It's scary that all this stuff is draped as social justice and benevolence, but it can turn to violence so quickly. And I think that was a lesson of the '70s, you know, 60s sort of ended with a Manson family, which was even they were like, "Oh, we're creating a great society to do that we need it." Kill these people. And that's why I thought, "Caloalist spoke to something much bigger." I do look at her, I'm like, "How do we bring her back? How do you de-radicalize someone?" And it's not going to be easy where she is, where she's on this kind of trajectory of purity, where I wonder if she can end up in martyrdom, is that the only place where she can achieve what she's seeking. Welcome to political ecology. I'm Ron Stuss. The boundaries of what is considered politically viable American policy in the Middle East have clearly moved in recent years. What once looked like mainstream consensus positions on Israel, Iran, and US engagement in the region now face serious challenges from both the left and increasingly parts the right. Current administration appears to be looking for a way to manage the conflict that avoids both open-ended escalation and a complete strategic withdrawal. So today rather than focus on narrow details and the latest developments on the ground, which change faster than you can say ceasefire, I want to use this discussion as a jumping-off point to talk about the ideological and the structural forces that are reshaping American foreign policy, especially in the region and leaning on the deep expertise of my guests today. I am here with Jay Sullivan and Hagar Shemali. Jay is a veteran investigative journalist and author with deep expertise on Iran and US foreign policy in the Middle East. He spent nearly two decades at the Wall Street Journal, most recently as Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, where he broke major stories on the secret US-Aran talks that led to the nuclear deal and the Obama administration's cash shipments to Iran. Jay is the author of the book The Iran Wars, which details the covert and financial battles between Washington and Tehran in his reporting has taken him across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, and he was nominated for three Pulitzer prizes during his time as a journal. He is currently the executive director of investigations at the program on extremism at George Washington University, a contributing writer for the Free Press and co-host of the new podcast The Threat. Jay, so great to have you back. Great to be here, thanks a lot. We also have Hagar, who needs no introduction to the political audience. She's a former spokesperson for the US Mission to the UN and at the Treasurer's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and a former Middle East director at the National Security Council. She is now an adjunct professor at Columbia University School of International Public Affairs, the host and creator of Oh My World on YouTube, and the co-host of the podcast The Threat, Hagar, Walk Back. Thanks. Oh, I'm excited for it. Thank you for having me and all of us in person. This is great to have you both in studio. So, first, you know, before we dig into the meat today, how do you both know each other? Because you know each other. Yes. And before The Threat, podcasting. That's right. I met Jay when I was a spokesperson at Treasury in the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and Jay was an investigative reporter with the Wall Street Journal, and did a lot on not just Iran, but on all things counter-alicit finance and counter-terrorist financing. And so, he was always bugging me for interviews and for quotes. Bussing around is good journalist, too. Yeah. And he was quite a fixture in the Washington, you know, Washington National Security media spokesperson World, for sure, or policy world. Yeah. Yeah. First impressions of Hagar. Some of us loved him, some of us hated him. I always loved Jay. Well, it was an interesting time, because this was when the Obama administration was kind of building up the sanctions warfare against Iran, which became like the driving force in a lot of ways of the policy. And Hagar was my entryway into that office at Treasury that was leading it. It's interesting looking to the day, because now they're sort of unraveling, where they're talking about unraveling this architecture. They created, not just Constrainer on's nuclear program, but support for international terrorism and other illicit kind of effort. So it feels like we come full circle, even though we don't really understand where we're going, but it's a very different time than when we first met during the first administration of Barack Obama. Well, talk about not knowing where we're going. I have kind of lost count of the number of podcasts, so we've now done on Iran and who's up, who's down, whether with this is going to resolve in a way that's, you know, favorable to the US goals. What those goals even are at this point, because they seem to be shifting. Like I said, I don't want to get bogged down in that, because by the time we release this, everything could be completely different. Support for political ecology comes from quince. One thing I love about summer is how easy everything feels. The days are a little more relaxed, and I find myself reaching for the same comfortable go anywhere pieces again and again, which is why I keep coming back to quince. I love this brand. 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Quince has also become a trusted favorite for everything from home to travel to everyday essentials. So make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quince.com/ron for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com/ron for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com/ron. So just to start with, you know, setting aside the day to day status, how are you thinking about what this war has revealed so far about the limits of American power and the credibility of our commitments, such as, you know, we are even able to articulate our commitments anymore in the world stage. I think there are two parts to it from my perspective. First of all, there's just like a military perspective. It really feels, if you talk to people in the Pentagon, that they were kind of running out of munitions. There was just like, did we have the capability to continue fighting this war given where our stockpiles were and it seems like no. So there's just kind of a hard military side. Can we defend two, three theaters at once if we couldn't continue this fight. So there's definitely the military front and then there's the diplomatic kind of geopolitical front where it feels like the Pax Americana or the US led order is if not challenged being broken down. I mean, what's so important about this war in a lot of ways is the free commerce, you know, open commerce, which is fundamental to our system. The fact that the Iranians were allowed to use that against us when they were so overmatched on the battlefield in a lot of ways is disturbing. But there's also the sense that our allies did not jump in and support us to a most, and you can blame Trump for alienating them over Greenland or whatever. But the fact is with their, it's in Europe or in Asia, these countries, our allies are in some ways even more dependent on Middle East energy than we are. They're more dependent on the trade coming through the straight-of-form moves and the fact that they didn't rally around us and we were sort of left alone. You can blame Trump for sure in a lot of ways, but you would have hoped that their own economic interests and their own understanding of how important this idea for an open commercial trading route would be the fact that we couldn't rally that as another sign that this kind of order is broken down. And this is bigger than, you know, our alliance with Israel and the way we've seen Iran in a long ways. To me, there was kind of a chicken and a part to this war on the one hand you'd say, "Wow, Trump is dumb because he got in this war and they took the straight-of-form moves hostage." Because we, everybody knew that that was the first card that they would play. That was like their race in the hole. Always have them. Correct. But at the same time you could look at and say, "Geez, if we didn't take military action in Iran was on this trajectory of military capabilities deploying these capabilities with the Houthis and their other allies, where would we have been in a few years?" And if you're of the belief that we're headed to some global conflagration where you've got the Iranians, the Chinese, the Russians, in the North Korean sort of aligned against us. You could see a situation where they're going to shut the straight-of-form moves. They're going to shut the straight-of-mallaka. These checkpoints, they seem to have a lot, if not control, certainly. Influence over that is a really dangerous situation. And I think that was kind of revealed in this conflict. And the fact that our European and Asian allies don't seem to share the fear is troubling. Yeah. Thoughts? I couldn't agree more. So I'm so glad.
