Who Sold America On The Iran War? (With Hooman Majd & Ryan Grim) — Lever Time

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The Ayatollah Khomeini appears tonight to have come to full power in Iran, as he said he would, in another of those bloody convulsions that have recently swept the country.

If you were an American kid growing up in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it's a good bet that there were few world political figures who seemed more terrifying than the Ayatollah of Iran. At any moment of the day, your favorite television show could be interrupted by breaking news about some guy who was portrayed as a new global supervillain. This is an NBC News special report.

Crisis in Iran. The turmoil spreads.

There on the TV, you'd see images of violence. Throngs of enraged people holding up photos of this bearded man in a headscarf, looking super angry. And there was grainy VHS footage of the Ayatollah's minions holding American hostages at gunpoint. I don't remember any explanation for why Iranians were so mad at America. The newscasters didn't say much about America helping engineer a coup in the 1950s that brought the brutal Shah to power. The TV anchors were mostly focused on the new dictator, the Ayatollah, who replaced him. For American kids in the 1980s, it was a two-dimensional story. The Ayatollah seemed like a guy who just wanted to be evil for no reason. The original Dr. Evil, decades before Austin Powers.

Oh, hell, let's just do what we always do, hijack some nuclear weapons and hold the world hostage.

And the fact that the Ayatollah didn't speak English and was from the Middle East? Well, pop culture back then was working overtime to make that seem scary too.

Oh my God, they found me.

I don't know how, but they found me.

There were so many movies about wild-eyed Middle Eastern terrorists trying to kill Americans, from Delta Force to Iron Eagle to Back to the Future.

Who, who, who do you think delivered it? Holy shit.

So when another 1980s pop culture icon, Donald Trump, ordered a US military assault on Iran this week, I was horrified and appalled, but I wasn't exactly surprised. Americans' brains have been flooded with Iran fearmongering For decades, this unilateral, seemingly out-of-nowhere war seemed like an inevitable next step, where this has all been heading for a very long time. In the past, especially while running for election, Donald Trump has depicted himself as an opponent of permanent wars, particularly in the Middle East.

We've spent $8 trillion in the Middle East and we're not fixing our roads in this country. How stupid, how stupid is it?

But back in the 1980s, when the Ayatollah was all over American television, a young Donald Trump made his views about Iran and military intervention very clear, as you can hear in this interview recently resurfaced by Sky News.

The Iranian situation is just absolutely and totally ridiculous. That this country sits back and allows a country such as Iran to hold our hostages is a horror, and I don't think they'd do it with other countries.

Obviously, you're advocating that we should have gone in there with troops, etc., and brought our boys out.

I absolutely feel that, yes. I don't think there's any question, and there's no question in my mind.

That clip is 46 years old, which tells you how long Iran has haunted the American psyche. It's actually amazing. A country that's one-fourth of the size of the United States has been cast as our central boogeyman for decades. I mean, I just turned 50. And it's fair to say that Iran has been America's nemesis for my entire lifetime, outlasting all the other nemeses like the Soviet Union, Iraq, and Libya. And now, instead of a Cold War or a proxy war with Iran, we have a real, actual war. So I have some big questions. First, why has America been so obsessed with Iran for so long? There are tons of other shady governments out there. Why are we so fixated on this one? And why does Iran seem so fixated on us? Here's another question: Why has America not been willing or able to make peace with Iran? And now that we've taken peace off the table and have started dropping bombs, what's the real goal and the endgame here? Is this truly a war for the freedom of the Iranian people? Or do Donald Trump and his own regime have different plans? This week, The Lever reported that a dark money network has been funding the organizations pushing America to go to war with Iran for years. But what exactly do they envision as a realistic positive outcome here? And one final set of questions: Is Congress going to do literally anything to stop or limit this war? Doesn't the Constitution require a congressional declaration of war? Don't we have laws to prevent this? Today on Lever Time, producers Natalie Bettendorf and Ariella Markowitz go on the hunt for answers. That's coming up on today's episode.

