Early last Saturday, President Trump announced that the United States had begun a major military operation against Iran. What followed has been a week of confusion, mixed messaging and rising casualties in a widening conflict that is causing calamity in the Gulf region. On this week’s round table, the Opinion national politics writer Michelle Cottle and the columnists Jamelle Bouie and David French discuss the dangers of another “forever war,” the challenge of defining success and viable exit strategies.
Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYTimes app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Michelle Cottle: Guys, people were anticipating some kind of attack on Iran for weeks. As of this taping, we are six days into Operation Epic Fury, as the Defense Department has named it. Given all the buildup, is it playing out as you expected?
David French: I honestly didn’t know what to expect. We had been told nothing. The president is in front of the State of the Union, all of America; he has an opportunity to explain. He has an opportunity, then, to declare that he’s going to go to Congress. We then would have an opportunity to learn what would be the war’s aims, for example. Why would we be doing this? What’s the objective? Is it attainable? What’s it based on? None of this happened.
And so, what’s happening is, you and I and Jamelle, we are watching a buildup, and the people who pay very close attention to the news are watching this buildup in the Middle East. So, we know something is coming, but buildups in the Middle East are not unusual. I mean, controversy and turmoil in the Middle East are not unusual. So, from the standpoint of, is this something that’s going to lead to the kind of war that we’re watching right now? No, I did not fully expect that in any way.
And so, what we’ve had here is one of the strangest sensations of my entire life, which is that we’re living in a war that was sprung on us by our own government.
Cottle: Surprise!
French: We’ve been in wars before that were sprung on us by opposing governments, but this is one that was sprung on us by our own government — and not as a very short, limited operation. But this is indefinite duration, with no clearly defined objectives, with the potential of not just blowback against our troops in the region, but also of something that risks civilians in a way that maybe many of our other conflicts haven’t, because Iran is a state sponsor of terror. And there are a lot of questions about whether Iran could activate terror networks, for example.
And so, we are dealing with greater risk to American civilians. We already had what looks like a terror attack in Austin, Texas. We have a huge risk to American service members. We have risks to the global economy. And this was just popped right on top of us. It’s a remarkable turn of events. And this is not supposed to be the way this constitutional republic was designed.
Cottle: Yeah, I was sitting around — I can’t remember if it was Sunday night or Monday morning — when my sister, who lives in Texas, texted me. She’s like: “So we are in a war now?” I was like: “Yep, yep. Welcome to the show.” They had no idea this was coming. And they’re in Texas. The Austin shooting made them very nervous. They said, where will this go?
Jamelle, what about you? What’s your introduction to all of this been like, and what has you scratching your head, or ringing your hands?
Jamelle Bouie: I feel compelled to say that most Americans learned of this on Saturday when they woke up in the morning, right? I woke up, my kids woke up at 7, I went to go look at what was going on, and it’s like, “Oh, we’ve started a war in Iran.”
I feel like it’s been brushed off, just like, “Oh, what a quirky thing the president’s doing.” But I think it gets to the core of the absolute contempt for democratic accountability, and just explanation that the administration has, that if you look in the past to when American presidents have announced conflicts, and it’s from the Oval Office, prime time, right? It’s talking directly to the American people or, in the case before television, it’s F.D.R. on the radio at a time when people are tuned in. It’s talking directly to the American people, saying: “This is the conflict, this is why we’re doing it. These are the war aims.” It’s an open, public thing. Because going to war is supposed to be an open and public and democratic decision.
The reason the Constitution gives Congress the authority to declare war, and not the president, is precisely because putting that authority into a single person makes it opaque, makes it subject to their whims and impulses. And war is one of the most consequential decisions the state makes. So that, in a self-governing country, that’s supposed to be something that the public and its representatives discuss among themselves.
And, you know, there’s a conversation to have about how the United States has — over the last 50, 60 years — kind of moved away from formal declarations of war. And the executive branch has adopted a lot of prerogatives about the use of military force.
But even setting that aside, it is really striking that rather than look — figuratively, I suppose — the American public square in the eye and say, “We’re doing this because of X, Y and Z,” he goes under cover of darkness at Mar-a-Lago. Not the White House, not the Oval Office, not some place that belongs to the American public, but to his little private club in the dead of night, and announces this conflict that has already claimed the lives of American soldiers.