As you mentioned, the part about Jay, about the fact that there is a lack of appreciation of an inevitability there in terms of a confrontation with Iran. Because you see this propensity for a desire for stability in the region. The Gulf, they just want things to be stable. In Lebanon, too, we just want things to be stable. And to me, it's shocking because I keep thinking to myself, not because, you know, listen, I understand I live in the, I live a privileged life in the United States and it's comfortable. And so I'm not sitting in the middle of a war zone. So I don't want to be dismissive of it. But I also think it's very naive to assume that by pushing policies that just keep a lid as much as you can. Just keep a lid on it. You know, we don't want this instability that they would assume that it wouldn't be worse years down the road. The fact that it is the way it is now is because these, and I'm right now, let's talk about Hezbollah and the Iranian regime specifically. They have been allowed and permitted to build the way they have, to arm themselves the way they have and to basically proliferate in almost an unfettered way. I mean, with Iran, I understand, of course, there are significant sanctions and so on. But again, how many times has the Iranian regime pushed America's red lines? And I always see it. It was president after president, regardless of party, when the Iranian regime would do something, like our people hostage started with that target our troops in the Middle East, pursue assassination and kidnapping plots here on U.S. soil. So many individual acts that could be perceived as acts of war that we also brushed under the rock found a way to do a reciprocate, you know, a proportionate response. The Iranian regime is banking on that because it only allows them to see where our red lines are and keep expanding. And the thing that frustrates me and you're seeing it with Lebanon Israel now is this desire, like on the Lebanese to be like, "Oh no, no, no, no, it's okay. Let's just, we just want stability." We don't want to confront Hezbollah. Well, what do you think is going to happen in 10 years if you don't do it now? It's going to be way worse. They're going to have all the technology that they need. We can see these formerly amateur groups becoming stronger and you saw that October 7, to me, really highlighted that. And October 7, to me, is this massive milestone where we're really seeing now a reshaping of the Middle East that will, and that's what we're struggling over right now. It's this post-October 7 world of who is the dominant force in this region? Who are they following? Who calls the shots? And how that is going to end up shaping things in that region and apparently the global economy. So, do you think, and I don't know, we're skipping way ahead, but since you brought it up and Jay mentioned Pax Americana. Do you think that the Middle East has always been a difficult region? Tough neighborhood. Tough neighborhood. But do you think that the changing of the order in the region right now is a consequence of the changing great power relationships around the rest of the world? Because I don't think it's fair to put China in the same category as Russia and Iran in terms of its threat to the United States, right? Asia certainly has a lot to gain from the selective closure of the trade reformers, right? Because Iran's not permanently closed. It's closed to allies of the United States, which means that vessels of oil and goods go into China get through just fine. So, which is kind of new for this kind of, through this region for this choke point, right? The threat always had been you attacking Iran, they're going to close the straight reformers, the global economy shuts down. 20% of the oil is health hostage. But what has actually happened is they have turned it into a toll booth and they've used it as a political weapon to sort of separate the world, to fracture the world pro-America, to America. That is direct assault on Pax Americana. So, where I ultimately want to go with this conversation, toward the end, I know we're jumping ahead here, but to what extent do we still have the will to do what it takes to maintain Pax Americana, our allies, our institutions that we have all been talking about almost breathlessly since the narrative has emerged that Trump is totally destroying all of these institutions, which I think they were doomed to crumble anyway with the digital age, but the post-World War II order of alliances that now seem antiquated. And a lot of that will has to do with whether you have the political will domestically. So, let's do that first. Let's talk about the domestic situation because we now have these primaries in our rear-view marriage, June 23rd, congressional primaries. Several candidates endorsed by Zora Mamdani, defeated establishment incumbents. The post-election analyses showed these victories were disproportionately driven by young college educated, higher-income voters than Democratic party traditional working-class base. And the boundaries of acceptable debate over US Middle East policy have shifted with positions once considered fringe now appearing regularly from elected officials and major candidates in both parties. So what do you think the combination of these primary results and the broader rhetorical shift suggests about where the energy at Democratic party currently sits, where it's headed, and how much influence is this going to have on, at least we'll talk about the right of center, but right now we want to talk about the left of center. Is it the left of center? Well, is it the far left? This is-- And left of center is migrating now. This is a very live debate. My view is that the Democratic party is hollowing out. It's a hollow show. I agree. And a lot of registered Democrats are abandoning their party affiliation, registering as non-partan on partisans are independent. And the electoral victories-- I mean, look, the Washington Post and the New York Times are now hailing Zoran as a kingmaker in the Democratic party. So that. This is clearly where the energy is going. And it's populism. It's very-- my friend, Mike Madrid, is making a very provocative argument, which I actually think is right, which is the Democratic party is the new conservative party, actually, it's the new institutionalist party. But the DSA, the Democratic Socialist of America, this movement, is using the Democratic party as a ballot access vehicle. They've straight upset this. They've used the ballot access vehicle. Yeah. They see it as an opportunity to hijack it in precisely the same way that Maga hijacked it. Exactly. OK. So given that, where does US foreign policy go with respect to the region? Paxing America is dying just in the same way that the institutionalist factions in both the Republican Party and now the Democratic Party are dying. Yeah. So this is a huge question. So I'm going to try and not talk forever and let Jay-- It disagree with any of that, please. No, I don't disagree with any of it. So it's very-- I'm very concerned where it's all headed. And we're all-- I mean, we're all of it is. But let's focus on the left, because this is important, because I agree first. I feel like we're watching what happened to the Republican Party in 2016 onward happen now, or maybe you could argue earlier, but whatever. And now to the left. And I've been very loud about it. I'm very loud and angry about it, because you're watching Democratic leaders who are center left or institutional left or whatever. They are excusing it. They aren't saying anything about it. And they-- which in effect condones it, because they are-- if they are ever pressed, they have one talking point. They repeat over and over again, which is, oh, we're one big tent. And we can have disagreements in that one tent. And I'm like, no, you don't see that this movement, the Democratic Socialist America, who are not Democrats whatsoever, are using you, banking correctly on the voter that isn't going to really do their studies, is just wants change, and sees a different Democratic candidate, and therefore votes for that other Democratic candidate without really actually understanding what the movement of the Democratic Socialist of America means, and what their policies are and what they're trying to fight for. And we know-- and I mentioned this on X. I did this-- and it's so funny, because I never thought I would bring up this political party, Sam, that Ron and I both worked on it. But so I want to explain why this is important. In 2017, a group of us got together and launched an independent party called the Serve America Movement, the Sam Party. And we did the very difficult work to try and get the tens of thousands of signatures you need to run your party on a ballot. In New York? Right. So where you have a Sam candidate, a candidate running for your party. Party line. Yeah, the party line. In order to do that, it is very difficult work. And we did that work to get those signatures, to teach people what Sam was, to explain it, to hold events, to do the grassroots movement, and so on. And we didn't succeed in a lot of states. We succeeded in other states just to--
get folks, we did get some local folks. The point is we did that very hard work. We didn't do the lazy thing and disingenuous thing of claiming ourselves to be different parties so that we could just appear on the ballot. And that is what the DSA is doing. So now to get this to the foreign policy. So all this to tell you is that Democrats need to be ready for and they're not. They're not even awake to it. They're not awake to the fact that DSA is doing this. That and if they are, it's very few of them that are even willing to speak out on it. And Bernie Sanders has been doing this already for decades basically by the way. So it's been practice and now it's taking over. And when it comes to the foreign policy part of it, yeah, just just moment. Hold that thought. I just want to interject because I would suggest to you that they are all very well aware of what is happening actually. And that the reason they aren't speaking out is because they'll get a primary from the law because it's a power that they're not stupid. They know exactly what's happening. They they they right. But I think some are stupid for the fair for for the same reason that you saw the exact same behavior on the right during during the tea park for sure. And in 2015 and 2016 and that years beyond as Trump took over the party. Yeah, a lot of a lot of a lot of legacy Republican politicians refused to say much of anything to criticize Donald Trump and that movement because they they would be primary from the right. Yes. Fair. What's up? Fair. You're right. They say things all the time. Like, you know, this is just where the voter, the party is based on the voters and this is where the voter base is. And this is like which which means they're not principled anymore. They don't understand what their own party stands for. But you got to this. I want to end on the foreign policy piece because you that's how you start asking. And it's actually very hard to figure out what the progressive party what the progressive stand for geopolitically other than that. It is there's a there is also what they share with the far right. If you can call each far left far right. Yeah, it's just popular. It's just popular. There's no left or right and that's right. And the populism associates itself with isolationism and kind of like why should we pay for this problem? Why should we be associated with this problem? Meddling American meddling makes things worse. And you know, certainly it is very driven by an anti-Israel sentiment that anti-Israel sentiment at times is just anti-Israel. And a lot of times it bleeds into anti-Semitism. And they also refuse to accept that by the way. They kind of hide behind the veneer of anti-Israel anti-Israel stance when trying to say anti-Semitic things. But anyway, it's it's they you feel as though if this were to take over. Yeah, you would not only see not a strong America on the world stage. That is certainly not what they want. Not American interventionism. But also not really strong alliances. Like I just don't they're just they're not in either of those camps. Don't wait on that. Yeah, I mean you raised it you started this with the idea of the will the will to fight the will to project packs of American and I think what's really disturbing from both the left and this kind of JD vans Tucker Carlson right is that they say the biggest threat to global stability is us. Yeah, it's not Beijing. It's not Iran. It's not Russia. It's us. And I forgot which one of the three politicians that was elected the other night. I mean, she's on Shavale. Yeah, one of the record say Daria Lisa Shavale. Yeah. And she was quoted saying we need to like roll back the American empire. Yeah, she's a co founder of a group called Columbia University apartheid divest quad and they are explicitly trying to quote eradicate Western civilization total eradication of Western civilization. Yeah. Yeah. So if you're sitting in Beijing or Tehran you're like God, what do we really need to do? They're doing it to themselves. Right. And I know in my reporting I've been particularly because I was looking at the negotiations over Iran like that the people who have influence over events his his worldview his policies are Tucker Carlson. There's a Washington thing called the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and you know, Tucker in addition to being just rabbi anti-Semitic is he sees in the US is the biggest problem. It's Russia's great. It's got great subways. I forgot how he looks at Iran, but they're clearly not the problem. So if our future is either DSA on the left or a remnant magma movement led by Vance with a kitchen kitchen cabinet of you know, Quincy pundits and Tucker Carlson. It's the same thing. It's the or shoe and the view is the US is the problem. Yeah. We need to pull back. So are we going to enforce global trading routes when we think that we're the biggest problem. That does not seem like the future. I mean corporations have their say and though they're going to have to decide how they're going to play it. But I do think it's a really scary time when you see both the left and the right converging not just towards a hatred of Israel, but a hatred of Western capitalism and the belief that we are the biggest problem. And if that's your view, you're going to try to dismantle it. