PDB Special Bulletin | Baker & Slater: Is Iran Trying to Trap Trump in a Forever War?

Hey, Mike Baker here. I recently had a chance to sit down with my good friend Mike Slater, host of the excellent Politics by Faith podcast. Now, we took a step back from the day-to-day headlines and we looked at the Iran conflict from the 30,000-foot view, sort of the big picture. Why President Trump got involved in the first place, who and what is the Islamic Republic of Iran, where negotiations may be headed, and what's really motivating both sides. I hope you'll take a few minutes to give it a listen. That's the Politics by Faith podcast with Mike Slater. Let's go to our friend Mike Baker, the great Mike Baker, host of one of the top podcasts in the entire world, The President's Daily Brief. Mr. Baker, how do you do, sir? I do fine. I do fine. How do you do? We sound very formal. Top of the morning to you, sir. I tip my hat to your way. To you. To you and your kin. It's all good. I think everybody- No one's ever called- No, I was going to say, no one's ever called out my intro like that before. I appreciate that. No, that's good. It deserves it. Everything looks good. The world is in peace. We got a community of nations. Yeah, that's right. It's all good. Yeah. Community of nations. Yeah. Is that what you all call it? That's great. All right. Well, let's talk about this community. So I think there's a lot of frustration. I know there's a lot of frustration about it. I know there's a lot of Iran. My read, correct me if I'm wrong, is that the president had a couple of massive, overwhelming, incredible victories, like don't even make sense victories. And a lot of peace president stuff was going on around the world, and then Maduro, and that went, you know, like, what? And I think he was on like a hot streak. So we're like, all right, let's go to Iran. And I think the perception is that this hasn't gone well. But I think, and this is where I'd like some, first of all, get your assessment there, but I also like your expertise on knowing our enemy. Like, who is this enemy? Who is Iran? We need to know who they are. Yeah, yeah, I think, I think by everyone's perception, this hasn't gone well. And I think you're absolutely right to have pointed out the Venezuela incident. I think, unfortunately, that set the table, or at least kind of framed us a scenario for how this could go. Obviously, there was a lot of talk, a lot of talk about the veracity, the credibility of the intelligence that was coming out saying they're just around the corner from having a nuclear weapon. You know, there's people that are in, you know, that say, yes, that's true. There's other people who say, I don't know if the intelligence has been corroborated. But I think they were a little bit intoxicated on the Venezuela experience, and didn't necessarily, look, I don't want to say think this through, because that doesn't give the Pentagon enough credit. But clearly, they thought this was going to take it much like Putin in Ukraine, I think the White House just imagines that this was somehow going to happen very quickly. And part of that is what you then referred to, which is understanding who it is that we're dealing with. And we're dealing with Islamist fundamentalists. We're dealing with the Islamic Republic of Iran, the same leadership. Now, over the years, there's been this narrative occasionally thrown out there by people like John Kerry, or Joe Biden, Barack Obama, usually on the Democrat side that, well, right now, we're negotiating with the pragmatic leadership of Iran, we're dealing with a more realistic and pragmatic, that doesn't exist in the Western concept, we think that way. But over there, that doesn't, that there's no such thing as a pragmatic Islamist fundamentalist, right. So I think we misunderstood who it is that we're dealing with, how much pain they were willing to bear and push down on them. Paul Jay Well, they already slaughtered thousands of their own folks in the beginning of the year, during those protests. So I think there was there were some real miscalculations here. And then it's a mystery to me how, and maybe we did, and we just don't necessarily see it in what happened afterwards. But it was always going to end up in the Strait of Hormuz. Right? That's, that's their primary point of leverage. And so how we didn't understand that from the very outset, before we even let loose with the munitions. So yeah, there's a lot of confusion here, at this stage as to where is this thing going? Paul Jay It's very interesting. I don't know if this is also an American thing or part of being in the West, but how much we can't even fathom that people are different around the world. Let alone understand the differences. It's hard for people to understand that they're, that anyone would think differently than we do. I don't know if that speaks to our narcissism or, or our goodwill and our charity and, and magnanimity. Paul Jay You know, look, we tend to, as Americans, we tend to mirror, right, our values, we tend to, it's, in a simple sense, it's like when you go to a, an event or a function or a cocktail party, right? And you're, you're, if you, if you stand across from somebody and you're talking, if you try this little experiment, lean in a little bit, the person will likely lean in a little bit. Paul Jay You know, pick up your, your, your drink and kind of stand there. They'll, they'll probably do the same. People in a physical sense tend to mirror actions, right? And you oftentimes do that when you're trying to get the person on side, right? When you, so in, in, in the, I don't want to say the interrogation, but let's say you're trying to elicit information. Mirroring the other person is a good technique oftentimes. And we tend to do it at the 30,000 foot level. Americans tend to do it with our values. So you're exactly right. We don't understand the difference between the two. We don't understand because we constantly decade after decade, right? Whether it was Afghanistan or