Trump Needs to End This War Quickly w/ Ex CIA Mike Baker (Transcript)

It’s the only leverage point they’ve really got. And so to think that somehow the Strait of Hormuz wouldn’t become closed in a sense — not officially closed, but it’s closed for all intents and purposes — that to me would be… I’d like to think everyone’s thought this through, I guess is what I’m saying. It doesn’t appear that way, because there still seem to be some people in Washington surprised that, “Oh my God, what do you mean we’ve shut down the flow of 20% of the world’s oil?” LNG, along with everything else that goes through the strait. So that’s what I mean by I’m not sure that this was completely well thought through.

How Did the World’s Biggest Military Not See This Coming?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And how is that possible? The United States has the biggest intelligence operation in the world, the biggest military in the world, the most military planners in the world.

MIKE BAKER: You sound like the US president. “We’ve got the biggest military.”

KONSTANTIN KISIN: You do. You do. And therefore — this is the bit that doesn’t sound like the president of the United States — it’s extraordinary that we might be sitting here weeks into a conflict going, “I can’t believe they didn’t think it through.” How does that happen?

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, it’s a great question. I think there’s probably a lot of people trying to think about that. But look, the Pentagon has a lot of smart people and a lot of mid and senior level people who came up through the Afghan experience — combat operations, Afghanistan and Iraq. Real-world experience. Now, does that mean that they are listened to? I don’t know. I’m not sitting in the room.

I’m just saying that I can’t imagine that there weren’t briefings where someone pointed to a big map of the Strait of Hormuz and said, “It’s about 21 miles wide, but it’s actually much narrower because of the depths and because of the corridors for the shipping lanes. Here’s what they’ve done in the past. They’ve closed it before. They’ve threatened to close it constantly. We all knew that. How are we going to prevent that from happening?”

But now we’re in a position where we’re saying, “Well, geez, we sure like China to come in there and help,” or we’re asking other countries to come in and help. That seems to be an indication that perhaps there was some surprise. And maybe it was because they thought the regime was going to collapse once — that we had very good intelligence about that initial strike on some of the leadership, including the Supreme Leader. And maybe there was this feeling, because people always think they can do it better, every generation thinks they can do something better. Maybe that was part of it. And they thought, “Well, we’ll get regime change.” They were probably a little intoxicated from the Venezuela experience.

A Massive F*-Up?

FRANCIS FOSTER: I don’t mean to put too fine a term on it, but it’s a massive f*-up, isn’t it?

MIKE BAKER: Well, it depends on how you define it — it depends on what the word “is” is, as Bill Clinton said. Who, by the way, I think is a very smart individual. Full disclosure, I’m a centrist Republican. I like national security, like secure borders, like smart immigration policy, like fiscal responsibility. Those things often don’t come around very often.

I guess if you define — which is what’s happening, the goalposts are moving — if you define victory as a significant degrading of their military capabilities, their missile program for example, then it’s not really a f*-up, because what you’re looking to do is what every administration’s done. They’ve just put lipstick on this pig and hoped that somebody else would deal with it.

So if you define it as, “Okay, we have now kicked the ball further down the field than any other administration” — they’re still in power in some form, it’s probably a much hardened administration now, run more by the IRGC than it ever has been — but if you define that as a win, which I think is what we’re going to see, along with some additional damage to their nuclear program, which again continues to be difficult in terms of assessing, then okay, it’s not a complete f*-up. But if you defined it as “we’re going to remove this regime,” then yeah, you’re not winning.

The Strait of Hormuz: Iran’s Trump Card

FRANCIS FOSTER: And we’re not winning in another sense because we’ve been talking about the Strait of Hormuz, and that is Iran’s trump card. Just talk a little bit about what it actually means for the global economy if Iran continues with the shutdown.

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, and it doesn’t take much. That’s the thing. Because what you’re doing is you’re impacting perception. If you convince the insurance businesses out there, the insurance companies, the shipping industry, that it’s just not worth the effort to haul that tanker through there, then they’ve won. Even if all they’ve done is hit maybe a dozen and a half vessels over all this period of time, it doesn’t take much at all.

So closing one-fifth or so of oil flows through the strait — everybody’s been talking about that now, we’re all experts on this — but also LNG is an important aspect of this for Europe, and in particular for Asia.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Explain what LNG is.

MIKE BAKER: Liquefied natural gas.

FRANCIS FOSTER: OK.

MIKE BAKER: And then all the other things that go through there, fertilizers for food production.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: 50% of the world’s traded fertilizer goes through there. This is me being an expert now.

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, look at you.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I’ve been doing the reading. And helium, which we use for cooling microchip fabrication facilities. This is real impact.

Political Fallout and the Path to Negotiation

MIKE BAKER: It’s a real significant impact. People can feel it in the US, for example. People see it at the pump. That’s the first place they see it, which is why suddenly the Strait became so important, because they have midterm elections coming up in November in the US, and there’s no easier way to get your ass kicked in an election than to be responsible for spiraling gas prices at the fuel pump. So that’s what it comes down to — politics.

So now the focus is on how do we prevent that? Again, you would argue that perhaps that would have been here in this playbook that you’d pull out as soon as the bombs started dropping, because you knew that’s where the Iranians would go, because they can’t match the US and Israel toe to toe for military capabilities.

So yeah, it is likely that the US is going to try to figure out a way to negotiate a settlement, if they can figure out who to talk to, so that they don’t have to begin the process of escorting tankers and ships through the strait. And so that they don’t have to think about taking Kharg Island, which is responsible for kicking 9 out of 10 barrels of oil out of the country for the Iranians anyway. So that’s a very important site for them. They don’t want to do that.

If you start escorting ships through the strait saying, “Oh, the strait’s open, yay, now we want gas prices to go down” — well, for how long are you going to do that? That’s very costly. And all it takes is one drone to hit one of those vessels, and you’re right back where you started. So that sounds a bit like an indefinite effort. And I don’t think the administration wants to get engaged in that.

