The hosts of MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” unpacked why backing out of the Iran War has become a “lose-lose proposition” for both President Trump and everyday American consumers.
Host Mika Brzezinski kicked off the Tuesday segment by relaying reports that Trump is considering pulling out of the war at the same time that America’s Gulf allies are urging the U.S. to finish what it started. Those reports prompted co-host Joe Scarborough to note that Trump has to decide to either pull out of Iran and leave an “angry, injured, radical regime” in place or push forward with the military campaign while rising gas prices continue to hurt Americans who were “struggling already on affordability.”
“[Trump] wants to get out of Iran. They were assured they’d be able to go in quick, decapitate the regime, decapitate the ability for Iran to continue to do what it did in the region and get out and now they can’t get out,” guest and Axios CEO Jim VandeHei explained. “The Iranians have no reason to compromise right now. They have to end this war with us fearing ever going back into Iran.”
“Pulling out and grabbing the oil and throwing it in a tanker and running, that doesn’t work,” he added. “It’s not logistically possible. It’s not diplomatically possible. It’s not financially possible.”
Scarborough, for his part, pushed back on claims that Trump and other members of his administration have been “shocked” by Iran’s ability to maintain control of the Strait of Hormuz and hold “oil hostage.”
“We’ve been war-gaming an attack against Iran since the early days of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime in 1979, and every one of those war games … have shown that they could attack the Straits, that they could really screw the West and the rest of the world,” Scarborough said. “When people in the administration say they’re shocked at that, when Republicans on Capitol Hill say they’re shocked at that, then they’re just dumb. They’re stupid.”
“This should not be a shock to anybody and, quite frankly, they’re lying if they say they are shocked,” the “Morning Joe” host added. “Whenever I was asked, whether it be by people in the administration or other people in Washington, whether we should go into Iran, I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ In fact, my exact words were, ‘Don’t listen to Lindsey Graham. This is not going to be easy.’”
“Here we are,” Scarborough concluded. “And because this is where we are, leaving the region and actually the United States consumers in a worse place at the end of the war than they were at the beginning of the war if the Straits are closed, that’s just a lose-lose proposition for everybody.”