Bouie: And that, to me, is such an abdication of the president’s responsibility to the public. And it’s such a reflection of this president’s, again, contempt for the idea that he’s answerable to the public.
Audio clip of Trump: “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war. But we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future. And it is a noble mission.”
Bouie: The other thing I’ll say, to wrap this up real quickly, is that the fact that there is no — the administration cannot articulate any kind of coherent war aim or strategy. That every time you ask them, they say something different. That, to me, should be a sign that the actual process in the White House is convoluted and confused and has no particular order.
They can’t speak clearly, because there is no clear process — because they have not planned, because there is no strategy. You’re gambling with people’s lives. And if you are spending people’s lives, you have an obligation to be absolutely clear and certain and have a plan and a strategy for what you’re doing. That’s what you owe those people.
Cottle: Well, that strikes me as a very key point, especially with this administration, because a key piece of common wisdom about Donald Trump was that, until this past year, he was pretty wary of foreign entanglements. That is no longer true, whether you’re talking about the ousting of Venezuela’s president or, now, this war.
So, I want your thoughts. Aside from the execution, so far, on what Trump has been projecting as a leader this past week, David — and how you see that landing with the American people, as Jamelle was talking about, who were basically kept in the dark until it was sprung on them.
French: One thing — just to amplify Jamelle’s excellent explanation of why we have this system — I think we can easily overdo this argument that says, “Well, he’s just standing in the line of recent presidents who’ve expanded war powers.” We don’t have a comparable situation, where a president has taken us into this kind of conflict without Congress in a long time.
I mean, George W. Bush, he had a congressional authorization for Iraq and U.N. Security Council resolutions. He had a congressional authorization for Afghanistan. H.W. Bush had a congressional authorization and U.N. Security Council authorizations for Operation Desert Storm. We are now seeing what it looks like when a divisive president, in a divided time, fights a war without trying to rally public support.
And it falls on the American people in an almost perfectly partisan way, with 80 percent or so of Republicans supporting this, because they’re going to support whatever Trump does. Overwhelming opposition from the Democrats. It looks like independents are against this as well. This is already majority disapproval, from Day 1, by most polls. Majority disapproval.
And some of the defenders of the administration might say, “Well, so what? He’s got to get this done. This just has to be done.” I’m like: “Hold on a second. Do you not understand how democracies fight wars?” Let’s just suppose — let’s just grant the argument, for the moment, that this had to be done at this time. Still, you have diminished and minimized your chances of a successful operation by not doing this the right way. Democracies that go to war with public support are very strong. Democracies that go to war without public support — the war effort is very fragile.
But again, to circle back to some of the earlier comments, we don’t yet know what success looks like. We have heard three, four, five different articulations for the purpose. And this matters. I mean, if you’re going to go for a regime-change war, that’s one kind of strategy. If you’re going to destroy a nuclear program, that’s another kind. If you’re going to diminish a ballistic missile capacity, that’s something else. And so there is no situation, I think, where we should say, “Well, the technicality of congressional approval wasn’t followed. But now that doesn’t matter. Now, let’s unite.” That’s just not the way this works.
And look, when I say I’m very critical of Trump, I am not in any way saying that I want the mission of the United States military to fail. What I’m saying is, he has set us up — he has created the conditions here for failure by what he is doing. And that is very alarming. It is very dangerous.
Cottle: OK. Before we go on to the goals, which I want to get to, I just want to say that when you talk like that, it gives me bad flashbacks. I did not support the Iraq war. And the reason that it made me so nervous is I did not have confidence that the Bush administration was going to execute it well.
And you’d get this whole, “Well, you’d support it if anybody else were doing it.” And I’m like: “One, I don’t know that that’s true. But two, it doesn’t matter. It’s this administration that’s doing it, and if you have questions about the way they are executing it, it just is central to how you expect things to go.”
And every time I hear people talking about confused motives and confused goals, and not really laying out the case openly and all this background stuff, I just have these horrible flashbacks to, “Oh my God, we are going to land ourselves in another forever war?” And this was central to Trump’s appeal, that he was going to keep us out of these forever wars, at least for certain segments of his base.