So I think that if they can figure out who to talk to, and whomever they talk to has some level of agreement from other factions within that government — now kind of operating in a fashion that is much less top-down — then they’ll probably go that direction.

FRANCIS FOSTER: It seems to me that Iran have got a stranglehold with the Strait of Hormuz on the global economy, haven’t they?

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, in a sense they do. And again, that’s why I keep going back to the same thing, which is how do you not see that when you’ve got recent examples where they’ve used it for that purpose? So you knew this was going to happen.

The Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s Strategic Position

KONSTANTIN KISIN: When did they use it before?

MIKE BAKER: It was, what are we in, 2022? This is how clever I am, 2026. I want to say 2019, I think was the last time. I may be completely wrong.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So they do this regularly?

MIKE BAKER: Well, I don’t want to say regularly, but they’ve done it before.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Okay.

MIKE BAKER: And they’ve also threatened to do it regularly. Again, I keep going back to that same thing. If it’s all hindsight, I get that. And I’m not privy to the intelligence that the White House has, right? So when they talk about there was an imminent threat, I don’t know. None of us here know, right? And unless you’re in those briefings and have access to it, and that information is very close held, right?

Intelligence is compartmentalized. So just because you have someone who had clearances and was in a position, they may not know shit about what’s happening over here. You know what you are supposed to be doing, right? If you’re responsible for some operation in the former Soviet Union, for instance, you’re not going to know crap about what’s going on over here. Because you have a need to know.

So I don’t know what they considered to be an imminent threat, as they put it, but one scenario could have been that they worked a little bit closer with allies and they gamed out what we’re going to do when the Iranians start to create havoc in the strait. And then you got people on board, including the Gulf states, obviously. The Gulf states, they won’t say it publicly, but they’re probably happy as pigs in shit, right, over the way this could be going. I think they’re getting worried because they probably also thought maybe we got a chance to change the government here.

The Economic Pressure of a Closed Strait

FRANCIS FOSTER: Because the worrying thing is for me, and again, push back on this — I’m just a regular Joe, blah, blah, blah. But you look at the Strait of Hormuz shutting down and you go, immediately there is a timeline here. This can’t carry on indefinitely. And Iran are the one holding the cards because we need it opened. If not, we’re going to be in dire straits economically. And by we, I mean the globe. And eventually pressure is going to come to bear on the Americans, and then they’re going to have to capitulate. Or am I projecting?

MIKE BAKER: No, no, I don’t think you’re projecting. I think they’ll capitulate because of politics, because of the midterm election. And because then they don’t want to — looking down the road, I will say that in the US, people don’t tend to have a long-term vision in politics, right? They’re looking at whatever election is right in front of them. But there will be some looking at 2028 and the White House. So this is being played out from that lens.

And I don’t think you’re going to see — again, I don’t think you’re going to see a prolonged effort here. I think all this talk you’re hearing from the White House about having these negotiations, part of that is kind of the stuff that Trump does, right? And I don’t think anyway, you should never take the president literally, right? But people do, and it drives them crazy, right? Because they take him literally and think, no, no, no, no, he’s just throwing shit at the wall sometimes to see what sticks, right? His origins as a tri-state property developer, right? That’s what he does. You punch somebody in the nose, you get punched back, you throw shit at the wall, you see what sticks, you go that route, come up with a deal, very transactional.

So I think they’re trying to figure out, but again, this problem is that the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, right, has found themselves where they want to be, which is in a more direct command role. I think the clerics have realized that perhaps they’re taking a back seat, but they’ll continue the optic of running the show. And the politicians, who knows, right? I mean, now they’re talking about the Speaker of the Parliament being the guy that maybe they’re talking to. And he’s saying, nobody’s talking to me. We’re not having any of these discussions, which shouldn’t be a surprise. If you’re having discussions, maybe you prefer people not to think you are, right?

So I get that if there’s something going on behind the scenes, I don’t know. But I do think they’re going to be desperate to try to make that happen because you’re right. Otherwise, down the road, right? The only — so far, the only country that’s really not worried about this in a big way is China. They’re the only ones getting oil out of the strait. Almost all those tankers that are going through with Iranian oil are going to China. So, once again, they’re fairly delighted that this has preoccupied the US, gives them a really good look at our military capabilities and the hardware and where they’re lacking in terms of their modernization. So nothing happens in a bubble, right? Everything’s connected. So that’s why I appear to be rambling.

Iran’s Capacity to Trigger a Global Recession

FRANCIS FOSTER: No, you’re not rambling at all. But because what we’re dealing with here effectively is unknowns. And then you see how America bombed — oh, not America, sorry, Iran bombed the gas field of Ras Laffan, and you go, they’re responsible, I think, for around 15% of all the world’s gas. And you’re going, I mean, if it wants to, Iran can literally plunge us into a global recession if it just decides to go all in.

MIKE BAKER: If it, and who knows, maybe — I guess I would hope that’s one of the scenarios they’ve mapped out, which is that what if they consider this an existential threat, then maybe they just say, yeah, let’s see what happens. I mean, they’ve already kind of in a way done that, right?

Look, you have to remember a lot of those regional actors were on Iraq’s side during the Iran-Iraq War. So Iran, the Islamic Republic hasn’t forgotten that. They’re not under the impression that those countries are on their side in some fashion. Most of them tried over the past handful of years, right, to try to have some level of détente or diplomacy or something to see whether that would work. I think most of them feel like that didn’t work out.

And so there is this notion that, look, if they really feel as if this is it and their back’s against the wall, then what are they going to try to do? Well, look, what’s their capabilities at this point? They’ve been well degraded, right? But it doesn’t take much to blow up some power plants, blow up some desalination plants, blow up some energy infrastructure, and they’ve got all that mapped out.

Amazing thing is they’ve been getting targeting data from both the Russians and the Chinese, which is kind of fascinating. And the White House has been a little dismissive of the reporting that says the Russians have been assisting, not just in targeting data, but also in how to make those drone attacks more lethal, more efficient, more effective. And because they’ve obviously had a fair amount of experience now over the past 4 years of Putin’s invasion. So that, again, what I’m trying to say, I’m always trying to point out that it’s not just here.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Sure. Yeah.

