Welcome to the Times of Israel's What Matters now, a weekly podcast bringing you one issue that affects Israel and the Jewish world right now.

I'm your host deputy editor Amanda Borschelle Don here today with opinion columnists at the New York Times, Brett Stevens, who is also the editor-in-chief of Sapir magazine. Brett, thank you so much for joining me today. Pleasure to be with you, Amanda. Nice to see you again. It is always a pleasure, and I see in your backdrop that is a lovely day in the United States. We are here to discuss what is happening in terms of the war in the U.S. I really want to feel out from you and get your perspective

on how the U.S. is viewing this war, calling it Trump's war, or is it a just war? So we are going

to discuss all of this and more when we're back.

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And we're back. I'm Amanda Borsel, Dan, in Jerusalem with Brett Stevens. Brett, your columns in the New York Times are outliers, I would say, in terms of the opinions that you're voicing both on this war, but in general, I would say.

And do you view your role there as some kind of catalyst in a way to show a different side of America?

I mean, my columns, I guess, with respect to the war in Iran, are outliers among my colleagues.

I don't think I'm completely alone in my view that this is not only Trump's war, it is also a just war.

And I am trying to express that to an audience that is perhaps, say, more skeptical of my views than my old audience when I was writing columns for the Wall Street Journal or, of course, in a past life for the Jerusalem Post.

There is, of course, a tremendous amount of skepticism about the war, and I think it's

compounded of a few elements. One is profound hostility and skepticism of President Trump, not simply

for the way in which he took the country to war, where I have misgivings. I don't think he spent

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