Making Sense - Sam Harris - #462 — More From Sam： The Iran War, American Amorality, Addressing Hopelessness, Tucker, and More

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing

00:00:11.980 this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and we'll only be hearing the first part

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00:00:26.400 made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing

00:00:30.400 here, please consider becoming one. Okay, welcome back to another episode of More From Sam. We are

00:00:39.220 taping this episode live in front of subscribers. They've submitted questions in advance of the show,

00:00:44.360 and then we've asked them to provide any follow-ups by using the chat feature so that we can try to

00:00:49.080 address their feedback in real time. Another thing to add, the questions for this episode are

00:00:54.560 outstanding. I love being reminded that so many in this audience are so thoughtful and smart with

00:00:59.020 different voices from many parts of the world, and I just want to thank everyone for taking the time

00:01:02.500 to submit the questions. There's really great stuff in here, so I'm excited for today's episode.

00:01:06.800 I haven't seen any of these questions, by the way, so this is-

00:01:08.680 No, you have not. I'm as excited as everybody else.

00:01:12.900 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,

00:01:17.980 and we'll get to those in just a moment. But first, a word from our sponsor. Next week,

00:01:21.380 Sam has shows in Portland and Vancouver, March 11th in Portland, March 12th in Vancouver. There

00:01:26.900 are still some tickets available for those shows, as well as for the shows we have on sale in May.

00:01:31.200 Toronto's already sold out, but you can find info for how to get tickets at samharris.org for the

00:01:35.560 other shows I just mentioned, as well as DC, New York City, Austin, and Dallas. Okay, on to our first

00:01:41.300 topic. Sam, should the US have taken military action against Iran? Yeah, well, I think you have to 0.98

00:01:48.320 hold two thoughts in your head simultaneously to have an adequate answer to this question.

00:01:53.220 So the first thought is that at any point since 1979, it would have been a good thing to unseat

00:02:00.520 the regime in Iran. It would have been true when they took our hostages. It would have been true 0.98

00:02:05.500 in 1983 when they engineered the bombing of the marine barracks in Beirut. It would have been true 1.00

00:02:10.840 during the Iraq War, whatever you think about that war, given that they were producing all the IEDs 1.00

00:02:16.260 that were killing our soldiers. It would have been true in 1989 with the Salman Rushdie fatwa.

00:02:23.040 I mean, this is an engine of terrorism and just awfulness for the world, right? For open societies

00:02:28.780 everywhere. And to say nothing of the immiseration of the Iranian people. And I think it's a scandal of 1.00

00:02:34.920 the Obama administration and the Biden administration not to have done more to support the Iranians who

00:02:41.360 risk their lives to fight for the civil rights of women in particular at various moments during

00:02:46.220 those administrations. I just think we have strangely been deterred by Iran for a generation 0.98

00:02:52.440 and a half, right? We've been scared to tangle with Iran because there was a proper jihadist regime, 1.00

00:02:59.020 is a proper jihadist regime run by true religious fanatics that show a kind of really a bottomless

00:03:05.120 appetite for making life miserable in open societies wherever they can do it directly or through their

00:03:10.800 proxies, right? So that's all true. And yet here's the second thought. It's also true that the Trump

00:03:17.040 administration is the most corrupt and incompetent administration I think we've ever had. And we are 0.96

00:03:24.480 right to worry that Trump and his enablers and, you know, the rest of his administration, people like

00:03:30.380 Hegseth, don't have any real purchase on a sane, you know, philanthropic and humanitarian impulse.

00:03:37.340 I mean, whatever they might say about caring about the Iranian people, we're right to worry that 1.00

00:03:42.200 doesn't run very deep. I think Trump is totally capable of breaking everything over there and then

00:03:47.720 just turning around and saying, well, this is victory. You know, it's on the Iranian people now 0.99

00:03:52.300 and we're done. I think he could do that in a way that no other U.S. president really could with a clear

00:03:57.640 conscience, right? So next week he could declare victory and leave Iran in total chaos, right? So I don't

00:04:03.140 know what to expect from this war. I certainly hope it goes well. I hope what happens is there is a 1.00

00:04:10.640 proper regime change and the Iranian people get to express their desire for something like a secular

