Trump’s War Gamble: “Isolationist” President Opens Pandora’s Box With Iran

Participants:

• Anne Kim, Contributing Editor and podcast host, Washington Monthly
• Paul Glastris, Editor-in-Chief, Washington Monthly
• Matthew Cooper, Executive Editor Digital, Washington Monthly
• Jacob Heilbrunn, Editor, The National Interest

A transcript of the conversation, lightly edited for clarity:

Anne Kim: Welcome to the Washington Monthly Politics Livestream. Today is June 23rd, 2025. So what happens when an isolationist president goes to war? 

Paul Glastris: So there’s so much to talk about. Let me kind of give you my take on it and you guys can react to it. You can agree, you can disagree. We don’t know what’s going to happen, but we do have a pretty good sense of how we got here. And the way I would formulate how we got here is, Donald Trump inherited just a few months ago when he became president a second time, a situation inherited from Joe Biden that allowed him to do what he did over the weekend. That is, the United States’s proxy governments, primarily Israel and Ukraine, had so weakened the adversaries of the United States, primarily Iran and Russia, that Donald Trump could bomb these nuclear development sites with minimal immediate military risk. That was the opportunity he was given.

The ultimate reason that he felt it necessary to do this—because he did not want to, he would much rather have cut a deal—is the deal he got out of in his first term, which was the one negotiated by Barack Obama where Iran agreed to limit its development of nuclear fuel and freeze its nuclear weapons activities. Those are the two things that are the backdrop to how we got here. And let me just ask Jacob, who has given a lot of thought to this, to react to that idea.

Jacob Heilbrunn: Paul, I do think you’re onto something and as we talked about earlier, the media has downplayed or overlooked the fact that it was Trump who ripped up Obama’s deal with Iran originally and set us on the path to war with Iran. I have to say, frankly, I’m not sure any of this was necessary and my gut is that we are going to discover in coming days and weeks that this does look very much like Iraq War number two. And frankly, I have the willies about the whole thing.

If you look at the New York Times headline last night, it was that the administration doesn’t know where the highly processed uranium is.

Paul Glastris: Yeah, apparently there were imaging and intel that showed trucks near the basis of these underground bunkers moving stuff out days before the bombing.

Jacob Heilbrunn: Now, past does not have to be prologue. Maybe Trump by some miracle pulls it all off. However, what we’re seeing looks pretty darn similar to what we saw before, which is that there is in fact no plan for any of this. And then what results is chaos.

This takes us back—I’m not drifting from your question. This is the very reason that even though Biden may have set up the preconditions for Trump’s assault on Iran, I’m highly dubious that Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, if she were president now, would have pulled the trigger on these facilities because in essence, he has opened up a Pandora’s box. Every previous presidency, including George W. Bush, by the way, who was being urged to attack Iran rather than Iraq in 2003—he thought Iraq would be the easy country to topple. Well, this is why everyone has flinched.

Trump, I think who was egged on by the generals who have scores to settle with Iran, dating back to the Iraq War, because it was Iranian munitions, IEDs that were the most lethal weapons targeting American soldiers. So I think Trump is an impulsive guy. The incentives were all there for him. He wants to go down in history as a great president. He was looking weak over the past month. Everything lined up for him to do this. 

Matthew Cooper: Yeah, and I would say just to build on what Paul and Jacob have said, it’s not only that Trump threw out the JCPOA, the nuclear agreement that the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany and Iran had forged that seemed to keep Iran in the box. It may not have been perfect, but it had a “get the job done” quality that was basically working.

But Trump, after having thrown it out in his first term, in his second term reopened the souq, so to speak, to try to form his own JCPOA and was giving away the store. I think this is the guy who was ready to bring the Taliban to Camp David on the anniversary of 9/11 when he was trying to cut an agreement with the Afghan regime. And so I think there was a certain—look, Bibi obviously is an unprincipled character who is trying to ensure his own survival. I think the Israelis had a legitimate reason to think we were seeing “give away the store” Trump with Iran. I think Bibi’s always been predisposed to move on Iran. I think he had even more cause. And so Trump not only screwed himself and put us in this box as you all said by throwing out the JCPOA originally but then by trying to go back and form his own JCPOA or unilateral version thereof. Madness.

