I kept reaching for an analytical framework this week and not finding one. That’s what prompted us to bring back Kerry Boyd Anderson, our longtime friend and go-to expert on Iran. Kerry is so good at helping us understand how history and the present collide, and she doesn’t shy away from complexity.
Sarah, Kerry, and I try to work our way through what Israel, the US, and Iran are doing. What are the objectives? What do we know? What don’t we know?
We talk about the Kurds, the risks of regional spillover into Turkey and Europe and as far east as Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the pattern of American military interventions that intend to help but don’t.
There is real fear in this episode — mine, specifically. There’s also a real effort to find a plausible best-case scenario. This conversation helped me, and I hope it helped you, too. -Beth
Topics Discussed
What are the objectives in Iran?
Is regime change likely?
What might happen throughout the Middle East because of this war?
Will this war make the people of Iran better off?
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Episode Resources
Episode Transcript
Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.
Beth [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers. You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Today, we are joined by Kerry Boyd Anderson to help us understand what’s happening in Iran. Kerry is a longtime friend of the show. She’s been with us many times over the years. We trust her experience and her deep understanding of the Middle East and specifically of Iran. She’s currently the membership editor for War on the Rocks. And I feel just a tremendous sense of relief that she was available to talk with us on short notice and really help us try to make sense of what’s happening across the world.
Sarah [00:00:42] We wanted this conversation to be standalone and easily shareable so there won’t be an Outside of Politics conversation this week. If you are hungry for a lighter take on the weekend news, go check out our Spicy Live where we gossiped about both Hillary Clinton’s deposition and Kristi Noem’s hearings before the Senate and the House. Lots there.
Beth [00:01:03] You can find that on Substack. We’ll put all the information in the show notes. Next up, Kerry helps us think about Iran. Kerry Anderson, welcome back to Pantsuit Politics. I am so happy that you’re here. I was thinking about how I am desperate for some kind of analytical framework through which to understand the strikes in Iran. And I tried to explore that a little bit because I knew I would want to rush into it with you. And probably what I should name for everyone is that I think I’m feeling that desperation because I feel kind of afraid. I think I feel more fear about this than I have felt about other actions that I thought were ill-advised or rash or maybe necessary, but scary. This one feels really scary to me. I’m wondering, Sarah and Kerry how you’re feeling just as we get started.
Kerry Anderson [00:02:02] I think that’s valid. I think if we look at, say, the strikes on Iran in June, or we look at the capture of President Maduro from Venezuela, while those were risky foreign policy approaches, the risks were within certain limits. This is actually, as an analyst, is even difficult to put a framework around what are the risks on this. So I think that the uncertainty here is massive.
Sarah [00:02:39] I think there’s this narrative that like, okay, we’re now at war with Iran, but haven’t we been at war with Iran for a long time just under different guises? I was listening to Ben Rhodes, and he was just talking about between the assassination of the general and his first term and the sanctions and the bombing of the nuclear program that we supposedly annihilated, but now maybe not, like, put us in a timeline here before we get to the fallout. Like really what was the realistic relationship between the United States and Iran? And particularly, I think you also have to talk about the orientation of Iran and Israel because clearly this is a joint mission. So how are you thinking about that leading up into the strikes, the most recent strike?
Kerry Anderson [00:03:32] That’s a great question because of course this has been a significant part of the administration’s explanation for why we’ve gone to war. I would say in terms of your question of have we been at war with Iran for a long time, it’s kind of yes and no. Certainly, nothing of this scale. This is an entirely new scale. And we can certainly, of course, had very negative relations with Iran back to 1979 when you had the Iranian Revolution and you had to take over the U.S. Embassy. And we had a failed military attempt under President Carter to pull the hostages out. Yeah, I mean, this goes back quite a long time. We supported Iraq with weapons during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. There was the tanker wars. Certainly during the Iraq war, after the United States invaded Iraq, Iran was supporting a number of the Iraqi Shia militias that were fighting. U.S. Soldiers and certainly help provide some of the materials. Then of course, as you mentioned, the killing in Trump’s first administration of Qasem Soleimani. So on the one hand, yes. On the other hand, the strikes in June was significant because that was the first time the United States has done direct strikes on the Iranian homeland. And now this is really huge because in coordination with Israel-- so I’m going to talk about we, meaning the United States and Israel, because I’m not sure the exact breakdown of who’s hit what. But we’ve killed the Supreme Leader, we’ve killed a number of the senior officials, we’re bombing huge parts of the country, and we’re talking about regime change. So this is an entirely different level than we’ve seen before.
Beth [00:05:21] So if you create a strategy by beginning with the end in mind, we’ve heard a lot of different versions of what the end might look like from administration officials. As we’re recording here today, what’s your best understanding of the end and mind that they have?