Anyway, now on to goals. What do we know? As you pointed out, they keep telling us different things. What have you heard that strikes you as the real story here? Or is it just impossible to tell?
Bouie: I don’t know if there’s a real story here. As David noted, if this is a regime-change war, the idea here is to change the leadership — change the nature of the Iranian regime, not just the leadership. The thing that’s important to understand — and I’m not an Iran expert, I know enough to be able to follow a conversation, right? But from what I understand, Iran isn’t a personalist dictatorship. This isn’t a country where you can take out the leader and everything kind of falls apart because the country’s so tightly tied to the leader, as was the case in Iraq, right?
This is a fairly sophisticated state, a revolutionary state, where there are multiple power bases, where large segments of the population are actually kind of tied in to the regime itself in very material ways. Which is like — a part of state ideology is to prepare for an attack by the United States.
But if the goal is regime change, then you can’t really do this with missile strikes, right? Like, a regime change operation is going to require ground forces, and the administration has not even begun to make the case for that.
If it’s just airstrikes, then it kind of raises the question: What’s the point here? Is it to take out the nuclear program? You tried that once, it didn’t work out. So, why are we striking?
And the way I’ll put it is, one of the first accounts of civilian casualties was a girls’ school. So, how many girls’ schools do we have to destroy to obtain whatever objective you’re trying to obtain with these airstrikes? And there’s no attempt to explain anything in that regard.
There’s a point I want to make really quick, and that relates to how Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been talking about this in particular. So, he has been discussing this conflict in terms such as, “We’re unleashing maximum lethality,” “American fighting men are pursuing their mission” — you know how he talks, in the kind of macho language.
If you’ve ever seen that movie with Tom Cruise playing the men’s rights-style motivational speaker.
French: “Magnolia”?
Bouie: That’s “Magnolia.” Yeah.
French: Yeah.
Bouie: That’s Hegseth’s whole vibe.
Cottle: Oh, god.
Bouie: That’s his vibe. And that, to an extent, is the president’s vibe a little bit. Not as much. And then they cannot articulate a strategy. And this just has me thinking, how much of this is actually less about strategic objectives and more about, “We have these toys, let’s use them, and let’s demonstrate our strength and masculinity on the world stage”?
How much of this is that, and how much of it reflects the way that the administration understands the world as not like a complex system, where you move one thing and a hundred things happen in response, but as equivalent to almost like a board game — like “Risk,” where we have lots of guys and they have fewer guys. We big, they small. And if we roll the dice and move our guys there, we win. Right?
It’s a very flattened, barely two-dimensional vision of how the world works, in a sense that other people, other states, other leaders are “nonplayable characters.” They’re N.P.C.s, they simply react to us, the protagonists of reality. To me, just observing how they’re talking and behaving, this fits this vision of the world, which is, for lack of a better term, insanely dangerous.
Cottle: Well, what’s the one thing that everybody knows about the game “Risk”? It lasts fricking forever. You can play that game for days and get nowhere, so that’s not soothing, Jamelle, I have to say. David, give us your reaction.
French: So, I think if you’re going to really boil down to what the goal is here — to be perfectly blunt, they’re trying to pound the Iranian regime to such a degree, hit it to such degree, damage it to such a degree, that it makes it vulnerable to falling, that it makes it very difficult to reconstitute nuclear weapons.
And then, if an uprising occurs and there’s a democracy that breaks out, great. If not, well then Iran is very, very, very damaged. And I think that one of the problems is — let’s just take that even on their own terms — that starts to sound a lot like the strategy that Israel took with Hamas before Oct. 7.
So, if you go back and you look at Israel’s military approach to Hamas before Oct. 7, it was these periodic strikes that were designed to degrade Hamas — sort of constantly, degrading Hamas. And in the absence of any sort of permanent peace or any sort of permanent agreement, or actual forced regime change, that’s what you end up doing when you take this approach, you just end up hitting them. And then they reconstitute, and then you have to decide: Do you hit them again? And for a long time, people in Israel thought that this was a sustainable strategy with Hamas until Oct. 7.
