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Podcast Host (Al)

Hey everybody, we've got a great one today. You know, for a change, Franklin 4 of the Atlantic returns to discuss World cup soccer and the peace in the Middle east, at least for now, as I record this on Friday. For those of you keeping score, Frank and I recorded our conversation on Wednesday just after the memorandum of understanding between Iran and the US Was released. And you'll hear our immediate reaction. Frank and I came down on the seems like we lost the war side. Look, when the war began, Trump let Netanyahu convince him that this was going to be easy, that all he had to do was urge the Iranian people to take down the regime. Well, things didn't quite work out that way. And it turned out that the Iranian regime could blockade the Strait of Hormuz. Who could have seen that Gummy, oh, maybe every Middle east expert he talked to. But he didn't listen, did he? Now, nearly four months later, Trump declared that they've reached an agreement to end the war. Yet today, JD Vance postponed his trip to Switzerland to meet with his Iranian counterparts after Israel targeted Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. Hopefully, the process will continue with the Iranians until very recently. Of course, our bitter enemies who turns out according to Trump, are, quote, very smart people, very good negotiators. But we've had enemies before who've become our friends. Now, I don't think you'll see the ayatollah in the buffet line at Mar a Lago anytime soon. But for now, we have an agreement which includes $300 billion in aid to rebuild Iran. Now, Trump says the 300 billion isn't coming from us, but from a fund from countries in the region. Now, I don't think the memorandum of understanding prohibited any of the rebuilding money from going to the Trump Organization. I'm sorry, but would it really surprise you if the Trump Organization got a small piece of the action? I mean, maybe rebuilding Iran might include just one golf course or, I don't know, the Ms. Middle east contest. Now, the deal put aside a 60 day period for the US and Iran to come up with a nuclear deal. And that period can be extended indefinitely, I guess. But Trump is celebrating. Do you remember all the hoopla Trump made over the Gaza agreement? Trump did a big, very big victory lap and then it all fizzled. Hamas still refuses to disarm. But at the time, the Gaza deal was had this triumphant feel to it. And of course, that has gone next to nowhere. Is anyone going to remind Trump of that? Well, 60 days is still a long time for Trump to celebrate a deal that might not go anywhere. And that 60 days is probably going to get extended even longer, I think. I suppose we'll be hearing about how great this deal is all the way to the midterms. Trump, at his press conference at the G7, praised the Iranian regime not only as very smart, but also very reasonable. Now, these are guys who executed two dissidents last week for waging war against God. Now, why did Trump make this deal now? Well, he came out and he said it. And the one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover. I didn't want that. Doesn't want to be Herbert Hoover, meaning of course, he didn't want to be the president to usher in another Great Depression. So he spun this whole thing to sound like he had to make a choice, give in to this awful deal or wipe out the world economy. Well, when you put it that way. Make the deal, please, Mr. President. The truth is, Trump saw that the longer this war continued, the lower his approval ratings got. But he's not going to go in front of the American people and say, have you seen my latest approval ratings? We're getting out of the war now. Gas prices will go down, but we don't know by how much. And they're not going to drop like a rock, the way Trump puts it. And you know, any nuclear deal he makes with Iran is going to be weaker than Obama's jcpoa, if there is any deal at all, that is. Speaking of Obama, I don't know if you watch the opening of the Obama library. Both Obamas were very uplifting Hopeful and aspirational. I was especially struck by how Michelle spoke about her husband.

Franklin Foer

Your truest essence, your stubborn optimism and unflinching courage, your dazzling brilliance and unpretentious decency, your ferocious work ethic, an absolutely unshakable moral fiber. How absurd it is to imagine that you might have done anything but make our family and this entire country proud.

Podcast Host (Al)

Now, of course, we all hope and pray that Trump will still be around for the dedication of his library, but even if he's not, can you imagine Melania touting Trump's unshakable moral fiber as she stands in front of his library, hotel, offtrack betting parlor? But at least we know that Trump has made his family proud. If by proud, you mean exorbitantly wealthy. Well, let's go to Franklin 4. It's a great one, you know, for a change. Hey, Frank, Owen, thank you for joining me on the podcast one last time.

Franklin Foer

It's bittersweet to be here.

Podcast Host (Al)

Okay, we'll get to Iran in a bit. As we speak, the New York Times has just produced the memorandum of understanding between Iran and the US So we'll do the best we can talking about that, but I want to get to the World Cup.