00:04:15.920 democracy, a desire which I think many of them, probably a majority of them actually have. I think

00:04:21.980 Iran was always a much better candidate for regime change and nation building than Iraq and certainly 0.97

00:04:27.980 Afghanistan ever were. So I think we have drawn the wrong lessons from our misadventures in Afghanistan 1.00

00:04:34.520 and Iraq if we think that Iran was just, it's just a hopeless case and, you know, we should never have 0.96

00:04:39.280 meddled there. But I think it's totally rational to worry that Trump will do this badly. The

00:04:45.480 communication has been just appalling around this. I mean, he's done nothing to prepare the American

00:04:50.600 people for this. We have no allies other than Israel. Congress has been sidelined as they have been in

00:04:55.840 everything. So this is a constitutional problem. So it's, there's, it's all kinds of bad in terms

00:05:00.860 of how this has been done. And yet that doesn't mean it will necessarily fail. I certainly hope it

00:05:05.460 doesn't fail. So if you can reconcile those two thoughts that may seem contradictory, that's my view

00:05:11.660 of it. A follow-up question. I don't need to do the whole part. I can just begin with it. I'm wondering

00:05:16.640 if Sam has any regrets about his hawkish stance, possibly giving the U.S. administration coverage for

00:05:21.040 what looks to be naked aggression without a plan, essentially that. Do you have any regrets about

00:05:26.520 my hawkish stance on what? On giving the U.S. administration coverage, you know, for feeling

00:05:31.280 supportive for what's happening in Iran right now? Well, no, I mean, everything I said around that

00:05:38.460 first thought is true. It's just what I believe now is what I believed before this war started. It's

00:05:44.680 what I will believe really, whatever happens here, because I think it is just in fact true that

00:05:50.240 if you look back at the protests, you know, the Iranian women some years ago, you know,

00:05:55.720 crying out for their civil rights and, you know, risking torture and death, you know,

00:06:01.380 merely to take off their hijabs in public. If you care about women's rights, if you care about 0.99

00:06:06.640 human rights, you should care about those women, right? And it's just, it's completely intolerable 1.00

00:06:12.340 that we have acquiesced to this meme. It is somehow a sign of bigotry to express how evil it is

00:06:20.000 that under this kind, this version of Islam, women are subjected to what is in reality gender 0.86

00:06:27.200 apartheid. I mean, it's just, and obviously this is not the only concern I have with the Iranian 1.00

00:06:32.100 regime, but that concern alone should have led to much greater support from us. There is no outcome

00:06:38.860 other than regime change that would, would have, should have, or would, would have in reality ever

00:06:43.520 been acceptable here with respect to Iran. Iran can never have a nuclear weapon because it's a 0.98

00:06:48.240 jihadist regime. And this, and I can make the generic case. We are perpetually at war with

00:06:52.960 jihadism, whether we want to state it that way or not. And Iran almost uniquely was a proper jihadist 0.94

00:06:59.800 regime that was within reach of developing nuclear weapons. And so it's just, there's no world in

00:07:05.740 which we can negotiate with a regime like that, even though we can pretend to, as the Obama and

00:07:10.160 Biden administrations did. And as Trump may yet pretend to, I mean, that's the other thing that we

00:07:14.800 have to realize is that Trump may decide that he's going to try to create some Venezuela-like

00:07:19.740 endgame here where he's just going to install somebody who, who will claim to be pliant,

00:07:24.780 but in this case really can't be because all of the people who would follow from, you know, 0.87

00:07:30.020 the ranks of the, you know, surviving mullahs in Iran are in fact religious maniacs, right? I mean, 0.99

00:07:36.180 it's a very different situation than Venezuela. So I think it's just an absolute mirage to think

00:07:41.020 that we could ever have negotiated any sort of proper peace with Iran, given the actual

00:07:47.680 religious commitments of the regime. And that's a fairly unique case. I would not say the same 0.84

00:07:52.180 thing of Saudi Arabia or many of these other Muslim states. I wouldn't say the same thing of 1.00

00:07:56.820 Pakistan in its current form, and Pakistan has nukes, but if Pakistan ever got taken over by a 0.92

