Trump Is Wishcasting Victory in Iran

This is Radio Atlantic. I'm Adam Harris in Forhanna Rosen. This week began with President

Trump giving Iran an ultimatum. Open up the straight-of-form moves, cut a deal, or face

attacks on civilian infrastructure.

We have a plan because of the power of our military where every bridge in Iran will be

decimated by 12 o'clock tomorrow night. Where every power plant in Iran will be out of

business, burning, exploding, and never to be used again. I mean complete demolition.

That was him speaking at a Monday press conference. The next morning he was even more direct.

A whole civilization will die tonight. Never to be brought back again. He declared

on Truth Social. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will.

In the hours before his Tuesday night deadline, the United States announced a two-week ceasefire

while the talks play out. The deal already looks shaky, with Israel striking targets in Lebanon

and Iranian state media saying the straight is again closed in response. Talks are set

to begin in Pakistan this weekend. But in the meantime, the President can't take back

his words. Words that appear to meet the UN definition of genocide, and when uttered

by a world leader are taken as policy. To understand what comes next, I'm joined by two

Atlantic staffwriters who follow the military and foreign affairs. Nancy Yusuf and Tom Nichols.

Nancy, thanks for joining. Thanks for having me.

Tom, it's great to have you. Hey, Adam. Thanks for having me.

So, Tom, we're speaking on Wednesday. As the clock was winding down on Tuesday, I guess

a very blunt question. Did you think he was going to go through with the threats?

I didn't think it was impossible, but I think it would have provoked a constitutional

crisis, which means that it was much less likely than not to happen. Because I think

he would have had to order the military to do things that the military this time would

have bulked out. There are reports that the military is already giving the President lists

of things that only had military applicability, which is not the same thing as erasing a civilization.

So I didn't think it was likely to happen. But as I said in the piece I wrote that afternoon,

when the President of the United States talks, you have to take it seriously. No matter how,

you know, I mean, we're used to Trump saying kind of loopy things and talking about, you

know, sharks and his uncle and electricity and whatnot. But nonetheless, he is the President

and the President's statements are policy. And so I said, well, it's not likely to happen,

but we have to treat his statements as if it could happen and go from there. Yeah. And

Nancy, what were your sources telling you about Trump's threats and the lead up to that

deadline? So there was a lot of anxiety after that social media post right after Easter,

in which he threatened the destruction of civilization. And people were really trying to figure out

what was in the realm of possible in terms of what could be done. The conversation I heard

in the run up to the deadline was that the US wouldn't be hitting historical sites or civilian

infrastructure, but that they would go after what's called dual use, things that are used both

by the military for military purposes and for civilian use. But then you can't just sort of declare

dual use and then strike. It has to be proportionally after demonstrated. So I think that was sort

of the start of people looking for an off-brain from the rhetoric that we heard. And then by

days in, you could, I couldn't figure out why at the time you could feel that things that sort of

calmed down in terms of the anxiety that I was feeling in the morning from sources, but we didn't

quite understand why at the time. And I thought that maybe it was because even if the military had

gone through, which as Tom noted, would have caused a lot of mayhem. Even that wasn't going to

guarantee the fall of the regime. So the question I kept coming back to is, what is the military

gain that comes with doing these unprecedented strikes? We've seen the Iranian regime survive,

the decapitation of its leadership, the destruction of its ballistic missile and drone capability

to what extent we don't know, the destruction of its navy largely, and they have survived. And

historically, we've seen them quite resilient. I mean, they were in an eight-year war with Iraq and

survived that. And so I couldn't understand how those strikes had they been carried out with all

the consequences associated with it, got the president. One of the outcomes that he said he was

seeking, which was the collapse of the regime. And actually, speaking of those outcomes that the

president said he was seeking, right, you go back to, you went back to January and you think about

what the president was saying about the Iranian people, right? This was to help them overthrow the regime.

And now we have something like 1700 Iranian civilians who have been killed in the strikes,

including at least 250 children. What of the Iranian people in all of this? What was the

administration thinking about those people when you were having these threats from the president?

Well, it's an interesting question because this started at 2.30 in the morning in terms of

presidential statements, which he made from a truth social video, that this was for the Iranian people.

Finally, to the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand.

Stay sheltered. Don't leave your home. It's very dangerous outside. Boms will be dropping everywhere.

