At least according to a Pew Research poll, a majority of Republicans under the age of 50 no longer view

Israel favorably.

How does invading Iran actually benefit the United States? It doesn't.

How does aiding and abetting what I would call genocide in Gaza benefit the United States? It doesn't.

It tarnishes our name and wastes our resources, and it is a moral stain on the United States.

Kurt thinks establishment Republicans are getting the war with Iran all wrong.

The Iran war is not good for the Republican Party.

They are pushing forward, at least publicly, pretty religionally.

What ha- what has happened over the last couple of days about the situation with Netanyahu in, in October 7th, because once you get this information, then it kinda starts to make sense about why there was such a delay, why they were caught by surprise, why it was Israel's Pearl Harbor, sir?

Yeah.

So this whole theme, this whole story has migrated from the alleged fringes increasingly into the mainstream.

Uh, a few weeks ago, Hillary Clinton herself, uh, was on a television program and seemed to allude, and then quickly correct, uh, herself to the notion that perhaps Netanyahu allowed this or had foreknowledge of it, which is really an astonishing admission from Clinton, who's, you know, a pretty committed, uh, supporter of Israel, a pretty co- committed, you know, member of the establishment.

You know, the idea that she would float that Netanyahu would allow this attack at some level, I think, uh, should give everybody pause about the exact nature of this.

Now, of course, Israeli citizens are going to the polls in later this autumn, later in October, and, you know, there are just a sort of swirling number of questions around Netanyahu.

Um, of course, some of the intelligence failures occurred under his brief predecessor, Naftali Bennett.

That's the current story that's out there, sir, and actually I think reinforced by the Egyptians as saying, "We did this"?

What has happened over the last couple of days about the situation with Netanyahu in October 7th? Because once you get this information, then it kind of starts to make sense about why there was such a delay, why they were caught by surprise, why it was Israel's Pearl Harbor, sir.

Yeah, so this whole theme, this whole story has migrated from the alleged fringes increasingly into the mainstream.

A few weeks ago, Hillary Clinton herself was on a television program and seemed to allude and then quickly correct herself to the notion that perhaps Netanyahu allowed this or had foreknowledge of it, which is really an astonishing admission from Clinton, who's a pretty committed supporter of Israel, a pretty committed member of the establishment.

The idea that she would float, that Netanyahu would allow this attack at some level, I think should get everybody paused about the exact nature of this.

Now, of course, Israeli citizens are going to the polls this autumn later in October, and there are just a sort of swirling number of questions around Netanyahu.

Of course, some of the intelligence failures occurred under his brief predecessor, Naftali Bennett.

Netanyahu came in in 2022.

And actually, I think reinforced by the Egyptians are saying we did this.

And so this is key, by the way, because Pazushkian has actually played himself a bit more of a pragmatist role within the system, would you say?

Yeah.

So, I mean, this is something that true Iran hawks don't like because they want to argue this is an autocratic system and there aren't actually politics.

But the reality is Pozeshkian is part of the reformist wing of the party.

So the former president, Raisi, died in June of 2024 during that helicopter crash, sort of at the zenith of the Biden administration.

Pozeshkian won a special election.

He is, you know, he's got a real kind of father of the nation reputation.

However, getting to a deal does seem like it's in the cards.

And so this is key, by the way, because Pozeshkian has actually played himself a bit more of a pragmatist role within the system, would you say?

Yeah.

So, I mean, this is something that true Iran hawks don't like because they want to argue this is an autocratic system and there aren't actually politics.

But the reality is Bezeskian is part of the reformist wing of the party.

So the former president, Raisi, died in June of 2024 during that helicopter crash.

sort of at the zenith of the Biden administration.

Pozeshkin won a special election.

However, getting to a deal does seem like it's in the cards.

say that, yeah, Netanyahu's selling point

to the electorate, which is relevant because he's going to be up here for another vote here in about 50 days or less, is that I am the unique bridge between us and the United States.

And he is not wrong to say so.

I mean, if you see his reception when he addresses Congress, honestly, some members of Congress, Republicans anyways, would probably prefer Benjamin Netanyahu as the president of the United States over Donald Trump.