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of this gets down to the layer of values. And sort of complete abdication amnesia perhaps of what values made Western civilization great in the first place. We don't you know, that's a I my view personally is that ultimately that's that is the root cause of the symptoms that we're seeing. We are totally divorced from from from the foundational values, not just of the American founding, but of all of Western civilization. We're going back to lock. But that is so brilliant by the way. Sorry, I have to say that like I it's so hard for me to summarize to in a concise way. Yeah. The issue and you're so right that that is what it is is that this they view the they view us as the problem. I've noticed this on my social media. Yeah. I mean, in a way, it's true. We are the problem, not for the reasons that the that the the anti-colonial settler movement, you know, whatever like to think it is not because the America is the bad guy, but because America has forgotten. Yeah. Because America doesn't remember. And and and the the youth movements in the United States now are inundated and doctorated by by ideologies that are antithetical to to the American project. Mm hmm. Which I guess is a good segue to to Calo Walsh. I do want to come back to what this looks like on the right. And we're going to spend some time there, especially with JD Vance. But let's talk about Calo Walsh. You wrote a piece, Jay earlier this year in March, for the free press title, the radicalization of Calo Walsh. And I wonder if you could it's a very long piece. I wonder if you could summarize the arc of her story. And more importantly, explain why you chose her as a subject and what you think her story reveals about the moment that we're in. Sure. So Calo Walsh is a 21 year old political activist who's now based in Beirut, Lebanon, and essentially openly running information warfare operations against the United States on behalf of the Islamic Republic, has below the sort of access of resistance, which is not to know. But the story drew me in because 2022, she's on the front page of the New York Times because of her social media activism on behalf at the time. It was for Senator Markey. Markey was running for re-election as Senator in Massachusetts and was facing off with a Kennedy joke, Joe Kennedy with her. Yeah. And Calo Walsh at the time, 1617, like mobilized this group called the Markey verse to repel the young Kennedy and re-elect Markey because of his involvement in the Green Rudeel. So this transformation in such a short time really drew me to this story because as a journalist you love a narrative. But the more I dig into it, I was like, wow, she represents something bigger. A, because the ideologies that kind of infected her are a much broader thing. In some ways, it's not that different than some of these DSA. This woman, Calo Walsh was at one point girl at 16 or 17, like she's a girl. Yeah, she was the youngest high school delegate to the DSA convention and I think it was in 2021. Maybe I forgot exactly. But so it's drawn to it because I thought of her radicalization pointed to a broader problem of the assault on young Americans, not just to hate America, but to be coming intoxicated with these revolutionary movements that are invariably repressive, unbelievably bloody and ultimately you should be destroyed as people who are drew to them. And the groups that radicalized her, you can see they're just feeding off of our instability. I can take you through it. I mean, she was first, yeah, a democratic party activist. Then she suddenly shows up in Cuba and is recruited by these Brigadistas, they're called, which are young overseas leftists who come to support the Castro regime. But it's not like they show up for a few days. They show up there for weeks. So Calo Walsh goes to Fana for three weeks in 2022, comes back further radicalized and then
heads up to this Marxist compound in the Berkshires that was headed by an heir to the Cox Communications Empire, a guy named Fergie Chambers who had just inherited $250 million. And yeah, they're up there in the Berkshires. I have to say it had a kind of a Manson family feel to it because you had these young women up there. They were being indoctrinated in a Marxism. They had like a dojo so it felt like there might be some paramilitary element to it. And sure enough, 10, 7 happens and Cala Walsh and Fergie Chambers formed the U.S. affiliate of, it's called Palestine Action. Cal Action, a UK entity that was designated as a terrorist organization last year. And well, most of the media, they tell a wall starts like fire bombing, the offices of Elbet Systems, which is a Israeli defense company that had R&D facilities and Cambridge Massachusetts and New Hampshire. So we're talking about like real physical, we're not talking about like online fire bombing. She showed up and with her three of her female, I guess two other female comrades kind of scale this Elbet Systems in Marimack, New Hampshire, lock the people inside, start like help, you know, using all the incendiary devices and other things to try to shut down the AC. If you were inside, you probably panic. So she goes to jail, but only for three months. So she's not clearly not, you know, at her sentencing, she screams free Palestine. So you had, first you have the Cubans involvement, then you have this young American and it's amazing because she just months after helping Marke get reelected, she shows up to protest outside of offices with a group called CodePink. His offices? Yeah. She flips on him within a few months. And he's not wriggling off because he was, he supported funding US military, um, expansive in Asia. So she, she shows up with CodePink and in something called the answer coalition, which are part of a network created by a guy named Neville Roy Singh. Yes, we talked about this maybe a month or two ago, the Neville Roy Singh, um, stuff. Yeah. Correct. And Singh, according to US officials, is tied in with Chinese intelligence. He's based in Shanghai. He made his fortune doing business with Chinese tech. So he's funding these organizations that are suddenly working with Caliwalsh. Yeah. So by the time she's, I don't know, 18, 19, she's already tied to Cuban and Chinese intelligence. Then this is where it really starts to turn dark. She gets out of prison and I don't know if you remember probably last May, there were two Israeli officials who were assassinated in Washington. Yeah. Within hours, she's online kind of mobile, trying to mobilize a defense fund for this Elias Rodriguez, the guy who's charged with, with murdering the two. She goes on a podcast not long after say we need hundreds of more Elias Rodriguez. So she's going not just from radicalization to militancy. And then she flies the coup. She sure shows up in Iran in August after the 12th day war to take part in, um, the information operations on behalf of the Islamic Republic, casting the war as a triumph for Iran. And then she sets up shop in Beirut and hasn't come back because I think I know she knows she'd be arrested and is running these information warfare operations. So she, her trajectory is amazing. And she also like, you can see where this has happened in history. Like in the late 70s, early 80s in Europe and the US. You had in Germany, that's something called the Red Bull grades, the bottom mine half. She's like, she even looks like Urukha mine half now. I think she probably, and Urukha mine half was kind of a journalist leftist who then, within a few years is, you know, assassinating Deutsche Bank executives. You don't even know if they totally know why. But she's, she's gone in that kind of worldview when I was writing it too. There was a famous novel by Lecker and called the Little Drummer Girl. And it's a similar, it's about a kind of a lefty British actress who gets kind of seduced and recruited and manipulated into supporting Palestinian terrorism. So Caliwalsh is kind of a modern day, Little Drummer Girl. But I was drawn to it because the forces that radicalized her, whether it's the Cubans, the Chinese, the Iranians, their lethal, and they're able to pray on these young Americans who are, who, you know, she only went to college for six months. She was supposed to go, she got into McGill and dropped out. But she, you know, she was raised, Cambridge, her parents were both academics, one at Harvard, one at Boston University. And I think what I found kind of troubling was the worldview she had like, first of all, she was super into the Green Movement. She was taking part in kind of Greta Thunberg-led protests. I was just going to say all of this sounds like Greta Timberg with a gun. Yeah. Yeah. But it's the worldview. And you hear her talk, it's kind of like, oh, when she was focused on climate, it was, you know, the world's going to end. We have to do anything to prevent that. So it's this very black and white, milenary, and view of the world. And you can see that transfer from climate to Israel, Palestine really quickly. It's like, Zionists are the biggest threat to the world. If we don't eradicate Zionism, we won't have this utopia that she imagines. And if that's your worldview, you'll do anything to execute it, including violence. And it's scary that all this stuff is draped as social justice and benevolence, but it can turn to violence so quickly. And I think that was a lesson of the 70s, you know, 60s, and how it flew, you know, 60s sort of ended with a Manson family, which was, even they were like, oh, we're creating a great society to do that. We need to kill these people. And that's why I thought Caloal spoke to something much bigger. I think I do look at her. I'm like, how do we bring her back? How do you de-radicalize someone? And it's not going to be easy where she is, where she's on this kind of trajectory of purity, where you wonder, is it going to end up in martyrdom, is that the only place where she can achieve what she's seeking? Okay, how many political movements come to mind when you think about being motivated by achieving utopia or purification or some kind of perfection of the human condition, the human race? That's what all, to me, that's what all of this, that's what ties all of this together philosophically anyway. I was talking with Mike recently, we have these sometimes philosophical conversations, and I said what you believe about human beings determines your world, your political beliefs, determines a lot. If you believe human beings are ultimately perfectable creatures, you can paint a vision of utopia and you can justify any means to get there. If you believe, on the other hand, that human beings are sort of innately flawed and we will never achieve perfection, utopia will never manifest, then you end up somewhere closer to where the American founders ended up, which was we're going to be on this unfinished abl march toward a more perfect union, but we're never going to get there. We're just going to continue to try and live up to these ideals. And to me, all of these very radicalizing movements feel like the thing they have in common is that they want to perfect the world. Whatever perfection is in their mind, with the Iranian regime, it's like apocalypse now, and the world ends and suddenly, I don't know what the, I don't want to articulate the eschatology of radical Islam, but to me, it feels like what is so compelling, so radicalizing to so many young people, which is the world they look around and it's not so good for them, at least they think so, and couldn't we just achieve perfection? And it's that purification that they're after. I don't mean to get abstract. What I was at the Wall Street Journal, when I was based in Southeast Asia, I did stuff in Cambodia, and the Camarrooge was a utopian millionaire. This was going to be the perfect workers, paradise, the most pulled pot, and others were trained in France, and had these very radical views. The French never actually executed them, the Cambodians tried to, and they killed a third of the population in a few years trying to create this perfect society. Year one, that's what they called it, the year one was how the Camarrooge described their radical makeover of Cambodia, but I think you're right, it's in the Cala-Walsh mindset, it's kind of black or white, it's all or nothing, and we can get there, whether it's the climate crisis or eradicating Zionism or racial justice, she thinks there's this perfect world that can be framed. And I think what's dangerous in our society is kind of every step of the way she only was encouraged, even with prison time, and they were trying to give her the DA in New Hampshire was talking about decade, not decades, I forgot with the original F, but within three months. And her parents, I tried to talk to them for the story, and in the end they just kind of gave me a quote that felt very lawyer, but if you read her mom's social feed, she's all barred and you'd think it's
