--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram here with Josh Keating from Vox. He's a senior correspondent covering foreign policy and national security.
--:-- Josh Keating: Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, Josh, what did the president do this weekend?
--:-- Josh Keating: So, on Saturday night, U.S. time, the U.S. launched airstrikes against Iran's nuclear program. A short time ago, the U.S. military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime, Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This ended about a week of speculation about whether the U.S. would join the air campaign against Iran that Israel had launched. It was kind of a major about face for a president who very recently seemed very committed to a diplomatic path for dealing with Iran's nuclear program.
--:-- Josh Keating: No U.S. president has ever bombed Iran. Why did Trump go for it? It seems like what happened was a combination of factors. One, Israel presented some new intelligence that they feel indicated that something had shifted with regards to Iran's ability to build a weapon.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the vice president had a counter-argument. But the difference is that back then, we had dumb presidents, and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America's national security objectives.
--:-- Josh Keating: But are these America's national security objectives? Because most Americans aren't interested in bombing Iran. And certainly most Americans don't want a war with Iran. But it sounds like the president might.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Truth social. It's not politically correct to use the term regime change. But if the current Iranian regime is unable to make Iran great again, why wouldn't there be a regime change?
--:-- Josh Keating: So, Josh, what did the president do this weekend?
--:-- Josh Keating: So, on Saturday night, U.S. time, the U.S. launched airstrikes against Iran's nuclear program. A short time ago, the U.S. military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime, Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This ended about a week of speculation about whether the U.S. would join the air campaign against Iran that Israel had launched. It was kind of a major about face for a president who very recently seemed very committed to a diplomatic path for dealing with Iran's nuclear program.
--:-- Josh Keating: No U.S. president has ever bombed Iran. Why did Trump go for it? It seems like what happened was a combination of factors. One, Israel presented some new intelligence that they feel indicated that something had shifted with regards to Iran's ability to build a weapon.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the vice president had a counter-argument. But the difference is that back then, we had dumb presidents, and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America's national security objectives.
--:-- Josh Keating: But are these America's national security objectives? Because most Americans aren't interested in bombing Iran. And certainly most Americans don't want a war with Iran. But it sounds like the president might.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Truth social. It's not politically correct to use the term regime change. But if the current Iranian regime is unable to make Iran great again, why wouldn't there be a regime change?
--:-- Josh Keating: So, Josh, what did the president do this weekend?
--:-- Josh Keating: So, on Saturday night, U.S. time, the U.S. launched airstrikes against Iran's nuclear program. A short time ago, the U.S. military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime, Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This ended about a week of speculation about whether the U.S. would join the air campaign against Iran that Israel had launched. It was kind of a major about face for a president who very recently seemed very committed to a diplomatic path for dealing with Iran's nuclear program.
--:-- Josh Keating: No U.S. president has ever bombed Iran. Why did Trump go for it? It seems like what happened was a combination of factors. One, Israel presented some new intelligence that they feel indicated that something had shifted with regards to Iran's ability to build a weapon.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the vice president had a counter-argument. But the difference is that back then, we had dumb presidents, and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America's national security objectives.
--:-- Josh Keating: But are these America's national security objectives? Because most Americans aren't interested in bombing Iran. And certainly most Americans don't want a war with Iran. But it sounds like the president might.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Truth social. It's not politically correct to use the term regime change. But if the current Iranian regime is unable to make Iran great again, why wouldn't there be a regime change?
--:-- Josh Keating: So, Josh, what did the president do this weekend?
--:-- Josh Keating: So, on Saturday night, U.S. time, the U.S. launched airstrikes against Iran's nuclear program. A short time ago, the U.S. military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime, Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This ended about a week of speculation about whether the U.S. would join the air campaign against Iran that Israel had launched. It was kind of a major about face for a president who very recently seemed very committed to a diplomatic path for dealing with Iran's nuclear program.
--:-- Josh Keating: No U.S. president has ever bombed Iran. Why did Trump go for it? It seems like what happened was a combination of factors. One, Israel presented some new intelligence that they feel indicated that something had shifted with regards to Iran's ability to build a weapon.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the vice president had a counter-argument. But the difference is that back then, we had dumb presidents, and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America's national security objectives.
