Leading the New York Times this morning: Israel is stepping up its ground attacks against the Iranian proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon, while other nations appear to be shrugging at Trump’s demand that they send warships to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. All perfectly standard procedure for a war that, as the White House keeps telling us, will be ending any minute now. Happy Monday.
It’s Worse Than It Looks
by William Kristol
On Bulwark on Sunday yesterday, my guest, the historian Robert Kagan, explained the broad implications of the Iran war as well as anyone I’ve seen. I thought his remarks were helpful and important enough that I’m going to devote this space to some of his key points.
Kristol: Give me your read on where we stand in the war and what its geopolitical implications are so far.
Kagan: The outcome of the war is in doubt. We can’t really foresee what’s going to happen, partly because we don’t know what Donald Trump is going to do. He has a huge choice to make: either go all-in and really deal with this problem once and for all, which also implies a huge long-term American military commitment (you can’t just go in and do that and then run out), or try to find some way to bug out and declare victory. Until he makes that choice, I don’t think we’re going to know how this war turns out.
But even before knowing the outcome, we can see some of the repercussions in terms of the rest of the world. The top-line, big-picture result is that one undoubted effect of the Iran war has been to drive a deeper wedge between the United States and pretty much all of its traditional allies—in Europe, in Asia, and potentially even in the Middle East.
* * *
Kristol: Let’s go through those in order. Start with Europe.
Kagan: For the Europeans, they face an existential threat from Russian aggression right now. From the Europeans’ perspective, this war has been a real strategic disaster, for two main reasons. First, oil prices have skyrocketed, and even before Trump lifted sanctions on Russia—over the unanimous objection of the other G7 leaders—that was going to increase Russian income. It’s a real lifeline to Putin.
Second, American forces are—perhaps unexpectedly—burning through major stocks of weaponry, particularly Patriot and other interceptors that Ukraine depends on heavily to defend its cities from Russian attacks. So on both ends—helping Russia and hurting Ukraine—this has been a major setback for Europeans.
And it’s clear that the Trump administration couldn’t care less about the effect on Europe. They didn’t consult the Europeans before the war.
* * *
Kristol: And Asia?
Kagan: Very few countries in the world are more dependent on Middle East oil than Japan. The Japanese were not consulted. The skyrocketing oil prices are really damaging our allies. On top of that, the Japanese will notice that the United States has sent significant forces that are dedicated to the defense of Japan and critical to any response to a Chinese attack on Taiwan, to the Middle East.
The Chinese can also see that in order to conduct this war against a much lesser power, the U.S. has had to strip the Western Pacific of significant forces dedicated to a potential China threat. I don’t see why China should be more worried about the U.S. after this than before it.
* * *
Kristol: The Middle East?
Kagan: The Gulf States in particular are wondering whether they’ve joined the right team. They thought they had a pretty good arrangement with the Iranians: a kind of live-and-let-live agreement. So they didn’t favor the war and were overruled. And now it turns out the United States can’t really protect them. They’ve been targets; they’ve lost money on oil. They had—with tremendous cooperation from the Trump family and social circle—been working to make themselves an attractive destination for investment in AI and other sectors, hosting data centers for major companies, positioning themselves as a hub for investment and tourism. This war is devastating for all of that.
And now Trump is calling on China to help keep the strait open. It’s not hard to see how that pushes certain Gulf states toward viewing China as an equally reliable partner—or maybe more reliable—than the United States has turned out to be.
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Kristol: The big picture?
Kagan: At the largest level, whatever outcome we eventually get, however decent, it will be because the United States brought enormous power to bear. And history shows it’s not enough to bring that power to bear to secure a victory. You have to keep it there to sustain the victory. The United States won a big victory in World War I, totally transformed the balance of power in Europe in a way favorable to peace, then pulled out—and then the balance of power got refashioned in ways that didn’t sustain peace, and we ended up in World War II. Something similar could happen in the Middle East if the U.S. brings great power to bear to create a certain situation but isn’t willing to keep it there.
That’s why Trump is at a fork in the road. It seems to me Trump faces one of two choices: establish a long-term, large American military presence to sustain whatever gains the war has made, or pull back and let things take whatever course they take. I find both highly problematic. But splitting the difference won’t solve anything.
And as every expert I’ve read says, the only way to guarantee keeping the strait open is to control the Iranian coastline from which most of the attacks originate. And you can only control the coastline with ground forces. If you ask me right now, I would say Trump is going to use ground troops, and we’re going to be in this war for months at minimum.
