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Speaker 1: Line from Vaal Hartbeiner and the Crossroads of America. It's

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Speaker 1: Tony Katz today, fifteen days to flatten the curve.

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Speaker 2: I remember that as you do. We were told.

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Speaker 1: Fifteen days, everyone just stays home. You won't have this

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Speaker 1: massive amount of COVID cases and hospitals. We'll be able

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Speaker 1: to manage everything. And well that didn't work out so well,

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Speaker 1: and I did it, Tony Katz, Tony kats today, Good

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Speaker 1: to be here, Good to be with you. Now it's

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Speaker 1: President Trump telling Iran fifteen days to come to a deal.

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Speaker 2: Or you're going to regret it. Now.

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Speaker 1: I'm not in favor of what it is that we're

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Speaker 1: seeing regarding the Iranian regime.

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Speaker 2: I'm not in favor of keeping the eye of toolin

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Speaker 2: in power.

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Speaker 1: If you ask me if I favor regime change, if

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Speaker 1: we're gonna call it.

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Speaker 2: That, the answer is yeah, I really and truly do.

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Speaker 1: But when we talk about while the President is going

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Speaker 1: to engage in attack on the regime, what does it

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Speaker 1: mean we're gonna hit military targets, what do I do

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Speaker 1: with that information? Because that doesn't help the people. I'm

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Speaker 1: focused on the people, not dealmaking. And regarding nuclear capabilities

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Speaker 1: that I thought we destroyed, and certainly we did a

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Speaker 1: lot of damage to Noah Roffman joins me right now

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Speaker 1: from National Review. His third book, Blood in Progress, A

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Speaker 1: Century of Left Wing Violence, will be out in May

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Speaker 1: of twenty twenty six. Be looking for pre orders at.

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Speaker 2: Amazon dot com.

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Speaker 1: His piece over at National Review, The clock ticks in Iran.

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Speaker 2: Is it your take that the clockticks.

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Speaker 1: Because the iatola knows that his days are numbered? Or

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Speaker 1: is just the clock ticking because at any moment, Iran

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Speaker 1: can be involved in some type of military action with

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Speaker 1: Israel or the United States.

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Speaker 3: Or both, and it's increasingly looking like both. Yeah, I'm

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Speaker 3: leaning much towards the latter of your year description there.

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Speaker 3: Nobody knows precisely what the president is thinking, and I

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Speaker 3: think there's an element of ambiguity there that he himself

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Speaker 3: is cultivating. He's beginning to talk about the Wall Street

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Speaker 3: Journal reported, and he said as much to reporters yesterday

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Speaker 3: and today that maybe we do we love it it strike,

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Speaker 3: maybe we only get a couple of things, some military targets,

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Speaker 3: and then you guys come back to the negotiating table

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Speaker 3: and you strike a deal with us, or there's going

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Speaker 3: to be another round of strikes that's going to be bigger,

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Speaker 3: and it will grow successfully until you guys come to

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Speaker 3: the table. I don't believe that for a second. This

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Speaker 3: is a use it or lose its scenario for the

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Speaker 3: Iranian regime, and they understand as much. And indeed, the

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Speaker 3: United States has enough firepower in this region that it

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Speaker 3: would make very little sense for it to tailor it's

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Speaker 3: targeting to such an extent that it leads itself vulnerable

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Speaker 3: to retaliatory responses the IRGC, the Iranian regime, its army,

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Speaker 3: or the dozens of proxy groups that are still active

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Speaker 3: in the region. And we'll engage with the US in

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Speaker 3: Israel on RAN's behalf once hostilities start. I don't anticipate

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Speaker 3: that's what we're going to see, but I think we're

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Speaker 3: going to see, and what we're beginning to get some

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Speaker 3: glimpses of in the Israeli press in particular, but some

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Speaker 3: of the in the American press and the Wall Street

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Speaker 3: Journal in particular, is some biblical stuff we executed. We

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Speaker 3: have a few weeks ago an attack on Venezuela that

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Speaker 3: was phenomenal in its technical tactical capacity. It was an interoperable,

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Speaker 3: integrated combined arms operation using every element of American firepower

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Speaker 3: as well as special forces on the ground, in which

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Speaker 3: we used experimental weapons that apparently turned the Cuban security