Franklin Foer

You know how much I love this podcast, Al. I'm here instead of watching England play Croatia right now. That's how much I love you.

Podcast Host (Al)

Oh, my. I don't know the sport. I played soccer in high school.

Franklin Foer

The off season. From wrestling.

Podcast Host (Al)

Yeah. I wrestled. I went to a school where you had to do sports, and so I love soccer, except I was so bad at it, and we did not know what we were doing. And I was. My position was, I guess. What do you call them now? It's like a fullback. What is that now? The defender, Right. Yeah. Yeah, a defender. And all I ever did was just kick it as far as I could upfield. We were terrible, and you were terrible. I read your book, and you opened with how terrible you were as a. As a soccer player as a kid.

Franklin Foer

The first line in my book is, I suck at soccer. It was still exotic when I started to play, but probably not nearly as exotic as it was in Minnesota in the late 1960s when you played.

Podcast Host (Al)

So you wrote this book, How Soccer Explains the World. An Unlikely Theory of Globalization. This is over 20 years ago, right?

Franklin Foer

Yep. Pages are yellow. Yeah.

Podcast Host (Al)

And how many you traveled the globe?

Franklin Foer

I did. Can I just say one thing about this? It's just relevant to this discussion, which is, you know, I'm looking at this World Cup. I started off with with not a whole lot of enthusiasm for this World cup, for all sorts of political reasons, but one thing that just I. I've really enjoyed watching it, and it's made me kind of think back to my decision to write that book for the first time, and kind of how I first became a narrator.

Podcast Host (Al)

Reissued, by the way, because of the World Cup.

Franklin Foer

Exactly that. When I was a kid, and it was. You would watch on, I think, ABC Wide World of Sports, it was. It was. It was kind of. It was not to follow the World cup in the same sort of comprehensive way that it is now. But when I would look at the stadium and I'd look at all the passion of the fans, which felt so authentic, there was no need for a scoreboard to tell anybody what to think or feel. And it was. There was something a little bit dangerous when I would look into the crowds, just about the unbridled passion. But the thing that I remember most was it was 1986, was probably the first World Cup I really followed closely, and Argentina was playing England in the finals. And England and Argentina had just fought the Falkland War. And there was so much that was kind of fraught about that game. It was like you could tell that this was about more than just a sport. And what I've loved about soccer from the start was just like, it felt like peeling open the atlas. And it was like that there was a way. There was something about the world that was. That was suddenly accessible through this game. And as I've watched this World cup, one of the reasons I wasn't enthusiastic is they expanded it to 48 teams. And I was like, how can there be 48 countries that play soccer with quality? And, of course, there are always a few who just get plowed. Like, there was Curacao, which has 100. I think 150,000 people, was beat 7:1 by Germany. But that's basically the only. You know, most of these games have been incredibly tight. And I just watched the Democratic Republic of Congo play Portugal to a 11 draw. Cape Verde, which was a country. I challenge most of your listeners to pinpoint that on the map.

Podcast Host (Al)

Yeah, I can't.

Franklin Foer

Which was one of the favorites in this tournament to a 00 draw. And there's something just so beautiful to me that we can see everything right now in our world. Like, everything feels accessible. You can stream every game you could, but there's still countries and players and teams that are just kind of beyond the knowledge and expertise of even the people who are most obsessed with this game. And it's to me, it's kind of marvelous just to remember that there is, there still is this wider world that we don't know, despite all of our technology, despite all of our expertise, despite all of our hubris. And it's so exciting to encounter it.

Podcast Host (Al)

Well, the subtitle again, it's How Soccer Explains the World, An Unlikely Theory of Globalization. And you basically take us to all these different countries, and I think your conclusion in this is that even though the world had kind of gotten smaller, the global globalization wasn't happening and at the pace you might expect.

Jake Stauch

Right.

Franklin Foer

It certainly wasn't bringing us together.

Podcast Host (Al)

Right.

Franklin Foer

Which I. And I'm confident that that part of my thesis has panned out. We're not any closer to Kumbaya now than we were in 2004. But it's, you know, the way that people think about themselves doesn't dissolve just because. Just because I can watch every, you know, every television show ever produced in my. On a device in my pocket doesn't mean that I'm going to suddenly be transformed into a different person who is not committed to my tribe, my nation.

Podcast Host (Al)

Well, since you wrote the book for the last 20 some years, has there been a trend more toward globalization or less, or how is it? What character does globalization have now compared to then?

