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Hey, everybody, we need to discuss World War three, which is not happening, but there's a lot of national security stuff going on and that is worth a discussion with our friend Stephen Yates, who is of the Wonderful Heritage Foundation and formerly a senior national security advisor to a vice president and speaks Chinese, which I always think is so Mandarin, which I always think is very impressive to
tell everybody. And I've asked him to take me out with him to a Chinese restaurant some time so I can really check this stuff out. But we'll get there at some point. Let's start with this. I have never seen so many people on our side the right broadly speaking, However, one even really defines that. So just I guess unrepentant about being so wrong on a national security thing so quickly as these air strikes will lead to World War three? Like what happens? Now? Where do they go with that?
Well, partially to me, I think this is evidence that TDS comes in multiple forms, and President Trump is doing things at a pace and a scope and a quantity that has never been done before. And I think even people on our side can fall into the trap of trying to make protracted judgments based on instant analysis and
the pace of things. The change all of it is so fast that a lot of people are going to be wrong some of the time, and I just think people on our side aren't used to that, and it's much more of a severe syndrome on the other side. But I think the first rule of living in Trump's world is it's going to get shaken four five times a day. Don't panic, don't assume the first result is the end result, and let him cook for a little bit before you sort of get a sense of the direction.
And I think ultimately that's what it is. He is a directional leader who distracts people with things that happen along the way they don't even realize they've moved. And so I mean, maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong, But when I look at even what we're dealing with with some of the zigs and zags on Israel and Iran right now, directionally, this is miraculously a positive direction based on what the history of this has been and does it mean it's over. No, nothing is over until we
say it's over. So but this, but this is you know, when you look at the negotiations on trade, you look at the negotiations on Russia and Ukraine, these things take a lot of time. But he's not even six months in and directionally we've done some things that are far far better than than they were in the Biden years. But that, I think is what messes with people. But I've been disappointed with a lot of people that I know,
of our friends. But you know, there's no horse disappointment than when you work for somebody that you like and then they do something you didn't agree with and you were right and they were wrong, and you feel bad all the way around. Hey that's my life.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've got to say I think that the I think that the trends right now in the Middle East are more positive than I can ever remember them, being, certainly in my adult lifetime, right in the post nine to eleven g watt Era, because even on things like when people say, okay, well what about the proxies and the terrorist I'm like, look, first of all, we're always at risk from some you know, if somebody wants to infiltrate a four man terror cell unfortunately across our southern
border of the last four years, you know, that's a risk, right, that's the thing that they can do. But that will just kill a bunch of innocent people, which is horrible, But it's not going to change the military calculus that of what's going on with the Israelis in the Middle East, right, So that doesn't. But also on top of that, Hamas and Hesbola are in the worst position they've been, which are the primary proxies. I think that we're usually concerned
about the Middle East, we talking about Iran. They're in the worst position they've been in since I can remember. I mean, the pay people. Things have gone so well with the airstrikes, Steve that the pager operation against Hesbola, which is the most incredible intelligence operation I can think of. No one even seems to remember.
Completely agree, Yeah, completely agree, I know. And so I think it partially comes down to people who have lived honestly, and there are some who don't live honestly in the national security world know that we don't ever get the luxury of zero risk, and there's always in several different places, terrible things that could happen in an instance, and we work against, we hope against. It's just sort of a management process. But if you look at how you know,
some people say, well, but could strike back in our homeland. Yeah, well, we always have to watch out for things like that. But you know, the risk in that was pretty severe without Israel having done anything against Iran, without the US having done anything against Iran, and that's courtesy of the Biden years of letting a whole host of unknown people
into our country. But the best way to mitigate those things is sort of what the Israelis have done and what I think a broader coalition of people need to do is one by one you lessen the capabilities of the bad actors. You get the Chinas and the Russians to think maybe they want to back off, and you know, maybe they're not all in for their Iranian pals. The Iranian pals aren't able to fuel those subordinates, and you
have a demonstration effect by the president being decisive. It was always thought it was a little bit ridiculous for people to say, oh, Donald Trump is going to get us into Worldorld War three or some kind of protracted a commitment. I mean, having B two's fly over and shake the earth is profoundly different than sending ground forces anywhere.
And so if anything this I mean. And also I've just loved, loved, loved the idea of how many people are sol hurt by not being told in advance this was happening, and I thought Scott Jennings actually had it perfectly summed up. The way you guard against leak is you don't talk against talk to leakers again, so you sort of tell where the leaks were coming from based on who the president and his top team didn't talk to.
You'll appreciate it before and I mean, two hours before the Israeli strikes kicked off, I was with the President and then right next to the Oval with the whole you know, your old your old office, I mean the NSC and uh talking to all those different folks, and it was funny because everything was very you know, we were off the record, but I mean we're talking about all kinds of national security stuff and everything was pretty you know, oh yeah, we can talk about this week.
