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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Here are three things that have changed in the last day about the war with Iran. The Trump administration isn't promising. Regime change isn't for the Iranian people anymore. The State Department is urging Americans to immediately leave 14 different countries where they could be attacked by Iran because the war seems to be widening faster than they anticipated. President Trump is signaling the war might go on longer than he first thought. You were just hearing about that on the BBC. He spins it here, though, as a point of pride.

President Trump: Right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that. We'll do it. Somebody said today, they said, "Oh, well, if the president wants to do it really quickly. After that, he'll get bored." I don't get bored.

Brian Lehrer: Trump at a Medal of Honor ceremony for past war heroes yesterday. Fred Kaplan writes the War Stories column for Slate about U.S. military and foreign policy. He's the author of many books, including The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War, and his latest novel called A Capital Calamity. His latest article on Slate is called Trump Is about to Send More Forces to Iran and There is Still no Strategy. Thanks for coming on, Fred. Welcome back to WNYC.

Fred Kaplan: Sure. Always good to be here.

Brian Lehrer: What do you mean there's still no strategy?

Fred Kaplan: You just played a clip which illustrates this. Now we're not into regime change, and we might be there longer than four or five weeks and might even send ground troops? To what end? What are we doing there? If you go back, Saturday morning seems like about a month ago, but it was just a few days ago. When he made his announcement, he talked about destroying their nuclear capability, which even though it was supposedly obliterated just a few months ago, getting rid of their ballistic missiles and their military and then regime change. Then he invited the Iranian people to rise up, the government is theirs to take, and then within a couple of hours, he says, "There might also be a diplomatic off ramp where I could be out of here in a couple of days." Then on Sunday, he told one interviewer that, "It could be like the Venezuelan solution where we just get rid of the top two people and keep the rest."

Imagine, Brian, that you're a Democratic activist in Iran and the president has said, "We're about to destroy your regime," and then, in fact, in the first wave of bombing, he did destroy 40 top leaders, including the leader, and he says, "Take to the streets. It's now your time to act." Then he says, "It might just be like Venezuela. That would be the ideal solution."

You've already seen, by the way, a month ago when Trump said, "Rise up, rise up," and they did rise up, and thousands of them got mowed down in the street. What kind of signal are you taking? If you are member of the regime, and he's going back and forth like this, the signal that you get is, "I'll just hold out a little longer, inflict casualties on the enemy, and maybe Trump will back out." He's not giving any signals, either as rhetoric or as apparent policy, of what is-- What is the criteria of winning right now?

In a war you don't have to kill every single enemy soldier. You don't have to destroy every single tank or ship or missile or whatever. What are the criteria for success here? He has not spelled out any rationale, except worse yet, he has spelled out three or four quite contradictory rationales of what this war is about, why we got in it, and what will it take to get us out of it?

Brian Lehrer: I want to come back to the issue of the pro-democracy movement in Iran and what Trump said originally about, "Iranians have been waiting for the United States to do this and give them this opportunity for decades, and I'm the president who's doing it." At yesterday's briefings, that pro-democracy, pro-human rights motive was missing from their lips, as you point out. A three-person panel appointed by Khamenei is now in charge. I guess my question is, why did he say it in the first place? Was that all just BS to make Americans feel good about the war in the first place because Americans feel good about things that are for democratic change?

Fred Kaplan: I think part of it is that he has seen too many movies. Remember when he moved two aircraft carrier groups into the area, just a lot of firepower, and then Witkoff, his emissary, said, "Trump is puzzled why they haven't just folded. We brought all this firepower there and they're still making threats. They haven't surrendered," as if that's how anything works.

Maybe it's because he's gotten away with this so many times in domestic politics. He makes threats to Congress, they fold. He makes threats to networks, they fold. He makes threats to universities, they fold. He sends one quick round to Venezuela, kidnaps the criminal president, new people, his deputies step up, say, "We're willing to work with you now." Maybe he just thinks that international politics is this easy.

Listen, we know for a fact that intelligence analysts, his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have told him in briefings that, no, Iran is a little bit different. They have a government that's thoroughly entrenched, that's deeply entrenched, with an elite military unit that is not messing around. He just thinks that this is easy, that if he says something is going to happen, then it happens.

