The Role Of Diplomacy In The War With Iran

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Hi, it's Jen.

Just a quick heads up before we start this show.

The news is rapidly changing and things may have changed

by the time you hear this episode.

So stay up to date with all the latest

by listening to your local NPR member station

and by visiting npr.org.

Fighting in the Middle East continues to escalate.

More than 1,300 civilians in Iran have been killed

since the start of the US and Israel's war against the country.

That's according to Iran's UN envoy.

13 US service members are confirmed dead,

and the number of injured troops now exceeds 200

across seven countries, a US military spokesman

shared that on Monday.

Meanwhile, Iran has largely closed the Strait of Hormuz,

one of the world's most important shipping lanes.

President Trump is now calling on allies

to send warships to protect merchant vessels,

few have responded.

That points to a significant challenge

as the US spites this war.

Our international ties are not what they once were.

Over the last year, thousands of career diplomats

were reassigned or let go, more than 80

ambassadorial posts are vacant,

and significant institutional memory has been lost.

The career diplomats who are left

have largely been sidelined by President Trump's reliance

on special unvoiced Steve Whitkopf

and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

So today, we ask what happens

when the institutions met to prevent war are gutted?

And in times of war, what does that loss

of experience and expertise mean

for finding a pathway to peace?

I'm Jen White.

You're listening to the 1A podcast.

We'll be back with more after this short break.

Stay with us.

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Welcome back and let's dive into our conversation

and meet our guests.

Joining us today is Akbar Shahid Ahmed.

He's Senior Diplomatic Correspondent at Huff Post.

He's also author of the forthcoming book,

Crossing the Red Line, Biden, His Advisors,

and Israel's War in Gaza.

Akbar, it's great to have you back.

Thanks for having me, John.

Also with us, Aaron David Miller.

He's a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment

for International Peace, focusing on US foreign policy.

He's also a former State Department

in Middle East analyst and negotiator.

Aaron, thank you for joining us.

Thank you, Jen, for having me.

And, treat up Parcy.

He's co-founder and executive vice president

of the Quincy Institute for Responsible State Craft.

Treat a welcome to one A.

Thank you so much for having me.

And we want to hear from you.

What questions do you have about current diplomatic efforts

to end the US's war against Iran and the negotiations

that occurred in the lead up to the conflict?

If you've worked in diplomacy,

we'd love to hear from you as well.

Send us an email at 1a at wamu.org.

So Akbar, let's start with the latest overnight.

Israel says it killed a top Iranian security official

and the head of the revolutionary guards,

all volunteer, besiege force, and a targeted strike.

Iran hasn't confirmed those claims,

but what are diplomats and governments doing today

to try to keep this crisis from escalating further?

There's already concerned, Jen, from veteran regional watchers

and former US diplomats,

importantly, that killing Laryjani

while he was someone blamed for Iranian repression,

certainly seen as a hardliner,

is not going to make Iran more conducive to come

from the negotiating table.

If anything, it will potentially make more hardliners,

even more powerful.

So what I'm hearing this morning,

talking to people kind of inside and close to US

government sources is the hopes for diplomacy

are not rising, and certainly the diplomatic expertise

that is in there to kind of deal with Iran

on a technical level to look at the broader strategic picture.

That's still not being tapped by President Trump and his aides.

And importantly, we're also seeing upheaval increasingly

inside the Trump administration.

So you've actually seen the head of the National Counterterrorism

Center quit today over the war in Iran,

which kind of points to this question of who is really leading

the charge within the administration

where we don't have professionals.

So when you have this absence of diplomatic expertise

and experience and the diplomatic efforts fail,

who feels it first?

Is it civilians in the region?

Akbar, is it US troops?

Is it the global markets?

Where do we see that show up?

Well, certainly the president has indicated

that global markets are top of mind for him, right?

And the Iranians have not come out and sort of said

that the Trump White House may even be leaking

alleged details of diplomatic contacts

to influence oil markets.

