How Relying on Regime Decapitation Could Backfire
We begin with the U.S./Israeli war underway against Iran whose president has apologized to the Gulf Arab countries Iran is bombing, indicating he is not in charge while Trump is claiming only he gets to choose Iran’s next leader. Joining us to discuss the assessment from the National Intelligence Council that the Trump/Netanyahu war is unlikely to remove the Iranian regime and the danger of regime decapitation backfiring is Ken Klippenstein, an American journalist reporting on the U.S. national security state and politics. He previously was an investigative reporter at The Intercept and prior to that was the D.C. Correspondent at The Nation, and a senior reporter for The Young Turks. He now runs a popular Substack at KenKlippenstein.com where his latest articles we discuss include “Why We Struck Iran” and “Congress to America: What War?”
As Evidence Mounts That the War on Iran Is a Disaster, We Will Look For Some Kind of “Success”
Then, in the face of mounting evidence that the war on Iran is an unmitigated disaster, we assess the possibility of some kind of “success” and speak with Paul Pillar, the Director of Graduate Studies at the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University. He retired after a 28-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. He is the author of Terrorism and US Foreign Policy, Negotiating Peace: War Termination as a Bargaining Process and Why America Misunderstands the World. We discuss his article at Responsible Statecraft, “With focus on Iran and Gaza, Israel is quietly annexing the West Bank.”
Our Gen Z Reporter on the Texas Senate Race as Republicans Panic Over the Talented Young Talarico
Then finally, our Gen Z reporter Sasha Linden Cohen discusses the first major primary results in this year’s midterm elections with the young Democratic State Rep. James Talarico defeating Congresswoman Jasmine Crocket in the Texas Senate race and the Republican side heading to a runoff between longtime Senator John Cornyn and the scandal-plagued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Sasha is joined by Gabby Birenbaum, the Washington Correspondent for the Texas Tribune, to look into what this primary tells about the political mood of the country going into November.