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After a long break, Iran Chat is back and we felt this year\\u2019s series should begin with a deep dive into the current state of US-Iran relations, focusing on the very real and growing possibility of war with Iran.\\xa0
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To help sort through all the recent news and issues concerning US-Iran relations, we spoke with journalist Jim Lobe.\\xa0 He served as chief of the Washington DC bureau of Inter Press Service from 1980 to 1985 and again from 1989 to 2016.\\xa0 Currently he is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies where he directs LobeLog, an award-winning web blog focused on foreign policy, featuring posts by expert contributors on a variety of global issues, with an emphasis on US policy towards the Middle East.\\xa0
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Recently, he co-wrote an article for Lobelog entitled War Against Iran Becoming Ever More Likely.\\xa0 We discuss his rationale for this assessment during our conversation.\\xa0\\xa0

Some excerpts:

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Regarding the Anti-Iran Advisors Around Trump

There are a fairly significant number of people around the President who seem to not like Iran at all, and while they may not want war with Iran --\\xa0they would prefer for the regime to collapse or for there to be a popular insurrection that would displace the regime --\\xa0they are of the view that regime change is essential and at the very least the US needs to inflict as much damage as possible on military and paramilitary capabilities of Iran before they leave office.\\xa0

The prime example is John\\xa0Bolton\\xa0who is the National Security Advisor.\\xa0 He seems to have a lot against Iran, seemingly dating from the hostage crisis, which he considers to have humiliated the US\\u2026 He\\u2019s closely associated with the MEK and has spoken before them many times; the last time predicting the imminent end of the Islamic Republic, just before he become National Security Advisor.\\xa0

Then there\\u2019s Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, who may not be quite as hawkish as Bolton, but clearly really hates Iran.\\xa0 When he was a Congressman, he was involved in various stunts designed to embarrass Iran.\\xa0 He was constantly denouncing Iran and vehemently opposed the JCPOA \\u2026 He is definitely a Christian Zionist,\\xa0making reference to the rapture in public, and\\xa0he is very devoted to the idea of a greater Israel of the kind that Likud has historically espoused. There is very little doubt in my mind that he thinks devotion to Israel should be a fundamental principle of US foreign policy.

Then there\\u2019s someone like Sheldon Adelson who is the Republican Party\\u2019s biggest donor. \\xa0And who, back about seven years ago, suggested that the US drop a nuclear bomb somewhere in the - as he put it - Iranian desert, coupled with the ultimatum that Iran must give up its entire nuclear infrastructure if it wanted to survive; and, if Iran failed to comply his idea was to drop a nuclear bomb in the middle of Tehran.

President Trump\'s Attitude Towards\\xa0War with Iran

Personally, I think that if you presented the idea of war to President Trump, he wouldn\\u2019t like it because he takes pride in the fact that there hasn\\u2019t been a war despite various pressures.\\xa0 I think he does genuinely want to disentangle the US military from the Middle East.\\xa0 I think that is a genuine, albeit not necessarily consistent, kind of leitmotif of his. And it\\u2019s something he could take to the 2020 election.\\xa0 Dennis Ross from the Washington Institute called Trump\\u2019s policy \\u201cbelligerent isolationism,\\u201d which I think is a pretty good tag. He doesn\\u2019t really like to be involved with foreign affairs politically and he thinks it\\u2019s a loser because everyone is trying to take advantage of the US, or of him.\\xa0

But, the question is:\\xa0if there is a moment of crisis where Trump feels besieged and like he could be impeached and he could actually be repudiated by the Republican Party and hence his chances of winning reelection are looking like virtually nothing, what would he do?\\xa0 Who would he consult with?\\xa0 And who are the people around him, and what would they say? \\xa0John Bolton -- it\\u2019s pretty clear what he would say.

Trump\\xa0is belligerent and he\\u2019s also impulsive, and I think if he thinks he is in deep trouble politically,\\xa0the attraction of war might become very strong.

The Current State of the\\xa0Neoconservative Movement

Neoconservatives have become very split, and it\\u2019s hard to speak of a coherent movement now. \\xa0It is true I think that all neocons consider the security and interests of Israel to be central to their worldview, but there are major differences that have emerged so that you have a few neocons defending the JCPOA and opposing the gratuitous deterioration of relations between the US and Iran, in major part because it created tensions with the European allies.\\xa0 But at the same time, you have a lot of neocons who are Islamophobic and definitely Iranophobic, and I would even say that although the intellectual leadership of neoconservatism tends to be somewhat more moderate, the body of neoconservative opinion has become quite Islamophobic and Iranophobic.

A complicating factor that has deepened the splits within the neocon movement was Trump himself\\xa0because most of the intellectual leaders of neoconservatism are real \\u201cNever Trumpers;\\u201d\\xa0they consider Trump to be outrageous and potentially antisemitic\\u2026 and they feel very strongly that Trump is a disaster for Jews and some of them think ultimately for Israel despite Netanyahu\\u2019s embrace of Trump.\\xa0 But, most neocons really like Netanyahu and since Netanyahu likes Trump so much they are willing to forgive Trump\'s kind of crudity, his white supremacism and racism.

The latter group has definitely penetrated the Trump administration, even though he says he doesn\\u2019t like neocons and holds them responsible in major part for the Iraq War or "stupid war."\\xa0 But they are infiltrating his administration through Bolton,\\xa0through Pompeo, though neither of them is a classic neoconservative... I think it\\u2019s important to distinguish between the aggressive\\xa0nationalists who are belligerent isolationists in the administration and the neocons, but they\\xa0are gradually working together.\\xa0I think neoconservatives are making a bit of a comeback.