Full transcript
0:04Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway. And I'm Jessica Charlap. Today we're joined by Senator Chris Murphy from the great state of Connecticut. By the way, Yukon absolutely destroyed my my March Madness bracket, but anyways. Senator, thank you so much for making the time to join us today. Yeah. Yeah, it's uh great to be with you guys. Yeah,
0:22we're we're we're psyched to be back in a world where it's not just the women's team that is awesome, but the men's team is well. So. >> If you aren't already, please make sure to subscribe to our YouTube page to stay in the loop on all of the political news. All right, let's get into it. Senator, with the war in Iran, you've
0:36been outspoken about US involvement calling it illegal and warning it could cost trillions of dollars. Uh it appears the situation is escalating on multiple fronts. The US military has begun enforcing a blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz, though its scope remains unclear with reports that some ships are still getting through raising questions about how effective or enforceable the
0:57strategy really is. At the same time, negotiations have restarted. Uh Iran has reportedly offering to suspend uranium enrichment for 5 years while the US is pushing for a 20-year halt, and President Trump is demanding guarantees Iran will never develop nuclear weapons. And the International Monetary Fund is now warning that the conflict could slow global growth, drive up inflation,
1:18and even tip the world toward recession as volatility in oil market ripples through the economy. So, given all of this, where do you think we stand right now, and what is your recommendation on a go-forward strategy? I think our instinct is often to apply previous lens lenses to um sort of modern, very unique problems.
1:39Um and so, you know, we we we look at what the president is doing in Iran, and we look at these negotiations, and we try to apply a conventional rationale. I just don't think that works. I I think that we underestimate the degree to which this is just basic incompetence. That we have people
2:02who literally have no idea what they are doing, who are applying no lessons from the past, who are drawing on no one who has any experience in doing diplomacy in and around the Middle East. And what you are getting is um you know, just gross incompetence. Um the latest is this plan
2:24to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by closing the Strait of Hormuz. Uh the idea that Trump has is that because Iran right now is letting at the very least its ships through, if we stop Iranian ships from getting through, then Iran will magically open the Strait to everyone. I think it fundamentally
2:45misunderstands the way that Iran thinks about this war. They believe they are winning the war. The regime does not feel any threat internally, and thus they think they can just wait us out. That the pain on the US economy will break Trump's will before the pain on the Iranian economy breaks their will. Same
3:06thing with negotiations. Uh you know, we're trying to find a logical thread of these negotiations. I don't think there's any logical thread. I think this is J.D. Vance, who's never negotiated an international deal in his life, a real estate developer, um who has no experience in negotiations, and a bunch of hangers-on to the president. Uh J.D. Vance was in
3:26Islamabad for 24 hours and left. That's not how negotiations work. You have to sit down and negotiate for weeks, uh especially with a complicated adversary like the Iranians. And the fact that we only are willing to give it 24 hours of negotiation tells you just how nonsensical all of this is. So, I think this war is going to drag on for a
3:45really long time unless Trump just decides to end it unilaterally, which I still think is the the the best of a bunch of bad options moving forward. Um I don't see a big diplomatic settlement. Uh I don't see Iran reopening the Strait absent Trump ending the war. But his pride and his hubris and his ego is
4:06probably for the foreseeable future going to stop him from um ending it unilaterally. What do you think we should do? Or what if the White House called you today and said, "What outline a strategy given where we are right now at this moment, what would your strategy be for handling the situation right now?" Unilaterally end the war. I mean, I'm not saying that
4:26>> Yeah, withdraw. Withdraw. >> Concede concede control of the Strait of Hormuz to Iran? So, you are There's no military means for us to take Iran's control of the Strait away. So, let's just start there. The fastest way to get into a conversation with Iran about how to reopen the Strait is to permanently
4:47end the war or the threat of military action. Trump believes that his threats are restart bombing or this current plan uh to sort of layer on an American blockade of the Iranian blockade will change Iranian behavior. Again, in the Middle East, there is not a lot of evidence to suggest that escalatory
5:10behavior ultimately achieves US war aims. Um I would advise him to stop the war, and I think that is the fastest way ultimately to get Iran to reopen the Strait. If they take control of the Strait of Hormuz, and J.P. Morgan estimates they're going to get an additional $90 billion potentially in revenue by charging a tax
5:31on any ship to come through, and they basically have what I would argue is more powerful than enriched uranium through control, and we acknowledge and concede control, what incentive do they have to ever give it back and not end seed control of it? Yeah, I mean, that's that's the disaster that Trump has wrought here. I mean, let's just go through his war aims. He
5:53said he wants to destroy their missile program. There's no evidence we've come anywhere close to that. Destroy their drone program. There's no evidence we will ever ever be able to destroy their drone program. He wants to get rid of their nuclear weapons ambitions. Um they retain all of that enriched uh capacity, and you can't really destroy knowledge. And now you've made
6:14them a true global player um by giving them control of the Strait of Hormuz. Again, the alternative is to just continue bombing Iran um and hope that eventually um the destruction that we wrought, the number of civilians that we kill, will cause the Iranians to reopen the Strait.
