Transcript: Trump Iran Rants Get So Crazy that Adviser Visibly Rattled

You know, we’ve talked about the Strait of Hormuz. I can tell you that for years and years, folks who’ve worked on this Iran portfolio in different agencies and departments have known that this would be a possibility—in fact, that it was a very likely outcome of a conflict.

And it seems like that viewpoint was not represented, which is how we’ve now had multiple administration officials, including the president himself, say, no one knew that this would happen. No. Everyone who’s worked on this issue knew that this would happen.

And so it is really troubling that he’s not hearing folks tell him things that he wouldn’t necessarily want to hear.

Sargent: Just to pick up on the point you made there, here Chris Wright very visibly does not think of his job as telling the truth to the president or to the American people. He clearly understands his job as being sycophant to the president. It’s very clear.

Tabatabai: Yeah, and look, I think it’s really telling that if—and I keep thinking about this having served in a Democratic administration—if this was the way that some of my former bosses had responded to folks on the Hill, Republicans on the Hill, the other party, I don’t think we would have heard the end of it. There would have been impeachment processes.

And yet this is kind of how the administration treats Congress—an atrophied Congress that has frankly not stood up to this administration, even as it’s made bad decision after bad decision on a host of issues. And for things that we’re going to be really, frankly, paying the price for for years to come.

We’ve talked about the implications for people’s paychecks every day and their gas and groceries and so on. But there’s the longer-term cost of these conflicts that we’re not seeing quite yet. There’s the support from allies and partners and our international standing, which sounds like this kind of interesting concept that only academics care about, but it is not.

Our ability to have a good story to tell internationally is how we get a lot of things done that directly impact people every day. We’re going to be paying the price of these facilities that are being targeted, of these defense systems that we’ve spent billions and billions of dollars buying that are now being damaged and destroyed. We’re going to potentially see huge implications for recruitment and retention in the military.

There’s so many things that are going to be happening in years to come that are directly stemming from the actions that the administration is taking. And the Congress should care more. It should be playing more of a role. And it is just not doing that right now.

Sargent: Just to finish this out, what’s going to happen now? Granted, we don’t know whether by the time people are listening to this, Trump will have bombed Iran again. Maybe he will have completely obliterated it by tomorrow as he’s been threatening to do by the time people listen to this. Maybe not, I don’t know. But understanding that things are in, let’s say, flux—what is the most likely set of scenarios to unfold from here?

Tabatabai: So I think what we’re going to see is escalation, kind of a steady-state situation, and then we’ll keep moving forward that way. It’s clear to me that President Trump is kind of ready to move on from this conflict. He has Cuba on his radar. He keeps saying the midterms don’t matter, but they clearly do.

And I think he’s just kind of stuck here, because on the one hand, Iran again gets a vote. On the other hand, any deal with Iran will be problematic for him, will be extremely divisive within his own base. He obviously doesn’t care what Democrats or independents think, but he cares what Republicans think. And many Republicans will be very opposed to any deal with Iran.

And then you have the additional challenge of—again, we’re degrading Iranian military capabilities, but this is not a country that needs a ton of sophisticated capabilities. They can keep doing this for a while. This is not a democracy that is going to have to respond to its people because gas is expensive. This is an authoritarian regime that is going to be able to continue this for as long as it needs to. And frankly, it probably benefits from it because it has cover to crack down on dissent, for example, and to continue to have an external enemy to point to.

So for Iran, winning is not about winning militarily. It’s about standing up and not losing to the United States. And I think that is a really bad recipe here for a situation that continues in a way that is problematic for all of the people of that region who have to live with the missile attacks and drone attacks and unpredictability, frankly.

Sargent: It’s going to get a whole lot worse for Americans and even worse for people over there, unfortunately. Ariane Tabatabai, it was really good to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on.

Tabatabai: Thanks so much for having me.