--:-- Josh Keating: But are these America's national security objectives? Because most Americans aren't interested in bombing Iran. And certainly most Americans don't want a war with Iran. But it sounds like the president might.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Truth social. It's not politically correct to use the term regime change. But if the current Iranian regime is unable to make Iran great again, why wouldn't there be a regime change?
--:-- Josh Keating: It seems like what happened was a combination of factors. One, Israel presented some new intelligence that they feel indicated that something had shifted with regards to Iran's ability to build a weapon.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the vice president had a counter-argument. But the difference is that back then, we had dumb presidents, and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America's national security objectives.
--:-- Josh Keating: But are these America's national security objectives? Because most Americans aren't interested in bombing Iran. And certainly most Americans don't want a war with Iran. But it sounds like the president might.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Truth social. It's not politically correct to use the term regime change. But if the current Iranian regime is unable to make Iran great again, why wouldn't there be a regime change?
--:-- Josh Keating: So, what did the president say to the nation after the airstrikes?
--:-- Josh Keating: There's no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight, not even close. There has never been a military that could do what took place just a little while ago.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The speech seemed to indicate that this was a one-off. Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.
--:-- Josh Keating: We're not exactly sure if that's true. The following day, Dan Cain, General Dan Cain, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that it's clear there was significant damage to all three, but we'd have to wait on final damage assessments.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: BDA is still pending, and it would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there.
--:-- Josh Keating: He also said that there would be no more strikes unless Iran didn't... Well, he was a little vague about that, actually. The implication seems to be that if Iran retaliates against U.S. troops in the region, that there could be more strikes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But he seemed to suggest that this was a one-off, that there weren't further military actions planned.
--:-- Josh Keating: He didn't get congressional authorization to do this in keeping with a decades-long tradition now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Who knew he was going to do this? Not very many people.
--:-- Josh Keating: Supposedly congressional Republicans were given some advance warning. Just Republicans. Congressional Democrats were given very very very brief warning.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Israelis do seem to have been involved in some coordinating fashion. So Israelis may have known more about this operation than congressional Democrats?
--:-- Josh Keating: Most likely they did, yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's worth noting just a couple days earlier, Trump had said that he was going to wait two weeks to make a decision.
--:-- Josh Keating: And, you know, a lot of I'll be honest, I wasn't sure if he would really go through with this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, he didn't even tell you. He didn't.
--:-- Josh Keating: No, he didn't. I was not on those signal chats.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: As you mentioned, Trump's own director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, expressed skepticism that Iran had the capability to build a bomb.
--:-- Josh Keating: Well, that's something of a tradition as well. I mean, the lead up to the war in Iraq seems very recent to me, but I'm realizing I'm just getting old.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that seems like a long time ago for other people.
--:-- Josh Keating: You know, I mean, in that case, the administration pressured the intelligence community to come up with findings on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program that would build a case for military action.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Indeed, the facts and Iraq's behavior show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction.
--:-- Josh Keating: We have not found at this point actual weapons. It does not mean we've concluded there are no actual weapons. It means at this point in time, and it's a huge country with a lot to do, that we have not yet found weapons.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This time we seem to be doing like a speed run of the lead up to Iraq. You know, rather than pressuring the intelligence community to come up with this, you know, favorable intelligence, Trump is simply saying he doesn't believe the intelligence assessments that were given to him that he believes what the Israelis were saying.
--:-- Josh Keating: And rather than, you know, trying to build a case in Congress, making a case to the U.N., as we saw in 2003, Trump simply kind of ignored those.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's kind of like we're doing Iraq, but much faster.
--:-- Josh Keating: The obvious difference being that in this case there really was a nuclear program.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You published a piece on Saturday night immediately after this happened titled This Time It's Trump's War.
--:-- Josh Keating: You pointed out that Trump had overruled objections while, you know, shifting his position on taking military action against Iran.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why is he kind of going alone on this? Do we know?
--:-- Josh Keating: I want to read something that he said in May in a speech he gave in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Just a quick quote.
--:-- Josh Keating: He said he was talking about the sort of legacy of the last few presidential administrations of the Middle East.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He said, in the end, the so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.
--:-- Josh Keating: They told you how to do it, but they had no idea how to do it themselves.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, I read this, and I think it's a fair reading that this was sort of a castigation, a rejection of, you know, decades of U.S. attempts to remake the Middle East through military action.
--:-- Josh Keating: And, you know, maybe this is just a one off. Maybe it's just a strike on the nuclear program.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But, you know, Israel clearly sees this as a potential regime change operation.