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My name is Hooman Majd. I'm an Iranian-American, born in Iran, raised outside of Iran.

Hooman is an author, a journalist, and he's lived in Iran. He's spent a lot of time writing about modern history and politics of the country. He still has some family in Iran. So first I just asked him how he's holding up.

Incredibly sad because I know we've seen all kinds of things. We've seen reports of Iranians celebrating the death of Khamenei, the Supreme Leader. We've seen people mourning the death. We've seen people celebrating Trump and saying thank you. Iranians, I mean, especially in the diaspora Iranians and especially in Los Angeles, um, the Iranian community there saying, yeah, we'll ride on. And, and I've seen videos of Iranians dancing to YMCA. Um, but I think that's a, that's not giving the complete picture because I see pictures from inside Iran that are, that have been verified. And, um, not that I'm saying that people inside Iran, some of them aren't okay with regime change because that's really what most Iranians, not most, many Iranians would want. And certainly the ones who were protesting in January who got crushed by the regime. But it's sad because, you know, what I see is death and destruction. That's what I see. And I worry about my family. I worry about other Iranians.

Why do Why do you think America, and now the Trump administration, has been obsessed with Iran and Iranian politics for so long?

Well, Trump's big problem starting out in his first term was that he had to undo anything Obama had done. He had to, you know, basically be better than Obama at everything. So he tears up the nuclear deal, which was successful, was working well. You know, Boeing executives were landing in Tehran and making deals to sell 80 planes, and American oil companies were going there. Renault, the French car company. I mean, it was like you couldn't book a room in a luxury hotel in Tehran after the JCPOA, which was the nuclear deal that Obama signed, because there was this great hope. And among the foreign minister of Iran at the time, when they signed the deal and arrived at the airport, there were people cheering him, men, women, young people cheering him. Iran was very happy all of a sudden. I'm not saying people were happy 100% with their government. I'm not saying they did love their regime, but they certainly felt a sense of relief. Oh, the sanctions are going to be lifted. We're going to have our economics are going to be better. And maybe this will lead to the regime not being so strict on us in terms of whether women have to wear this kind of clothing, hijab, so on and so forth. So strict on social issues. There was this hope that there was going to be this opening because once, you know, there isn't this enemy, there isn't this idea that we're going to be under attack because of our nuclear deal. There was so that, that hope was there. Trump wanted to do a better deal. But you know, the problem with President Trump is I'm not sure that he, first of all, he has good advisors. Secondly, that he really understands any foreign policy issue properly. Decided, for whoever told him that he should kill Qasem Soleimani, was, you know, there's a huge, the head of the Quds Force of the IRGC. Qasem Soleimani was at the time, I'm not saying today, but at the time was sort of a hero for Iranians, many, many Iranians, because Even though he was in the IRGC, he was on the foreign wing, the expeditionary wing of the Quds Force. So he wasn't involved in cracking down on any protests in Iran. The Green Movement, for example, in 2009, he wasn't responsible for that. But what he was responsible for was defeating ISIS. And so Iranians didn't want ISIS or Al Qaeda or that kind of organization to ever come into Iran. And there had been a few. There had been a few ISIS attacks inside Iran. So the fact that he was in Iraq and then Syria fighting these people made him a hero for most, many, if not most, but many Iranians who were like, well, thank God he's out there fighting these people. He's capable. Then Trump assassinates him. And then we saw the scenes of millions of people going out to mourn him, literally millions on the streets. So that was not fake. That was real. That caused the problem for the Iranian government in terms of how, well, you just killed our most important general, assassinated, not killed. You assassinated our most important general. You tore up the nuclear deal and now you want to talk about a better deal? Well, we're not going to talk to you. So that happened. And then Trump lost the election and then Biden came in saying, I'm going to make another deal or redo the JCPOA. For whatever reason, there were delays and then a new president in Iran came about. And then he got killed in a helicopter accident. So one thing after, and then we had October 7th. And October 7th made it so that, um, everything was set aside to deal with October 7th, uh, both from the Israeli perspective and from obviously the US perspective and getting caught up. And we know the how, what happened after that in terms of domestic politics in America and obviously politics inside Israel. Um, Bibi Netanyahu has always been anti-Iran. It's always been a good foil for him to say, you know, I've got to deal with Iran first and then I can deal with the Palestinian issue, which has put off the Palestinian two-state solution until we have to deal with this big boogeyman Iran first, because it's our biggest, it's the biggest threat to Iran. And Iran has never helped by saying, oh yeah, you know, Israel should be wiped off the map, things like that. But the Israeli government has always known, and certainly the intelligence Agency and agencies in Israel have always known that Iran wasn't going to attack Israel first. That wasn't going to happen. It had plenty of opportunities to do so and never did. Even if you look at Israeli interest, if you think of Israeli interests of having weak adversaries, especially an adversary as big and as powerful as Iran could be and was at a certain time, weakening them to the point where they can no longer ever be a threat, where Israeli jets can fly over Tehran at will. As they can right now over Syria, which was an adversary, is probably in the interest, Netanyahu sees that in the interest of Israel's national security anyway, regardless of whether he's trying to stay out of jail or not. So I think we've got all these combinations. So it's unclear what the goal is. And on Wednesday morning, Pete Hegseth had a briefing and he was just talking about death and destruction raining from the air. Death and destruction.

