Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
So we’re checking in with Nicholas Grossman, a professor of international relations who has a new piece for MS Now, arguing that the economic fallout from the war is only just beginning. Thanks for coming on, Nick.
Sargent: So let’s start with the news from the U.S. Senate. Three Republicans joined with Democrats to support a resolution that would end the war in keeping with the War Powers Act, which requires a congressional vote after 60 days have passed. The three senators are Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Rand Paul. As Politico reports, there’s new frustration and deepening divisions among Republicans over this. Nick, what’s your reaction to all that?
But also, the War Powers Act—the way that they’re acting now is a sign of America’s democratic backsliding, of shifting power towards the executive branch. And this actually happened in Trump’s first term because the way the War Powers Act is supposed to work is the president is allowed to use force in an emergency or self-defense without Congress’s permission. And then if he doesn’t get congressional permission in 60 days, it automatically ends.
So already the War Powers Act is not really acting like it’s supposed to. But now, when we have Congress trying to assert itself, I think that would be a positive thing. More of this power is supposed to be in Congress and it would be positive if they can get a resolution saying that we assert our power under the War Powers Act. I don’t know if Trump would listen, but even so it would be a good step.
Trump continued that the media is aiding and abetting the enemy. And he called the media “American cowards that are rooting against our country.” He called them losers, ingrates, and fools. You know, Nick, it’s going to be harder for Trump to continue claiming that anyone who questions his war is a traitor when even Republican senators are now doing so, right?
So Iran has weapons. They are able to fire them to block the Strait of Hormuz. That is creating massive shortages in things like oil and gas and fertilizer and other essentials. Those will damage the economy. It doesn’t matter what Trump is able to bully the media into doing. And yet it seems like that’s his priority—as if he can somehow, “virtual treason” is such a great term for it, as if this is all a virtual reality, a reality show. Whereas it’s clearly not real treason. But if he can shape the narrative—it’s not going to make the situation better.
Grossman: Yeah, that shows a desperation about the politics because the facts of the war are just so bad.
I’ve made this point on here before, but in addition to the content of the leaks, which is bad enough, it’s also devastating for Trump that top officials are doing the leaking of this kind of thing, because it shows that there’s really serious dissent inside the administration about how this is all going. What do you make of all that?
He moved around so many times and eventually settled on something that was pretty small, which was degrading Iran’s missile program and degrading so that they would have fewer missiles. And even that is not any sort of strategic victory. All it would do, at absolute best, is set them back, where they would then have greater incentive to build up weapons and to possibly go for a nuclear weapon and to build up their missile stocks.
They more or less turtled and kept a lot of their capabilities in reserve so that they could do things like continue to block the Strait of Hormuz, as they did when the U.S. briefly tried that failed attempt that they called Project Freedom to get ships through it. And it’s not working.
Sargent: And you sort of see this same mistake being duplicated over and over by Donald Trump. It’s almost like he’s caught in this weird mental loop. He just keeps tweeting over and over, if Iran doesn’t do what I say, then the bombing will really start. And it’s a little hard to keep escalating that. We were sort of treated to the comic spectacle, I guess comic isn’t quite the right word, of Donald Trump threatening to obliterate Iranian civilization entirely, which would have killed 90 million people.
Grossman: It’s not even force by itself—it is threats that he’s trying to solve the problem with. One of the problems of this war is, while it was never a good idea in the first place, Trump did not deploy the type of force that would be necessary to accomplish it—they just thought bombing from afar. And the thing about bombing from afar is it has literally never won a war, ever. Bombing on its own—you can damage some stuff, but you can’t really win big concessions from a country.
And so Trump is in the situation where his only two options are a humiliating surrender that leaves Iran decently stronger than it was before—getting to charge tolls for all these ships that used to be able to go through freely—or a military escalation. And he’s clearly afraid of that. And really he should be, because there is no good military option. More bombing won’t do it.
And then even trying to do something like invade the ground around the Strait of Hormuz would be very militarily costly, difficult, risky, and has no end game.
Grossman: And for a ground invasion, those capabilities would multiply, because then if there are U.S. troops on Iranian soil, there are a lot of different ways that Iran could get to them that they don’t currently.
Which, already given that the war is so unpopular—even at the start, it was the most unpopular war since we have been measuring these things, since World War II. More unpopular than Iraq at the start. More unpopular than Obama’s intervention in Libya, you name it. Then with the economic costs mounting, trying to sell the lie that this is already over and he’s already won and it was such a great job and the Iranians are giving him everything—you can’t sell that lie if you have to go and escalate to putting troops on the ground. So he really is stuck. He’s gotten the U.S. into a terrible position and there is no good way out.
Reporter (voiceover): Do you agree with the president’s position that Americans’ financial situations should not be a consideration in that decision-making process?
Here’s Mike Johnson.
Here’s Senator Roger Marshall.
Here’s Senator Cynthia Lummis.
Sargent: Nick, I’ve got to say, a lot of them are claiming they don’t know the context, but the context is not exonerating in the least, is it?
Iran’s leverage over the United States comes from the economic damage that it’s causing. And when asked, effectively, so does Iran have leverage over you because of all this economic damage, he very quickly defaults to, no, no, no, I don’t think about that, I don’t care about it. But in the process, it’s probably revealing some of his personal beliefs and looking absolutely terrible politically, given that prices are rising in various ways.
Sargent: Okay, Nick. So what do you predict is going to happen in the end here? It sure looks like Donald Trump is going to have to accept something soon enough. We’re stuck in this dynamic where he’s only willing to accept something that looks like he’s pulled off this world-historically stupendous accomplishment. And yet at the same time, he can’t actually get such an accomplishment out of the situation.
Grossman: So he’ll probably have to accept something at some point, although he always could try for a military gamble to attack them, or to either follow through on some of these threats, or who knows, escalate all the way to a ground invasion. I find it almost impossible to try to predict which one of those he’s going to do.
The result now is kind of like a shell game where companies and countries are drawing down on their reserves. And they’re able to keep the price of oil from spiking and to keep some of the commodities flowing. But that is going to run out.
And that set off a recession that lasted over a year. It saw big stock market declines, although interestingly, the stock market didn’t really decline until after that embargo was lifted. And so what that suggests is that a lot of these things are being strung along for now.
And so the pressure will continuously mount on Trump. And he’s going to have to either do something that is so clearly a surrender to Iran that gives Iran some sort of concessions, and gets maybe a fig leaf of Iran kind of promising to restrict their nuclear program in ways that are less than the JCPOA—the nuclear deal that Obama negotiated and that Trump tore up without cause and let Iran out of nuclear restrictions in exchange for nothing, which set us on this path to war or nuclear Iran.
Sargent: You know, Nick, it just seems like the built-in dynamics of this situation are really formidable and terrible in every conceivable way. The only way out is going to be the midterm elections. And even that might not help that much. Unfortunately. Nick Grossman, awesome to talk to you as always. Thanks for coming on.
Grossman: Thanks so much for having me.
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