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Speaker 3: forces around Nicholas Mudurero into jelly. They came home in

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Speaker 3: shoe boxes. We haven't seen anything like what we're about

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Speaker 3: to see in Iran. The scope, the scale, the speed,

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Speaker 3: and the aggression with which the US can apply power

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Speaker 3: to First, Iranian military targets. It's missile launchers, it's whatever

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Speaker 3: remains of its layered air defense system from the Twelve

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Speaker 3: Day War, as well as any other ability for its

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Speaker 3: proxies read in the region and around Iran and inside

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Speaker 3: Iran to project power. That's first, and that's going away

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Speaker 3: in hours. And in the subsequent hours there will be

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Speaker 3: attacks on ier GC targets and regime targets designed to

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Speaker 3: minimize the casualties that the experienced by the Iranian people,

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Speaker 3: the civilian population. The whole point of this exercise is

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Speaker 3: to re energize the protest movement and filment something that

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Speaker 3: looks like a ground force, because you can't dissolve a

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Speaker 3: regime from the air without a ground force.

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Speaker 2: And that's why the protesters join.

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Speaker 3: US but that is the goal. I think the goal

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Speaker 3: is to collapse the regime.

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Speaker 2: So that's where it gets for me rather confusing.

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Speaker 1: That is what I want, and I'm going to be

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Speaker 1: called a warmonger for it, and I honestly don't care

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Speaker 1: about that. One of the things I think interesting about

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Speaker 1: Trump foreign policy is that while he would never call

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Speaker 1: himself a Neocon, I think he's given himself a little

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Speaker 1: bit of an eye to the idea that maybe dealing

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Speaker 1: with these things before they become bigger things is the

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Speaker 1: right way to go about things. I don't know if

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Speaker 1: we would call that a neocon policy or any other

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Speaker 1: kind of policy, but I have been questioning, how in

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Speaker 1: the world, if I bomb this site, if I bomb

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Speaker 1: that site, how does that help the people?

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Speaker 2: He said help is on its way. You can't say

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Speaker 2: help is on its way and then not provide help.

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Speaker 1: You have to break the IRGC and the only way

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Speaker 1: I think to do that is to end the money

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Speaker 1: supply and the power supply that goes to these people.

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Speaker 1: So what you're arguing is is that what we saw

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Speaker 1: in Venezuela is only a taste of the kind of

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Speaker 1: activity you could see in Iran, and that means that

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Speaker 1: you're going to see US troops actually making maneuvers.

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Speaker 3: We don't have a force posture in the region that's

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Speaker 3: conducive to a ground element. They're not there. Well, we

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Speaker 3: do have are probably special Forces operations that it would

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Speaker 3: not be surprised if they'd taken a role on the

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Speaker 3: ground in some very limited capacity, and much the same

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Speaker 3: way that we saw in Venezuela. There was a ground

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Speaker 3: component to that as well. I wouldn't rule that out.

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Speaker 3: But what you have to do, and when you're engaged

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Speaker 3: in a campaign like this, is start with the military targets,

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Speaker 3: because you're trying to protect your forces. We want to

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Speaker 3: make sure that as much as Iran is capable of

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Speaker 3: retaliating against US and Israeli and allied forces in the

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Speaker 3: region at US basis, Israeli basis, our joint partnership bases,

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Speaker 3: as well as our naval assets. You want to neutralize

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Speaker 3: all that stuff right away. That's the first that's job

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Speaker 3: number one. Then you start peeling away the regime targets,

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Speaker 3: the IRGC command structure, as well as its capacity to

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Speaker 3: communicate with its troops on the ground, and then after

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Speaker 3: that you start attacking symbolic targets, symbols of political authority,

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Speaker 3: the region's political authority, and inside Iran. And you know,

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Speaker 3: we've talking who knows how long this campaign lasts. What

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Speaker 3: it looks like, we've been talking about weeks and weeks

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Speaker 3: and weeks. But if you start looking at reading some

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Speaker 3: of the informed speculation from people who know exactly what

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Speaker 3: they're talking about, like those who are talking who are

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Speaker 3: not inside the loop here, but are nevertheless informed on it,

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Speaker 3: like for example, Vice Admiral Bob Howard, the former Deputy

