Welcome back to the Rational Policy Podcast! In this installment, Episode 42, your steadfast hosts and break down the week in news, touching on policy, politics, and foreign affairs. We start with the latter, delving into the latest updates on the Iran ‘deal’ and how things look a week later. (Spoiler alert: not great!) We talk about the Iranian refusal to comply with the very terms it agreed to, the piss-poor and contradictory statements from the Trump administration, and the centering of Vice President JD Vance as a pro-deal messenger to the American public. We also discuss the potential resumption of fighting, what this war has accomplished, and how we could still win the peace, in spite of the White House’s best efforts. Mike also posits an alternative and more ambiguous end to the conflict, one that might be more consonant with American interests.

After this discussion, we remain overseas but shift to rank politics, talking about the rapid and stunning decline of the just-resigned British prime minister Keir Starmer. We mention how the Labour Party has squandered its historic electoral landslide, the very real issues with migration and related violence in Europe, and why the left’s inability to deal with the problems they ran against could open the door for a dramatic pendulum-swing in the region’s politics. Finally, we come back stateside to talk about the recent New York primary elections, focusing on the far-left Democratic Socialist (read: communist) primary winners who will be in Congress early next year. What do these results say about the future of the Democratic Party in America? (Hint: nothing good.)

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Check it out, follow us on Twitter/X (Mike / Art), and share the podcast with anyone you think might appreciate it. Thanks for listening. We’ll be back next week with two Very Special Episodes. Until then, enjoy the summer weather and the air conditioning! USA! USA!

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The Rational Policy Podcast is back! After a weeklong hiatus, we return with Episode 41, in which hosts and dive into the latest developments in news and politics over the past fortnight. Unsurprisingly, we spend the lion’s share of the podcast discussing the war (or conspicuous lack thereof) in Iran, breaking down the just-signed Memorandum of Understanding between Tehran and Washington. We talk about the ridiculously bad terms of that ‘deal’, how it gives away the store to the Iranians, and why the president suddenly got cold feet when he was on the precipice of victory. We also touch on why this agreement is worthless, how it will inevitably fall apart, and what might happen afterward. This isn’t the end of the war, but it might be end of Donald Trump’s ability to credibly threaten the use of force to achieve American national aims - and that is a very dangerous thing.

Another dangerous thing is our second topic, the lapsing of FISA intelligence collection authority after Democrats held the renewal up to protest Trump’s terrible nomination of Bill Pulte as Director of National Intelligence. The rationale may have been sound, but the consequences could be massive; let’s hope we never see them. We finish off with a discussion of the World Cup currently ongoing here in the good old US of A. We talk about the tournament itself, the way it has helped demolish the preconceived notions that foreigners have about America, and how it showcases the best of our great nation.

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Check it out, follow us on Twitter/X (Mike / Art), and share the podcast with anyone you think might appreciate it. Thanks for listening. We’ll be back next week. Until then, enjoy the World Cup. Go USA!

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I’ve returned to the pages of National Review again, discussing the latest US-Iran memorandum of understanding. My piece takes a different approach than the usual criticism (of which I have plenty!1), instead focusing on why any deal with the Iranian regime is a fool’s errand. I explain the three major structural factors that preclude the regime from making a deal that is good for America and undercut their claims on enforcement and compliance. The regime’s legitimacy rests on staunch opposition to the “Great Satan” of America, it lacks the ability to enforce deal terms on radical and autonomous IRGC cadres, and the regime lies like it breathes. All of these factors make a deal with Iran worth less than the paper it is written on.

Below is an excerpt, but the whole essay can be read here.

In many ways, this whole back-and-forth misses the forest for the trees. It does not particularly matter if this deal is in some ways better or worse than the JCPOA. It does not much matter whether Iran has agreed to our demands or we have agreed to theirs. What matters is the ground truth: No deal that could possibly be agreed to by the Islamic Republic of Iran is a good one for the United States. Three major structural factors internal to the Iranian regime itself ensure that this is the case.

First, the regime’s domestic legitimacy depends on its stringent opposition to America. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the regime has rested on three pillars to justify its existence to the Iranian people. It claimed to be a better steward of the country than the government of the shah, it repudiated the hereditary monarchy and replaced it with a theocratic government of Islamic jurists, and it promoted itself as the mortal enemy of the United States, orienting all foreign policy to defeating the “Great Satan.” Today, two of those three foundational claims have collapsed. Over the past 47 years, the mullahcracy has proven to be a complete failure at improving the lives of its citizens, funneling funds best used to face down domestic challenges into foreign terrorist proxies, allowing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to co-opt much of the country’s productive economy, and brutally repressing ordinary Iranians who dare speak up in protest. After the killing of longtime leader Ali Khamenei, the second pillar has fallen as well; his son Mojtaba, nobody’s idea of a respected Islamic jurist, has been appointed supreme leader with the backing of the IRGC. All the regime has left is staunch opposition to Washington, something on which it has doubled down for the past three months. There is no way for the regime to surrender to American terms and continue to rule Iran, so any deal must be heavily biased toward the interests of the mullahcracy.

Second, the regime as it exists today — massively degraded, with less centralized control than ever before — may not even be in a strong enough position to enforce a deal on its own radical cadres. Since the decapitation strikes that began this war in February, the Iranian response has relied on disparate and self-directed regional factions within the IRGC, granting serious autonomy to each sector to prosecute the war; this at least partly explains the continued cease-fire violations and the maintenance of the threat to commercial shipping. Our Iranian interlocutors may not be in control of the kinetic situation, especially if they are, as media reports suggest, politicians, not military leadership. If a deal is viewed as suboptimal by the most fundamentalist segments of the IRGC, even if leadership disagrees, they simply will not comply with it. And when the biggest current issue, the disruption of Hormuz, is being carried out entirely by rhetorical threats, the suggestion of mines, and occasional low-level drone launches, those independent actors within the system have immense ability to ruin the bargain. This has the potential to scuttle any deal we make, even if it receives widespread buy-in at the top levels of the regime. Hoping that our negotiating partners are able to enforce our demands on intransigent armed radicals is at odds with the evidence of reality.