And so, I think the best way to say it is, the administration’s just hitting them as hard as it can and seeing what happens.
I do want to say, none of my arguments against the administration are defenses of this Iranian regime, which is loathsome, evil. And look, if I were in the Senate, and you came to me with an attainable goal about how you could destroy their nuclear program, or you came to me with an attainable goal about what you believed you could do to, say, their ballistic missile program — which is incredibly threatening — there are circumstances where I would absolutely approve of it if I were a senator, the use of force against Iran. But not in this circumstance, not like this.
Bouie: Just in terms of even being in the situation to begin with: The origin point of this is Trump, in his first term, tearing up the Iran agreement that the Obama administration negotiated around the nuclear program — a very stringent agreement that wasn’t really given a chance to play out. And plenty of voices at the time, when Trump withdrew from it, said that there’s two possible outcomes from ending this attempt to resolve this peacefully through negotiation and diplomacy. And they are that Iran either actually successfully builds a nuclear weapon, or we go to war to prevent it from doing it. And I think that this is like a vindication of that, right?
When the administration tore up that agreement — and I would say, an ideologically driven decision to do it — there weren’t many choices left on the board. And the Trump administration — neither in its first term, nor its second term — really seemed to be seriously all that interested in trying to find some diplomatic resolution to the question of the Iranian nuclear program. All diplomacy appeared to be like a cover for pursuing this military option, which, to me, feels ultimately less about strategic necessity and more just that they really wanted to attack Iran. Like in the same way that, you know, I’m really looking forward to going on vacation.
Cottle: Oh, come on.
Bouie: They really wanted to attack Iran.
Cottle: All right, so we are here. We’ve done this, however it happened. People are increasingly using the term “metastasizing” across the region. And let me just say, never is that word a good thing. There’s no good context for “metastasizing.” So, that’s clearly telling you something about how it’s being looked at.
But, going forward, how do we expect all of this to affect our credibility with our allies in the region? Thoughts, feelings?
French: First, I want to say that war is a highly contingent exercise. It is something that is extremely unpredictable.
And there are few better examples of that than this: The very month that Trump launches his war against Iran, we get the message that Ukraine reclaimed more territory than it lost for the first time since 2023, in this past month. You want to talk about an unexpected development? Oh my goodness. Virtually every expert, every person who immersed themselves in the balance of power and military forces, would’ve said this was not possible four years ago, just not possible. So, huge grain of salt, huge dose of humility.
Let’s look at some outcomes. One, reasonable best case: the strategy works to some degree. Iran is hit so hard that it either cries uncle or there is some kind of uprising that creates a new government or provisional government.
I think that is not the most likely circumstance. I think it is a possibility. It is not the most likely possibility. I think the most likely possibility here is that regardless of the duration of this war — this particular phase of it — we should not think of it as ending anything with Iran. Iran is a nation that when Iraq invaded it, right after the revolution, they righted the ship in that war, in part, by using mass human wave attacks — young men running over minefields, to clear minefields. This is a regime that does not care how many people it loses. This is not like Venezuela, where you have a lot of people in this thing for money, perhaps. This is a world in which a lot of people are in this for deep-seated, radicalized, theological reasons, willing to expend lives at a level you can’t imagine.
And so, I think the most likely case here is that we have expanding chaos. We do an enormous amount of damage to Iran. We do not topple the regime. We do not end the war, and then we are now going to be at a much greater risk for — Israel gets, I think for a time being, a much greater sense of security. We push a nuclear weapon way down the timeline, but with unforeseen second and third-order effects.
And then, the worst case scenario is spreading chaos that we’re at the front end of something that looks like August 1914: One thing leads to another, which leads to another. A kind of cascade, and this is something I just wish people would have more cognizance of.
We are in a time of heightened tensions around the world, with a massive Chinese military buildup that Xi Jinping had talked about, in some reports, as being ready for war by this year, next year. And here we are, touching off additional large-scale conflict, pulling multiple world powers in. This is inherently dangerous.
