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Time Magazine
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
Lukas Nelson Is Ready to Make a Name for Himself
Even if you can't name one song by Lukas Nelson, chances are you've already heard his music. The 36-year-old singer-songwriter (and son of country music mainstay Willie Nelson) has not only been releasing country-roots albums with his band the Promise of the Real since 2010, he and his band have been touring and recording with Neil Young since 2016. Nelson has also written for the screen: In 2020, he won a Grammy for his work on a little film called A Star Is Born, for which he wrote and co-produced several songs, as well as appeared on screen as a member of Bradley Cooper's band. Despite all of these accolades and accomplishments, Nelson has a grander vision for himself. He'd love to graduate from behind-the-scenes player—let's say your favorite country artist's favorite country artist—into a top-billed superstar in his own right. There's no reason to think that he won't meet the moment. Nelson's debut solo album, American Romance (produced by Shooter Jennings, son of Waylon), is brimming with universal observations about love, loss, family, perseverance, and the cycle of birth and death. It's all set against a classic American backdrop of diner counters and truck stops, East Coast turnpike exits and snow-tipped Montana mountains. Led by Nelson's acoustic fingerpicking and aching, reedy vocals, American Romance goes down with the familiar ease of a time-worn Townes Van Zandt record while distinguishing itself enough to stand on its own in the modern-country landscape. Ahead of his album's release on June 20, Nelson spoke to TIME about the long road to American Romance, finding the right way to discuss his lineage, and why he's a 'disciple of Dolly Parton' when it comes to politics. Nelson: Well, Promise of the Real was a band that I started when I was 19. I was always the songwriter, and those guys traveled with me through thick and thin. We became Neil Young's backing band for five years. Then we're trying to do both my songs and Neil's songs and straddle that line. But a lot of the fans that we got were fans of Neil and, of course, my father. Eventually I realized, if I don't establish myself as an artist right now, then I won't be able to. So I just decided to go out and play for my own fans and my own generation and figure out who I am. I had to just become Lukas Nelson. I stopped smoking weed, I became sober. I faced my fear of flying by becoming a pilot. And I sort of let go of a lot of the legacy ideals that I had grown up with and felt pressured by. There's a song on the album—it's the first song I ever wrote, when I was 11, called 'You Were It.' I wrote that before I started telling myself a story of who I was meant to be. That song came to me on a school bus. My dad liked it so much that he recorded it. Then Kris Kristofferson said, "I love that song. Are you going to be a songwriter?" I said, "I don't know." He said, "Well, you don't have a choice." That inspired me to become a musician. But now I'm trying to ask myself: What do I mean musically? How do you feel American Romance might begin to answer that question? I'm working with some of my favorite musicians of our time: Stephen Wilson Jr., Sierra Ferrell, Anderson East. 'God Ain't Done,' I wrote with Aaron Raitiere, who just had a hit with 'You Look Like You Love Me' with Ella Langley and Riley Green. I'm writing a lot with Ernest [Keith Smith], who's written all the number one hits on Morgan Wallen's recent album. I've always believed that I could stand toe-to-toe with anyone as a songwriter. I am a songwriter first and foremost—I play good guitar, and I sing well, and I perform well, but the songs are the most important thing, what brought me to A Star is Born and what really, I think, caused Neil [Young] to take notice. You have artists like Kacey Musgraves, Zach Bryan, Chris Stapleton, Tyler Childers—these are the artists that I respect, and I want to be part of that conversation and musical landscape. I want to have a career that lasts as long as my father's. And when my father played, he played for his generation, and they followed him now up into his nineties. So in order to have that longevity, I have to be smart and play to my own people. I've always known and respected [Shooter] for his musicality. I'd always wanted to work with him. I think now was the perfect moment, because he's established himself separate from his legacy, as an incredible producer. Now I feel like the conversation is less about, 'Oh, isn't it cool that these kids are doing it and their fathers were friends?' That becomes a little bit of icing on the cake. Those who don't know us will probably still look at it that way. And that's something I deal with my whole life. [But] we've gotten past the idea that we are only just the sons of [ Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings]. We have our own careers that we've built. I respect [Shooter's] work ethic. When I started playing with the band, we did 250 shows a year for a good part of 10 years, just in order to prove to myself. I knew I was going to have to work twice as hard. People who don't know me are always going to have an opinion on whether I got anything handed to me, but I know how hard I worked, and so at the moment of my death, that's what I'm going to look at. I can see that Shooter has the same approach. I can imagine you having so many different internal conversations with yourself. Like on one hand, when Kris Kristofferson tells you that you were born to be a songwriter, that's amazing. At the same time, like with any family business, did you feel like there was ever even a choice? I'm so grateful