From the sky all day long.

But he didn't say to what end. At the end, what's going to happen? I mean, Trump says tell the people to go take over. I don't know how you take over when you're being bombed. And then who's your leader to take over? Who's going to be the person or persons who are going to lead the people of Iran to rise up again after being just brutally massacred a month ago, or a couple of months ago, to come in and take over the government and and say, okay, we have a new regime. So this is, this is all, you know, it's meaningless.

Why has America not really been willing or able to make meaningful peace with Iran or meaningful diplomatic relations in a way that maybe it has had with other, you know, more authoritarian-leaning regimes in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia?

It's a good question. I think it's lost opportunities on both sides. Iran has not taken advantage of opportunities when they were there, with the exception of with Obama and that particular nuclear deal where both sides seemed to actually recognize that there was a reason to make that deal. As we know, it was signed and sealed finally in January of 2016, an election year here, and then Trump took over. So there wasn't enough, really enough time for that to blossom, that deal to blossom into something, uh, bigger and, and a real entente, if not complete détente, between Iran and the United States. But prior to that, we start with the hostage crisis, obviously, you know, yeah, then subsequent years of, of, of animosity between the two countries. You've got Iraq attacking Iran in 1980, an 8-year war, about a million soldiers and people killed in that war. The U.S. and Western Europe supplying Saddam Hussein with the arms and the intelligence. You know, Donald Rumsfeld in Saddam's office showing him maps, so intelligence of what to strike in Iran. So that bitter experience, as far as the Iranian regime was concerned after the war was over, was going to be, you know, again, you overthrew our government in 1953. You supported Saddam Hussein in this 8-year war that killed our people. Germans, you guys gave the mustard gas, which you've had really good experience with, to Iraq for them to use against Iranians and its own population, Kurdish population. And it was hard for either side at that point after Ronald Reagan left to kind of get together. And then you had a few years where nothing much was happening, so there wasn't any real reason. Iran was rebuilding after the war. They had decent relations with the Europeans, the Chinese, and Russians, and they could do business. Sanctions weren't as bad as they were later on. Before George Bush coming along, you had President Khatami being elected, a very liberal reformist saying, well, let's have dialogue, dialogue among civilizations. That's the way to make things work. President Clinton tried to meet with him at the UN. It failed mainly because the Supreme Leader was against meeting with the Americans who it was still raw, I guess, the feelings about Iraq. And then you had 9/11. Now in 9/11, Iran, there were candlelight vigils in Tehran that the government didn't stop. We're the only country in the Middle East where you had Iranians coming out for Americans on 9/11. But subsequent to that, then George Bush puts Iran in the Axis of Evil. You know, North Korea, Iran, and Iraq are the Axis of Evil. And the Iranians are what? Really? This was after the Afghanistan War where Iran helped the United States, offered to rescue any paratrooper or any plane that falls over Iranian territory because it's obviously neighbors with Afghanistan. So then it's that animosity. Why would you put us in this axis of evil? So there was no opportunity with George Bush and the Iraq War. And then so the Iraq War takes over and, and then we move on to Obama and that's where the opening was. So, but for all those years in between, there were various things that always would get in the way. And I'm not suggesting it's always America's fault. Iran had opportunities, for example, during Khatami's presidency where he could, if he had been allowed to meet with Clinton, there could have been President Clinton who was willing to, and he said he wanted to, there could have been an opening there. And that was, in that case, was Iran's. The fault. But then George Bush came in, and we know Dick Cheney, one, yes, the "real men go to Tehran" line and things like that.