Finally, we come to the Iranian regime’s specialty: deception. The Islamic Republic has routinely dissembled in the past. It says one thing and does the opposite. It talks out of both sides of its mouth, making conciliatory noises in discussions with credulous Westerners while simultaneously redoubling its malign efforts. Nowhere was this more obvious than with respect to the JCPOA. Iran repeatedly averred that it would never seek a nuclear weapon and solely intended to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. This was a lie, as we discovered when the Israelis spirited away the regime’s secret nuclear program archive from Tehran in 2018. It turns out that they never stopped working on weaponization, never intended to stop working on weaponization, and sought to use the fig leaf of the nuclear deal to protect its clandestine program until breakout was assured. They have returned to this strategy of mendacity throughout this war, including in the current cease-fire, during which the Strait of Hormuz was supposed to be open to all shipping. Clearly, it isn’t. Their continual redefinition of terms in these very negotiations similarly shows their deceitfulness.

Believing that Iran will comply with an agreement it makes is foolish in the extreme. The regime has proven again and again who they are and how they act. They lie, they cheat, and they find any and every way to undermine what has been agreed to. This constant deception, paired with the other structural factors detailed above, makes it impossible for any deal we sign with Iran to be a good or durable one for us. This agreement with the Iranian regime is not worth the paper it is written on. American leaders must recognize this fact and act accordingly. Anything less is courting disaster.

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I’m back in the pages of the always wonderful Commentary magazine with a review of historian Arthur Herman’s new book, Founder’s Fire: From 1776 to the Age of Trump. The book discusses how America’s enterprising spirit and empowerment of risk-seeking visionaries, in both politics and business, have characterized American history, centering this “founder’s fire” at the heart of our national narrative. The book is an excellent and interesting reframing of our past that builds up our nation instead of tearing it down - something far more in vogue among historians these days. The book is a great counter to the doomerism that has infected the modern American elite, bringing an optimism about the future that is deeply rooted in the successes of our past. Given the proximity to our nation’s 250th anniversary, this paean to American dynamism comes at a perfect time. And being able to review it for Commentary’s special America 250 issue is an absolute honor.

Below is an excerpt, but you can read the whole thing here.

The men who quite literally laid their lives on the line to forge this United States possessed a founder’s ethos—an exceptional approach that combined innovative thinking, extraordinarily high risk tolerance, unique vision, and dogged persistence. That same ethos has driven the country inexorably forward, helping achieve the dreams of our earliest forefathers and making America the most powerful and prosperous nation on earth. We are at our best when we embrace this adventurous and visionary spirit, both in public and private affairs. Such is the case that the historian and COMMENTARY contributor Arthur Herman posits in his latest book, Founder’s Fire: From 1776 to the Age of Trump. And that case is compelling.

In Herman’s telling, American history has been characterized by a series of foundings and re-foundings, simultaneously bringing us back to the first principles that made our nation unique and pushing us forward to surmount greater heights. These include crafting the documents and ideology that birth-ed America itself, preserving the Union through the dark night of civil war, developing the industries that allowed us to dominate the 20th century, winning a world war through the power of logistics and manufactur-ing, expanding civil rights to all Americans, and birthing the technologies that will see humanity advance to our next great frontier. These events were driven by extraordinary people with a relentless drive to pursue greatness and fulfill their own specific, often idiosyncratic vision. These “founders” had a great deal in common, from an immense appetite for risk and a penchant for perfection to a tenacity that bordered on obsessiveness and a visionary ability to imagine a different, brighter future. Whether in politics or business—and certainly in the synthesis of the two—this ethos has been behind most of the major successes and bold ideas that have characterized our national history for the past quarter-millennium.

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I was back on the excellent Break It Down Show with my friend Pete Turner and the always interesting Dr. Amber Brittain-Hale today to discuss the latest in the Iran War. We talked about the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding, explaining what we know, what we still don’t, and what to think about it. Will the war end with this agreement? Can Iran be trusted? Are we undermining our own leverage to get Tehran to comply with further demands in the future? We also hit on the administration’s messaging problem, the domestic politics of the conflict, and how the region and the world may react to this deal - if it indeed happens. Tune in to hear all this, as well as some great conversation about the hypercharged Treasury Department under Scott Bessent, the fight for the 21st century against our aligned adversaries, the need for nonpartisan patriotism as we approach America 250, and the unifying power of American sports.

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Check it out at the embed above and be sure to visit the BIDS YouTube page for more great content. Enjoy!

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Episode 40 of the Rational Policy Podcast is here! In this freewheeling episode, hosts and skip the usual news of the week for a series of digressions and tangents that actually ended up being one of our better podcast installments. In this semi-rambling hour or so, we hit on everything from American patriotism and the UFC fight on the White House lawn to the uselessness of the DNI position and how Trump’s second-term Cabinet compares to his first-term team. We also talk about how Trumpism was an outgrowth of the 2008 financial crisis and what that might mean about the long political tail of the Covid pandemic, lay out a counterfactual about how the George W. Bush administration would’ve been very different had 9/11 not happened, and interrogate why politics attracts all the worst people, while repelling the best our nation has to offer. And be sure to stay tuned for some great pop culture references, including a nod to the classic Mike Judge flick Office Space.

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Check it out, follow us on Twitter/X (Mike / Art), and share the podcast with anyone you think might appreciate it. Thanks for listening. We’re taking next week off, but we shall return in mid-June. And there will be a Very Special Episode coming soon, too. Until then, enjoy the fascinating cultural spectacle of UFC 250 next weekend. Cheers!

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In my latest essay for , I lay out a program that I’ve explored in several outlets in the past: Patriot Month. We have various identitarian celebrations all year long, focusing on identities that tend to divide Americans instead of unifying them. Patriot Month, a 30-day-long celebration of American civic identity, would be the antidote to that. It would celebrate all facets of American history, all while centering the things we share, not those that separate us. There has never been a better time to inaugurate Patriot Month, as we are fast approaching our 250th anniversary as a country. In the essay, I explain why this is needed now more than ever, how embracing a basic civic patriotism could be politically beneficial to the American right, and why patriotism is critical to the future of our shared nation.

Below is an excerpt, but you can read the whole thing at the Substack link.

Junto Magazine

Patriot Month

We are fast approaching the 250th anniversary of American independence, a genuine triumph for our nation and the truly radical and freedom-centric ideals its founding represents. The past quarter-millennium has shown the United States of America to be the greatest country on the face of the earth, a greatness benefiting not only its own citizens but peo…

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a month ago · 4 likes · Mike Coté

Today we unfortunately face a problem the likes of which our forebears could not imagine: a stunning lack of positive sentiment about the basic facets of our country. American patriotism has declined to new polling lows, heavily weighted toward younger generations and those left-of-center politically. This turn against traditional American patriotic sentiment isn’t only a problem of the progressive left: Yet even self-identified Gen Z Republican voters show significantly less patriotic feeling than the generations before them, something reflected in the marked turn some in the right-wing media have made over the past few years to try and capture this audience. These changes are explained by two things: the wholesale embrace of educational curriculum antagonistic to the very idea of American greatness and the promotion of those noxious ideas by the majority of one of our two political parties.