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Speaker 3: commander of the US Central Command SYENTCOM in the Middle East,

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Speaker 3: speaking of the Jerusalem Post, it speculates that a lot

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Speaker 3: of the really heavy kinetic operations will take place within hours,

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Speaker 3: not days, not weeks, hours that we have the capacity

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Speaker 3: and we have the firepower in this region to execute

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Speaker 3: something that the world has never seen before. And make

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Speaker 3: no mistake, the world is watching. The audience for this

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Speaker 3: is not justin Tehran, it is in Beijing, it is

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Speaker 3: in Moscow. And what the performance that is about to

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Speaker 3: be put on is for their benefit, and it is

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Speaker 3: designed to deter as much as anything else, a much

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Speaker 3: broader conflict in West in the Western Pacific, or in Europe,

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Speaker 3: and I think we're going to see something that's going

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Speaker 3: to be pretty impressive. You know, you had regime Chinese

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Speaker 3: regime officials speaking to their house organs, the propagandist outlets

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Speaker 3: that they populate the West with, and even they could

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Speaker 3: not like really hide how impressed they were with that.

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Speaker 3: You know, it was a violation of international law, it

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Speaker 3: was reckless and imperialist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But at the

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Speaker 3: same time, you had Beijing, Beijing Link officials and military

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Speaker 3: strategists speaking with for example, the Daily, the Chinese People's Daily,

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Speaker 3: saying like, well, you got to hand it to them.

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Speaker 3: I mean, it was really actually pretty impressive as a

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Speaker 3: matter of tactical and strategic military prowess. And I think

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Speaker 3: that really did it really did hit home in Beijing

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Speaker 3: what they saw in Caracas, and I think what they're

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Speaker 3: about to see in Iran is going to is going

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Speaker 3: to be just as impressive and leave just as lasting

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Speaker 3: an impression of what US capabilities are for sustained power projection,

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Speaker 3: for the speed at which we can amass resources halfway

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Speaker 3: across the planet Earth, for the integrity of our alliances

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Speaker 3: while we're doing this sort of thing. It's designed to

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Speaker 3: be a deterrent and I think it'll be effective.

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Speaker 1: Now, just really quickly, before we move on we talk

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Speaker 1: about not having certain forced postures in the region. You

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Speaker 1: can argue that the Israelis are in the region, and

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Speaker 1: the Israelis are absolutely capable of doing a whole bunch

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Speaker 1: of things. Is this a coordinated effort with the Israelis

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Speaker 1: or is it better for a on a pr level,

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Speaker 1: I'll call it to tell the Israelis or to say, hey,

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Speaker 1: we're not going to involve the Israelis in this until

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Speaker 1: they start getting hit with drones and missiles and whatever

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Speaker 1: it is Iran does in a flurry of fury.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: So we have to stress at this point in time

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Speaker 3: that the information environment is saturated with a lot of

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Speaker 3: stuff that may not be real. There's efforts to misterrecd

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Speaker 3: redirect to get the Iranians to think something is coming

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Speaker 3: that is not coming, to get the Iranians to think

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Speaker 3: that something is coming that may not be coming. So

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Speaker 3: we have to be cautious about being caught in the

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Speaker 3: misinformation loop that is being actively cultivated right now as

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Speaker 3: part of any competent strategic operation. But there are indications

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Speaker 3: in Western media outlets that Israel will take an active

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Speaker 3: role jointly along with the United States in this operation,

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Speaker 3: which would be kind of unprecedented. There really was, There

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Speaker 3: was coordination during the Twelve Day War, and we took

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Speaker 3: over in the middle of that operation to execute the

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Speaker 3: Operation Midnight Hammer, but it wasn't a joint allied operation

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Speaker 3: like what we're seeing in news reports. I can't necessarily

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Speaker 3: say that that's definitely going to happen. I would be

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Speaker 3: kind of surprised if it did, but not completely surprised

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Speaker 3: because this is a joint project. For one very important reason,

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Speaker 3: Iran does not distinguish between the United States and Israel.

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Speaker 3: It doesn't distinguish it strategically, it doesn't distinguish it tactically.