Franklin Foer

I think that there is. You look at the global economy and you would say that that has progressed very fast. And you look at the way that technology has transformed the world and made the world ever smaller, that certainly has accelerated. If the promise of globalization and of kind of political liberalism was that trade would result in the spread of liberal values and liberal institutions, I would say that that hasn't happened.

Podcast Host (Al)

So not better since you first wrote the book, or up and down?

Franklin Foer

I would say up and I mean, it's up and down. It's like, you don't want to be too bleak about this because politically there's so much bleak that has occurred. But there's a lot of people who've been lifted out of poverty in that time, et cetera, et cetera.

Podcast Host (Al)

Now, Trump is a soccer fan. He's a big soccer fan. This is. You don't think of MAGA as being big soccer people, Right?

Franklin Foer

Well, this is one of the surprising things, is that there's been a lot of hatred on the American right towards soccer. In some pretty incredible quotes from Fox News hosts who described the game as gay, Ann Coulter is described as kind of socialist. Jack Kemp in the 1980s. You remember Jack Kemp, of course.

Podcast Host (Al)

Yeah, yeah. Buffalo Bills quarterback. I'm more of a American football fan, I will say, than a soccer fan, maybe from my experience playing soccer.

Franklin Foer

But I've had. I've had the privilege of watching a Minnesota Vikings game with you. So I know.

Podcast Host (Al)

Oh, that's right.

Franklin Foer

So Jack Kemp. They denounced this game as this foreign incursion into the United States. They saw the way that little kids were playing soccer and not Little League baseball. They saw the way in which this was a deliberate effort from the rest of the world to transform the United States. Because the United States is such a big market, and it's a place where soccer really hasn't taken off. So once you could crack that market, then there was this big financial opportunity for brands, et cetera. And so they would complain about it being un American. But Trump doesn't really subscribe to that point of view because. For two reasons, or maybe a couple of different reasons. One, he came of age in New York city in the 1970s, and Pele was. Was the great Brazilian soccer player was playing in New York City. Then.

Podcast Host (Al)

It was kind of a Kissinger got him into the country.

Franklin Foer

Little known fact. Henry Kissinger called the foreign minister of Brazil and told him it would be very much in his country's national interest to allow Pele to come to the United States. So Trump has that memory of Giant Stadium being filled with it with celebrities to watch Pele play. His son Baron is a soccer fan. He's a goalkeeper. He's tall, tall, very knowledgeable, apparently plays a lot of video games, watches a lot of. Of games on television. So I think to impress him, Trump has kind of brought in Cristiano Ronaldo or, you know, Messi, the big soccer stars. White House.

Podcast Host (Al)

Who's ahead of FIFA?

Franklin Foer

Gianni Infantino.

Podcast Host (Al)

Oh, that's. That's his pal, right?

Franklin Foer

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then that's the third part of it, is that Infantino has read the manual about how you manage Donald Trump, and he's executed it to perfection that he started making the pilgrimages to Mar a Lago. He bought office space for FIFA in a Trump building in Miami, even though FIFA had plenty of office space here. Then, of course, he handed Trump. He created the FIFA Peace Prize.

Podcast Host (Al)

Right, because they had not had a Peace Prize before.

Franklin Foer

Exactly. Okay, maybe. Maybe as you sign off on the podcast, they're gonna. They're gonna honor you with it next year, but who knows, because they never really outlined the criteria for the prize or never really explained how the recipient, the single recipient, I guess, has been picked for that prize. There was also this incredible moment at the End of. There was a Club World cup that took place in the United States last summer, and Chelsea, a team from London, won it. So Trump is on. He's handing this team, Chelsea the trophy. They expect him to disappear from the stage, but he just doesn't go away. And so the team is celebrating this massive victory. They're jumping up and down, the confetti is going, raining down on them, and they're like, why is Trump still on the stage? You're acting as if he's just won this trophy with us. And, of course, that's. That's the Trump way, right? You sponge off somebody else's success. And then there's this moment there. He's. They've handed out the medals, and he's handing out the medals to the winners, and there's one extra one, and what does he do? He slips it into his pocket and walks away with the winner's medal because that's.

Podcast Host (Al)

Okay. Well, let's go to Trump. I guess this afternoon, you know, just right before we. We hopped on the memorandum of understanding between the US And Iran was. I guess the New York Times published it.

Jake Stauch

Right.

Podcast Host (Al)

So this is. You get a chance to. To look at it. I looked at these. Holy mackerel.

Franklin Foer

Holy mackerel.