Brian Lehrer: Fred Kaplan is with us, who writes the War Stories column for Slate. Listener writes, "Trump is changing his narrative constantly because he's just trying out in real-time to see which reason resonates with his base." Here's Defense Secretary Hegseth yesterday taking a stab at explaining why this is important to US national security, and that seems to be the emerging rationale, which reminds me a lot of George W. Bush before the Iraq war, that this is preventive to take care of a potential long term threat to US national security. Listen.

Defense Secretary Hegseth: Iran was building powerful missiles and drones to create a conventional shield for their nuclear blackmail ambitions. Let me say that again. A conventional shield for their nuclear blackmail ambitions. Our bases, our people, our allies, all in their crosshairs, Iran had a conventional gun to our head as they tried to lie their way to a nuclear bomb.

Brian Lehrer: Fred, do you understand that or think that's true as far as it goes?

Fred Kaplan: I understand that, but they've had this enormous missile force for the many years when they were not pursuing a nuclear weapon. They have their own direct, as they see them, threats or their own kind of intimidation. You can have ballistic missiles without having them as a shield to your nuclear threat.

In fact, look, the fact ignored in all this is that in 2014, Barack Obama and six other leaders, including Russia and China, by the way, got Iran to sign to what's been called the Iran Nuclear Deal, which they were abiding by. There were many inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. They basically dismantled their nuclear force. Then Trump comes along in his first term and says, "This is the worst deal ever made," tears it up.

Iran then [unintelligible 00:09:20]. Iran then starts to rebuild its centrifuges, they start enriching uranium again. It has been limited by diplomacy before. In fact, even in the negotiations that Witkoff and Jared Kushner had been having with an Omani intermediary, Iran was making some interesting proposals. They were proposing limiting their enriched uranium to levels even below those that they agreed with Obama, and in fact, having no enriched uranium at all for three years, that is for Trump's entire term of office, as well as dismantling their centrifuges and doing a lot of other things and allowing inspectors.

Trump didn't take it. He got it in his head that, "No, you have to have no enrichment at all," which, this is getting into the weeds a bit, and I can either go into that a little deeper or not depending on your inclination, but you can have a little bit of enrichment without being anywhere near the ability to have a nuclear weapon, but he didn't want to go there. 190 nations, including Iran, have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which enshrines the right to enrich a little bit of uranium. Iran is thinking, "Why should we be more outlawed than the rest of the world?"

It's never been a negotiable position. There are ways that you can keep severe limits on nuclear weapons capability without outlawing enrichment entirely. Trump didn't want to go there, and here we are.

Brian Lehrer: Listener writes, "There are too many in the American government who think that the successors to the Iranian regime are not going to seek retaliation, are not as radical and are not as power hungry as their predecessors." The listener writes indicating that that's probably not true.

Another unknown related for how the war will expand is outrage in Shiite communities like in Kashmir, controlled by India, and in Karachi, Pakistan, where Khamenei was considered an important religious figure, not just a repressive, authoritarian, religious extremist theocrat. There have been clashes around US Embassies in those places. You have reporting that indicates Washington understood that risk. I'm asking you, do you have reporting that indicates Washington understood that risk going on, or do they have plans to deal with it?

Fred Kaplan: No. According to several reports, this was pointed out both by the CIA director and by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that this could lead to escalation, that Iran could retaliate, that Americans could get killed, that it could destabilize the region. As terms of succession, the business about, "Hey, people, just go rise up, there is no Nelson Mandela in Iran. If there were, he has since been killed, jailed or sent into exile by the regime. There is no African National Congress like there was that Mandela could appeal to in South Africa.

All of these protesters, they aren't armed, they aren't organized. There are 190,000 soldiers in the Revolutionary Guard, this elite military unit which is wedded to the regime, which is thoroughly integrated into control of the country's economy, its social institutions.

The most likely scenarios, if, let's say the regime does fall apart, that they killed all these top layer people and the other layers are killed as they come up and then they flee, leaving nothing, the two likeliest scenarios are that the Revolutionary Guards, take over. If there are any moderates in the Revolutionary Guard, we don't know who they are. In fact, Trump at one point, he said that he knows of three people who could maybe take over, who would be good, and then he revealed the other day that they've all been killed in the airstrikes. It's either going to be that or it's going to be chaos and anarchy, like you had in Libya, where you have factions, opposing factions vying for power.