You know, Netanyahu is a very Americanized Israeli figure.

He spends a different amount of time here.

His alma mater is here in the United States.

And actually, it could be beginning to be a hindrance in some races.

Perhaps it's a little bit of a better explanation.

Yeah.

So, I mean, look, the Iranians themselves shrink from the term proxies.

They claim that the Houthis are not directly a proxy of the Iranians.

And I think the term perhaps slightly overstates the relationship.

They are definitely a client of Tehran.

There's support material and otherwise financial.

And of course, at a time where I'd love to have a conversation about globalism and whether or not that's a good idea, because I think we are seeing the issues with it right now.

Perhaps it's a little bit of a better explanation.

Yeah.

So, I mean, look, the Iranians themselves shrink from the term proxies.

They claim that the Houthis are not directly a proxy of the Iranians.

And I think the term perhaps slightly overstates the relationship.

They are definitely a client of Tehran.

There's support material and otherwise financial.

And of course, at a time where I'd love to have a conversation about globalism and whether or not that's a good idea, because I think we are seeing the issues with it right now.

And so if it's not an objective to seize American troops and have like a big POW event, why is it that you don't think the carrot of sanctions relief isn't sufficient to get a sincere engagement from the Iranians?

I mean, the Iranians don't want to do this every six months.

The Iranians want a guarantee that this will stop.

And so they're driving a hard bargain.

So the two examples that you cited, the PMF in Iraq, we don't know how many people are members of it.

But last I checked, the self-reported numbers are over 150,000 troops.

That could be, frankly, an exaggeration.

architect of the MOU.

But here, are you tracking that America doesn't have the firepower to continue this war at the current pace?

Not at this particular pace.

So basically the tit-for-tat, and this can balance either way because the hawks are making the case, which is because we're running low on munitions, we need to do the total war now.

But no, the reality is that we are running out of these missile interceptors.

It's not just the Iran attack.

war, though.

Of course, we have been basically buttressing and the foundational partner of the Ukraine war for over four years now.

Do you see any world in which we get out of this war on cheaper terms than you described some weeks ago?

All right, Kurt, what do you think?

Yeah, definitely a good turn of phrase.

You have to hand it to him.

I would say it remains an open question.

how politically salient, that is, will voters vote on this? Will they show up to the polls on what I think is pretty obviously some level of Trumpian corruption, if not uh gargantuan corruption and uh i just don't know um i think it's a problem uh but it doesn't particularly show up into into the polls if you look at what people care about they care about the economy uh they care about their health care that's what they say they care about that being said i've never thought political science was an exact science and i think it remains it remains on The Democrats, you know, to hone a message that's very coherent and the message looks like this.

The White House doesn't care about you.

The White House is fighting a foreign war at the behest of a foreign power.

So what's your read of how all this AIPAC money may end up being a liability for these Republicans?

Your thoughts, sir?

Yeah, I mean, look, the central deadlines here are the 60 days that are set by the MOU, notwithstanding that the president himself declared the MOU dead.

Clearly that he has greenlit or yellowlit people in his own administration to deal with the Iranians.

That's what's going on at some level unclear in Oman today.

Additionally, you have the deadline of the likely Israeli election, October 27th, and you have the U.S. midterms.

These are major sort of goalposts that could compel action or lack thereof.

I think the neoconservative plan was to sell the president on renewing the war after the midterms.

the israeli election is a week before we're november 3rd they're october 27th am i correct in that yes how big a deal how big a deal is that

Kurt Mills.

Yeah, no.

The essential pretext for the war was a lie.

There was no imminent threat of a nuclear weapon hitting the United States.

Um, and so when you had administration officials talking about bombs over New York or London, it's just not true.

Uh, the Iranians had enriched uranium to some low level, but remember, the former supreme leader basically for either a mixture of political relig- religious reasons had banned the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

We've now removed him.

How big a deal is that?

Kurt Mills, your thoughts.

Yeah, I mean, this is, uh, I, I don't know what could be more serious than this.