You know, Donald Trump himself was an icon of the 1980s. He grew up with the messaging that, you know, the Ayatollah's evil, Iran is the enemy. How much do you think that messaging and that narrative, media narrative in the United States, influenced what we're seeing now?

Well, I think a little bit. I'm pretty sure that his feeling about the Iranian government, if not the Iranian people, but certainly the Iranian government and the regime, has always been negative. I don't think there's any question about that. He goes into it looking at it from a negative standpoint. Somebody like Obama or Clinton wouldn't do that necessarily. They would think about it. They would think, well, why is the Iranian regime so anti-American? But, you know, you know, he's such an America firster or whatever you want to call him that it's like Americans can do no wrong. So if anything, it's always going to be their fault. It's not our fault. We're the greatest country in the world. We're the greatest military in the world. We're the greatest this, that, and the other. So, yeah, I do think, you know, '70s and '80s, you know, he was probably looking at Iran in the '70s. I mean, he was an adult in the '70s, looking at Iran in the '70s. As this like, oh, magical place. And, you know, Elizabeth Taylor was going there and the Iranian ambassador was having parties here and parties in Washington and they're buying art and they're doing this. And, you know, the Shah himself is having his foundations invest in New York real estate. So there was all these things that, you know, if you were an adult and especially in business, you'd think, oh, Iran's a good place. We should start thinking about investing there. And then the revolution happens, and then he sees all these people saying death to America and the hostage crisis. And, you know, I don't know how angry or he would get, but you're right. And I think that in that era of the '80s, Iran was just this horrible country that had taken Americans hostage, had been responsible for American deaths. And then in the Iraq War, that's where you— I mean, first of all, you had the Hezbollah Lebanon bombing, which was blamed on Iran, the barracks, the Marine barracks bombing. Um, so there's, that's one aspect of saying, oh, Iran's responsible for that. You've got Iran in the '80s, the Israeli center in Buenos Aires being bombed, a bunch of Argentinian Jews being killed. You got that being blamed on Hezbollah and Iran. And then you've got the Iraq War and you've got the roadside munitions killing American soldiers, maiming American soldiers. Those are all Shiite militias planting them, but supplied by Iran. You've got all that. And all of that plays into Trump's, I'm sure, feeling about it. You should hear him yesterday saying, "They're sick people. They're evil." At the same time, they're sick and they're evil, but he was perfectly willing if the Supreme Leader picked up the phone and said, "Hey, Don, you want to come to Tehran for a quick chat?" And he would have gotten on the plane and gone. On in the same way that he did. I mean, is Kim Jong-un any less sick than, uh, than the Supreme Leader?

You know, that's a good point, but I don't know, like, what do you think the endgame of this war could be, and what would it take to get back to some form of, or to any kind of diplomatic relations between the countries?

I'm very pessimistic, I'm afraid to say. I don't know what the endgame is because I don't think the U.S. has expressed an endgame.

Yeah.