that he gave me that inspiration because it lit a fire. And I had the confidence to say, 'OK, put my head down, ignore everything anyone else is saying and just work, and I think I have some sort of innate understanding of this songwriting thing that I can actually nurture.' I'm really grateful to that 11-year-old boy who understood that the time that he put in then would pay off now. And it has. It was about just closing my ears to any of the chatter and playing guitar eight hours a day and through the night, much to the chagrin of my mother, and just obsessing over songwriting, not giving a crap about parties in high school. I never had one sip of a beer until I was in college. I just focused. The greatest part about being the son of my father, and of my mother [Annie D'Angelo] too, was the inspiration and support. Like Colonel Tom Parker seeing Elvis and saying, "I'm going to focus all of my efforts on that man," he invested and made him a star. So somebody has to champion you, and I was lucky to have that growing up. Yeah, it's a double-edged sword. Say you have no industry connections and want to make it as an artist, you're going to need someone to take a chance on you. Meanwhile, as you've described, say you do come from a family with every connection—someone will still have to personally vouch for you, because people will make assumptions. Now I've gotten to this place where I think I'm clear-headed enough to understand how to talk about it. I didn't really know how to describe what I was feeling. I was in my Beatles Hamburg days—just playing show after show after show. And when people would ask me [about my father], I'd be like, 'I don't even have time to answer that. Ask me about my record.' You know what I mean? I love my dad and he's a good man, and I love my mom and she's a good woman. And my brother and sisters. It's a good family. I'm lucky. Not because he's a successful musician, because he's a good person and a kind person and is in touch with his empathy. That's what I'm most grateful for. How did you end up settling on the album name American Romance? The title came from the song, [which is] like a portrait. This whole album is a bunch of different chapters, kind of in a John Steinbeck Travels With Charley, memoir-like [way] about different moments that shaped me growing up in this country that raised me. The loves and the losses and the heartache, and then the elation. There were moments where I've spent Thanksgiving dinners at a truck stop having the turkey special, and then having the kindly waitress feel bad for me, although she was working too. It's the Walmart parking lots. It's the sirens at night, the rendezvous in the night. There's a thousand different stories I have in hundreds of hours of travel, but I tried to just put it into an album of 13 songs. At the same time, it's an album about the future. I've got a song called 'Pretty Much' that talks about how I envision the hour of my death and what I hope is in store for me in terms of love and relationships. I'd love to be surrounded by my family and them desperately wanting all the information about how I met the love of my life, who's right there beside me, and telling all the different stories about when I fell in love. It's about the future and the past and the present. You split your time between Nashville and Hawaii now, and between Hawaii and Texas when you were growing up. When people ask, where do you say you're from? I was raised by America, by the United States. The roads raised me. I may have been born in Texas, and I spent some time there. I spent some time in Hawaii. But most of my life was spent on the road growing up from Walmart parking lot to motel, to hotel to diner to stage. It's easier almost to say the greater United States than it is to say anywhere in specific. Country music has such a legacy of storytelling about America, encapsulating the good, the bad, the mundane. But 2025 is such a unique time to release a body of work about the country, seeing as the country itself has rarely been more divided. As someone who has traveled it so extensively, what are some commonalities that you think everybody living in the U.S. still shares? That's a great question. I believe that we all share the heart. There's a song I have called 'Turn Off the News (Build a Garden).' 'I believe that every heart is kind, some are just a little underused' is the first line. I think that when we can connect with our hearts, we can open up empathy inside of ourselves. Now, there are exceptions to the rule. Obviously some people are sociopathic. So barring that, I feel like music has the power to cut through the mind and reach the heart. What we can all relate to is suffering in love and relationships and heartbreak. Those things are really universal. My belief is that I can change people's minds more by doing what I do than by standing and making statements. I can put it in my music. I believe that strongly, and I've seen it work. There's a guy named Daryl Davis who is a Black musician, and he has converted over 200 Klansmen, to the point where they give him their hoods because he sat there and talked to them. This guy has some balls. He somehow reached their hearts. I think the only way to change people's minds, if they have hatred, is to try and reach their hearts. I don't think calling them a monster will do it. Some people are beyond changing, I understand that. But music has the power to open up hearts. I know I'm good at one thing, and I do it. I am not a politician. I have friends that span the aisles, as they say. But kindness and compassion are where I try to live from. I look at someone who's suffering, and I always believe in helping that person out. I'm a disciple of Dolly Parton, let's just say.