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Speaker 3: When there are when when things this will start popping

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Speaker 3: off on either side of this equation, we get involved

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Speaker 3: very quickly. Iranians target us, we target them. Their proxies

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Speaker 3: target us, we target them. There is no distinction on

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Speaker 3: the ground when it comes to when the when the

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Speaker 3: shootings begins, So it's sort of a distinction without a

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Speaker 3: difference for me. It's the sort of thing that really

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Speaker 3: dominates the thinking in Western European capitals. And then you

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Speaker 3: know uh, social media venues, but it really is. As

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Speaker 3: far as tactical strategic considerations go, it's just not really

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Speaker 3: up there for me.

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Speaker 1: Talking to Noah Roffman of National Review his new book

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Speaker 1: Blood and Progress, A Century of Left Wing Violence.

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Speaker 2: You'll be able to get that in May of this

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Speaker 2: very year.

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Speaker 1: Look for pre sales at Amazon dot Com or wherever

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Speaker 1: it is you like to get your books.

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Speaker 2: Let me move it over to Representative Acasio Cortes.

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Speaker 1: This performance at the Munich Security Conference, which I would

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Speaker 1: say before anything else that Marco rub speech was an

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Speaker 1: absolute joy to listen to, and not only just I

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Speaker 1: think a full throated defense of the value of Western civilization.

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Speaker 1: But I took this speech not as I think some

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Speaker 1: Europeans wanted to take it, that we are not abandoning you,

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Speaker 1: but rather if you don't want to survive, well that's

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Speaker 1: on you.

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Speaker 2: We simply won't be a part of it. The best

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Speaker 2: of luck to you.

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Speaker 1: The United States is moving in this direction, but with

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Speaker 1: Representative of Cassio Cortes. Most people are pointing to her

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Speaker 1: answer regarding what if China made a move on Taiwan

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Speaker 1: and her hemming and hang and her inability to even

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Speaker 1: understand the question, never mind formulate an answer which was

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Speaker 1: rather sophomoric as saying, we need to do what we

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Speaker 1: can to make sure that moment never comes. As opposed

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Speaker 1: to answering the question. I would argue that there were

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Speaker 1: a great number of things that she discussed at the

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Speaker 1: Munich Security Conference that showed that even with all her

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Speaker 1: prep work, it was a very sophomoric attempt at trying

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Speaker 1: to be seen as somebody sirious about foreign policy. Your

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Speaker 1: piece AOC's breakout performance, which you can find at National

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Speaker 1: Review dot com, do you see it as a sophomore

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Speaker 1: performance or do you see it as something else?

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Speaker 3: No, I absolutely agree with your assessment. And yeah, that

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Speaker 3: piece was written sort of a tongue in cheek praising

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Speaker 3: her for her what her staff build as really like

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Speaker 3: her debutant's ball here. She was going to come out

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Speaker 3: and demonstrate her foreign policy chops. They had prepped the

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Speaker 3: beaches for weeks in advance of her trip to Munich

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Speaker 3: and Berlin, you know, indicating to the press, hey, keep

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Speaker 3: your eye on AOC. She's going to make some news.

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Speaker 3: And she sure did, but it wasn't the news that

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Speaker 3: she wanted to make. I watched as much as I

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Speaker 3: possibly could the hour and forty five minutes she spent

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Speaker 3: at a Berlin university speaking, you know, extemporaneously on foreign

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Speaker 3: policy issues. And it was excruciating because this lady just

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Speaker 3: doesn't know how to speak about foreign policy. She understands

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Speaker 3: how to appeal to an audience of far left progressives

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Speaker 3: in the United States on domestic issues. That is her

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Speaker 3: box of rhetorical tricks, and she pulled every single one

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Speaker 3: out over the course of this that engagement and in

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Speaker 3: subsequent engagements over in Germany over the course of that week,

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Speaker 3: and they were so wholly unimpressive. They were really reflective

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Speaker 3: of the milieu in which she is steeped, in which

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Speaker 3: the United States is the bad guy. Western Europe is

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Speaker 3: the bad guy. We were imperialist, where aggressive, we're preternaturally racist,

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Speaker 3: institutionally and structurally racist, and all of that informs her worldview.

