Clip: What role does China play in resolving the Iran war?

Jeffrey Goldberg: How important is China to solving the Iran mess, for lack of a better word?

Peter Baker: You know, I mean, I think the problem is Iran is important to solving the Iran mess, right? We've talked about this now week after week. But the president is in a box. He needs to find a way to get out of it domestically in order to shore up his Republicans who are facing a pretty tough midterm year, and yet he can't stop the war in a real way without something he can call a victory.

And the Iranians aren't going to give it to him. They've made very clear they feel like they can wait him out at this point. They do not feel like they have lost this war. They feel like that the time is on their side, and they're not going to simply say, yes, you're right, we're going to give up all of our nuclear program just because you want us to.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. I want to -- and, Nancy, I want to talk to you about where exactly we are in the level of crippling of Iran's capabilities. But I have an even bigger question for the table. It was just something that popped to mind. China is supplying Iran with weapons to fight America. Iran has been, in the past, fighting -- supplying drones to Russia to fight in Ukraine, a Ukraine that's supplied by Europe and America and so on. There's this cascade. Are we in World War III but we just don't know it, Susan?

Susan Glasser: You know, it's --

Jeffrey Goldberg: This is an essay question. 50 percent of your grade comes from this answer.

Susan Glasser: Well, you know, it's one of those moments in history. I actually wrote a column based on a conversation with Fiona Hill, the Russia expert, in September of 2022, Jeff, in which she and I were talking about this very question, and I wrote that she said it was quite possible we were already in World War III. There was kind of a huge amount of freak-out at that moment in time.

But what she was suggesting is what you're suggesting right now, which is that the adversary alignment between Russia, Iran, China suggests a sort of, you know, call it an informal, certainly not a formalized axis aligning itself. It's what Joe Biden -- you know, we don't talk about him anymore, but, you know, what Joe Biden used to talk about the inflection point, the confrontation between democracies and autocracies.

The difference here, Jeff, and that's why I underscored how radical Trump's rhetoric was in Beijing this week, the difference here is that it is not clear at the moment what side the United States of America is on. And I think it's very important to underscore that, that the difference from September of 2022 when this question of World War III was already out there in the ether, is that the United States' own role in shoring up our democratic partners in the Middle East and in Asia and in Europe is no longer certain.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Maybe that's why it's not quite World War III in the sense that it might be closer to World War III if America knew what side it was on and was more vigorous in confronting this axis of fill-in-the-blank. I'm not going to hark back 20 years, but you know what I'm thinking. But we don't know what the president thinks about this.

Susan Glasser: Well, we also don't know what America after Trump is going to be like. I mean, you know, the United States wavered before entering World War II. And we sort of wrote the history of that America first movement, you know, out of our collective memory, I think, because of, you know, the momentous events that followed. And so we don't know what follows Donald Trump.

But I think the question is, were so many Republicans and Democrats wrong when they spent the last ten years telling us that a major strategic competition with China, including military, economic, all domains, that -- were they all wrong, or is that still going to be the case?

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Nancy, the Iran war itself, obviously, the Trump administration believes that it has won the Iran war. CENTCOM, the military, has more nuanced view of the various levels of degradation of Iranian armaments and defensive and offensive capabilities. But give us your global assessment of where we are right now.

Nancy Youssef: I mean, very simply, there are not any good military options on the table to resolve this conflict. Something like an aggressive restarting of military strikes on Iran doesn't guarantee a win, because you could see Iran still carry out strikes on allies, on U.S. interests.

A limited strike, a love tap if you were, isn't necessarily going to lead to a different outcome. Waiting this out and just having a protracted stalemate isn't an option because of the impact on the world economic market. So, the best outcome on the table right now is some sort of deal on the Strait of Hormuz and dealing with other issues later.

But as Peter noted, the Iranians don't have an incentive to reach that deal at this point. According to the U.S. intelligence community, they believe that they can hold out and suffer the blockade that the United States is putting in for several more months, all the way up until the midterms, which means, in some ways, they have checkmated the United States in terms of the timeline with which a deal can be reached.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Does the U.S. have theoretically the capability of taking Iran, going all the way, troops, the use of troops, the use of weapons systems that we haven't used yet, or is that just not being discussed because there's no possible way that President Trump is going to deploy ground troops to create conditions for regime change?

Nancy Youssef: So, ground troops don't guarantee a victorious outcome either. And so I think what's missing in this is tying those military tactics to a clear, strategic outcome. More force, more troops, more attacks in and of itself doesn't guarantee it.

Now, does the U.S. have the capability? It certainly does, but it comes with risk. It takes a -- it's a draining of resources. It is costly, and, politically it's risky because I don't think there's an appetite for it, particularly if the outcome leads to an extended conflict, one in which not only the U.S. but the world economy finds itself in a stranglehold because of the ongoing hostilities.

And so that's why negotiation becomes the most palatable option. But how you reach that deal and how much you have to concede to Iran and its hold on the strait going forward is what makes it so complicated.

Jeffrey Goldberg: So, before the war, there was no Iranian hold on the strait. Now there is, and that's what's upsetting President Trump when he's confronted with the idea that he hasn't won. Is that fair?

Nancy Youssef: Yes, because that was their nuclear option taking the Strait of Hormuz. Remember when the United States assassinated Qasem Soleimani, the former IRGC leader in 2020? They did not retaliate with this way. I think one of the lessons that they've learned is that the way we do deterrence going forward, the way we prevent the United States --

Jeffrey Goldberg: We, the Iranians?

