Rational Security

This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by co-host emeritus Benjamin Wittes to talk through the week's very big national security news stories, including:“The Waiting Game.” The Middle East is on edge this week as it awaits a possible attack by Iran or Hezbollah on Israel in response to the suspected assassination of senior Hezbollah and Hamas leaders last week, including the chairman of Hamas’s political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed while visiting Tehran for the swearing in of its new president, Masoud Pezeshkian. What might a response look like, if there is one? And what does it mean for the region, including the prospects of a Gaza ceasefire?“Stay Weird, Austin.” Just days after the announcement of a long-negotiated plea deal for three of the four remaining defendants in the military commission trial relating to the 9/11 attacks, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin took the surprising and still largely unexplained move of intervening to rescind that deal and remove the convening authority th