--:-- Josh Keating: And then on Sunday, we saw Trump posting on Truth Social that, you know, it's not PC to talk about regime change, but if Iran can't, if the Iranian government can't make Iran great again, then maybe there should be regime change.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We've been hearing and reading that Trump doesn't have much of like a, you know, foreign policy ideology for, I don't know, like a decade now.
--:-- Josh Keating: But as much as he has one, it's America first. This is not that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The first person Trump thanked in his speech on Saturday night wasn't the troops, wasn't the pilots of these bombers.
--:-- Josh Keating: It was Benjamin Netanyahu.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's feeling a little Israel first out there right now.
--:-- Josh Keating: Is Trump diluting his brand, Josh?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is another major shift we've seen.
--:-- Josh Keating: I mean, Trump was basically giving Israel the cold shoulder in the Middle East.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was cutting deals with Hamas for hostages.
--:-- Josh Keating: It was, of course, engaged in these nuclear talks with Iran that Israel was not too happy about.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They stopped bombing the Houthis, even though the Houthis continued lobbing ballistic missiles at Israel.
--:-- Josh Keating: So it didn't seem like either protecting Israel from its enemies regionally or, you know, appearing to be in lockstep with, you know, Israeli foreign policy in the Middle East was really that much of a priority for this administration.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is a major shift.
--:-- Josh Keating: I mean, and I don't really have a good explanation for it other than this is a president who's shown more than once he's capable of shifting on a dime in foreign policy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, he can go from calling for fire and fury in North Korea to calling Kim Jong-un his best friend.
--:-- Josh Keating: So there were a lot of people on the so-called America First right, as well as some on the left, who hoped that this would be a president who would show more restraint in the use of military force, who maybe wouldn't be as locked step aligned with Israel in the Middle East.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The theories about where Trump's foreign policy was headed or who was calling the shots a few weeks ago haven't held up very well.
--:-- Josh Keating: And I think, you know, observing this president over the last decade or so, that's something we should come to expect.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The view from Iran when we return on Today Explained.
--:-- Josh Keating: Support for Today Explained comes from Chime.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Nobody likes fees and complicated banking, says Chime.
--:-- Josh Keating: And Chime gets that says Chime.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Chime is a financial technology company that says they understand that every dollar counts.
--:-- Josh Keating: So when you set up direct deposit through Chime they say you get access to fee features such as free overdraft coverage, getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit, so much more.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Chime says with qualifying direct deposits, you can be eligible for free overdraft, up to $200 on debit card purchases and cash withdrawals.
--:-- Josh Keating: Plus, they say you don't need to worry about monthly fees or maintenance fees.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can work on your financial goals through Chime today.
--:-- Josh Keating: You can open an account in two minutes at chime.com slash explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's chime.com slash explained.
--:-- Josh Keating: Chime feels like progress.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank.
--:-- Josh Keating: Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancor Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Members FDIC.
--:-- Josh Keating: Spot me eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Timing depends on submission of payment file.
--:-- Josh Keating: Fees apply at out-of-network ATMs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Bank ranking and number of ATMs according to U.S. News and World Report 2023.
--:-- Josh Keating: Chime checking account required.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This episode is brought to you by LifeLock.
--:-- Josh Keating: Between two-factor authentication, strong passwords, and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But many other places also have it, and they might not be as careful.
--:-- Josh Keating: That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it. Guaranteed, or your money back.
--:-- Josh Keating: Save up to 40% your first year.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Visit LifeLock.com slash podcast for 40% off.
--:-- Josh Keating: Terms apply.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Upwork.
--:-- Josh Keating: If you run a business, you know that scaling your business requires the right expertise at the right time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I sometimes wonder how many of you are running businesses out there.
--:-- Josh Keating: I would love to know. Please email me, noelle at king dot com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: With Upwork, you can find specialized freelancers in IT, web development, AI, design, admin support, marketing, and more.
--:-- Josh Keating: Experts who they say are ready to help you take your business to the next level.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: With more than two decades of experience, Upwork has a simple and ambitious goal to pioneer a better way of working.
--:-- Josh Keating: Companies at every stage turn to Upwork to get things done and find more flexibility in the way they staff key projects and initiatives by accessing a global marketplace full of top talent.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Plus, Upwork makes posting your job easy with no cost to join.