MIKE BAKER: It’s happening all over.

The Escalation Threat and the Risk of Going Harder

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, and look, as someone who’s very pro-Ukraine, I nonetheless will say this. I mean, the Russians will say, look at America, how much they’re helping Ukraine. You’re giving them all the satellite information, you’re giving them weapons, you’re giving them money — so why wouldn’t we help Iran in this situation? And this is the concern. I mean, you talk about what would happen if they just — the escalation threat is what I think a lot of people are rightly worried about, because if the administration goes harder, Iran is forced to go harder. And then, when we had Robert Payton, that’s kind of one of the things he explained is if, say, you have a Marine attempt at a landing on Kharg Island or to try and take control of the strait, that forces Iran to take this more seriously. They then destroy all kinds of stuff around the Middle East and also in their own country because they’re like, well, what do we have to lose?

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, I think this idea — look, they’ve got, I believe, a second Marine expeditionary unit heading out there. Each one of those MEUs carry about 2,500 Marines and then another couple thousand sailors or so to support those operations. They’re really a self-contained assault force, right? And much like we had two carrier strike groups on target, you don’t do that just to posture. You’re not doing this just because you want to show what you can do.

So that was an indication, along with the fact that they had gotten so many tankers out there, which obviously are key to all this air assault operations — got to be able to refuel. The fact that you’re getting those Marines on target, you have to imagine there’s a contingency plan likely for an assault on Kharg Island. Now, again, I think they’re going to do everything possible to try to avoid that and declare a big win, right? And then back out of this thing. And whether that happens or not, Iran may have a say in whether that happens or not.

But if you put boots on the ground in Kharg Island, doesn’t take much. The Iranian regime may decide, okay, well, we’re not going after the Saudis, we’re not going after UAE because those players, not just them, but the other players also, they’re very close to pushing their chips into the center of the table and saying, that’s it. We’re going from a defensive posture to an offensive posture.

So they may stop short of that, but they will definitely target US military on Kharg Island. And you could almost piss on Kharg Island from the shoreline, right? You’re not talking about a massive complex issue. They just have to be successful a handful of times. And then you’ve got the issue of the US and the population, which is already still — a lot of people have forgotten it, but there’s still a lot of folks fatigued from the Global War on Terror. So you start losing more personnel because now we’re in something that doesn’t look anything like what they were told it was going to be at the outset. Yeah, now you got a problem. And the Iranian regime, they’re not stupid, right? A lot of them are dead, but the ones that are living are not stupid. They will have thought this through.

Israel, October 7th, and the Question of Hypocrisy

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Right. One thing I want to talk about, Mike, which we haven’t addressed yet, is you talked about the US allies in the region. One of them is Israel. And just for people who may be coming to this fresh, who don’t know our backstory with it, after October 7th, we really didn’t comment very much on Israel and that situation for about a year. The only thing we’ve ever really said — we’ve interviewed people who are very pro-Israel, very pro-Palestine, somewhere in the middle, everybody. And where we came down on it among other things is kind of the one thing we’ve always said about Israel — we don’t want to be hypocrites and be like, oh, look how terrible what they’re doing in Gaza is. Because I know if our country had been attacked in the way that they were on October 7th, we would have bombed the shit out of anyone who stood next to anyone who walked the dog of anyone who had anything to do with it. That’s a fact.

MIKE BAKER: And the dog.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And the dog.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

Israel, Iran, and Diverging Agendas

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Right. And we wouldn’t have given a shit about any of it. So I’m not going to sit here in comfort and safety, isolated from Hamas and Hezbollah and all of that, and tell Israelis how they should do this. You know, we would have done the same.

But even we are starting to look at this, and we’re kind of going, I mean, Israel has got its own, you know, Bibi Netanyahu as the leader of Israel. You talk to Israelis now, a lot of Israelis are like, Netanyahu is kind of, you know, he’s off the rails a little bit here.

And it’s becoming very clear, by the way, that Israel and the United States have different agendas here. And it looks to me, I may be completely wrong, but I’m just saying what I’m thinking in the moment. Francis and I talk about this a lot because it’s a thing that we think about. It looks like to many people now, and when we talk to people in America, like normal people, not people who are like anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, people who are balanced and reasonable are kind of going, well, in this conflict, it looks to us like the US is drawn into something that’s bad for the US while Israel is getting kind of a lot of what it wanted here. Is that a fair assessment?

MIKE BAKER: It’s an assessment. I don’t know. You can say it’s an assessment. Well, no, I don’t know that I’m qualified to say whether it’s a fair assessment or not, right? Because again, I, not being privy to the conversations that took place, you know, leading up to this, you know, yes, you’ve got a lot of folks that say, oh my God, Israel dragged them into this, into this war.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah, I don’t think that’s true because I don’t imagine Israel can, like a small country, drag a big country. It doesn’t make any sense. But what I’m saying is something else, which is from an Israeli perspective, just thinking rationally, I may be totally wrong. I’m not an expert.

Bombing the shit out of Iran is always a good thing. Iran is a regional rival. It funds Hamas, it funds Hezbollah, it funds the Houthis. So you’re degrading their ability, the ballistic missile program, their drones. Wonderful. Irrespective of nuclear weapons, irrespective of regime change, you just mow the lawn. But the United States has put itself and the global economy now at risk in some ways for an objective that matters a lot less, I would argue, to the United States.

Netanyahu, Israeli Politics, and Military Objectives

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, I think, yeah, just proximity, right? I mean, look, you know, Israel’s dealing with an existential threat, right? They’re surrounded by this problem, right? And so, yeah, you’re right in a sense, right?

The US, so, but US administrations, they tend to sometimes, they will act in a way that you look and you think, well, why are they doing this, right? Why do they feel as if they need to do this? There’s some moral obligation or there’s some desire to spread democracy or whatever the reason may be.

