Trump ‘totally got it WRONG on Iran’: Fmr. State Dept. Vet

I don't have wars. I had no wars. We are following breaking news this morning. Overnight, the United States has carried out what President Trump calls, quote, a large-scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured. Breaking news overnight and developing this morning. The U.S. and Israel launching major combat operations against Iran. Mr. President, there are no signs that Iran is ready to stop fighting. So what is the plan? Is the plan to just keep bombing until they give up? Are there no signs? Why, do you know something that I don't know? You know, it's always been a traditional notion in Washington that a president's second term in office usually focuses more on foreign policy in an attempt to solidify a global legacy. That's also true for President Trump. Despite his America First agenda, the war in Ukraine, global tariffs, battle with NATO allies, regime change in Venezuela, and the ongoing war in Iran, they've all dominated the Trump administration's focus since he returned to office last year. Let's talk about it with President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass. And, Richard, this keeps going, and I think we need to put some perspective on it for our friends that are watching every day, because things come at us so quickly. Let's step back and just say, here's an America First president who said, I'm not going to get you into any more wars. We're going to focus on home instead of away. And look what's happened. He started by threatening Greenland, threatening Canada, threatening Cuba, invading Venezuela, invading Iran, insulting NATO, insulting Maloney in Italy, insulting the prime minister of Spain, and insulting seemingly every other good ally that we have, yanking troops out of Germany, threatening to take troops out of Poland, one of our best military allies. I know it's asking a lot, but tell us where we are almost two years in to Trump's second term globally, and how would you define his foreign policy? Joe, if I had to come up with a phrase, I would call it a kind of aggressive unilateralism, and I think that's the overriding characteristic of it. There's obviously an anti-Allied, anti-European bias. As you know, when Donald Trump came into office, he really believed two things passionately. One was a real animus against allies, and second of all, a real animus against trade, that somehow trade was ripping apart. So I think some of that was predictable for Donald Trump. Some of the excesses, the thing you mentioned, Greenland, Canada, that's an odd thing. I didn't see that coming. Traditionally, the United States, Joe, has run what I would call an imperial foreign policy. We were promoting a kind of order. This is more of an imperialist foreign policy. He's looking at things to acquire, whether it's access to energy in Venezuela or new pieces of real estate in Greenland or Canada. I think all of that, and then I put in a separate box, Joe, because it's hard to find a common thread in Iran. And the only way I can make sense of Iran, and I don't think you'll disagree with this, is that he got it dead wrong. Iran was going to be an easy cakewalk, another Venezuela. If you look at the national security strategy, you look at everything Donald Trump promised, it wasn't to get into open-ended, costly wars. So there's no way to make sense of Iran, except that the president and those around him totally, totally, totally got it wrong. And now he's caught, and he's flailing because he's not sure whether to double down or to back out. And that's where I think we are. But the most common characteristic, again, is one of unilateralism. Aggressive unilateralism, which, again, doesn't really have too many parallels that you can connect Donald Trump with other presidents in the past. I will say so much of this has to do with legacy, if you're talking about seizing Greenland, even if it offends all of our NATO allies, calling Canada the 51st state, even though they're one of our closest, most important allies. This aggressive unilateralism and insulting of allies has put us in a very difficult position. I want to add to the discussion, contributing editor at the Financial Times, Kim Gattas. And, Kim, Richard was just talking about how both the United States and Israel find itself greatly challenged. The United States tied down in Iran, and Israel not only tied down across the region, but also more unpopular with United States voters than at any time since 1948. How is that impacting the direction not only of this war, but also the region? Joe, it's very interesting to hear Richard speak about Israeli overreach and American overreach, because I also think the Iranians are overreaching at this moment in the conflict. And reading through the tea leaves of what Iranian officials are saying, including the foreign minister, Araghchi, who was speaking just over the weekend in an interview, there's really a sense that although it may look like they have the upper hand, closing the Strait of Hormuz, inflicting damage and casualties on the United States and its forces and troops in the region, they also feel quite stuck, it sounds like, from listening to these interviews, the Iranian foreign minister was sounding quite demoralized, almost. So, how this is translating in the region is differently in each country. In Lebanon, there's a real sense that we are stuck between the Israeli fire and Iranian fire. The Iranians using Lebanon as a battleground to fight their wars against America and Israel, and the Israelis, of course, establishing this depopulated, uninhabitable buffer zone in southern Lebanon. We have the Lebanese president in the United States meeting President Trump, and we'll have to see what that leads to in terms of any concessions that the United States can get from Israel for the Lebanese. And then across the Gulf, Joe, you have a sense of limbo. Of course, Arab countries, Gulf countries were not happy to be dragged into this war that they didn't ask for, that they cautioned against. But there's also a lot of anger at Iran, and I would not discount that as a factor in how things unfold going forward. Boy, that's so important. Let's bring in a columnist and associate editor at The Washington Post, David Ignatius. David, let's underline Kim's point right now, because obviously we're looking at this from a position of how this could be a growing quagmire for the United States. If you step back and just look over the past year or two, you have an Iranian regime, which you said was ready to fall under its own weight. The fact that Donald Trump may have given them a second life doesn't take away from the fact they still face the same economic challenges. They still face the same popular discontent there. But it is fascinating when Kim talks about the Iranian foreign minister being down. It reminds me again, as we talked about earlier this week, David, of the checks and balances in the United States. There always have been. They've just been made more scrambled and Byzantinian since this war began. Talk us through that. So we've been talking about how the United States is stuck, and I think that's equally true of Iran. Iran has been hit so hard, and that comes after years of economic neglect and decline. Let's not forget the Iranian people were so unhappy. In January, they were in the streets by the tens of thousands, risking their lives to protest this regime. The estimates at that time were maybe 20 percent at most supported the regime. The rest of the country was really ready for change. And I suspect that remains true. The problem is that the people who have the guns in Iran are just intoxicated with their resistance to the United States and Israel. And you can understand why. They've stood up to bombardment. They're still going. They're still fighting. So they think this conflict is going their way. It's going their way only in the sense that they're still in the game. They're still able to fire drones and missiles to hit targets in Bahrain and Jordan, inflict casualties, deaths on the United States. So it gives them a sense of power. But they're really playing a pretty weak hand. Week by week, their ability to project power declines. My own feeling is that the biggest mistake that President Trump could make is to deepen American involvement on the ground. I suspect that's precisely the thing that the Iranians would like to see us do. I'm reminded of bin Laden's strategy after 9-11. Suck the United States into a conflict, trapped in conflict, on their turf. So there's a lot of that going on with Iran. In a month, if the U.S. is successful in choking their revenues, they're going to be in even worse shape. And they're going to have a population that says, hey, wait a minute. How are we going to beat the United States? And so I think Trump has to do the thing that's obviously hardest for him, which is to be patient.