--:-- Josh Keating: You can register, browse, freelancer profiles, get help drafting a job post, or even book a consultation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free.
--:-- Josh Keating: That is Upwork.com to post your job for free and connect with top talents ready to help your business grow.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You are listening to Today Explained.
--:-- Josh Keating: Professor Vali Nasser just published a book on Iran's grand strategy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's called Iran's Grand Strategy, A Political History.
--:-- Josh Keating: We asked him how long they've been trying to build a bomb.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, it hasn't been developing a nuclear weapon.
--:-- Josh Keating: It has been developing a nuclear program.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It actually started before the revolution under the Shah.
--:-- Josh Keating: At that point in time, the Shah saw it as a mark of Iran having arrived as a great power.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But also he saw industrial uses for it.
--:-- Josh Keating: He wanted to develop and modernize Iran.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He needed electricity, and he thought that a nuclear industry was critical for that.
--:-- Josh Keating: And I think the Islamic Republic began to think about a nuclear program when they got hit by Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war with chemical weapons, and the international community didn't do anything.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: According to its own declarations, Iraq used more than 101,000 chemical bombs and munitions during eight years of war, including mustard gas and nerve agents.
--:-- Josh Keating: And then they started basically thinking also as a nuclear program, as a way of getting U.S.'s attention, to sit down at the table and negotiate with Iran about lifting sanctions and de-escalating.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And every time the U.S. balked at it, they built the program bigger.
--:-- Josh Keating: The idea of Iran having a nuclear weapon is unacceptable.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's unacceptable to the United States, and it's unacceptable to the nations we're working with in the United Nations.
--:-- Josh Keating: And Obama came to the table. He signed a deal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because America negotiated from a position of strength and principle, we have stopped the spread of nuclear weapons in this region.
--:-- Josh Keating: Iran gave up much of its program, not all of it, much of it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because of this deal, the international community will be able to verify that the Islamic Republic of Iran will not develop a nuclear weapon.
--:-- Josh Keating: And then Trump pocketed those gains and then left the deal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Iran deal is defective at its core.
--:-- Josh Keating: If we do nothing, we know exactly what will happen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In just a short period of time, the world's leading state sponsor of terror will be on the cusp of acquiring the world's most dangerous weapons.
--:-- Josh Keating: So the Iranians then built something bigger, And they were willing to negotiate over it with Trump when this attack by Israel and then the U.S. came.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So until now, I don't think they made a decision to build the bomb.
--:-- Josh Keating: But definitely the nuclear program had very important strategic value for them, which is the only way in which they can get out of the chokehold of U.S. sanctions.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The containment wall that Iran has built around them is to put the nuclear program on the table and say, what are you going to give me for it if I gave up X, Y, and Z?
--:-- Josh Keating: And now President Trump says... Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it feels like there are people out there with different views.
--:-- Josh Keating: What is the best understanding we have of what just happened to Iran's nuclear program?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, we have the word that's been put out by the United States that this was a very successful bombing that they've used upwards of 13 massive bunker buster bombs on this site called Fordow, which is a massive mountain under which Iran has built its plan.
--:-- Josh Keating: We devastated the Iranian nuclear program.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, in reality, unless you actually put people on the ground, particularly in Fordow, which is this fortified mountain, you really won't know what has been destroyed and how much damage has been done.
--:-- Josh Keating: Now, increasingly, there is talk that actually Iran had emptied out these facilities of their centrifuges or sensitive machinery, etc.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the facilities might have been damaged but not necessarily what was in them.
--:-- Josh Keating: And most importantly according to Israel that Iran had amassed enough fissile material for nine bombs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that why they were imminently going to get a bomb or nine bombs.
--:-- Josh Keating: And that why Israel had to do this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the vice president just said yesterday that we don't know where that material is.
--:-- Josh Keating: It has taken its sensitive material out of these enrichment production sites.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We know that. We know that they've moved the enriched uranium.
--:-- Josh Keating: Well, we won't know anything for sure until we can get in there and we can't.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But there is evidence.
--:-- Josh Keating: And in fact, even Israelis have said that there were trucks, evidence of trucks moving, you know, near Fardo, this site in the days before the attack came.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And maybe that's also what pushed them to move the attack up when the president said two weeks, they moved it faster.