Time Magazine
7 hours ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
‘If Middle East Is Unstable, World Will Not Be at Peace': How China Views the Israel-Iran War
Iran's friends don't like the war decimating Tehran, but they're not ready to join the fight against Israel and potentially the U.S. Instead, Russia and now China have urged deescalation, emphasizing the dangerous consequences the escalating conflict could have on the whole world. 'If the Middle East is unstable, the world will not be at peace,' Chinese President Xi Jinping said Thursday. 'If the conflict escalates further, not only will the conflicting parties suffer greater losses, but regional countries will also suffer greatly.' 'The warring parties, especially Israel, should cease fire as soon as possible to prevent a cycle of escalation and resolutely avoid the spillover of the war,' Xi added. Xi's comments came in a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which both leaders called for a ceasefire, according to a readout by China's foreign ministry. Earlier this week, Russia warned that Israel's attacks have brought the world 'millimeters' from nuclear calamity, and Putin urged Trump against attacking Iran, as the President is mulling direct U.S. military engagement in the war that has already killed hundreds in Iran and dozens in Israel. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters that Putin and Xi 'strongly condemn Israel's actions, which violate the U.N. Charter and other norms of international law.' Ushakov added that Xi expressed support for Putin's suggestion to mediate the conflict, an offer Trump said he has rejected. China, like Russia, has also positioned itself as a potential peacebroker, though experts say it's unlikely Israel would accept Beijing as a neutral conciliator, given its past criticisms of Israel and ties with Iran. Here's what to know about how China has responded so far to the conflict and what it may see is at stake. Rhetorical but not material support 'Iran doesn't need communiqués or declarations, but concrete help, like anti-aircraft systems or fighter jets,' Andrea Ghiselli, a Chinese foreign policy expert at the University of Exeter, told France 24. But communiqués and declarations are all China is likely to offer, experts tell TIME. William Figueroa, an assistant professor of international relations at the University of Groningen, tells TIME that China's lack of military support should not come as a surprise. China has historically followed a policy of non-interference, focusing more on domestic issues while aiming to avoid entanglement in protracted foreign conflicts. Earlier this year, China similarly called on both India and Pakistan, the latter being an ' ironclad friend ' of China, to show restraint. And while it has been accused of providing ' very substantial ' support to Russia in its war against Ukraine, China has maintained that it doesn't provide weapons or troops to its neighbor. (Reports suggest, however, that its material support has included lethal systems.) White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that the White House doesn't see 'any signs' of China providing military support to Iran 'at this moment in time.' Instead, China has offered words. Beijing has been 'harshly critical' of Israel, says Figueroa. In separate calls with his Iranian and Israeli counterparts over the past weekend, after Israel launched an attack on Friday against Iran, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed that China 'explicitly condemns Israel's violation of Iran's sovereignty, security and territorial integrity.' It has also publicly advised the U.S. against greater involvement in the conflict. 'The heating up of the Middle East region serves no one's interests,' Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said on Tuesday. 'To fan up the flames, use threats and exert pressure does not help deescalate the situation and will only aggravate tensions and enlarge the conflict.' 