So, first of all, congratulations, America.
You survived July.
You remember July, right?
Joe Biden announced he wouldn't run again, a woman of color became the nominee of a major party.
Someone tried and failed to kill Donald Trump.
Trump picked JD Vance to be his running mate.
And meanwhile, Joe Biden, who was written off as a political force, somehow managed one of the most complicated prisoner swaps in history, the result of which is that our Wall Street Journal colleague Evan Gurshkovich is now.
Joining me tonight to discuss all of this and more, Anne Applebaum is my colleague and a staff writer at The Atlantic.
She's also the author of the new bestseller Autocracy Inc.
The dictators who want to run the world.
Elizabeth Be Miller is the Washington bureau chief for The New York Times, Steve Inskeep is a co-host of NPR's Morning Edition and the author of Differ We Must, and Vivian Salama is a national political reporter at the Wall Street Journal.
Welcome all.
Vivian, let me start with you.
It's uh, it's just, it's a great week at the Wall Street Journal.
Tell us, tell us how it feels.
I mean, every emotion that you can imagine all at once, obviously we are beaming.
I saw his parents yesterday.
I saw a sister and brother-in-law and to see after a year and a half of such a weight that was on them lifted.
They were smiling from ear to ear.
We all were, I mean, cheers, celebrations, um, Evan is finally free.
He never should have been behind bars in Russia in the first place and that comes A little bit of frustration for us that that just never should have happened, but at this point we're looking forward.
We want him to be well.
We're happy that he's free and we wish him the best.
He's a kind of a stone cold reporter.
He asked Putin in an official document for an interview as he was being taken out of Russia, correct?
Part of the sham protocol as he was leaving was to request clemency directly to Vladimir Putin and so in that request he did ask for an interview and today the spokes.
For the Kremlin responded and said that it is under consideration, so there you go.
Mind you, I don't think they would even entertain the idea publicly if they thought he was guilty for a second, but they got to get their story straight.
Either he's a spy or a journalist, obviously, and so, but Evan is free and that's what matters.
Anne, could you talk a little bit about the geopolitical implications of this.
I mean, obviously we're you know, all Americans are excited about the release of Evan, the other two Americans, plus a group of Russian dissidents, but You know, this is a Putin got a reward for essentially kidnapping, among others, an American journalist.
I mean, there's there's a dark cloud here.
There's a dark cloud.
I mean, it's in a way you have there were two things going on.
There was the moral imperative to release Evan, to release the Russian dissidents, you know, and on the other hand, there's this moral hazard, you know, we, we, we let go a contract killer, a bunch of cyber criminals and several other spies, and in exchange we got hostages.
I mean, there were, you know, Girkowitz was not obviously a was not a spy, you know, and so there's a, there's a fundamental unfairness and of course the risk is now that Putin thinks, well, I can capture anybody at any time whenever I need to get somebody back and that's, uh, and, and you know, and that's the big risk here, right?
I mean, I have to, I mean, everybody here is uh has been foreign correspondent and traveled extensively for their jobs.
Elizabeth, I have to ask you as someone who runs a large operation.
Sending reporters to Russia in the future.
No, we don't do that.
We, uh, uh, our Moscow bureau chief is in Berlin, who was determined that it's just not safe for a New York Times bureau chief to be working right now in Moscow and he's obviously right, so no, it's a, it's a real problem and uh I mean the one, the one another positive thing that came out of this is that Biden, it was interesting.
Biden said it, which is that allies matter and I think he said that obviously.
The nod to former President Trump to point out that he worked very closely with the German Chancellor, with the Slovenians, uh, right, you know, as he was about to drop out of the race.
Are you suggesting that Biden was trolling Trump?
I'm suggesting he he had a very good day at the end of a really bad month.
Steve, let me ask you about that.
The uh, I mean, it's interesting, Biden obviously had Been involved in trying to figure out this very complicated formula for the release of uh Evan and and the others, um, he seems to still have it.
In some way it's a good thing to remember anybody who's president, if they're doing their job properly, we don't know 90% of what they're doing, and it turns out we did not know the details of this until it came out.
It's also interesting who he brought along for the ceremony of arrival and for other occasions in the last several days, the vice president is with him again and again and again.