00:08:02.320 real jihadist regime, we would have a full-on emergency with Pakistan, right? So nukes and jihadism 0.99

00:08:08.580 just do not play well together, and we have, we can never lose sight of that. And we were on the

00:08:13.840 verge of losing sight of that with respect to Iran, but I don't think I gave anyone cover for

00:08:17.620 anything. I just think this is, this is just true. And yet it's also true that the way Trump has done

00:08:23.640 this is authoritarian, right? This is not the way a U.S. president should take our country into war

00:08:30.920 without explaining anything, without consulting anyone, without, with having cartoon characters,

00:08:35.800 you know, running the effort. You just listen to Pete Hegseth talk about anything, and you know

00:08:41.700 you're not in good hands. So this is, there's nothing optimal about this, but that also doesn't

00:08:46.680 mean that the aftermath of this might not be better than what preceded it, because what preceded it was

00:08:52.960 just about as bad as can be.

00:08:54.500 Yes, I was interpreting the question as, which you addressed, was being hawkish, given this

00:09:00.060 administration and the way that they might go about doing this in all the wrong ways. And your

00:09:06.100 comment on jihadism might answer this next question. Why isn't anyone calling out the Trump

00:09:10.060 administration on the double standard of our enthusiastic military defense of the Iranian

00:09:14.300 people and our lack of resolve to militarily defend the people of the democratic country of Ukraine?

00:09:19.520 Well, yeah, it is a, again, I think we've been bad on Ukraine too, right? I mean, it's understandable 1.00

00:09:25.260 that we're not enthusiastic about stumbling into a direct conflict with Russia, right? So that,

00:09:31.780 you know, the moment of nuclear blackmail, all of that was sobering for a reason. At this distance

00:09:36.960 from, you know, the start of the war, I think it was a bluff that we essentially called and it proved

00:09:43.500 to be a bluff. I'm not actually worried about a nuclear war with Russia, really, over Ukraine. But,

00:09:49.200 yeah, I think we should have always given Ukraine more support and Europe should have as well. And

00:09:53.300 it's just, it's understandable. This war is awful and we fought some bad ones, right? And we fought

00:09:59.420 ones that in retrospect look totally pointless and horrible. So it's easy to see how we, I mean,

00:10:04.540 we basically have a renewed version of Vietnam syndrome to some degree, which makes it impossible

00:10:10.140 to notice necessary wars early, right? And I think we should have helped Ukraine earlier more than we

00:10:18.560 did. And I don't know, it remains to be seen what's going to happen there.

00:10:22.280 Hi, Sam. Having watched Donald Trump and his court ride roughshod over every norm convention and more

00:10:27.620 recently international laws, are the rules of engagement around war? My question to you is,

00:10:32.460 what is the point of any of them?

00:10:34.100 What's the point of any of what? Wars?

00:10:35.940 No, no, no. Of every norm convention and more recently international laws. What are the point of

00:10:41.620 any of these rules of engagement around war? What is the point of any of this stuff? If the question

00:10:46.820 is if Trump and his cohort just completely ignore it and go about their own way?

00:10:50.620 Well, the point is we used to have a liberal international order that was anchored to our

00:10:58.340 being a good and viable and respectable superpower, right? So that has changed radically and we have

00:11:05.800 alienated pretty much all of our allies except for Israel. I think that's, while there's a silver 0.96

00:11:11.360 lining perhaps to some of it, the net result is quite bad. And I think we're going to discover

00:11:17.240 what it's like to live in a world where our country stands for nothing other than its own

00:11:22.420 power and its own interests, right? I mean, we're now a country that has declared to the world that

00:11:27.500 we are fundamentally amoral, right? Like, we're not going to judge anyone else for being imperialistic

00:11:32.740 and, you know, savage on the world stage. I mean, we're just as long as it doesn't conflict

00:11:36.540 with our interests. We have a country now, you know, we have an administration now that expresses

00:11:41.840 more or less nothing but contempt for our democratic allies and a very strange admiration for our

00:11:49.080 actual enemies like, you know, Vladimir Putin. All of that's just bizarre and corrosive and I think we

00:11:55.600 have horrified much of the free world for good reason, right? I mean, this is just alarming. And