That's a big claim from the Iranian government that came yesterday.

So we don't know who the Trump administration is counting on,

but we do know that it's increasingly,

as you say, leaning on troops, sending more troops

into the region and kind of floating these wild ideas

of taking over an island off the coast of Iran,

Kark Island, that's important to that oil industry.

But what I hope people can understand, Janice,

is that it's not just a matter of experts focused on Iran.

At this point, this is a regional war.

And what we've seen from the Trump administration

is they've removed ambassadors across the region,

the additional war in the region

that's very linked to any dealing with Iran, Lebanon.

They don't have any indication of tapping the expertise

that's for a very complicated situation there.

The president yesterday said he doesn't have an indication

of an off-ramp for Lebanon

or doesn't really seem to care about peace there.

And you're not seeing any of the kind of U.S. infrastructure

to deal with broader allies.

So Western allies in Europe,

the question of bringing in China, bringing in Russia,

bringing in India, any of these other players,

there's not that kind of tapping of the expertise

in relationships.

And again, talking to people on the inside today,

I was asking, are the professionals,

are the non-partisan professionals who do remain,

some of them still remaining,

lost to the mass firings being tapped?

And the answer was very much no.

Well, you mentioned the head of the Center for Counterterrorism's

decision to resign.

And this is from a tweet today.

After much reflection, I've decided to resign

from my position as director

of the National Counterterrorism Center Effective Today.

I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran.

Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation,

and it is clear that we started this war

due to pressure from Israel,

and it's powerful American lobby.

So there is the relationship

we're lack thereof diplomatically

in the Middle East and that region.

But as we mentioned earlier,

Iran is disrupting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

And the US has now threatened NATO members

with retaliation if they do not step up and assist

in reopening that waterway.

This comes after Spain earlier refused to allow

the US military to use its basis for attacks on Iran.

And we'll talk more about the Strait of Hormuz in a moment.

But Akbar, from the diplomat you've spoken with,

how much of the reluctance we're seeing now

is about the specifics of this war

versus the state of US relationships with allies

and how diplomacy is being handled

by this administration more broadly.

Yeah, that's absolutely a broader picture here.

I mean, Charles Kushner, for instance,

the father of Jared Kushner, the president of the Sun and Law,

is the US ambassador in France.

I mean, he's a great example of Trump appointee

who's really aggravating his interlocutors, right?

The French government has repeatedly complained about him.

And this is not someone who's taken seriously.

You look at someone that can really

give foil a master increase.

The kind of signals the Trump administration

has sent out twofold.

One is when I'll go into tap people

who might be more diplomatic, lack for better term,

more serious than these positions,

more respectful, have more senescent.

And simultaneously, it's a lot of threatening.

And there's only so much threatening you can do,

especially when you are, as the US is looking at this moment,

increasingly looking like a rogue actor, right?

The US initiated this war.

The US has initiated the choice to drive up oil prices,

create energy chaos, and importantly,

for these European countries for traditional allies,

the US appears to be helping Russia,

which they've been very concerned about with the Ukraine war,

in a lot of ways, Trump is easing sanctions on Russian oil.

So from the standpoint of American traditional allies,

there's not a lot of reason to have faith

or buy-in in Washington.

Will they continue to deal with the administration

because they have to?

Absolutely, but will they endorse or supplement plans

to, for instance, reopen this trade of war moves?

I think that's looking quite unlikely.

Treeti, I want to bring you in here.

How is Tehran interpreting this moment

and the lack of a strong response supporting the US?

I think the Iranians find themselves in a conflicted situation.

On the one hand, they are taking massive hits.

The United States and Israel have bombed

a tremendous amount of their industrial base.

Their military has, to a large extent, been degraded.

On the other hand, the theocracy actually

feels itself to be stronger.

Its base has been dramatically energized

by the assassination of Ayatollah Hamine

and the replacement of him by his son,

a person who most likely would not have

become the next supreme leader had the decision

not been made during wartime.

