Washington Wednesday: Quagmire—or turning point

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday, March 18th. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. 

Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. 

Time now for Washington Wednesday, and joining us is political scientist Hunter Baker. Hunter is a WORLD Opinions Contributor and our regular Washington Wednesday analyst. 

Good morning Hunter!

HUNTER BAKER, GUEST: Good morning.

EICHER: So as we were preparing this, Hunter, you said something I really wanted to pursue with you, and that’s your view that the president has, in effect, wagered his presidency on the outcome of the Iran war. 

Pretty straightforward notion, but I wonder whether you mean by that that it’s a close enough proxy for the midterm elections—i.e., you lose in Iran, you lose the midterms, but winning in Iran, does that actually translate into winning politically that way?

BAKER: I think this is the whole ball of wax for him. You know, going after Iran is something that probably other American presidents have wanted to do, but have been intimidated by the task, because it is a big task, and we see that. They are the number one world sponsor of terror, they did exact a very high toll from us during the war on terror when we were trying to basically avenge the September 11 attacks and to sort of build a new order of democracy and freedom in the Middle East.

We have now gone after them, in part because of their nuclear ambitions and their other aggression, and this is turning out to be a very big job. We talked about maybe it’s a few days, and maybe the Israelis would be doing something for a few weeks, but it looks like it’s going to take considerably longer to unfold. This is going to be a much bigger challenge.

And complicating matters—and this is why I say that Trump has really staked his whole presidency on it—is the Strait of Hormuz. And we mentioned that before, that the Strait of Hormuz is affecting the world oil equation, and we’ve seen the prices shoot straight up at the pump, and that’s very upsetting to people. It’s one of the most attention-getting sort of prices, but really it has an impact worldwide.

And so there’s the domestic part. Americans are extremely wary about another Middle Eastern military adventure. They’re going to be very unhappy with pain at the pump if that continues... there’s a lot at stake domestically, internationally, and the people that we’re up against in Iran, they know that. And so their goal is to drag this thing out as much as possible and to cause as much pain as possible.

EICHER: Absolutely, and that’s why I framed the question as I did, because I can see how losing or having a difficult time getting bogged down in Iran translates into losing. But I wonder, what’s the upside? You know, if you win, then what’s the prize politically?

BAKER: If you win, it’s an incredible prize. If you win, you have vastly contributed to the stability of the world. I mean, [laughs] if you turn around that regime in Iran, it is incredibly good for so many different people and good for us. They’ve been a thorn in our side for, fifty years? 

EICHER: Fifty years. But Hunter, does it translate to domestic politics, is my question?

BAKER: Yes, I think it does, because this would be different from the terrible and humiliating failures that we had in Iraq, and most notably, in Afghanistan. If you come away from this with a win, then you change the whole narrative, and then you look like somebody who was able to do what others were not able to do. You know, it adds to that idea that Trump is a real winner, and that when he undertakes something, he’s serious about it, and he’s going to win.

MAST: Well, Hunter, then let’s talk about defining victory. It simply does not seem reasonable that the U.S. would lose this one because of the overwhelming might of America, but victory has a political definition, right? And already that’s being talked about. Senator Tom Cotton had this to say, let’s hear it:

TOM COTTON: Anyone who says that we're already losing or we're in a quagmire or the president can't succeed because of the threat that Iran poses to the Hormuz right now, is akin to saying Eisenhower is losing because he hadn't made it to Berlin within two weeks of D-Day. It's going to take some time to achieve those military objectives, but in the end, we will have defanged the Iranian regime. Their missile forces, their drones, their missile launchers, their manufacturing capability will be ended. Their nuclear program will once again be pulverized.

Not a bad point, but I remember the number being four to five weeks, or maybe a little longer. What about you? How do you define success or victory?

BAKER: So, if we have to actually go all in, right—major, major league troops on the ground in Iran—there is no telling how long that could last, how much it would cost, how many lives will be lost.

I think that the gambit is, is that we attack, as we have, Kharg Island and try to get control of sort of the hub of their oil exportation business. And the idea is, if we do that, then we choke off the revenue to the regime, maybe that forces them to come to the table. 

So that’s the game. We have to force them to come to the table. And if we do that, then success or victory becomes something that I could see happening.

EICHER: Well, Hunter, I did want to ask you about the counterterrorism official resigning over the war. Joe Kent is his name. He’s the highest-ranking administration official to quit over opposition to the conflict. He complained about the sway of the Israel lobby, saying that it has too much influence over American policy. He said that, as far as the U.S. is concerned, Iran posed no imminent threat.

Now, before you can say he sounds an awful lot like Tucker Carlson, The New York Times had a story saying that the two of them are close friends. 

