I Asked a Former Trump Official to Justify This War
About this episode
Ezra Klein presses former Trump official Nadia Schadlow to justify the war on Iran. Schadlow frames the administration's doctrine as 'flexible realism' — states, power, interests, and deterrence over universal institutions — and argues that Iran's nuclear, missile, and regional threats created a rare window for force, while military degradation can restore American credibility. Klein challenges her on the contradiction with Trump's antiwar promises, the unclear connection to core U.S. interests, the risk of regime-change chaos, and the erosion of international law. Schadlow says she favors no U.S. ground troops and concedes the successor regime and stabilization path are uncertain, arguing a weakened Iran still improves security even amid humanitarian fallout. They clash over whether deterrence logic applies evenly: Klein warns that if might makes right, stronger states everywhere are licensed to attack weaker ones.