And on the other hand, they are now finally

finding themselves in a position in which they actually have leverage.

Because of the manner in which they control

this trade of war moves, they have a tremendous amount of leverage

over the global economy.

And through that on Trump, something

that the Iranians have lacked for the last couple of years.

And as a result, I suspect that they

will try to drive a very hard bargain

in order to agree to ending the war.

This is not a war in which Trump controls

in the sense that he can decide when it ends.

Even if he were to declare victory,

it seems to me very likely that the Iranians will continue

to close the streets until they get some concessions

for agreeing to end the war as well.

Well, Aaron, I want to turn to you

and your experience in the State Department.

What does it mean that the US has fractured relationships

with allies as they confront how to fight an off-ramp

in this conflict?

I mean, I think it means a lot.

And it's great being here without burdened and treated.

Thanks again for having me.

Look, I was part of Bush 41 and 43.

You had arguably two wars of choice.

They may have argued necessity.

In the first Gulf War, the administration

spent four months getting people to pay

for it, coordinating relations in the region, working

with European allies.

There was a strategy, a set of attainable goals,

and no overreach.

And in essence, that war, even though it's

been highly criticized as unfinished business,

was a success.

It led to a year of diplomacy in which the administration,

former Secretary of State James Baker

managed to get the party together at Madrid.

If you're going to war, you don't form the coalition afterwards.

You form it before.

And I think the Trump administration,

this was a war of choice.

It was launched on the basis of false and unproven intelligence

claims.

It was done without any appreciation

that the enemy, the adversary, had a vote.

And it was done without considering

any number of contingencies.

Well, we have to take a quick break.

We'll pick back up with what's

happening on the ground in the US and Israel's war in Iran

in just a moment.

This message comes from Comcast.

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at the Olympic Winter Games.

From NBC Universal's iconic storytelling

to the innovative technology across Xfinity and Peacock,

Comcast brings the Olympic Games home to America,

sharing every moment with millions.

When Team USA steps onto the world stage,

people are not just watching.

They're cheering together.

This winter, everyone's on the same team.

Comcast, proud partner of Team USA.

Let's get back to our discussion.

Now, Aaron, before the break, you

were talking about the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom

in 2003, President Bush bypassed you in authorization,

but he did enlist the support of allies in the Gulf

and across Europe, the coalition of the willing.

And as you said, this time the US is struggling

to rally allies.

If allies don't step in, what does that

mean for the potential length, the potential danger

and the expense of this war?

I think, again, Jen, I think, let me get down to what I think

the tension point is, to paraphrase Ecclesiastes,

there's a time for this, and there's a time for that.

Right now, there's not a time for diplomacy.

There's not a time for allied coordination.

There's certainly not a time for an off-rent.

And Triton makes a powerful point.

Negotiations work when, in fact, you have two parties

who are willing and able.

You do not have that.

Negotiations work when there's a sense of urgency,

and that urgency has to be shared.

I don't see a sense of shared urgency here.

Trump may want out, but the Iranians

as treated rightly points out, have leveraged.

And number three, you need an end state.

You need what I call a doable deal.

You don't have that.

You don't have it in Ukraine, courtesy with Kof and Kushner.

You don't have it between Israelis and Hamas and Gaza.

Again, another with Kof and Kushner managed negotiation.

And you do not have it between the US and Iran.

So the notion that somehow allies

are going to make a difference

in the Trump administration strategy.

You have an American president who, in the wake of Venezuela,

said to the New York Times, the only constraint that I have

is my morality, the constraints of my own mind.

This is incredibly idiosyncratic.

We've never experienced working for Republicans and Democrats

and voting for Republicans and Democrats, anything

like what you are watching play out.

And I said to Tritoff, line, people studying

international conflict, studying every war since 1815,

have concluded that the average interstate war

lasts between three to four months.

We're only three weeks into this,

and we're not looking at anything that remotely

resembles a diplomatic offering.

Well, on Monday, President Trump had this to say to NATO allies

who have refused the request for military support.