6:35I I don't think that that's a likely path forward. And so, let's end the conflict, and then with our regional allies be in conversation with Iran about reopening. It may be that Iran is going to toll that Strait for the short and medium term. I just don't know right now that there's any way around it. So,
6:56do you want that to be the reality in addition to spending $200 billion um of taxpayer money on a war that likely won't end up with the Strait being open? That sounds a pretty like a pretty horrific exercise in fiscal malpractice. What do you think Russia and China are telling Iran right now?
7:18Because we know what our allies, you know, our NATO allies and also what our Gulf allies are saying about it. But Russia and China have been you know, close allies obviously of Iran and beneficiaries of this conflict themselves. You know, uh Putin suffered a big defeat in Hungary with the election uh a couple days ago, but you
7:38know, he got some sanctions relief, which I'm hoping that Secretary Bassin is going to hold to this and put those sanctions back on. Um but this 2-week period has felt like a gift to the Iranians that they can essentially rearm and, you know, conference up with China and Russia for the plan going forward. So, what's your feeling about what
7:56Russia and China want Iran to do? Well, I I I think this conflict accrues to the benefit of both Russia and China. For Russia, these high oil prices and um the easing of sanctions on Russia it just fills the Russian treasury. For China, I think there's, you know, a
8:17longer-term play here. Um for China, you know, they don't really mind that that Strait stays closed as long as Chinese ships and Chinese energy move through the Strait. And so, there's there's a pretty simple deal for the Chinese and the Iranians to do moving forward, which is that Iran will let Chinese ships and energy bound for China
8:39move through the Strait, and then China will help Iran rebuild its missile program and its drone program, and probably broader destroyed infrastructure when the United States stops bombing. Um that is just a reality that I think is very sort of hard to confront
9:00right now. And it just for me makes me pine for the days in which the United States, China, and Russia were aligned on Iran policy. I know, like right now, that's hard to imagine, um but that's what existed when we signed the JCPOA. That's the Iran nuclear deal. That was an agreement not between the United
9:21States and Iran. That was a deal between the United States, Europe, Russia, China, and Iran. We had the ability to basically build on the JCPOA with the United States, China, and Russia on the same side to confront Iran's other malevolent activity. We gave that up, and now we are in a world where, you know, we
9:42ultimately may have to accept that there's a more deeply integrated um access, especially between Iran and China, but also between uh between Iran and Russia. Yeah, I'm glad that you brought up the JCPOA cuz I've been thinking a lot about the sunset clauses, which if it if we had stayed in it versus Trump taking us out in 2018, we would be coming up, uh you
10:04know, near the end of the deal and there was this opportunity to hopefully renegotiate. And I'm curious as to what our diplomatic team besides Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner looks like if we do manage to get Iran back to the table even in the next year or two before President Trump is out of of
10:25office we have a a Democratic president coming in. I mean listen, I don't know what they're looking for, but when they describe the deal they want, it sounds a lot like the JCPOA. I mean one of the things they talk about is a firm commitment from the Iranians not to develop a nuclear weapon. Well, that's exactly what the JCPOA said. Iran in
10:46that agreement promised to never develop a nuclear weapon and gave the Americans and the Europeans the ability to do in-depth inspections every single day on Iranian territory to make sure that they were only pursuing a civilian nuclear weapons program. So, if at the end of this, you know, we just get a slightly different version of Obama's nuclear
11:07deal, that would be a ironic and B, it would be a ridiculous outcome with a dozen or more Americans having been killed and billions of dollars of American taxpayer money wasted just to come out with basically the same agreement that we had before Trump became president. It took 18 months to
11:29negotiate the JCPOA and we're talking about, you know, this idea that deals can be done with these people who are quite emboldened at this moment in like, you know, you have 10 to 14 days to sort this out. So, And again, I just I just like want to underscore um that these guys have no idea what they're doing. I mean they this is this
11:48is buffoonery. Vance flying over there for 24 hours, right? John Kerry negotiated that deal and and the Secretary of Energy, you know, they they would sit at these negotiating tables for weeks at a time. And so, there's no incentive for the Iranians to really negotiate when they