At this point, it's your daughter running around South Lebanon and Iran in a war zone. You think you're just your protective instincts would say, "Look honey, you gotta come home. This is going too far." They still see all in, which is a bigger problem. It's a bigger societal problem. They don't see it or they think this is all headed in some benevolent way, despite the fact that your daughter's online calling for the assassinations of people across the world. It hasn't kicked in. How do you think that we should distinguish? How do you think that listeners should distinguish between the run of the mill anti-war sentiment that America has always had and certainly going back to Vietnam? It's anti-war movements or an American tradition. How would you differentiate those periods of our history with the kind of anti-war sentiment that we're seeing today, especially among the youth? To me, it's what's troubling now. I think you agree. There's so much of this ideology, philosophical philosophy, is coming from the outside and sort of being picked up by these people. I think some of the anti-Semitic rhetoric has real echoes to Soviet Union anti-Semitism, which is very much the Zionist bankers and the capitalists will take over the world. The Soviets really use that ideology to radicalize the Arab world against US-Hedemini back there. I think you can feel that in some of these progressive movements. For me, so many of these organizations too seem to be penetrated from outside. Code pinks can see these ties to the Chinese. The Quincy Institute's headed by an executive director who's got extremely close ties to the Iranian government, as his brother. On the one hand, I think our openness is being used against us and things like anti-war. It's definitely an American thing, but it's like everyone does a lot of war, right? Sure. Nobody really wants war. But it's war for what? I think if you study this stuff, particularly during the Cold War, the Soviets used the anti-New environment to totally penetrate that to sort of stope. We seem to be asleep at the wheel with all of this outside influence manipulating and stirring up our system. It's being used against us and you can see it and you just wonder with Kalawash. How is she allowed to go to Cuba, come back and openly be agitating for the Cuban government, and going over there with an organization that it was called ICAP, you just Google it. We believed it's a Cuban intelligence operation from decades back. I mean, we've studied it and she's talking about going over there with ICAP and everything's great and coming back and running around Washington with Cuban diplomats calling for an end of the embargo. I guess we don't take it seriously. She's just a teenager, but it's they're playing a long game. If you're sitting in Havana or Tehran, you're like, "Wow, there's this young woman who's got great social media skills, which is something you need in this day and age." She's politically active. Let's recruit her. Let's bring her in and use her against the system and you can see it's working. If you take that propensity, like you said, that if that tradition of being anti-war, or you take this propensity for individuals to want more perfect humans, like you said earlier, and you couple that with the very real nefarious goals of these outside actors that all work together also, unsurprisingly, Cuba, Russia, China, Venezuela, maybe formerly Venezuela, but others, it's a perfect recipe. They're using the youth in America specifically as a weapon and as a weapon to eat at our own system because our system poses this democratic system we have in general, the freedom of speech, we have all the freedoms we have, but also what that leads in terms of how those values turn into the amazing nation that we are, our economy, our military, the strength that we have, they're exploiting those freedoms and those natural tendencies to use as a weapon to eat the heart of the United States. I think, and I've thought a lot about this and this is not going to be a very good answer because I always think to myself in terms of worldview and worldview matters so deeply here because sometimes I'm always shocked at how like, how is it that you've got all these folks that view the US government as the enemy versus the Iranian regime as the enemy or Israel as the enemy versus the Iranian regime and terrorist groups as the enemy. And you have this fundamental, you know, it's hard to really even explain that difference in worldview. The thing I will say is that I find over and over again in this period and phase that we are now, it's like all the people I worked with in government for the most part, people who worked in national security in general and certainly in a lot of times, I don't want to over generalize here at all because I don't think this is the case for all groups, but a lot of immigrants and children of immigrants but of a certain generation all seem to really appreciate that threat that comes from the outside. So this is interesting. I wanted to ask this because Cala Walsh's white girl. Yeah. And Boston Irish. Right. Aren't so are the majority of DSA, I think. Yeah. The primaries also, yeah. Yeah, they are. So are the Manson girls. Yeah. They were. Right. But also the voters who elected these, you know, just picking on the three Mamdani nominees who just won this last week, in the socialist sweep, a lot of the, their voters were college educated, affluent, younger and predominant, many of them in white neighborhoods. This is not, you know, there's this idea going around that the woke movement is sort of morphing into what some people call third worldism into a material politics of third worldism, rather than a symbolic politics of, of wokeism. And the idea is that this is a, this is, you know, again, that a leftist perspective that settler colonialism is the ultimate evil in the world and the United States is the chief sort of proponent of an architect of it. And that is what we must dismantle. And therefore America is evil. And we have to end America. Many of them will just say outright, yeah, we got to end the United States of America. And they want to dismantle or decolonize it. Okay. But the voters who are electing these people, many, first of all, many of the candidates themselves are, are white and come from privilege. And many of the voters, the college educator voters who are electing them are the same. And interestingly to your point of the car, many immigrants to the United States from these failed countries or repressive regimes who fled them and came here recognize all too well just how devastating this, this ideology can be if it gains power, cultural suicide. Yes. Cultural suicide. And I don't know, I don't know if this would have been possible. If this kind of vulnerability could have been exploited in the United States prior to the digital age. This feels to me like very much like a, you know, ideas can cross borders at the speed of light because he doesn't have no borders kind of phenomenon. Yeah. And Cala Washington got radicalized during COVID a lot of us. She was sitting in her basement, tapping away and, you know, work as trading campaign stuff. I agree. Like, it was, it was a bad, she had a perfect storm of things at radicalized her. Okay. I want to talk about the rights. There's a lot to get at here. But I think to open up this piece of the conversation, I just want to play a clip of JD Vance, which you have all probably heard by now. It's a minute 28 long. I'm just going to let him speak for himself. Now I saw the Axios report, you know, the Netanyahu is fuming. That's not reflective of the conversations that I've had with him. But maybe he's saying something to somebody else that he's not saying to me. What I will say, and this does bother me, is that you've seen people within BB's cabinet who have come out and attacked the deal. And in some ways, very personally attack the president of the United States. And I guess my message to them would be twofold. Number one, Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time. And he happens to be the head of state of the world's superpower. If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world. And the second message I would give to some of those cabinet members, BB, to his credit, has not gone down this path. But to some of these cabinet members in Israel who are attacking the president of the United States, the other thing that I would say is that over the last three months, two thirds of the defensive weapons that have protected your homeland have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars. The problem for Israel is not Donald J. Trump. And anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the president of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in. Thank you all. Gee, that's a nice national security apparatus. You got there. Israel would be a shame if anything happens to it. i can't believe that the
President of the United States is taking aim squarely at Israel's defense in that way as our strongest out. Those are the strongest words I've heard of the United States level at Israel ever in my lifetime. Certainly from the White House anyway. What do you make of that shift? I mean, I think it's what we've been talking about in a lot of ways that Vance and the people who seem to be advising him whether it's, I mean, you look at who's driving these negotiations a lot of ways. Vance, but we're relying on Pakistan and Qatar. There are many interlocutors. What's the history of those two countries? Al-Qaeda came from Pakistan. Hamas is being funded by the Qataris and was getting, you know, their leaders are being housed there. So, I think, to me, I was really shocked. Not shocked because I could see it coming, but I think a lot of what Vance is talking about is this kind of alt-right or mega-right of the Republican Party that's not totally different from the DSA. They see, they think US power, they question US power. They think the US is, you know, the biggest threat disability. They think Israel is, you know, an illegitimate state and a little wise and we should, the only reason we have these problems in the Middle East is because of Israel and if we detach from Israel. We will be having more stable Middle East. So I think it shows that ideology, but I also know from my own reporting, like Vance's office has been advised by this Quincy Institute, which is their worldview is, they want, it's the restrainiers, they're isolationists. They want to restrain US military power. They don't want to confront Iran or China and Russia and any other way. They want to, you know, pull themselves in. They have a lot of influence over Vance's worldview. I think his first major address when he was in the Senate right before he came, President was to the Quincy Institute, which really shocked a lot of traditional conservatives because they're getting funding from George Soros of all people. So you can see that language and Tucker's language in these comments you're talking about. You know, Tucker was absolutely central to getting JD Vance that job. So you can, you can see in his language the influence of someone like the, you know, the Quincy Institute, but I also think we talk about foreign influences. The fact that the Qataris and the Pakistanis are kind of the main outside actors kind of helping the broker. There's a picture. I'm sure you saw it just a few days ago where you have JD Vance at a computer typing out notes related to the negotiations and over his shoulders, the Qatari Prime Minister of like kind of like Jake sent it to him. It looks like he's dictating terms and like, I'm sorry, the Qataris, they support Hamas. They support, they have their business partners. Fundy Islamic Brotherhood all over the Europe, all over the world. Yeah. And they're in business with the Iranians or with their gas field, which