These are serious trends that are not solvable overnight, but thankfully they have not yet become fully dominant. That same survey shows that 58% of Americans are still either “extremely” or “very” proud of our country and a further 19% are “moderately” proud. This remains a supermajority of the population, which opens the door to civic renewal, or at least a broader public celebration of our national identity. We already have special months to commemorate all sorts of distinct ethnic, religious, racial, and sexual identities – adopted largely by progressive activists and their allies in government in order to promote leftist politics and the centering of their preferred identity signifiers – yet we do not have a period dedicated to the one identity we all share: being Americans. That is an oversight worth rectifying.

Enter Patriot Month. The 30 days between June 4 and July 4 are a perfect time to honor our shared American civic culture and the incredible history that has built the great nation we live in today. That month-long window is replete with important and representative events from the American past, notably during the founding era, showcasing the martial, political, and civic achievements of our society. From the June 4th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment to the anniversary of the D-Day invasions, from Flag Day to Juneteenth, with ample other events sprinkled throughout worthy of commemoration and celebration in our nation’s historical narrative throughout, June is perfectly positioned to host a unified celebration of American history and accomplishment. Independence Day is wonderful, and would be the capstone to each Patriot Month, but one day isn’t enough to stem the rising tide of unpatriotic feeling. Honoring our country each year and focusing on the centuries of good our nation has done are an antidote to the divisive progressivism that seeks to undermine our national story and stoke negativity about the United States. And there is no better time than our auspicious 250^th birthday to inaugurate these festivities. Rather than being a month of disparate, seemingly unconnected holidays, June could be a unified drumbeat of celebration for American achievement, American ideals, and American aspirations, all tied up into one month long narrative.

Patriot Month would bring Americans together, not drive us apart. Commemorating the glories of our past and the inherent and continued greatness of our nation remain popular propositions, no matter what the Democratic left and the too-online right may have you believe. Given the current predilections of the progressive faction that dominates Democratic politics, there is a major opening to claim the mantle of patriotism on the right and potentially attract independent voters who are turned off by the left’s performative anti-Americanism. If conservatives can leave the off-putting internecine debates over what truly makes a ‘real’ American aside and instead embrace a broader, civic-minded American identity, we can make political and cultural strides. Even outside of that, promoting patriotism is a good thing to do for American society and the longevity of our national project. Those on the American right have always embraced this idea and we should continue now.

Americans by and large love our country. They want to identify with it and be proud of it. But they are relentlessly told that it is and has always been a terrible place and its existence a bad thing for the world. That message is blatantly false and most people know it. The key is promulgating the truth: that America is great. That it always has been great. And that it is worth celebrating. Patriot Month would do just that.

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Episode 39 of the Rational Policy Podcast is here! Join hosts and for a breakdown of the most important topics in policy and politics - this time with a focus on everything AI. The subject is nigh-inescapable, impacting essentially all aspects of life today, from the economy to the dinner table. On this episode, we discuss the topic, both in broad and narrow terms. Are the controversies over things like data centers reasonable? Is AI going to destroy productive human employment? Will AI ever do anything but make slop Instagram videos? Are tech moguls the new robber barons? And what role - if any - should government have in the development and regulation of this burgeoning industry? Plus, tune in for digressions on the positive impact of Big Pharma, the future of foreign far-left funding in US politics, and whether there will ever be a deal with Iran.

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Check it out, follow us on Twitter/X (Mike / Art), and share the podcast with anyone you think might appreciate it. Thanks for listening. We’ll be back next week. Until then, take a moment to appreciate the glories of modern medicine. Cheers!

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I had the pleasure of once again joining my friend Pete Turner on the Break It Down Show to discuss all things Iran and foreign affairs. We detailed the newest developments in the pursuit of a war-concluding deal, asking whether pushing for a negotiated settlement is either necessary or smart. We talked about what sort of end states should be acceptable for the US in this conflict and how breaking out of the WWII paradigm - a neat and tidy unconditional surrender - is necessary to succeed geopolitically in the 21st century. We also hit on the regional situation, Iran’s economic and military constraints, the 2020 Soleimani strike, and the domestic politics of the war in the US. All this and much, much more can be found in this one-hour foreign policy extravaganza.

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Check it out at the embed above and be sure to visit the BIDS YouTube page for more great content. Enjoy!

Welcome to Episode 38 of the Rational Policy Podcast! In this installment, hosts and break down the news of the week, both foreign and domestic. We start with the latter, discussing the White House’s announcement of a $1.776 billion fund to compensate the purported victims of a politicized, abusive, and vindictive Justice Department – essentially, an unregulated pot of money through which the president could pay his most vitriolic supporters. We talk about this nakedly corrupt abuse of power, how it could hurt Republicans politically, and what it says about the abject self-marginalization of Congress. We then move on to a lightning round on foreign affairs, hitting developments and predictions on Iran, the resignation of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the outcome of last week’s Trump-Xi summit, and the future of the Cuban regime under increasing American pressure.

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Check it out, follow us on Twitter/X (Mike / Art), and share the podcast with anyone you think might appreciate it. Thanks for listening. We’ll be back next week. Until then, enjoy the long weekend and be sure to remember our fallen troops this Memorial Day.

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Episode 37 of the Rational Policy Podcast is live! In this installment, hosts and dive into the news of the week, touching on global, domestic, and media affairs. We start with an update on the progress (or lack thereof) of the Iran War, exploring how things have changed and what might come next for the conflict. Most of the show, however, is dedicated to a different topic entirely: the Trump-Xi summit in China. We explain what is happening, why it shouldn’t be happening, and our concerns for the outcome of this trip. We discuss what it means for US-China relations and whether this approach is a useful one. Along the way, we touch on various semi-related issues, ranging from the future of the Cuban regime to the economics and geopolitics of tariffs and decoupling from Beijing. Finally, we shift to the media, lambasting a disgraceful antisemitic blood libel published by the New York Times, claiming that Israel uses sexual violence as a tool of state power. These claims not only fly in the face of reality, the timing of their publication - immediately prior to the release of a full report from the Israeli commission investigating the mass Hamas sexual violence of October 7 - speaks to the nefarious intent behind the piece.