12:09get to see J.D. Vance for 24 hours and then he leaves. So, they're not setting up any construct in which there's likely to be a meaningful negotiation and the Iranians know that. The term I think that best describes it from my vantage point is operational excellence but strategic incompetence. Do you think that if the president and
12:32his cabinet or some members of his cabinet member had consulted Congress, had tried to enlist the help of some Gulf and European allies and said this is a unique moment in time to further neuter their ability to support proxies which have been wreaking terror across the region, to take out additional
12:54missile launch capability, to potentially tip over what appears to be a wobbling regime. Do you think one, would you have been more supportive and clear objectives that said we're in, we're out, this is a military operation not a war. Would you personally have been potentially supportive and do you think that this might have had a greater likelihood of
13:15success and that we wouldn't be in clinical you know, this feels like the definition of a quagmire. And I would argue that what has happened here, there is some justification for a military operation but not getting any support from Congress or our allies basically doomed us from the get-go. Would you personally have been more likely to be supportive
13:35of some sort of military action had he enlisted or at least consulted Congress and enlisted some allies? No, because I don't see an objective at least amongst those that have been articulated by the president that has a military answer. So, you cannot bomb out of existence knowledge. So, yes, you can set back
13:56their nuclear program likely only for a handful of months, um but not much longer than that. What we're learning is there is no way to eliminate their missile and drone program through air strikes alone. Hanks that goes on TV and he lies. He says, "Well, we destroyed their missile program, 90% of it is gone." That's just not true. It is likely that we've gotten
14:16far less than than half and we knew from the beginning that a major military operation was going to cause them to close the strait. And that is the primary reason why both Democratic and Republican presidents prior to Donald Trump had not undertaken a military action of this size. We knew that it would draw them closer to China
14:36ending up in China benefiting. And regime change is is not something you can achieve without a ground invasion as we have now seen definitively. The Ayatollah was a bad guy, but he was a dottering old man. It is now possible that we have put in charge of that nation much more
14:56competent um much more provocative leadership. So, no, I don't think that for me there was any argument that they could make that a military campaign was going to end up achieving any of our goals. Yeah, I want their missile program gone. I want their drone program gone. I want Iran to be a democracy, but
15:20I don't see any of those being achieved by a short-term targeted military intervention. And you don't you don't worry that if we exit now, we one leave our allies sort of naked and afraid, we broke it, they have to fix it, and two that we suffer from sort of a glass jaw syndrome where despite 1.4 trillion dollars a year proposed military budget,
15:41we become the ultimate paper tiger that a decent amount of pain or someone argue relative to other conflicts, not that much pain and we cut and run. You're you're not I mean, I think that your arguments are really uh I don't know. I have a ton of veracity, compelling, hard to argue with around the incompetence that's gotten us
16:02here and now. But if we were to exit, who takes us seriously when we show up with any sort of military campaign and doesn't believe that just inflict a little bit of pain and they'll run? But who takes us seriously when we respond to a catastrophic mistake with another catastrophic mistake? I I I mean, you know, this is this is like
16:24trotting out a little league team you know, in a in a in a major sporting event and hoping that if you just keep playing, they'll win. I mean, these guys are embarrassing the United States. This latest move of of of closing the strait ourself in order to respond to Iran closing the strait, that makes us look
16:44like a laughing stock. This is just going to get worse and worse because these people do not know what they're doing and listen, that argument has been made before, right? I I heard our leaders make that argument to Congress on Afghanistan over and over and over again. Give us more time, give us more troops. That is literally the reason why
17:01we stayed in Vietnam for as long as we did because if we can just escalate a little bit more, if we can escalate in a slightly different way, ultimately the enemy will come to the table. So, I just see this quagmire getting worse and worse. I don't I don't disagree with you that this is going to make us look weak,
17:19but for us to just continue to perform ineptly, for us to just invent new bold strategic mistakes on a weekly basis, that makes us look even weaker. And what do we say to our allies there? We've inflamed Iran, we've put them at harm's way, and And you have to pay more as a result of
