Tommy Vietor: The Marionette in the White House

The Trump administration's foreign policy is being run by people with direct financial stakes in the conflicts they're managing—and the Democratic Party is failing to capitalize on the resulting chaos. That was the central argument from Tommy Vietor, co-founder of Crooked Media and former Obama national security spokesman, in a wide-ranging conversation with Tim Miller on The Bulwark Daily.

The War in Iran: No Strategy, No Exit

The Pentagon is sending a third aircraft carrier strike group and additional Marine Corps forces to the Middle East, adding 9,000 to 10,000 troops to the region, as Trump considers renewing strikes on Iran after the midterm elections. Vietor argued this escalation lacks any coherent strategy. "There's no strategy to win this war," he said. "We can send as many aircraft carriers as we want. There's still not a strategy to end this war."

The math is unfavorable for the U.S. The Iranians "live there. They have nowhere else to go." They still possess ballistic missiles and drones, and they're receiving targeting intelligence from China and Russia. Meanwhile, the U.S. is running low on interceptor missiles needed to protect Israel, American bases, and Gulf allies. Vietor noted that 19 to 22 U.S. service members have been killed and 800 injured, with costs running into the hundreds of billions.