Kerry Anderson [00:05:39] That’s a great question. Wish I knew the answer. I think one of the real challenges has been the goals here are not clear and right before the war started on Saturday, February 28th, I was I think posted on X that how-- because people are asking what do you think they’re going to hit and I was like I don’t know what we’re going hit because I don t know what the goal is. Like how do you match your means to your ends when you don’t know what the ends are. So I can hope that that is clearer to people in the administration than it is to the rest of us. But the administration has given multiple, sometimes conflicting and confusing answers for what the end goal is. We’ve had, for example, a total regime change, which we can get into what does that mean? Trump has also a few times said that he wants to do something more along the lines of what we had in Venezuela, where you remove a few officials, but you leave the regime generally intact. And, of course, Israel has its own goals here too, which play a crucial role. We’re really kind of in this together and those are also kind of unclear.
Sarah [00:06:51] Well, I think there’s just so many layers of this that are both complicated, but to my mind, simple. With regards to Donald Trump, he is transactional and relationship oriented. So it’s not about regime change. It’s not about protecting the people of Iran. He doesn’t give a shit about democracy. I think in Venezuela, it was just, well, I can’t work with this guy. So let’s take him out and scare the hell out of whoever comes next so maybe they’ll work with me. That seems to be his sort of modus operandi. If I can’t work with this person, I’ll take them out. He’s clearly not afraid to use force. He has put more military strikes than any other president in recent memory. Nigeria, Venezuela, boats in the Caribbean, like he’s unleashed to use the power of our military however he feels in that moment is appropriate. And I think his feeling of how can I get to a place where I have a relationship with someone in Iran is also in the context of his relationship with Netanyahu. And Netanyah who was very hesitant for many, many, many years to get into these military strikes and squirmishes. I mean, it’s kind of weird I’ve heard like Netanyahu was hesitant, but Netanyahu who’s also been trying to convince a president to strike Iran several presidents back and everybody was like, no, there’s no upside for us; we’re not going to do that. But he’s also in a very tough spot. He has this election probably coming his way. He’s still on trial. He’s also promised to eliminate Hamas, but he’s blown Gaza into oblivion and has not eliminated Hamas. But he has weakened Iran and Hezbollah for sure. So his motivation, I don’t know, is to just keep the war going? Because I feel like we have to know his motivation so we can understand how that played into his relationship with Trump, so that when he finally called Trump and said, okay, now or never, Trump was like, yeah, sure, this looks like it gets good a time. And I don’t know if it was like the personal insults of blowing off the negotiations and slow rolling those, I don’t know.
Kerry Anderson [00:09:15] Yeah, I definitely think Netanyahu has been talking about going after Iran for many, many, many years, at a minimum back to the Obama administration. So I think in some ways, this is something he’s been wanting for a really long time. I also think that he made the argument that Iran has never been this weak, which is true, and we can talk through that more if you want. And he is facing these elections and this within Israel, this move against Iran is very, very popular. So I think for him, there’s not really much of a downside. This is definitely something most-- I mean, and obviously Israelis are dealers in the consequences of this. There’ve been a few deaths and there will be huge consequences in long term. And now we also have effectively a reignited war, I guess, in Hezbollah and Lebanon. So there’s some negative consequences for Israelis, but they are generally very much behind us. And so I don’t think there’s a downside for Netanyahu. It is interesting that Israel faces multiple friends now. There’s still Israeli soldiers in half of the Gaza Strip. There’s extensive military operations in the West Bank and now extensive operations again in Lebanon. So this is a country facing multiple friends and it’s a small country in terms of numbers, it’s relatively small military. So it’s going to be a lot for them to deal with, but right now it looks like Netanyahu’s got a lot of support for this war.
Sarah [00:10:44] A weakened regime is dangerous in its own way. I agree that they’re weakened, but what we’ve seen is when you got less to lose, you got less to lose.
Beth [00:10:53] I want to know more about the regime as it existed. If we could maybe go back to the first strike that Trump authorized on Iran, the one he told us completely decimated their nuclear program, except that maybe no, it didn’t. So can you tell us about the power of the Supreme Leader and the overall standing of the regime after that attack up until this most recent one?
Kerry Anderson [00:11:18] Yeah, I think it’s really important to understand the Iranian regime up to this current war. So, obviously, and its current state it came into power after the 1979 revolution and eventually the creation of the Islamic Republic. And it’s really interesting because it’s kind of a mix of democracy and authoritarianism. So it’s not a straight up authoritarian country in the way like North Korea or Russia or China even. So there is the Supreme Leader, or was the Supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who really was in charge of things, and then there are institutions like the Guardian Council that were unelected and would decide who is allowed to run for office. So there are all these limitations, but then there is an elected parliament. There is an elected president. We could get into whether those are always free and fair, but they have been actual real elections. And so it was a system where you had a certain level of democracy on one level and at the local level as well. There’s a lot of local elections, but then sitting on top of that, you had this more authoritarian structure. And so that’s basically how it had been working. And then also in recent years, a lot more power has gone to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And so that’s also very important is that IRGC is going to be playing a key role in how the surviving parts of the regime try to go forward.