Bouie: Yeah. I can’t say it better than David there. This is tremendously dangerous. The August 1914 comparison point sounds frightening, and it should sound frightening. The Balkans of the early 20th century were the Middle East of the 21st century. It’s the same kind of pressure cooker of rivalries and interest.
Earlier in our conversation, Michelle, you mentioned twice that Trump ran on being kind of a peace candidate. And I do want to say that I always thought that this claim from the president was obviously made up, obviously fake. During his first term, although he did not commence a new war, he was very eager to use American military forces for strikes and sabre-rattling. And his conduct in this administration is of a piece with that previous administration; except, in the past, where he may have had voices in the White House, who could say “no” or advise him to not do these things, now the White House is geared toward fulfilling his every whim and impulse, and there’s no one really to say “no.”
He seems to view the use of military force as almost an expression of his own will. And so, he wants to do it to demonstrate his own toughness of some sort. And during the 2024 election, one of the things you’d hear online a lot was, you know, vote for Trump if you want to avoid World War III. And it’s like, I don’t know, if I were trying to start World War III, then this is the kind of thing I’d be doing.
Cottle: OK, so, what viable options do the American people have to have some say in this? I mean, Congress seems to have just thrown up its hands, or at least the Republicans in Congress. But what is to be done for those people who really thought this was going to be a president who wasn’t a warmonger? What kind of say can they have in what happens next in this war, or other possible conflicts moving forward?
Bouie: So last I saw, you had some Democrats who were like, “You know, maybe we’d vote to authorize military action in Iran now that it’s already started.” And if I were advising Democratic members of the Senate in particular, I’d be like, “What are you talking about?”
This is already unpopular. We’re not even a week in, and this is about as unpopular as the Iraq war was in 2005. Already unpopular. So, there’s no political thing to gain here, and I think that maybe this sense of responsibility is misguided. What Democrats can do is put forth a united opposition to this war. To make clear to the American public that we are against this war. We are against this conflict. We are obviously for the safety of American soldiers, but we’re against the war. And we want to end it as quickly as possible, and if you put us into office, if you give us majorities in the House and the Senate, we will. If it hasn’t already ended, we will end this war. That’s the political strategy. It seems incredibly simple, but these are Democrats we’re talking about, so.
Cottle: Now, now. Don’t start that. David?
French: Yeah, I mean, look. One of the core problems we have here, as we’ve been talking about, this launching of a war without articulating goals, without articulating a plan, isn’t — I’m going to say it again — it’s not just a technicality. This is fundamental. This is fundamental.
And so, I would say, even if you are somebody like me, who is pretty hawkish in my approach to Iran, this is intolerable. This is utterly intolerable, because once you initiate hostilities all on your own — you’re the president, you do it without consulting Congress — all of a sudden you create a situation where it becomes incredibly difficult for Congress to unwind your mistake without creating additional risks for soldiers who are downrange. How do you say “stop” when everything’s unrolling? American men and women are in mortal danger.
And so, you begin to create a situation that has its own momentum. I think what you would have to do is, you would have to go to the administration and say: “We’re unwinding this thing. And here is how we’re going to be unwinding this thing, step by step.” But again, I take a back seat to no one in my anger at this Iranian regime. Iranian-backed militias killed men I served with in Iraq, OK? But when we’re talking about launching a war, all on one man’s whim, with no articulated goals, with often contradictory objectives — this is intolerable in the constitutional system. It’s intolerable and Congress has to exert control over this situation. And that means running on this thing.
Cottle: I am not terribly optimistic about this. My position on this is: November is coming. We are in a big election year, and everything that’s going on should factor into what people do at the polls come November. I understand that’s a long way off, but this is the one foolproof check on an out-of-control party at this point.
So, if the Republicans in Congress can’t be counted on to make any kind of demands on an out-of-control president, then it’s time for a little electoral punishment. I’m sorry.
So before we wrap, I just want to take us back. The primary season has begun, Texas started us off with a bang. There were a couple of other states, like North Carolina, Arkansas, but the Texas primaries, especially the Senate — we talked a lot about it, it was kind of a litmus test for each party, or kind of a canary in the coal mine for where they’re going. We have some answers at this point: James Talarico won the Democratic nomination outright, beating Jasmine Crockett, while the Republicans are headed to a runoff between John Cornyn and the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton. Trump is expected to now jump in and do an endorsement.