--:-- Josh Keating: So we really don't know what's been damaged.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then secondly, we don't know how quickly can Iranians rebuild it because, you know, they have know-how, they have engineers, they have scientists, they have capability.
--:-- Josh Keating: So if anything, the U.S. has damaged the program, has initiated a war with Iran at some level, but it has fallen short of its claim that it has completely obliterated Iran's nuclear program.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But what we know, John, is they no longer have the capacity to turn that stockpile of highly enriched uranium to weapons grade uranium.
--:-- Josh Keating: And that was really the goal here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Uranium is not that difficult to come by, John, but enriching uranium up to the point of a nuclear weapon. That is what the president put a stop to last night.
--:-- Josh Keating: What would a war with Iran look like?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Many of Iran's proxies and friends from Assad in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, even Russia, are either weakened, destroyed, preoccupied.
--:-- Josh Keating: What should we expect in terms of retaliation from Iran?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, Iran has enough missiles, short-range missiles, medium-range missiles to hit plenty of U.S. targets in the region.
--:-- Josh Keating: Or not hit U.S. targets, go after the oil and energy supply chain, close the Straits of Hormuz, hit tankers, things like that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I think an Iranian retaliation will come.
--:-- Josh Keating: I don't think Iran is looking to start a bigger war, but Iran also does not want President Trump to think that this was really easy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's do it every day of the week.
--:-- Josh Keating: So I think the retaliation will not be so much out of anger or lashing out or revenge as it will be to still try to give the U.S. a sense that this is not a good idea.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Up until just a few weeks ago, it seemed like President Trump wanted to talk to Iran, wanted to consider a deal with Iran.
--:-- Josh Keating: Is that now off the table?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, what he thinks about a deal is not what the Iranians understand about a deal.
--:-- Josh Keating: I mean, right now he's talking about, I want you to show up and sign a surrender treaty, an unconditional surrender treaty.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's what his definition of a deal is.
--:-- Josh Keating: A deal would now be much more difficult because I think Iran's experience with this whole thing means that it has led them to a point where they don't trust in anything President Trump says or does.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He says, I make a decision to bomb you in two weeks. He does it the next night.
--:-- Josh Keating: He says, you know, we have one more round of talks going and I only am going to go to a military option if the talks fail.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he allows Israel to start the military option before the talks failed.
--:-- Josh Keating: So why would Iran necessarily trust a deal with the U.S.?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A lot of people are scared right now that the United States, the world is about to see another forever war.
--:-- Josh Keating: Maybe World War III if you're super paranoid.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Does Iran want that? Does anyone actually want that?
--:-- Josh Keating: No, I don't know if anybody wants that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't think World War III is a bit hyperbolic because World War III sort of suggests that there are circumstances in which Russia or China or other global powers can come into this war.
--:-- Josh Keating: And I just don't see that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that's going too hyperbolic.
--:-- Josh Keating: But I think a real costly forever war, another Middle East war that is going to look, Iraq look like child play.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, Israel can start this war, but in the end, the United States will be the one that will own it and will have to deal with it.
--:-- Josh Keating: And it's going to cost the United States trillions of dollars.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's going to divert its attention from varieties of other global issues.
--:-- Josh Keating: It's going to be extremely taxing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't think the U.S. wants it.
--:-- Josh Keating: I don't think Iran wants it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I think we're in a circumstance where President Trump decided that if he struck Iran, there is no risk of having to then put boots on the ground, which is a huge assumption in my point of view.
--:-- Josh Keating: It has to basically shoot a bow across President Trump's arrow for him to sort of realize that there is serious risk here because only then might he back off.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so for that reason, And I do think that Iranians would retaliate, not out of pride, but out of the desire to warn the president that you shouldn't go down this path.
--:-- Josh Keating: Vali Nasser is a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: His book, once more, is titled Iran's Grand Strategy of Political History.
--:-- Josh Keating: Shortly after we spoke today, Iran said it launched an attack on the largest U.S. base in the Middle East.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That would be in Qatar.
--:-- Josh Keating: As of publishing time, we had no reported casualties.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Peter Balanon-Rosen and Hadi Mawajdeh made our show today.
--:-- Josh Keating: Miranda Kennedy, Laura Buller, Denise Guerra, Andrea Kristinsdottir, and Patrick Boyd helped.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is Today Explained.
--:-- Josh Keating: Thank you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you.
