This is Democracy- Episode 319: U.S. Decision Making on Iran

[00:00:22] Zachary Suri: Welcome back to our latest episode of This Is Democracy.
I’m Zachary Suri. We’re joined of course, as always by Professor Jeremi Suri. Good morning.
[00:00:30] Jeremi Suri: Good morning, Zachary.
[00:00:31] Zachary Suri: Good morning. And today we have the privilege of speaking with someone who is perhaps, the leading expert on a topic that has dominated our headlines, for weeks at this point. and probably will continue to do so for quite a long time.
Someone I think we’ve spoken to before on the program, but, whose work has probably never seemed more relevant, at least not in recent months, that we’re speaking of course of Elliot Cohen. Elliot Cohen is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He’s a professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins University, author of the forthcoming book, the strategist, how to Think About War in Politics and co-host of the, the podcast Shield of the Republic.
Cohen is also the author of The Hollow Crown Supreme Command conquered into Liberty, the Big stick and a number of other works on military history and national security policy. he, in his time at Johns Hopkins, created their strategic studies program, at SAIS and also served as the school’s ninth Dean and perhaps most relevantly to our discussion today.
He also served as the counselor of the Department of State and in other positions in the United States Department of Defense. And within the intelligence community. Mr. Cohen, thank you for joining us this morning.
[00:01:45] Eliot Cohen: Oh, well thank you. thank you Zach. Thank you, Jeremi. It’s great to be with you and that was a very kind introduction. I appreciate it.
[00:01:52] Zachary Suri: Thank you. My pleasure. And, Mr. Cohen also recently published in The Atlantic, a very thought provoking piece entitled One War Two Mistakes published on March 17th. that, we wanna talk. With him about today and try and get a sense of, you know, what the pitfalls are for United States policymakers and leaders, but also ordinary citizens trying to, make sense of of the, of world events.
So, Dr. Cohen, what are these two mistakes, that you see, that you see, Americans and American policy makers, making in, in, in this war so far?
[00:02:31] Eliot Cohen: Well, so the article is really about, looking at the arguments and the views of both people who are adamantly in favor of this war and those who are adamantly against it. for myself, by the way, I’ve, deliberately refrain from. Saying whether I’m in favor or against ’cause. it’s a complicated question.
I think the for those who have been in favor of it the argument that I make is, the problem is the failure of the administration to do any of the political work that’s necessary to, to wage war. And that’s first explaining to the American people why and why this matters and how it might go.
Failure to do work with our allies, and, you know, prepare the groundwork there. And I would say third failure to have the kind of deliberate policymaking process, which you absolutely need if you’re gonna go to war. I mean, I think one, one of the reasons why I. As I said I wouldn’t argue in favor of the wars.
I just have very little faith in this administration. and I think it’s, you know, it’s also it’s a dangerous precedent as I also say, to have major uses of military force, which are not authorized by Congress. I mean, some presidents have gone for authorizations for the use of military force.
President Bush did, in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Some have not, including, president Obama, so who authorized a substantial bombing campaign and Libya, but did not ask Congress to authorize it. The argument on the other side though, is for those who are denouncing the war is I, you know, I say. You need to take seriously the nature of the Iranian problem.
and it is a profound problem. Iran has been at war with us, really in many ways since the founding of the Islamic Republic. Its hostility to the United States, let alone its desire to exterminate the state of Israel, is part of its DNA, and it’s been there pretty much forever. It is a very dangerous state.
And there, you know, we’ve tried every other way of dealing with it, and none of them have worked. That doesn’t mean that this is necessarily the right way, it’s just that, you know, I think there’s a lack of seriousness if one doesn’t say, okay, the best way to deal with Iran is thus and such.
so I, this is one of those cases where I think there’s just a lot of muddled thinking. Going around and, you know, like all policy, like most policy problems, it, there’s actually not really a good, clear solution. You know, you’re making choices among bad options and the task of, a political leaders to choose between the things that are bad and the things that are awful.
[00:05:23] Jeremi Suri: Right Elliot. I think that’s a very. Balanced as one would expect from you account of this. And as you say, there are no easy solutions. It’s a longstanding problem. one of the topics that comes up on both sides of the debate is the role of Israel. Those who are, opposed to the war, blame Israel for somehow cornering the United States.
It almost becomes an antisemitic argument about the Jews con, you know, controlling the US on the other side. Those who, you know, see Israel as some sort of savior nation. you know. Say the United States is now following the righteous lead of Benjamin Netanyahu. What’s your sense of the Israeli role in this?
[00:06:01] Eliot Cohen: So there, there are a couple of things here. First, you know, I have been plenty critical of Donald Trump. but one thing I don’t think he is. The, the shill or the tool of, any foreign leader. You know, it was an argument that people have made over Ukraine that, you know, that Trump is simply doing.
