I do appreciate the transparency that admiral Cooper is having about what The US is doing

in Iran. But that said, I think we've already seen these announcements of various attacks to

degrade Iranian capabilities. That doesn't necessarily mean that these capabilities are off the table. There's also

a real focus right now on, Iran's conventional capabilities. It's conventional navy. It's anti ship cruise

missiles. It's command and control architecture. And while that is all well and good, Iran can

do a lot with very little. It can threaten the Strait Of Hormuz with drones. It

doesn't need to have some of its large warships. It can use IRGC fastboats. There are

so many different ways that Iran can still threaten the Strait Of Hormuz that are more

asymmetric. And some of these attacks will most certainly degrade Iranian capabilities, but it doesn't take

them out entirely. And that, I think, is where we maybe have some problems with the

theory of victory that's being put forward by US central command, the Pentagon, and, frankly, president

Donald Trump.

Becky, you mentioned transparency, and it's it's nice to hear updates on the operations. But in

previous administrations, Republican and Democrat, this would have been a press conference. Why wasn't this a

press conference? And can we get your take on this court ruling that those Pentagon passes,

were taken away, that the parameters by which you could retract a Pentagon pass were not

legal?

I mean, it would have been a press conference. And in fairness, we have had Pentagon

press conferences pretty routinely since the start of the war with secretary of defense Pete Hegsef

and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Dani Burger. Yeah. However, that doesn't necessarily mean

that everyone's in the room. Right? We're all watching from afar, quite often because there is

this new Pentagon press corps. So there is transparency, but it's so focused on all of

these tactical successes as opposed to focusing on the bigger picture and strategic success. There's also

the question of why hasn't there been any open door congressional hearings about this? That's definitely

something we would have seen in previous administration.

And something we've heard from Republicans about that if they were to authorize this $200,000,000,000 package,

they would wanna see those hearings. I think senator Kennedy said that, in remarks yesterday. Becca,

I wanna ask about your most recent piece. You're writing about kind of the the military

tack that this president has taken or favored. That is favoring air power, special operation forces.

You use a term that candidly I love, which is Gucci high end long range, equipment.

What he's experiencing now, though, is the degree to which that works in kind of a

longer term scenario here. You write that violence wielded from afar can only accomplish so much.

I'd love for you to talk about that lesson learned, especially as we've been talking about

over the course of this morning. The president is clearly thinking about the prospect of going

to Karg Island and trying to take that very critical part of Iran's oil infrastructure.

Part of Trump's way of warfare has been this idea of war without entanglement. The idea

of no boots on the ground, no big coalitions of the willing, no need to actually

be there. Just use coercive force in any way that you can from a distance. But

when you try and do that without clear objectives, oftentimes you find that it doesn't work.

And so Trump has found himself having these strikes and then potential restrikes. And I think

looking at the Iran war, we can even think of this as a restrike. Trump went

in during, June for operation midnight hammer. It didn't actually achieve what he set out for

it to achieve, so we find ourselves mired in conflict yet again. And I think with

this current war going on much longer than Trump intended, there's the potential for ground force

deployment. As you said, we've seen, various marine units get called up. And at this juncture

in time, it potentially risks, becoming one of the very forever wars that Trump campaigned against,

and that just shows the limits of his approach to warfare.

And that's, I mean, that's the irony here, especially as he talks about wrapping up this

operation and possibly looking at others, including Cuba. I wanna read a little bit more from

your piece. You say Donald Trump believes America can fight wars without becoming trapped in them,

yet this more muscular military vision rarely produces the political outcomes he desires. One of the

other things we've been discussing is the fact and you just mentioned it. When you're coming

in hard and hot with these airstrikes, this works for him in Venezuela. It is not

going to work everywhere, and it may not work like that in Iran. And I think

it seems the president is now trying to get his hands around what he wants to

do here. Can he achieve his objectives, frankly, without putting boots on the ground?

The question is, what are his objectives? It's been a bit vacillating. It's been all over

the place. And so a lot of what we've actually heard from the president and from

folks who are in support of his aims have really focused once again on these tactical

and operational objectives, not a broader strategic picture. And that is something that makes it really

difficult to disentangle yourself, and it makes it really difficult to try and achieve aims when

you keep on just slapping more and more tactical objectives onto something. And that's the risk

where we might actually see some of these ground forces. And it's also the risk that

I think Trump has seen in the this current term where he's launched over 9,000 strikes

all around the globe, not only The Middle East.

Very quickly here, you write about the splendid isolation he seems to find himself in. We

got about thirty seconds. I apologize for that. But but this is a moment when he's

trying to get allies to help him out, and yet he finds himself increasingly alone and

isolated only with Israel. Yes. An ally, but with no more than that.

Yeah. I think Trump thought that he could essentially do it alone with one model ally

who could come in and provide some additional firepower.

And I

think now he's finding that he needs allies. Look at his call for request for the

Strait Of Hormuz. Once you eschew allies, they're not necessarily going to come to your aid

just because you asked for it after the fact.

What's that thing going on on social? If you if you want a village, you gotta

be a villager. I guess that applies to diplomacy too.