17:41it because they're all getting their energy through the strait. Right, but our but our allies there, maybe with the exception of Saudi Arabia, they begged us not to do this. And Saudi Arabia right now is telling us to at the very least end this nonsensical plan to blockade the Strait of Hormuz because what they worry about is that that will end up with Iran and
18:04the Houthis activating to close or harass traffic inside the Red Sea. The the Saudis see our continued escalation as bad for the region. So, I don't know that our allies there are doing much else than hoping Trump ends this as
18:24quickly as possible so that they can try to put the pieces back together. It may be that it's going to end up being a sort of broader Sunni-Shia dialogue in the region that might get the strait reopened. It's not likely going to be Steve Whitkoff that delivers this delivers this deal. And again, this is also
18:46a function of our broader alliance structure being shattered. The success of the JCPOA of real diplomacy with Iran was built on the United States and Europe working together. The fact that we can't do any of this with Europe, it greatly deleverages our ability to end this this this conflict in a meaningful
19:06way because Europe is, you know, basically running their own play in the region right now. Okay, let's take a quick break. Stay with us. Welcome back. I just want to touch on, you know, a key element in this war that hasn't been mentioned yet and that's the role of Israel in this. So, with the Italian Prime Minister's announcement,
19:27we're up to 26 of 27 EU member states that now support at least partially suspending their trade agreement with Israel. We have, you know, Bibi Netanyahu giving press conferences where he says, you know, J.D. Vance checked in with me right after the negotiations. I talk to them every day and, you know, really inextricably linking Israel and and the US in this fight, um which I
19:49think makes sense since it was a a joint venture there. How are you seeing Israel's role in this and what do you think that we should be doing about, you know, a very clear fissure in American attitudes towards Israel on both the right and the left? Yeah, I mean, I I worry about the lack of coordination
20:12in US and Israeli operations in Iran. I I do not actually think we share a goal set. It's been very confusing to me as to whether regime change is um an American goal. Sometimes the administration says it is, sometimes they don't. That is clearly a goal of uh
20:32Israel. They have been targeting political leadership inside Iran in the way the United States has not. I don't think the United States wants Iran to be a failed state in the long run. I do think that Israel wants Iran to be a failed state in the long run. So, there are divergent goals between the United States and Israel. What is more
20:53concerning to me right now is the potential for a massive new conflict between Israel and Lebanon. Obviously, you've seen this bombardment of Beirut and other cities inside Lebanon. We might be days away from a new massive Israeli ground operation in Lebanon. Lebanon is a
21:14a very flawed country, but a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural democracy that was frankly for the first time in a long time on its way towards a better day because they had a functional government. And so, the idea that we would end up after the conflict with Iran with another long-term conflict between the
21:34United States and Lebanon where tens of thousands of Lebanese will be killed, millions will be displaced, just a disaster for the region. My sense is that the Trump administration's been trying to hold Netanyahu back, but they never seem interested in doing that for more than a handful of days. You know, right now that's I think what
21:56we should be worrying most about is a another massive US-Lebanese war that might end up with the eradication of democracy in Lebanon. Do you think that the pursuit of destroying Hezbollah, which is what Israel's goal is in Lebanon? They don't want to destroy the Lebanese government and they are killing a a lot of civilians
22:16in the meantime, which is completely unacceptable, but the target is a known terror group, right? So, is that something that you think is not worth the effort or that Israel should be hanging back from that in general? Well, there was a path, a very viable, a difficult path, but a viable path to get
22:38the current Lebanese government into the business of directly confronting Hezbollah. Hezbollah obviously was weak and there were discussions underway to finally turn the Lebanese Armed Forces, the LAF, against Hezbollah, especially in the south where Hezbollah poses the most
22:58direct threat to Israel. There was going to have to be a a pretty major investment in the LAF from the US and from the Europeans. Um but we finally had a halfway competent government in Lebanon and instead of spending one day trying to pursue a route in which the Lebanese themselves would eradicate
23:19Hezbollah's threat to Israel, instead we decided to essentially greenlight a new Israeli military operation that has shown in the past no meaningful ability to eradicate Hezbollah's military capacities in the in the long run. So, you think there was a diplomatic solution both in Iran and for Lebanon