What are your top takeaways from this? I mean, I was there. I looked into it. I followed, a little bit, Paxton and Cornyn on the trail. I saw how their supporters were sorting themselves. You know, the old-school Republican, last of a dying breed. And Paxton strapping himself to Trump as hard as he could, but wildly scandal-ridden. And then, on the other side, you had an equal split with Talarico being a more unifying figure, lower key with his style, and Crockett just being the ultimate bomb thrower.
So, from how this all shook out, give me your top takeaways, but, you know, keep it tight.
Bouie: My top takeaway is just the astounding Democratic turnout in the primary. Considerably more than the previous Senate primaries, and a real sign that Texas Democrats were, at least, energized and excited. And you can’t make predictions about general election turnout based on primary turnout.
But it is noteworthy that having a competitive primary between two young and exciting candidates really got Democratic voters ready to go out and vote and participate. And that’s a lesson to Democratic parties across the country, that people are looking for fresh faces and they want to be inspired and excited by their candidates. Not only can that produce real energy, but you can carry the energy over into November.
Cottle: Anytime you get participation levels up, I feel like the country is doing what it’s supposed to do. David?
French: So, a couple of things: What Jamelle said about turnout, that really surprised me. Because I’ve always been the one that says, “Ah, Democrats, this is Lucy with the football for you guys.” You’re always thinking, “We’re going to turn Texas blue,” you dump an enormous amount of money into a race that was never going to be that competitive.
I mean, the closest was Beto O’Rourke against Ted Cruz in a wave year. Could Talarico do it? It’s quite possible. Those turnout numbers were something that were surprising to me. But, I will tell you, my main takeaway was on the Republican side, that Paxton did not get that plurality.
Cottle: It’s like a one-point gap, right?
French: I know. You grasp for any little ray of light here, Michelle. Because the conventional wisdom was that he was going to come out of this maybe five or seven points ahead, and then the pressure would be on Trump to endorse Paxton, and then Paxton would roll to the general. And then, even though there was polling showing Paxton and Talarico, with Talarico in the lead, Texas Republicans had a lot of reason to be confident that whoever they put forward is going to win. And we came one step further away from Ken Paxton as a U.S. Senator, and no matter what else happens —
Cottle: You are going to be celebrating that today?
French: If Ken Paxton does not become a U.S. senator, that’s a win for America right there.
Cottle: OK, well, on that happy note, David — David has given us reason for a little optimism here. Let’s just roll right on into recommendations this week. Jamelle, what do you have for us?
Bouie: I am reading a really interesting book, called “The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North” by Michelle Adams. And it’s a book about the battle to desegregate Detroit schools, and how that produced a Supreme Court case that really shaped the nature of school desegregation efforts across the country.
Really interesting book looking at midcentury Detroit, looking at the northern civil rights movement. It’s extremely well written and really fascinating. So, I would recommend it. “The Containment.”
Cottle: David?
French: OK. The latest season of “Dark Winds” has come out. So good.
This is a series about a Navajo tribal police lieutenant named Joe Leaphorn, and I think it’s set in the 1970s. And it’s murder procedurals in the Navajo reservation. And it’s so good. It is such a great show. And the actor who plays Joe Leaphorn, the lead, is just phenomenal. And so, Season 4 is out. Three episodes have dropped. It’s really good. You will not regret this.
I do not lead you astray, Michelle. I do not lead you astray.
Cottle: You do not. You’re very good. All right, so I’m going with a book, although I’m going with a very weird book. It is called “More Weight: A Salem Story.” It is by Ben Wickey, and it is a 500-ish page graphic novel about the Salem witch trials. I think it took about 10 years for the artist to get all of the artwork done. And I’m only a few chapters into it, but, so far, it’s a very strange but very good read. So, I’m just going to go out there. Go get yourself a 500-page graphic novel about the Salem witch trials.
That’s it. And with that, guys, we’re going to land this plane. Thank you. It has been a crazy, head-spinning week. I rely on you to guide me through these things.
French: Thanks, Michelle.
Bouie: Thank you, Michelle.
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