When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.

And I think there are a lot of Iranian people who welcomed it and even still welcomed it because

there was such profound frustration with the regime. We had seen massive protests and the

run-up to this in December and January and real threats to the durability of the regime.

But over time, not only through the strikes, but through the rhetoric we heard from the US,

I think we saw an administration that conflated the regime and the people. And we use a spray

sort of hearts and minds and maybe people are quick to dismiss it. But if the objective was to

get the Iranian people to rise up and to challenge the government, it's very hard to get that

kind of mobilization when you're also attacking them and making what they saw as derogatory comments

about the religion on Easter Sunday and all these things. And so I think for some Iranians,

we heard about real splits within the diaspora. But internally, I think there was a real struggle between

those who both found themselves stuck with the regime that they didn't want and a war that was

conducted in a way that they didn't want. On those goals and thinking about, you know, this was

the war that the people didn't want. But now we've reached a point where we have reached a cease

fire. But I'm still kind of stuck in this idea that I don't know that we've ever gotten a clear

definition of why the administration is there. They've said all of these various reasons why they're

there. And now they're saying that, well, the straight-of-formers is reopening and that's the

sort of victory. But that was just the byproduct of war. So Tom, Nancy, either of you can answer

this one, have they clearly defined our reason for being there? No. No. I mean, now we have a very

clear reason, which is to reopen the straight-of-formers, which wouldn't have been closed if we hadn't

gone to war in the first place. In that sense, yes, we had. We created a clear war aim by starting a war.

I think the important thing is to go back to the first day of this war and to realize,

regardless of how many times Trump denies it, this was a regime change war. It was meant to be a

regime change war. We're seeing that now. There was this piece from the New York Times that was very

detailed and was kind of a minute-by-minute explanation of how the administration went to war.

It was clear. Trump said, we're going to hit them really hard and then the regime's going to fall.

To their credit, and boy, how rarely do I say this about people in Trump's orbit,

but to their credit, people like the CIA director said, I believe the word he used to describe

that scenario was farcical, but Trump didn't want to hear it because remember, Trump wishcasts.

I mean, I say this every time we talk about him. He tries to manifest things into beans.

Like, yeah, yeah, I know it's a problem, but if we just do it, it will happen. If you build it,

they will come thinking. He launched the war, expected the regime to fall, and it didn't.

When that didn't happen, everything went to hell. They didn't know what to do next. He just said,

general, if you got more operations, yeah, we can hit plenty. Iran is a target-rich environment.

We can bomb stuff all day long. As I used to teach at the Naval War College years ago,

operational successes without strategic direction don't get you toward victory.

What does the military do when they don't have that strategic direction?

When they're pulling all of these different threads, if this is a regime change,

you're going to do a specific thing for regime change, as opposed to I'm doing a specific

thing for liberation of people, as opposed to I'm doing specific things to open up a

street that wouldn't have been closed otherwise. How do they plan when there is no strategic direction?

That's not their job. Their job is to plan operations. The very senior military leaders are

supposed to ask that question. We have these packages. We have these target sets. We have these

objectives we can achieve. What is it you want us to do, Mr. President? Where are we supposed to be

going with this? In the absence of that, they do operations. They say, okay, well, we can destroy

some more factories. We can blow up some more airfields. We can take out some more boats.

We can do that all day, at least until we start running out of ammo. In the end, the people

who are supposed to know that are the kind of people that Pete Hegseth has been firing left and

right. This is one of the most war-gamed scenarios in American modern American history. We have

been war-gaming scenarios about fighting with Iran for almost 50 years. They've got tons of

operational plans sitting on the shelves about everything. But if the president just wanders into

the candy store and says, give me one of those and give me one of those, the military salutes

smartly and says, yes, sir. Can I jump in, Adam? Tom made so many great points. I want to just build

on a couple of them. Absolutely. The firing, we've had a lot of generals and animals fired,

including the head of the army during this conflict. Now, usually when a general

animal's fire during war, it's for the conduct of the war that didn't appear to be the case in

this instance. This was personal animosity, a secretary who is micromanaging personnel decisions

in the army looking to put his own stamp on that service. And while this was largely a war from

the air in sea, the army had an important role. The air defenses that you heard about the patriots

and the thaz, those are army operated system. Restocking the munitions that were used for them,

it falls on the army chief of staff and he was fired during this conflict. And so I think that's

important to note, just the pace at which these these personal changes were happening. The other

thing I want to point out is, for all the reasons that the United States gave for conducting this war,