00:12:01.080 there's been a few silver linings. I mean, one is that now Europe is taking more responsibility for its

00:12:06.300 own defense. I think that is a good thing, all things considered. I think that could have been

00:12:10.440 engineered without us destroying our soft power for a generation and just announcing to everyone

00:12:16.500 that we're purely transactional and purely corrupt. And, you know, what you really have to do is pay

00:12:21.500 bakshish to our first family to get what you want from the United States. I mean, all of that's just 0.52

00:12:26.220 awful, right? So I think we want all those norms back. We want a sane president in 2028 that can

00:12:32.440 offer a full mea culpa for the last decade, really, and try to find some reset button with the world.

00:12:39.900 I don't know how easy that would be to accomplish, but I think we need a president that will limit the

00:12:45.000 powers of the presidency against his or her seemingly short-term interests in 2028. That's

00:12:51.020 probably too much to hope for. But yeah, those norms were there for a reason and we wanted more of

00:12:54.900 them, right? We want to be able to coordinate to solve global problems and we have taken a massive

00:13:00.160 step back there. Yeah. I remember when you were talking to Sarah Longwell at Bulwark and she had

00:13:05.420 made a comment about the Democrats being able to learn something from Trump in that he just proved

00:13:11.000 that things could get done and the Democrats shouldn't fight in their other direction. They

00:13:14.200 should take that lesson and get things done on their side. And given the way that Trump's been

00:13:18.440 doing many things, but especially this war, how into this next question, how will you view Trump if

00:13:23.140 he turns out to be the one who finally brings peace to the Middle East, having done it?

00:13:27.220 Well, again, I certainly hope for that, right? And it's not impossible. I can't say I'm optimistic

00:13:33.820 about that, but I do not want him to fail on this front. I hope that's obvious. And it is true that

00:13:41.640 some of our norms and some of our kind of slavish devotion to process and multilateralism and everything

00:13:48.340 else has produced friction where we probably didn't want friction, right? I mean, so it's not that there's

00:13:54.660 no silver lining to any of this, you know, norm breaking, but for the most part, I think it's

00:14:00.480 terrifying and demoralizing, right? I just think it's bad. I think he, Trump has revealed, you know,

00:14:05.680 if we could do a proper post-mortem on his two terms, I think we would, you know, nine times out

00:14:11.240 of 10, we would find that, okay, here's the thing that he broke that we didn't want broken and we need

00:14:16.940 to figure out how to shore this up so that a president can't break this again. But 10% of the time,

00:14:22.960 I think we might reconsider the norm, right? We might say, okay, his recklessness or his selfishness,

00:14:31.300 his impulsivity, you know, his character flaws revealed something about this norm over here

00:14:37.780 that, you know, we didn't need it in the first place. We didn't want it. And, you know, even a

00:14:41.940 dummy like him got something done that should have been done, should have been easier to do, 0.98

00:14:45.940 right? So here were regulations that we really didn't need and, you know, we shouldn't have had 0.95

00:14:51.000 them in the first place, et cetera. I think there's, there are, you know, I think there are

00:14:54.100 probably honest discoveries of that sort to make, but for the most part, I think what we need to do

00:14:59.240 is restore trust in institutions and processes and we need, we need a clean house. And I'm very

00:15:06.040 worried that any sort of house cleaning after 2028 is going to look like more hyper-partisanship

00:15:11.840 and that's going to be a problem.

00:15:13.600 Are you worried about antisemitism on the rise? It seems there's sort of now two camps of Jews,

00:15:19.240 probably could have used a better word for that. One that seeks to avoid the tall poppy syndrome

00:15:23.940 and the other that says, you know, fuck you, we're not hiding or apologizing anymore. 1.00

00:15:28.020 Where are you on that? Or how do you feel about all this and which approach do you think is in the 1.00

00:15:33.580 right direction?

