For decades, David Boies has been one of the most renowned and impactful lawyers in America. He represented Al Gore in the legal battles over the 2000 Presidential election, and he was a lead attorney in the case that overturned California’s Proposition 8, which had banned gay marriage in the state. In more recent years, however, Boies has been embroiled in controversy after representing Harvey Weinstein and the fraudulent blood-testing company Theranos (while serving on its board of directors). Boies is still arguing cases, including one last year that led to a four-hundred-and-twenty-five-million-dollar judgment against Google for unlawful user tracking.

Last week, Boies wrote an op-ed about the war in Iran for the Wall Street Journal. In the piece, Boies, a Democrat, argues passionately in favor of the war, and scolds people—mainly other Democrats—for, in his mind, letting their dislike of President Trump affect their opinion of attacking Iran. As he writes, “If we believe that Iran presents a serious threat, we need to support the president on this issue. There’s plenty to disagree with him about, and we don’t need to like or admire him. But on Iran we should be on common ground.”

I recently spoke by phone with Boies. Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.

You’re known as one of the most famous lawyers in America. Why did you feel it was important to support the war with Iran in the pages of the Wall Street Journal?

I thought that we were tending to approach the war more in terms of where we stood politically and how we felt about the current Administration than the merits of the conflict. When I was younger, people used to say that politics stopped at the water’s edge. While that was never really true completely, I thought it was an important aspirational goal.

In the piece, you write that what is “particularly troubling for our country, is opposition rooted simply in antipathy toward Mr. Trump himself . . . for most of our history we have given the president the benefit of the doubt.” Can you talk about that?

Sure. When North Korea invaded South Korea, we’d just come out of the Second World War. Everybody was weary of war. Everybody was embracing peace. Nobody wanted to send American soldiers back into battle. And while the war was politically unpopular, and probably cost Truman the opportunity to run for another term in office, both political parties supported that conflict, and they supported Truman necessarily.

This war was started by a President who frequently seems unstable, who can’t lay out a clear reason for the war, and who makes vague threats against our allies. We have a Secretary of War who seems to delight in death and destruction. The White House X feed is putting out fascistic video edits of military attacks that delight in violence. How do you synthesize all that with the point you’re trying to make?

Sure. I think you’ve got to begin by asking yourself, Do you believe that this war is necessary or not? And I think you’ve got to begin by asking yourself, first, Do you believe it’s acceptable for the Iranian regime to have nuclear weapons and the capacity to deliver them? If you believe that, then the next question you have to ask yourself is: Could we have achieved that goal of eliminating the threat that Iran poses by some other means?

You were not a fan of the deal President Obama’s Administration made in 2015, I gather?

I was not. And the reason I was not is that I did not trust the Iranian regime. And, if you believe that they are as big a threat to America as they can be, then I believe you have to conclude that you need to prevent them from having nuclear weapons.

President Trump did say that we destroyed their nuclear-enrichment facilities less than a year ago.

Right. And if I believed everything President Trump said I might have voted differently in the last election.

So we shouldn’t trust him saying that he destroyed the Iranian nuclear program a year ago, but it is worth embarking on this larger war that he is leading.

But see—my view is I don’t support him in this conflict because he says it’s the right thing to do. I support him because I think it’s the right thing to do.

It just seems like it’s not clear what he’s doing. His Administration has laid out a number of different reasons for the war. Sometimes it is about nuclear weapons. Sometimes not. And it seems like President Trump could keep this going for a very long time. It also seems like he could pull the plug at any minute and decide that the war is over. So it’s very hard to separate the means from the ends, since we don’t know what the ends are. And the means, in terms of civilian casualties and negative effects on the global economy, seem quite perilous.

Well, I think you have to separate out civilian casualties from the economics. I mean, neither is desirable, obviously, but in terms of the economic impact war always has a terrible economic impact. I think that the economic dislocation of this conflict is probably going to be less than most of the major conflicts that we’ve engaged in. But one of the reasons war is terrible is not only the human casualties but the economic cost. But I don’t believe that that can be a reason not to use military force when you otherwise conclude it is essential for national security.

Right, when you say it’s an existential threat, then I would understand that, but it seems like even the Trump Administration is not clear that they want to make that claim. I mean, sometimes they do, but it’s confusing.

Well, you see, I start from the proposition that Iran cannot afford to have nuclear weapons and the capacity to deliver those weapons to American cities.

I don’t believe they could do so today, because I believe if they could have done so today, rather than hit Abu Dhabi and Oman, they would be hitting New York and Miami. And what we have seen in the last month, in terms of Iran’s response, is that their capacity with ballistic missiles has expanded much more rapidly than I think anybody expected.

Trump declared that we destroyed one hundred per cent of Iran’s “military capability.”

I don’t have the intelligence briefing to know whether that’s true or not. I think that one of the things that concerns me is that he may simply declare victory and stop too soon. And one of the reasons that I wrote the article that I did is that I don’t want political pressure on him to stop before–

We need to give him some runway.

You know, I don’t know how much runway he thinks he has.

That’s what I mean. It seems like it’s important for him to have enough to finish the job.

Yes. That’s my view.

Just thinking this through, you said you’re worried that Trump could stop the war too soon. If, in fact, he does just quit, and America doesn’t accomplish what you want it to accomplish, but there is an economic hit, there are people who’ve died, then that seems like one reason to not support the war.

Well, if you knew that he was going to stop before he finished the job, I think it would be a complicated question, because, while he may not have destroyed everything in Iran at this point, he has certainly set the regime back a long time. And so I think that even if he were to stop now I believe he will have accomplished something, and what I would hope is that people think about this, think about what this means to our country, think about what this means to the future of our country, and they would give him the support that would encourage him to finish the job.