Iran was very consistent throughout. They wanted to survive as a regime. They wanted compensation

for the damages to their country. And so I think to Tom's point, when one side doesn't have clear

strategic aims and the other does, no amount of firepower can resolve that. And what you saw the

Iranians do is take that strategy and marry it with an asymmetric warfare approach to take away

the advantage that the United States had with much stronger munitions, training, planes, weapons,

ships. And so that's where the strategy I think sort of or lack thereof played out on the battlefield.

Two quick points. The other thing about Nancy's point about the army, the army took casualties.

We spent a lot of time on watching television with the air war. But when some of those

bases got hit, those were army people that we lost. The other is this looks a lot like Ukraine.

It was exactly the same imbalance of interests. Putin went in, thought he was going to just knock

the Ukrainian regime over in a day or three days or four days. But also when that didn't happen,

Putin didn't have a clear set of goals. It was just throw more guys and more bodies and blow up

more buildings. And just like the Iranians, the Ukrainians had a strategic goal, survive and control

the territory and the government of Ukraine. And they did. They have so far. Nancy, we know that no one

really wins in war in terms of human suffering. But even so, we now have the ceasefire. And I wonder

everything you've said here is Iran actually the winner of the ceasefire?

Well, I should start by saying that the ceasefire is very tenuous. I mean, almost immediately

Iran announced that the straight would be effectively shut down again because Israel, which did not

believe in the part of the agreement that said that Lebanon would not be attacked,

carried out extensive attacks on Lebanon. So it's all very fragile because there are three

parties or three different interests and we don't know the specifics of the deal.

Now, having said that, you know, Trump, among the reasons he gave, is that he didn't want Iran to

have a nuclear weapon. But I think what Iran discovered is that they actually have a deterrent

capability that is immediately available to them right now that allows them to make revenue off

of it, that allows them to have great influence over the global economy. And that was a straight

of hormones. I don't know that Iran needs to look to nuclear capabilities as much, having now been

empowered with some control of the straight of hormones. One of the things that they have said is

that they want to maintain that control. And so what Iran has come out of this, I think, is a new

form of deterrence against future warfare, not inviting sanctions through the prospects of a nuclear

program, but rather sort of saying, if you punish us, it now affects the global economy,

certainly has that potential. That was always sort of their nuclear option of sorts. That if it

came down to the threat to their survival, which this for them was, that they would exercise that

option of the straight. And now that they have, I think going forward, we're going to see them try

to continue to collect revenue as they did during the war to rebuild and potentially rebuild the

regime from the strikes that they've endured throughout these past 39 days.

After the break, the turmoil inside the Trump administration over this war, and what that means on

the battlefield.

So if you're going to have a fight with the Trump administration, you can't just go to the

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at us a dot com slash bundle restrictions apply.

Tom, one of the things that I couldn't necessarily wrap my head around, it was maybe an irony that was

Sunday into Monday into Tuesday as the president's threats became more hostile, severe,

incendiary, whichever adjective you'd like to use there. And that was that he was saying things that

people clearly identified as war crimes and Congress has not yet declared a war.

And so I guess constitutionally, this is still something that's worth asking, will Congress ever declare a war?

Or does it matter at this point?

No, and it doesn't matter at this point.

There's a couple of things to think about, and reasons that Democrats would be hesitant to declare a war as well.

War time conditions vastly empower a president.

What they want, what I think people like Tim Cain and others among the Democrats wanted was a war

powers resolution to be able to reign in Trump by law and by budgetary authority from this conflict.

But now that it's over, and I think it is over for the foreseeable future, there's no point in it.

Republicans didn't want to do it because Trump kept sending them signals, stop saying war.

It's a military operation, which is part of the reason I think that the war was never popular.

I've never seen this happen before, where a president embarks on a major military operation,

and not only gets no bump out of it, but actually starts to bleed support over time.

I mean, even in the first stages of Vietnam,

you're a good people, rallyed around live in Johnson.

This is really unprecedented in modern times.

