Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller.

Delighted to welcome back to the show, a columnist for the New York Times, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

His latest book,

Chasing Hope, is a memoir. He's also the general manager of Christoph Farms in Oregon. He briefly ran for governor of Oregon also in 2022. A bunch of other stuff. It's Nick Christoff. How you doing, man? Hey, good. Good to be with you, Tim. I'm pumped to talk to you. You were just back from the West Bank, so we're going to get into that and maybe some politics, but obviously I want to start with the Iran war stuff. I guess I kind of just want to begin by letting you cook on what you think is the state of play in the Iran War and how you assess where we are today. Boy, I mean, well, what a mess. You know, we got into this war unnecessarily, and now we're in a worse position than when we started. You know, we're now trying to get the straight of

hormones reopened. And I think it's actually more likely that Iran will end up with nuclear

weapons, say, you know, three or five years from now than at the start of the war.

You know, right before the war, Iran was actually offering a pretty good nuclear deal.

And we turned it down.

We're not going to get as good a deal now.

I believe I think Iran is going to try to really hold on to some

kind of control over the straight. And meanwhile, we have spent as much on this war, Tim,

enough that we could have provided a free college education to everybody or every family

earning $125,000 or less in the country,

and provided a daycare to every three and four year old in the country. And so,

it is maddening when we do these things that cost lives have a huge opportunity cost

and leave us in a worse strategic position,

all because we haven't thought through the consequences.

That's pretty compelling to me.

It's kind of like an other than that,

Mrs. Lincoln assessment of the Iran War.

I want to read this counterpoint.

Mark Dublitz over at FDD

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