There are a number of things that could happen. Trump could get bored of the war. We could see more coffins coming back to Dover Air Force Base. We could see more gas getting to $5 a gallon from $4 a gallon. We could see, you know, all kinds of disruptions in the Middle East. We could see the Qataris, the Emiratis, the Saudis going to Trump and saying, you've got to stop this now, it's enough. If Iran could continue to lob missiles at them and drones at them, we could see that. And then Iran recovers and has a new the Supreme Leader and figures out how to move forward, knowing that there isn't going to be another war anytime soon because the last one didn't really work for the United States. You have bombs raining down on you day in and day out, day and night, and you have family members killed. You have, you know, living in fear. You can't buy food. I mean, at a certain point, you might blame your government a little bit, but you're certainly going to blame the person who's dropping the bombs, the people who are dropping the bombs. And in this case, it's Israel and the United States.

I think that's probably the note to end on. Hooman Majd is a New York-based author, journalist, and NBC contributor. He's written 3 books about modern Iran and geopolitics. Feel free to check out his memoir called Minister Without Portfolio. Thank you so much for being a guest on the show today.

It's my pleasure. Good talking to you.

After the break, we're going to hear Natalie's conversation with Dropsite News co-founder Ryan Grimm. They're going to bring us up to speed on what we've seen emerge from this week of the war and what Congress is doing about it. We'll be right back. This is Ariella Markowitz, one of Lover Time's producers. Imagine waking up to find out that your private information, passwords, photos, even your Social Security number have been leaked online for the world to see. Well, this is a reality for countless people worldwide. Just last year, hackers tried to sell 2.9 billion stolen personal records. Yes, that's billion with a B. One way to fight back is with Incogni. Incogni contacts online data brokers on your behalf to remove your information from servers. Go to levernews.com/data right now and get 55% off an annual Incogni plan when you use code LEVER55. That's L-E-V-E-R-5-5. 5-5. There's a 30-day money-back guarantee if you change your mind, so there's no risk in trying it out, unlike having your data remain unprotected. So for a massive discount on Incogni, go to lovernews.com/data right now. The all-new 2026 Toyota RAV4 is here, building on everything drivers know and love about Toyota with a redesigned look and modern tech that makes life behind the wheel easier than ever. The new RAV4 comes standard as a hybrid, providing smooth, efficient performance for both city streets and longer journeys. Enjoy the legendary reliability Toyota is known for in the all-new 2026 RAV4. Learn and shop more at toyota.com.

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You just heard my conversation with Hooman Majd about the complicated political history between the United States and Iran. And now producer Natalie Buttendorf is going to take us to the present. Yeah, so I spoke with Ryan Grimm, He's the co-founder of the foreign policy-focused outlet called Dropsite News. Ryan and his team have obviously been following this war very closely. And so I wanted to talk with him about some of the potential outcomes of the war, right? Like a lot of people are wondering about the endgame here. And we've wondered, you know, who really stands to gain the most from this situation, however it ends up unfolding. So both The Lever and Dropsite have been reporting pretty extensively about how this war was a long time coming. Obviously, Ariella filled us in on a lot of that context, but we have reporting from earlier this week here at The Lever that showed how dark money interests have been pushing this war for years, and also how powerful lobbying efforts have been in Congress surrounding this conflict. So I got into all of this with Ryan And I actually started by asking him what he and his team of reporters have been seeing as the real reason that the US is waging this war.