00:15:34.520 Yeah. Well, I am increasingly worried about antisemitism. It just, you know, is now,

00:15:38.580 you know, fully burgeoning on, on the left and the right to a degree that I wouldn't have thought

00:15:44.020 possible. And it would, the alarming thing on the right, when you look at how you, what the

00:15:48.900 Trump administration does and doesn't do about it and does and doesn't say about it is that

00:15:54.400 clearly Republicans from Trump on down feel like they can't be too clear on this topic, even if they

00:16:02.700 don't share any of these, you know, poisonous views, right? So you're not getting a very clear,

00:16:08.580 condemnation of people like Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens and people who are

00:16:13.080 doing more than dog whistle, but just they're holding open the tent for, you know, white supremacy

00:16:17.960 and antisemitism. It's the fact that Trump and J.D. Vance and, you know, everyone who's truly in

00:16:24.220 power can't say, okay, this is awful. We want nothing to do with it. That's, I think, quite alarming.

00:16:28.900 I mean, they clearly think they need the antisemitic white supremacist vote on some level. God only

00:16:34.960 knows why, but you would think they'd be more worried about alienating independence. So yeah,

00:16:39.820 I am worried about it. I think you're, you might be referring to the talk that Brett Stevens gave at

00:16:45.080 the 92nd Street Y about, you know, his views on how doomed it is to fight antisemitism explicitly.

00:16:51.840 Well, that talk, and then there was a Super Bowl commercial that was sort of on the other side that

00:16:56.240 was very, you know.

00:16:57.620 I didn't see that. I heard about it, but it sounded terrible. Yeah. So, I mean, Brett gave a very

00:17:02.740 thought-provoking talk, which I don't think I agree with in the, I certainly don't agree with

00:17:06.660 his conclusion. I mean, his conclusion is to, the only real remedy is to double down on Jewish 0.99

00:17:11.220 identity, right? So, like, he seemed to be arguing for a Jewish identity politics that is much more

00:17:16.440 muscular than it has been in the past. Then needless to say, I'm allergic to that for reasons that I

00:17:21.800 could spell out if anyone's interested. But the first part of his talk, he said, listen, this has

00:17:25.700 failed. There's no way we can successfully fight antisemitism by being more philanthropic or being

00:17:31.940 more apologetic or by arguing rationally against various conspiracy theories. We have to just

00:17:37.340 recognize that this is a mind virus for which we don't have an inoculation, and we essentially just 1.00

00:17:43.340 have to tell the antisemites of the world to go fuck themselves. I mean, he was more eloquent and less 1.00

00:17:48.420 scatological than that. But that was his punchline, just like, unapologetic, you know, we're just going

00:17:55.780 to succeed in the face of this hatred, realizing we don't have a remedy for the hatred, right? We're just

00:18:01.760 going to, you know, our success is going to be our rejoinder to this, and so it is with Israel.

00:18:06.260 Israel's success and its successful defense of itself is going to be its rejoinder to this. 0.70

00:18:10.900 I think I agree with that, but I'm, as you know, just very reluctant to endorse anything like a 1.00

00:18:17.840 Jewish politics of identity around this. I think we just, we have to fight for enlightenment values

00:18:24.100 and the values of open societies, right? And that, for me, is a post-racial, post-identity politics

00:18:31.220 future that we have to keep in sight.

00:18:33.480 I think what's so scary now is that having grown up experiencing antisemitism, you know, it was the

00:18:38.780 David Duke types, or it just always felt like it was in small corners. And today you have

00:18:43.420 unbelievably gifted people from Nick Fuentes to Tucker to Candace who have studios, they can reach the

00:18:50.360 world, and they're really good at what they do. And that's, that makes it a lot for the first time

00:18:55.920 where I have a different feeling about the narrative around Judaism. And then I want to hit a sort of

00:19:02.680 devil's advocate question that just came in. The thing about antisemitism is a lot of antisemitism

00:19:07.280 is just valid critique of Israel. On this note, what do you think about the obvious power the Israel 0.91

00:19:12.640 lobby has on our country's support? If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation,

00:19:18.340 you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. Once you do, you'll get access to all full-length

00:19:23.800 episodes of the Making Sense podcast. The Making Sense podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on

00:19:29.660 listener support. And you can subscribe now at samharris.org.

00:19:42.640 Thank you.

Making Sense - Sam Harris - March 06, 2026

#462 — More From Sam： The Iran War, American Amorality, Addressing Hopelessness, Tucker, and More

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