Beth [00:12:55] The administration has really touted the benefit of eliminating Khamenei. Given his age and everything that you just said, what’s the reality of that? And where might we go from here?
Kerry Anderson [00:13:08] Yeah, he definitely was a really important guy, but he also was, well, I believe he was 86. And I have some people have said, oh, it’s incredible that he wasn’t hiding. He was so arrogant. I was like, I don’t know that it’s arrogance. I think he was just kind of like bring it. I think, he was like if you’re going to kill me, you’re going to kill me. Whatever. And they had clear succession plans in place through several layers of officials. So currently the assembly of experts, such as the body that’s set up to determine who would be the next supreme leader, they are in discussions. I don’t know how that works at wartime.
Sarah [00:13:45] But they got bombed, right? I read that the assembly of experts where they meet was bombed.
Kerry Anderson [00:13:50] The building was bombed. It doesn’t appear that it actually took out the members of the assembly. So they’re choosing who’s going to be next. There are several potential candidates including Khamenei’s son. I think what’s going be really interesting going forward is whether the regime will survive in a way that there is still a supreme leader who matters or not. So that gets into different scenarios for regime survival, regime collapse, transformation of power. So at this moment there is still a regime kind of in charge is trying to come up with his successor, but we’ll kind of have to see where all of that goes at this point.
Sarah [00:14:31] Explain, though, why even in the face of incredible uprisings because their economy has been decimated through these sanctions, you had a lot of young people, hopeless young people, truly willing to risk their lives. This regime took out thousands and thousands of protesters recently. But can you explain the functions in the way this regime works that it’s not so simple as like, okay, here’s your chance, your once in a generation chance, just rise up and take it back.
Kerry Anderson [00:15:03] I think the protests were important to leading to this moment because you had these huge protests in late December, mostly in January. And then you had this very brutal response, which was unprecedented in scale. And the regime obviously is a repressive one that has used repression to put down previous protests. But they were just opening fire on people. We don’t know the exact numbers, but thousands of protesters were killed. And I think that was very much seen as a sign of weakness, so this is a regime that’s actually afraid that it could be overthrown. I mean, Iran had a revolution before. It is a possible thing to happen. So I think that added to the sense that this regime is under all this external pressure and under all these internal pressure, this is the time to take them out. However, we’re going to have to kind of see what happens about whether there will be an uprising. Part of it, it’s hard to come out in the streets and protest when you’re being bombed. And President Trump did say in his first speech about this, that people should stay inside until we’re finished. I don’t know exactly what that means. And then you should go out in the street and overthrow the regime. But they were still going to be facing armed people who have nothing to lose who are going to be shooting. So I think, definitely, whether there’s an uprising or something, a lot of analysts are really watching. But it’s complicated, and it would take extraordinary courage on the part of the Iranian people to do it. I think we will probably see some of that, but where that goes is going to be a huge question. I also think we should be very careful about the promises we make to people who might be risking their lives to protest. So that’s, I think, another thing. It’s a whole big question.
Sarah [00:16:44] I just look at Venezuela and Syria. So Venezuela you take out the guy on top, but there’s all these administrative structures and bureaucracies. It’s not like it was just him. He had set up this whole system to repress people so that he wasn’t the only one kind of protecting everything like repressing the press and emboldening these different law enforcement, bureaucracies and repressive arms. And so like even in Syria, you had that as well. First of all, you have I think the reporting that’s come out since Syria about Al-Assad and he just didn’t have his hands on the wheels, man. Like the warnings were there and he just-- there’s this crazy piece in the New York Times about really what he just sat around and did all day was play video games. And you had a leader in Syria. You had a organizations that were like this is what we want. We’re prepared to fight and take it. Where you don’t have that in Venezuela, you don’t have that in Iran. So to me it’s like where should these people exactly start? You took out the Supreme Leader. You didn’t take out the entire armed forces. You didn’t take out these people who torture and imprison people. Like, it’s not clear to me that we have actually opened up an avenue for regime change. We just changed the guy, eliminated the guy at the top. You know what I’m saying?