Iraq, it doesn't matter where it is, Libya. We, we tend to, we tend to imagine that they're overseas. They're going to think a certain way that we do. And particularly in the Middle East, particularly with fundamentalists, it doesn't work. We don't understand. We can't understand. We can't process how they think. In Iraq, they would, you know, the, the, the radicals, the fundamentalists would, would strap a bomb belt. Paul Jay On a, on a mentally disabled child and have that kid walk into a market and blow himself and others up. We can't process that. We don't, we, we don't understand what that mindset is like. So the idea that right now the white house seems, I don't want to say confused again, it's not giving them enough credit, but seems at a bit of a loss as to why the current regime leadership is refusing to give in. I think that's confusing some people. Paul Jay Yes. Paul Jay Because, because, because why the, what do we need to know about them or, or maybe Islam in general? Maybe that's a different question, but do these guys, are they just willing to suffer pain, whether it be themselves or have other people experience just pain and it doesn't affect them at all? They don't care? Paul Jay Well, they certainly don't care whether they're people, their, their population suffers, or whether they have to kill their way out of another series of protests. That's the biggest issue they've got right now that the leverage that the U.S. has isn't more munitions dropping from the sky. It's, it's this economic leverage that the white house is talking about, this economic D-Day. The problem is, do we have the patience, right? The ability to, to maintain that long enough. Now, the problem there is it creates a humanitarian crisis, right? Because that regime, that leadership, the IRGC isn't going to stop eating. They're not going to stop paying themselves, stop getting gas in their vehicles, but they're going to push all that pain down to the people, to the families, and they're already suffering. Paul Jay Food costs have gone up over 130%, right? Inflation is hovering around 70%. The, the value of a wage has dropped through the floor. And so the, the regime is concerned about potential new civil unrest, about protests, but they do have a game plan. If that happens, they'll just attempt to kill the way out of it again, right? If they, if they get to the point where they look and go, we're going to lose our grip on power. Paul Jay Then? Paul Jay Then the regime leadership, not Pozeshkin, not, not the president, the president, Massoud Pozeshkin, everybody's talking about, oh, he, he said he'd like to go back to this memorandum of understanding from June. Massoud Pozeshkin doesn't run things. He's been, he's, he's a figurehead much like the Supreme leader, if he's still alive. So, but if the regime leadership that actually controls the place, the IRGC hardliners, the commanders that have been risen up and put into place and control the besieged militia and the IRGC, if they feel like, oh, we're one step away from losing what we have, yeah, then you'll, you'll get a change of direction. But with the caveat that their other thought process may be now push the rest of the chips into the table. We're all in on this one. So you can't, you can't, you can't put a Western value concept. You can't, you can't imagine that they think like we would, and that the logic train runs the same way that it would in the West. Paul Jay All right. Last question for you, because the name of the game today has been distinctions and just drawing distinctions between this group and that group or whatever. So correct me if, if there's a distinction here that I need to understand, but a value that we have in America, I think is, although we appreciate our warriors, we would prefer not to have war. Like we like, we don't like, we prefer peace. We value peace in Islam. Do they have, is that a similar value or am I assuming it's the same value we have, or do they prefer to be in a state of war or maybe they do? Maybe, maybe that's a human thing that they prefer peace. I don't know. What have you learned? Paul Jay Yeah. Yeah. I think that, you know, whether they prefer, like everybody's an individual to some degree, right now, you know, Paul Jay except for the zealots, right, the radical fundamentalists that, you know, they tend to think as a bloc. But, you know, other people, no matter what their religion, I think, for the most part, prefer not to have conflict in a variety of ways. But the, you know, the regime is, it's the Islamic Republic of Iran. And by definition, that implies that they assume they will be at war. There's this underlying bit, no matter how they talk about the religion of peace, right, there's there's an underlying tone of, at some point, you have to defeat the infidels. Right. And so that's right. You know, I think there's, again, that's not everybody, you can't paint everybody with the same brush. But you the the Islamic Republic, the leadership that exists in Iran today, doesn't see any upside to stopping what they're currently doing. Right? Because they honestly believe that if they just maintain, right, and they can survive the munitions dropping from the sky, China is not cooperating with President Trump's economic D-Day. So they do have a lifeline in terms of economic pressure. They believe that if they just hold on for that Kung Fu-like grip on power, that the White House, Trump, will at some point cave in because of U.S. domestic political pressure, rising gas prices, general mood, of the American public in terms of its attitude towards this conflict. So that's where they are right now. You know, there shouldn't be any confusion as to why they're not, you know, waving the flag and saying, we want to set the table and we're going to make all sorts of concessions and compromises. That doesn't seem to be in the cards anytime soon. Mike Baker, host of the President's Daily Brief. Mike, always appreciate you. Thank you, brother. Thank you, Matt. Appreciate you.