23:41working with the current Lebanese government? >> a pure diplomatic solution because it was going to involve the Lebanese Armed Forces in some kind of conflict with Hezbollah. >> And no Israeli forces though. And but no Israeli forces. And and that that would have been a very difficult proposition, but in the long run, the only way to eradicate Hezbollah's influence inside
24:01Lebanon, remember, it's not this is not just a sort of fringe military operation. Hezbollah in Lebanon is integrated into the government. But the the Lebanese people were ready to support a strategy that would reduce Hezbollah's political and military the country. We were poised to implement a
24:24strategy of that sort, but the Trump administration, you know, again had no interest in the hard work of doing that and instead just told the Israelis to do a military operation that again has no evidence, there's no evidence in the past that those kind of incursions into Lebanon, of which Israel has conducted many, have
24:44a long-term impact on Hezbollah's power. Appreciate our time with you your time, Senator. The race to replace Governor Newsom, recently Congressman Eric Swalwell suspended his campaign resigning from Congress following sexual assault allegations and we've seen multiple cases like this across Congress including the resignation of Tony Gonzales. And
25:05supposedly a lot of this these were quote unquote open secrets. Do you see this as a cultural problem in Congress and if so, what can be done about it? Yeah, I mean, obviously, this is a systemic problem and we've seen, you know, multiple instances in the House of Representatives. I mean, I think you have to have a much more vigorous
25:25oversight and ethics capacity in the House of Representatives. That seems to be a process that has ultimately broken down and you have to have real protection for victims to make sure that they come forward as early as possible and clearly there's not a belief right now that victims are going
25:46to be protected if they if they step forward and that's something that I think both the legal system and the internal ethics system can work to address. I want you to imagine that you decide to jump into a crowded field for the Democratic nomination for president. What would be the one or two policies that would be the touchstones of a candidate Murphy's
26:05campaign that would be that would be different from a crowded field? Yeah, I'll I'll I'll I knew you were going to do that, Senator. >> I will tell you my belief and I think this squares with how you think of the world is that Trump is not the cause of our American spiritual crisis. He is a symptom of it.
26:26What is plaguing America today is a lack of meaning and purpose and connectivity in people's lives and we need to have an agenda that I think would be surprisingly bipartisan and in some ways apolitical to give people greater access to meaning, purpose, identity, and connection in their lives. Those are
26:47agendas about rebuilding healthy, unique, small cities and small towns. That's an agenda about controlling the poisonous technology that robs you of real connection. That's about industrial policy so that there's real dignity in work, a common good capitalism where you can make a profit in this country, but not at the expense of healthy workers. I
27:10just think that we spend all this time in this country fighting over important issues like abortion and immigration and climate and guns, right? Things that I deeply care about and it masks this underlying realignment in this country that is happening around a different kind of less exploitative capitalism and investments in local communities or
27:31regulation of technologies, a belief that institutions from unions to churches need to be healthy again. I think that there's a real ability to scramble the traditional existing fault lines in American politics if you, you know, run a national campaign based around meaning, connection, friendship,
27:53companionship, leisure time. I think that'd be a fascinating campaign for somebody to run. For somebody to run. There you go. Common good capitalism, that sounds like a pretty good I hadn't heard that before and I like >> like a pretty good bumper sticker. Christopher Scott You know how I like a bumper sticker. >> Murphy is an American lawyer, author,
28:12and politician serving since 2013 as the junior United States Senator from Connecticut. Senator Murphy is a member of the Democratic Party who served from 2007 to 2013 in the United States House of Representatives representing Connecticut's fifth congressional district. He joins us from our nation's uh great capital. Senator, we always very much enjoy your level-headedness,
28:32pragmatic, yet compelling narrative. Very much appreciate your service. And you didn't back down to stop the bombing when you were asked 80 times. Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. You know, I listen, I mean, restraint is a policy
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29:58>> Woo!