Kerry Anderson [00:18:18] Yeah, it’s really tricky because you’re absolutely right that this is a regime that’s far more than one person. And we also know that the Iranian government had planned succession for multiple senior officials down to at least four layers. So they knew this could happen. So there are certain preparations in place. And I think another factor that is important to think about too, Iran is a really big country and we have more than 90 million people there. It’s much bigger than Syria. It’s much bigger than Iraq. It is much bigger than Venezuela. So the potential scale of consequences is just a lot bigger. And it’s also a country that’s geostrategically in such an important place. If there’s spillover effects, it can go into the Middle East, it can go into Central Asia. It’s surrounded by all these very fragile countries. So this is a really huge thing. And I think to your question about uprisings, it really feels that there’s not really a plan. The plan was just kind of like we’ll bomb stuff and then the Iranian people will rise up. It’ll be cool. And I think this is going to be a lot more complicated than that.
Beth [00:19:41] So if I’m trying to make this analytical framework that I really want, I have US objectives, question mark. Israeli objectives, maybe more of like ellipses. Like we understand that it’s popular, we understand Netanyahu personally has some objectives, we understand that Iran has legitimately posed a threat to Israel, but where that goes, don’t know. Potential for protests to actually take their government back, question Mark. Okay, regime change, question mark. Iran is doing counter-offensives right now. And some of the reporting that I’ve seen is that to Sarah’s point, as much as we like to talk about cutting off the head, there are some pretty decentralized Iranian forces throughout the Middle East. And I’ve seen that maybe they’re kind of winging it right now, they’re just kind of doing what they think makes sense. So if you had to say like here’s probably what the objectives driving Iran now are in a military sense, what could we say about that?
Kerry Anderson [00:20:46] That’s a great question. If you come up with a really good analytical framework, let me know, because I feel like everybody else.
Beth [00:20:53] I really want to, Kerry. It would help me so much.
Kerry Anderson [00:20:57] Me too. I mean, I’m a Middle East analyst and I’m struggling to figure out what the framework is. But I like your question because I think while it’s very difficult to understand what the US and Israeli goals are, I think we do know what the regime’s goals are and what their strategy is. So in terms of the Iranian regime, which I certainly distinguish from the broader Iranian population, but in terms of the regime, they want survival. First and foremost, they went to survive as a regime. They want to survive as a country. So they don’t want portions of Iranian territory to be taken away or to secede. And they want to survive as a regime. There’s also a personal level for a lot of officials, there was a lot of economic incentives involved in all of this too. And my understanding from military analysts that I’ve read or talked to is that the IRGC in preparation for this did kind of devolve some authority so that you would have IRGC and other armed groups on the ground who would be able to function and carry out certain plans even without necessarily a lot of direct structure from the top. So I don’t have that personal information, but that’s my understanding from some of the military analysts I’ve talked with. Also, it’s really interesting and very clear that the regime is responding with the understanding that this is an effort to destroy the regime.
[00:22:26] And so in the past, they’ve always responded with a certain level of restraint. For example, in the June, when the United States and Israel conduct these strikes against Iran in June, Iran retaliated but they were very careful. It was kind of very specific how they retaliated against Israel. It was a retaliation against the Al Udeid air base in Qatar, but it was limited and they gave an advance warning. There’s always been a kind of a careful game of chess where they’re being a little restrained and now it’s just all out. I think one of the surprising things for a lot of people has been the way that Iran has really gone after the Gulf Arab states because they had been working on developing better relations there, and they’ve just been whacking them. And then obviously we could talk about other parts of the region as well. But I think their strategy has been ensure survival. We understand a bunch of our top people are going to get killed; we’re going to be prepared for that. And we’re going to spread the pain around as much as possible. Like you’re not going to take us down that fight kind of approach.
Sarah [00:23:36] I heard it described as asymmetric endurance. So we’re going to make it as painful for you. We’re using multimillion dollar, anti-ballistic missiles to shoot down like $20,000 drones. There’s like real concerns about our stockpiles. They’re trying to take out some of the foundational military hardware that shoots out those drones. And I think they’ve been moderately successful, but the Iranians have certainly been successful at exacting that pain. It’s going to be a long time, I would imagine, before Dubai’s tourism completely recovers. They’ve been working so hard in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and all these countries in Saudi Arabia to say come visit, enjoy, we’ve built this tourist paradise. And now the airspaces are shut down, people can’t get in and out. We won’t even talk about the fact that the American government has just abandoned like 1,500 American citizens with no way to get back. That’s going to be painful as far as the oil shipments and all that. I mean, they are exacting a cost for sure. And I agree with you, I’d watch with such interest with the way that they were so careful and would broadcast what they were going to do. And now it does seem like all bets are off. I’m wondering what you see the role as the Kurds. I was reading some reporting that Netanyahu was like, The Kurds will save us. The Kurd’s will rise up. They’re ready. They’re going to take over. They’re our magic solution to this problem.
Beth [00:25:08] And if you would, Kerry, as you answer that, a little background on who the Kurds are because it’s so hard to keep all of the groups in the Middle East straight for everyone.