Vladimir Putin’s will. I don’t think that’s true, and I don’t think he’s simply doing. Vivian Natanya will, he has a long track record of hostility to the Islamic Republic. I mean, he has commentary really. Going back to the eighties, which some journalists have, dug up but not nearly enough. he has tried the path of negotiation over the nuclear program, which I think he is.
He was appropriately. Alarmed about, and we should be alarmed about. and let us not forget they tried to kill him. And that was a conclusion of the Biden Justice Department and a bunch of other people as well. one of the points I make in the articles I spoke at, at the Chautauqua Institution, a few years ago and, three weeks after I spoke.
On the same platform. Salman Rushdi was attacked by somebody who drove a knife into his eye, and that was a direct result of a death fois issued by Iran. The Israelis have their own concerns. Look, the Israelis have, I think have watched with tremendous trepidation both the growth of the Iranian nuclear program, but also of the ballistic missile program because even though they have some remarkable.
Defenses against ballistic missiles, those can be swamped. and what the Iranians have clearly been doing is preparing to swamp them simply with vast numbers. And for a little country like Israel that ends up being intolerable, and of course a, a nuclear weapon, and they are above all, they’re up against somebody, a against a country that really does want to.
Annihilate them. And I think that’s often not taken seriously enough. The dimension, the Israeli dimension during this war, though, I think is significant in another way. And again, I’m struck by the absence of commentary on this. So the Israeli Air Force has actually been doing as much work as the US Air Force and the US Navy here.
I mean, we have different capabilities than they do. You know, we have B two bombers. They do not, we have ships deployed in, just outside the Straits of Horus, they obviously do not, but in terms of as far as we can tell, the number of strikes delivered. The Israelis have done as much, possibly more than we have.
You know what I think people need to understand is the Israelis are the most formidable military power in the Middle East and not, you know, not just the Middle East. If you compare, say the Israeli Air Force with the Royal Air Force and the British still have a reasonably good air force, and you compare the number of strike aircraft that is airplanes that can deliver bombs.
They have like twice as many as the Brits do. Considerably more capable ones. They have more F 30 fives, they have F fifteens, which can deliver quite a payload, which the, British don’t. So I would say it’s probably twice as many aircraft and probably three to four times the capability.
it’s an extremely powerful force and I don’t think the story of the war is gonna be able to be told. Unless we take into account the Israeli side, including above all the intelligence side. I mean, it’s clear the Israelis have had terrific intelligence penetration of Iran and they share that stuff with us.
So it, you know, I think it’s, there’s a real synergy there.
[00:09:30] Jeremi Suri: But Elliot, just to come back to the, political diplomatic question here to, to what extent or how do you think, that Israeli leadership influenced American leadership?
[00:09:41] Eliot Cohen: You know, I’m sure they were arguing for this, I do, I think they were driving the train. No. I, you know, Trump I don’t think has sentimental attachments to anything or anybody, or to any country. I think he had a number of his own reasons why he wanted to do this. It was probably a lot easier to do it knowing that you had a very capable ally who would be in this with you.
I suspect, by the way, this is another part, remember the Israelis are not the only ones who are playing on the diplomatic field. The, I think the Saudi foreign minister, if I’m not mistaken, paid a visit to Washington shortly before the war to kind of quietly argue in favor of doing this. you know, the while, while in public, the Saudis and the Emiratis were, cautious and sort of a bit standoffish in private, it’s quite clear that they’ve been arguing for it because they see the same, as rather similar kind of menace.
it just that they did not want to get directly. Engage for a whole bunch of understandable, understandable reasons. So I think, you know, Trump was hearing from a number of, a number of allies in the region, beginning with the Israelis, but very much including some of the Gulf States urging him to do this.
[00:11:05] Zachary Suri: That makes sense. it seems like the end goal, of the Saudis and the Israelis, and certainly the professed end goal, at least at the beginning of President Trump, was regime changed Iran. Or the sort of destruction of the Islamic Republic, as it currently, stands. Do you think that goal is realistic?
Was it ever realistic? And what should we make of that sort of sense of a goal.
[00:11:33] Eliot Cohen: So I think it was always low probability, but not inconceivable. I mean, you know, you don’t really know what the, say the tensile strength, if I can put it that way of a. Regime is until it’s been tested and it has been tested, it does seem to be retaining some form of control, though again, you know, there’s so many unknowns in any war.
but, and in this war definitely as well we don’t really know how much centralized control they really still, that still maintain. You know, I think the most likely outcome is you get a regime. With a different, a different kind of strong man in charge that may not be stable. you know, the Iran the Islamic Republic has gone through different periods, some more repressive, some more open, with different kinds of leaders by, the supreme leader was gonna die anyway, but he died in this together with, A lot of, senior people. The, his replacement is his son, who clearly does not have the prestige and influence that his father did. He is not tato, he is not a religious scholar, really. He dresses like one, but he isn’t one. and so you ha and a lot of you know, very senior people like Ali Rajani have also been killed.