You said that you think that it's over for the foreseeable future, right?

But if we are operating under the idea that the ceasefire is tenuous, what led you to say that it's over?

Because Trump's entire political body language for weeks now has been, get me out of this.

I think what we saw from Easter onward and leading up to those really feverish statements

was panic and flailing. He lost control of the situation within the first week

when the things he wanted to happen didn't happen.

And ever since then, he's been trying to manipulate markets and wish cast solutions and

announce things, hoping that just by announcing them, they become reality like deals.

We were going to make a great deal. They're begging me for a deal.

None of that happened. And I think the last thing anybody wants in Washington right now

is to have to go back into this. You know, Nancy and I were talking at one point about General

Cain's briefing, which really sounded like a wrap-up. It didn't sound like a here's where we are

on the eve of a ceasefire. It sounded like, well, it's been 39 days. Here's all the stuff we destroyed.

Thank you and good evening. You know, I was actually, I was watching that press conference

on Wednesday morning as well. And there seemed to be like two different postures that were coming from

Cain and Secretary Hegseth. Am I wrong in that? Because General Cain did seem as if he was

wrapping things up. Over the course of 38 days of major combat operation, the joint force achieved

the military objectives as defined by the president. But Secretary Hegseth kept going back

this idea that, well, the reason why we're at the ceasefire and the reason why the steel came is

because of the president's threats. Other presidents mark time and kick the can down the road.

President Trump made history. Because he's shown that he's willing to go there and he is still

willing to go there. So they still may shoot here and there, but that would be very, very unwise.

Kind of leaving that option hanging out there felt like a different thing than what General Cain was

saying. Yeah, that's, of course, that's what Pete Hegseth is going to say. Because, you know, while

this war has been going on, there's been another drama going on at the Pentagon. Pete Hegseth

is worried about his job. And, you know, if you wonder why the Secretary of the Army came out,

you know, in recent days and said, I'm not quitting, I have no place to resign. I'm not getting

fired as far as I know. That's Dan Dreskel. And he has been floated as the most likely replacement

for Pete Hegseth. So every time you see Pete Hegseth, just assume that all he's doing is speaking

to Donald Trump and saying, please keep me in my job. Nancy, one of the things Tom mentioned was

the, the deference that Republicans have had traditionally to the president over the last several

years in both terms and office. But some members of his own party had become vocally critical of his

threats. In recent days, what are they saying now that this ceasefire has gone into effect?

I think that you're hearing relief. I mean, throughout those statements, it was notable to me

yesterday Republicans that spoke up, but the silence that happened throughout,

particularly after the president threatened to destroy a country civilization, the silence

after Hegseth and one of those press conferences talked about no quarter and then days later,

US service members were flying in F-15E over Iran and had to escape because the Iranians shut it

down. Like, there was a lot of really bombastic language that happened throughout this war. And again,

I think Tom's right in terms of the audience that often Hegseth is speaking to, but it is heard

around the world. And it was striking to me that we didn't hear the kind of pushback I think that

maybe some would have expected given the impact on the battlefield. You could feel the discomfort

in that silence, but it wasn't enough to sort of challenge the president's assertions. And that

was striking to me. I should also note that there was a willingness to kind of support funding

in the war, which at the time the president was asking for 200 billion, I think the question going

forward will be whether they continue to support the military in terms of the budget the president's

asking for 1.5 trillion, much of that will go towards rebuilding some of the damage that happened

to ships. We saw the USS Gerald Ford, the newest aircraft carrier cut on fire during this conflict,

restocking of munitions, particularly those air defenses. There is a cost. And I think the

Republicans will be confronted with sort of whether they're willing to pay for it literally.

And then in terms of political costs, given that the president had campaigned on the promise to

not go into these kinds of wars in this region specifically. Yeah. And even considering his promises

not to go into wars in these regions specifically. And other ways that the president has sort of gone

back on things that he said during the campaign alongside the sort of increasingly erratic of

sorts behavior that he has been exhibiting. Tom, right, there have been calls from notable

right wing figures for the 25th amendment to be invoked. Of course, that is the most nuclear

option there and probably the most involved option. But those folks were previous or former

representatives, folks like Marjorie Taylor Green, Joe Walsh, Adam Kinzinger. But you ended up

getting folks like Alex Jones. Is there a point where the sort of more mainstream part of the

party starts to push back if the president's behavior becomes even more erratic than it has been

in recent weeks? Boy, that is a great question because what would constitute more erratic?

