PBS NEWSHOUR: David Brooks of The Atlantic and Jonathan Capehart of MS NOW join Geoff Bennett to discuss the week in politics, including President Trump delivering conflicting messaging on when the war in Iran could end.

GEOFF BENNETT, PBS: With the war in Iran intensifying, President Trump this week delivered conflicting messages on what — when it could end. And attacks here in the U.S. prompted a wave of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric. To discuss that more, we turn to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart. That’s “The Atlantic”‘s David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart of MS NOW. It’s always great to see you both. So, Jonathan, on Iran, if the goal was to weaken Iran and stabilize the region, the early picture looks complicated. You have got a new supreme leader in Tehran, who is the son of the original supreme leader who was killed in the initial attack. You have got higher oil prices, a widening regional war, and more than a dozen U.S. troop casualties. What, in your view, has been achieved so far? JONATHAN CAPEHART, MS NOW: I don’t know. I really don’t know. And I’m glad you mentioned the casualties, because I was going to do something that the secretary of defense refuses to do when he — immediately when he gets before the microphones, and acknowledge right now the 13 killed in action, including the six who lost their lives when their refueling aircraft crashed in Iraq. I am still trying to understand what the endgame is here. The president gives a lot of — says a lot of happy talk about this will take a short period of time, and we had to do this because they were going to attack us. But we have not heard a single coherent rationale since this war started, what is it, two weeks ago tomorrow. BENNETT: David, how do you see it? DAVID BROOKS, THE ATLANTIC: Yes. Well, this was not a good week. I think things were achieved in the first week with the weakening of the regime and taking out some of the ballistic missiles and all that. But this week, two big things happened not good for the U.S. The first is every intelligence agency on Earth seems to have concluded that the odds of regime change, the odds that the Iranian people have any opportunity to rise up any time soon are very unlikely. And so that means we’re in a war of containment. It looks a little more like the Cold War, where whatever happens in this military kinetic phase, there’s going to be a long period we’re going to have to contain Iran. The second bad thing that happened was the effective closing of the Straits of Hormuz. Now, I don’t know what went through Pete Hegseth’s head or Donald Trump’s head, whether they anticipated this move or not, but it surely is impossible that the U.S. military did not anticipate this, because we have been talking about this for 47 years, and closing the Straits of Hormuz has always been on the table. The Iranians have been preparing for this for decades, and they have effective ability to do it, at least partially, so far, and we see what’s happened to oil prices. We see what’s happened to the world economy. And the problem is the U.S. has no really good options here. Ending a naval blockade, getting rid of naval mines is just not an easy thing to do. Back in 1991, during the first George H.W. Bush, the war in Kuwait and Ukraine — I mean, Iraq — Iraq had roughly 900 mines, and it took us nearly two months to clear them. The pre-war estimates for Iranian mines were closer to 5,000, and then they have all these things that didn’t exist in 1991, like underwater drones. So that’s a really long struggle to try to make the Straits of Hormuz open. But if the U.S. doesn’t do that, then Iran is the effective victor, because they can say we can pull the economic string that will always deter a further U.S. attack, we are the ones in charge here, and we won this war.

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