Anne Kim: What do you think Trump’s options are from here? What can he do?

Paul Glastris: He can listen. Look, Jacob is right. There are generals out there and the four-star who was in command of this mission is someone who’s well known to be very aggressive. So if you ask the general in the field, who’s got a reputation for aggressiveness, “Hey, what do you think we should do?” He’s going to say, “Go for it.”

At the same time, I was speaking earlier this morning to a longtime source in the national security arena with direct operational knowledge of the region right now. He was reminding me that in the past, like when the United States took out this senior military official, Soleimani, the Iranians did some—or I think it was their proxies—some strikes at US military bases, I believe in Iraq. They sort of signaled to the US that they were limited, let them know they were coming in advance. And the US retaliated in a limited way. The regime is going to have to do something.

What the regime, if it’s wise, and it’s not shown a lot of wisdom recently, if it’s wise, will do what it did last time, which is not want to go up the escalatory ladder, right? Because the United States has far more ability if it wants to retaliate hugely. And so, you know, something limited, something signaled in advance, then the wise thing to answer your question, is for the Trump administration to listen to the generals. And I think this is what they’re going to hear from the generals, you know?

There is a performative quality to this. Let’s retaliate, but not escalate too much and then see where that goes. And if you do that, you might have this sort of not be Armageddon. But if the Iranians choose to mine the Strait of Hormuz, if they start really harassing our ships in the region—our Navy hates being in that region because they’re vulnerable—if the retaliations are persistent and escalatory, then Trump and the Pentagon are going to be very, very tempted to just destroy the Iranian Navy. You know, our military has the ability to do that to really escalate and boy then you’re at war.

(Update from the Associated Press: “Iran said its Monday night missile attack on Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar matched the number of bombs dropped by the United States on its nuclear sites this weekend, signaling its likely desire to deescalate.”)

Jacob Heilbrunn: The problem, Paul, is that the Iranians must feel like their back is to the wall. When you have Trump coming out calling for, of all things, regime change in a tweet last night, I don’t know that the Iranians can distinguish perfectly between reality and hallucination with Trump. And the other part is that Trump has clearly lied to the Iranians.

I mean, it looks like these negotiations were camouflage for an assault. You couple that with his language. And the Israelis are still heavily bombing Iran. And my sense is that they would like to do to it what they did to Syria, which is devastate it as a military power. It’s not about nuclear weapons. It’s about eviscerating the Iranian military.

And Israel emerges as the hegemon of the Middle East. There will be no other power in the Middle East that commands the kind of military might that Israel does. Syria’s gone. Lebanon has been disposed of. Iraq was invaded and is not a threat. Iran was the big menace. I think we’re headed for a much greater conflict.

Matthew Cooper: It can always get worse. I think that’s a good instinct. Just to take a little bit of a glass-half-full advocacy, especially after speaking to a source who’s really steeped in this this morning. I think the Iranians are fairly limited in their response for now. It doesn’t mean they can’t mine the Strait of Hormuz, but I don’t think they’re totally irrational actors. I think they will take action, but I suspect they have a lot of options from killing dissidents overseas—a strike in the US on Iranian dissidents is not impossible. And frankly, something Trump’s immigration people might like.

So I think they’re somewhat limited there. And I think also Trump by nature does not have the George W. Bush, Dick Cheney messianic belief in democracy in the Middle East. Thank goodness, you know, he does not really—he’s not a democrat to begin with, small d. And I don’t think he has any intention of thinking it can take root overseas. So that’s at least one thing to counsel against him wanting to get in there. But I agree with you, it can definitely get much worse.

Jacob Heilbrunn: Let me just interject quickly, Matt, because one thing worries me about what you said, which is that Trump operates like a mob boss. And I don’t think he’s going to take—or he’s in it already. And if the Iranians defy him, I think his instinct is to crush them.

Matthew Cooper: You could well be right.

Anne Kim: Well, let’s turn now to the question of how Congress will or should react. We’re grappling with two separate but overlapping questions here, the first being the legality of the strike because when the Constitution says only Congress can declare war, are we in a war? And number two, whether the strike was the right thing to do, legal or not.