So you have now a group of second and third. tier people who are probably jockeying for power, and my guess is that jockeying will continue well after the bomb stop falling and what the regime will be like after that. I don’t know. I think it will be different than. than the regime was before. I mean, there was a kind of continuity between Aya Ho Khomeini, you know, the original founder of the Islamic Republic and Ali Chani, who was, you know, really one of his senior followers.
now you’re dealing with a different group of leaders, mainly from the, Revolutionary Guard Corps, but also at a different time when revolutionary zeal has diminished A lot of these pe for example the person who seems to be our, interlocutor or, Kali buff. Who was the mayor of Tehran, but before that was, I think an air force general of some sort and who was a brutal guy, you know, beats people with sticks and stuff like that.
that is a, they’re a different generation and much more corrupt, which is something that, that people have not focused on. Khali B in particular has, a track record on that with apartments. Turkey and things of that kind. So it’s that regime is changing, you know, WW is it likely to become a liberal democracy in the next two or three years?
I would say probably not. Will it be a different kind of regime after this? I don’t think there’s any question. It’s already happening.
[00:14:31] Zachary Suri: That makes sense. one more question on this sort of que this, point about the end goal. Or the end game. do you think American Allies, I’m thinking in particular not just of American allies in the Middle East, but American allies in Europe, with whom the United with whom Trump administration has already had a rocky relationship, do you think those allies are on board with at least tacitly, this goal of trying to drastically change the regime in Iran?
[00:14:59] Eliot Cohen: Well, I’m sure they would. They would be happier if that would happen. I lemme just backtrack for a moment though. So, you know, people get fixated on the regime change question, which is right since it was, it’s been raised in one way by Trump in another way, by Natanya. But there are other objectives which are kind of much harder and more definable.
You know, eliminate the Navy, you know, really do most of the remaining work on the. Nuclear program, really set back their missile industry and their, going after the arsenals of missile launchers. So things of that kind. And I think those are actually being. Being achieved in some measure for the Europeans.
You know, everything is colored by the fact that they really hate mistrust Trump on the one hand. On the other hand, they need the United States and, and the Islamic Republic is a problem for them. You know, when I was in government during the George W. Bush administration, the French in particular were much harder over on the Iranian nuclear program than we were. and they saw the threat. And I think part of it is that, you know, the French who in GE in general, I think are harder headed than, say the Brits. You know, they were looking at the Iranian missile programs and we just saw, you know, the Iranians popped off two intermediate range ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia.
I think one crash and one one was shot down. Now that’s significant because the Iranians already have plenty of missiles that can reach. Tel Aviv, why did they need a missile like that for? Well, if you look what the threat rings are, that puts Paris and London under, within range of Iranian missiles, and they actually don’t have any real defense against that. and I think that’s a scary, and that should be a scary thing for them. And. That’s A and B, they are much more dependent on oil outta the Persian Gulf than we are. I mean, part of Trump’s confidence in all this which may be misplaced is, you know, the United States is now this huge hydrocarbon producer of both oil and natural gas.
Now all that stuff is fungible to be sure. So it’s not like we get insulated from price rises but. We’re, they are more dependent than we are in many ways on hydrocarbons from really problematic countries, first Russia, and now from, from that part of the world. So they have concerns and then finally they wanna maintain, even with Trump in office.
A relationship with the United States, in part because they have to, in part because they hope the next president is easier to deal with. And that’s why, you know, you’ve seen a declaration by a number of European countries that they will contribute in some vague way. which might conceivably include things like mind sweeping, where they have more capability, frankly, than we do.
but that’ll remain to be seen.
[00:18:03] Jeremi Suri: So Elliot, one of, your many books that I admire is Strategic Command. it’s really, I think the seminal work on understanding the relationship between civilian and military leadership. As a historian, I admire your coverage of Lincoln and Churchill and really unpacking, the unequal argument they had, as you call it, with their military leadership over strategy and aligning strategy with, political, goals.
how would you describe and rate the Trump administration, within your framework?
[00:18:33] Eliot Cohen: Yeah. Well, you know, to the extent that I understand it, which is, because I don’t have visibility into it, I don’t know what goes on in the sit room but from what’s observable on the outside first, it’s chaotic. it’s not a disciplined process. I think the president does clearly have, a high level of trust in the Chairman of the joint Chiefs of staff for now.
But he’s perfectly capable of changing things. what he doesn’t have around him are civilian advisors who are going be willing to contradict him. or really insists that these things be argued through in a really serious way. and so I don’t think you’re having the kind of tough dialogue that you really need to have.
Remember then, ca, general Kane’s, predecessor CQ Brown was fired for no. Particular reason other than quite possibly being black. and you know, so I, I don’t think there’s probably much of a dialogue here. I what I strongly suspect, and I think there, there’s evidence for this. You know, the US military is terrific at a number of things.