And so, you know, again, staying away from this whole idea of, you know, Israel and what their intention, I think, here is, is not to bring this to a close in the same way that the US is looking to do, right? They’re not facing the same or calculating this the same way, right?

And so I think what we’re seeing is, Netanyahu, and he’s always had his detractors inside Israel, right? So that’s nothing new, right? There’s a large contingent there in Israel that thinks like, “If we could just get rid of Netanyahu, we’ll all live in peace somehow.” And so putting Israeli politics aside, ’cause I’m definitely not qualified to talk about it, from a military perspective, from an operational perspective, right? They seem to have done this.

They’ve pushed their chips and said, are using this as an opportunity because if we don’t get to a point, again, I don’t know that they’re thinking regime change. I think they’re a little bit too pragmatic for that, but I think they’re thinking we have to be comfortable with the amount of damage we’ve done to the Iranian military capabilities, particularly the missile program. They’ve been more worried about the missile program for years than they have been about the nuclear program. And also with their proxies, particularly Hezbollah, I think that’s where they want to be.

They want to be comfortable enough, and they’ve got their intelligence in that region tends to be better than US intelligence, right? I mean, again, because of proximity and years of having to do this and their abilities of working within that environment.

So you’re right, and you can see these different agendas now, you know, and they’re diverging. Then you’ve got the other part of it, which is what do the Gulf states think? What do the Saudis think?

And there’s some interesting reporting, whether it’s accurate or not, again, you have to kind of balance it out and say, well, let’s see if it gets corroborated here somehow. But with MBS, with the head of Saudi talking about staying in the fight, he’s urging supposedly the White House to not stop, right? Because most of those folks out there know that if you leave the regime in place, at some point they’re going to have to do this over again. Someone’s going to have to do this over again, right? Because it’s not as if they’re going to give up, right? If the theocracy stays in place, it’s not like they’re going to have a, I was about to say a come to Jesus moment, but I guess that’s not happening.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: That seems unlikely.

MIKE BAKER: That seems unlikely. But, you know, so they’re going to maintain their objectives. It’s just going to be much harder for them. And like I said, the can’s been kicked much further down the road. So maybe now instead of, you know, a couple years of a window, you know, now they’re looking at 10 years, 15 years to rebuild and get to a point where then it has to happen again. But it will have to happen again. I don’t think they’re changing their stripes if they stay in place.

Iran’s Incentive to Build a Nuclear Bomb

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And in fact, some would argue they now have a much stronger incentive to get a nuke, an actual nuke. Before this, they were enriching uranium. Now they actually have an incentive to build a bomb and test it so we know they have a bomb as quickly as possible so this can’t happen again.

MIKE BAKER: Right, right.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Can we stop that?

MIKE BAKER: Is it possible to stop it? Do we have the will or the— I mean, we have the ability, I think.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Short of invading the whole country with 2 million men.

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, exactly.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Can we stop it in another way?

MIKE BAKER: Yes, I think they did not. They definitely didn’t obliterate the president. Again, don’t take the president literally when he says we obliterated it. You know, you didn’t. But of course, it came back to bite him in the ass, right?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, if you obliterated it, we wouldn’t be having this war now, right?

MIKE BAKER: What would I mean? Go after the missile program, maybe. But we wouldn’t be still talking about the towns and the other facilities. So. But I do think that they, they could. But it never say never, right? You never get to a zero risk in any of this, right?

So there’s always that slight chance that, I mean, nobody really has solid intel on where the enriched uranium is. Maybe it’s buried well underground at this point. Maybe some of it was moved. Maybe the North Koreans decide after looking at this, they think, “Hey, we made the right move. We raced to get that nuke weapon. Now look at us, we’re safe.”

Like you said, the Iranians, the regime will take that lesson. Maybe the North Koreans step in and help. I mean, the Russians have been helping them with technology transfer for the past 4 years in exchange. It wasn’t pro bono on the part of the Iranian government to help them with drone technology.

So yeah, there is that fact that if the regime stays in place, it’s more hardline, probably. The IRGC has more say in things, likely. I don’t think they’re going to change their stripes and give up.

There was a little bit of this talk. There was talk the other day about, well, you know, this conversation that supposedly is taking place off the radar with somebody in the Iranian regime. They floated the idea that we’ll give up our nuclear ambitions. I’m thinking like, no, they’re not.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Why would they do that?

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, exactly. But, you know, again, I think they read American politics pretty well. And they probably saying, look, you know, maybe the White House just wants something to grasp onto and claim victory and say, look what we did, you know, try to get back to normal.

Would Iran Actually Use a Nuclear Weapon?

FRANCIS FOSTER: Look, it’s— this is a very difficult question to ask, Mike, but—

MIKE BAKER: Well, don’t ask.

FRANCIS FOSTER: But I’ve kind of— this is what a lot of people are thinking: what is the likelihood if Iran gets nukes that they actually use them, that they actually fire one into Tel Aviv? Is that hyperbole, or is that within the realms of possibility?

MIKE BAKER: I, you know, I think it’s within the realm of possibility. It’s like, do aliens exist? Sure, yeah. And don’t— how, you know, don’t say no. Well, that would seem silly and preposterous and a little bit arrogant, but I think with that idea of nukes, I think, would they use it?

I think a regime like theirs is— the possibility is increased somewhat because of the zealous nature of a theocracy. And again, because of this, look, people have done, you know, incredible things in the name of religion over the life of this planet.

And so I wouldn’t— it kind of comes back around when, again, the White House came out with this, we had an imminent threat. I don’t know, was it imminent? Who knows? And then the president comes out and says, you know, if we hadn’t done what we did on the 20th of February, what did he say, within 2 weeks, you know, they would’ve had a nuclear weapon. I don’t know. I don’t know that he got that intel, right? And I don’t know that the intel was credible. And I don’t know if he had the intel that he should actually say it in a press conference.