I’d now like to quote a close friend of ours, WORLD Opinions writer Erick Erickson. He posted this yesterday on X, and this is a direct quote from that:

“There is a rule in conservative politics,” Erickson says, “that a man is rarely to the right of his wife. Joe Kent lost his first wife in war and remarried a woman who now works for a far-left, anti-Israel, pro-Iran website. Kent should never have been appointed to anything in the Trump administration.”

That from Erick Erickson. A lot going on here, Hunter. What do you think about all this?

BAKER: First of all, I kind of wonder about that rule in conservative politics, because there have been an awful lot of Republican presidents who I would say were on the right of their wives, politically.

Nevertheless, let’s take this issue up. For a long time, the—let’s call it Israel-skeptical sort of a group—has been a deep minority in Republican politics, but they have been there. Pat Buchanan has often sort of occupied that position in the Republican Party, you know, he was able to survive being sort of Israel-skeptical in his career.

But you look at somebody else, like the former National Review writer who’s long dead now, Joe Sobran. Joe Sobran was so skeptical of Israel that he eventually lost his perch at National Review. 

And this viewpoint has been around with Republicans for a very long time. Sometimes they make common cause with some Democrats, and we see it coming out again. And this group, however large it is, they are gaining some influence. And I think they’re gaining some influence with some young conservative Christians who have begun to sort of question the alliance with Israel. 

And so this is something that I think is becoming more prominent. 

I think it’s something that we’re going to hear more often, and it hurts Trump a little bit. I think that some of these folks allied with him on the view that he would be America First and not have the appearance of doing something that Israel wants America to do for its own benefit. And so I think that this guy, Joe Kent, not necessarily all that big of a deal, but as you pointed out, he’s close to Tucker Carlson, and we may hear more of this.

MAST: Well Hunter, since the war with Iran started, there have been multiple attacks or attempted attacks on Americans on American soil.

MONTAGE: Investigators in Texas are looking into possible ties to terrorism in the deadly mass shooting at a bar in Austin over the weekend …  / Chaos at Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s house. A man tries to ignite an incendiary device during a protest, but is tackled by New York’s finest … /We’re also learning more about a shooting this morning at Old Dominion University in Virginia. That shooting left one person dead, two injured. The shooter is also deceased.

Now, those three attacks are being investigated as terrorism. A fourth attempted attack at a Jewish synagogue and school in Michigan is being officially investigated as a targeted hate crime for the time being, we'll see. But reports say the suspect in that case may have a brother with ties to Hezbollah.

Now, I remember a time not so long ago when any one of those would have prompted some sort of political response, maybe even a bipartisan political response, but that doesn’t seem to be happening here. Why?

BAKER: Well, these are all examples of attacks that appear to be motivated by the action that we are taking in Iran. And there are concerns, especially among the American left—and when we talk about the American left, we are including a lot of the American media in that description—who are concerned with what they would term Islamophobia.

And so they are very worried that if we draw attention to attacks that are carried out by Muslims, by radical Muslims, that they will then be participating in a sort of castigation of Muslims in general. They’re not going to highlight that, they’re not going to ask voters to kind of say, hmm, what’s going on here?

But nevertheless, that’s what I think is going on. I think that the idea of running with these stories would be counter to the American media narrative, and that’s why we’re not hearing much about it.

MAST: So, Hunter, here’s my follow-up for you. As an American who likes to go places, places where other people are, it’s starting to feel less and less safe. And there was a time where I would have thought that the politicians would prioritize that. 

What would it take to get the attention of politicians to where some policies would either be enforced or changed, or something, that I would have expected, I don’t know, say, some 24 and a half years ago, when this would not have been tolerated, but suddenly is not only tolerated, but barely even spoken about?

BAKER: I would say that on the right side of the equation, what you’re going to hear is more focus on immigration, more focus on knowing who is coming into the country, and figuring out whether there are any patterns that would tell us that there are certain people that we need to keep an eye on. You know, Donald Trump has suggested that we do that sort of a thing. 

And on the left side, the interest is going to be in gun control or something like that. But, of course, with at least one of these attacks, I think that you had these young men trying to throw improvised explosive devices, so gun control laws wouldn’t have helped us in that instance.

But the problem with this, as it is with everything for us right now, including something like the SAVE Act or any number of other potentially useful pieces of legislation that we might address, is that almost nobody is dealing with it in terms of the common good. Almost everything is being dealt with on a partisan basis, or how it will hurt the other side or help the other side, and how we can avoid doing that.

They don’t want to give the other side a win, or they don’t want to take a loss, but a lot of times that’s not the most important question at all. The most important question is, what’s good for the American people?

MAST: Well, Hunter Baker is provost at North Greenville University. 

Hunter, thank you so much.

BAKER: Thank you.

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