is all their money. Is it almost a joint venture with Iran? So when you see the domestic influence responsible state craft and you see the outside, the unbelievable outside interest they have. And let's talk about the Qataris. Yeah. They just sent their $400 million plane to Trump. Right. The cabinet was, you know, so many cabinet Minimists or negotiators with Steve Whitkov for Kushner and these vast business dealings with Qatar. They have this outsize role in our diplomacy, which is, they just have a different view of that region. And you talk about the split with Israel. The Qataris would love that. The Iranians would love that too, obviously. So when I hear these comments from Vance, I think of like what's underneath it, what's impacting those words. It's the influence of Quincy Institute, the influence of these Islamist governments that want a different Middle East and are not. And a different America. And they're funding that. You know, the Qataris are the largest outside investor in US education. You know, you gotta ask, why is that? So when I hear Vance, that's what I'm seeing in hearing. Yeah. It is absolutely insane. I mean, it's the idea, first of all, that you would have without going into the war itself and where we are and so on. But the fact that you'd have the two main interlocutors be Pakistan and Qatar and no other balance, right? It's not like it's balanced with others. It's these two. And now, and it's something I argue, as you and your listeners all know, I work a lot on Lebanon, Israel. And when Lebanon now became on the table as a menu item for the Iranian regime, the notion that you would have Qatar, Pakistan and the Iranian regime, figuring out things in Lebanon or between Lebanon and Israel without Lebanon or Israel sitting at the table. And that it's not just that they're not sitting at the table, but that the three out of the four countries have very clear goals that are extremist in nature, Islamist in nature, and pro-terrorist group in nature. But they would be influencing and figuring this out to me is, is, is, is assamine. And we've enabled that. I mean, the United States government has enabled that. So they've played their cards very well, but we're the ones who have allowed that to happen. But on Vance and his evolution, because I do think to a degree, there's this evolution, I think, or at least further down this path. He's not freelancing here. He's speaking on behalf of the administration. He's speaking with Daddy Trump's permission. Yes. And he's convicted in his, what he's saying, right? I mean, you see that and you're seeing it, you're seeing it play out. There's, you know, between Vance's team and Rubio's team, Rubio has a very different worldview. And there are certain issues where you're seeing Rubio kind of being control and being shouldn't charge and a very different policy or strategy because of that. Venezuela and Cuba are perfect examples of that. And now you're seeing with the Iran something completely different. It doesn't jive. It's just who's handling each, um, each portfolio. But you're seeing this tug of war play out within the administration. And ultimately it is guided by whatever Trump wants in that moment because there are no values. There are no transactional. There are no commitments. There is, there is just transactionalism. That's all there is. That's right. That's right. And so that turned, by the way, that, and this is the thing that gives me hope for how we're in the shitter on, on Iran for sure. And we've given them now all this power that they never even had. We've enabled that. But I, I also think that because we are not rooted, we, I mean, the administration, we the United States at the moment are not rooted in principles and values and it's very transactional. That will change in a month or two. So right now the goal is gas prices. That's going to change in a month or two. Who knows what it'll be. Hopefully it'll go. The wind will blow where we want it to. But, but we got 80 days left in the strategic petroleum reserve. Yeah. That puts us at about mid September, which is prime time midterm campaigns. So if we continue drawing down at that point, the strategic petroleum reserve is run out. We stop dumping oil on the market gas prices spike everything spikes bond, bond prices spike. And suddenly we have to roll over. Morgan is spike. Morgan is spike every credit card interest rates spike. And we have to roll over seven or eight trillion dollars of debt this year. And we're fine refinancing at way higher rates. And that's 300 to 400 billion dollars. I think in additional borrowing burdens on the United States, like that's what the urgency is about. It is, but can I make a really interesting point here that that frustrates me as a foreign policy person is that we don't have to let it get there. And it's not necessarily just deal making that gets us there. We have the military capabilities. We do. If we wanted to flex our muscles in the state of hormones, we absolutely could. We don't write or this administration doesn't want to anymore because of that world view that we're talking about that this stepping away from tax. No, see, I would have agreed with you four months ago. I don't think that's true anymore. I don't think they're committed isolationism. I think they're committed to whatever is good for Donald Trump. Yeah, I mean, yes, it's transactional, but it's still interesting. I think that JD Vance maybe committed to isolationism. I think the Quincy Institute may be. I think the guy who's calling the shots in the Oval Office right now is committed to whatever makes him look good. And that's it. I agree. And so if it takes a tactical nuclear strike in Iran, I agree, except right, but, but, well, I don't know. I don't know about that because so Vance, his, the way he talks about most things and you saw this, we talked about this, I think a year ago when signal gate happened. Yeah. How the most fascinating piece of that was how Vance viewed the weather or not we should be engaged outside of Yemen, right? And, and, and pursuing supporting freedom of navigation in those waters. And his view was, well, I don't know why we should be doing this. The Europeans are the ones that get their trade through here. If, if we're going to do this at all, they should, we should find a way to, for them to renew, or, or whatever. And it's a world view that as somebody, you know, from a different, I find foreign policy, era, I guess, was shocking to me because the problem is with every single geopolitical issue that exists, including the Iran one, for somebody like Vance, not Rubio, so not the whole administration, but somebody like Vance who is in charge of Iran right now. The view is, well, why should I be involved? Why should I actually, why should we expend more of our, our national treasure and military to take over this straight of hormones? Should we, our base doesn't like it? They're not going to understand why, I barely understand why. Why should we? We just want low gas prices and that's it. Yeah. Without thinking of all the other ramifications. And this is what I see over and over again coming specifically from Vance and that brand of Maga. Why should we support Israel? We don't get it. Why?
doesn't make any sense of who cares if they face threats who cares of those threats also hate us we don't have to you know what then we shouldn't be there at all like why are we in the region at all it's it's an entire view of retreat and also You know and and this is why my you know mind exploded when Jay earlier said that there's this view that were the problem You saw this after after October 7 when tick tockers when a when around Sharing would been lot and had written 20 years ago and how it mentioned Israel or whatever and they were like oh, it's our fault That's been a lot that been a lot in guy. I really knew what he was talking about. Yeah, it's our fault We're the one it's because we were friends of Israel So we deserve what we got with 9/11 right this view that we are the problem and And and you're seeing the far left and the far right converge and and agree on that point and it's going to play out I think in ways that you know You're here. You're seeing it with Iran. I don't know if you apply this view in China or related to China and again This kind of like maybe we're just better off good luck Taiwan. Yeah. Yeah. Good luck to you know what we'll just make our own semiconductor factories here We are we're trying which we are which undermines Taiwan's security and can I also understand it? Can we outrun reunification is the question? Yeah, can we can we can we build fast enough so that we don't have to answer that question Because to your point. Yeah, why why why should we do any of this the answer is in that question Yeah, the question is evidence of the answer the answer is because we have forgotten the values that underpin these alliances in the first place Yes, we we used to have values based alliances. That's what made them strong. We had Define the American system is not the European system is not the Is not the Israeli system is not the UK system But we had a base layer of values about human freedom liberties Equality etc that the rest of the world doesn't share and that's what made those And now you're strong and we don't we don't know how to answer that question anymore We don't have to answer the why we also had an understanding that spreading those values correct and freedoms Strengthens our own because they're universal. Yes That is in the Declaration of Independence that's the entire point and it's the particularists on the right who say no Those values aren't for everybody they were meant for a specific people at a specific time in a specific piece of land Called America. They're not for everybody else and therefore we have no responsibility to help the rest of the world access them right? Yeah, it does feel like history will bite us in the ass of eventually like we were talking off Mike in the 30s You had a very strong isolationist view led by like Charles Lindbergh and his kind of Kind of like Tucker Carlson asked Father Cochland that was very much We have everything we need here. We're fine You know what's happening in Europe? It's terrible. It's horrible. What's happening to the Jews in Europe? But it's it's not our problem It's let's stay here and the people who want us to get involved are you know Jewish bankers or whatever it was it doesn't sound that different from today and maybe that you know that position could have grown But then you know eventually we were attacked and poor horror and the threats that they were trying to dismiss Yeah came up came for us, and I think it's you know, it's gonna happen again. It's gonna happen again On the Israel front What criticism is due to our ally and How do you analyze these developments responsibly while not giving Credence to the very anti-Semitically fueled Criticisms that are coming from all of these all of these factions that we've been talking about how should Responsible pro-America pro-freedom Institutionalists think about the US Israel relationship its alliance and where it goes from here what duties and responsibilities do we have to our allies to each other Given the all-out assault on that alliance that we're facing from from all over the political spectrum. How do you think about that Jay? I mean, I think there's obviously a legitimate debate about the Israeli response to 10/7 I think everyone knew they had to be a military response was it Was it you know, was there not enough effort to protect Palestinians? That's totally deliberate debate. I think You know the the way the Israelis had kind of if you studied this conflict People I don't think most people really understood how the the Iranians really were investing in encircling Israel with his beloved Hamas with Houti missiles flying in from Yemen from militias in Syria that they had to act and Netanyahu's response to that when you understand what was going on make sense like we'll Take out Hamas will take out his blah will go against at least Iran's ability to project Nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles it makes sense Only if you understand that those things are are explicitly Iranian proxies correct But if you don't understand that relationship it looks like Israel's just on a war pet. They're just war hungry, right? Yeah So I think there was definitely a little legitimate debate discussion on that I think You know that the two-state solution I think most people really study it now like executing it at this stage would be almost possible But there needs there needs to be some political movement on that front. I think Those are all legitimate debates. I think what's so terrifying Now is whether it's you less listen to Tucker Carlson or The DSA folks it's it's not it's this moot. I mean Tucker has a podcast yesterday about how Christians high-enest and is it? No, it's sort of a Infecting Christianity. It's like you could it's almost like a janisadil view of Jews like there They're a threat to Christian life. Wow. It's gone