By the way, Democratic activists aren't going to a big source of that. They're going to be ethnic, they're going to be Kurds. It's going to be armed slaughter. The idea that you get rid of the bad guys and the good guys rise to power, it, one could hope that would happen, but you don't start in with a war with all this and mobilize everything that Trump has mobilized and take all the risks without a much allied support, by the way, based on a very remote hope of how things might go and knowledge that the alternatives to this hope are worse than the current situation is.

Brian Lehrer: Another listener writes, "The president who tried to ban all Muslims entering the United States is doing this for another payout from Saudi Arabia, not to protect Muslims." Fred, I've seen theories that the US is shedding American blood, sacrificing American lives to back up Trump's ally, Netanyahu, or that it's not so much for Israel, but more for some Gulf states that have helped make Trump rich with business deals since he became president, and that's who this sacrifice is for. Do you have a take?

Speaker 1a: As for Israel, it's well known, there's never been a secret about this, that Netanyahu has been praying for regime change in Iran and trying to get presidents to be his buddy on this for many, many years. He finally found someone gullible enough to take his cue. We now see, because Hezbollah has gotten back into this war, that Israel is mobilizing to take back territory in Lebanon, again, where Hezbollah is based and had been reduced to almost nothingness for a while, until they were roused to action again by killing the Ayatollah.

As for Saudi Arabia, I have heard that the Saudis also pressured Trump into doing this by saying, "Look, you've mobilized all this force. If you don't do something about it, you'll be weak, you'll be seen as weak." The Gulf countries, they've always wanted to stay out of this. They're getting attacked now. Look, none of these people have any love for the Ayatollah or the Iranian regime. They're Sunnis and the Iranians are Shiites. They would like to see the Islamic Republic of Iran destroyed, but none of it means that they get caught in the crossfire.

Brian Lehrer: They are caught in the crossfire. The Trump administration is now urging Americans to evacuate 14 countries. 14. Most are right around there. Give me a little more on that before we run out of time. Part of the US strategy in the Middle East generally has been to try to unite Israel and the Arab states against Iran. Iran, remember, for people who don't know, largely Muslim, but not Arab, and Iran, under the current leadership, is largely an enemy of most of the Arab states. The Arab states have reasons to want this, but they also have reasons to fear this. How do you see that balance and whether they are happy with what they're seeing?

Fred Kaplan: I find it interesting and instructive that all of the Arab powers said, "Look, in previous Israel-Iran confrontations, when Iran fired the first shot of missiles, we've been there either publicly or secretly letting you overfly our territory with missiles or aircraft providing bases, even in some cases, cooperating and shooting down Iranian drones and missiles." This time, however, they said in advance, "We're not going to do any of that. We're not going to let you fly over our territory. We're not going to help you out with air defense."

It should have been known that, "Look, if you fire the first shot, if Israel and US fire the first shot, we're not going to put ourselves on the line to do this." They find themselves on the line anyway because Iran has decided, I think, stupidly, to attack all the countries that have US bases, even against targets that are other than the US bases themselves.

Now, is this good news? Does this mean they're all going to rally and help us overthrow the Iranian government or do whatever it is that Trump has decided he wants to do? We shall see. We're talking about widening the war.

It's interesting that at the very beginning of this, "Well, this won't be like Iraq. This won't be prolonged. This will be a few days, maybe a few weeks." Brian, you and I have been around long enough to remember that's what everybody says at the start of these wars. Nobody goes into a war saying, "This might last many months or years." They always have this illusion, especially the bigger country that, "Oh, we will show them how strong we are and they will quake and fold." It just usually doesn't happen.

Brian Lehrer: I'll let you plug your novel on the way out the door, your nonfiction work called A Capital Calamity. I know the prologue reads, "Much of what follows is true except for the plot. Ha, ha, ha." It tells the story of a cynical defense consultant whose mischief plunges the world into a cataclysmic crisis. Wait, I thought you said it was fiction.

Fred Kaplan: Right. I would say this not to discourage anybody from buying my book. It's much more light hearted than anything that's going on now. The capital calamities that I envision occurring because of the Congress or bureaucrats or steely generals or whatever are thoroughly outdone by what this administration is inflicting on the world and what the Republican Congress is acceding to. At this point, I would view my novel as entertaining escape, not ominous warning.

Brian Lehrer: Fred Kaplan writes the War Stories column for Slate. His latest article is called Trump Is about to Send More Forces to Iran and There is Still no Strategy. His latest novel is A Capital Calamity. Fred, thank you for joining us.

Fred Kaplan: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Much more to come

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