Trip the Beltway Fantastic With Kelley Vlahos and Friends

A ceasefire memo, a reopened Strait of Hormuz, and a 60-day sprint toward Iran nuclear negotiations sounds like progress until the backlash hits. We dig into why powerful voices in Washington call the deal “surrender,” and why that label can miss the real strategic question: are we achieving our objectives, or are we just chasing the appearance of military victory? From the first reactions to the 14-point plan to the warning that future escalation could turn into forced control of Hormuz, we trace how domestic politics, alliance pressures, and prestige can hijack US foreign policy decision-making.We also test a provocative idea that makes people uncomfortable: sometimes defeat is good for a nation. Drawing on military history and statecraft, we talk through how Japan’s devastation in 1945 also broke a crushing security dilemma and opened a pathway to long-term stability. Then we revisit Nixon’s opening to China as a reminder that diplomatic reversals often look like weakness in real time even when they become historic wins later. Along the way we confront a deeper critique of punitive strategy, moral absolutism, and the habit of framing diplomacy as appeasement rather than as a tool for achieving national interests.Finally, we ask why a wealthy, technologically dominant military can still struggle to “win” against mid-level powers and irregular strategies. We unpack the long-running faith in sea power and air power, the temptation to treat precision weapons and AI-driven systems as a decisive fix, and how the military-industrial complex can steer lessons toward bigger budgets instead of better strategy. If you care about US national security, Middle East stability, the Strait of Hormuz, and what “winning” should mean in foreign policy, listen through to the end, then subscribe, share the show, and leave a review so more people can find it.Chapter Markers0:00 Welcome And Guest Introduction1:30 The 14 Point Iran Memorandum3:56 Why Defeat Can Be Useful7:34 Japan’s Loss That Became Security11:39 Nixon’s China Flip As Template16:06 The Punitive Mindset In Washington21:19 McMaster Clip And Moral Projection28:26 Twilight Of Empire And Diplomatic Risk34:14 Sea Power Air Power And Tech Faith40:41 Expensive Weapons And Closing Requests

On Monday President Trump signed an agreement with Arab leaders that has been called a “miracle” and “historic.” It has largely (so far) paused the Israeli onslaught in the Gaza strip and served to release the remaining live Israeli hostages held by Hamas and upwards of 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.Before attending the signing ceremony in Egypt, Trump was feted in triumph by Israeli officials at the Knesset. Aside from bestowing on him the moniker “President of Peace” they said he would be remembered “as a giant of Jewish history, one for whom we must look back two and a half millennia into the mists of time to find a parallel. Cyrus the Great. Donald J Trump, you are a colossus who will join the pantheon of history,” said Amir Ohana, Speaker of the Knesset. He referred to the 6th century BC Persian King who liberated the Jews from Babylonia to create their own self-governing province in the Persian Empire, also known as the Second Temple period.Benjamin Netanyahu was also met with thunderous applause and a long standing ovation, as was Steve Witkoff, whose name was even chanted. In his own remarks Trump went on for nearly an hour, charting the litany of things he had done for Israel since his first presidency, including recognizing the Israeli capital in Jerusalem, and acknowledging right there that it was due to the aggressive lobbying of the billionaires Miriam and Sheldon Adelson. They were strange speeches overall, in that the word “Palestinians” only came up once, even though the deal was to eventually afford the Palestinian people the same self-rule the Jewish people had enjoyed thanks to Cyrus in 540 BC.The speeches, too, mentioned very little about the United States, other than Washington had given everything it could — including $21.7 billion in taxpayer dollars — to the Israeli cause over the last two years. Trump even boasted that he had approved every weapon Netanyahu had asked for, even ones he never knew existed.This week I brought in my friend Ret. Col. Doug Macgregor to the show, because after the dust settles, one wonders what any of this has to do with America and the vaunted America First foreign policy that Trump had been promising since 2016. For the last two years, Americans have been told this was “our fight too” but it was never properly explained. It’s been clear in polling that Americans haven’t been convinced either, even Republicans are waning more visibly in their support for giving Israel everything it wants in order to wage a war that has resulted in the collective punishment and deaths of more than 67,000 Gazans, most of them civilians. Today, Gaza is in ruins and we are being told it was worth it. Was it?