So on that first question, we have senators like Tim Kaine of Virginia who wanted Trump to get congressional approval before this. And now in the House, you’ve got Tom Massie and Ro Khanna of California arguing the same. On the other hand, you’ve got senators like Lindsey Graham, who say Trump was well within his rights. You’ve also got these diehard MAGA isolationists like Marjorie Taylor Greene and progressives like AOC arguing on the other side that the strikes were a mistake.

So how do you see all of this in Congress sorting out? And how durable is that loyalty to Trump on the MAGA side of the aisle, Jacob, you can speak to this. And when and if the backlash will begin.

Jacob Heilbrunn: I think the Democrats are largely positioning themselves if this is a failure to be able to denounce Trump. And I think it’s the right political call. They really don’t have much choice. And Trump is behaving in this conflict—it’s another opportunity for him to display his contempt for Congress. He didn’t even consult the Democrats. It probably is unconstitutional what he did, but he doesn’t care.

And you have Bob Kagan arguing that it’s prelude to upping authoritarianism in the US, which I don’t think is going to happen because I think this war is going to be a fiasco.

Paul Glastris: I mean, just as a general matter, Congress has for decades now progressively given away its power over the executive in matters of war. We are already seeing major MAGA figures like Charlie Kirk come round to supporting Trump on this, who were hardcore isolationists, you know, America Firsters, which was all perfectly predictable. I think the MAGA forces that are still against what Trump did and are gonna try to hold out will do as the Democrats are doing. And, you know, hold their powder, but hope that things do go poorly and be ready to pounce when they do.

I think it’s wise and strategically smart for Democrats and others to bring up the abuse of separation of powers that we’re seeing. I just don’t see any possibility that it matters in the near term.

Matthew Cooper: Let me take a somewhat different take, which is I think the Democrats are in more of a pickle, both intellectually and politically. I think intellectually, look, they were more than willing to let the authorization for the use of military force that Congress passed after 9/11 be extended to include Libya and other nations in Africa to use drone strikes promiscuously. I think now you can say there’s a difference between that and this, and maybe there is, but I think it’s a harder case to make when they’ve relied on a rather elastic definition of presidential war-making powers.

And then second, politically, I think if you look at something like Hakeem Jeffries’ statement, and I agree keeping your powder dry, being in a position to pounce when this thing goes south, as I agree with Jacob, it most likely will. But nevertheless, I think there was a certain churlishness. And I think if you were online the last couple of days and saw the reaction of prominent Jewish groups and Democrats, Jewish Democrats and others, being surprised about the somewhat churlish quality of this. I mean, the degrading of the Iranian nuclear threat and with all the dangers that come with it is still something that is not totally to be sniffed at.

And in that sense, I think Democrats can’t look either too legalistic or too eager for this to fail. I’d say keep your powder dry, but don’t—you know, keep your condemnations of Iran up. And there was none of that in, for instance, the Hakeem Jeffries statement last night, or Saturday night, Sunday night, excuse me.

Jacob Heilbrunn: The key will be gas prices.

Anne Kim: Yeah, I was going to get to that question. Jacob, in the five minutes we have remaining with you. Let’s talk about what the impact of this war is going to be on Americans here at home, including now a very heightened risk of a global recession because of gas prices. But there are other threats too. Matt, you alluded to this with the idea of unconventional retaliation that Iran could do. There was a white paper from 2016 from the Idaho National Laboratory warning of cyber attacks on the nation’s power grid and specifically cited Iran as a potential threat. So you’ve got these kinds of unconventional threats out there. What could we expect to see in the worst case scenario? What can we expect to see inevitably as a result of this conflict?

Jacob Heilbrunn: It would be a good time to take down America’s electric grid with 100-degree temperatures across the country. I think that there will be, if this war grinds on and—we are now begging the Chinese, the Trump administration went to China and asked them to ensure that Iran does not close the Strait of Hormuz. So that vitiates Trump’s leverage there with China. And if gas—you know, oil is at around 80—if it goes above 100, people will become very unhappy in the United States. That would be a good issue for the Democrats. They can start putting the “thank you Donald” stickers on the gas pumps the way people did with Biden.