Podcast Host (Al)

Doesn't it seem like we gave them everything? Pretty much, yep.

Franklin Foer

I think Trump said he wanted this war to end in unconditional surrender, and he delivered what he promised.

Podcast Host (Al)

Boy. I mean, that's what he said at first, right? That it would. When we started the damn thing, that's what it was about. It was first and foremost about regime change. The people of Iran would get rid of their leaders, and he encouraged them to do that. And then he didn't do anything. And about the regime killed about 30,000 people.

Franklin Foer

I mean, I think part of the tell here was they announced that this deal, this memorandum had been done. I think JD Vance signed it via DocuSign, also telling that. That. That Donald Trump didn't want to fix his own signature to it, that he made J.D. vance do it. And then days went by, they briefed Republican senators on it. They just wouldn't release the text. And, I mean, that suggests that they were pretty embarrassed by the terms that they'd agreed to. Then, you know, we talked about regime change being a primary objective of the war, at least ostensibly when it was announced, when Trump gave that speech at Mar a Lago, the night that we started to bomb Tehran.

Podcast Host (Al)

And wearing a baseball cap, a US Baseball cap.

Franklin Foer

Yeah. Defensive occasion. I think FDR won one of those Right, Yeah. You know, we, we not only end this war by failing to depose the regime, we basically. Can we say that if there is a deal, because this memorandum of understanding is just kind of outlining where the talks, the next wage of stage of talks will end, that they'll eventually end with Iran getting $300 billion in reparation.

Podcast Host (Al)

Now, Trump has said that's not coming from us, but it's coming from some globe global fund from countries in the

Franklin Foer

region or countries in the region was what I, I think I, I heard. But the very idea that we're paying them for the damage that we inflicted on them seems like a concession that it was a dumb war to start in the first place.

Podcast Host (Al)

Okay, now, we were in talks with Iran on the nuclear negotiations before the war, right?

Franklin Foer

Yeah, yeah.

Podcast Host (Al)

Okay. So we were in talks with Iran before, on, on the nuclear stuff, before the war started. Right, right.

Franklin Foer

Witkoff and Kushner were talking to them.

Podcast Host (Al)

Right.

Franklin Foer

And Iran actually said before the war that they wouldn't pursue nuclear weapons.

Podcast Host (Al)

They did that in the jcpoa, right? Yeah, it was on the first page of it.

Franklin Foer

Yeah. Right. And even before that, they've always claimed that they weren't pursuing nuclear weapons. So for them to restate kind of that claim is worth nothing.

Podcast Host (Al)

Yeah. I mean, I don't trust Iran, but I think that when we take a victory lap, that this is in the memorandum, it's a little hanky.

Franklin Foer

Yeah. And the biggest problem is, is that having started a war that was ill advised, there was not a good way to win it after they, they, they essentially showed that they could withstand the best punch that the United States and Israel was willing to throw at them, that they, they, they had showed that, that they could survive, you know, a massive amount of bombardment. We, they could kill layers and layers of leadership. And in the end, as this negotiation was happening, Iran very deliberately chose to respond when Israel struck Hezbollah in Beirut to show that they weren't going to be deterred by any of this.

Podcast Host (Al)

It starts off with a thing about, you know, that Lebanon is, is part of this. There'd be no. And of course, Trump and, and Netanyahu into words on this, right?

Franklin Foer

Yeah, exactly.

Podcast Host (Al)

And it's the you kind of words, right?

Franklin Foer

Yeah. So they got, they got pissed. But it's an incredible concession to Iran that Trump is essentially saying, I will stifle Israel when Israel wants to attack Iran, because that is like the end of the war in Lebanon is essential to this deal. And so Iran's ability to operate in the Middle east as a power has always been predicated on its use of these proxies that sit on Israel's border or that sit on the border of the other Gulf states. And one of the things that before this war, it felt like Israel and the United Israel had successfully defanged Hezbollah. But coming out of this war and based on this document, it feels like Iran not only has maintained the power of its proxy, it's essentially got the US blessing to protect its proxy.

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Podcast Host (Al)

Let's go into the text of this thing, and I want to talk about some of what's in here. Okay. The first thing is that it includes Lebanon, so obviously very important to Iran. The second thing is that Iran and the US Would respect each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity in each other's affairs. Now, that's pretty important, I would think, because we've tried to kill them and they've tried to kill Trump, haven't they?

Franklin Foer

Yeah.

Podcast Host (Al)

So I don't blame them for that one.

Franklin Foer

Nope.