The Trump Administration reportedly has a plan to reconstruct Gaza into a Riviera on the Mediterranean. What does that mean? According to reports, President Trump, with the help of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner, have laid out details for the total real estate redevelopment of the war torn Gaza Strip. This of course would require the relocation of the two million people, or what is left of the Palestinians after two years of war, who live there.According to the Washington Post this week, it is euphemistically called the Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust, or GREAT Trust.The proposal “was developed by some of the same Israelis who created and set in motion the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)” which is operating the Hunger Games-like food distribution centers at which more than 2000 Gazans have been killed, mostly from getting shot or shelled from Israeli military tanks. The financial planning and prospectus was done by a team working at the time for the Boston Consulting Group, which has now distanced itself from the project. The plans, according to Washington Post, call for “a temporary relocation of all of Gaza’s more than 2 million population, either through what it calls ‘voluntary’ departures to another country or into restricted, secured zones inside the enclave during reconstruction.”“Those who own land would be offered a digital token by the trust in exchange for rights to redevelop their property, to be used to finance a new life elsewhere or eventually redeemed for an apartment in one of six to eight new ‘AI-powered, smart cities’ to be built in Gaza. Each Palestinian who chooses to leave would be given a $5,000 cash payment and subsidies to cover four years of rent elsewhere, as well as a year of food.”The plan estimates that every individual departure from Gaza would save the trust $23,000, compared with the cost of housing them somewhere in the Strip while the reconstruction takes place — so a financial incentive to push as many Palestinians out of Gaza as possible.Gaza’s western waterfront would be reserved for the “Gaza Trump Riviera,” boasting “world-class resorts” with the possibility of artificial islands similar to the palm-shaped ones built off the UAE city of Dubai.For many who have been watching this nightmare in Gaza unfold, the details of the plan do not come as a surprise. Not only did Trump announce something like this was coming shortly after his inauguration, Kushner was interviewed at Harvard in March 2024 before Trump was elected saying there was “very valuable” potential in Gaza’s “waterfront property” and suggested Israel should remove civilians while it “cleans up” the strip. Since then of course, tens of thousands more Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli forces and they are being deliberately starved as the Netanyahu Government makes it untenable to live there. Families are being forced completely from the North of the Strip and from Gaza City as a military incursion began in earnest this week. There are no serious signs of the war abating or a ceasefire agreement coming into fruition.The prospects of Kushner leading a real estate bonanza in this hellscape is, even beyond what we’ve seen over the last 22 months, a little hard to swallow. Here to talk about it with me are Jon Hoffman, a Middle East research fellow at the CATO Institute, and Rawan Abhari, who serves as an advocacy associate at the Quincy Institute.