Uh, you know, what you described there is the rise and kill first doctrine, which was explained, uh, in great detail by the New York Times reporter, Ronan Bergman, uh, in the first Trump administration.

You know, Israel has assassinated, you know, we think, uh, more than, more, more people, uh, more political officials, uh, than any, quote, Western government, uh, since World War II.

So, you know, Israel exists with own, wi- within its own plane.

Um, of course, uh, the allegation, uh, funneled by Israeli intelligence and then of course, um, expounded upon by their allies in the United States is that Iran is seeking to assassinate the President of the United States.

And, you know, we don't know.

Yeah

Price and coverage match limited by state law.

[upbeat music] That's kind of a contradiction between soul.

That's contradiction between soul and denial.

So w-what do you see the state of the world as being? And then perhaps even from there, what should the state of the world be? What, what should the US do in the world?

I can get us started.

I mean, this isn't terribly original, but top of mind for me right now is US-China relations and of course, the Iran war and the connection between them.

It's interesting that you said that the Iran war has showed the weakness of America.

I think that there is some truth to that, and also it's made us weaker, and it's made us weaker relative to China.

Is it that Donald Trump simply didn't prepare the ground enough or, or, or sell the war unlike HW Bush in the, in the first Gulf War? Or is there something else going on?

So, you know, when the US, uh, uh, it launched the, you know, uh, intervention in Vietnam or Iraq, there wasn't an immediate spike in gas prices or any other sort of discernible metric that affected the standard of living in a, in a very digestible and legible way for the man on the street.

That's not what happened here.

It immediately affected gas prices, and already the affordability question was the buzzword, was the catchphrase, was the leitmotif of, of why Republicans might struggle in the midterms.

We already knew that by the 2025 sort of off-off year elections.

But most significantly, and I think most spiritually for MAGA and for the White House, this was a violation of a core campaign pledge or a core campaign promise.

You know, Trump was seen as not only a relative anti-interventionist on the right, he had lobbied or lobbed this criticism against the entire Washington establishment, which he accused Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton, I think rightfully so, of embodying.

[laughs]

Where is this going? Where do you where do you speculate this all ends up? Is there going to be some sort of like moderate middle anti-Israel coalition that can be like an independent actual winner in real deal elections like governor races and, you know, Congress and Senate and potentially president?

Yeah, I mean, the first thing I would say is I didn't particularly like, you know, whatever state Senator Weiner, I think, is in position being harassed like that.

I don't love the 2020 sort of flashback of that.

I will say, though, it is a taste of his own medicine, because I believe he was in favor of a lot of the 2020 politics.

And so the shoe is on the other foot, as they say.

As to the question of where anti-Israel politics or Israel skeptic politics are going, I think you're very right, number one, to highlight the generational gap here.

But number two, I do think there's a precedent for where this could go in a generative fashion, which is that there's something called the blob or the establishment or this idea that we vote for presidents and nothing changes.

I mean, is it a strong possibility that we get a President Gavin Newsom, Vice President AOC, and a cabinet position to Mayor Mamdani, in your opinion, Kurt?

Where do we go from here?

Yeah, no, I mean, certainly it was true to form for this Israeli government.

And I saw that there's reporting that broke throughout Friday that U.S. intelligence assesses that Israel and Netanyahu are likely to interfere with this memorandum of understanding.

As I've intelligence- to guess that that's the direction they're going to go- yeah I think as laid out by vice president Vance.

They fully anticipate this- I think it's going to be pretty.

Early burly it already canceled- the president's meeting with Iranian president.

Pajeshkian.

But beyond that admonishment, I mean, are you really expecting that this administration is going to take a hard line stance against Israel as a consequence of these attacks in Lebanon and freeze aid.

Or is it something that they have substantive critiques?

No, I don't think they, they broadly speaking have substantive critiques.

I think we've seen this, uh, sleight of hand again and again where, uh, you know, opponents of any accommodation with the Iranians will say, "Oh, we have problems with Clause 1 or Clause 8," or, "This isn't tough enough," or, "All of a sudden we super care about ballistic missiles." And then they'll reveal in any run-up to any kind of conflict with Iran that they wanted war, um, from the beginning.