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Check it out, follow us on Twitter/X (Mike / Art), and share the podcast with anyone you think might appreciate it. Thanks for listening. We’ll be back next week. Until then, let’s hope that Trump’s Chinese vacation ends with very few souvenirs. Cheers!

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Welcome back to the Rational Policy Podcast! In Episode 36, hosts and explore the week in news, delivering our hot takes on the key events of the past seven days. We spend much of the show diving into the seemingly-stable situation in Iran and detailing the developments (or lack thereof) emanating from Washington and Tehran. We explain what it all means, how to think about the ‘ceasefire’, and whether the economic battle may be more impactful than the military one. And in what may be something of a first for the show, we actually disagree and debate the merits of continued action. After the Iran segment, we preview the upcoming midterm elections - they’re only 6 months away, folks! - and discuss whether the potential blue wave will materialize for Democrats. Finally, we talk about the lives of two legendary media figures who passed this week, former Yankees radio announcer John Sterling and cable TV innovator Ted Turner.

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Check it out, follow us on Twitter/X (Mike / Art), and share the podcast with anyone you think might appreciate it. Thanks for listening. We’ll be back next week. Until then, go listen to some classic John Sterling calls; you won’t regret it. Cheers!

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For decades, prominent hawkish figures have been warning of the serious threat posed by the Iranian regime to America, Israel, the broader Middle East, and the world writ large. For much of the 2000s, these conservative hawks cautioned American policymakers against the dangers stemming from the increasingly powerful and destabilizing mullahcracy. They wrote about Tehran’s budding nuclear program, its state sponsorship of regional and global terrorism, its ballistic missile program, the danger it posed to Israel and the Gulf states, and its belligerence toward shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. They spoke of its attempts to colonize other nations via proxy forces, as well as its intent to use those colonized nations as a means of gaining regional hegemony. And they described Iran’s inability to be stopped from these malign objectives by negotiation alone.

These arguments have appeared in the pages of important hawkish periodicals for decades. In Commentary, historian Arthur Herman explicitly laid out the Iranian threat to the Strait of Hormuz, pointing to Iranian military documents and war games over the waterway a full two decades ago. Legendary neoconservative stalwart Norman Podhoretz referenced Iran’s aspirations for regional hegemony, backed by nuclear weapons, in 2007. In the Weekly Standard in 2010, former Bush officials Michael Makovsky and Lawrence Goldstein discussed the need for alternative export pathways to the Strait to reduce Iranian influence – still a topic of discussion today. Academic articles, like one by Efraim Inbar in the journal Middle East Review of International Affairs in March 2006, detailed the Iranian ballistic missile menace against various US allies in the region, including the Gulf states. These messages were echoed at the highest levels of power in Washington during the Bush administration. UN Representative John Bolton, Vice President Dick Cheney, and even President Bush himself all decried Tehran’s attempts to go nuclear, presenting it as a broad peril to the US, Israel, and the Middle East as a whole, particularly when paired with Iran’s status as the world’s leading state sponsor of terror.

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These warnings went largely unheeded at the time and were positively ignored once the Obama administration entered office and dramatically shifted our approach toward the region. Instead of a forward posture and the potential for military confrontation with the Iranian regime, we had “leading from behind” and conciliatory nuclear negotiations with Tehran. Hawks were strongly against these talks and their eventual outcome, the JCPOA. They argued that the deal was “catastrophic” for American interests and that the Obama team was taken advantage of by Iranian negotiators who crafted a deal in which they reaped all the benefits without verifiable costs.

These arguments were the crux of the hawk’s case against Iran, and they were lampooned for it. Over the past two months of war, however, that case has been vindicated by Iran’s own actions.

Since the joint US-Israeli strikes that started this round of conflict with Iran on February 28, Iran’s retaliatory actions have proven the threat that the hawks were warning about for decades, sometimes in eerily prescient fashion. Only Washington and Jerusalem have attacked Tehran, yet the bulk of the retaliation has been against regional non-belligerents. Iran has launched drones and missiles at the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Iraq, Oman, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Cyprus, with the total targeting these nations dwarfing those launched at Israel. The Iranians are not only targeting military bases. They have attacked oil refineries, ports, airports, city centers, skyscrapers, and pipelines. Even nations that have historically been either friendly or neutral toward Tehran have been targeted. This is the epitome of a regional threat, one that does not discriminate in its reckless belligerence.

The other major retaliatory action taken by the Islamic Republic has been to threaten commercial shipping in world’s most important energy chokepoint, the Strait of Hormuz. Nearly a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade and almost as much of the global LNG trade passes through this waterway. It has always been an international waterway free to transit and controlled by no single country. Now, Tehran has shuttered the strait and tried to force ships to enter its territorial waters to pay a toll. This is not merely an assault on the Gulf states that rely on oceangoing shipment for export, but an attack on the entire international system. Iran chose to take this action almost immediately – something that would be unsurprising had one read the early-2000s hawks. In fact, they laid this exact scenario out in detail. “The Islamic Republic has its hand on the throttle of the world’s economic engine: the stretch of ocean at the mouth of the Persian Gulf known as the Straits of Hormuz,” Arthur Herman wrote in 2006, before specifying a scenario that reads now like a daily news report. He also quoted from a leaked Iranian military document which called for “closing the Hormuz Straits through a combination of anti-ship missiles, coastal artillery, and submarine attacks,” demonstrating conclusively that Iranian tactics were always predictable.

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Iran has clearly shown the world that it has been seeking a nuclear weapon, admitting in negotiations that it possesses enriched uranium and several sites at which to weaponize said material. It has likewise proven that it has longer-range ballistic missile capability than previously disclosed by trying to strike the US base on Diego Garcia, around 2,500 miles from Iranian soil. Both of these programs had been officially denied, yet they have shown themselves all too real. Iran’s government has also proven the hawks right when it comes to its attempt to control Lebanon via its proxy Hezbollah. Israel has been beating back Hezbollah for quite some time; now the group is seemingly weak enough for the previously-cowed Lebanese state to actively oppose it. Beirut has ejected Iran’s diplomats, sought to disarm Hezbollah, and has engaged in direct high-level negotiations with the Israelis for the first time in three decades – a process which the Iranians, despite their protestations, have been left out of entirely. Tehran has even gone so far as to threaten the temporary ceasefire if Lebanon was excluded, terms that neither America nor Israel agreed to. Iran’s behavior in negotiations has also proven the hawks prescient, as it has constantly shifted its demands, sought to include terms not agreed by the other parties, and repeatedly violated the agreements it chose to make. Iran is clearly not a good-faith negotiating partner, something its opponents have been correct about from the start.