One of the things that’s really terrific at is planning. There are plans for everything and they’re very elaborated. So my guess here is that, you know, you had a conversation between, or multiple conversations between the chairman and the president. He laid out the, what the military calls an O plan, an operations plan.
For that part of the world, which, you know, generations now of officers have worked on. And you know, Trump probably said, oh, okay that’s fine. and did, they didn’t really engage in a, you know, a really deep thinking through of what might this mean? What are different branches and sequels and all that.
And so I think what we’re seeing now probably is the working out. Or working through rather of an operations plan that’s been long ing gestation, but which is not one that’s probably been shaped very much by this administration.
[00:20:25] Jeremi Suri: And just to follow up on that Elliot, briefly, based on your scholarship. What is the problem with doing it this way, as you’ve described it?
[00:20:34] Eliot Cohen: Well, you know, I mean, longer, subject for which, you know, people can read Supreme Command or hopefully the strategist as well when it comes out. I mean, war is fundamentally about politics. It only makes sense in a political context where you have political objectives, and. The question is whether the military means are harmonized with, not just with the political objectives, but with the political circumstances in which you’re operating.
and you know, if you don’t have that kind of intimate dialogue, which can be very tough, you’re not likely to get. Particularly good strategy. it’s also the case that, you know, it’s the military profession is one in which, you know, unlike medicine, you know, if you’re about to have a really serious surgery, chances are you’ll go get a second opinion from an equally competent, surgeon.
And that’s what, you know, doctors themselves recommend. In the case of dealing with the Mil military it’s kind of a, you know, anony, I mean, there’s only one, you have only one military. You have only one chairman. So you’re not really gonna be getting a whole lot of second opinions unless you go looking for them, and that which can cause a lot of friction.
and then the third thing is, you know, military technology is complicated. Military organizations are complicated. Civilians frequently don’t know how they operate and what they’re like. They’re, you know, cases of people like Trump are really. Anybody around them, they’re frequently not very familiar with the culture.
Even if you’re somebody like Hegseth who has some military experience, that’s the army, that doesn’t mean he knows the Navy or the Marine Corps or the Air Force, which have very distinct cultures. And so you need a very intimate dialogue to make sure the civilians really understand what the military.
Is doing. While the military needs to understand how the politicians are thinking, and you know, they’re not by nature politicians, they’re, you know, their mode of life, the way they view the world is quite different. So it takes a lot of work to get some mutual understanding there. And I would certainly be worried in this case that you haven’t had that.
[00:22:45] Zachary Suri: Well, you’ve offered us a wonderful and a wonderfully detailed and nuanced, understanding of how to think about this war. I did wanna ask one final, very quick question, which is, You know, the way that this war has certainly affected most Americans is in their gas prices, which was something that the Trump administration seemed to fear above all else.
in a war like this, or at least, politically, do you think that puts a sort of ticking time bomb at the end of this war? Sort of requires President Trump, particularly going into a midterm election to end this as soon as possible.
[00:23:22] Eliot Cohen: Well, perhaps, but. First, even with the oil prices and, you know, prices at the, at the gas tank, there was a very good piece by Brett Stevens, who I think very deliberately was pushing back against a lot of the more pessimistic arguments in the New York Times. And one of the things he does is say, well, let’s look at actually what oil.
Price or gas prices at the gas station are compared to what they were in the past. And his basic point is actually it’s not that huge a bump, honestly. I think Americans are probably more affected in their day-to-day lives by, the, you know, collapse of TSA and, by this unconscionable. Inability of our political leaders to cut a deal where, you know, these people who we rely on to keep our US safe, in the air get paid.
I mean, that’s, that I think is probably more troubling to a lot of Americans. I think the, you know, of course the ice raids and all that much more troubling to a lot of Americans and besides, you know, this is the casualties in this war. I mean, all casualties are awful. Have been astonishingly low.
They don’t really affect anybody. If you’re in the, if you know, if you have a member of your family who is a pilot flying there, maybe you’re concerned or manning a radar station. But, that is a tiny minority of Americans. So, you know, it’s very different from the world that I grew up in where, you know, people were drafted and if you’re fighting the Vietnam War, and you have a son who’s turning 18. You know, you bet you think about it very seriously. That’s not the world we’re in. This is a world that most people are watching on YouTube or TikTok or something like that. And it’s not really distinguishable for most of them from video games. And that’s, I mean, that’s an awful thing, but it’s, I think it’s the truth of the matter.
[00:25:24] Zachary Suri: Thank you so much Dr. Cohen for joining us, today and for offering your insights on this conflict. Thank you also professor Suri for joining us today. And thank you, most of all, to our wonderful listeners for joining us for this episode of This is Democracy.