#462 — More From Sam： The Iran War, American Amorality, Addressing Hopelessness, Tucker, and More
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Summary
In this episode of the Making Sense Podcast, host Sam Harris sits down with a live audience to answer listener questions about the Iran crisis, including whether the U.S. should have taken military action against Iran, and whether it would have been a good thing.
Transcript
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Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing
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this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and we'll only be hearing the first part
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of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense Podcast,
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you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's
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made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing
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here, please consider becoming one. Okay, welcome back to another episode of More From Sam. We are
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taping this episode live in front of subscribers. They've submitted questions in advance of the show,
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and then we've asked them to provide any follow-ups by using the chat feature so that we can try to
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address their feedback in real time. Another thing to add, the questions for this episode are
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outstanding. I love being reminded that so many in this audience are so thoughtful and smart with
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different voices from many parts of the world, and I just want to thank everyone for taking the time
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to submit the questions. There's really great stuff in here, so I'm excited for today's episode.
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I haven't seen any of these questions, by the way, so this is-
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No, you have not. I'm as excited as everybody else.
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Yeah. No, this is a good one. This is going to be a good episode. We'll try to get to as many as we can,
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and we'll get to those in just a moment. But first, a word from our sponsor. Next week,
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Sam has shows in Portland and Vancouver, March 11th in Portland, March 12th in Vancouver. There
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are still some tickets available for those shows, as well as for the shows we have on sale in May.
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Toronto's already sold out, but you can find info for how to get tickets at samharris.org for the
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other shows I just mentioned, as well as DC, New York City, Austin, and Dallas. Okay, on to our first
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topic. Sam, should the US have taken military action against Iran? Yeah, well, I think you have to
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hold two thoughts in your head simultaneously to have an adequate answer to this question.
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So the first thought is that at any point since 1979, it would have been a good thing to unseat
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the regime in Iran. It would have been true when they took our hostages. It would have been true
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in 1983 when they engineered the bombing of the marine barracks in Beirut. It would have been true
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during the Iraq War, whatever you think about that war, given that they were producing all the IEDs
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that were killing our soldiers. It would have been true in 1989 with the Salman Rushdie fatwa.
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I mean, this is an engine of terrorism and just awfulness for the world, right? For open societies
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everywhere. And to say nothing of the immiseration of the Iranian people. And I think it's a scandal of
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the Obama administration and the Biden administration not to have done more to support the Iranians who
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risk their lives to fight for the civil rights of women in particular at various moments during
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those administrations. I just think we have strangely been deterred by Iran for a generation
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and a half, right? We've been scared to tangle with Iran because there was a proper jihadist regime,
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is a proper jihadist regime run by true religious fanatics that show a kind of really a bottomless
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appetite for making life miserable in open societies wherever they can do it directly or through their
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proxies, right? So that's all true. And yet here's the second thought. It's also true that the Trump
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administration is the most corrupt and incompetent administration I think we've ever had. And we are
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right to worry that Trump and his enablers and, you know, the rest of his administration, people like
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Hegseth, don't have any real purchase on a sane, you know, philanthropic and humanitarian impulse.