So on Monday, the Secretary of State and some other figures from the Trump administration gave a classified briefing to key members of Congress. And those members of Congress, the Democrats at least, emerged from that briefing saying that they had no idea what the objective of the war was, that It was not internally consistent beginning to end, even inside the meeting, that there was nothing that should have been classified that was even discussed in the meeting. You know, just the same kind of gibberish you would catch on Fox News or on, you know, one of these administration officials' Twitter accounts. And so I think what the public understands about the Trump administration's rationale for this war is the same as what is being presented in a classified setting and is the same as being discussed privately among the Trump administration. I mean, like, they They don't, they don't really know. So they're trying a bunch of different things. Originally, they went with this massive decapitation strike, and Trump said they had some idea that there were some other candidates that might be more pliable to run the Iranian government, but he accidentally killed them as well in the attack. This is like literally what he's saying. You then have two internally contradictory strategies playing out. One is that the Israeli idea that they're going to, or some elements of the Israeli structure, they're going to put Reza Pahlavi, this like son of the ousted Shah, on the throne again. They're going to restore the king. And then at some point the king will like transition into democracy and he will run Iran. And he has been very clear and explicit that he would brook no separatist movements, no efforts to gain new autonomy in a restored monarchy in Iran. And that's particularly aimed at the Baloch population in the south, the Kurdish population over in the north. And then you have the CIA saying that they're going to go in and arm these Kurdish militias in order to spark an uprising and cause massive problems for the central government in Iran. There are a lot of US intelligence links to the Baloch separatist movement in Pakistan, which borders Iran in the south. And so there's a lot of assumptions that you're going to see weapons and fighters moving from Pakistan into Iran and trying to spark a Baloch uprising as well. And then you have the Iraqi politician, you got the MEK hanging out in like southern Iraq and were blowing up border guards and the entire border network. Trying to diminish border security so that, you know, fighters can flow into Iran and destabilize it, which again is like completely contradictory to the idea of like reinstalling a Shah. So, so to answer your question, my own view is what they're trying to do is turn it into a complete failed state that descends into just chaos and sectarian violence and then no longer poses a threat to Israel. But, you know, in a country of 90 million, a small fraction of a refugee crisis from there would destabilize all of the countries near it, including up to and including the EU. But that seems to be a price that they're willing to take to basically wipe out Iran as a kind of going concern, right?

Yeah, I mean, as you mentioned too, I know DropSite's been reporting on this as well, obviously. And, you know, The Lever reported earlier this week and weekend that dark money interests have been pushing America to go to this war with gone for years, and that potentially what you're saying is, you know, what they envision as this realistic positive outcome can be this destabilization. I guess that kind of leads me to this question I've had too, which is how much of the decision to wage this war do you think is an American strategy versus an Israeli strategy?

I mean, it's hard to find moments where there's been divergence between the two. That makes it a really hard question to even answer. We're in this like shocking moment where Marco Rubio just straight up said that the reason for the timing of the attack, he said, maybe it would have happened in 2 months, but it was definitely going to happen. But the reason it happened now is that Israel was just going to go ahead and do it. And we knew that if Israel attacked Iran, Iran was going to respond by hitting American bases. And we didn't want congressional hearings about why we weren't prepared for that. So Rubio, like, how absurd is that? Like, that Trump cares about congressional hearings?

Right.

Like, are you joking? Seriously? Or mean articles like in the Washington Post or New York Times about, like, he doesn't care about that. But yes, so, so now he's been sort of walking that back, but he has not walked back the claim itself that the U.S. attacked because Israel was going to attack and they wanted to, you know, preempt the counterattack from Iran. They have not walked that back. What they have said is that all that mattered was timing, and the timing is kind of irrelevant because this was going to happen either way. Same press conference, he talked about how the State Department would like to help Americans evacuate from the war zone but can't because the war is on. So the timing matters to those thousands of Americans. And also, it's kind of absurd. Like, you were in the middle of negotiations. The Omani foreign minister even came to American television because he suspected that the American negotiators, Kushner and Whitcoff, were not like understanding or accurately conveying what the extent of the basically capitulation that Iran was offering at the table. And so what Rubio is also saying is that they had already decided they were going to war, negotiations be damned, and that it was just a matter of time. And then the Israelis got to choose the timing. So that is the bare minimum that we know.

Still staying in this region, obviously we have seen Iran has launched a barrage of attacks on Gulf states. You know, they've been been pretty open about it, but there was this attack earlier this week on the Saudi Aramco facility, which is also known as the Saudi Arabian oil company. Iran denied that attack. I'm just curious what you make of this.