so far from a legitimate debate to Classic anti-Semitism every you know you talk to the people on the left This is the view that look God if only Israel wasn't there the entire region will be this Halcyon place and like if you know about what happened in Syria the last decade or in Iraq It's it's like it's they're in Lalla land, but I think that's what's terrifying it's moved from A legitimate debate and even like people I have who are friends They they you know this language is well as a jenisadil state. It's a dream. The entire thing is deranged Yeah, and it's become a litmus test on the left Right support if you support Israel you almost can't be a democratic candidate Well, it could go to that you can't be a Jewish congressman and go to a sandwich shop and yeah So that I don't I'm making a reference to a guy who literally just got kicked out a congressman He just got kicked out of a coffee shop and go to a Jewish yeah, yeah, right, but has already become like a litmus test on the left and it could end up there In the right so then where you know Jews are basically completely out of political life is what where's that it? It feels like we Feels like that's the that's the that's the strain of anti-Semitism that is ascendant on the right Politically they're gaining power. I mean Trump's got how many more years left than he's calling them and whatever takes over is very likely going to come from that corner Mm-hmm. Yeah There's a real you see it on the far left and the far right equally and on the right as well and and you're seeing it with vance's Statement as well and well not not Not you're not just his statement by the way uh from vances rhetoric yeah, and trumps rhetoric over the last week or so give with with how things have heated up on the Iran talks and trumps clear frustration With Netanyahu and how public they've been in their advance as you said went so far as to say um, you know Britain israel's entire defense structure in our support of but Trump came out and said for example when it when he talks about Israel's strikes in Lebanon he said You know why do they have to take the whole apartment building down? Yeah, why can't they just strike the the guy? There are a lot of non-hazbola people in the apartment building what and and so and he's so he's voicing He is voicing the that deliberate the legitimate discussion That you can have with your ally by the way of how they execute a war how they approach their military operations the United States does Um, it's not like they don't and by the way the thing that drives me up the wall over this is that um I'm perpetually stunned and this is why When people argue it's anti-Semitic because it is by the way They can under they're always like no, it's not we have the legitimate right to say this I'm like you do, but how come you didn't say it about Saudi Arabia? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I could go on There are numerous so many so many so many actual genocides you could be concerned about but yeah We've begun to unpack. I mean, you know, and it's it's specific to Israel And they've united on this and it is taking over both the left and the right and Whether they feel however they feel about Israel genuinely um or Jewish-Americans frankly Uh, they they really it has become Democrats and Republicans are afraid now to say what they really feel in if they are in support of Israel or the US Israeli alliance You have a few brave ones going out there still and I commend them for that um because it's rooted ultimately our alliance is rooted in our values and and it's shared national security threats It's shared National security interests and benefit we get of being allied with such a strong military in a very tough neighborhood And it's also being friends with other democracies because democracies don't go to war with one another and we spread those freedoms and values elsewhere um We can't even get to that they're not going to get to that level right that that's too esoteric for me. Yeah, but it's it's it's going to take over
and you know, and Jewish Americans are really concerned about ice because the office all the time with them with Jewish American Committee, the American Jewish Committee and they are really concerned without going and I don't know that they feel like they feel they're losing. Yeah. Well they are. I mean, look around, they are. I mean, the next question I wanted to ask you, which you said perfectly was what happens when this alliance doesn't have political support anymore because that's the trajectory that we're on. If the bad guys win. Yeah, but I want to dig into what exactly what that means and what that looks for the looks like for the Middle East and beyond because if the if the institutionalists politicians are no longer they may they may still believe in the alliance, but if they are not willing to defend it and they are not save one lone John Federman, then it will collapse. If there is no vocal support, if there is no articulation of what it is for and how it serves the United States interest and how it protects the how it keeps the world safe. If there's no why, it will collapse. The support will erode and I don't know what happens after that. I genuinely don't that's that's I would love to hear what you think, Jay, because it will leave a back. What does Israel do because maybe we can analyze a rational actor right a state actor what does Israel do if the United States materially withdraws its support of of its defense capabilities its funding its moral support for Israel in the region. How does Israel then change tax what is it what does it do because I think then we can expand out from there. I mean the Israeli defense establishment has been moving for years to try to be assuming this is coming right to be autonomous they can they can they do you know there are arms exporter in a lot of ways. So yeah to us to us. So I assume you know I don't think they can make f16 so you know what I'd assume knowing how the Israeli government is to some extent. They probably had with China. I mean it's not like they don't have relations with China. They do the Chinese play a double game with the Israelis. I mean they I've been to like hotels and Tel Aviv and there were more Chinese people going to buy tech then almost anyone else. So they have those relationships got relationships with Russia. Right and then relationships with Russia. You know those countries play double games but I assume it would be a hedging of trying to. If we're totally cutting them off and you know this encirclement that they see which has been pushed back. I assume the Iranians with this money coming in will just start to try to rebuild this. You know they'll try to use you know the Russians are Chinese to keep this at bay and to keep building up their own autonomous kind of military capabilities. I think for me one of the failures of how Trump sold this war is you know what's the common denominator that people would fight to. I do think it's the economic if you said look they're shutting down global commerce and this was a war that was going to happen at some point like Hagar you're saying. I felt this conflict was inevitable because if you saw where they were going I'm noticing a picture of the who tea military parade like 18 months ago it looked like North Korea. There weren't some like rabid guys in the desert these were military unit with ballistic missiles and drones. Where'd that come from? Where exactly we know exactly what that came from. But that you know if the crudest element could just be you know people's the cost of your cell phone or oil. You know maybe we've taken a hit now but this war was coming that was to me one way to sort of appeal to an understanding even amongst all this ideological craziness that you could cut. Through it I think when I was talking about the 30s or 40s what cut through it was an attack by the by these adversaries that people kind of turn blind to but I think with the Israeli front they'll hedge. Yeah geopolitically and you know they do have a lot of their own tech they can keep building up and they now have oil and gas as well so they probably try to become more autonomous and head with. Powers that have influence over Iran but have never shown any desire to restrain them whatsoever so they'd be in a very difficult situation yeah. Okay I want to I want to try something a little bit different here because the thing we haven't talked about yet in in the way the forces that are driving a lot of developments are corporations. We can just talk about them in as industrial complexes there is a there's a very conspiratorial story going around that I'm seeing pick up traction right now that I want to be very clear I do not endorse this but I'm going to try and represent it somewhat and and see if there's anything insightful here that we can use. The story goes something like politicians are captured by money and the money comes from industrial complexes like the military industrial complex financial industrial complex the technology industrial complex all of these have. Different incentives they have different aims. The military industrial complex wants the business model of forever wars and so it thrives on conflict and therefore needs perpetual conflict keep going the financial industrial complex in addition to dollar a Germany needs the. The rebuilding opportunities that come after wars destroy one country move on to another country et cetera and what's emerging now is a very influential technology industrial complex which needs stability to build out data centers and artificial intelligence and actually drive the economy forward because that is the only thing that's driving the economy forward right now and we are sort of. So I think it's a very important thing to have caught in between these different let's just call them incentive structures because when I see people tell this story they tend to anthropomorphize the industrial complexes and pretend like it's a person behind a curtain pulling strings with a unified agenda but I think it's probably fair to say each of these industries has. And they overlap complex but they are not the same to what extent do you think that that story is true and to what extent do you think that these downstream developments for example Jared Kushner being involved in the negotiation sort of represents the real estate interests in the post war reconstruction possibilities right. And so it's the anti war figure in maga land is speaking for Silicon Valley and its interest to develop AI data centers that everybody calm down no more no more forever wars is very much a no more forever wars guy and and we need. We need to pick the way for our future and then you've got the military industrial complex which I guess Pete Hague says is in charge of now but I don't know how much interest he has in the Raytheons and the you know the other defense contractors but there is very much you know we're spending a trillion dollars a year on defense now and that's a business. One of those three factions or industries how are they influencing if that's even an accurate way to pose the question the way this war is unfolding and and the different factions inside you see the story how this goes a lot of people are are buying into this and I think it's I think it's some contagious. I might have like a weird take on this yeah I remember during the chase the first or on nuclear deal. I was open to this idea like okay everyone you know even the I told us have to pay their mistresses I was open to this idea that okay if they're willing. In the wake of this deal to open up to American companies coming into Iran like yeah that could that's something to use their desire for investment. Could have been something but there was no evidence I mean maybe they didn't give it enough time but there was no evidence from what I saw that there was any interest. But the Islamic Republic they wanted their oil money they wanted to be able to trade oil they did not want to be sanctioned but there was absolutely no evidence I thought that they wanted a Hilton in. In the open and in to run they definitely don't yeah or that or that they wanted any outside investment I remember some of the Iranian Americans who got arrested after the nuclear deal. We're exactly the people who would have been the tip of the spear of some sort of economic opening you know we're running American to add influence in the US and could bring in money and they were thrown in the just jail I sure because the IRGC was saying hey don't think this is going to happen we want our own money and that's it. So when you hear Vance or like some of the crudest takes on what's going on it's like okay Whitcoff and Kushner heavily involved in this deal so they're going to want their companies you know they want to be they want real estate deals on the Persian Gulf in the Caspian Sea. So it's crude and corrupt but God if they really allowed even like Whitcoff to with a Trump tower in Iran like wow that would be a change and maybe it's crude and corrupt but that's something that you know.