'The international community, especially influential major countries, should uphold a fair position and a responsible attitude to create the necessary conditions for promoting a ceasefire and returning to dialogue and negotiation so as to prevent the regional situation from sliding into the abyss and triggering a greater disaster,' a Chinese state-media editorial declared on Thursday. China's diplomatic response reflects its priority to 'lower the temperature,' says Figueroa, particularly in tensions with the U.S. Diplomatic limitations China has sought to deepen its investments and influence in the Middle East over the years, which has raised the expectations of its regional diplomacy to 'sky high' levels, says Figueroa. But while Beijing touted brokering a historic truce between Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023, the task before it now is much taller. Wang, the Chinese foreign minister, said China is 'ready to play a constructive role' in resolving the conflict, according to foreign ministry readouts of his calls with both Iran and Israel, but unlike with Saudi Arabia and Iran, Figueroa says, Israel has expressed no interest in negotiating a resolution. And even if Israel was interested in coming to the table, China is unlikely to be seen as a neutral arbiter given its ties with Iran, criticisms of Israel including over Gaza, and ongoing global power competition with the U.S., Israel's biggest ally. China has developed strong economic ties with Iran over the years, becoming Iran's largest trading partner and export market, especially for oil—a critical lifeline for Iran as the U.S. has placed severe economic sanctions on the country. Iran joined BRICS, the intergovernmental group China has viewed as an alternative collective of emerging powers to the Western-oriented G7, in 2024; joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a Beijing-backed security group, in 2023; and the two countries signed a 25-year cooperative agreement in 2021. While China has also maintained an economic relationship with Israel—China is Israel's second-biggest trading partner and the two countries have had an 'innovative comprehensive partnership' since 2017—Figueroa says it's 'not close enough to have a serious influence over Israel's actions.' When asked about the possibility of China acting as a mediator, Israel's Ambassador to Beijing Eli Belotserkovsky told the South China Morning Post on Wednesday, 'at this stage, we are concentrating on the military campaign. This is our main concern at the moment, and we need to see how things will develop.' Still, he added that Israel would 'continue talking to China as [part of] an ongoing process.' Failure to help bring peace to the Middle East could seriously dampen China's recent efforts to portray itself as an effective global peacebroker, especially after Ukraine already rejected a peace plan Beijing had proposed in 2023. And if Iran's regime falls, Marc Lanteigne, an associate professor of political science at the Arctic University of Norway, told France 24, the China-mediated truce with Saudi Arabia would also risk 'going up in smoke.' 'It is hard to predict how the conflict itself might impact [China's diplomatic] efforts,' Figueroa says. 'A wider conflict would undoubtedly complicate Chinese diplomatic efforts, which largely rest on their ability to provide economic development.' Economic concerns While the Iran-China trade balance is largely skewed in China's favor— around a third of Iranian trade is with China, but less than 1% of Chinese trade is with Iran —China is heavily dependent on the Middle East's oil. 'China is by far the largest importer of Iranian oil,' according to a statement in March by the U.S. State Department, which added: 'The Iranian regime uses the revenue it generates from these sales to finance attacks on U.S. allies, support terrorism around the world, and pursue other destabilizing actions.' Sara Haghdoosti, executive director of public education and advocacy coalition Win Without War, tells TIME that China 'has a vested interest in seeing the conflict end before Israel strikes more of Iran's oil infrastructure.' But China is less dependent on Iran itself than on access to the region's reserves. 'The Islamic Republic is a replaceable energy partner,' according to a Bloomberg analysis. For global oil markets too, changes to Iran's supply alone are unlikely to cause significant price disruptions. 'Even in the unlikely event that all Iranian exports are lost, they could be replaced by spare capacity from OPEC+ producers,' assessed credit agency Fitch Ratings earlier this week. Around 20% of the world's oil trade, however, passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has threatened to close in retaliation if the U.S. joins the war. 