Nancy Youssef: That's right, is we hold economic leverage over the world economy, that the practices of the past were not a successful form of deterrence, which means they're not going to easily give up the, their control over the strait, because, to them, it's essential now to their security.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Trump just had -- yes. Trump just had a pretty remarkable exchange with your colleague, David Sanger, on Air Force One on this subject. I want you to watch this.

Reporter: What was the use of repeating the bombing? You did it for 38 days.

Donald Trump: Well, no, we did.

Reporter: And you did not get the political changes in Iran.

Donald Trump: No, I got -- I had a total military victory. But the fake news guys like you write incorrectly. You're a fake guy.

I actually think it's sort of treasonous what you write, but you and The New York Times and CNN, I would say, are the worst.

Go ahead.

Reporter: Sir, on another war --

Donald Trump: And you should know better. You know better. Your editors tell you what to write and you write it. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Reporter: Mr. President, another war --

Donald Trump: I actually think it's treason.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I want to make a small point and a big point.

Peter Baker: Yes.

Jeffrey Goldberg: First, his editors don't tell him what to write.

Peter Baker: They were very surprised to hear that today.

Jeffrey Goldberg: They would like it, but they don't tell him what to write.

The larger point I want to make and please jump in on this, is that it's absolutely outrageous for Donald Trump to call David Sanger or any reporter treasonous. That's the worst thing you could accuse a person of being. He's a professional reporter, and he's a patriotic American. We all know him. And he's not obviously the first reporter to be attacked by President Trump even this week. One of the things that makes that encounter unusual is that he used the word treason. The other is that David Sanger is not a black female reporter, which is Trump's sometimes preferred target.

But on the exact subject that we were talking about, this obviously triggered him in some terrible way.

Peter Baker: Well, look, he in his second term has been much more willing to go further even than he did in the first term in terms of the idea that anybody who questions him, who says something he doesn't like, who reports something he doesn't either accept or want to believe or doesn't knows is true but doesn't want anybody else to believe, is now not just a bad reporter, not somebody who's a critic or the opposition, but treasonous. He is now using that term, treason, and the other term sedition, with increasing frequency in the last few months.

He used it about our coverage, for instance, about his health. It's treasonous or seditious to even ask questions about his health, he said. He used that now against politicians as well. Obviously, he accused six members --

Jeffrey Goldberg: I think that was known in behind the Iron Curtain as the Ceausescu rule.

Peter Baker: Exactly. Remember, six members of Congress who dared to film a video saying to the military, do not follow illegal orders, were then not just called traitors, but actually the Trump administration tried to bring charges against them, criminal charges against them.

So, I think what we're seeing is a real escalation in this second term about going after people who they consider to be enemies and that they consider to be providing information that they don't want to be out there or views to be squelched.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes.

Nancy Youssef: Can I just note Article 3, Section 3 was written very narrowly because the founding fathers watched British monarchies make accusations of treason against their critics in the conduct of their monarchies. And so it's -- this was written precisely to not be used in this way. If you read Hamilton's Federalist 84, he talks about this, that it's such a high charge that it has to meet the definition of helping enemies during war. And that was written in the spirit of making sure that critics that the First Amendment and the press' right and responsibility to critique was protected and wasn't abused in such a way that reporters would be, or critics would be called treasonous for pointing out valid criticisms.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I want you all to watch one more quick clip of Donald Trump talking on these general subjects. This happened or this took place immediately after he was asked how Americans' financial health might be affected by the Iran war.

Donald Trump: Not even a little bit. The only thing that matters when I'm talking about Iran, they can't have a nuclear weapon. I don't think about Americans' financial situation. I don't think about anybody. I think about one thing. We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That's all.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Democratic ad makers are going to have fun with that. He was trying to threaten Iran in a kind of way, saying, nothing's going to deter me. But that came out in a way that I'm sure people on his team were like that's not going to help.

Mark Mazzetti: Yes, I mean, I'm not one to try to interpret what the president says or what he meant to say. Obviously, I think in a charitable way, you could say he was singularly determined to say, this is a national security threat and this is the reason we went to this -- went to war. And I realize there's economic pain, but this is worth it, right? It didn't come out that way, right? And as you said, for political reasons, right, the opposition, the Democrats will have a field day because it cuts to the very issue with this war, which is unpopular and is causing a lot of economic pain.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Peter, last 30 seconds, it's very, very hard if you're an adversary of the United States to understand how serious Trump is about preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, for one thing, or defending Taiwan, South Korea or another. Where does that leave our credibility? Where does that leave American credibility?

Peter Baker: Well, this is the problem, right? So, presidents have over the years, Republicans and Democrats, insisted on or tried to maintain a certain discipline, a certain consistency in order to avoid misunderstandings. Because misunderstanding in some ways is the most dangerous factor in international relations, misjudgments, miscalculation about what somebody might do in X or Y situation. And I think, in some, ways you could see how that plays out in Iran right now in terms of the miscalculations on both sides.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, it's a fascinating conversation, but we are going to have to leave it there. I want to thank our guests for joining me, and thank you at home for watching us.

For more on how Trump's unpredictability may be making the U.S. an unreliable ally, please visit theatlantic.com.

I'm Jeffrey Goldberg. Good night from Washington.