I think we have one or two that will not do it,

that we've been protecting for about 40 years.

Why are we protecting countries that don't protect us?

And I've always felt that was a weakness of NATO.

We were going to protect them.

But I always said, when in need, they won't protect us.

Now, as oil prices, skyrocket, President Trump

has launched a pressure campaign on European allies

to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

The request has largely been rebuffed

to your German defense minister Boris Pistorius

on Monday in Berlin.

It's not our war.

We didn't start it.

We want diplomatic solutions under swift end.

Now, historically, the US has built multinational naval

coalitions to protect the waterway during moments of tension.

Akbar, what are you hearing about why allies

are hesitant to answer President Trump's call this time?

I think the most important point is something

I'm just raised, which is there is no clear end game

for the Trump administration here, right?

The goals of this war have shifted from regime change

to, we want to encourage the Iranian people to rise up

to overgrading Iran's navy

and overgrading its ballistic missile capability.

It's really not clear what any other power would be signing up for.

And I'd really point people to also the rupture

in faith in the US credibility and planning that came from Gaza, right?

I mean, this is the second now major regional concentration

that the US has gone into under a non-presence from both parties

with Benjamin Netanyahu, a leader who a lot of European governments,

a lot of governments around the world,

are extremely skeptical of.

So if you're looking at the track record of the US and Netanyahu's missions,

the Gaza war has yet to conclude

and there's no sort of recourse for the two million Palestinians there

who are still living in extreme deprivation,

Lebanon again, a place where the US was helping Israel bomb less than two years ago,

is again facing bombardment and a problem is really invasion.

So if you are someone sitting in Paris, Brussels, Berlin, London,

why would you sign up for a US that's repeatedly demonstrated again

under presence of both parties that it's going to go in with Israel

and kind of lead into these rudderless missions

that don't seem to have moral or strategic bases for success?

Well, at least as to this question from Brock, who says,

I wonder, is this really a war on Iran by the US

or is it a war by Israel with the US assisting?

And we should acknowledge your act by that the messaging around

who's leading this effort hasn't been clear from the administration.

I certainly, there's been a close cooperation with these treaties.

Of course, Prime Minister Netanyahu was a major factor in encouraging President Trump

to choose to begin this war right now.

Most importantly, in convincing him that right now was the moment to go for it,

that we still haven't seen any indication of imminent threat

or a reason for the US to be put in.

All of that said, I'd encourage people to look at the broader context here

of how Israel is kind of treated the US politics.

And what I mean by that is, even in the resignation statement today

from Joe Kent, now former National Counterterrorism Center chief,

he's really pointing to finger at Israel.

He's saying President Trump got deceived by Israel.

Now, that certainly President Trump was influenced by Israel,

but the choice to go to war was his, right?

And we also see many actors.

Joe Kent has previously been associated with white nationalist, the far right.

There is, it's important to kind of look at,

look at where responsibility lies with the US

and then also who might be jumping on the narrative of,

this isn't an American war, this isn't Israeli war,

for their own domestic political gains and in China's.

Today, I love your thoughts on that as well.

I think the administration has made it quite clear in several statements,

including by Trump yesterday, that this decision would never have been made,

had it not been for the pressure coming from Israel.

Now, I agree 100% with that, but ultimately the president is responsible

for the decisions he makes, he that the box stops with him.

But take Israel out of the equation, and this war would never have happened.

Trump did not come into office with any type of an obsession to go to war with Iran.

Netanyahu has had an obsession for more than 25 years

to push the United States into a war, and he's now finally succeeded.

And I think what happened, or may have happened in the terms of the assassination

of Adi Darijani, it was a very critical figure within the Iranian Theocracy,

with intentional or not, but the effect of that killing

may very well have ended up being the destruction of some of the potential off-ramps

that Trump could have had.

Because Adi Darijani was someone that U.S. had actually engaged with before

and could potentially have engaged within the future.

But from the Israeli standpoint, any effort by Trump to end this war

in their view prematurely would be problematic.