Much has happened since the start of this war just over two months ago. But one thing has become clear above all else: the Iranian regime is a unique danger to America, Israel, the region, and the world. Its own actions have proven this beyond a reasonable doubt. Whether it is engaging in unprovoked attacks against its neighbors, illegally closing a critical international waterway, trying to control Lebanon via Hezbollah, or reneging on its own deals, the Islamic Republic has shown that it is a bad actor that must be constrained, if not destroyed. On that front, the hawks were absolutely right.

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On Episode 35 of the Rational Policy Podcast, hosts and return to our regularly scheduled show format, where we discuss a number of topics in the news this week. Naturally, we spend much of the podcast discussing the latest assassination attempt against President Trump – the fourth such attempt in less than two years. We explore the attempted assassin’s rationale, what it says about the apocalyptic rhetoric of the far-left vis a vis Trump, and how this particular attempt is especially worrisome. We also detail the security situation around the president – what worked and what needs to be changed – and how we may be able to move away from this growing cultural push to justify political violence. After that, we do a lightning round, hitting on a wide variety of topics in rapid succession. We talk about the war in Iran, focusing on the blockade and the news of the UAE leaving OPEC. We discuss the ideologically-suspect Spirit Airlines bailout. We touch on the bogus criminal case against James Comey. And we hit the Virginia gerrymander and the recently-decided Supreme Court voting rights case.

Depending on the developments over the next week of the Iran War, we may keep this normal podcast format or go back to our one-topic Iran focus. Only time will tell.

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Check it out, follow us on Twitter/X (Mike / Art), and share the podcast with anyone you think might appreciate it. Thanks for listening. We’ll be back next week. Until then, go enjoy some more playoff hockey. Cheers!

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Since 2015, the Trump phenomenon has upended quite a great deal about the previously run-of-the-mill politics of the American right. In capturing the Republican Party and dominating it thoroughly over the course of a decade, the politics of the MAGA movement have become ascendant. Sometimes, those politics overlap with the previous instantiations of the American right. But oftentimes they do not. Nowhere is that more obvious than on economics.

Despite some continuity on tax cuts and deregulation, MAGA economic policy looks very little like that of the old guard conservative right.1 The ascendant New Right is populist, statist, pro-tariff, pro-union, anti-free trade, interventionist, hostile to Wall Street, and seemingly uninterested in the national debt. These positions either diverge from or are antithetical to the modern American conservative movement. They fly in the face of the iteration of the party that was considered the ‘establishment’ as recently as 10 years ago, the one that won thousands of elected offices over the course of and in opposition to the Obama administration. But the populist MAGA movement has almost entirely usurped that version of the Republican Party, replacing it with a more traditionally left-coded economic vision.

One of the (few) saving graces of Donald Trump is that he does not always buy into the ideology that his adherents try to craft around him. We have seen this most powerfully in his second term when it comes to foreign policy; many of his most fervent and vocal supporters – often heavily in the Vance camp – were part of the restrainer faction that wished to push American retrenchment, if not isolationism. Happily, Trump has bucked those folks decisively, notably with the ongoing Iran War. Unfortunately, when it comes to economic policy, the president is more aligned with the populist faction. And his administration has been putting those policy prescriptions into practice over the first year and change of his second term.

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The most recent example of this MAGA leftism comes with the administration’s plan to bail out the failing Spirit Airlines. In the possible $500 million rescue package for the low-cost carrier, the federal government would have the potential to own upwards of 90% of the airline as it emerges from bankruptcy. Proponents of this bailout point to the aftereffects of the pandemic, the pointed refusal of the Biden administration to approve a proposed merger with JetBlue during a prior bankruptcy in 2024, and the recent increase in fuel costs due to the Iran War as good reasons to save Spirit. They also see a precedent to this plan in the auto industry bailouts during the 2008 Financial Crisis and the airline industry rescue during Covid. Besides the fact that many conservatives opposed those bailout schemes, this situation is nothing like the others. And the rationalizations that have been proffered for this intervention fall flat.

There is no systemic risk to the airline industry today. Spirit is going bankrupt yet again because of poor management and operations, not because of some broader issue that will drive other airlines into the same dire straits. If Spirit closes shop, the airline industry and consumers will not be much worse off. This is rescuing a company – one often considered the worst airline in the country – that has failed due to its own choices. That isn’t intervening on a sectoral scale, but an individual one. It is the epitome of picking winners and losers, and it comes with immense moral hazard. Why won’t other airlines or companies run themselves into the ground and expect a taxpayer bailout on the other end? If this is about saving jobs, plenty of American companies have more than Spirit’s 14,000 employees; what’s to stop them from following the Spirit playbook? Another bad argument is that this bailout must happen because the Biden administration failed to approve a merger that would have saved Spirit in 2024. But that does not make any logical sense from a conservative perspective. Just because a Democrat president did something bad, that does not mean that a Republican president should do something worse in response. And let me be perfectly clear: rescuing Spirit through a buyout plan is far worse than stupidly shelving a merger out of wrongheaded ideological predilections against corporate consolidation – predilections that many MAGA leftists share.

This sort of intervention into the market is nothing new for the second Trump administration. They have acquired shares for the federal government in a wide variety of companies covering vastly different sectors of the economy. They have acquired an equity stake in the semiconductor company Intel that amounts to nearly 10% of its ownership, worth almost $9 billion, ostensibly to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing. They have partnered with the private nuclear company Westinghouse to build $80 billion worth of nuclear plants across the country, with the potential for 8% US ownership of the company if and when it goes public – something made far more likely with this massive infusion of capital from the federal coffers. Another major equity deal was made with the rare earths mining and processing company MP Materials, giving the Department of Defense 15% of the company in order to supercharge the creation of a purely domestic rare earths and magnet supply chain. Several other deals, often at least tangentially related to national security sectors, have been inked, totaling nearly $21 billion before the Spirit deal. This is undoubtedly the biggest spending spree on strategic corporate equities from the federal government since the Second World War.

