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 is there a path to forcing Trump to end this conflict and what’s likely to happen now in the war itself? We’re talking about it all with Emily Horne, a former veteran of the State Department and National Security Council. Emily, good to have you back on.
Sargent: So the House passed a bill Wednesday directing Trump to end the conflict, with four Republicans breaking ranks. The Senate could pass this, and because it’s a certain type of resolution, it’s not subject to a veto, but Trump can probably not follow it. Still, this is significant, isn’t it, Emily? Can you tell us why?
And unfortunately, terribly, tragically, as more American service members continue to die or be injured in conflict in the Middle East, the more this war expands regionally and the more innocent civilian lives are lost, the harder that it becomes for Republicans to defend this war when in fact many of them were running on the principle that Trump would not get Americans into open-ended foreign conflicts. That’s a lot harder to defend when we are at month three of an open-ended conflict.
Horne: This vote is not happening as a coincidence. This vote is happening now because the 90-day deadline for a War Powers resolution has come and gone, and we are still in this war. And so this has not exactly been a Congress that has taken its oath of office to both the letter and the spirit of the law, but it’s nice to finally see some backbone and some acknowledgment that they do have a constitutional duty to do things like allow the president to declare war or not, that that is a pretty important part of their oath, in fact. So while procedurally this may not change anything, politically, again, I think this is a really important moment.
And now they’re on the hook for voting to continue the war, which means holding the House is going to be harder for Republicans because the war is just absolutely killing them. Republicans have done this to themselves even as Trump has also been delivered a rebuke. It’s just an all-around failure in every way for them, no?
And going back even years and years ago to the first Trump administration, we had a diplomatic deal. He blew it up in 2018. He started us down this path a long time ago. And even then, he still had many chances to not wind up in this current situation. He still had multiple off-ramps where diplomacy was still a realistic option.
Sargent: In fact, he was told repeatedly that what is happening now would happen. He was told it by many top people. And we’re learning this because the leaking is getting worse for Trump.
Emily, you’ve been in the belly of the national security beast in the past. In addition to how damning the facts are here, what does it mean that we’re getting leaks like this?
None of what we are seeing right now is remotely surprising to me. And all of this has been predicted before, with the possible exception that drone technology has just advanced so much in the last several years. And that’s an element that anybody who was seriously watching what was happening in Ukraine could easily have predicted—and many did predict—would be an important tool that we would see in future wars, including this one. That’s been the topic of much discussion in national security circles in the last several years.
Sargent: Right. And they’re in some sense trying to also insulate the national security establishment from blame for this, aren’t they? They’re really just trying to foist the entire thing onto Trump. And in some respects that might actually be justified.
And so I have no doubt that the national security workforce—who are civilian, who serve apolitically, who are military, who serve apolitically—are doing what they always do. They’re collecting the intelligence, they’re preparing the assessments, they’re preparing the battlefield scenarios and the plans, and they’re bringing them up. The question is, is any of it getting through?
Sargent: The leaks get even worse than this, believe it or not. The Atlantic reports that Trump has told advisors repeatedly that he wants a deal that’s bigger than Obama’s 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Also, The Atlantic reports that Trump has become “irritated by comparisons between his emerging framework and Obama’s deal.”
Emily, is that how the process is supposed to be working here?
And that sounds really simple, but sometimes with Trump, the simplest explanation is the truest one. It was someone else’s triumph, not his. And that meant that he resented it. It was not about what was objectively a good diplomatic deal or in the interest of American national security. That much was obvious.
But what’s wild to me about this latest Atlantic article is it’s fairly common knowledge—you don’t have to be a national security expert to know that Trump resented Obama’s Iran deal. What’s wild to me is that they found so many sources within the Trump administration to say that to a bunch of Atlantic reporters for attribution. That people are talking about this with their outside voices now.
Sargent: Is there a way for Trump to get a better deal, extract a better deal from Iran than Obama got? It seems to me that it’s fundamental to the situation that it actually isn’t possible. And what I really question is whether he is capable of grasping that fundamental aspect of the situation or not. What do you think?
And The New York Times piece that you mentioned earlier pointed out that in 2011, when Obama communicated privately to the Iranian regime that the Strait of Hormuz was a red line for him, the understanding that the regime had was that they would be in existential risk—that essentially the Obama administration would take out the regime were Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz the way that it is essentially doing now. The problem is that Trump did take out the Iranian regime.
People operate logically within the situations and frameworks in which they find themselves. That is a logical position for the regime to take at this stage. And it is hard to imagine how Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are going to get them to trade away that leverage that is now squarely in their court, especially at a moment where, again, I cannot stress enough, this war is spectacularly unpopular and a real political albatross around Trump’s neck.
And so he’s almost caught in this kind of loop, right? This kind of Gordian knot of a situation where the more time that passes and the more he loses the support of Republicans on this, the more likely it is that Iranians will hold out and not give him what he wants.
We are talking about people who are only in power because their family members have been killed with Israeli and American missile strikes. We are talking about people who have staked their entire lives and entire reason for being on the outcome of this war. Those are not the stakes for Donald Trump, and everyone involved knows it.
Horne: It’s a great question. And in different contexts, some partners and allies have figured out how to do things like rebrand economic deals that are already going to happen or previously concluded agreements that they paint over in fake gold leaf and they call it a Trump economic incentive or something. And the marketing carries the day and you’re able to move on. That’s not really possible with a war. And that’s not really possible in this situation.
Or for that matter, how American troops are going through munitions at an insane clip and depleting our stocks—that is worth thinking about, or should be thinking about, for the worst of the future. He doesn’t care about any of that. What he cares about is his headlines.
Horne: Greg, it sounds like you’re suggesting that we just need to create a closed-circuit broadcast with a feed that only he will see that will have Bret Baier talking about this as a huge win. And then maybe everyone else can just get back to—not normal life, because there is no going back—but maybe to not an active war dragging into its fourth, fifth, or sixth month.
Horne: Thanks, Greg.
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