They want this war to go on for much longer and destroy as much as possible

of Iran's military capabilities in order to shift the balance in Israel's favor.

So, again, in previous cases, there may have been some speculation

about what Israel's role was, and in this case, I think it's utterly clear.

That, however, does not take responsibility away for Trump

for having made the final decision to go into this war.

Aaron, can I jump in here for a sec?

I think Akbar's right on this that basically this is not BB's war.

And Trudas notion, I think, is also accurate.

Predecessor American President's Democrats and Republicans,

rebuffed Israeli more risk readiness when it came to Iran.

But Trump was an idiosyncratic figure.

And the notion that somehow a crafter clever Israeli Prime Minister

con Donald Trump into war, I think, frankly, misses the point.

It is Trump's idiosyncrasies, not Benjamin Netanyahu's pressures

that explain why we are where we are.

And when you say idiosyncrasies, what do you mean specifically?

I mean, Trump operates outside the lines, both in terms of what,

of his domestic policies and his foreign policies.

He thinks, in large part, about conflating his own personal financial

and political interests with the national interests.

We've never had a president like that before.

In June, Benjamin Netanyahu offered Trump a piece of history.

The first American president, the only one,

Republican or Democrat, to strike Iranian nuclear sites

without cost or consequence.

And on February 23, during that famous phone call,

when Netanyahu said we have information

that Supreme Leader Ali Hamani and members

of the clerical establishment and numerous national security,

Iranian national security officials were gathered in place

or would be a date time date cert.

He offered Netanyahu another piece of history,

and excuse me, Trump and Trump,

who in January encouraged demonstrators

by saying, help is on the way, seize your institutions,

will hit them hard, then mobilize the largest deployment

of American missile and naval power since the Iran war,

since the Iraq war.

And then, because Witkov and Kushner,

I think, reported back that, in essence,

Iran was not interested in an off-rap.

Trump was going to war for all of his own reasons.

I think Netanyahu made it easier for him.

This is a good moment to remind ourselves

before the U.S. and Israel struck Iran.

There were negotiations in Oman and Switzerland.

And as those talks were happening,

the U.S. was building its military presence in the region.

So Akbar, what is your read of whether those talks

were a serious attempt to avoid conflict or something else?

I do think that President Trump and some of the people around him

have expressed a pretty serious desire

to cut a deal with Iran.

He certainly sees that as something that could differentiate him.

He wants a better deal than President Barack Obama

got from Iran.

All of that said, the way that those negotiations

went and really undercut any chance of success.

So they didn't bring in people who had

the technical expertise to talk to the Iranians.

They didn't bring in people who had history.

And on the Iranians side, of course,

you had people who had been doing these talks

for, in some cases, upwards of 20 years.

I mean, so you really are looking at a U.S.

Iran dynamic that was extremely difficult.

All of that, again, coming with deep distrust in President Trump

after his being someone who had assassinated

the Iranian military commander, Krasim Selimani,

and as Sam said, Prime Minister Netanyahu

had a huge influence over him.

So there wasn't a lot of trust.

I think the Trump administration wanted quick results.

And when they didn't get quick results

and their definition of really quite total capitulation

from Iran, they weren't willing to pursue it further

or look at what a middle ground compromise could be.

So that's very much their responsibility.

Treaty or thought?

Look, I think these were not serious negotiations

in the sense that there was a search for a serious compromise.

Akbar is right.

This was a search for Iranian capitulation.

And this, again, I think, was an outcome

of the manner in which the Israelis had very effectively played

Trump's psychology, telling him,

the Iranians are so weak.

This is the most weak point that they've had since 1979.

You have the opportunity to just get rid of this regime

or to get them to complete it,

capitulate, don't strike a compromise.

Doesn't matter if it's better than Obama's deal or not.

And Trump went in to these talks with Admin said,

so they were not really negotiations.

They were just checking in every two or three weeks

to see, are the Iranians ready to capitulate?