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I mean, whatever they might say about caring about the Iranian people, we're right to worry that
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doesn't run very deep. I think Trump is totally capable of breaking everything over there and then
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just turning around and saying, well, this is victory. You know, it's on the Iranian people now
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and we're done. I think he could do that in a way that no other U.S. president really could with a clear
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conscience, right? So next week he could declare victory and leave Iran in total chaos, right? So I don't
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know what to expect from this war. I certainly hope it goes well. I hope what happens is there is a
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proper regime change and the Iranian people get to express their desire for something like a secular
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democracy, a desire which I think many of them, probably a majority of them actually have. I think
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Iran was always a much better candidate for regime change and nation building than Iraq and certainly
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Afghanistan ever were. So I think we have drawn the wrong lessons from our misadventures in Afghanistan
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and Iraq if we think that Iran was just, it's just a hopeless case and, you know, we should never have
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meddled there. But I think it's totally rational to worry that Trump will do this badly. The
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communication has been just appalling around this. I mean, he's done nothing to prepare the American
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people for this. We have no allies other than Israel. Congress has been sidelined as they have been in
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everything. So this is a constitutional problem. So it's, there's, it's all kinds of bad in terms
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of how this has been done. And yet that doesn't mean it will necessarily fail. I certainly hope it
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doesn't fail. So if you can reconcile those two thoughts that may seem contradictory, that's my view
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of it. A follow-up question. I don't need to do the whole part. I can just begin with it. I'm wondering
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if Sam has any regrets about his hawkish stance, possibly giving the U.S. administration coverage for
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what looks to be naked aggression without a plan, essentially that. Do you have any regrets about
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my hawkish stance on what? On giving the U.S. administration coverage, you know, for feeling
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supportive for what's happening in Iran right now? Well, no, I mean, everything I said around that
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first thought is true. It's just what I believe now is what I believed before this war started. It's
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what I will believe really, whatever happens here, because I think it is just in fact true that
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if you look back at the protests, you know, the Iranian women some years ago, you know,
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crying out for their civil rights and, you know, risking torture and death, you know,
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merely to take off their hijabs in public. If you care about women's rights, if you care about
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human rights, you should care about those women, right? And it's just, it's completely intolerable
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that we have acquiesced to this meme. It is somehow a sign of bigotry to express how evil it is
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that under this kind, this version of Islam, women are subjected to what is in reality gender
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apartheid. I mean, it's just, and obviously this is not the only concern I have with the Iranian
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regime, but that concern alone should have led to much greater support from us. There is no outcome
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other than regime change that would, would have, should have, or would, would have in reality ever
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been acceptable here with respect to Iran. Iran can never have a nuclear weapon because it's a
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jihadist regime. And this, and I can make the generic case. We are perpetually at war with
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jihadism, whether we want to state it that way or not. And Iran almost uniquely was a proper jihadist
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regime that was within reach of developing nuclear weapons. And so it's just, there's no world in
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which we can negotiate with a regime like that, even though we can pretend to, as the Obama and
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Biden administrations did. And as Trump may yet pretend to, I mean, that's the other thing that we
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have to realize is that Trump may decide that he's going to try to create some Venezuela-like
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endgame here where he's just going to install somebody who, who will claim to be pliant,
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but in this case really can't be because all of the people who would follow from, you know,
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the ranks of the, you know, surviving mullahs in Iran are in fact religious maniacs, right? I mean,
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it's a very different situation than Venezuela. So I think it's just an absolute mirage to think
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that we could ever have negotiated any sort of proper peace with Iran, given the actual
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religious commitments of the regime. And that's a fairly unique case. I would not say the same
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thing of Saudi Arabia or many of these other Muslim states. I wouldn't say the same thing of
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Pakistan in its current form, and Pakistan has nukes, but if Pakistan ever got taken over by a
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real jihadist regime, we would have a full-on emergency with Pakistan, right? So nukes and jihadism
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just do not play well together, and we have, we can never lose sight of that. And we were on the
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verge of losing sight of that with respect to Iran, but I don't think I gave anyone cover for
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anything. I just think this is, this is just true. And yet it's also true that the way Trump has done
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this is authoritarian, right? This is not the way a U.S. president should take our country into war
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without explaining anything, without consulting anyone, without, with having cartoon characters,
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you know, running the effort. You just listen to Pete Hegseth talk about anything, and you know
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you're not in good hands. So this is, there's nothing optimal about this, but that also doesn't
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mean that the aftermath of this might not be better than what preceded it, because what preceded it was
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Yes, I was interpreting the question as, which you addressed, was being hawkish, given this
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administration and the way that they might go about doing this in all the wrong ways. And your
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comment on jihadism might answer this next question. Why isn't anyone calling out the Trump
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administration on the double standard of our enthusiastic military defense of the Iranian
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people and our lack of resolve to militarily defend the people of the democratic country of Ukraine?