Podcast Host (Al)

Okay. Okay. It says the United States and Islamic Republic will commit negotiating and achieving this in 60 days. We're talking about a nuclear agreement in 60 days. How long did the, you know, JCPOA take? I mean, that took years.

Franklin Foer

It was like a year. I think it was a year and a half, maybe.

Podcast Host (Al)

Is this so different than the jcpoa? I mean.

Franklin Foer

Well, that was an actual rigorous deal. I mean, that was. That was a deal that had lots of technical specificity.

Podcast Host (Al)

Moniz, our Energy secretary, was. Is a nuclear physicist and fed him from mit. And, yeah, that was really done in the right way.

Franklin Foer

And this is an agreement to have an agreement which is not the same thing as having.

Podcast Host (Al)

Which they will do in 60 days. And the JCPOA took about a year and a half, is that right?

Franklin Foer

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Couldn't be more different.

Podcast Host (Al)

Yeah. In 60 days. 60 days from now, they won't have anything, will they? They won't have anything, of course. Yeah, of course. And then where will it proceed from there?

Franklin Foer

I mean, I think it's either they set up a process for negotiation that takes forever and maybe culminates in nothing. I mean, I think that's. That's the most likely thing. Or everything breaks down again and there's. We're back to some sort of hot conflict in the Middle East. Maybe the United States is involved, maybe it's not involved. Maybe Iran kind of petulantly says, you couldn't control Israel, Donald Trump. So we're walking away from the table. But Iran has shown that they hold the straight, which is the thing that will ultimately break Donald Trump's will. So they've done a pretty good job of demonstrating to themselves how you prevail in this process.

Podcast Host (Al)

Does Trump benefit from this thing, or do Americans see this kind of for what it is? How do you think this is the reaction politically is going to be?

Franklin Foer

I don't think anybody's going to believe that we won this war. That's not going to change anything. I think that he's. He's going to deal with now a lot of complaints from his right that they're going to be on Fox News and other places. I think Fox News referred to him as Neville. There's somebody referred to him as Neville Trump today. And there are a lot of prominent voices in the movement who are going to be decrying him. You know, this is probably net good for the global economy, and that might benefit him in the run up to the midterm elections. But I think that we're just crossing that threshold point where people have made up their mind about their mood on the national economy. And I'm not sure that things will necessarily improve that quickly to materially.

Podcast Host (Al)

Right. I don't think so either.

Franklin Foer

Yeah. I don't know if you remember, we talked on the phone maybe a week and a half ago. And my take then, and I think that this is still true, is that Trump just wants us out of the way.

Podcast Host (Al)

I mean, this is a war that started with him demanding their surrender. Yeah, yeah. So we lost this war. We've lost this war.

Franklin Foer

We've lost this war.

Podcast Host (Al)

Yeah.

Franklin Foer

But if you think back to, like, the end of the Gaza war, where Trump gathers the leaders of the world

Podcast Host (Al)

and celebration, and I'm wondering if this week is. We're going to see that kind of celebration, too.

Franklin Foer

I don't know. I kind of. I doubt it. But I think the thing that we'll see is that Trump had all these visions for the Board of Peace and. And what, what. How the reconstruction of Gaza and how that would unfold and how political. And none of it has happened because, I mean, of course, this is obvious. Trump is just committed to getting the kind of headline where he can claim credit for ending a war, and then the execution and diplomacy and all the hard work just never happens because he doesn't. He simply doesn't care about it. And it feels like that's where this is headed, too. It's like the likelihood that Witkoff and Kushner are going to be able to pull off a Nuclear negotiation in 60 days is kind of laughable. The idea that they're going to be committed to executing it over the rest of Trump's term seems kind of similarly laughable because there's no real commitment or patience.

Podcast Host (Al)

But nevertheless, in the meantime, the US Will take out its blockade and they'll open up the. The strait. Yeah. Of Hormuz. So commerce will start again. That's a good thing, I guess, right?

Franklin Foer

Well, it's very important for Iran. So it's like, so. So Iran will be able to get oil revenue, and so they'll be able to begin reconstruction. They don't need to wait for the $300 billion reparations. They'll be able to. Their economy will start to have money flowing into it, and so that money can go into propping up the regime and rebuilding from. From the attacks. Then the other provision in there is that it says after 60 days, Iran can start collecting tolls on shipment through the strait.

Podcast Host (Al)

Right. And I believe that Trump has said in the. That they won't be able to do that. But they will, according to the MoU. I mean, they will. They will be able to.