'If the United States officially and operationally enters the war in support of the Zionists, it is the legitimate right of Iran in view of pressuring the U.S. and Western countries to disrupt their oil trade's ease of transit,' said Iranian lawmaker Ali Yazdikhah on Thursday, according to state-sponsored Iranian news agency Mehr News. Doing so would also impact China, for which more than 40% of crude oil imports come from the Middle East. The conflict's 'greatest impact on China could be on energy imports and supply chain security,' Sun Degang, director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Fudan University, told the South China Morning Post. 'While Beijing will continue to condemn the conflict, it will also seek to balance ties with Israel and the Gulf states and promote stable energy flows,' according to Bloomberg's analysts, especially as surging commodity prices would exacerbate domestic economic growth challenges already hampered by the trade war with the U.S. and an ongoing real estate crisis. In response to a question about the potential interruption of Iranian oil supplies to China, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun reiterated on Tuesday the need to 'ease tensions as soon as possible' in order to 'prevent the region from spiraling into greater turmoil.' A contained conflict could be good for China 'If a wider conflict breaks out,' Figueroa says, 'the impact on China's economic projects and investments in the region would be significant.' Foreign policy analyst Wesley Alexander Hill noted in a Forbes op-ed that an escalated conflict could force China into a bind between taking 'decisive action' to defend Iran, which might alienate Saudi Arabia, or doing nothing militarily and letting Israeli and potentially U.S. attacks 'continue to degrade Iranian export capacity,' which would leave other regional partners with a 'dim view [of] what Chinese commitment under pressure looks like.' Still, some analysts have suggested that China—as well as Russia—may be content for now to sit back and let things play out, with their higher priorities clearly elsewhere. According to Bloomberg Economics analyst Alex Kokcharov, a contained conflict in the Middle East could 'distract Washington from strategic competition with China.' Added Bloomberg's bureau chief in China, Allen Wan, in a newsletter Friday: 'Should the U.S. once again get tangled up in a war in the Middle East, that'd probably suit China just fine. Beijing and the [People's Liberation Army] would appreciate the chance to squeeze Taiwan tighter.' 'At very least, both powers [Russia and China] are content to watch the U.S. further squander goodwill with gulf Arab partners by backing another destabilizing conflict in the region,' Haghdoosti, the Win Without War executive director, tells TIME. And they, she adds, are likely 'shedding no tears that the U.S. military is currently burning through stocks of difficult-to-replenish missile defense interceptors to shield Israel.'
Time Magazine
19 hours ago
- Business
- Time Magazine
10 Ways AI Can Support Remote Workers
This article is published by a partner of TIME. By Su Guillory It's become impossible to ignore the impact and potential of artificial intelligence. It's now become a tool we use to organize our lives, do research, and entertain ourselves. Every day, we're discovering new ways AI can make our lives easier and more productive. That goes for remote workers and digital nomads as well. Whether you do your work on a beach in Bali or take video calls while traipsing from one European country to another, AI can be of great use to you as an employee or business owner. Why AI? If you're resistant to allowing this technology to lend you a hand, you might want to reconsider. As a digital nomad, you may occasionally find it difficult to put the same focus on your work while traveling that you do while in the office, but AI doesn't miss a beat. It helps you sustain your business even when you're out-of-pocket. AI also helps you reduce the time spent on repetitive tasks, such as email replies, data entry, or content repurposing. It allows you to serve more clients without taking on more work. And as a citizen of the world, you can also serve clients in other countries without being fluent in their language. 10 Ways AI Can Help Remote Workers 1. Translate Content If you're a digital nomad or working abroad, even if you're fluent in the local language, you may not be well-versed in business or technical terms. Or you may want to offer your services to the local community, and in that case, you'll need to translate documents and marketing materials. Tools like Google Translate and DeepL use neural machine translation (NMT) and large language models (LLM) to translate images and text. You can take a photo with your phone and get the image's text instantly translated, or upload a file through your desktop. 