AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The U.S. and Israel's war with Iran continues to escalate. Yesterday, Israel attacked a crucial Iranian natural gas field. Iran responded today with a strike on the world's biggest liquefied natural gas complex in Qatar. And at a press briefing this morning, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed reporting that the Pentagon would seek additional funding for the war.
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PETE HEGSETH: As far as $200 billion, I think that number could move, obviously. It takes money to kill bad guys.
CHANG: But Hegseth said that any assertion that the mission was widening was noise, and he said that the president would decide when this war is over.
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HEGSETH: It will be at the president's choosing, ultimately, where we say, hey, we've achieved what we need to on behalf of the American people to ensure our security.
CHANG: Well, not everyone thinks ending this war will be that easy. Thomas Wright served as senior director for strategic planning at the National Security Council under President Biden. He writes in The Atlantic that any off-ramp in Iran is disappearing. Thomas Wright joins us now. Welcome.
THOMAS WRIGHT: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
CHANG: So the Trump administration has basically said that the end of the war is in President Trump's hands, that Trump can declare mission accomplished, essentially, whenever he wants. And then at that point, this war will be over. Do you think that will be the case?
WRIGHT: Yeah, I think his initial goal was a Venezuela-style model where after the supreme leader was killed, he would do a deal with the No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, who'd be willing to work pragmatically with him and maybe cut the U.S. in on oil revenue or have some economic arrangement. But that possibility, you know, disappeared as more and more of the leadership were killed and as Mojtaba Khamenei became the new supreme leader, and then his off-ramp was really declaring victory and getting out. And I think that's become much more difficult over the last week because the costs of the war are rising. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. Iran's strikes on the Gulf States continues, including on energy infrastructure. And so if he were to stop military operations now, I think it would look more like a stalemate than the victory he wants.
CHANG: Is it your sense that Iran actually wants this war to continue?
WRIGHT: I think Iran only wants the war to end when it has some guarantee that he won't be back in six or eight or 10 months to strike again if it rebuilds. I think they want to impose costs on the U.S. and on Israel to deter a future strike. And so I don't think they would necessarily accept an unconditional cessation.
CHANG: OK. Well, let's talk about these possible off-ramps here. You outline some potential paths forward for this administration. One is taking a bit of a military gamble. Can you describe what that might look like?
WRIGHT: Yeah. I think, you know, President Trump could take greater risks to try to achieve a major tactical victory that would allow him to say that he has achieved his objectives and to end the war, so he could try to take Kharg Island where a lot of Iran's oil is.
CHANG: This is the principal oil export hub for Iran.
WRIGHT: Exactly. And he could order a military raid on some of the nuclear facilities in Isfahan or Natanz (ph) to take the highly enriched uranium. But those are extremely high-risk operations. The U.S. could easily take or possibly take casualties.
CHANG: You do say that another possibility is simply to wage a longer war, but you don't see that as plausible. Why not?
WRIGHT: Well, I think he may end up there anyway, but he is not prepared for a longer war. He's not prepared the American public or Congress for it, and, you know, munitions and air defenses are being depleted. And so, you know, he intended this to be three to four weeks long, I think he said, maybe a little bit longer, you know, at the beginning. If this goes on for three, four, five months with oil prices skyrocketing, potentially, you know, casualties on the allied side higher than they are now with no clear end in sight, I think it will become a very different animal.
CHANG: This administration continues to highlight that it has achieved overwhelming military success. Is it unreasonable to think that continually degrading Iran's military would eventually weaken the regime to the point where it is simply forced to give up?
WRIGHT: They're measuring that purely based on inputs on the number of targets they're hitting, but not necessarily on the effects. So, you know, Iran's strikes on the region continue. Its strikes on energy facilities continue. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed. President Trump sort of downplays that and says, you know, well, we've (ph) destroyed their navy. It's just some guys with a mine, you know, on the coast dropping one in now and again. I think that fairly dramatically understates it, but I think they are, you know, spinning a story that the war has already been won when it obviously, you know, has not.
CHANG: Another possible off-ramp is, of course, a negotiated settlement, but that seems pretty hard to imagine at this moment, don't you think?
WRIGHT: Yeah, I think it would be very difficult to imagine, partly because, you know, I think Iran will hold out for a deal that is more favorable to it than what it would have gotten before the war started, but I think that would be very tough for President Trump to accept. And so Iran is sort of counting on - as the economic cost increases and the energy markets are roiled - that Trump will look at compromise - messy compromises over time.
CHANG: Well, the Trump administration continues to argue that this war in Iran is different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which it says were the result of blunders by foolish politicians. But let me ask you, how much of a risk is there that this conflict in Iran turns into a similar mess with repercussions that last years and years?
WRIGHT: You know, no one intends wars initially to be very long. And certainly George W. Bush intended the war in Iraq to be short. The administration's view is that the reason those were long was rules of engagement that inhibited the U.S. from using force as much as was needed. I think that is, you know, demonstrably not true. And the second thing they say is that Bush tried to build democracy in Iraq, and they're not concerned about building a democratic - Jeffersonian democracy. But I think that also misrepresents the challenge because what governments find in these situations is they're trying to establish any type of government that does not view them as an enemy and is sort of stable domestically and averts sort of a descent into chaos. So they, too, have this problem.
CHANG: Thomas Wright, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former director for strategic planning at the National Security Council during the Biden administration. Thank you very much for joining us.
WRIGHT: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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