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Trump’s War to Nowhere

Intercept senior editor Ali Gharib discusses the human and political toll of the Israel–U.S. war on Iran with Séamus Malekafzali.

The Israel–U.S. military campaign in Iran has killed more than 1,000 people since the assault began on February 28. A war powers resolution in the Senate to curb President Donald Trump’s ability to drag the U.S. into the war failed on Wednesday. Similarly, a measure in the House failed on Thursday. 

“This war is just a few days old and it’s escalating really quickly,” says Ali Gharib, senior editor at The Intercept. “It’s becoming a regional conflict,” as Iran retaliates and targets U.S. bases as well as Israel and Gulf energy sites. This week on The Intercept Briefing, Gharib discusses the human and political toll of the Israel–U.S. war on Iran with co-host Jordan Uhl and journalist Séamus Malekafzali, who has been based in Paris and Beirut.

Sources Briefed on Iran War Say U.S. Has No Plans for What Comes Next

“Trump has repeatedly failed to articulate anything even resembling coherent about why the U.S. got into this war,” says Gharib. He adds, “Marco Rubio even — who, again, not the sharpest tool in the shed, but usually has his shit pretty together — but in this case, he’s like changing his tune every two days because he has to keep up with Trump’s inanity about what the reasons for the war were.”

The end game for Israel here, says Malekafzali, is they want “a state that is incapable of defending itself, a state that is no longer sovereign.” He adds, “If you are bombarding police stations, if you are bombarding hospitals and schools, border guards, when you are attacking the very fabric of any society as your main target, CENTCOM and the IDF together, that means that you are going toward state collapse.”

“These are hard-won lessons over and over again for the United States — war after war, fallout, blowback. It just happens again and again. And yet we always seem to get leaders who are willing to run willy-nilly into these things,” says Gharib.

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen. 

Jordan Uhl: Welcome to the Interceptive Briefing, I’m Jordan Uhl. 

Ali Gharib: And I’m Ali Gharib. I’m a senior editor at The Intercept.

JU: Today we’re going to talk about the growing war in the Middle East, specifically Iran. Last Saturday, Israel and the United States launched unprovoked attacks on Iran, and assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as well as several senior military officials. 

The Israel–U.S. strikes have continued on Iran, bringing the death toll to more than 1,000 people since the assault began. On Thursday, the World Health Organization verified 13 attacks on health infrastructure that killed four health care workers. Ali, it feels like we’ve seen this playbook run before, but this time, it seems like they’re trying to distinguish what is and what isn’t a war.

AG: This is like the sort of last redoubt of the idiot, when it comes to national security policy, is that you don’t need congressional approval. There’s no real stakes because this isn’t a war. This is part of a long history. It’s bipartisan. We’ve seen Democrats in office. We’ve seen Republicans in office. People are constantly starting these wars. They say they’re going to be limited strikes. Well, you know what? When you’re dropping bombs on another country and that country is attacking your military personnel in the area, that’s a textbook war.

In the so-called global war on terror, they could bullshit this and say, “Oh, we’re not going after armies. We’re going after these non-state actors and terrorist groups,” or whatever. But in this case, it’s like you’re literally attacking the leadership of another country and another country’s military.

There’s just no way to bullshit this. This is war. It’s what it is. There’s civilians dying. It’s the whole thing. It’s maybe the most egregious example since Vietnam of this phenomenon.

JU: Now there are efforts in Congress to rein in the Trump administration’s attacks on Iran. We will look to see how those votes develop, but I think there’s a general sense of pessimism around the outcome.

Another way of looking at it is just getting people on the record. Do you think that’ll be something that is an anchor around people’s necks going into the midterms?

AG: It looks increasingly like this is going to be a midterm issue. We’re seeing these breaks. In the Senate, it was pretty clean.

There was a war powers vote this week that failed and we saw [Sen. John] Fetterman, D-Pa., was the only Democrat to peel off, which isn’t that surprising. He voted last summer against a war powers resolution to block another Iran attack, which would’ve given Congress the power to stop exactly this calamity that we’re seeing right now. But it failed on basically party lines, with Fetterman defecting.