Kerry Anderson [00:25:18] Yeah, absolutely. I have so much sympathy for the Kurds.
Sarah [00:25:23] Yeah, especially after Syria.
Kerry Anderson [00:25:26] Yeah, and yet I have some concerns about some of the current plans with that. So the Kurds are an ethnic group that is historically primarily based in the mountainous parts of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. And if we were really going back into history and then the creation of the states in the Middle East, the Kurds very much wanted their own state. So there is Kurdish nationalism, they want their own state. There were a lot of proposals for them to get their own state, but they didn’t. And so they were divided between Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. And that has always created certain instabilities. [crosstalk]. It’s pretty a lot of insurgencies, especially in Turkey, but also other places. And then when you had the Syrian civil war, the Kurds in Syria were able to kind of create sort of an autonomous area that they controlled in Syria. Also with the war in Iraq that led to a semi-autonomous Kurdish area, the Kyrgyzstan regional government in northern Iraq. So Iraq kind of went with a federal approach and so the Kurds kind of have like their version of not a nation state, but like us Americans type state in the north of Iraq. So for a while, for the Kurds, it was like there’s kind of some autonomy in northern Iraq, and there’s some kind of autonomy in Syria. The Kurds in both Iraq and Syria were crucial allies in fighting ISIS. They were the boots on the ground in fighting ISIS.
[00:27:07] However, since the Assad regime about a year ago in Syria, just in the last few months, the new government in Damascus wants to have a centralized government and they’ve actually captured a lot of land from the Syrian Kurds who have been pushing a much smaller area. Turkey is working on actually a ceasefire with its main Kurdish group, the BKK. That’s all very complicated and kind of on hold right now. Now we have a situation with Iran, which is an opportunity for Iranian Kurds who have long had a kind of low-level insurgency. This is sort of their big opportunity. And there are quite a few Iranian Kurds who had fled into Iraq and into the Iraqi Kurdish area. And so the news reports that we’re hearing, and I do not know how much to rely on these, but there are reports that Israel and the United States might be providing some small arms and encouragement to the Iranian Kurd’s who are in Iraq to go back into Iran and fight the regime. While I have deep sympathy for Kurdish nationalism and for the Kurds, this also raises all sorts of risks. The Kurds are usually the ones who suffer the most from that. We can go back into the first Gulf War and the George H.W. Bush administration encouraged the Kurds to rise up against Saddam Hussein and they did and they got gassed by the Iraqi government. Also, then we have the Syrian Kurds who are our main allies in fighting ISIS. And we pretty much kind of thrown them under the bus there as well. So I guess I worry a little bit that every time we kind of turn to the Kurds and they step up, it doesn’t always go well for them, but I guess that’s their decision to make.
Sarah [00:29:00] To the ISIS of it all, we’ve been talking a lot about nation states and the fallout in nation states, but what do you see and what is the analysis as far as not only striking Iran, but destabilization in the wider region? How do you see that playing out with the Islamic State?
Kerry Anderson [00:29:21] I think right now, in the short term, this doesn’t necessarily have direct impacts on the Islamic State. The Islamic State was an enemy of the Iranian regime. So in the short term I think that’s not something I’m specifically watching. However, any time you have chaos in the Middle East, you get resurgence of some form of terrorism. And whether that’s Sunni terrorism or Shia terrorism or something else we haven’t about before. If this is not contained fairly quickly, if we see a collapse in Iran or any of the more negative scenarios, then I’m just sure we’ll see some sort of a resurgence of terrorism just because that’s what happens. So I think that’s something we need to be ready for here.
Beth [00:30:10] Well, and it seems like the ground for that is fertile anyway because of Israel and Gaza, because of the situation that’s been persistent for years in Yemen, because, because, because. Thinking about the Kurds a little bit more in Turkey, I read this morning that NATO is watching all of this very carefully. I wonder what the risks are, you think, if it’s not contained very carefully, what the risk are for Turkey and what the risks are for the NATO alliance.
Kerry Anderson [00:30:40] Yeah. I mean, there’s several. In the short term we could talk about, for example, I believe there was a report that an Iranian missile was headed toward Turkish airspace and NATO shot it down. It’s not clear that that was an intentional thing on Iran’s part. So there’s some risk there and Iran clearly is willing to spread the pain out. And so if it feels like European countries or NATO are supporting this operation. There was also a report of a potential effort to attack a British base in Cyprus. That could be a real issue. My biggest concern for Europe and Turkey is that we’re already seeing some refugee flows, of course. If Iran really falls apart, we’re going to see refugee flows on a level that makes the Syrian refugee crisis look tiny. And many of those refugees will go through Turkey and will attempt to go into Europe. And there’s other places as well. But given both the geography and given the existence of trafficking networks already and given the existence of diaspora networks, that’s going to be a huge thing. And the Syrian refugee crisis already had huge impacts on European politics. And globally, we’ve had since World War II a global system for managing refugee flows. And it’s imperfect, but it has worked. It’s so close to breaking. And I think in a large scale, refugee flows from Iran would just completely break that system.
