Robert D. Kaplan, Author And Foreign Affairs Expert Talks Iranian Blowback

Robert D. Kaplan, author and foreign affairs expert discusses the potential blowback and next "phases" of the Israel-Iran conflict. He is joined by Bloomberg's Tom Keene and Paul Sweeney.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Robert D. Kaplan, over a stretch of over twenty books,
just simply speaks of the map. If you're one of
those believers in get out the map and look at it,
Kaplan is definitive. His new tour de force is Wasteland
a world in permanent crisis. This is coming off my
book of the Year a few years ago, The Loom

(00:28):
of Time from Morocco to Persia. Robert Kaplan, thank you
so much for joining us. I'll cut to the chase.
You say technology has permanently changed our map, our geography.
Is that true of this war with Israel and Iran?

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Ah? Yes, it is to an extent, because Iran is
a long distance from Israel on the map. But yet
the Israelis and of course the Americans have condensed that
distance through technology. The America excuse me, The Americans sent
B two bombers all the way from the center of

(01:07):
the United States, uh white Man Air Force based in
Missouri to bomb Iran, so that Iran is as close
to America, you know, in in operational terms, as you know,
as Kansas was to the Indian Wars in the middle

(01:29):
of the nineteenth century. And let me just make one
thing very clear. Yeah, people who were saying that this
could this could lead to another you know, forever forever war,
Middle East quagmire, they're making a mistake of category. Iraq

(01:51):
is in different was in a different category than Iran.
Iraq was in the category of Vietnam and Afghanistan in
Korea in the sense that it involved tens of thousands
of ground troops which got stuck literally in a quagmire.

(02:12):
Here we're dealing with just air and naval assets. The
war could go in a number of ways. There could
be blowback, but as long as we stick with air
and naval assets, there's not going to be a quagmire.
There's going to be something different. It may be something bad,
but it will simply exist in a category different from

(02:34):
those four forever wars Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
Robert, what do you expect the response from Iran will be?

Speaker 1 (02:48):
I think there will be a response. It may take
a few days or a few weeks. It may be
a terrorist attack in Europe. It may be an attack
by Shia Irani and Shia militia in Iraq on US troops,
not too far away. There certainly will be blowback, but

(03:10):
it's going to take a few months at least to
really register whether this decision by President Trump to bomb
the Iranian nuclear facilities was a wise or an unwise decision.
It will unfold stages.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
And you're the loom of time, and folks, I can't
say enough about this is your single concise read on
the span from Morocco to the Eastern Arab world and
over to Persia. You talked there, Robert Kaplan, about the
giant of your academics, which is Clifford Gertz, and it's
the idea of culture described for our American audience today.

(03:53):
The Persian called for culture, the Persian culture extant, since
that's a theocracy of nineteen seventy nine.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yes, Persia. Iran is not the Arab world. It is
not Iraq, it is not Syria, it is not Libya.
Iran has been a nation state of sorts on the
Iranian plateau for thousands of years. Iran was the world's

(04:23):
first superpower and antiquity. You're dealing with a highly sophisticated,
highly evolved organ you know, culture and civilization where there
is not one center of political power but multiple centers
of political power. You know, I've been to Iran several times.

(04:44):
It takes two hours in traffic to drive from one
end of Tehran to the other. Being in Iran is
like being in Egypt or India, and that is it's overwhelming.
You feel overwhelmed. So the so the idea that you
know that a singular attack on nuclear facilities is going

(05:07):
in a linear fashion to lead to a regime change
is far too simplistic. They're they're may you know, they're
very very well likely could be a regime evolution, as
I call it, but it will involve many other factors,
and it will be internally driven. It won't be imposed

(05:28):
from the outside.

Speaker 3 (05:30):
Robert, what do you think our US strategy should be
towards Iran at this point? Again, the over the weekend,
a significant escalation and military action should be are strategic view?

Speaker 1 (05:43):
Well, at this point, we should try, as President Trump said,
to keep it a one off that we try as
hard as we can not to attack again, not to
respond again. You know, if they're just going to do
a desultory pin prick response like they did after President
Trump bordered the assassination of Kassamsulemani, the head of the

(06:07):
El Kutz force back in twenty twenty. In January twenty twenty,
I think it was there's no need to respond, you know.
The policy now should be to lower the temperature, not
talk about changing a regime from the outside. Because the
damage has been done. It will take days or weeks

(06:29):
to more properly assess exactly how much damage was done.
But the idea that the Uranians are just going to
rebuild their nuclear facilities is very simplistic. They're never going
to rebuild it to the point that Fardeau or Natans was,
you know, way before they get to that point, the

(06:51):
Israelis will be able to attack them. So this attack
really did do substantial damage.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
What you expect Israel to do here because a lot
of folks are suggesting this is a unique time for
Israel here in terms of exerting and expending and it's
its role within the Middle East and adding to its security.
Is this a unique time for Israel?

Speaker 1 (07:15):
Yes, it is because you know, Benjamin Netanyahu, love em
or hate him, is a world historical figure. People may
forget Clinton, Obama and Biden and half of the European
prime ministers, you know, who will be forgotten in the
course of the decades. But decades from now, people will

(07:36):
be writing biographies about Netta Yaho, you know, because he's
been in power so long, and the way he was
able to, you know, achieve tactical surprise in his attacks
on Iran, and then I'll use the word manipulate President
Trump into taking action on his own is is nothing

(07:56):
short of extraordinary. I think with the is the smart
thing for the Israelis to do now now that they
got help from the US, is to give the US
something that is start the process of withdrawing from Gaza.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
Robert Keppin one final question, was going to run on
with the day and again, folks, I can't say enough
about Wasteland. Robert Cappan's new effort in The Loom of Time,
my book of the year, you wrote a monograph. I'm
going to call it The Tragic Mind, taking us back
to Greek mythology and how we need tragedy to move forward.
Does President Trump have a tragic mind in there somewhere?

(08:37):
Is there a philosophy of tragedy? Is a foundation to strength?

Speaker 1 (08:42):
Very hard? Yeah, Tom, That's a very hard question to answer.
Because I don't sense it. I think he's too vain
and superficial to really have a deeply, a deeply developed
sense of tragedy. But I could be wrong. I could
be wrong on this because the person who really did

(09:03):
have a deeply evolved sense of tragedy was President George H. W. Bush,
who is very cautious and another. You know, the great
thing about his administration was not what happened, but all
the bad things that did not happen because of his governance.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
This has been wonderful, Robert Caplan, thank you so much.
It's a must read, folks. Wasteland World in permanent Crisis,