Hello and welcome to Trip the Beltway Fantastic. On July 17, the only Catholic church in Gaza - the Holy Family Catholic Church – was hit by Israeli fire, killing three, wounding scores of others including the parish priest. Israel says it was a mistake, a stray tank shelling, igniting a firestorm particularly among American Catholics and Christians, many who had already been shifting support away from Israel on the issue of Gaza.Catholics including Sohrab Ahmari, who joins us here today, jumped on comments by people like Luke Moon of the Catholic Philos Project, who lashed out against critics of Israel in the wake of the Holy Family church attack. In comments called “unacceptable” and a “bridge too far,” Moon said ““Church leaders are quick to blame Israel (and Israel has apologized),” he added. “They never speak so clearly about Islamists. They’re afraid to. It’s not courageous to attack the Jews. It’s easy. It’s been easy for almost 2000 years. One would think that the leaders of a billion member Church might not be so afraid, and yet they are.”Meanwhile Evangelical Christian Joe Berry, managing editor of the conservative Onion, the Babylon Bee, is probably regretting comments he made about the outcry after the church shelling. He went on a rant saying “this won’t be easy for people to hear, but there are only 200 professed Catholics still living in Gaza and they all support Hamas.” “I don’t know about anyone else, but as a Catholic who supports and prays for my persecuted Christian brothers and sisters in Gaza and the Holy Land, I won’t be sharing or boosting anything produced by the Babylon Bee or its anti-Catholic, dispensationalist editors ever again,” wrote author and Federalist senior editor John Daniel Davidson.Berry doubled down suggesting this was all an effort to turn Christians against Israel, calling it “​​evil forces trying to break up MAGA along racial and religious sectarian lines and it’s encouraging to know some people of wisdom and discernment see right through it.”While polling still shows strong Republican support for Israel overall, there is a discernible drop overall of Americans’ tolerance for its war in Gaza after more than 22 months of civilian death, destruction and starvation. There is a notable shift in attitudes, even among Republicans, of Americans under 30. MAGA, which includes a strong faith based element, has been divided over the issue, as Berry said, but the blame, my guests here today are likely to say, are Israel actions and the Trump administration’s inability to stop them, more than “evil forces” trying to systematically divide the coalition.The disillusionment of course goes far beyond the Catholics. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an Evangelical Christian, has come out to call what is going on in Gaza a genocide and has specifically invoked her faith to explain why she is speaking out so vociferously against the Israeli government on this front. “Yesterday I spoke to a Christian pastor from Gaza. There are children starving. And Christians have been killed and injured, as well as many innocent people. If you are an American Christian, this should be absolutely unacceptable to you,” he posted on X this week. Online outrage included Erik Prince, no pacifist or even critic of Israel, who actually accused Israel of taking “pot shots” at the cross on the top of the Holy Family Church. He too said he was finished supporting American funding for Israel’s war on Gaza. He said Hamas “need to die” but "But the real losers are the normal people in Gaza just trying to live.” So what is going on here? I wanted to drill down on how Christians and particularly Catholics on the conservative end of the spectrum are part of the backlash against Israel and may play a bigger role in potential policy change where the war is concerned — and what that might look like.Joining me are the aforementioned Sohrab Ahmari, who is the US bureau chief of Unherd magazine, and author of Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty – and What to Do About It (2023).Dave DeCamp, new editor of Antiwar.com and host of Antiwar NewsAnd Andrew Day, writer and editor at the American Conservative magazine

The Trump administration is reeling from a potential disaster but one of its own making. After months of roiling criticism over DOGE cuts and deportations, Trump has found himself in a situation in which his loyal base is revolting over his refusal to release the Epstein files. Not only that, his administration — including Attorney General Pam Bondi — has gone from saying an infamous Epstein client list does not exist, to asserting the files themselves were “created” by President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and that there is essentially “nothing to see here” but more left-wing attacks whipping up against him.It would seem that this time, the spin job is not working with MAGA. This follows what is becoming a long hot summer in which the president has seemingly taken a number of foreign policy turns against what many in his base had been expecting: he is now threatening Russian President Putin with tariffs and even bombing him, while pledging more weapons to Ukrainian president Zelensky and in June, decided to bomb Iran and boasted he destroyed its nuclear program when there is no evidence to support that claim. Essentially, no ending the war in Ukraine as promised, and no diplomacy over war in the Middle East as promised. In particular, the base sees deference to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel as the curious common denominator here, given his insistence on an ‘America First’ foreign policy. For many, it just doesn’t feel like it.Here to talk with me about this are two of the most persistent and capable investigative reporters I know — Max Blumenthal and Anya Parampil of the Grayzone. Max, the editor of the Grayzone, has had a long career in journalism publishing widely in the The Nation, Daily Beast, New York Times, Salon, and more, he has also written several books, including the latest The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump Anya is a journalist for Greyzone and a documentary filmmaker whose reporting has taken her to a number of international hot spots and conflict zones including Honduras, the Palestinian territories, the Korean Peninsula and Venezuela. Her book, Corporate Coup: Venezuela and the End of US Empire was published in 2024.

News is moving so rapidly in the Middle East right now. Israel launched strikes against Iran on June 13, the Iranians have been retaliating in kind, and then the U.S. jumps in with its own strikes against Iran’s nuclear program on June 21. On Monday the Iranians engaged in limited retaliatory strikes on the U.S. military base in Qatar and by the end of the day Trump announced a ceasefire which was barely holding Tuesday morning.Wow, my head is spinning. I am lucky to have Retired Col. Douglas Magregor here to sort this all out for us and give us his always astute, always realist and common sense perspective. For some context, Col. Macgregor was the "squadron operations officer who essentially directed the Battle of 73 Easting" during the first Gulf War. He was also a military planner during the NATO intervention in the Bosnian war in 1999 and one of the most important critics of the U.S. invasion of Baghdad in 2003. He has been a solid voice for military reform and restraint for the last 25 years and is invaluable in his military and geopolitical analysis today.