Then in the House there’s a version where we see some pro-Israel Democrats peeled off and tried to introduce their own version, which would allow Trump 30 extra days to continue the war before a congressional block gets imposed. We wrote about it this week on The Intercept. Our great D.C. reporter, Matt Sledge, wrote about it.

Democratic Leaders Avoid Criticizing Trump’s Iran War. Now Voters Will Have a Say.

Because this is becoming a midterm issue, and these guys have to try and thread the needle here between satisfying their pro-Israel donors, satisfying the American voters who are not happy with this war, all told. And we’ve seen in some cases, some pro-Israel Democrats who were getting primaried from the left came out preemptively and said, I oppose this. And they’re still getting hit by their insurgent primary opponents for not having come out soon enough and hard enough.

This is something that Jon Stewart made a joke about this week, is that it seems like every time a president starts a war, Congress wants to come in next Thursday and do a vote about whether it’s authorized or not.

There’s logic to what these insurgent Democrats are saying is that we’ve known what’s going to happen here for a long time, and Democrats on Capitol Hill could not get their act together. And yeah, I think that some of these progressive insurgents that we’re seeing are going to make hay of that on the campaign trail.

JU: So there are many troubling things coming from this administration. The general sense is that they don’t have a clear objective or plan. We’ve seen people forward concerns in Congress, and especially in the anti-war camps. But then how the White House has been messaging on this — even down to their social media posts — has people deeply troubled.

There’s a video, for instance, from the official White House account that was posted on Wednesday that spliced together footage from “Call of Duty” — I would argue a military propaganda video game — with footage of actual strikes in Iran. This is that blurring of lines that critics of intervention and those games have been worried about for years because it sanitizes the act of killing.

We’re already distancing ourselves from direct combat through this unseen aerial warfare, and that is pushed to young people through these games. And now the White House specifically is pushing that. So I’m curious if you could touch on both of those things: the sanitization of war and the meaning of war, and also this lack of a plan. 

AG: Honestly, I think those things go hand in hand that these guys — Trump, especially, you would think maybe Hegseth’s little military experience would be different, but I think maybe he’s a little too dull to really get what’s going on here — they just seem to not get the stakes that these are the most severe decisions that a government can make and that the stakes are really life and death, and not only just in the immediate dropping bombs, but long-term ramifications.

These are hard-won lessons over and over again for the United States — war after war, fallout, blowback. It just happens again and again. And yet we always seem to get leaders who are willing to run willy-nilly into these things. 

On the one hand, they don’t take it seriously. It’s a political ploy. They think it’s a joke. They’re just like meme lords running around trying to goose up their base to get all hot and bothered about bombing some Muslims over there. Then on the other hand, they’re not taking it seriously in the actual war planning either. It’s not just the propaganda. 

Watching Trump’s statements has been really incredible. To watch Marco Rubio even — who, again, not the sharpest tool in the shed, but usually has his shit pretty together — but in this case, he’s like changing his tune every two days because he has to keep up with Trump’s inanity about what the reasons for the war were.

Rubio Admits That America Is Fighting Israel’s War

Rubio came out and said the other day that he thinks their imminent threat was that Israel was going to attack and there was going to be blowback on U.S. assets in the region. That’s a maybe true but slightly embarrassing justification for war.

And then you had Trump who came back after he was asked about Rubio’s comments and said no, no, this happened because of me. We were negotiating with the Iranians over their nuclear program — which by the way, as the details have come out, it turns out they were, and there was huge progress being made. And then the U.S. bombed the shit out of Iran. 

But Trump said these talks were going on and the talks weren’t going anywhere and were collapsing. (Again, bullshit.) And that he was worried that that would spur the Iranians to attack — for which there is no evidence. Something Iran has never done in the history of the Islamic Republic is lash out after a diplomatic exercise like that has failed. I’ve covered this for my whole career: There’s been a lot of diplomacy that’s failed, and Iran is never so much as hinted that they’re going to then lash out afterward. That........

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