2. Schedule Across Time Zones It can be a pain to try to calculate what time it is in your client's time zone, especially with different daylight saving time schedules. Use an AI calendar tool like Clockwise to find times that work for everyone you need to meet with. You can also add Focus Time when you need to concentrate on your work and not get scheduled for calls with others on your team. 3. Automate Customer Support Rather than hiring a customer service representative for your company, use an AI chatbot to serve your customers, even when you're out of the office. Today's chatbots can do a lot. You can feed them answers to frequently asked questions or set them up to process returns. Most customer issues can be resolved this way, which can cut down on the amount of human interaction needed. 4. Streamline Client Communications If you find yourself writing the same emails over and over again, AI tools like Gmail's built-in compose window can draft emails you can modify. Or you can create templates to respond to common questions your clients or coworkers ask. You can also install AI Mail Assistant to create personalized responses, translate your emails, and correct errors. 5. Learn a Language the Smart Way If Duolingo isn't cutting it in helping you get fluent in a language fast, try an AI-powered language learning tool like Speak. It provides conversation opportunities, and it adapts as you learn. The tool will create a personalized curriculum that helps you reach your learning goals faster. 6. Be a Better Writer In today's business world, flawless grammar and syntax are a there's no excuse for errors with AI! Grammarly can be installed as a plugin you can use with Windows, Google Drive, and even your phone. It corrects your mistakes and makes suggestions for better content. ChatGPT offers a way to polish your writing. Paste what you've written, and the tool can smooth awkward transitions, modify the tone to better fit your audience, or optimize for SEO. You can also take one piece of content—a blog post, for example—and turn it into multiple other types of content, such as a LinkedIn post or an X update. 7. Make Meetings Less Painful Staying connected with your team likely means countless video meetings. You already know that sometimes when you pause to take notes, you miss important information on the call. AI Meeting Notes auto-joins calls on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet and even takes notes so you can focus on the call. It also automatically creates action items from the call. If you miss a meeting, you can get a 30-second recap. 8. Never Miss a Deadline If your digital nomad lifestyle involves heavy travel, you run the risk of missing a deadline or letting something slip through the cracks. AI tools like Motion take over task planning. The tool prioritizes your most important tasks and helps you balance your workload to ensure you meet deadlines. 9. Research Faster Artificial intelligence is even changing how we research for our work. Rather than Googling a question and then sifting through the results, AI tools like can do the heavy lifting for you. Input a query and you'll get an in-depth response on whatever it is you're researching. It's a great way to get data on your competitors, market, customer behaviors, and trends. 10. Close More Deals If you're an entrepreneur who sells online, you can automate the sales process with AI-driven customer relationship management software. For example, ActiveCampaign can automate workflows and communications so that a lead at the top of your funnel is more likely to buy from you. It uses intelligent segmentation and predictive sending to make sure that every message is sent at the right time to the right audience. Harness the Power of AI for Remote Work These are just a few examples of the myriad AI-powered tools for work. Find the ones that make you more productive, and get back to enjoying that nomadic life. Related Articles: About the Author: Su Guillory is an expat coach and business content creator. She supports women who want to move to Italy. Su has been published on AllBusiness, Forbes, SoFi, Lantern, Nav, and more, and writes about entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, and living as an expat in Italy.