Kristol: That’s striking. Did you think that two weeks ago?
Kagan: No. Like most people, I thought Trump would declare victory and bug out. But things have gotten to the point where I don’t think he can.
* * *
Kagan: And there’s one thing we haven’t mentioned that I find genuinely concerning: the domestic ramifications.
Kristol: Say a word about that.
Kagan: One reason I worry Trump is willing to let this war go on for months is that it’s a potential weapon against domestic opposition. Brendan Carr just threatened to start looking into the broadcast licenses of news organizations running coverage the Trump administration doesn’t like. They could use this to silence the media further, or pressure corporate chiefs to rein in their news organizations.
And that doesn’t even get to national security authorities—whether it’s around elections or some other context, justified by the fact that we’re at war and facing threats. Can we trust the FBI under Kash Patel to tell us a threat is real, rather than manufacture one? What happens when there are anti-war protests? Do they get labeled domestic terrorists for protesting a great patriotic war?
I’ve always thought Stephen Miller was particularly enthusiastic about the Venezuela action not because he cared about who was ruling Venezuela, but because of the domestic authorities it might give him to wield. I worry the Iran war, as it continues, could open the same opportunity. Trump would not be the first leader in history to find a foreign war useful for domestic consolidation.
* * *
A bracing and important analysis. Watch the whole thing. And watch Bob’s very good talk with Tim Miller from six weeks ago on Trump’s new world disorder.
Is there any way of convincing the world that Trump doesn’t represent America? Should we even try? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Carr Wreck
by Andrew Egger
The Federal Communications Commission is a relatively obscure federal agency, so its chairman, Brendan Carr, tends to get into the news only when he starts threatening to revoke broadcast licenses over speech he dislikes. Unfortunately, he’s back in the news.
On Saturday, after President Trump posted a message to Truth Social grumbling about coverage of his war in Iran (“Media actually want us to lose the war. Their terrible reporting is the exact opposite of the actual facts!”), Carr chimed in: “Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions—also known as the fake news—have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up. The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”
Naturally, for Carr, the public interest is Trump’s interest. If this wasn’t obvious enough from the fact that he attached a screenshot of Trump’s kvetching post to his threat, Carr went on: “When a political candidate is able to win a landslide election victory after in the face of [sic] hoaxes and distortions, there is something very wrong. It means the public has lost faith and confidence in the media. And we can’t allow that to happen.”
Apparently, Carr believes that reporting that tanker planes were “struck” in an Iranian missile strike—the headline that set Trump grumbling in the first place1—is to invite the government to label you “fake news” and retaliate against you as such. But lest you think he’s just being an incredible stickler for accuracy, in the very same post Carr proclaims that Trump “won a landslide victory” in 2024—an interesting way to describe a 1.5-point win with a plurality of the popular vote.
Because he’s not insane, Carr wants to frame his threat as mere concern for fair coverage. But the president he’s channeling, who is insane, isn’t really bothering. In one post last night, Trump accused the “Fake News Media” of working “in close coordination” with Iran to spread AI-generated disinformation about the war: “Buildings and Ships that are shown to be on fire are not.” He added that “the Media Outlets that generated it should be brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information!”
Which outlets were these? Who knows! Trump didn’t name them, and since no actual outlets have actually been spreading such AI-generated disinformation, it’s hard to know from context clues. (I asked the White House this morning which outlet in particular the president was accusing of treasonous AI-generated coverage. They did not respond.)
Trump’s post suggests that different adversaries are blurring together in the president’s mind: He starts by taking issue with a Wall Street Journal report, then pivots to denouncing AI clips he seemingly bumped into on social media before smash-cutting to Carr-like threats against broadcasters’ FCC licenses and, for good measure, a parting shot at “the Late Night Morons, who get gigantic Salaries for horrible Ratings.”
It’s possible that Carr, channeling Trump, was making an empty threat intended to keep Trump’s media opponents off-balance. Carr’s last foray into the headlines is perhaps instructive here: Last year, after threatening to revoke ABC affiliates’ broadcast licenses over a Jimmy Kimmel monologue he didn’t like, Carr ended up backtracking pretty quickly.
Or maybe this time Carr is more serious. The White House has had media suppression on the mind lately—think of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s remark Friday that “the sooner David Ellison takes over [CNN], the better.”
