

It was the strongest non-proliferation agreement I've ever seen, and I've been tracking non-proliferation for 45 years.

I mean, this solved the problem.

It, it slashed Iran's program.

[bell dings] And the winner by knockout is Pataday! [crowd cheering] Pataday, bring it on.

Um, uh, uh, uh, so, uh, perhaps in reflection, you're gonna sign on to Ed's war of whim, eh, Joe?

Yes.

W- w- what do you, what do you call that snake that, that eats its own tail? A, an Ouroboros?

It's an Ouroboros.

Oh.

Yeah.

Well, that's what we have here.

I mean, it's, it's actually just, just an amazing, um, uh, d- well, it's a disgrace.

Yeah.

You, you, you, you're absolutely right.

I mean, what we're seeing is the mass extinction of arms control.

It is happening.

It is a process.

It's been going on for about 25 years ever since George H- uh, George W. Bush pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001, and there's been a series of agreements that administrations ha- have, mostly Republicans, have pulled out of.

The agreed framework with North Korea, the Iro- the Iran deal.

Talk me off the ledge.

And so I just wanted to turn to you guys, and turn to you first, Joe, and then t- then, then to you, John, and get your reaction to this shift

shiftThank you, David.

Thanks for having us on.

And that...

I listened to that podcast on Friday.

It was excellent.

It is...

What are you hearing about the plans of the Trump-Hegseth administration regarding their nukes? Like, what, what are they gonna do, uh, over the course of the next couple months that we've gotta look out for because it's gonna be a sign that things are shifting even further?

when, when, when Trump went after Syria, when Obama went after Syria, when we go after, uh, terrorist groups in, in Africa, um, it, uh, we use cruise missiles launched from attack submarines.

So I'm not gonna go through everything, but basically everything across the board in this vast nuclear complex that we have in America, everything's gonna be accelerated, everything's gonna be expanded.

They wanna roll back restrictions.

For example, they want to unsign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the treaty that bans nuclear weapons testing.

Uh, this has been largely adhered to in the world.

The only country that's tested a nuclear weapon in this century is North Korea, and even they, you know, did it underground, uh, at least, not an atmospheric test like we used to do.

Uh, you do that, well, that's a gift to China.

How do you expect Russia, China in particular, our main nuclear competitors, to respond in that environment?

anymore?Sure, if you like

Sure.

Just a second, just so we get the record straight.

Uh, since 1945, since we exploded the first nuclear weapon in a, in the, the test in, at Los Alamos and depicted dramatically in the Oppenheimer film, we've tested 1,054 times.

That's more than all the other countries in the world combined.

We accumulated a vast scientific knowledge of nuclear explosions and their dynamics so that in, in 1992, we stopped testing.

We said, "Uh, uh, we led the world in this," and the rest of the countries of the world soon followed.

[laughs]

How hard is it to know with any certainty how close Iran is to getting a nuclear bomb before these airstrikes?

Right.

Thank you, Anderson.

There are major uncertainties here.

There are a couple of things that we do know.

We do know that they have enough, um, medium enriched uranium, uranium enriched to 60%, that they could quickly put back into those centrifuges at Fordow or elsewhere and turn into bomb-grade material, 90% enriched uranium.

And they would have enough for the cores of about 10 bombs.

It, with 60%, which is what they have already, can you fashion a crude device? Because I guess my question is, if Iran feels they have no other, you know, if their back is against the wall, they feel this is a, uh, the regime is, is going to live or die based on this and they are so inclined, could they fashion some sort of crude nuclear device?

Um, what was, what was the problem back then? Well, we'll get to the physics a little bit more, but there was also some just, like, practical dollars and cents problems that would make SDI not feasible.

Sure.

So, uh, y- you know, very few people thought Reagan was serious about this when he announced it.

He surprised his own, uh, uh, military chiefs and his technical advisors.

In fact, the day he gave that speech, Air Force, uh, uh, leaders were testifying on Capitol Hill that th- this was not the time to be accelerating, uh, laser programs, um, or, or accelerating anti-missile programs because they thought the physics just weren't there.

The whole thing, s- one of them said, filled me with a great deal of trepidation.

It'd be like trying, it'd be like standing on top of the Washington Monument and aiming at a baseball on the Empire State Building while both were moving thousands of miles per minute, you know, you just, or hours.

Again, pesky physics.