Franklin Foer

Yeah.

Podcast Host (Al)

Okay. Yeah.

Franklin Foer

It says so in plain English.

Podcast Host (Al)

Okay, let's keep going. Okay. It'll be 60 days. Then Iran can start charging tolls. Right. Okay. And it says that the investment of $300 billion, you talked about that, but Trump keeps saying that none of that is coming from us. Right. Yeah. Okay. I. I guess not.

Franklin Foer

I mean, going back to the revolution, there's all this money that was frozen.

Podcast Host (Al)

Oh, there's like $26 billion in frozen money. And they remember that Trump kept pointing out that under the JCPOA that there was $1.7 billion, I guess, that Iran got. And he keeps harping on that. This is 26 billion.

Franklin Foer

Yeah, yeah. My colleague Jonathan Chait had a pretty good line where he said, Trump keeps talking about the $1.7 billion that were transported in green currency on pallets to the regime. He says he would never do that. And one of the reasons you couldn't do that is because $300 billion on pallets would break any pallets and break any heavy.

Podcast Host (Al)

So. So that's. That's pretty astounding, considering that was such a. A big, big deal to him. Okay, now, it says. It says Here, paragraph 8, the Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that it should not procure or develop nuclear weapons. But that goes back to 1970. So that's nothing. No.

Franklin Foer

Right. Every country that's pursuing nuclear weapons says it's not pursuing nuclear weapons until it has nuclear weapons. And then if you're Israel, you keep it quiet.

Podcast Host (Al)

And do you think that there'll be. In the 60 days, there's not going to be an agreement on their nuclear program. And as you say, that's probably going to take forever. But is there going to be a way for us to make sure that

Franklin Foer

they don't, they don't develop in the next 60 days?

Podcast Host (Al)

No, in the next 60 days, they're not going to develop a nuclear weapon. But, I mean, once Trump turns his attention away from this, I don't see us monitoring that.

Franklin Foer

Well, there's not. What the JCPOA did was set up a system.

Podcast Host (Al)

We had inspectors in there, of course. Yeah.

Franklin Foer

And unless there was a deal over this, there won't. Inspectors are not going to come back into the country unless Iran, for some reason, decides to invite them back in, which seems unlikely.

Podcast Host (Al)

Okay, let's see what else is in this thing. All right. Okay. The Republic of Iran will maintain the current status quo of the nuclear program. The United States will not impose any new sanctions and will not deploy additional forces in the region.

Franklin Foer

So what is our source of leverage? The blockade was a source of leverage. That's gone. There's nothing we can do to increase the leverage that we have on them, according to this document, by punishing them in the next 60 days if they start to do something broke, I guess the withdrawal of leverage. I'm not sure what their alternative is, but. But it's not a strong negotiating position.

Podcast Host (Al)

Let's move to where's Netanyahu on this? I mean, again, there was evidently them swearing at each other the other day. And can he interrupt this? Can Israel attack Hezbollah? Would that scuttle this?

Franklin Foer

I think it could. I mean, I think that the Iranian position is that it would scuttle this. And so Netanyahu's in the bind. He's up for reelection in October. Donald Trump's popularity in Israel has plummeted.

Podcast Host (Al)

Has it plummeted in the last few days, or has it plummeted in the last few days because of this dispute?

Franklin Foer

Yeah, it went from he was at 58% approval in Israel, he's dropped to 38% approval in Israel.

Podcast Host (Al)

Almost as low as here.

Franklin Foer

Almost as low as here. Right. And so Netanyahu has to make a decision. And the decision is, you know, do you cross Trump and do you stand up to Trump on this? Because that's what his opponents are saying. His opponents are attacking him from the right, saying that I could manage Trump better than you could manage Trump, and I would have never allowed Trump to do this, which is, I think, whatever, just empty, not very intelligent political rhetoric. But if Netanyahu is desperate and Hezbollah is going to test him, I think that Hezbollah, you know, can continue sending drones at Israel, that they make it hard for people in the north of Israel to resume everyday life. And Netanyahu may feel like in order to bolster his reelection that he has to strike Hezbollah back in a meaningful sort of way. And then the question is, what happens to the Trump, Netanyahu relationship from there does, you know, which. Which I think anybody who saw this coming from the beginning could see that it was gonna. It was gonna likely to end badly. And if it did, like, end badly, Israel was going to be the one left holding the bag that they were going to take the fall for it. That's. That's true. I mean, it's. I think if you, you look at the, at Israel standing in the United States, which was not high to begin with, I think all the bad trends for it in public opinion have accelerated over the course of this war because this war is so unpopular. And the Trump administration's going to shift, already shifted, to blame Netanyahu for persuading Trump that this was the right thing to do in the first place.