But do I think that there’s a possibility that if they had reached that stage, that now you’re a little bit more angst-ridden because they’ve got it? And they have stated many, many times that, you know, their primary objective is the destruction of Israel, get them off the map. There’s that possibility, I guess. And nukes come in all shapes and sizes, right? You don’t necessarily have to drop the big one, right? But anyway, I don’t think anybody in the region wants them to have that. So the US and Israel are not alone in this in a sense, right?

Why Does Iran Really Want Nuclear Weapons?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: But hold on, Mike. See, sorry to buy into your line of questioning, Francis, but this is the really important distinction. That we’ve explored with all kinds of guests. We’ve had experts on Islamism on the show. We’ve had Iranian dissidents on the show. We’ve had all kinds of people on the show.

And whenever we bring up, you know, well, why does Iran want nuclear weapons? Why should we fear Iran having nuclear weapons? They always go, oh yeah, you know, they practice this Twelver Shia Islam, which means that they’re waiting for the Messiah and blah, blah, blah. So therefore, you know, you can’t trust them because religion and blah, blah, blah.

Whenever we push those people on that issue, they always kind of back away. And so then I go, okay, well, what if Iran— I mean, much more likely scenarios— Iran wants nuclear weapons for the same reason everybody wants nuclear weapons, which means you get to dominate your region, you can’t be invaded, you can do whatever the hell you want, you can fund your proxies to attack Israel, and nobody’s going to bomb the shit out of you, etc. And that seems to me like the much more likely explanation.

The Iran Nuclear Threat: Justification or Reality?

MIKE BAKER: Well, I think it’s the more — I don’t want to say safe, it’s the more logical explanation because nobody knows if they would use a nuclear weapon or not, right? I mean, that’s just a reality. I don’t have a clue. But would I be a little more concerned if they have it? Would I be more concerned that because you just said they would do whatever they want? Well, we’ve already seen when they do what they want, how bad it is. It’s not good. And it’s not good for the stability and long-term success of the region.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I don’t want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. But the point I’m trying to make is it seems to me that people are very cavalier with the claim that the moment they get a nuke, they’re going to drop it on Tel Aviv the next day.

MIKE BAKER: I won’t disagree with that at all.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Right? Yeah. And so when we talk about that, that worries me that people — because if we actually believe that, if we actually thought that they’ve got nuclear material, they’re going to build a bomb, and they’re going to drop it on Tel Aviv the day that they do, you’d be going, well, then in that case, we literally have to do to them what we did to Germany and Japan. Right. That’s what we’ve got to do. But no one’s talking about doing any of that.

MIKE BAKER: Right.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Which tells me that this is probably BS, with all respect.

MIKE BAKER: Well, I don’t know whether it’s BS. I think it’s — it is — it’s a way to justify what you’re doing. I do think that — and again, I go back to the same thing. I have no clue if they would drop the bomb on Tel Aviv as soon as they get it. Right. They have stated what they’d like to do to Tel Aviv. We have seen what they’ve done in the past. We know that they’re a destabilizing factor in the region. And that’s not just the US saying that, that’s the Saudis and the Qataris and everybody else out there.

But yeah, I don’t disagree with the fact that it is used as justification when in fact you don’t know that. So I don’t disagree. They want it for leverage. Right, for sure, right? And that leverage would allow them then to do kind of what they want to do, certainly in the region.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And we don’t want that. That’s a problem, and that’s bad. Yeah, but it’s so different from the claim that’s being made. Yeah, and that kind of bothers me. I mean, maybe I’m being naive, but I don’t like it when people are lying about that because it matters, right?

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, I don’t know that. I mean, I guess some people, I’m sure, straight up lying. Some people are — who knows, maybe they’re couching it in terms of, well, this is just the geopolitical realities that we face, so we have to do this. Someone’s got to step forward. I don’t know, but I don’t disagree with the idea that it is used as justification, right, without 100% certainty. But you’re not going to get 100% certainty on — that’s not this world. Yeah, sorry, Francis.

Global Terrorism: The Threat From Iran

FRANCIS FOSTER: No, no, it’s — but moving on now, one of the issues that we haven’t addressed is terrorism and global terrorism. And there’s a very real threat now that Iran is going to launch a global wave of terror against the UK, the US. How big of a concern is that, and what do you think the likely impact of that will be?

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, here’s — I think just from an operational perspective, I think my bigger concern is all the individuals out there, the lone wolf individuals, the copycats, whatever, who get triggered by this and decide — they don’t get a phone call from Mojtaba Khamenei or somebody saying, “Yeah, I want you to go do this now. You’re a sleeper cell, so now wake up.” It’s more the people who think, “This is my justification for going out and doing something,” right?

And those, in part, sometimes because of the disjointed nature of something like that and the inability to see it coming or pick up communications intercepts on something like that, they are very difficult to identify and then to mitigate that risk. So that’s the part. The state-sponsored issue, well, sure. I mean, if I was the Iranian regime over the past handful of years, would I want support assets in the UK? Would I want support assets in the US? Absolutely, right? And what would I want them doing? Well, I’d want them pulling a recce on an interesting site that maybe we would consider to be a soft target, right?

So yeah, the counterterrorism people in the US are stretched then, right? They’re working their asses off all the time. But you could argue they’ve been doing that for years now. I mean, everybody’s tired from the war on terror, but the terrorists aren’t tired from it. And the people that are trying to fight it on the other side, on the counterterrorism operations, they haven’t given up. It’s not like they got tired of the whole effort. And so the past few years they just let it go. So in a sense, there’s nothing new there. It’s just, yeah, okay, fine, you got a heightened threat alert because of this. But like I said, I think the bigger issue is those people out there that for whatever reason, right, they’re true believers or they’ve got mental issues. They’re going to look at this and go, this is my justification.

FRANCIS FOSTER: But that must be a genuine worry for America, because since we’ve been here, which is a comparatively short period of time, we’ve seen, I think, already 3 Islamist terrorist attacks in the US. I mean, you must be worried.

