From WNYC Studios, I'm Brian Lehrer.

This is my daily politics podcast.

It's Tuesday, March 18th.

On Monday, President Trump claimed that a former U.S. President praised his aggressive actions regarding the conflict in Iran.

Listen.

I spoke to one of the former presidents who I actually like, actually speak to some.

I do like some people be shocking.

And he said, I wish I did what you did.

There aren't that many living former presidents, and guess what, all have denied having such a conversation.

But our next guest argues that the United States could have, long ago, toppled the Islamic Republic of Iran with its military might alone.

In fact, the U.S. has been involved in a standoff

with Iran that by one measure has outlasted the Cold War in terms of number of years from

1979 to the present. Our guest writes, whatever has held back the dogs of war, it hasn't been a

lack of American ability. So the current war with

Iran proves, he says, that with the U.S. dropping $3 billion in bombs and missiles within the

first hundred hours, it's time to look at some of the history. Historian Daniel Emmervar is a

contributing writer at the New Yorker, the Bergen Evans Professor

in the Humanities in Northwestern University, and author of the book, How to Hide an Empire.

His latest piece in The New Yorker doesn't just ask why is the war in Iran happening, but why is it

happening now? Professor Imovar, welcome to

WNYC. Thanks for having me on. You're interested in that clip of the president citing some

unnamed former president supporting this war, and none of them owned up to that. Why? I'd like to imagine it was Obama. No, I mean, it's interesting

...