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Well, yeah, it is a, again, I think we've been bad on Ukraine too, right? I mean, it's understandable
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that we're not enthusiastic about stumbling into a direct conflict with Russia, right? So that,
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you know, the moment of nuclear blackmail, all of that was sobering for a reason. At this distance
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from, you know, the start of the war, I think it was a bluff that we essentially called and it proved
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to be a bluff. I'm not actually worried about a nuclear war with Russia, really, over Ukraine. But,
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yeah, I think we should have always given Ukraine more support and Europe should have as well. And
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it's just, it's understandable. This war is awful and we fought some bad ones, right? And we fought
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ones that in retrospect look totally pointless and horrible. So it's easy to see how we, I mean,
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we basically have a renewed version of Vietnam syndrome to some degree, which makes it impossible
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to notice necessary wars early, right? And I think we should have helped Ukraine earlier more than we
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did. And I don't know, it remains to be seen what's going to happen there.
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Hi, Sam. Having watched Donald Trump and his court ride roughshod over every norm convention and more
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recently international laws, are the rules of engagement around war? My question to you is,
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No, no, no. Of every norm convention and more recently international laws. What are the point of
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any of these rules of engagement around war? What is the point of any of this stuff? If the question
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is if Trump and his cohort just completely ignore it and go about their own way?
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Well, the point is we used to have a liberal international order that was anchored to our
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being a good and viable and respectable superpower, right? So that has changed radically and we have
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alienated pretty much all of our allies except for Israel. I think that's, while there's a silver
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lining perhaps to some of it, the net result is quite bad. And I think we're going to discover
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what it's like to live in a world where our country stands for nothing other than its own
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power and its own interests, right? I mean, we're now a country that has declared to the world that
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we are fundamentally amoral, right? Like, we're not going to judge anyone else for being imperialistic
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and, you know, savage on the world stage. I mean, we're just as long as it doesn't conflict
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with our interests. We have a country now, you know, we have an administration now that expresses
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more or less nothing but contempt for our democratic allies and a very strange admiration for our
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actual enemies like, you know, Vladimir Putin. All of that's just bizarre and corrosive and I think we
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have horrified much of the free world for good reason, right? I mean, this is just alarming. And
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there's been a few silver linings. I mean, one is that now Europe is taking more responsibility for its
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own defense. I think that is a good thing, all things considered. I think that could have been
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engineered without us destroying our soft power for a generation and just announcing to everyone
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that we're purely transactional and purely corrupt. And, you know, what you really have to do is pay
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bakshish to our first family to get what you want from the United States. I mean, all of that's just
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awful, right? So I think we want all those norms back. We want a sane president in 2028 that can
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offer a full mea culpa for the last decade, really, and try to find some reset button with the world.
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I don't know how easy that would be to accomplish, but I think we need a president that will limit the
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powers of the presidency against his or her seemingly short-term interests in 2028. That's
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probably too much to hope for. But yeah, those norms were there for a reason and we wanted more of
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them, right? We want to be able to coordinate to solve global problems and we have taken a massive
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step back there. Yeah. I remember when you were talking to Sarah Longwell at Bulwark and she had
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made a comment about the Democrats being able to learn something from Trump in that he just proved
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that things could get done and the Democrats shouldn't fight in their other direction. They
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should take that lesson and get things done on their side. And given the way that Trump's been
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doing many things, but especially this war, how into this next question, how will you view Trump if
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he turns out to be the one who finally brings peace to the Middle East, having done it?
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Well, again, I certainly hope for that, right? And it's not impossible. I can't say I'm optimistic
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about that, but I do not want him to fail on this front. I hope that's obvious. And it is true that
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some of our norms and some of our kind of slavish devotion to process and multilateralism and everything
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else has produced friction where we probably didn't want friction, right? I mean, so it's not that there's
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no silver lining to any of this, you know, norm breaking, but for the most part, I think it's
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terrifying and demoralizing, right? I just think it's bad. I think he, Trump has revealed, you know,
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if we could do a proper post-mortem on his two terms, I think we would, you know, nine times out
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of 10, we would find that, okay, here's the thing that he broke that we didn't want broken and we need
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to figure out how to shore this up so that a president can't break this again. But 10% of the time,
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I think we might reconsider the norm, right? We might say, okay, his recklessness or his selfishness,
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his impulsivity, you know, his character flaws revealed something about this norm over here
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that, you know, we didn't need it in the first place. We didn't want it. And, you know, even a
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dummy like him got something done that should have been done, should have been easier to do,
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right? So here were regulations that we really didn't need and, you know, we shouldn't have had
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them in the first place, et cetera. I think there's, there are, you know, I think there are
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probably honest discoveries of that sort to make, but for the most part, I think what we need to do
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is restore trust in institutions and processes and we need, we need a clean house. And I'm very
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worried that any sort of house cleaning after 2028 is going to look like more hyper-partisanship
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Are you worried about antisemitism on the rise? It seems there's sort of now two camps of Jews,
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probably could have used a better word for that. One that seeks to avoid the tall poppy syndrome
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and the other that says, you know, fuck you, we're not hiding or apologizing anymore.