Podcast Host (Al)

People associate in Israel, you know, kind of associated Trump with Netanyahu. Right. And now this has been the split. So Netanyahu loses. Very likely.

Franklin Foer

Yeah. I think there's a. There's a real chance that that happens. Now the opposition is split into two blocks. At the beginning of the, this campaign, it looks like the opposition was uniting against Netanyahu. The Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, who'd kind of run a coalition government before Netanyahu came into power, had basically joined forces with Bennett as the front person. But there's this other party run by a guy who was the chief of staff of the idf, named Gabi Eisenhower, and he's been soaring in the polls at the expense of this other coalition. And my guess is that in the end, between the two factions, they end up compiling enough seats in the Knesset that they can join forces together and form some sort of new government. But Netanyahu is the figure everybody always thinks is on the brink of tumbling after October 7th. Everybody said, surely he's going to take the blame for this disaster and fall, and it didn't happen. And everything looks pretty bad for him right now. But who knows?

Podcast Host (Al)

Let's move over to Russia and Ukraine, or Ukraine. You're the first person I talked to about Ukraine. This is, I think, right before or right after Russia invaded. Basically at the time, you were covering the Biden White House very closely. Right. And you were very praiseworthy of Biden putting together this coalition, which he started doing well in advance of the invasion because we saw our intelligence forces, folks saw it coming. He at least fucking supported we armed Ukraine. He kind of backed off a little bit. Remember when. When Putin threatened to use tactical nuclear weapons and we backed off? That was kind of a mistake on Biden's part.

Franklin Foer

Well, I think that Biden was always reluctant to give Ukraine weapons that could allow Ukraine to strike, strike within Russia, strike deep into Russia.

Podcast Host (Al)

And now they can.

Franklin Foer

Now they can. That was a mistaken calculation. And I think the historical question is if they were able to launch those strikes, would they, would they. That somehow have changed Putin's calculus? I kind of doubt it would have. I mean, I think Biden was being overly cautious. The risks he worried about never came to fruition. But I'm not sure there were. There was any moment where Ukraine could have done something that would have changed

Podcast Host (Al)

Putin's approach to this war, and maybe still not. Even though I think that things have changed in momentum in the war. Right.

Franklin Foer

Well, so here's the. I think the Russia a couple months ago looked like it really was going to have the upper hand here, that as the Trump administration, support for Ukraine was diminishing. It looked like maybe this. And as Ukraine just has kind of gone through this war for how many years now? And you're like, how can they sustain this with a much smaller population, with the weakening support of its primary international benefactor? But Russia just keeps throwing bodies at Ukraine, and it's not really making massive advances on the battlefield. I think they're losing something like 30 to 40,000 soldiers a month.

Podcast Host (Al)

Well, part of this isn't the technology that Ukraine has created in terms of drones. And hasn't that made a significant difference in this. In this war? Isn't that helping to stop Russia's advance?

Franklin Foer

Yeah, I mean, it's. I mean, from the start, they've shown that they were able to innovate on that. But I think the thing that's been very interesting to watch is that you have this combination of Europe stepping up in a major way for Ukraine, compensating for some of the United States's diminished

Podcast Host (Al)

role, and that's a good thing. I think you got to give, maybe give Trump some credit, I don't know, for saying, okay, we'll sell you. We'll sell Europe these Weapons. And the weapons. And they'll give them to Ukraine. And that put them more skin in the game.

Franklin Foer

Sure. I mean, I think it's better if everybody had more skin in the game.

Podcast Host (Al)

Yes, yes, I do, too.

Franklin Foer

But I think the other thing is, is that Ukraine has created its own defense military industrial complex, kind of on the fly in the course of this war, that they've made shrewd investments, that they've, They've, they've grown their manufacturing capacity so they can produce a lot of their own weapons, and they've done it much faster, I think, than anybody anticipated.

Podcast Host (Al)

And don't they sell their, their drones to us? Don't they? Or is it to us? Or who?

Franklin Foer

Yeah, well, I mean, it was in the middle of the Iran war. It's a moment that is either humiliating or inspiring. Look at it. Where we needed Ukraine's help in trying to figure out how to counter Iranian drones, because you remember, Iran is been selling drones to Russia that they use against Ukraine.