And wartime has always made for better opportunities than peacetime for opportunistic governments to start chiseling away at the structures restraining their power. The stakes are too high, a would-be wartime autocracy argues, for subversive internal elements to be allowed to go on poisoning the body politic.
Whatever Carr intends, it’s plain he isn’t freelancing here. CNN’s Brian Stelter notes that Carr’s threat came during a trip to Mar-a-Lago, where he was seen Saturday meeting with Trump. That same day, Trump posted a chest-thumping graphic to Truth Social detailing the ways he is “reshaping the media,” which Stelter theorized may have been provided to him by Carr:
Apparently, Carr and Trump intend to reshape it still further—perhaps by threats alone, perhaps by force.
AROUND THE BULWARK
The Voter Fraud Fraud… There just isn’t evidence of significant election cheating—but that won’t stop the GOP from pushing its dangerous SAVE America Act, argues SEN. ANGUS KING.
How Does The Iran War End? On this week’s Shield of the Republic, ERIC EDELMAN and ELIOT COHEN discuss the Iran war: its battlefield gains, strategic failures, mounting munitions costs, and the possibility of a shift in U.S. focus to Cuba.
Trump’s War With the Fed Could Backfire… On How to Fix It, Harvard economist and former IMF chief economist KENNETH ROGOFF joins JOHN AVLON to discuss the growing risks facing the U.S. dollar.
Quick Hits
THE BEST AND BRIGHTEST: It’s been a tough week for the DOGEbros. Elon Musk’s kid arsonists, who spent the early part of last year slashing and burning their way across the federal government, have been sitting for depositions in a court case brought by groups seeking to reverse their cuts. The groups have argued that the cuts were illegal and arbitrary, and the DOGEbros aren’t exactly beating the allegations. As the New York Times reported earlier this month, much of DOGE’s “work” involved downloading grant summaries and feeding them into ChatGPT with a simple prompt: “Does the following relate at all to D.E.I.? Respond factually in less than 120 characters. Begin with ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’”
Recently, clips from the DOGEbros’ depositions have gone viral on social media, especially one in which staffer Justin Fox repeatedly struggles to define what D.E.I. actually is. In another, staffer Nathan Cavanaugh is asked whether he regrets that people might have lost income to DOGE’s fast-and-loose work. “No,” he replies, “I think it was more important to reduce the federal deficit from $2 trillion to close to zero.” (The federal deficit last year ended up being about $1.7 trillion.)
Clowning on the DOGEbros is fun and cathartic, but perhaps not conducive to achieving a sober outcome in the lawsuit. On Friday, a judge ordered that the deposition videos be removed from the internet. Late last night, Musk said that he had offered his former staffers “legal support as needed.” Big of him.
WITH COURTS LIKE THESE: The Fake News Media weren’t the only institutions that felt Donald Trump’s social media wrath this weekend. He also had some revealingly insane things to get off his chest about the Supreme Court. In the wake of their tariff decision, which found—to the shock of no one—that Trump did not actually have unlimited power to place tariffs on any product from any country at any level for any duration for any reason at any time, the president fumed that the justices he appointed weren’t giving him the respect they owed him: “They openly disrespect the Presidents who nominate them to the highest position in the Land, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and go out of their way, with bad and wrongful rulings and intentions, to prove how ‘honest,’ ‘independent,’ and ‘legitimate’ they are.”
And Trump wasn’t finished: “They wouldn’t even call out The Rigged Presidential Election of 2020. . . . This completely inept and embarrassing Court was not what the Supreme Court of the United States was set up by our wonderful Founders to be.”
Cheap Shots
Amazingly, Trump confirmed that the five planes were struck in his very message railing against the media for reporting it. “Four of the five had virtually no damage, and are already back in service,” he wrote. “One had slightly more damage, and will be in the air shortly.”
Trump wants China to help protect the Strait of Hormuz, but as Robert Kagan told Bill yesterday, Iran has been allowing oil tankers bound for China through the Strait. Does Trump somehow not know this?
The hypocrisy is off the charts as the same people who regularly post AI-generated images and videos of the convicted felon are decrying unnamed and allegedly AI-generated videos of battle and who accused the Biden administration of suppressing misinformation about COVID as an attack on "free speech" while they're accusing anyone who doesn't share the narcissist's wish-casting view of the war as "poisoning the airwaves" and being "domestic terrorists".