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Where are you on that? Or how do you feel about all this and which approach do you think is in the
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Yeah. Well, I am increasingly worried about antisemitism. It just, you know, is now,
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you know, fully burgeoning on, on the left and the right to a degree that I wouldn't have thought
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possible. And it would, the alarming thing on the right, when you look at how you, what the
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Trump administration does and doesn't do about it and does and doesn't say about it is that
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clearly Republicans from Trump on down feel like they can't be too clear on this topic, even if they
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don't share any of these, you know, poisonous views, right? So you're not getting a very clear,
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condemnation of people like Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens and people who are
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doing more than dog whistle, but just they're holding open the tent for, you know, white supremacy
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and antisemitism. It's the fact that Trump and J.D. Vance and, you know, everyone who's truly in
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power can't say, okay, this is awful. We want nothing to do with it. That's, I think, quite alarming.
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I mean, they clearly think they need the antisemitic white supremacist vote on some level. God only
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knows why, but you would think they'd be more worried about alienating independence. So yeah,
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I am worried about it. I think you're, you might be referring to the talk that Brett Stevens gave at
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the 92nd Street Y about, you know, his views on how doomed it is to fight antisemitism explicitly.
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Well, that talk, and then there was a Super Bowl commercial that was sort of on the other side that
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I didn't see that. I heard about it, but it sounded terrible. Yeah. So, I mean, Brett gave a very
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thought-provoking talk, which I don't think I agree with in the, I certainly don't agree with
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his conclusion. I mean, his conclusion is to, the only real remedy is to double down on Jewish
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identity, right? So, like, he seemed to be arguing for a Jewish identity politics that is much more
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muscular than it has been in the past. Then needless to say, I'm allergic to that for reasons that I
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could spell out if anyone's interested. But the first part of his talk, he said, listen, this has
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failed. There's no way we can successfully fight antisemitism by being more philanthropic or being
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more apologetic or by arguing rationally against various conspiracy theories. We have to just
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recognize that this is a mind virus for which we don't have an inoculation, and we essentially just
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have to tell the antisemites of the world to go fuck themselves. I mean, he was more eloquent and less
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scatological than that. But that was his punchline, just like, unapologetic, you know, we're just going
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to succeed in the face of this hatred, realizing we don't have a remedy for the hatred, right? We're just
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going to, you know, our success is going to be our rejoinder to this, and so it is with Israel.
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Israel's success and its successful defense of itself is going to be its rejoinder to this.
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I think I agree with that, but I'm, as you know, just very reluctant to endorse anything like a
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Jewish politics of identity around this. I think we just, we have to fight for enlightenment values
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and the values of open societies, right? And that, for me, is a post-racial, post-identity politics
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I think what's so scary now is that having grown up experiencing antisemitism, you know, it was the
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David Duke types, or it just always felt like it was in small corners. And today you have
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unbelievably gifted people from Nick Fuentes to Tucker to Candace who have studios, they can reach the
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world, and they're really good at what they do. And that's, that makes it a lot for the first time
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where I have a different feeling about the narrative around Judaism. And then I want to hit a sort of
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devil's advocate question that just came in. The thing about antisemitism is a lot of antisemitism
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is just valid critique of Israel. On this note, what do you think about the obvious power the Israel
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lobby has on our country's support? If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation,
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