You could build on, maybe eventually, like, there's, we've taken out the senior leadership in Iran and this new leadership is more open. But I'm steeply skeptical that's gonna happen. So, you know, maybe they're gonna learn the same thing that we learned from the Obama years. This is kind of good luck. They're not open to it. They're happy to get investment from the Chinese or the Russians. It doesn't open up their economy. It doesn't bring any sunlight on it and their oil sales. And that's it. And, you know, I think that's up in the face to come like quicker. Wait, wait, quicker. Like when they talk about this $300 billion fund, if part of that fund was, "Oh yeah, we're gonna bring in the IMF and the World Bank and open up your banking system." We should say what that is, by the way, because you alluded to it a couple times and I assumed this is the $300 billion of the Trump administration has said that we would give back to Iran that was frozen. No, no. This is the investment. Oh, new investment. Yeah, this is $300 billion is not American money. It's a no-sional idea. It doesn't exist. It's an idea that if they were to reach a final deal, that the US administration would try to set up a $300 billion investment fund where others, maybe US companies, foreign companies, them, bodies, I mean, Chinese, you name it. Do you mean perhaps the US companies that we now own a 10% share of? Yeah. I mean, United States owns a 10% share of which don't get me started. Yes. We don't invest in Iran's reconstruction. That's the idea. They are never going to get to this point, by the way, ever. There's no way. Like, there's just. What are you talking about? Last Tuesday, we had an MOU. Well, and to be fair, and it's so funny, because by the way, in the news, there's so much focus about this $300 billion investment fund. They are never getting that far to get to this point for the point that you made, that this is a regime that is not what they want. They want their oil money so that they can continue their nefarious activity because they are ideologically and fanatically driven. Yeah. It is not because they actually want to be thriving and economically prosperous and be part of the international financial system or trade. Yeah. Made this point repeatedly that people don't underestimate what drives the Iranian regime. No, they don't get it. They're not rational actors. They are apocalyptic theocrats. Yes. They want to end the world. Yeah. They're not interested in economic development. That's right. So it's the. Which they would see as a threat because their own people would use it against, right? Exactly. But to finish the Iran point that I want to get back to your corruption thing because I understand where you're going with this. And it is an important one. The MOU gave, because there is a lot of misinformation on this. The MOU, I'm not trying to pretend that what the administration did was fine because they lifted oil sanctions temporarily and that is immediate, in effect. And there are frozen assets, different frozen assets that. Which we would also get back. Yeah. They are being released or not. That is muddy in that they're saying now Trump is like, "Oh, but it's going to be used to buy American food and the Iranians are like, no, it's not." For sure. In the same way that the six billion dollars that the Biden administration unfroze was going to be used for what? I don't remember, Hagar. It was supposed to be used by humanitarian goods abroad. Yeah, the pallets of cash. And the pallets of cash. Don't forget the Obama's pallets of cash, which I'm straight to see. I feel the car when she was defending the Biden, you know, unfreezing of the six billion dollars I was like, "Money is spongebob." She's like, "No, it's not. No, money is spongebob." Money is spongebob. I think you have come around on this. That I have come around. I have come around my argument at the time because I feel like I need to defend myself on this. What needs to be put in context is that that money had to be spent on food and medicine, whereas had you given that money to the Iranian regime in cash, they would not have spent it on food and medicine. So that's why I was like, "Money is fungible, but in this case, it's kind of a unique situation." Thankfully, we never even got to that point because then October 7th happened. But I want to. For just briefly hold that thought for listeners who aren't aware, the Jays comments about pallets of cash is real. If you weren't around or don't remember the Obama days, the Obama administration literally flew in $300 million. That was $1.7 billion. $1.7 billion in cash. On airplanes. On airplanes. On airplanes. On airplanes into Iraq. Jay was there. He carried some of it in gas. I hope you got a few bills. They hated him. They hated you for like all. I mean, so interesting about it because people at Treasury loved Jay and loved all the stories he was exposing. And folks at Treasury were really hated the whole process. You mean Obama's own Treasury Department? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. And Meanwhile, and state and NSC just couldn't stand him because he was exposing all of his employees. And to me, it wasn't even like this. For me, I had nothing to do with the politics. Right. It was just like, how do you even move $1.7 billion in cash to a terror state? It was like, yeah, I just thought it was a bullet. Put it on a cargo plane. It was like, we actually ended up finding video of that point. Did you really. Wow. Canadian plane flew into Geneva. Wow. And they like hollowed out the plane and put the pallets of cash. And what's interesting when the plane is taking off, you can see in his really plane an L offlight in the thing. But you could also. The hostages where our prisoners were on the way back. Yeah. And that was the way to do this part of that story. They were like, it had nothing to do with it. It was like, it wasn't part of the exchange. Right. But we wouldn't. They wouldn't let us. They wouldn't release Americans until the money was in the air, but it was unrelated. Right. I was part. I was a spokesperson at that time. And I remember the talking point was like, it's not related. This is not a ransom. It's not a ransom. It's not a ransom. Don't say a ransom. This is money we owed, which was true that the United States owed it to Iran. But the talking point was like, right, like, did we actually have to give it? That's where the United States of America, like, and you're an enemy state. So. Spoken like a true empire. And we actually ended up paying them twice. Yes. We had to have paid them twice because we had this pool for people who had been targeted in Iranian terrorism. So there was this pool of money that the government would pay to these people rather than using money from Iran. So it was like, wait a second. We have. Because money. So why is it not going to these terror victims? Why are we aint not using it to pay the terror victims and then paying them again? So it was the language was all because. Yeah, yeah, it was all because. The whole idea was we say it, therefore it is. It is not a ransom payment, therefore it is not like, it's like, well, but isn't it? But I want to finish the public question. Yes, question to you today. Because I understand what you're getting. Flash forward to you. The reason is because I see it's interesting because I myself am as often on your podcast and evolving my views on this. Because at the beginning of the Trump administration, I saw even though I didn't like the. I did not all like the idea that you would pursue certain geopolitical goals or interests or peace deals or around the world for. I didn't like it if it was to benefit your own economic interest, your own business, your own company, you write like whether you're Steve Wittkov or Tom Barich or whomever, right? Jared Kushner. I didn't like it. And I. That's corruption. That's corruption. Yeah. I definitely didn't like it. And at the same time, I was like, except I like that they're motivated to broker deals, peace deals, release of hostages, actual end to certain conflicts for better or worse, some of them worked, some of them didn't, we get into that. But I liked that they were driven by an economic desire for to end geopolitical conflict because that economic benefit should technically expand to everybody, right? It's one of the selling points you make with the Abraham Accords all the time is that in the new Middle East countries, you should want to be part of the Abraham Accords because the economic prosperity you'll get, the boon you'll get in trade is astronomical as evidenced by the UAE Morocco and Bahrain. And so I struggle with it because at the beginning, I was like, I don't like that that might be the driving force, but I do like the economic argument. So okay, maybe it's okay until you get to the point where you see that corruption backfire because it does backfire because at the end of the day when there are personal goals, then there are- - Or cut away influence over our four-class exactly. - Then right inevitably, you're going to have, it's again to the point that it's not principled about peace or the economic argument, it's about personal gain and benefit. And so in the moment, if it's like, well, actually, wait a minute, this country doesn't have enough resources for us. So, this guy is friends with that dirty businessman in Syria or Turkey or Lebanon or Iraq, I could go on. And so that's what's driving certain policies. This is where you see that corruption is a driving force or personal economic or business interest as a driving force really backfire on something that you, in the moment, you feel like, oh, and then I can't go into too much detail, but I've seen it play out several times. - Can I offer a finer point on precisely what you just said? I think that's right. - Please. - I think that's right. But it's been- - I struggle with this, and I lie. - I know. But it's not new in this administration. This is the, we've talked a lot about how foreign policy has always been conducted at the intersection of American interests and American values. And the job of our public servants is to balance American interests and American values. That's not always clean. But those two components have to be in the room. We're no longer interested in American values because we can't articulate them. With the-