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But most of these legitimate objectives – increasing nuclear power construction, building a durable semiconductor supply chain, onshoring rare earths mining and magnet manufacturing, ensuring a steady supply of critical materials for the defense sector – could be accomplished without making the American government into a direct investor, with all the new interests that status creates. By investing in these companies directly, the federal government becomes interested in their profitability, their status vis a vis their rivals, the regulation of these companies in particular, their specific tax treatment, their position in lawsuits, and more. That only incentivizes favoritism and creates an enormous conflict of interest. Instead, the government could work to achieve those useful ends via different means. Those could include guaranteed purchase agreements, direct no- or low-interest federal loans, long-term contracts for construction of factories or processing capacity, favorable tax treatment, setting price floors for critical materials bought by the government itself, or public-private partnerships in specific projects. The Trump administration has used some of those tools, but the direct investment status undermines the broader independence that the federal government could maintain had it not pursued that path.

These direct investments in companies are not the only way that the Trump administration has aggressively inserted itself into the private sector in a manner that most resembles the traditional ideas of the left. The administration has mooted a cap on credit card interest rates, long a left-wing priority, as they claim that the rates are too high and are causing too much consumer debt. Besides the fact that this abrogates the classical conservative promotion of personal responsibility, it is also a terrible idea. Not only does it reduce consumer choice by disallowing credit card company innovation, it will likely lead to a massive reduction in the credit available to low-income households – these borrowers simply pose too much of a repayment risk to offer credit at such artificially low rates. Interest rates are not arbitrary constructs, but market prices of borrower risk. If we constrain that pricing mechanism, we will reduce the supply of credit to high-risk borrowers. That starts a vicious cycle that ends up harming the poorest among us and removing from them the opportunity to build credit and advance economically.

Similar price interference has come at the expense of pharmaceutical corporations, with the White House launching an executive order that essentially creates enforceable price targets on certain drugs, and one not limited to those medications the government itself pays for. If companies do not show “significant progress” toward achieving these targets, the order directs the Department of Health and Human Services to enact hard price controls, potentially revoke FDA approval for drugs, and use the Department of Justice to investigate pharma companies for antitrust violations or other anticompetitive practices. This is an extremely coercive use of federal power against private American businesses – some of the most innovative in the world, mind you – to force them to comply with a federally-set pricing scheme. It would reduce research and development of new drugs, incentivize investment elsewhere, give foreign copycats a leg up, and undermine an industry that has been one of the key drivers of modern American prosperity. This policy could have just as easily been promoted in a Kamala Harris administration, to the same ill effect.

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Another left-wing policy embraced by the Trump administration and the broader MAGA movement it leads is an attempt to ban institutional investors from owning single-family homes as investment or rental properties in a larger real estate portfolio. The White House explains this policy as a means of creating more affordability for regular American homebuyers and paving the way for their realization of the American Dream of homeownership. But this will do nothing of the sort. Large institutional investors like Blackstone – a favored bogeyman of the left since the 2008 financial crisis – own a minuscule portion of the US single-family housing stock and a similarly-small portion of the single-family rental stock. They have reduced their inventory of housing meaningfully over the past few years, seeking to diversify out of the sector. They are really no competition for ordinary folks. And when they do invest in housing, they often promote rent-to-own schemes or new developments, both things that help deliver more housing to more people, usually the less well-off.

One of Trump’s earliest anti-conservative economic policies was his promise not to touch entitlement spending – the largest line items in the federal budget and the primary drivers of our national debt. He has been consistent about this since 2015 and the MAGA movement has followed him. His support for this spending, which has only grown over the past decade, was, in the classic leftist mold, a pure giveaway. Instead of promising gifts to poor voters, however, this giveaway was to older voters, many of whom traditionally lean Republican. Trump has shown no interest at all in tackling the looming entitlement crisis or even the ballooning national debt, incurring massive debt-driven expenditures over his two terms in office. For a party that spoke often about the debt and entitlement problem, the speed at which its voters – and many of its leaders – changed course entirely was both surprising and disappointing. The left was wrong about entitlements and the mortgaging of our shared future as a nation. The right shouldn’t have followed their lead, but Donald Trump brought them straight along that primrose path. We’re all going to be worse off for it.

Policies aren’t the only outlet for the president’s economic MAGA leftism; personnel surely matter, too. Historically, Trump has hired more traditionally conservative figures for his key economic advising positions – with the exception of his insane picks for trade positions, ones that fit his peculiar obsession with tariffs.2 But in this second term, he has added some true believers in MAGA leftism to the Cabinet.

The most notable appointment in this vein was former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, previously a GOP representative in the House who partnered frequently with progressive politicians on economic issues. She was a favorite of organized labor, an institutional constituency that opposes the vast majority of conservative labor policies like Right to Work laws, the ending of public sector unions, and the broader push for pro-business and pro-growth policies. She was one of the few Republican co-sponsors of the PRO Act, a bill that attempted to make illegal various forms of freelance or independent work, stifling the freedom of Americans to contract as they please and eliminating a wide variety of new jobs like rideshare driving, independent delivery, and temporary online work – all in order to favor union labor. She has thankfully left the administration, but not due to her progressive policies; she was scandal-ridden, to boot. Her departure has not altered policy, nor was she the lone MAGA leftist in the Cabinet. Far more important in that regard is the man trying to become heir apparent to the Trump movement: Vice President JD Vance.

Vance has been the leader of the economic populist front in the second Trump administration, building on his brief Senate career, during which he championed these ideas and often made common cause with progressives in the process. Vance promoted various anti-free-market interventions while in the Senate and has been a leading supporter of the aforementioned MAGA leftist policies. He has repeatedly praised former Biden FTC chair Lina Khan, one of that administration’s worst economy-related picks. Khan wielded antitrust law as a cudgel to slow growth, hurt American businesses, limit the freedom of corporate decision-making, stifle American innovation, and harm consumers in the process. Of course, she did not think she did any of these things, but the results don’t lie – the Spirit failure, the iRobot bankruptcy, and several other corporate failures are due to her overbroad interventionism. Now, unsurprisingly, she is working for the hardcore leftist mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani. Vance has also worked in the Senate alongside progressive stalwart Elizabeth Warren, co-sponsoring economic populist legislation and joining to attack business and increase the regulatory burden in a misguided effort to help ordinary Americans. If Vance does indeed earn the mantle of Trump heir, he will firmly install MAGA leftism in the Republican Party, throwing out classically conservative economic ideas.

