Iran Conflict: Downed US jets could shift public support for war

[0:00] Phyllis Bennis is a fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies [0:03] and a specialist on US foreign policy with a focus on the Middle East. [0:08] She joins us now from Washington DC. Good to have you with us. [0:11] So does the US military now have to explain how we went from a situation of weeks of very few, [0:19] if any, verified reports of US aircraft being downed to US media reporting [0:27] at least four incidents of US aircraft being targeted within just a few hours? [0:35] Yeah, I think this is going to be particularly difficult for the White House to explain, [0:42] particularly because they have focused so much in recent days about the claims, [0:46] obviously false at this point, that the US controls the skies over Iran, [0:53] that the US has destroyed all of Iran's capabilities in air defence. [0:58] We don't know exactly. [0:59] We don't know exactly what capabilities still remain, but clearly they are usable. [1:03] They have some defence against these attacks. [1:07] And, you know, whether the Iranians were holding back some of their capabilities to use later, [1:14] I don't know, and we probably won't know that for quite some time. [1:17] But I think this is going to have a very significant impact on how they are trying to sell this war [1:23] to the American people, particularly to the so-called MAGA base, [1:29] the Corps. [1:30] The Corps base of the Trump administration, which has largely supported this war. [1:35] Seventy percent of the MAGA supporters said that they agreed with going to war in Iran. [1:41] Whether they continue to support that, knowing that US planes are being shot down, [1:47] pilots may be missing, we don't know what's going to happen to the one or perhaps two pilots [1:53] who have not been found and located, this changes the equation. [1:57] I don't think it changes the military equation necessarily, [2:01] but it certainly changes the propaganda equation. [2:04] Let me play devil's advocate here and bring you the line. [2:07] I've been hearing from analysts who are more supportive perhaps of the White House's policy on this. [2:14] And they say, look, this is just a few out of thousands of sorties. [2:20] Will it ultimately change the course of this conflict and especially the plans for any upcoming operations? [2:29] I think it could change the plans based on, again, [2:32] the propaganda side, the question of how much support is there in the United States [2:37] has to be taken into account. [2:39] The White House has just come forward in the last few hours with a demand to Congress for [2:46] raising the extraordinarily, horrifyingly high military budget of this year, [2:52] which passed the trillion dollar mark. [2:55] Trillion dollars, Sammy, that's one of those numbers that you can't even imagine how big it is. [3:00] And now they're saying they want a budget of [3:02] 150. [3:02] and $50 trillion next year—sorry, $1.5 trillion next year. [3:09] This is one of those bizarre things that nobody can even comprehend what this means. [3:15] But at the same time, the president said, we can't afford childcare because we have [3:21] a war to fight. [3:23] So he's saying that we can afford to put another half a trillion dollars into this [3:28] war, which we are clearly not just winning easily. [3:32] And we can't afford to pay for our children. [3:35] Can he make the argument, Phyllis, that he'll get the money from the Straits of Hormuz? [3:42] The U.S. president today has been talking about how he can open the Straits, he can [3:47] take Iran's oil and make a fortune, I think was the words he used. [3:52] Yeah, he did say that. [3:54] And maybe he thinks he can. [3:56] I think the people around him, hopefully, are saying, Mr. President, you better be careful [4:02] what you claim that you can do. [4:03] Because we're not at all clear how that would happen. [4:07] You know, the Straits of Hormuz is closed right now. [4:10] Iran is calling the shots in the strait. [4:12] They're allowing some ships to go through that are flagged by countries not connected [4:18] in any way to Israel and or the United States. [4:22] I don't see that changing anytime soon. [4:25] His claim that somehow the strait will naturally open all by itself the instant that the fighting [4:32] stops simply doesn't work. [4:33] Right. [4:34] It doesn't take into account the role of the big insurance companies who make the decisions [4:40] about this. [4:41] They're not going to rely on a claim from Trump or anyone else that says, oh, as soon [4:45] as the fighting stops, they'll just open it up. [4:49] Oh, we stopped fighting, so you can go through now. [4:52] They're going to want guarantees. [4:54] And Trump can't provide them. [4:55] So I think this is going to be a very, very difficult challenge when he says that we're [5:00] sending Iran back to the Stone Age, where they belong. [5:03] This incredible kind of racist, Islamophobic language that he's been using that also doesn't [5:11] match what they're facing in terms of opposition. [5:14] He said just a few days ago, Iran is no longer a threat, and then went on to say, but we're [5:19] going to hit them even harder in the next two to three weeks. [5:22] If they're not a threat, why are we going to hit them harder? [5:25] It's talking about the war crimes he's anticipating, the war crimes he has said he will carry out, [5:32] we will go after. [5:33] We will go after the oil industry. [5:35] We will go after the electrical plants. [5:38] We will go after water purification. [5:41] These are all war crimes. [5:44] And there will be accountability for this. [5:45] I think that what we saw with the lack of accountability, the lack of any real way of [5:53] holding Israel accountable in their genocide in Gaza, this is not going to be allowed again [5:58] for Israel and the United States to carry out war crimes with impunity. [6:04] There will be accountability at some point on this. [6:07] Phyllis Bennis there, co-director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute [6:12] for Policy Studies.