You know.
I had a on the not on the record content, but on the record meeting with Tulsi Gabber, the d and I and all these different folks I talked to you just in general. The second remember, hours before these really strike, if if I even mentioned the word Iran, it was you know, it was all of a sudden. Ever, it kind of just like got really they're like, oh, but you know, I even had one I won't say who it was. I one person who had just said, you know, what's the what's the temperature like with Iran
right now? Because I'm getting a sense that things might be you know, there's some chatter up, things heating up, whatever, And it was, well, I can't separate the classified from the unclassified, so I can't make further comment. I remember my head tell yeah, I I remember thinking, okay, so we're going in like this is happening. So yeah, no surprise there, Yeah, it's h they were, they were very Everyone was very quiet about it for sure. So it's
gone much. I will say this has gone better even than I had anticipated in terms of the retaliatory response to Iran. The fact that Tehran were and I believe it told us that they were going to fire or missiles at our base in this show of force thing. Clearly they can't do any military to military damage to US. Their only option is terrorism. And look, you know, I think people need to remember also October seventh, what Hamas did in Israel was it was the Israeli nine to eleven.
That was the let's just go out and kill as many civilians as possible approach to things. And I think people can look back historically, will look back historically and think that was maybe the biggest strategic miscalculation that Hamas has ever made among many, right, I mean, among a lot of areas and blunders, but I think they just they they completely they missed it. They don't understand you do something like that, and the First World armies of the of civilization they take the gloves off.
Well, I agree with that. I also think it exposed more because we had had rental mobs and agitators for years doing destructive things in the United States, and as long as it was domestic politics, it kind of hid who was up to what. But after October seventh, the flash mobs were immediately holding up Hamas and Palestinian flags and things like that. It made very very clear, I think to a lot of sane America that holy crap, this is something different. This is not organic, this is not American.
There were people they were still burying the dead in Israel. I mean, you know, women and children and the elderly burying the dead, and you and people in this country calling for a ceasefire. A cease fire before the Israelis had even been able to fire or shot in response to that is the most disingenuous. I mean, this is like if a guy ran into a bar, punched the first person the face he saw, and then when the guy went to hit him back, he goes, hold on
a second, ceasefire. No, that's not how this works.
It's peace and love. Brother, Come on.
But I mean the ceasefire talk was just but you know, I'm actually in a sense, I think it was good that they did that because it showed the same people saying ceasefire are the same people who have been saying there's a genocide in Gaza as things move along, are the same people who are saying that were violating international norms by striking Iran. They really actually just root for the bad guys. I mean, they're really actually just on.
I agree, Yeah, yeah, very very clarifying. The other the other thing was after October seventh, somewhere along the lines. Uh, there was, there were some back and forth. Of course, the Israelis have done some incredible things by way of human intelligence, embedding themselves into their enemy in ways that the entire world ought to learn.
Can I just kind of jumped in really quickly with this because you had you had a TS and you know, secret squirrel clearance. I had a T S Secret squirrel clearance. You know, we saw some interesting stuff back in the day. I've never seen anything like one with the Israelis pulled off with hesbe Lah obvious, I don't think anyone's seeing that. But also it's like they mapped out I mean, Stephen, they they did missile strikes on nuclear scientists at home
in apartment buildings and only killed the scientists. I mean, this is like it's like they had the whole playbook of how they were going to take out all the guys they wanted to take out.
Well, I think they literally did have the playbook, and they had people that were trusted and at the side of some pretty key leaders. So they ended up with the intelligence, the necessary knowledge, but then the precision and the discipline to deliver on what they aimed to do. I mean the visuals of seeing a hole in the side of a condo building that only fried the unit
the bad guy was in. That is otherworldly. That is the stuff of movies that we wouldn't believe if we read the script, and so it was really really amazing. Plus they had an exchange of missiles. So Iran launched some missiles in the direction of Israel, like a year ago or something like that, and the Israelis were able to learn from that when they retaliated the state of
Iran's air defenses. Iran had bought a lot of air defense capabilities from several different sources, Chinese, the Russians, others, and on paper it could have been scary. We had to have some uncertainty, so did the Israelis. But I think the Israelis learned a lot more than the average bear about the vulnerability that Tehran and other places had when they saw their missile counter strikes succeed and that
led them to know they could conduct deeper operations. So they had the playbook, they had some technical tests, but then they also had the gumption to give it a go, and they had their reasons for it. Now we also have people you've talked about some people on our side that got spun up in different ways. You'll talk about, you know, the Israelis leading us in a direction or to us, you know, doing these things for Israel. I
don't know. I'm old enough to remember four hundred and forty four days, and I'm old enough to remember marine barracks and other kinds of things getting blown up. There is and I also, you know, we can before or against the Iraq War. I certainly have a lot of questions and criticisms of how things were conducted after major military operations were done at the initial phase. Lots and
lots of criticisms and questions. But no matter what, there's a lot of Iranian ordinance that killed Americans during that war. So you know, there's any number of reasons why a decisive action would be justified just on American interests. And again, I similarly to a lot of these people, I don't want to protracted war. But this was striking at distance and with stealth, and that I think for the timbers of Russia, Russia and China.