Donald Trump is no leftist. In fact, he may be the most outwardly and rhetorically anti-leftist president of my lifetime. But that does not mean that all of his administration’s policies – or even his personal instincts – always follow suit. On the economic front, this is especially pronounced. The MAGA movement is far more like the progressive left than it is the conservative right when it comes to those critical issues. They are big government statists who seek federal intervention in the free market, are skeptical to hostile of large corporations, support big labor unions, promote price controls, and abhor Wall Street, the tech sector, and the pharmaceutical industry. If you laid these policies out in front of someone from 2010, 2000, 1990, or 1980, they would label them as left-wing; that the ostensibly right-wing MAGA movement has embraced them does not change their partisan valence.

MAGA leftism is very real and it is an utter repudiation of the conservative view of economics. One can only hope the fever breaks after Trump himself leaves office, but that may very well be a pipedream, especially if Vance is his successor. If both sides of the partisan divide embrace failed progressive economics, America will be much worse off.

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Welcome back to the Rational Policy Podcast! In this episode, hosts and once again plumb the depths of the events in the Middle East. We discuss the latest developments in the Iran War, including the escalating naval conflict and the potential for future negotiations with the regime in Tehran. Is this a lull in the war, or the start of a new phase? We explore the near-global American blockade, the continued Iranian threats to the Strait of Hormuz, and the impact on markets. We also talk about the increased prominence of American economic warfare in this conflict and the potential for success in this approach, continuing to drastically weaken the mullahcracy. We discuss the changes in Iranian leadership, the impact that has on negotiations, and how this conflict may end. The change in posture in the Gulf states, the American domestic political dimensions of the war, and the broader geopolitical implications of it all are detailed as well.

As always, we will continue to monitor the situation and give you our thoughts each week.

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Check it out, follow us on Twitter/X (Mike / Art), and share the podcast with anyone you think might appreciate it. Thanks for listening. We’ll be back next week. Until then, go enjoy some playoff hockey. Cheers!

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Episode 33 of the Rational Policy Podcast sees your hosts and deliver a sixth consecutive update on the Iran War. On this installment, we discuss the newly-implemented American blockade of Iranian ports, how it could impact the next steps of the conflict, and how it helps solve the biggest concern of critics thus far: the navigability of the Strait of Hormuz. We also talk about the possible endgame of the war, whether negotiations with the Iranians are ever worthwhile, and what may happen to the remaining nuclear material inside Iran. Other topics include the Lebanese front and the bilateral discussions between Beirut and Israel, the enormous economic pressure being put on Tehran, and even some talk about AI.

A bit of a shorter episode this time, but rest assured, we’ll be right back at it next week.

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Check it out, follow us on Twitter/X (Mike / Art), and share the podcast with anyone you think might appreciate it. Thanks for listening. We’ll be back next week. Until then, let’s enjoy this return to classic naval strategy and tactics. Cheers!

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One of the most popular arguments that has been proffered against the Iran War is that it has caused a spike in gas prices for American consumers. This has been a top attack line for Democrat politicians, commentators and pundits, and social media talkers. They contend that the war against the Iranian regime is already a failure because we now need to pay more at the pump to fill our vehicles and may need to continue paying higher prices for several months, largely due to the oil supply disruption caused by the fighting. This impact on the American consumer is presented as reason enough to have avoided entering into a war against Iran and certainly a strong rationale for stopping it as soon as possible, even if that means settling on Tehran’s terms.

Reader, this argument is absolute blatherskite. It is nonsense. It is so detached from the reality of how statecraft works that it should be utterly disqualifying for the person spouting it. And yet it is treated as a real ‘gotcha’ for those of us who support the conflict. It is nothing of the sort.

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To be sure, higher gas prices are impactful to the average American. They are one of the key expenses that most US households incur on a weekly basis and play a huge part in how we perceive the economy writ large. Higher prices at the pump are noticeable and meaningful to many Americans, especially those who have long commutes, live in rural areas, or enjoy traveling by car. In short, people don’t like paying more for gas, something which they basically cannot avoid buying. In a representative democracy like ours, public opinion matters. Citizens being upset about higher prices should be something that politicians take into account when making decisions. But it cannot be the decisive factor in those choices, particularly when it comes to long-term geopolitical or strategic calculations.

Prices are fickle and highly manipulable. They are the sum total of all information about a product or service: what sort of work goes into it, the raw materials required, the incidental costs like shipping and overhead, the demand for it, the alternatives to it, the broader interests of the entity selling it, and myriad other factors. That means that any nation or non-state actor with the ability to alter any of those factors in a significant way has the ability to make a meaningful impact on the price of a good or service. Prices are highly variable for widely-traded commodities, especially those with markets as liquid as that of oil. Actions like serious threats to a trade chokepoint, direct attacks on trade, destruction of production or transfer capacity, and other supply disruptions all could be leveraged to control prices for geostrategic purposes. As we are seeing in Iran right now, even a largely imaginary threat – in that there are not frequent attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz – can be extremely potent. But America simply cannot allow these sorts of malign actors to use their disproportionate leverage to force us into backing down.

First, the price gambit cuts two ways; the market is highly responsive to actions going in either direction. America has the most powerful economic levers in the world available to us and we can use them to counter these moves or reset these markets over time. When the price is for something that is traded in the volumes that oil is, the responsiveness factor increases dramatically. In short, Iran will not be able to manipulate gas prices forever, nor would other similarly-situated actors be able to sustain their gambits in high-volume markets like oil. If we were to cower at every temporary price increase for important goods, we would make ourselves extraordinarily vulnerable to foreign enemies manipulating our society and defeating us without even having to fight. We cannot allow ourselves to be held hostage by bad actors out of mere temporary inconvenience. That is untenable for a superpower and would be tantamount to embracing national decline.

Unfortunately, this is not something that the average American dealing with higher gas prices will be thinking about when he is sidling up to the pump. He does not spend his time looking out for the needs of the country in the long term, but his own needs in the here and now – as he should. He is very easily influenced by temporary, yet noticeable, changes. And that is exactly why we have elected representatives who are meant to turn that normal American view on its head, prioritizing the long-term interests of the country over the short-term interests of the self.1 If we are to be successful, the best interests of our nation, particularly when it comes to the complexities of foreign affairs – something of which the citizenry is largely ignorant2 – need to be stewarded by people who are able to abstract themselves from the vagaries of the moment. That includes price pressures, upcoming elections, or media headlines.

