PDB Special Bulletin | Baker & Slater: Is Iran Trying to Trap Trump in a Forever War?

Mike Baker (0:00)

Hey, Mike Baker here. I recently had a chance to sit down with my good friend, Mike Slater, host of the excellent Politics by Faith podcast. Now, we took a step back from the day to day headlines and we looked at the Iran conflict from the 30,000 foot view, sort of the big picture, why President Trump got involved in the first place, who and what is the Islamic Republic of Iran, where negotiations may be headed and what's really motivating both sides. I hope you'll take a few minutes to give it a listen.

That's the Politics by Faith Podcast with Mike Slater.

Mike Slater (0:36)

Let's go to our friend Mike Baker, the great Mike Baker, host of one of the top podcasts in the entire world, The President's Daily Brief. Mr. Baker, how do you do, sir?

Mike Baker (0:46)

I do fine. I do fine. How do you do? We sound very formal.

Mike Slater (0:52)

Top of the morning to you, sir. I tip my hat to you away.

Mike Baker (0:55)

To you and your kin.

Mike Slater (0:58)

It's all good. I think everybody can know what I do. No one's ever called out my intro like that before.

I appreciate that. That's good. It deserves it. Everything looks good.

Mike Baker (1:08)

The world is in peace. We got a community of nations.

Mike Slater (1:11)

Yeah, that's right.

Mike Baker (1:11)

It's all good. Yeah.

Mike Slater (1:13)

Community of nations. Yeah. Is that what you all call it? That's great. Well, let's talk about this community.

So I think there's a lot of frustration. There's a lot of frustration about Iran. My read, correct me if I'm wrong, is that the president had a couple of massive, overwhelming, incredible victories, like don't even make sense victories. And a lot of peace president stuff was going on around the world, and then Maduro and that went, you know, like what? And I think he was on like a hot streak. So we're like, let's go to Iran. And I think the perception is that this hasn't gone well.

But I think, and this is what I'd like to make, first of all, get your assessment there, but also like your expertise on knowing our enemy. Like, who is this enemy? Who is Iran? We need to know who they are.

Mike Baker (2:03)

Yeah, I think... I think by everyone's perception, this hasn't gone well. And I think you're absolutely right to have pointed out the Venezuela incident. I think, unfortunately, that.

Set the table or at least kind of framed us a scenario for how this This could go.

Obviously, there was a lot of talk about the veracity, the credibility of the intelligence that was coming out saying they're just around the corner from having a nuclear weapon. You know, there's people that are in, you know, they say, yes, that's true. There's other people who say, I don't know if the intelligence has been corroborated. But I think they were a little bit intoxicated on the Venezuela experience and didn't necessarily, look, I don't want to say think this through because that doesn't give the Pentagon enough credit. But clearly, they thought this was going to take, much like Putin in Ukraine, I think the White House just imagines that this was somehow going to happen very quickly. And part of that is what you then referred to, which is understanding who it is that we're dealing with. And we're dealing with Islamist fundamentalists. We're dealing with the Islamic Republic of Iran, the same leadership. Now, over the years, there's been this narrative occasionally thrown out there by people like John Kerry or Joe Biden, Barack Obama, usually on the Democrat side. Well, right now, we're negotiating with the pragmatic leadership of Iran. We're dealing with the more realistic and pragmatic. That doesn't exist in the Western concept. We think that way. But over there, there's no such thing as a pragmatic Islamist fundamentalist, right? So I think we misunderstood who it is that we were dealing with, how much pain they were willing to bear, and push down on the Iranian people, what they already slaughter thousands of their own folks in the beginning of the year during those protests. So I think there were some real miscalculations here. And then it's a mystery to me how, and maybe we did, and we just don't necessarily see it in what happened afterwards, but it was always going to end up in the Strait of Hormuz. Right? That's their primary point of leverage. And so how we didn't understand that from the very outset, before we even let loose with the munitions.

So yeah, there's a lot of confusion here at this stage as to where is this thing going?