Sarah [00:32:17] Can you help me understand, Iran shares a huge border with Afghanistan and Pakistan. I’ve been so focused on Pakistan and India, but there seems to be a lot of conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan that I can’t imagine this is going to improve. What is going on?
Kerry Anderson [00:32:36] Yeah, well, I’m actually recording a podcast later today specifically on that with an expert, so I’ll know a little bit more later. Afghanistan and Pakistan have, a few months ago, tensions between the two. Tensions have always been there, but there’s also been a lot of cooperation. And tension started increasing mostly because, of course, Afghanistan is now run by the Taliban, but there’s also the Pakistani Taliban. They’re an offshoot, but they seek to overthrow the Pakistani government and they are responsible for a number of terrorist attacks within Pakistan. And so since we left Afghanistan and the Taliban took over, there’ve been a lot of positive relationships in the past between the Pakistani Government and the Taliban in Afghanistan. But now the Pakistani government is annoyed with the Taliban in Afghanistan because they’ve been providing shelter across the border for the Pakistani Taliban. And that started a few months ago some cross-border fighting, which has intensified in the days right before this.
Sarah [00:33:45] And they started sending people back, right? People who’ve lived in Pakistan for years and years and years.
Kerry Anderson [00:33:51] Yeah. So they forced a lot of the Afghan refugees who had been in Pakistan to get back into Afghanistan. This is another thing, right? There also used to be a lot of Afghan refugees in Iran, which Iran has been kind of before this been pushing back to Afghanistan. So we’re talking about potential refugee flows out of Iran. Where are they going to go? Some of them are going to going to Afghanistan and Pakistan, which already have these issues. On top of that, there’s also in Eastern Iran and the territories along the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan, there is a minority group called the Baloch and they also have had a low level insurgency against the Iranian regime for years. So that’s another thing to be watching because the border there also cuts across the ballot community. So there’s a community in Iran and Pakistan, Afghanistan, and that creates a lot of potential issues too. So the potential spillover here is yes, it could go west, two parts, the Middle East and the Europe. It can also easily go east to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Beth [00:35:08] So I’m surrounding my whole analytical framework in caution tape because there are so many places that this could erupt in such a disastrous way. I would love to know how you think about the foreign policy portfolio right now and what risks and I guess opportunities that might create for the U.S. Military in this engagement, the fact that we did the Venezuelan strike, that we are providing military support in Ecuador, that we seem to be trying to starve out the Cuban regime. I’m really trying to get my arms around the objectives there. That we are still trying to negotiate some kind of end in Ukraine. That we know that there’s a threat to Taiwan. It just feels like there’s a lot running across the crawl for the White House as it thinks about this effort. So how would you put that in some kind of framework? Like these are the risks of that and these are benefits if there are any of that.
Kerry Anderson [00:36:11] Yeah. I think in some ways our foreign policy right now could be like go big or go home. It’s kind of just doing it all. And if we look at the opportunities, I’ve been focusing on the worst case stuff, but if we’re looking at potential opportunities, clearly the United States has demonstrated to the world that we have extraordinarily effective and powerful military and we’re willing to use it. We’re willing to use it to remove your leader like we did in Venezuela. We’re willing use it to extensively bomb your country and kill your leaders as we are in Iran. We’re willing to us it to blow up boats. Like we’re going to just use it. And I think the argument from Trump administration would be that, that’s what you want to do. You want to show you’re big, you’re tough, you’re bigger and tougher than everybody else. And I you could argue that so fa they did get what they wanted out of Venezuela, and they have convinced Europe that it needs to spend a lot more on its own defense spending. So I think you can certainly argue that we’re demonstrating our strength and our willingness to use it and people are going to think twice before messing with us, and that when it comes to other negotiations with other countries that we are demonstrating our leverage. So I think you could take that perspective.
[00:37:37] I think on the other hand, from a broader foreign policy perspective, one concern I certainly have and I know a lot of other foreign policy analysts have, is that this is going to massively distract from our abilities to counter China in the Pacific and may also lead Japan and South Korea to feel like, okay, the U.S. is busy over in this place, so we need to do more for our own defense, which might be okay, but there’s certainly concern that they might look into nuclear weapons. So I think this all raises huge risks. There are questions about the extent to which we have munitions to continue these types of wars. I am not an expert on that, but that’s an issue. For those who feel like the best foreign policy is that a good defense is a good offense and it’s good to show that we’re big and strong and we’re willing to use it, yeah, they’re doing that. But it creates so, so many risks and it seems there’s very little plan for thinking through those risks.