Time Magazine
a day ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Why Trump May Ignore 80 Years of U.S. Regime Change Mistakes
This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME's politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. Donald Trump expected his first face-to-face meeting with Barack Obama would be all of '10 or 15 minutes.' After all, the pair had spent years circling each other, trading barbs from afar and using the other's political movement as a blend of punching bag and strawman. The mutual enmity was hardly a secret; Obama's trolling of Trump at a White House correspondents' dinner set in motion the New Yorker's serious contemplation of Redemption By White House Win. [time-brightcove not-tgx='true'] The 2016 summit between the President-elect and the incumbent ended up going 90 minutes, during which North Korea was, to Trump's mind, the big takeaway. (Obama's team recalled the conversation differently.) The message was pretty clear: that rogue nation was one of the biggest problems Trump was inheriting as he rose to power after the 2016 election. The election clearly did not go as Obama had hoped so he had this one set piece to convey to his successor just how fraught the situation on the Korean Peninsula was, and how any misstep could be fatal to millions. The outgoing President's concern was that Trump, or some of his top advisers, might want to try to swap regimes. But history is lined with examples why these trades have never gone as planned. And Obama wanted to convey the risks of both a nuclear-armed free agent and a country decapitated without a clear next step. Obama hated the threat of a nuclear North Korea but also understood how things might escalate in some pretty terrible ways if unchecked emotions and amateur gut sense took over. Maybe—despite his own instincts—Trump understood that regime change was not compatible with this worldview. Instead, he courted the North Koreans and broke a half century of protocol in visiting with the reclusive regime's chief. In fact, as a candidate, and even well before that, Trump resisted any suggestion of intervention. That positioning helped Trump remake the Republican Party by elevating its isolationist wing. It's why the current moment is such a challenge for Trump: Israel's strikes on Iran lure dreams of a time after an Ayatollah runs the Islamic Republic. But dreams can easily turn into nightmares, and this particular lullaby is more than a little discordant. 'Regime change' has become shorthand in national-security circles the same way 'nation building' and 'mission accomplished' have devolved from well-considered policy goals into collapsed folly. U.S. intervention into foreign nations' governance in pursuit of friendlier—if not less-lethal—regimes has proven a loser. In recent years, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya have all provided proof of the model's overly optimistic lens on the map. Going back in the post-World War II era, history has shown the United States very capable at both toppling governments and then promptly getting the sequel disastrously wrong. For every regime change at the hands of Americans that went well—think Adolf Hitler's exit from Germany and Benito Mussolini from Italy—there are multitudes that went off the rails: six overt attempts during the Cold War and another 64 in covert operations. And just about no one on the political stage this century has been more clear-eyed on that reality than Trump. Dating to his days as a celebrity host of a reality show, Trump hated foreign adventurism, although he did tell Howard Stern he supported the Iraq war a month before Congress voted on it. After launching his presidential bid in 2015, he campaigned endlessly against so-called 'forever wars' and creeping American meddling. He blasted decisions to engage beyond U.S. borders as simply stupid. He called regime change a dangerous precedent that violated sovereignty and wasted cache. For Trump, the ability to topple rivals was enough of a threat without taking it out of the safe. 'Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake, all right?' Trump said in a February 2016 debate. Months later, after he won election but before he took office, Trump seemed to redouble his skepticism of the military's reach into other governments. 'We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn't be involved with,' the President-elect said in December of 2016. There's a reason why regime change has been a non-starter. Democrats hated it when George W. Bush tried it, particularly with Iraq. Republicans hated the blowback they faced for Bush's errors. Independents loathed the fallout. Swing-state voters hated that their kids were sent onto battlefields they didn't understand. Fiscal conservatives hated the costs. Fiscal liberals hated the opportunity costs. In Iraq alone, 4,000 Americans and 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives. Trump gets that. He may not have a grasp on the nuances of the foreign policy but he certainly gets the zeitgeist. And, as has been the case for two decades, the patience for a thrust beyond U.S. borders is limited. Want proof? Look at the post-WW2 landscape. South Korea, Greece, and Syria all fell to U.S. meddling before 1950 even got here. Burma, Egypt, Iraq, Guatemala, Indonesia, Syria (again), Cambodia, and Cuba all followed. Far-flung efforts in the Dominican Republic, Laos, Brazil, Chile, Ethiopia, Bolivia, Afghanistan, and even Poland followed. Grenada, Panama, and Haiti left U.S. administrations in the political muck. Vietnam was the biggest catastrophe to most Americans' memories. Put in the crudest terms, the United States is really good at ignoring what Washington has coined the Pottery Barn Rule: you break it, you own it. Yes, we can break a whole lot, and have. But the United States does not exactly have total control over what it knocks off the shelf. Which brings us back to Iran, which sits dangerously close to the ledge's edge. In public comments, Trump is being very cagey about what he does next. 'I may do it, I may not do it, nobody knows what I'm going to do,' Trump said Wednesday about the prospect of launching an air strike on an Iranian nuclear facility. Read more: A New Middle East Is Unfolding Before Our Eyes Yet undermining that cautiousness is Trump's apparent acceptance of Israel's view that Iran is racing toward building a nuclear weapon. That assessment is at odds with the U.S. intelligence community's view, which remains consistent that that's not the case. 'I don't care what she said,' Trump said on Tuesday, referring to recent testimony of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard that Iran isn't actively trying to build a bomb. Trump may have been brutal about Bush getting the intel wrong on Iraq, but it seems he may not have learned the risks of rushing into the mix with incomplete or manipulated facts. Trump is, at his core, a gut-driven figure who has proven adept at finding voices that confirm his instinct—and banishing those who challenge it. Trump might despise the existing regime in Tehran, but he also does not want to be left with another shattered nation in that region with little more than epoxy as a plan. Yet even members of his own base fear he may be about to do just that, dragging the country into the very kind of boondoggle he won office by denouncing and abandoning the isolationism that he inserted into the GOP's new DNA. Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter.
