“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough warns that President Trump underestimated the dangers of Iran, ignored military advice, and walked into a conflict that could give the regime a “chokehold on the world economy.” On Tuesday, Scarborough argued there is no such thing as “Iranian moderates,” saying decades of failed U.S. policy proved Iran would never be easy to negotiate with.
That is a massive historic loss that, as Kagan says, strengthens China, strengthens Russia, strengthens all of America’s enemies, strengthens Iran. It would be an absolute nightmare. You know, you couple this piece, this Atlantic piece with your Atlantic piece, where you wrote in great detail about how Donald Trump is bored with this war.
He wants to move on. But that’s the thing about quagmires. You can’t move on.
Him coming home is a nightmare. And as Kagan points out, if you want to do this right, which Donald Trump will not do, if you want to change the regime, if you want to get rid of the nuclear material, if you want to achieve your goals, you’re going to have to put troops on the ground. And that’s just never going to happen.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: All those things were known before.
SCARBOROUGH: And all those things were known before by…
BRZEZINSKI: Every single one.
SCARBOROUGH: Anybody that actually has studied this for more than five minutes. I do. I hear this talk about Iranian moderates.
That literally has been a running joke in foreign policy circles since 1979. Oh, we’re going to find the Iranian moderates to help us out of the Iranian hostage crisis. Oh, we’re going to find the Iranian moderates to help us here.
Oh, we’re going to find the Iranian moderates to help us there. There are no Iranian moderates. We have been looking for…
Bud McFarland, again, went over with a birthday cake and a Bible looking for an Iranian moderate in 1986, trying to bring peace, trying to get some hostages back. They don’t exist. They’ve never existed. And Lindsey Graham should have known that. Pete Hegseth should have known that. Benjamin Netanyahu knew that, but he wanted to sucker Donald Trump into this war. And Donald Trump should have known that, but he didn’t. None of them knew it. I guarantee you, General Caine knew it.
I guarantee you, military people knew it. But we have here the same situation we had in Afghanistan and Joe Biden. All of Joe Biden’s military people told him, don’t leave Afghanistan without at least a couple of thousand troops in there.
They all told him not to do it. He did it anyway. It was disastrous. Donald Trump, all the military people didn’t want — they knew what was awaiting in Iran. He went anyway. He ignored them, thought it was going to be a quick two-week excursion and he was going to come back. It’s not. It’s Iran.
And again, this is like, we’ve known this since… Anybody that studied this has known this since 1979. If he had talked to anybody in the CIA that worked the Iran desk for more than five minutes, that wasn’t one of his hacks that would say, yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir.
They would have said, Mr. President, don’t do it. It’s just not going to end well. They’re going to close off the strait and then they’re going to have a chokehold on the world economy.