Sarah [00:38:41] I thought Ezra Klein describing it as head on a pike foreign policy, like we just come in and you just need to be afraid because whatever might happen to your country, if you’re in charge, we won’t hesitate to take you out, it’s a probably pretty apt description. It doesn’t seem to have any long-term strategy. Now, since I don’t think any of us want to end on quite that hopeful of a note, I do think I see a positive outcome to all of this. Well, maybe not an outcome, but a positive impact. Which is I think the narrative for so many countries and for the globe was that there was this other axis of China and Russia who would not hesitate to prop up and support these regimes. But they were not there for Syria. They were not there for Venezuela, and they are not there for Iran. So, yes, I think the United States use of power in this way has been sloppy and dangerous. But I do think, and I don’t think this was their purpose, but I do you think inadvertently they have exposed. So yeah, I think there are countries around the world that are looking at us and going, oh my God, there’s no this global order, they’ll do whatever they want. But they’re also looking at China and Russia and thinking, well, they’re not going to come to our defense. I think there’s this theory that China and Russia are presenting an alternative to the U.S. but I don’t see that coming. I don’t see that happening at all.
Beth [00:40:12] Is every man for himself? Is that where we are.
Sarah [00:40:14] Every man for himself.
Kerry Anderson [00:40:16] Yes, I’m not sure we are. I think you’re right. This could, in some way, the fact that China and Russia clearly are not interested in defending other countries against the United States in any truly effective way, does potentially undermine their power. I think you could also take a perspective that the “liberal international order” that was set up after World War II was always imperfect. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a speech about this at the Munich Security Conference. It was kind of calling out many of us, and I would include myself earlier in my career, would have been like big, big defenders of liberal international order. And I think there’s very, very good reasons for that. However, it was never perfect. It was always a certain amount of papering over and sweeping certain things under the rug. You’re big.
Sarah [00:41:07] If you’re big enough, you don’t have to do it. If you’re the United States, it’s all just a mere suggestion.
Kerry Anderson [00:41:15] Right. And so one could argue tearing the veil away is a good thing. Like, let’s see it. Let see it for what it is. Let’s be honest about what it. I don’t know how I feel about that, but I think that is in discussion that’s worth having. I also I’m really curious about what you guys have been hearing from your audience about the war in Iran and that issue of the global order more broadly.
Sarah [00:41:41] I think that people have a certain wisdom about this. I think that no one thinks Iran was a good guy. No one thought Venezuela was running well. But I think after decades of intractable conflict and that sort of asymmetrical endurance we’ve seen play out over and over and over again all the way from Vietnam to Afghanistan into Iraq, I think people understand it doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter how powerful our military is. We can go in and we can have enormous short-term impact, but there’s no way to militarily solve a problem like the Kurds. There’s no way to militarily solve... Even when there is uprisings, there were sincere, impactful uprising during the Arab Spring. Egypt now has a more repressive government after that. It’s not that easy. It’s not that simple. We all want democracy and freedom for the world, but it’s complicated. And I think there is some like inherent wisdom in the American people who recognize that and say we just need to stay out of it. Not because we’re not struck by the suffering of our fellow global citizens, but we’ve just seen this happen so often where we just make it worse. We just make it worse.
Beth [00:43:05] We intend to help and our help is not helpful. And I would say the other piece that I would add to Sarah’s reflection, we have people very tangibly personally impacted. People with sons, daughters, friends, cousins, uncles in the service, in the region, very concerned for their safety. We have people who got stranded and got that message from the State Department that you’re on your own. The United States government can’t get you home. I think there’s a loss of faith in our own government on two fronts. That we can’t be helpful in the world militarily, even we intend to be, and we’ve seen that over years and years, but also we can’t be helpful to our citizens. The direct responsibility we have to get people home when we have made them less safe where they are, we’ve not met that responsibility. People are so frustrated that they’ve had to go to Truth Social to learn about this, that the president hasn’t tried to make a case to the American people. That if we see these pictures as we do of Americans who are dying because of this, we can’t say what they died for. We want to be so respectful and supportive of people in service, but we also want to be able to say what died for. So it’s a really frustrating time. We have a smart audience and smart enough to know how complex this is, even if we couldn’t all sit down and diagram those complexities. And I think that overall, there’s a feeling that we are trying to be more careful about this than the Secretary of Defense, than the secretary of state. We’re trying to speak about this with more precision than the people who are supposed to lead the effort, and it’s maddening.