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Speaker 3: So when she goes out and she just doesn't know what,

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Speaker 3: she doesn't know. So a lot of the stuff that

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Speaker 3: made news was her hemming and haweing and not saying

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Speaker 3: anything of substance at all, but using a lot of

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Speaker 3: polysyllabic jargon that is familiar to the Academy and sounds

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Speaker 3: superficially authoritative, But then when you actually type it out

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Speaker 3: and read the transcript, you realize nothing was said at all.

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Speaker 3: No point was ever made over the course of the

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Speaker 3: entire paragraph in which she spoke. But there were other

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Speaker 3: moments where she said Marco Rubios, for example, appeal to

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Speaker 3: Western culture was essentially chauvinist, that he didn't really understand

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Speaker 3: that cowboys are really I guess the tantamount of slave

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Speaker 3: patrols is sort of the implications she made that Mexicans

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Speaker 3: and descendants of African enslaved people are.

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Speaker 2: Word for it.

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Speaker 1: Because I listened to her and I still don't know

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Speaker 1: what she was talking about.

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Speaker 3: No, it's because she wasn't saying anything. She was saying

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Speaker 3: a lot of words that don't amount to a complete

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Speaker 3: and coherent thought. It's like she starts talking and then

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Speaker 3: hopes her brain will catch up to her with a

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Speaker 3: point that's comprehensive and incogent. But most of the time

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Speaker 3: she just keeps talking and doesn't actually get to anything

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Speaker 3: resembling a point. But you can assess if you dissect

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Speaker 3: and interrogate, to use her word and her highly academic language,

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Speaker 3: the points that she's attempting to make, and you get

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Speaker 3: at the nut of it, which is that the United

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Speaker 3: States is fundamentally imperialist, even when it engages with anti

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Speaker 3: democratic actors, as they did with Nicholas Maduro, a very

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Speaker 3: generous concession on her part, it is nevertheless imperialist, and

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Speaker 3: it is informed entirely by the degree to which we're

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Speaker 3: executing hostile operations against people with dark skin.

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Speaker 2: That's her worldview.

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Speaker 3: It is very naive, it is very childish, but she's

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Speaker 3: been taught her whole life that this is the height

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Speaker 3: of sophistication. That you can't understand the events without layering

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Speaker 3: onto them this elaborate academic framework that reduces everything to

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Speaker 3: the influence of capital and the influence of race. That's

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Speaker 3: just her worldview, and it is impossible to navigate foreign

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Speaker 3: policy with that worldview. I should know. I went through

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Speaker 3: a foreign when I was in graduate school for doing

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Speaker 3: an IR degree. There were schools of thought that I

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Speaker 3: had to understand, like the Feminist school of international relations,

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Speaker 3: which isn't a thing which does not help you understand

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Speaker 3: the geopolitical landscape and navigate it. The Marxist school of

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Speaker 3: international relations, which again is sort of a theory that

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Speaker 3: reduces everything to the pernicious influence of capital, and it's obstructive,

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Speaker 3: It obscures, it doesn't it doesn't enlighten you about how

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Speaker 3: the world works. It makes it very confusing how the

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Speaker 3: world works, because nothing is behaving as your doctrine tells

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Speaker 3: you it should. This is the kind of world that

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Speaker 3: she comes from, and it was very interesting to see

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Speaker 3: the extent to which the entire planet seemed to agree

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Speaker 3: that what they were hearing was not sophisticated. They didn't

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Speaker 3: have to pretend as though this was some really nuanced

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Speaker 3: and authoritative outlook on foreign policy just to prop this

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Speaker 3: person up, even though she's a great white hope. They

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Speaker 3: let her flat, they let her flail, they let her fail,

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Speaker 3: and it was really refreshing to see that. I don't

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Speaker 3: know if it's going to be indicative of the future

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Speaker 3: trajectory of her political career. She's going to be around

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Speaker 3: for a very very long time, but it was refreshing.

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Speaker 2: She's going to be around.

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Speaker 1: She's going to be formidable because she talks in sloganeering

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Speaker 1: and emojis, and the American press is already trying to

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Speaker 1: rally around her. I think in great ways. But that's

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Speaker 1: another conversation for another day. Noah rothen National Review. I

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Speaker 1: appreciate you taking the time. Moore's coming up on Tony

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Speaker 1: Katz