Nobody's honest ever, but people are definitely not honest in wartime. And so the Iranians are trying to imply basically that Israel hit the Saudi Aramco field. Basically, the implication there would be that they're trying to provoke all of the Gulf countries to like really significantly get into this conflict. You can't trust the Iranian public statements. You can't trust the Saudi public statements. You can't trust the Israeli ones or the American ones. I did notice that the Israelis are now being clear that it was the US that struck the Iranian girls' school. I don't know if you noticed that. They're like, do not try to, you know, blood libel Israel by suggesting that it was us, it was the Americans, and CENTCOM is looking into it, and it was a mistake that they made. Meanwhile, a lot of, like, American defenders are saying, well, maybe it was the Iranians that bombed their own school, but Israel is not even going with that line. So it's, it's really hard to know.

Yeah, absolutely. You kind of have touched on this, but, you know, any time in war, it is useful to think about who's benefiting, right? And so when we talk about the implications and what we know so far in this first week, what is standing out to you? In your reporting of who stands to gain the most from this war as a whole and what that might be?

If I were Israeli strategists right now, I would be feeling like the smartest people in the world. They have the U.S. fighting Iran, obliterating it, leveling Tehran. And they also have Iran hitting the Gulf countries. And while Israel has the Abraham Accords that they've reached with the UAE and some others, and they're moving towards some sort of normalization, from their perspective, they're better off. You know, any Gulf political power is viewed with some skepticism. They're pragmatic. They're allies with the US. We can do business with them. But all things being equal, them being knocked down a few pegs is preferable to the Israeli security strategy. They've been very clear that a region that is kind of in ashes is one that is safer for them as far as they're concerned. And so here they have the Iranians and the Gulf countries like at each other. I don't know how this ends. They seem to be confident that this ends well for them and that then that long term they can just, just keep doing this. I don't, I don't, I don't understand it. I don't see it. To me, peace, coexistence, and development is a better way to live, right? They disagree. But, you know, to their credit, they're accomplishing the strategy that they have laid out as most beneficial to them.

Yeah, definitely. So I want to head to Washington now, and I would love to get caught up to speed a bit on how Congress has responded to the war in Iran so far, because as far as I can tell, there's been no congressional declaration of war, right? Or even a vote on the strikes before they happened. So tell us a bit about this war powers resolution and just kind of the lead up to when these first strikes hit and what was happening in Congress.

Right. So the War Powers Resolution and the War Powers Act is on top of the Constitution. And in the Constitution, it says that Congress has the power to declare war. The War Powers Act clarifies that, and the Supreme Court has obviously held that, like, in, in times of, like, immediate danger— when the War of 1812, when the British are, like, attacking Washington, James Madison doesn't need to, like, go to Congress and get approval to, like, defend Washington. Although he didn't, he like fled and they burned the Capitol down and burned the White House down. Otherwise, if you're going around the world seeking monsters to slay, then you need congressional approval to do that. The idea being it would be that that involves the people's representatives and then it would make it harder for a king or, you know, unaccountable executive to go around just waging war because he likes it. So it's all illegal, but like Trump's view is, you know, who's going to stop me? Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna in the House were pushing for a war powers resolution. The vote is supposed to be privileged, which means the leadership can't keep it off the floor. Leadership can delay it and can use different tactics to delay it, which gives them then leadership some leverage to negotiate with the people who are bringing it. And leaders from both parties, you know, Hakeem Jeffries on the Democratic side, played a role in in delaying it past the attack.

I mean, I guess my question, Ryan, is why are so many people in Congress willing to support this war?

Yeah, I mean, Congress, they, you know, they've for many years loved war. They don't like to be on the wrong side of a war. AIPAC and the other pro-Israel lobby has been fighting for this war for decades. Netanyahu said 40 years he's been yearning for it. So there's a lot of institutional and financial backing behind it. Even Schumer on the Senate side, he's been critical of Trump, but he always leads with Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. So it gives the framing away because if you lead with that and then you say, but you've kind of lost the whole moral high ground of being opposed to the war. And also we were told in June, like, they obliterated the program and set it back for years. And then we learned that Netanyahu was already, even before June, Netanyahu's intelligence was that it would be years until they had a weapon. We also have the intelligence that they were not pursuing a weapon. And during the recent negotiations, they put out a statement saying, we are not and will never seek a nuclear weapon.