She made her own statement which Republicans criticized as word salad.
It was a little wordy, but the statement is very clear actually.
It's clear what she meant.
She said, This shows the importance of having a president who understands diplomacy and the value of alliances and so in a way that was almost a campaign stop for Vice President Harris to be at the center of the you don't often see them at 11:30 at night walking together across a tarmac and a dark, steamy night in Maryland, you know, and I think that was a very striking tableau that by the way, I mean this is one of the criticisms you never, you very seldom saw Joe Biden at 11:30 at night, period.
But he seemed, you know, very energized by, I mean, it's what's, what's done is done.
But you know there is a, he seemed to be very involved in the guts of this negotiation.
I have one question for Anne, who's a professional criminologist.
I don't know if that's fair, but I'll just say it anyway, yeah, uh, but a little Kremlinology here about, about the response.
There was a feeling, um, that, uh, Putin was going to reward Donald Trump when he becomes president and Putin was assuming perhaps that Donald Trump would win that Trump would be rewarded with this release and I know there's a lot of speculation and among people who study Russia and the Byzantine ways of Russian foreign policy.
There was this assumption is, does the timing surprise you at all?
So the only, my only guess is that it may even be that Putin is now worried that Trump won't win and I think he really wanted this his contract killer, this guy Krasakoff, who was in Germany, he wanted him back.
Tell us what he did and he was, he murdered.
Uh, um, uh, it was a Chechen dissident, you know, in cold blood in the middle of the day, in the middle of Berlin, and was caught immediately and Putin really wants him back because he's he's one of the, you know, top secret police had sort of an honor guard at his arrival, he really wanted him back.
It's thought that he has some older connection with him that he knew him from his, you know, KGB days, and he really wanted him back and it may be that you know, and the only way, by the way, he got him back was because Biden convinced Schultz to release him, so the German chancellor had to make the decision to release him and originally the Germans didn't want to do it because you know the guy was a murderer.
He murdered someone in the middle of the German capital and they didn't want to let him go.
And so I think it was maybe the fear that if Trump won that Schultz wouldn't release him, so it may I think a lot of this was about him and you know this one particular person who he wanted back and the rest of it is just sort of making other people happy and making the Germans.
A bunch of Germans who were released too, right, right, it's fascinating because we come back to this point about, about allies I think when, when Vice President Harris said that, I think that was top of mind that the idea that what Joe Biden did was work the phones intensely with other foreign leaders in a way that those of us who have covered the Trump the first Trump administration would find unlikely, uh, he did call Ukraine, remember, just keep in mind there was a there was a perfect I think.
the so-called perfect phone call.
Let's move to the behavior of another autocracy.
I'm going to stay on the theme because of, uh, Ann's book, um, Iran is threatening very openly to uh seek vengeance on Israel.
There's this expectation that some large scale uh action is going to happen sometime soon with Defense Department just announced that America, America moving more assets.
To the region defensive shields over Israel, etc.
I'm, I'm curious to know if you all think that this is the moment when things spin even more out of control in the Middle East.
I mean, Steve, you've been to Iran many times number of times at a minimum things get closer to spinning out of control.
I have a memory of being actually at an earlier version of this table months ago and we discussed this.
We discussed how it was not in Iran's interest as Iran saw it to.
Go into a wider war and it seemed they would avoid it as long as they could.
Nevertheless, they have been struck in this way.
Israel killed Ismail Haniyeh, who we should remember was the political leader of Hamas, widely regarded as a terrorist group, but they killed him in Tehran at a particularly embarrassing moment to make a point, to make a point perhaps, but in any case to kill him and leaving Iran with no choice really but to respond in some way.
Well, there's a choice.
Well, from the Iranian point.
Of you and so the question is, can if Iran still sees it in their interest not to engage in a much wider war with Israel.
Can they find some way to respond as they have in some other recent incidents that fall just a little bit short of an utter conflict that was the expectation that's the expectation right now of, you know, national security officials in the United States, but nonetheless, the Pentagon has moved, is moving combat aircraft and warships into the region.
In preparation to perhaps do what happened but maybe more so than happened in April.