Right, so we should sort of be egging him on. I know that’s a cheap phrase. But we need to make sure he’s got the wind in his sails to keep going.

Exactly. I think that’s fair.

Does it worry you at all that we may find ourselves in the position of egging on an authoritarian figure who is engaged in a war that he started? It just doesn’t quite sit right with me.

One of the things about democracies is that the person that you support doesn’t always get elected, but the person who gets elected is nevertheless your President. And, while I think that part of democracy is opposing things that you disapprove of, part of democracy is supporting our elected officials, regardless of whether they are the same party, regardless of whether you agree with them generally, when they are making decisions that you support. I think that we’ve got to find common ground. We have got to get back to the point where we can support people that we oppose.

I mentioned the White House posting fascistic video edits of strikes on Iran and the things Pete Hegseth says about killing people. Something just feels wrong about egging them on.

I would rather that we had a Department of Defense rather than the Department of War. I believe that this is a conflict that is important to our defense.

There was an American strike that killed at least a hundred and seventy-five people, many of them Iranian schoolgirls. The U.S. government denied this for a long time. The President himself is still denying it. It doesn’t take someone supersmart to realize that Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth do not care that much about the fact that an American strike killed a bunch of Iranian schoolgirls. I’m curious how you synthesize that with your larger feelings about the war.

Sure. Well, first, nobody can feel comfortable with civilian casualties.

No one outside of the Administration, you mean?

I don’t even think . . . I really don’t think that Donald Trump doesn’t care about civilian casualties.

Sir, you’re a very, very smart guy. You don’t think Donald Trump actually cares about casualties, do you?

Look, I actually do, O.K.? In his first Administration, in 2019, when he turned back the bombers from hitting Iran, I think he did that because I do think he genuinely cares about human life. Now that doesn’t mean that he respects human life the way I would.

It’s a sliding scale.

But, if we bomb that school, and I agree with you that I think the evidence is that we did, I don’t think it serves us well to deny it.

On the other hand, I do understand that in wartime people say a lot of things that are untrue to support their side. We’ve done that repeatedly in every war we fought. Now, with respect to civilian casualties, it is a terrible cost of war, and it is an inevitable cost of war. And, by my count, the civilian casualties that have been incurred are far less than the civilian casualties that this Iranian regime caused in suppressing the protests.

These aren’t in competition with each other, right? They’re both bad independently.

Exactly right.

You said it’s possible that Trump does, in fact, really care about civilian casualties, but he’s not going to say it right now. I hadn’t thought of that.

Think of how many lies our government has told us, not just in Vietnam but in Korea and the Second World War.

I’m also thinking of Pete Hegseth gleefully talking about the Iranian warship that we sunk in the Indian Ocean. It does seem like they’re gleeful about death. And also, just knowing what I know about Donald Trump, it makes me wonder how much these things really hurt him emotionally.

Well, I don’t know. I do know Donald Trump some. I’ve known him for decades. And I think that he would be better served by being willing to recognize some of the costs here, but I believe he respects human life. And I think this is a President who, despite renaming the Department of Defense, really doesn’t like war.

Sure.

War interferes with all the things that he is in favor of.

He might like exerting power.

But I don’t think he wants to exercise that kind of power.

Have you talked to Trump about this war recently?

I have not. I have not spoken to him since he was elected.

After Minneapolis and the way he responded to death there, it’s hard for me to believe he cares too much about human life.

I am not defending the killing of civilians in Minnesota by masked government agents carrying assault weapons.

In the piece, you also wrote that you “deplore” the “fringes of both parties that apparently hate Israel and Jews so much that they oppose any action to neutralize Israel’s enemies.” Should the role of the American military and the American government be to take actions to neutralize Israel’s enemies? There are certainly antisemites in the world, but it seemed weird to complain about Americans not wanting a massive war if one of the reasons was to neutralize Israel’s enemies.

I was not clear. My point was not that we should conduct this war to eliminate antisemitism. My point was that, in terms of the opposition to the war, I could understand people who were opposed to it. But they were so opposed to Israel that anything that happened to dismantle Israel’s enemies was something that they opposed. I do think that Israel is an important ally of the United States. I personally am a supporter of Israel.

You had a controversy with an Israeli intelligence firm, right?

Yeah, right. Exactly. [Ronan Farrow reported in The New Yorker in 2017 that, while representing Harvey Weinstein, Boies hired Black Cube, an Israeli intelligence firm staffed by former Mossad officers. He instructed the company to spy on Weinstein’s accusers and reporters who were looking into Weinstein’s behavior, including reporters for another client of his, the New York Times.]

I don’t believe this war is being fought to protect Israel. I believe this war is being fought to protect the United States.

Were you at all worried by the reporting that seemed to show President Trump hadn’t really considered or even cared that Iran might block the Strait of Hormuz?

I have not entirely kept up on all the reports, but have they said that the Trump Administration didn’t consider the Iranian government were going to shut the strait?

The military brought it up as a possibility, and Trump waved it off and said it’ll be fine.

I think that if we thought that they were not going to close the strait I believe that was a reflection, had to be a reflection, of not appreciating how far Iran’s military capacity had developed. [The Wall Street Journal reported that after being warned about the war’s risk to global oil prices Trump assured his advisers that the American military could handle it.]

I think you’ve also highlighted in this conversation that there’s a difference between liking President Trump or supporting him or voting for him, and putting your faith in him to execute this operation.

Right. And it’s even different from asking, If we were going to prosecute this war, would I want it prosecuted by Donald Trump or Harry Truman? Or Donald Trump or Lyndon Johnson? I didn’t pick Donald Trump as my President, but he is my President. ♦