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Steering the ship of state requires a helmsman that is not going to be driven inexorably by the waves and currents of geopolitics, but one that can navigate those changing currents to arrive at the best possible destination. Statesmanship is not about bowing to the supposed political exigencies of the now or succumbing to pressure from the easily-swayed populace below; it is about persevering through them to pursue what you believe is the best path forward for the future of the nation. It is not about following the masses, but leading them. It is about using your judgment, in trust for those whom you represent, to make wise choices, even when they cause temporary discomfort. Unpopular or hard decisions are often the right ones. And long-term strategy can require short-term sacrifice. As such, statesmen can earn enormous credit over the long term, but risk suffering immense blame in the short – sometimes even for the very same actions.3

But statesmanship is not politics. Politicians succeed by getting elected and remaining in power, or getting their friends and parties elected and into power. That means being far more responsive to the temporary whims of the electorate, which are, once again, very easily influenced by malign foreign actors. It means caring more about tomorrow’s gas prices than about degrading an inveterate foe of the United States and a close partner of our greatest adversaries over the long run. That means that good politicians can make very bad statesmen.

America does not need any more of these good politicians. We need some statesmen. Only time will tell if there are any more in Washington.

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I’m once again back in the pages of National Review, this time with an essay covering an important medium- and long-term plan to reduce Iranian leverage over the Strait of Hormuz: the expansion of the regional energy pipeline network. Pipelines aren’t the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of Gulf energy exports, but the region currently boasts one of the world’s largest pipeline networks. Many of these pipelines are intended by bypass the maritime chokepoint between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman and they can already handle sizable volumes of oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) - just not enough to make the Strait secondary. But that could - and should - change given the Iranian regime’s actions in closing the waterway. In this piece, I explore the promise and pitfalls of this approach, detail the potential expansions to the pipeline network, and lay out why this is a good idea for Gulf states going forward. It may not be a silver bullet, but it sure is beneficial.

Below is an excerpt, but the whole essay can be read here.

In the short term, the only real way to solve this problem is to reopen the strait, either by deal or by force. But there is one potential solution, built for the medium and long term, that is far more intriguing: expanding the regional pipeline network to shift energy exports elsewhere, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz and mitigating the Iranian threat.

The Middle East already boasts one of the world’s largest networks of energy pipelines, moving critical commodities across large distances for internal consumption and export. The biggest and most important is the East–West Crude Oil Pipeline in Saudi Arabia, which has been expanded to handle about 7 million barrels per day (bpd) since the start of the war in Iran. That pipeline cuts over 700 miles across the Arabian Peninsula, moving crude from the oil fields in the country’s east to export terminals along the Red Sea in the country’s west, bypassing the chokepoint at Hormuz. The Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline is much smaller, handling about 1.5 million bpd, and travels a shorter distance, moving crude from areas abutting the Persian Gulf to ports on the Gulf of Oman, allowing tankers to avoid transiting the strait. There are other pipelines, both for oil and natural gas, running from Iraq to Turkey, Qatar to the UAE and Oman, and Egypt to Jordan and Syria. These pipelines are not currently able to handle the massive volume transiting the Strait of Hormuz by sea, but they are already significant bypasses to that waterway. And they have room to grow.

Constructing new pipelines is certainly a good idea for the Gulf states, as it would reduce Iranian leverage over the medium and long term. There are several factors that make this a strong investment for nations seeking to avoid an Iranian stranglehold over their economies. The Gulf states are extremely dependent on revenues from energy exports and have seen Tehran attack them directly; they have every incentive to reduce Iran’s power over their countries. These nations are non-democratic regimes with little in the way of procedural roadblocks to building new infrastructure. They do not need to deal with the eminent domain claims, environmental review processes, property rights, or lawsuits that slow major infrastructure projects in America to a crawl. These nations are also flush with cash and usually control these projects at the national level, removing many typical roadblocks to speedy development and construction. New projects could expand on existing infrastructure, connecting current pipelines to one another or growing the network to new export nodes. We could see more pipelines heading to Red Sea ports, as well as potentially northward and directly to the Mediterranean via nations like Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and, if the Abraham Accords are expanded, perhaps even Israel.

While there is immense long-term promise in this approach, pitfalls abound. Huge infrastructure projects like this take time to build, despite the fact that Gulf nations have few of the regulatory hurdles that we do in the West. They are large-scale construction projects that require planning, purchasing, logistics, and financing. If they are crossing the entirety of the Arabian Peninsula, they are extremely long and will be passing through some of the most remote and difficult terrain on the planet. The center of the Arabian landmass is primarily inhospitable desert, alongside mountains and ridges that are challenging to traverse. Companion infrastructure — roads, railways, power transmission, water provision — is lacking as well, making the construction more time-consuming and demanding. Transnational pipelines bring additional hurdles, including diplomatic issues in a region that is infamous for its constantly shifting multilateral relations.

These pipelines are also not entirely immune to malign Iranian influence. Depending on the route, Tehran can continue to threaten ships carrying oil or gas. If the export terminal is in the Gulf of Oman, beyond the Strait of Hormuz, ships still need to pass within missile or drone range of Iran’s coastline before exiting to the open ocean. If the pipelines end at Red Sea ports in order to transit the Suez Canal or the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, the threat of Iran’s Yemeni proxy, the Houthis, becomes salient. The Houthis have already demonstrated their willingness to attack shipping in the Red Sea, launching multiple attacks at commercial vessels during the Gaza War. These threats will only be fully avoided if the pipeline terminus is directly on the Mediterranean, a longer and more diplomatically complex route. Pipelines are ripe for attack or sabotage, either directly by Iran or via its terrorist proxies. They are static targets that run for hundreds of miles, exposed against the open desert, and damaging even a small portion of the pipeline may be enough to shut it down entirely, at least temporarily. Defending infrastructure like this is a significant challenge, whether from aerial threats or traditional sabotage operations.

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I was back on the excellent Break It Down Show with my pal Pete Turner this morning for a discussion of all things Iran. We talked about the ceasefire (or lack thereof), the upcoming US-Iran negotiations, the potential for further combat, the immense successes of the American military, the challenge of the Strait of Hormuz, the various political factors driving the leaders of the US and Israel, the future of Iran after the regime, and why I still believe that the Islamic Republic is fatally wounded. And this is just a taste, as we hit several other topics too, from the impact of social media on the information environment to the historical aberration that was the 1990s. There’s even a theological reference to Saint Augustine in there. Nobody can say that we skipped a subject on this one!

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Check it out at the embed above and be sure to visit the BIDS YouTube page for more great content. Enjoy!