MIKE BAKER: Yeah. Oh, everybody — yeah, everybody’s worried, but at the same time, you can’t sit in your foxhole, right? So you’ve got to get out and get busy. And what I do know is that since 9/11 all those years ago, which seems like ancient history, right? I’ve got teenagers and they, I talk to them about it and they kind of look at me like, hmm, really? Right? It’s like when I talk to my middle boy who’s a basketball player, talk to him about the old guys, right? Bob Cousy, Pete Maravich. They’re like, oh, come on. Seriously, Unc? Right?

So I think when you get to a certain point working counterterrorism operations, whether at the local or the state or the federal level or overseas, you become very pragmatic about it, because you know the threat’s always there. The methodology doesn’t tend to change much. Technology can change kind of how you gather intelligence to some degree, but you just kind of keep ticking along. So I’m not saying — I mean, I’m not worried. I’m just saying yeah, you’ve just raised the alert, but it’s the same problem.

Lone Wolf Attacks and the Porous Border Problem

FRANCIS FOSTER: But there’s got to be a renewed focus because from an outsider’s point of view, I’m looking at going, so there was one in Michigan with a truck loaded with explosives trying to drive into a synagogue, then you had a potential nail bomb attack in New York, then you had the shooting in Austin.

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, I mean, and this comes on the heels of — and this is another thing that I would have been doing if I was the Iranian regime, I would have been taking advantage of what essentially was a very porous border for several years under the previous administration. Vetting just wasn’t there, right? And because they weren’t focusing on it, they didn’t have the resources down there. And so the Customs and Border Patrol, they did what they could do, but there was really no vetting. And so the idea of how many people came across that border with nefarious intent, right, whatever it may be, for narcotics trafficking or for terrorism purposes? We don’t really know.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Right.

MIKE BAKER: And so that’s a problem. And so it compounded this already significant issue of terrorism on the home front. And you’re right, obviously, the conflict — anytime you have a conflict, right, you got a problem. I mean, obviously, 7 October, the heightened alert was raised. And it just happens whenever there’s something like this. The target can change, right? And who you’re looking at.

But on the other side, again, this idea of the individual who’s triggered into a lone wolf attack, they’re always out there, right? So sometimes, I guess what I’m saying is sometimes with the state-sponsored, it can be — I don’t want to say it’s easy, but it can be a little less complicated. And not quite as much based on luck. With a lone wolf, maybe you get lucky and the individual’s cousin sees something and actually says something, right? That’s kind of what you have to hope for, is that somebody within that orbit is willing to speak up.

FRANCIS FOSTER: If that doesn’t happen, it can be very difficult because senior security officials in the UK have said that they’re highly worried that what the Iranians are going to do is pay petty criminals nominal sums of money like £500, £1,000 to create small acts of terror in order to destabilize security, to destabilize society. And we saw an incident in the UK a few weeks ago where ambulances were set on fire.

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, right.

FRANCIS FOSTER: And an Islamist group came out and said, we claim responsibility for this. Now, we don’t know, is that a ploy? Is that a game? Is that a mind game? Or is it actually true? And what happens is that as that continues, it destabilizes society.

The Outsized Impact of Small-Scale Terror

MIKE BAKER: Sure. It’s like shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, right? It doesn’t take much to do something that has this outsized impact, right? So a handful of incidents, and what have you done? Suddenly, everybody’s losing their shit, right? And it becomes a real — after 9/11, that was a major event, obviously. That was a statement of rocket science. But people kind of pulled together. And so you developed a mindset within a population that said — and that was a very helpful thing for a period of time. But then again, like I said, everyone’s gotten tired. We kind of got out of that. Everybody’s back to listening to their AirPods and staring at their phone when they’re walking around. Nobody’s operationally aware. Not that they should be, but pay some attention, I guess, is what I’m saying.

So when you look at the potential for just a handful of things to create an outsized impact on a population — a handful of lone wolf terrorist incidents — I mean, bin Laden talked about this, well before 9/11. He was going to bankrupt America, right? Through using our own civil liberties and the freedoms, cause us to kind of retract and do what we did, which was this multi-decade effort against the war on terror.

So yeah, and then again, the IRGC and the Quds Force and all their proxies, they’re not stupid, right? They know how to do this. But whether there’s — I don’t have access to that intelligence, but I will say that the FBI and other authorities in the states spend a massive amount of time focused on this very issue, and they have gotten much better over the years, right? We had some problems with siloed information leading up to 9/11 and some other issues in terms of lack of human sources in different places, but they have gotten much better at the process of sharing intelligence from across the board, the state, the local, the federal authorities, working with liaison partners overseas. So that part of it’s the good news, but they just need to have success once or twice, a handful of times to change the entire dynamic of a country.

Radicalization and the Threat From Within

FRANCIS FOSTER: And also radicalization is a major problem, particularly within the Muslim community, because you’re thinking there will be a lot of potentially young men who are looking to this, and some young women, who will get radicalized by certain preachers. And we’ve seen it happen time and time in the UK. And all of a sudden you have a portion of the population who are American-born who suddenly become a threat to the country.

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, well, again, when you have an incident, it’s a really interesting dynamic, right? The way that social media has changed how we process information. As soon as there’s an incident, whether it’s the Michigan synagogue attack or anything, suddenly everybody’s a reporter, right? Everybody’s a journalist. So they’re on their phone. And then you’ve got this segment of society that they’ll see a name, right? “Oh, look, that sounds Middle Eastern. I knew it. I just knew it, right?” And then they’ll look and they’ll say, “Oh, wait a minute, he was in the National Guard here in the US? Wait a minute, he was born wherever in the States? What?” And so it’s a confusing dynamic, but it speaks to exactly what you’re saying, which is trying to identify these individuals — you need an element of luck.

I never had a single operation in the agency that didn’t have some element of luck when there was success involved, right? At the point where you think you’re just really good at it and you don’t need luck, then you’re kind of f*.