Paul Glastris: I think the bottom line to your question is anybody who says they know what’s going to happen next hasn’t been reading the news over the last two decades very carefully. The unpredictability of what’s going to happen—there’s just too many variables. You know, Matt, I’m torn as to whether a Democratic president in the situation Trump was in—imagine, you know, Kamala Harris had been elected. She would possibly have been in a better position to get a deal with Iran diplomatically. But, you know, the damage had been done by Trump. If you assume they were in the same position, Jacob said no Democrat—or, I’m not sure a Hillary Clinton wouldn’t have made the same choice as Donald Trump did. I don’t know about Kamala Harris, but it wasn’t the easiest call in the world given the conditions. And so we’re going to know maybe in 10 years whether this was wise. I don’t think we’re going to know in three months or six months, or certainly tomorrow.

Anne Kim: Well, I think it’s pretty clear that the economy—well, he could have put the economy in a better position to absorb a shock like this one, but with the tariffs in place, this one big beautiful bill is going to increase our deficit situation, the deportations he’s carrying out that are also wreaking havoc on the economy. To me, it seems kind of clear that this is a mistake for the US economy, at least if nothing else. 

Matthew Cooper: I think that’s totally right.

Paul Glastris: I see no way that it helps.

Jacob Heilbrunn: I don’t think it’s going to take as long to figure this out, Paul. I think it’s already starting to erode. And the other part of the problem that we haven’t talked about is, look, obviously Bibi maneuvered this brilliantly on his own behalf, not in America’s interest. And Trump’s team is a team of clowns. Frank Bruni has a good piece in The New York Times today. These guys are not capable of conducting a longer-term conflict, nor by the way is Trump who has the attention span of a gnat. He reacts impulsively to every latest development. I don’t believe that these guys can safely steward our fortunes now that they have triggered this conflict.

Paul Glastris: One hundred percent, 100 percent. Right. And we devoted half of our last livestream to precisely the point that Jacob made, which is we haven’t had a national security team with less experience of running major national security operations in our lifetime.

Jacob Heilbrunn: The other point, Paul, is that they don’t even have a process. There’s no one drafting papers. No one’s figured out, well, here’s what the Iranians would do with uranium. But apparently The New York Times is reporting that the Iranians, based on Trump’s tweets, started moving the uranium. I mean, this is a one-man show.

Matthew Cooper: No. Yeah, they do have the apps.

Paul Glastris: They do have a signal channel, apparently.

Anne Kim: And they do have a social media channel too.

Paul Glastris: I hope we know sooner rather than later the fallout from this. I would not personally predict that in six months people are going to say, “I’m so glad Donald Trump took out these missile facilities.” You know, as a matter of operation, regardless of the killing of some senior scientists, Iran has been at this now for decades. There’s really not too many examples of countries being stripped of their capacities to produce nuclear weapons. These things are now embedded in their networks, their knowledge base. And if they have the equipment and the fuel, they can still do it.

And let us also go back to the point about the Obama agreement. With the Obama agreement, we had international inspectors swarming Iran and though it is technically possible and conservatives went on and on about these very unlikely possibilities of the Iranians being able to operate outside of those inspections. They were very protological in their sweep. That’s all gone. Right. And what we knew came from international inspectors. That’s now gone. So our ability to know what they’re doing is now gone. And we are looking at Iran the way we looked at Iraq, which is we had no idea whether they did or did not have nuclear capacity.

Matthew Cooper: Right, as my source said this morning it’s conjecture, but certainly plausible, had we stuck with JCPOA, that really might have led to regime change. I mean, there really was a lot of dissatisfaction with the mullahs, and we may find out that Trump has saved the regime in Tehran.

Jacob Heilbrunn: Bibi has won.

Anne Kim: Bibi has won. Well, Jacob, I want to thank you for joining us this morning. I know you need to run to another podcast. Jacob Heilbrunn, who’s the editor of The National Interest and a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Eurasia Center. Jacob, thank you so much for taking time out of your morning to come on to the show. Hope to see you again.