Yes, there was this is round 2 of the missile when there were all these drones and the US and the allies Britain and other allies Jordan, Saudi Arabia all were involved but to also remember that this comes at a moment where the US has been trying to broker a ceasefire agreement and Gia was in in a large way involved in those talks as is Netanyahu and just Hamas in general and to have this happen at this moment.
brings us further away potentially from achieving that goal which Biden would love to see, which is to achieve that.
I want to come back to in a second, but Vivian, stay on that point because it's interesting, you know, there's a lot of criticism in Israel or in national security circles in Israel that there's no love lost, uh, here.
There's no, there's no sympathy for Ismail Haniyeh who's responsible for the murders of a lot of Israelis, but there is a belief among Netanyahu's many critics that he is trying to for and political reasons extend the war and he's not paying attention to the hostages.
There's more than 100 Israelis still being held hostage in Hama.
Do you have any insight into the, the, the salience of this kind of idea that Netanyahu did this very much on purpose in order to slow to slow this down and and get the confrontation with Iran that may be coming.
I certainly can't read Netanyahu's mind, but I can tell you that numerous US officials who I've spoken to have speculated that that is his intention.
Obviously he has a lot of political battles at home that prolonging any kind of conflict might put off kind of hit him ultimately having to face the music, but at the same time you have this tit for tat that continues with Iran and Lebanon and Israel, and whether or not it escalates into a full blown war.
A lot of these parties don't necessarily want it to, but ultimately what it does do is delay a ceasefire.
Biden himself said at Andrew's at Joint Base Andrews last night when he was when the hostages were coming.
He was asked by the pool of reporters, does this, how does, how does this affect the negotiations this this assassination because it doesn't help, you know, and it was like, uh, it was a, a quick, uh, quick, uh, sentence full of meaning.
He's been through it a lot.
If I can add one other little piece of the story that's that's fairly new is there is beginning to be evidence that the Russians are beginning to help the Iranians with new kinds of weapons, these Iranian drones that are going to Russia are being.
Using the word in Ukraine are being remade and remodeled and possibly sent back to Iran, so it could be that if the Iranians are bolder than they used to be.
It could be because they have more allies in the.
What a convenient way for me to introduce the main topic.
A the theory of the theory of which is that you are looking at a tacit alliance of China, Russia, North Korea, Iran for for starters, I.
Talk about the risk here that if the US, let's say in the coming hours, days, uh, has to come in in the defense of Israel and maybe Jordan as well if Iran is firing rockets and does something kinetic as they say, against Iran is that bringing the US closer into an open confrontation even with Russia or other elements of this.
Autocratic alliance.
It's a network.
It's not a, not an alliance.
Explain the difference.
It's they, they don't have, they, they don't have anything in common ideologically, so this is theocratic Iran and communist China and nationalist Russia, and they don't have a special room where they meet and make decisions.
They just cooperate when it's in their interests at at particular moments and right now Russia is very interested in confronting the US and challenging the US wherever it can because of the war in Ukraine.
So you say.
It's not an alliance, but it sounds like Russia would benefit from having Iran act as a proxy.
Yes, of course.
OK, so but you're saying that the coordination is looser than we think they didn't sign a treaty somewhere where it says, you know, like the NATO treaty, I will help you in case of X, but are they interested in the US being dragged into a war in the Middle East?
Yes, they are, right?
Anything to drag America into any bad situation that will keep them away from helping one more question for you before we turn to domestic politics on this, on this question.
Of the next hours.
Lloyd Austin very publicly is moving American assets closer to where a fight could take place, um, is Iran deterrable?
I mean, can, is this the sort of action that would cause a rational or semi-rational autocratic regime to say, you know what.
Biden seems upset.
Maybe I'm not going to go do the thing.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna do.
I mean, I can't read their minds either, but I mean, yeah, I wish you all could read I can read Netanyahu's mind it more exciting show, right?
You all just mind reading No, no, I mean, but yeah, I mean the idea in all these cases is to raise the cost, you know, raise the cost for them, make them think about it harder.
That's what we didn't do, by the way, in 2022 in the run up to the war in Ukraine, we didn't, you know, the Ukrainians weren't sufficiently.
Armed and I mean I think that was a lesson that in each of these that was also a problem of the Ukrainians not believing American warnings that Russia was going to, yeah, but, but, but right, the pathway was open,