And like, look, that's fine.

This is democracy.

If you're an American citizen, uh, if you're, you know, if you want to make an argument, uh, for war, uh, go for it.

But don't pretend like you, you just want a deal, you just want a little bit better deal.

What do you think are the most important variables that we need to be tracking?

Or is it something that they have substantive critiques?

No, I don't think they, broadly speaking, have substantive critiques.

I think we've seen this sleight of hand again and again where opponents of any accommodation with the Iranians will say, oh, we have problems with Clause 1 or Clause 8, or this isn't tough enough, or all of a sudden we super care about ballistic missiles.

And then they'll reveal in any run-up to any kind of conflict with Iran that they wanted war from the beginning.

And look, that's fine.

This is democracy.

If you're an American citizen, if you want to make an argument for war— Go for it.

What do you think are the most important variables that we need to be tracking?

Curt Mills, your observations on that.

Yeah, I just think the whole framing is entirely off.

The way of describing Shiite Islam or the Iranian authorities as uniquely interested in survival or uniquely interested in explaining their own position to their own people, the idea that we don't do this ourselves, that we don't want to survive, that we don't valorize resilience, I think this is a human trait, not an Islamic trait or a Muslim trait or Shia trait.

So I'm not really sure what the relevance of that is.

As to the actual deal, the $300 billion fund, allegedly, if any of this money ever gets dispersed, as you correctly observed, Steve, will be done by people in the region.

where it's their business, where this is already going on.

There was an Emirati side deal announced over the weekend.

Curt Mills, your thoughts?

does it appear they've won out here?

Yeah, I mean, even by Trump's standards and even by Iran war standards today, the 11th of June is going to go down in history.

I mean, this was helter skelter of the first rate.

It appears in some that they're going to go back to the negotiating table unless this is an elaborate ruse by the White House.

But it's already past midnight as we tape in Tehran.

And, you know, the ones who are championing administration those who are not chomping at the bit for further ruination.

Those who look at the inflation reports those who look at- hikes in Europe this did just today as a result of- sort of wartime inflation those who want to wrap this up- by.

Should we expect that, like, the Mark Levin wing of the Republican Party would start criticizing President Trump?

Kurt Mills, your thoughts on this topic, sir?

Yeah, no, for sure.

I mean, look, it matters what gets in front of the president of the United States.

I think you know this as a former member of the principal's committee of the National Security Council.

I think, you know, the interagency process is a buzzword used by D.C. or blog types, but it matters.

And it mattered in the run up to this war.

The interagency process completely broke broke down.

Kurt, where do people get you with all your great commentary and writing on this?

How did we get in a situation that they think they can hold us up on this, sir?

Well, it's a rather, um, hilarious piece of leverage as you've, uh, noticed.

So it's, it's probably a thing that President Trump's base does not want, um, and they're gonna try to use it and intimidate the White House, uh, to potentially pull some of these nominees.

I think, uh, y- this is an opportunity for Trump to sort of return to his populist roots and say he doesn't want this, as you just laid out.

Um, this is a long, long, long history of perpetuating the mistakes of the war on terror.

Uh, this was a thing that was really spearheaded during the Bush administration, and continued very controversia- contr- controversially and lavishly under the Obama administration, and it's something that people have wanted President Trump in both terms, uh, to reform.

And, you know, look, the president himself during Russiagate was probably, uh, a subject of inappropriate government spying and surveillance.

In what world does that make sense, Kurt Mills?

In what world does that make sense, Curt Mills?

Well, the White House is officially pushing it.

But I think the White House is inattentive.

And you have people like your longtime associate, Seb Gorka, the counterterrorism chief.

These are the kind of sort of neoconservative voices in the White House who want to be a rubber stamp for this renewal.

So you have a situation where I don't think the president is really abreast of the details here.

And you have facets of the administration that are pushing something that Bush would have wanted, that Biden would have wanted, that Obama would have wanted, that almost any non-populous president of the United States would want.

Right? Your thoughts on this, sir?