The European Perspective and Alliance Tensions

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America’s Actions and the European Fallout

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Mike, one of the other things I want to ask you about is it seems inevitable to me that this will change very much the dynamic of the relationship between European countries, including our country, the UK, and America. Because I’ll be honest with you, I think from the European perspective this kind of looks at this point, as we sit here talking, a little bit like America and Israel went and did a thing and now they expect us to pay the price of that. And that’s going to piss a lot of people off.

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, well, it already has. So I was in London when President Trump was making those comments about Keir Starmer. He’s not Winston Churchill and, you know, we don’t need anybody to come into the fight after we’ve already won. And, as a dual citizen in the US and UK, I found it offensive. I didn’t like that because we shouldn’t be talking that way about close allies, right, where we’ve got so much history. And there’s been disagreements in the past, that’s true. So I thought not the best move, but then you step back and you go, well, what else do you expect? You know what you’re going to get from President Trump, which is in part why his base just loves him, right? Because in a sense, he kind of talks like them. He feels like the guy next door, in a way. And I think they like that. But it also leads to these messaging issues.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And so my point is something else though, which is while he was slagging off Keir Starmer, yeah, I was very happy with that because, well, it depends on your politics. Keir Starmer is not Winston Churchill.

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, yeah.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And it’s not really even about politics, actually, it’s about reality. So both Labour and Conservative governments in our country, if they’ve run down the military, they’ve run down our industrial base, they’ve run down our intelligence operation, they’ve run down almost everything that we need to make ourselves safe.

And so when Marco Rubio or when President Trump comes over to Davos or to Munich and they tell Europeans you need to up your game, I’m rooting for them when they say that. I think that’s important.

What the point I’m making here is this isn’t about talk anymore. This is about you went and caused the Strait of Hormuz to get closed, and we are the ones that suffer from that because we are the ones that import the gas, the oil, the fertilizer, etc., in a way that actually the United States is quite insulated from. I mean, you produce almost all your own energy, etc. We don’t. And so having taken this action, now we in Europe and in the UK are supposed to suffer the economic consequences of the action. It’s not about talk, it’s about reality.

MIKE BAKER: Well, the talk also is it—

FRANCIS FOSTER: When you—

MIKE BAKER: I guess my point being is when you slag somebody off and then you have to turn around and ask for their help. Yeah, that’s a messaging problem.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

MIKE BAKER: But then the logistics side of it, the actual real-world impact is— yeah, you’re right. And I think that there’s a lot of Gulf states that feel that way. What the hell, right? And we weren’t happy with the Iranian regime, but we kind of had this thing going, right? And now it appears to be somewhat f*ed up.

So that kind of goes back to something we were talking about earlier. A scenario that you could have argued might have produced somewhat different results would have been to include some of your allies in the pre-planning. Now, there are some in the States who will say, well, that’s that, then you take away the element of surprise. And they go, well, you’re not talking to them about a specific targeting operation on a specific date and specific time. You’re saying, look, we have to have these conversations because here’s what we believe, here’s what we think. Can we get some agreement? People don’t agree, fine. You still have the same result. You go out and do it on your own. Right?

But I think there probably could have been a way to do this. And there’ll be— again, I’m always amazed that there’s a lot of folks who think, well, that’s bullshit, we don’t need anybody else. And President Trump has enunciated that pretty clearly lately. But that’s not true. We do need other people, right? You can’t draw the curtains around the US and say that we’re isolationists. I would love to be in a world where you could be libertarian and isolationist and the shit wouldn’t hit the fan on a regular basis. I think that’d be lovely. But that’s not my experience anyway, from being overseas for a long period of time. There’s some shit.

The Case Against Isolationism

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Can you elaborate on this, Mike? Because there are a lot of people who have that view. Dave Smith is a prominent proponent of that.

MIKE BAKER: Very smart guy.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: We’ve had him on the show. We had a great debate. We don’t agree with Dave, but he puts his arguments well. Why is that worldview not accurate in your opinion?

MIKE BAKER: Because I guess it has to be based on your life experiences, right? My life experiences have been a lot of it being overseas in some fairly hostile environments where you see how people treat each other and sort of the worst sides of humanity. And I don’t live in a world where I think we’re so disconnected that we can just ignore everything else that happens around the world and somehow we’re not going to be impacted.

I’m a big believer in the fact that you do some shit over here, it’s going to impact over here. The world’s too goddamn small anymore. And it worked one time, but a couple hundred years ago, right? And now that’s not how we’re all so tied together. So that’s what I mean by that.

My personal experience tells me that while it’d be lovely, this is not a community of nations where everyone’s got everybody else’s best interest at heart. But again, I get it. I get Dave and others who think that way. And if I felt that was the way the world worked, then I’d probably think that too. But anyway, that’s all I have to say about that.

The Risk of a Permanent Fracturing of the Alliance

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, that’s not your experience. I get it. I mean, one of the points you make about the impact— this happens here and then there’s an impact over there— is in terms of European countries and the UK, I mean, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Nobody does. But logically speaking, if the United States is not effectively acting like your ally anymore, talking shit about you, causing you problems. I mean, a logical solution for a lot of European countries would be to do a separate deal with Iran.

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, yeah. Or a logical deal is to kind of tighten that alliance within the EU and say, okay, fine. And I think that was— I agree when Trump was talking about the lack of spending for NATO.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah, great.

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, absolutely. Make, you know, get on board, right? Have a little more skin in the game. But again, I suppose, right, you could make an argument for, could the EU cut a deal with Iran? I don’t know that that would work. I’m thinking through this out loud, but I would see where you could eventually get to that point.

If you get your ass kicked enough by what you thought was a tight ally, and so now, look, you don’t need to go any further than saying, “F* you, we don’t need you. We don’t need anyone.” And then over here, “Well, we’re going to need your support in opening the strait because look, you guys have a lot of skin in the game because it’s more important to you than it is to us.” Well, we’re the ones who created this problem, right? The US military.

So I just think that that’s where I come back around to saying sometimes, and it gets a bad name sometimes in the US among certain folks, again, a lot of times people who think that it’s the US, it’s our way or no way. In the real world, you do need to think about coalition building, right? You do need to think about marshaling your resources along with your allies. For force multiplier purposes, that has more impact.