Kerry Anderson [00:44:52] Yeah, that so make sense. And I’ve been thinking a lot about the run up to the Iraq war because I was early in my career and there’s a lot of important differences and there’s some significant similarities. But it was interesting in the run up to the Iraq war, there was a lot effort on behalf of the Bush administration to persuade Congress, to persuade the American people. Now, I think there was some lying and a lot of cherry picking of information involved in that. But it’s interesting in this case, there just wasn’t any of that. So I certainly sympathize and understand with people who are trying to grasp what is the purpose of this and why are we doing it.
Sarah [00:45:39] It just seems like he thought he had his window with this meeting and he didn’t care that people would get trapped or nobody told him in a way that had impact. I’m not really 100% sure ever that Donald Trump is getting the whole truth about the impact of his actions. It seems like General Cain tried to say like this is not necessarily an easy in and out, which is what he wants from all these military strikes he’s perpetuating with no checks and no balances for a year. And I just think that there’s no desire that’s not in his framework. How do I justify it to Congress? How do I justify it to the American people? That’s not how he thinks about his role in power at all. He thinks I’m limited only by my own moral guidelines. And so if 170 little girls get murdered in the process, got to break through eggs, I guess. It is so transparently a one-man show. And so a one man who doesn’t do a lot of in-depth strategic thinking. It’s just ruled completely by his gut.
Beth [00:46:53] Well, Kerry, I really liked Sarah’s instinct to try to take us somewhere more positive. So pulling back that fear that China and Russia are going to support all these countries that they’ve tried to convince that they will support is one good outcome. If you thought about what is the absolute best case scenario here, here is a way that we could say this is what they died for; this mattered, this accomplished something that did real good in the world, what would that best case scenario look like?
Kerry Anderson [00:47:25] Have been thinking a lot about that. When we do scenarios, try to think about something that’s plausible. So I think there is a plausible best case scenario here, where I think you would have the collapse of the regime, but not the internal collapse of the country that would probably involve a group of different actors coming together. So some of those might be kind of like protest leaders with some of the reformist politicians, with some parts of the previous regime. I think they would have to come together and develop compromises. But I think it is possible that together they could have a functioning government that would put the country at least on a path toward democracy. And if that happened, that would be an enormously positive thing for more than 90 million people. Also, if you talk to Iranian Americans, they’ll hear this all the time, this is a country of all this culture and all these resources and all this human capital, and it should be doing much better economically. And that’s partly because of sanctions, but partly because of the regime. And you potentially could see a situation, maybe like 10, 15 years, Iran is democratic and is prosperous and is a source for stability. It’s right there between the Middle East and between Central Asia. It’s really important. And if it’s a source of stability rather than instability, that could have really great spillover effects. So I definitely think there is a potential plausible outcome here where things go well and things go better. I would like to have more faith in that, but it is possible, and that is what I’m very much hoping for right now.
Sarah [00:49:18] I mean, look, I was opposed to the Iraq war, but Iraq is better. I think better is a fair word to describe where Iraq is right now. It’s not a democratic paradise, but it is better. It is a more stable country than it was before. I don’t know if I’ve necessarily seen spillover effects into other areas, but maybe with more time there that could happen as well. So I’m incredibly encouraged by despite the betrayal of the Kurds, of some of the developments in Syria, like it’s not-- I don’t know if democracy is achievable within the next 10 years, but I think stability could be.
Kerry Anderson [00:50:04] Yeah, and I do see Syria as a bright spot in all of this. I am sorry. I wish there had been a better arrangement with the Kurds in Syria, that they could have maintained a degree of autonomy. However, there is no doubt that Syria is better off right now than it was under the Assad regime or under the civil war. So it is a point for hope and not for some sort of foolish hope that everything’s just going to be great and it’s all going to be fine, but an actual like with the right steps and with the resources, a better future is possible.
Beth [00:50:34] Well, let us hope for that peace and stability and better for the people who are most directly affected and the safety of those who are trying to bring about that outcome. And Kerry, thank you so much for sharing your deep well of knowledge and expertise with us today.
Kerry Anderson [00:50:51] Well, thank you so much. Always a pleasure to talk with both of you. I love your audience. And it’ll be really interesting to see how they feel about all of this.
Beth [00:51:01] Thank you so much to Kerry for joining us today. Thank you to all of you. We’ll be back with you next Tuesday. I’ll be here with Greg Landsman, the Congressman from Ohio as Sarah will be out. And then we’ll be together again on Friday. We appreciate you very much. Have the best weekend available to you.
Show Credits
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That this audience strives to be more precise and nuanced about this situation than those who are supposed to be in charge is spot on…and so upsetting.
I wholeheartedly agree that the PP team approaches the topic of war, the dignity of humans, and all that makes up our current situation with a LOT more grace, care, and seriousness than this administration does. Thanks for an informative discussion and all the work you do!