You can watch this episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon above or by following this show on YouTube or Substack. You can read a transcript here.
The United States and Israel’s war against Iran has now been going on for about three weeks. President Trump sounds increasingly frustrated that Iran has not surrendered. In the latest edition of Right Now, Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy, argues that the war is failing by nearly every metric: Oil prices are rising; civilian casualties are up; the bombings by all three countries are getting more aggressive, destroying critical infrastructure; the Iranian regime remains controlled by leaders hostile to Israel and the U.S. Duss argues that what Trump and Israeli leaders see as successes, the killings of numerous Iranian officials, are really violations of international law. He says Trump is now grasping for a way to declare the war a success and end it. Duss, who was a foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders during his two presidential runs, says that America’s problems in the Middle East are not just the fault of Trump. He argues that it was a huge mistake for the Biden administration to not restart the nuclear deal with Iran and to support Israel in its destruction of Gaza over the last two years. He says 2028 Democratic presidential candidates should use the terms genocide and apartheid to describe the current situation in Israel and Palestine. Duss also discussed Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent trip to Germany. He advised Ocasio-Cortez on her comments there.