They are not in the room. They do not matter. If all you have left are American about American interests and Your idea of American interests are my interests Then corruption is inevitable Yeah, and that's and if the character of the people who are who are responsible for negotiating American interests is not Good It is not public service but self-service. You're gonna end up with corruption Because the values aren't in the room right? That's that's my simplistic framework for thinking about Where we are now and what's driving these decisions, but one thing on interest groups I think it's interesting in the Ron section and I agree with you on the values. It's like a Po like proponents of engagement with the Ron Who are offered very into Israel? They'll make it sound like the only reason we've had this hostile relationship with the Ron since 1979 is cuz The Israelis don't want it. They want to keep it on weak. They they want to be the hegemon I think it's ridiculous argument, but I firmly believe Knowing our system and the power of oil companies and the power of airplanes. There was any real sign That the Iranians were willing to open their economy in any way that would alter that they the interest the power of the oil lobby Boeing wants to sell airplanes or talked about it. I still think Those interests are very powerful probably more powerful than the Israel lobby Yeah, if they really thought there was a way to deal with it I remember Kerry after the G-Sphere way away. Yeah, Kerry was running around Europe trying to get people to do investment and Most the people are like who I don't want to put my I'm not gonna bank there Yeah, our money's gonna end up with Hamas. Yeah, so it was like they had this view of you know who told him to pound sand Was the former undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at treasury who worked for Obama for the first two years and all of Bush and John Kerry went to London and While we were not banking Iran because we had other sanctions that were made in place John Kerry and Ben Rhodes their whole argument was oh, but if the Iranian regime could get a taste of the international financial system They're changed so we did pen on Europe to do it so they go to London they pitch a bunch of bankers and My former boss Stuart levy was chief counsel for HSBC a man who's brilliant by the way a door Stuart and he never speaks to the press It's not what he does he wrote an op-ed after that basically Telling John Kerry to go pound sand was like oh you guys Care about your reputation. You're not gonna bank with Iran, but we should yeah, thanks, but no thanks and So to the point that I said earlier that treasury had some views Yeah Well, it's a parallel argument to the one that we have been making about China for how long now and now or now Understanding it never was true in the first place. Yeah, it was given the taste and they will reform Let's make them the most favored nation and we now recognize that was a failed strategy and it's and it backfires the same with their own Okay, we are We're about at the end here. I just want to ask one last big question You know about like where where we go from here, right because the United States is Long played the role of security provider in the Middle East and everywhere else in the world through combination of Military presence alliances economic leverage all of those are in question It to to do in different degrees At this point we've talked a lot about You know the very concept of America being under assault by both the right and the left now the lack of political will to articulate values the question I have and Much has been said not just on this podcast, but several other long-form conversations we've done on this show about the you know the the the multipolarization of the world the the trajectory of you know the fracturing world order and power vacuum competition among great powers on every different you know layer Domain of power whether it's military financial cultural etc What I am curious about is where you think American leadership in the world goes from here Or are we effectively Seeding our role as The the guarantor of free shipping lanes around the world for free trade for As a moral beacon for what it means to you know represent the free world Where does America we know what's happening in the rest of the world, but where does America leadership go from here given everything that we've talked about given the You know the difficulty of our domestic political situation where do you envision this sort of unfolding in Under the rest of the Trump administration the next administration whoever it may be My view is that you can't roll any of this back easily and that the only way Forward is forward and it's not going to be the same as fast We're never going to put the institutions back together the way they were so something new has to emerge and I'm just curious if you guys have thoughts about what that looks looks I mean I wonder if this is our Suez Canal moment to more yeah, you know the British Empire Couldn't defend the Suez Canal when the Egyptians came in the 50s and that was basically the end of the British facts Britain that was the end of it and you know as a smudge collar smaller country But it was the global had jaman and the fact that they couldn't secure The Suez Canal marked the end of the British Empire does our inability to defend and the Suez Canal does that and mark the end of Box America and I think History might look at it the way for me. I think what's interesting I if you talk to people the military both in the US and Israel and in the Arab world They talk about this conflict like right now. Maybe it wasn't executed correctly We didn't fully understand how they would use drones. We didn't understand you know This is how sensitive the oil markets were or we didn't understand how low we were on munitions We already hear people churning you know their oil pipelines that will be redirected around the straight-of-form news and These real ladies have talked about lays and laser weaponry that could take out these drones in a way Quickly they could learn things relatively quickly so the technological military and financial Capabilities I think we have and no one else does and do we learn over the next six 12 months Maybe Trump is bluffing and say okay, screw it We've our mission they're under control. We got the oil markets. We're going back and we're finishing this But you look at the plot politics on both the left and the right even though we have these Capabilities and technologies is the Message in Washington basically say we're done. We're an evil force. We're dismantling all these incredible Capabilities we've developed over decade centuries and we're gonna see See the world to the Chinese or the Russians and you know, I think pretty quickly anyone who's You know sees what those worlds would look like wouldn't wouldn't love them Yeah, but yeah, I think it's a real inflexible because I do on the positive side I do think Like our military would always learn. They're seeing what's going on I'm you know, my fear wasn't with the second part of the war was that is this really been thought out does Trump have the Capability and the institutions to execute this type of conflict I think he didn't but we also Our system usually is very good at adapting and if you know in two years if we had the political will we might be able to solve these problems but if the president is either a DSA guy or a mega Vade JD Vance who similarly views American power as a threat then All these capabilities won't matter and someone will fill the vacuum. Yeah, then the companies and industries building these capabilities will go elsewhere Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you know It's a bit of a depressing view that I'd like your Suez Canal Idea your analogy think it's spot on like I didn't think of it that way. It's a little bit terrifying But I also always have this sentiment that That you know the pendulum swings so so much in the United States much more than we Appreciate because in the moment we always feel like oh my god. Where are we heading and we're watching this right? But the fact is that we've been through so many phases now if you think of it from The highest level and you think about the international world order as it was said after World War II without thinking of all the smaller movements under that and You think of this moment or us leading up to this in large part It would not it wasn't the Iran war or or even October 7 I would say really like this it's the world view that you have coming from the far right and the far left This populism the isolationism though. Why should we care about who are we? Yeah? Who are we anyway? What are we doing here? What is America? What is the point and what is our point in the world? Yeah, those questions are not being answered They're not and and if if you don't answer them then you don't know what drives your policies and And you wouldn't understand then why we have for an aid what right that's and you see happening You the dismantling of USAID the right well, why should we care? That doesn't make any sense. We're not the world's charity. That's right USAID was not built as a world as an American charity It was built as a tool of soft power. Yeah, um and so all the
systems you see that were built after World War II that were also honed further during the Cold War. And if now you're entering this new phase, then the history would say, even though the pendulum does swing, and I'm a big believer in that, otherwise it wouldn't get out of bed in the morning, that that phase would last very long. Is the thing that concerns me. I don't fear, though, that our system won't allow us to keep changing it. I really do have faith that even if right now we're about to see, we're going to enter a phase of the far left and the far right uniting, and it's driven by this anti-Israel sentiment and this populism sentiment and blah, blah, blah. I also believe that a lot of people fucking hate that. I really do. I think a majority of Americans actually hate it. And it will take its own grassroots movement and its own active, proactive engagement to go against that. And that ends up also dictating our foreign policy. I have not yet seen, and I say this all the time to people. I don't think we've hit rock bottom yet. In terms of political division, in terms of this lack of understanding of our values and principles, but you're seeing people out there, and they do tend to be, and this is what scares me, they do tend to be our generation to dub, who are out there scared, right? Because the youth don't get it. They can't. It may be certain students, but for the vast majority of them, they don't. And there is an onus and responsibility on our generation in dub to reform the educational systems, to teach certain principles and values in history, that in a way that's been lost over the last two decades, I think, that has now contributed to where we are today. So I've gone a little bit all over the place. But that's because I'm inherently optimistic as a person. And I believe I don't fear our democratic values and systems because I'm seeing it being tested over and over again. And I'm seeing it come through. I'm seeing our freedom of speech actually get better in a lot of ways and threatened, but still better, withstanding the threats that it faces. And that's why I feel like we're about to enter this, we haven't hit rock bottom yet, we will, but I also think that's one we'll change again. We have lessons to learn. And only after we learn those lessons, possibly the hard way, will we build new institutions, not try to rebuild the old ones, but new institutions? Yeah. And that's okay. And that's okay. And that's okay. It's, yes, yeah. Okay. Hagar. Shamali. J. Solomon. Thank you so much. This was a wonderful conversation. It was great. I really enjoyed it. It was amazing. Okay. Until next time, political ecology. Talk to you later. Bye. Thank you to everyone at home and on the go for listening. If you haven't yet, we'd appreciate it if you could open up the Apple Podcast app and give us a five star rating and review over there. This helps us rise in the rankings so that new people can discover political ecology organically. Finally, I always enjoy reading messages from you. If you want to share your thoughts in more detail, I'd love to read them. Just send us an email at
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