Time Magazine
a day ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Exclusive: Iranian Nobel Laureate Narges Mohammadi Calls for Israel-Iran Ceasefire
Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi has long fought for freedom and human rights, even at the expense of her own. With her country now at war with Israel, Mohammadi called on her fellow activists to band together and call for a ceasefire. In an exclusive message to TIME from Iran, Mohammadi said that the outbreak of war, which began in the early morning of June 13, has forced millions of Iranians to leave their homes and caused damages to 'critical national infrastructure,' compounding an economic crisis its citizens already bore the brunt of. Mohammadi herself has left Tehran. 'The scale of destruction already resembles that of a months-long conflict,' Mohammadi writes. Mohammadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 for her women's rights advocacy in Iran. She is known for helping imprisoned activists, leading a campaign against the death penalty, and openly criticizing the Iranian regime's use of torture and sexualized violence. She has been arrested several times for her work, and sentenced to more than 36 years. Mohammadi was in prison when she became the Nobel Prize recipient in 2023, but she was furloughed in December 2024 for medical reasons. Mohammadi called on other Nobel laureates 'to use all your individual, collective, and institutional capacities to amplify the call of 'No to War' and support our urgent plea for a ceasefire and an end to this war.' Earlier, Mohammadi told the BBC that she could possibly return to prison for speaking publicly against the war, but she said she's ' not worried.' Mohammadi, alongside fellow Nobel laureate Shirin Ehbadi and other prominent Iranian voices, wrote an op-ed earlier this week demanding a halt to Iran's uranium enrichment program and an end to the attacks. Israel launched an attack on Iran saying it intends to stop the country from achieving the capability of producing a nuclear weapon. Hundreds are believed to have been killed in the strikes on Iran, which has retaliated by firing missiles into Israel, killing at least 24. Read Mohammadi's full statement below. To the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, Human Rights Orgs, people of the world peace lovers, I urge you to take action to stop the war between Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Six days have passed since the beginning of this horrific war. The violence is accelerating at a devastating pace, and the scale of destruction already resembles that of a months-long conflict. The growing fear that Israel may attack the Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities adds terrifying uncertainty to the war. Millions of Iranian citizens have fled their homes. Amid crushing economic hardship and soaring inflation, they are unable to afford basic daily expenses and have sought refuge in other cities. The targeting of critical national infrastructure, the rising number of casualties, and the threat to evacuate the capital, Tehran, are deeply alarming. I call on you—Nobel Peace Prize laureates—to use all your individual, collective, and institutional capacities to amplify the call of 'No to War' and support our urgent plea for a ceasefire and an end to this war. Let us rise together to form a united, global front for the right to peace. The scope of war expands by the day. Its fire will not remain confined to the lands directly involved—it will cross borders and engulf the entire world. War casts a dark shadow over humanity's future—a darkness that cannot easily be erased from the eyes of humankind. Let us stand together—loudly, clearly—for peace and for an end to war.