Yeah, remarkably successful. Let's come back and actually talk next steps here in a second. But our sponsor here is Birch Gold. And here's the good news. Trump's in charge of the economy. Things are going well. Here's the bad news. The dead is thirty seven trillion dollars.
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I think he's pretty clear on that. And I also think he's a little like like like the dad who's been paying all the bills who now has people chirping at him about like, how do you know he's got it? You know he's figured this out? Yeah, Like, well, what do you think is next here? For? If thing go
the way that we would like them too? Because I I'm always very I would to say, I don't know if cynical is the word, but I just feel like, look Asad had suicide bombers infiltrating pretty much his inner circle in like twenty twelve, and it looked like they were going to get him in any a, you know, lasted another decade in change right under tremendous pressure and managed to just sort of slither out and last and
what is he now? He's living in Russia? Right, I'm not as convinced as some others that this is the death knell of the Ayatolas at all. But so then if that is the case, what is the best like, what's the best realistic option for what happens in Iran without without US pushing regime change?
Yeah? Well, I mean, I would confess over the arc of my life, I've been disillusioned about the nature of authoritarian and brutal regimes. They have a stickiness that is very very disappointing, very good.
Staying in power. That's like the main thing they want to do, yeah, yeah.
And willing to do anything, and so they have escalatory dominance over anyone who wants to challenge them in many, many cases. You know. The one that seared in my mind was the absolute universe of intelligence services in the US and the entire world saying that the North Korean regime was on its deathbed in the nineties, and it was. It was overwhelming evidence, and there was mass starvation, right, So you can look at this and be like, oh,
there's no way that people. It's hard for starving people to overthrow a huge military apparatus. Yeah, And then you think of, you know, the regimes now have tools that the people back then could only imagine. And so yeah, I would love it if the Iran pre revolution had a second go of things. That would be a beautiful thing to witness. It would be great if the history of the Persian Empire could kind of give some of those good civilizational qualities back to this war torn part
of this planet. But I'm not going to hold my breath on that. And I think that what President Trump has been doing, he's hit a lot of major reset buttons. But one of the major reset buttons is a true sense of realism and foreign policy, and that really focuses less on the nature of the state and more on containing the malign influences and seeing if you can negotiate a more stable balance point for our interactions with different countries.
And that's uncomfortable for a lot of people that live in the world of black and white, complete one hundred percent right or wrong, no gray, no middle, which is not my life, whether it's in dealing with the family that I love or dealing with with friends or other experiences. There's the real world is not all or nothing, and it's not that here either, And so I think what
President Trump has now, you've got the Abraham Accords. Countries that probably aren't one hundred percent happy with the way things have played out. Israel probably pretty happy, but some of the Arab allies maybe mixed feelings. But on balance there they didn't want Iran to have a nuclear program either. But you have tools to manage risk better going forward, and a lot of motivation to do it. Trump pushes prosperity, and people might downplay that, but it is a useful
and good tool. It doesn't work all the time perfectly. I think US China relations are the best counter example to prosperity. Doctrine doesn't solve all your national security woes, and you have to watch out, but it's a lot safer set of options than having a theocratic totalitarian regime with a bunch of violent terrorist proxies. So we're in
a different set of tools. He's also really focused on arming and enabling independent capabilities among our allies so that they can over time take a lead with this this stupid talk of closing the straits of Hormuz, that that shivered the timbers of the Chinese they flowing.
They're not gonna They're not gonna say, yeah, you know what, guys to stop selling us your oil. That's not gonna help.
So here's a big country that wants to be your friend, and your peeing in their teerios. Come on, you can't do this.
Yeah, and that sounds even better in the original Chinese. You know, that's.
The classical Chinese modern Yeah, exactly, it's more poetic in the old language.
I mean, look, I mean, maybe we have to do a follow up to this, Steve, when we say, oh my gosh, you know, who knew that Iran had that ace up their sleeve? I think the chance of that is like a less than one percent, so so far, to me, it seems like a remarkable success where we are. We will do a follow up, but we're doing this was our Middle East Yates deep dive. We'll do as a East Asia deep dive next time we talk. Stevin
Yates over at the Heritage Foundation. Steven Alway, appreciate you man, Thank you so much.
Take good care. Thank you. Buck