Podcast Host (Al)

So. And so now Russia takes how many casualties? I heard a thing of 30,000 casualties a month.

Franklin Foer

Is that 30 to 40,000 casualties a month? I think it is, yeah.

Podcast Host (Al)

That's injury. That's wounded and dead.

Franklin Foer

Yeah.

Podcast Host (Al)

But there's no hope of Putin saying, you know, let's negotiate. Trump has lost any interest in negotiating. Of course, he said that he would end it on the first day.

Franklin Foer

Yeah. And Zelensky has made various gestures. I think earlier this month, he, he said he was willing to meet face to face with Putin. And I think, you know, and Putin rejected that out of hand. And so, you know, you look at this, you're like, what will change this conflict? I mean, it's, it's. Everybody uses these terms stalemate, frozen. And like, what. What are the forces that could shock this into some sort of different resolution? And what could change Russia's calculus? And, you know, maybe if there was the, the, the economic collapse that everybody has kind of been anticipating since the first days of the war, maybe something like that could develop. But it seems like Russia's ability to withstand economic pain, pretty immense. But, but Putin's. Putin's dream of getting international recognition of parts of Ukraine that he's captured, it's kind of, it's so immense. His sense of his own place in history is so tied up with Ukraine that he's not going to slink away from this. There needs to be something external that

Podcast Host (Al)

changes the dynamic, and that's certainly not going to come from Trump.

Franklin Foer

No.

Podcast Host (Al)

Last time we spoke, I don't think Venezuela had happened. Do you think Venezuela, what happened there was that made Trump think he could bomb Iran, that we could win a war with them.

Franklin Foer

Is that totally. I mean, it seems like he was high on his own supply that he thought that there was some version of the Venezuela strategy that he could replicate. He was so eager to do it. There was that great Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman TikTok of the decision to go to war. The table was so vividly portrayed that you had all these people sitting around the table being like, I don't know if this is a good idea. The head of the CIA, Marco Rubio, J.D. vance, of course, all weighing in. But Trump was just dead set on doing it. And it's not just because Netanyahu came in and showed him a dazzling PowerPoint presentation that convinced them that this was plausible. I think it really was because he had this example sitting in front of him and he had these dreams of his new place in history.

Podcast Host (Al)

Well, he will have a new place, I guess. Let's move on to Cuba. This probably talks against are not doing trying to overthrow the Cuban regime. Does it?

Franklin Foer

And yet, and yet there was Pete Hegseth visiting Guantanamo earlier this month, talking about how we needed to take back our hemisphere and applied, what do they call it, the Don Row Doctrine. And there's been a lot that's I think intensified over the course of the last month, even as there's this pretty clear object lesson about the dangers of us attempting regime change.

Podcast Host (Al)

Okay. So I, I'm thinking that the Iran experience has maybe made us beg off on that. Is he. Does Trump now have a foreign policy? I mean, or is it just, let's not do this again?

Franklin Foer

I mean, I don't know if I fully believe that he wouldn't do this again. I think in Cuba, I think it's unlikely that anything quickly will happen in Cuba, but I think that they see this opportunity to topple the regime. There's Because Cuba was so reliant on Venezuelan oil and that oil is no longer flowing and there are blackouts in the country on a regular basis. They've indicted Raul Castro. Right. They've done all these things to turn the screws on Cuba. I don't think that they will engage in a military adventure there, but I couldn't totally rule it out.

Podcast Host (Al)

Okay, well, thanks for going through the world with us, Frank, and congratulations on the reissue of the book. It's been great having you on over the years.

Franklin Foer

I mean, what's been a real pleasure. I don't know if you remember the first time we met, I was. You were going into the studio in Capitol Hill. I was there recording a podcast. Not your podcast, somebody else's podcast. We just really hit it off and it's been, I mean, not only have I really enjoyed coming onto your show, and everybody remembers how extraordinary you were as a questioner, and it's just, it's been, I've always had the best time doing this with you and feel like you've, you've, you've performed a great service to your nation and through the podcast. And it's been more than that, personally. It's been a way that I've been able to deepen my, my friendship with you. So thank you for having me so often.

Podcast Host (Al)

Well, thank you, Frank, and for your friendship, but mostly for being a great guest. Well, I hope you enjoyed listening. That beautiful music is by Leo Kotke, the great Leo Kotke. I want to thank Peter Ogburn for producing this podcast. We'll talk again next week.

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