Where this was said
Iran Won the War: Ben Rhodes's Full Verdict
At 17:30 · chapter starts 13:30
Ben walks through the comparison nobody wants to make but everybody should. Before the war, the US demanded absolute zero enrichment, no proxy support, and geographic caps on Iranian missiles that would prevent them reaching Israel. The MOU delivers none of these. Worse, under the Obama JCPOA that Trump spent years trashing, Iran received not a single dollar of frozen assets until after it shipped out enriched uranium, removed centrifuges, destroyed its plutonium reactor core, and accepted inspections. Now Iran gets $10 billion just from being able to sell oil again, before making any nuclear commitments whatsoever. Ben's verdict: the body language of this deal is one of complete surrender. [1] — Ben Rhodes "The body language of the deal is one of surrender. It's one of Iran won this war, we failed in our objectives. Trump wants out." 12:05 Trump is far more worried about the Strait staying closed and economies collapsing than about looking weak. That fear — not strength — is why Iran holds all the leverage. Tommy and Ben then pivot to accountability, calling out the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, and David Sanger for having sold a war that has now proven catastrophically wrong — and demanding they be run out of Washington's foreign policy ecosystem.
People who sold the Iraq and Iran wars as serious foreign policy experts — Lindsey Graham, the FDD, Marco Rubio — face zero accountability for being catastrophically wrong. Meanwhile, progressives who opposed the wars could never get on a Sunday show. That asymmetry needs to end.