Then starting a war half-world away with a country of 90 million people and then threatening to

erase their civilization from the planet. I think what you're seeing though is Republicans doing

what rather than rising in opposition or thinking about the 25th amendment, they're doing a much

more time-honored Washington tradition. They're going to the press and they're ratting each other out

and they're distancing themselves from the president. That whole report about the decision to go

to war, basically you had everybody in the room saying, well, I didn't think it was a good idea.

The only guy who gets thrown under the bus in that whole account and he's thrown under the bus

while all of his colleagues is Pete Hagueceth. The other thing that's happening and this goes back

to the conversation you reached out to Nancy about budgets, do the Republicans really want to go out

in a few months? Because just to back up for a moment, the economic damage from this war is going

to reverberate now for months. I think a lot of Republicans out there are saying, I can't really

do anything about the 25th amendment, but I don't want to run on a 40% defense budget increase

while the president is saying we can't fund Medicare. There's a lot of trouble for Republicans

because of Donald Trump, but I don't think he goes anywhere and I think that's actually worse

for Republicans. Instead of becoming the fuel for more Republican victories, Donald Trump has

become a giant millstone, an albatross around the necks of Republicans now. As he is in your

words right in an albatross around the neck of the Republicans, I still come back to this thought

that this is just the second year of this administration. Even if we have the sort of change over

and in Congress, if Democrats reclaim the House, there are still several more years of a Trump

administration. I do wonder, and left to wonder, where do we go from here? Tom Nancy, where can the

US go from here in terms of its reputation? We have turned war crimes into a bargaining chip of

political policy. I think if the Democrats win in November, his presidency is effectively over.

And I think that will make him completely bananas and he will say and do even crazier and

more dangerous things that will harm the reputation of the presidency and the United States. But I

also think that he will now be more constrained in what he can do, especially, I mean, I can't believe

that we're even thinking of this because this was impossible a few months ago, especially if he

loses the House and the Senate. But if he loses the House, which I think now is just, you don't

ever want to say anything's inevitable, but seems inevitable, then I think you get crazy or rhetoric,

but more responsible government in the short term. I think on a global scale, what we saw from this war

is another region that is sort of reconsidering its relationship with the United States from a

security perspective. And then run up to this, you'll remember that the president threatened to

attack Greenland and you saw the sort of shocks that go through Europe in terms of could they count

on the United States as a reliable partner during this conflict he threatened to leave NATO because they

wouldn't come to the defense of the straight. And then later said that we didn't need NATO because

we don't need the oil and we don't care about the straight. So again, there was sort of attention

there. The Gulf States had really pinned their security on their relationship with the United

States. They had bases throughout the region because they thought those bases would be a security

guarantee as it turns out and made them a bigger target. They had built defense relationships with

the United States hoping that that would lead to security and again it ended up making them a target.

Now there are a few options for the Gulf in terms of how they look at alternatives, but I do think

we're going to see them start to diversify in light of how these past 39 days have gone. And so

I think the most immediate takeaways we're going to see another consequential part of the

world really reassess its relationship with the United States given the events of these past 39

days and how the war has played out and the impact that has had on them and the US response to that.

You know, one interesting thing here I think is we've worried a lot about terrorism and payback and

all those other things that you should worry about when you embark on this kind of war.

But Nancy's point about the Gulf States, the Iranians may decide to play nice with Europe and

the United States to keep us occupied elsewhere but really take it out on the Gulf States and

make it clear don't ever do this again. You chose poorly, it's possible that the Gulf States

have to be more worried about that even than we do. Yeah well there will be a lot to look out for

in the coming days and weeks Tom Nancy. Thanks for joining me. Thank you. Thank you.

This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Rosie Hughes in Genet West. It was edited by Kevin

Townsend. Rob Smersiak engineered and provided original music. Sam Finchris fact checked.

Claudine Abade is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor.

So listeners if you enjoy this show you can support our work and the work of all Atlantic

journalists when you subscribe to the Atlantic at theAtlantic.com slash listener. I'm Adam Harris.

Hanna will be back next week. Thanks for listening.