I do think if we had thought this through and if we had worked a little harder on that idea, we probably wouldn’t have had this issue. They still would have tried to blockade the strait, but we would have been on top of it. It wouldn’t have been a reactive moment, right? We would have been proactively dealing with it, not just us.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, the attitude to Iran and the not thinking through what they are likely to do seems to me to be kind of replicated in Europe where you go, well, whatever you think about Keir Starmer or Macron or whoever, you have to understand their situation from their point of view.

If you’re the leader of a European country, you’re looking down the barrel of a recession, right? People don’t generally get reelected in the middle of a recession. If something goes bad in your country economically, you tend to get the blame, you tend to get voted out. So you’re putting these people who are already in quite a weak position into a bind. Then you’re talking about them, then you’re trying to pin the blame on them for something you did. You put all that together, I mean, you could be talking about a permanent fracturing of the alliance.

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, I don’t think it’s going to go that far because I think the White House will do what they can to get out of this here relatively soon. Not because of that, but because of internal U.S. political concerns.

But there’s also this thought that, okay, well, right now our EU allies are saying they’re not going to take part. Maybe they’ll do something appropriate, which I think was the phrase they used the other day, take appropriate measures. Who knows what that means.

But then I think there was some thinking in Washington, D.C. that, well, they’ll come around once they realize how bad economically this could be for them. From the energy supply, they’ll come around. And to the point of self-preservation, maybe they will because they’ll look and go, all right, well, better we go all in and help open the strait than face this problem on the global energy markets. And suddenly we’re in a recession and now we’re going to get kicked out.

So they may do a calculation that says, all right, we don’t like it, and yes, we feel insulted, but maybe out of self-preservation so that we don’t completely get our ass handed to us in the next election, we’ll go all in and help with the effort. Maybe that— so that may play a role in this. And again, coming back around to the idea that politics influences everything.

Domestic Support and the Risk of a Prolonged Conflict

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And speaking of politics, one of the things we’ve seen obviously in this country, in the United States, is there’s been incredible levels of support for the war from Trump’s base.

MIKE BAKER: Yes. Yeah.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Is that going to last if this drags on?

The Complexity of a Deal and Who Can Make It

MIKE BAKER: No, no, it won’t. Because while his base is very supportive, there’s— you maybe take a knife and cut half of that out and say if this thing is a protracted conflict, you’re going to lose half that base because they’re not all in on that. And I just don’t see the White House going all in on that. I think they’re really looking at this stage of the game for some way out.

And they’re going to have to be careful because what does that do? That gives the Iranians leverage, right? Then suddenly they read the tea leaves and they say, okay, and here’s our list of concessions that we want. I think that’s already happening, whomever they’re talking to, if they’re talking to somebody. And that’s a big question, right? Because who’s got the ability to cut a deal at this stage of the game?

Again, Mousavi Khamenei, he hasn’t been seen ever since he was named as a successor. There’s no evidence that he’s copacetic. So who is it? I would argue it’s not the Speaker of the Parliament, right? Mohammed Khalifa. He’s not a reformist, right? So who are you trying to cut a deal with? The IRGC, right? They’ve got a new commander of the IRGC after they whacked the last two. Head of the Quds Force, maybe? There’s not a lot of people out there that you could argue can carry out a deal that the various elements now of the Iranian leadership that exists would agree to.

And maybe now they’re at odds with each other, right, over do you have discussions? No, we don’t want discussions. Do you cut a deal? Do you find some concessions? What do those concessions look like? So this is going to be very complicated, but I do think the White House is very keen to make that happen for what you’ve described, that support even from the base is not going to last if people start to think this thing’s dragging on into the early summer.

Closing Remarks

FRANCIS FOSTER: Mike, pleasure as always to have you on the show.

MIKE BAKER: Really, do you mean that?

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course. It’s always great to chat.

MIKE BAKER: Yeah.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Final question is always the same. What’s the one thing we’re not talking about that we really should be?

The Forgotten War: Ukraine

MIKE BAKER: I’ll tell you what I think. It’s going to sound odd, but I think it’s Ukraine. Because for the past several weeks, there’s almost no headline, right? In the US, it’s particularly noticeable where we do seem to have ADHD, right? So we can’t focus on more than one thing. So you’re hard-pressed to know that there’s something happening in that conflict.

And the ground’s thawing, moving into the spring fighting season. And it looks like so far over the recent week, few days, that you’re getting a start of what looks like a spring, maybe early summer offensive. It’s still a major conflict causing major suffering and with the potential to really create problems for NATO, for the EU. Putin’s showing no signs of backing off his demands. I don’t think he sees any downside to continuing the effort.

And yet, because of the way information flows and how we’re all like raccoons chasing the next shiny tinfoil ball, we’ve taken our eye off it and it’s like it’s not even happening. And so I think that’s the one thing people need to kind of touch back in and say, oh, that’s going on.

Why Hasn’t Trump Ended the War?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Mike, and why is it still going on? Because President Trump, you know, repeatedly— you talk about not taking him literally. I mean, he said he’d end the war on day one. It’s been a lot of days.

MIKE BAKER: Yeah, it’s been more than one day, I will say that. If I knew that, I’d get myself one of those Nobel Peace Prizes, if someone would just give me one. But I think that part of the problem there is Putin, again, doesn’t see a downside to doing this. He still believes that he can outlast the West. He can outlast Ukraine. He’s got the manpower advantage, right?

But when you look at it and you think it’s been all these years and he’s in a World War I scenario where they’re trench fighting, it’s remarkable. And it’s remarkable also from a technology standpoint, how drone warfare has just completely changed the battlefield. We’re seeing that played out now, obviously, in the Iran conflict. But that is an absolutely fascinating part of that whole sad story.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Story.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Mike, thanks for coming on. Head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where Mike is going to answer your questions.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Who do you see, if there is anyone, as a viable opposition leader replacement for the current regime that would be acceptable to the non-radicalized populace?

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