Right.

Like, we got what we wanted.

Right.

We just didn't— that's not really what we wanted.

And, you know, we reported at The Lever earlier this week, and I know you guys have been following this closely, too, the combined over $1 million from AIPAC that these pro-Israel Democrats are getting, right? Who? You mentioned are backing Trump's military onslaught. It's not all secret of what his motivations are.

Just these few, yeah.

Right. So one of the things that Senator Richard Blumenthal said earlier this week—

I am more fearful than ever after this briefing that we may be putting boots on the ground and that troops from the United States may be necessary to accomplish objectives that the administration seems to have.

How likely is it, do you think, we're going to see U.S. troops sent to the Middle East? And what do you think the implications will be with that kind of involvement?

I was just realizing the other day that I've been telling myself and others that, like, well, okay, it does appear like they're going to absolutely bomb the hell out of Iran, but they would never send American troops. And I— then I started to realize, wait, why Why? Where's that come from? Where does that confidence in that, right, in that come from? Trump is already saying that he's going to escort ships in the Strait of Hormuz. That would be putting troops even more in harm's way than they are now. It could also involve some amphibious invasion to capture portions of the, the shore from which the strait is threatened. We're also talking about arming Kurdish militants. That could very easily include sending American special forces along with them. And then, you know, once you've breached the border in northern Iran or southern, between Iraq and Iran, I would expect that special forces would be the first ones to go in with any, any significance, do some, maybe some no-fly zone, not that there's much Iranian Air Force flying going on anyway. And then if you get some casualties or the Kurds are threatened, then you send in more troops and it just kind of develops that way.

I want to play this clip of one of your reporters, Julian Andrioni, asking Senator Elizabeth Warren about the war.

It's pretty clear that both Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump want to distract people from looking at the Epstein files and asking more pointed questions.

And, uh, you know, they may think a war is the best way to do that.

I want to hear your reaction to that, Ryan, because it's something that I've been wondering. I think it's been in the discourse. People are thinking a lot about this. Is there some kind of connection between the Epstein files and this war and Iran? And if so, what do you think that connection is?

I think to say with confidence that Epstein had nothing to do with this or with Venezuela, I don't think you can say it with confidence. I think at minimum it's playing a role in his mindset. And I also— the ICE killings, I think pushed him in a more aggressive posture towards Venezuela in particular to try to move on from this very— what he considered to be this very ugly period where his, like, goons were gunning people down in the streets and the news was dominated by the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. I think there's no question that he wanted to turn the page on that and push it off the headlines. Ironically, I don't think it'll work. I think for now, The world is focused on possibility of World War III and this massive regional war, markets going crazy and the economy falling apart. At some point the war will end and people are going to go back to looking at the Epstein files. Like, I'm— I don't think he can get rid of it forever. Now it has its own logic and motivation and momentum too. And so maybe it would have happened without it, but I don't think you can just completely discount the role that plays.

Ryan, thank you so much for joining Lever Time. and people can go to dropsitenews.com. Uh, really appreciate your time today.

No, thank you. Great to talk.

Thanks for listening to another episode of Lever Time. Lever Time is a production of The Lever. Our associate producers are Natalie Bettendorf and Ariella Markowitz. Our theme music is by Nick Campbell. Our director of podcast production is Ron Doyle. You can subscribe to Lever Time on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're at it, please leave us a comment or a review. We really appreciate hearing from our listeners. Remember, for ad-free episodes, exclusive bonus content, and access to The Lever's entire archive of investigative journalism, please consider becoming a premium subscriber. Head over to levernews.com right now to learn more about becoming a paid subscriber, or click the link in this episode's show notes. I'm David Sirota. We'll be back next week with another episode of Lever Time.

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