Monday Morning Politics: Trump's Saudi Nuclear Deal

**Kusha Navadar** (0:09)
Good morning, New York City. It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Kusha Navadar. I'm filling in for Brian today.
Coming up on today's show, Brooklyn Assembly Member Robert Carroll will be my guest to talk about something he's got cooking, which is to bring the Olympics to New York State. He thinks the Winter Olympics from this past year, which were split between Milan and Cortina in Italy, could be a model for us. And he's proposing the 2042 Games be split between New York City and Lake Placid all the way upstate. This is the kind of thing that takes a lot of planning. So the state's already working on it. And Assembly Member Carroll is on the exploratory committee.
Plus, later in the show, we're going to hear from a history professor and the host of a popular US history podcast called History That Doesn't Suck. We'll talk about his new book that looks at eight moments in America's 250 years when our politics were more divisive than now and how we moved past them. That professor is Greg Jackson from Utah Valley University. And we'll wrap up today's show with a conversation that I think could be potentially really helpful for a lot of people. It's about how many people getting married now are writing a clause into their prenups that would protect the stay-at-home parent should one of them choose to take that path. It's important because in a divorce, often it's the parent who chooses to take a break from work to stay home with the kids who's left with less money and fewer options, despite their contributions to the family. Prenups, especially for stay-at-home parents. Stick around for that. But first, this.
Last week, the president was looking at plans for ramping up attacks on Iran. Secretary of State Rubio said this on Thursday.

**Marco Rubio** (1:55)
I saw Arachi, their foreign minister, who the other day say something about their policies, an eye for an eye.
The president's policy is a head for an eye. I mean, honestly, that's what it's going to be. I mean, they will pay a very heavy price for the things they're doing. They're already paying a very heavy price.

**Kusha Navadar** (2:11)
And the price of oil spiked to over $100 a barrel. But this weekend, no attacks on either side, and it seems diplomatic efforts are starting up again and the price of oil has dropped. There was also an announcement of a deal to provide nuclear power to Saudi Arabia, which the president then seemed to throw a wrench in a social post the next day following strenuous objections from Israel and others. So for more on the status of the war, the deal with the Saudis, and Israeli President Netanyahu's visit to the White House this week, we're joined by Fred Kaplan, Slate's War Stories columnist, contributor to the British publication, the I-Paper, and the author of The Bomb, Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War, and of the novel A Capital Calamity. Fred, welcome back to WNYC.

**Fred Kaplan** (3:05)
Thanks, Zoe. It's good to be here.

**Kusha Navadar** (3:06)
Always great to have you. So, Fred, I mentioned that on Friday, word was that President Trump was meeting at the White House with advisors on whether to escalate attacks on Iran after the June ceasefire collapsed and the latest US offer for resuming it was rejected by Iran. But he evidently decided to hold off. Here's UN. Ambassador Mike Waltz on Meet the Press just yesterday.
What the president is doing right now, as we've seen all along, is giving some talks, some space. Talks are ongoing. They're happening at every level, from the more technical aspect of it, all the way to the highest levels, of course. Okay, so Fred, there's a lot to parse through here. I guess, just right at the top, is there any word on where talks stand now?

**Fred Kaplan** (3:53)
About the same place that they were a week ago, two weeks ago, three weeks ago. You know, I don't know how many times President Trump has said of Iran, oh, rational people there now, they want to make a deal. I got a call this morning which said, sir, we want to make a deal.
And it's not happened because, I mean, if this is really, we are now involved in what back in Cold War days, used to be called a half war. In other words, you would prepare for the major war, with the Soviet Union or whatever, and then you'd have enough left over for a small war. I mean, Vietnam was considered a small war when it began too. It didn't turn out that way. But we're, the reason why Trump has not gone ahead with further attacks, well, there are two reasons. One, he's been told by his military advisors that given that they've attacked more than 13,000 targets and it hasn't affected Iranian behavior in the slightest, there really aren't that many more targets to attack that stand any chance of affecting their behavior in the future. And second, those 13,000 attacks back starting in February, they depleted a lot of our major weapon systems, especially air defense systems to the point where if a major war did start right away, we would be in serious trouble. And so why go to the trouble of resuming the war against Iran with quite possibly no impact except for further depleting our own arsenal? So that's why he's taking a break. And the Iranians know this.