But capitulation was never in the cards.

And as a result, he ended up going to war,

but now that same war is being turned into a debacle

because he, again, is expecting capitulation, not realizing

that the Iranians fear surrender far more than this fear war.

They can even afford to lose the war,

but they can never afford a surrender.

I'm talking about the specific theocracy here,

whose base will never forgive them

if they actually surrender in this war.

And so what is being over?

Well, some supporters of the administration argue

that Trump's unconventional diplomacy

relying on personal envoys

and leader-to-leader relationships

can actually break diplomatic log jams.

When is that an effect of approach?

Sorry, I didn't quite understand the question, as well.

So some supporters of the administration

say that Trump, yes, he has an unconventional approach

to diplomacy.

He relies on these personal envoys.

People like Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner.

But that can be effective

when you're talking about leader-to-leader relationships.

Do you see that ever as an effect of strategy?

It can be effective at various times,

but the entire manner in which this diplomacy has gone forward

with no technical team, no real understanding

of these technical issues.

There's some reporting that's going to come out

that's going to show that actually Steve Whitkoff

and Kushner didn't quite understand

some of these proposals.

Part of the reason why the Omani Foreign Minister

decided to travel to Washington himself,

to try to lay this out into Trump,

but failed to get a meeting with them

and instead did it so with JD Vance.

So obviously, on little circumstances,

this is not going to be effective.

The way that some of the approaches of Trump

at times could be useful is that

they're willing to break with certain conventions

and they're willing to break with certain deadlocks

that have existed in U.S. foreign policy.

And at times that can be helpful,

but it can never get you across the finishing line

if you don't have the right diplomats in place,

if you don't have the expertise,

if you don't have any of these different things,

but from their standpoint,

I don't think that was a problem

because they were not looking for a technical compromise.

They were just looking for Iran's surrender.

More on the role of diplomacy in times of war

after this short break, stay with us.

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Let's get back to our conversation

about what diplomacy can and can't do in the middle of a war.

A treat I wanna pick up with something you mentioned

before the break.

You're expecting reporting to come out that Steve Whitkopf

and Jared Kushner didn't understand

some of the fundamentals about Iran

and about the deal that was offered.

Can you give us a more insight?

Yes, you had a situation in which,

for instance, American negotiators

didn't quite understand what the Tehran research react to.

It's a reactor actually given to the Iranians in 1968

that is used to produce medical isotopes for cancer patients.

They thought it was actually an enrichment plan.

They didn't understand that this is a reactor.

It's not something that enriches uranium.

And when the Iranians try to explain that to them,

they just got more suspicious and felt

that the Iranians were trying to dupe them.

So when you have that kind of a,

not even basic understanding of some of the technicalities of it,

then it's very difficult to be able to reach

an agreement that both sides will understand,

not just wrecking it, but understand is quite favorable.

And what the proposal on the table was

in the last round of negotiations

was that the Iranians would not even have any stockpile

of an enriched uranium.

In the 2015 JCPOA that the Obama administration negotiated,

the Iranians would restrict their stockpile of uranium

of an enriched uranium to 300 kilos.

You need 1200 kilos to build a bomb.

The Iranians would only have up to 300

on their own soil at any point.

But in this proposal, they would go down to zero.

They would not have any stockpile,

which means that it's virtually impossible

for them to build a nuclear weapon.

They would only enrich for two purposes,

one for a reactor that is not even online

for another seven years.

And the other one was this Terran Research Reactor.

It just happens to be that that reactor

already has fuel pass for the next five to seven years.

So essentially, for the remainder of Trump's presidency,

there would be no enrichment taking place

at all on Iranians.

So this is a massive win.

Trump could have easily declared victory

instead he chose to declare war.

As far as you wanted to get in here.

I just wanted to note, I think it actually speaks

to treat us worried about this prospect of success

that Trump had.

Something else that gets to the seriousness of whether the US

was ever going to reach a deal with Iran

in these kind of months preceding the war

is Trump did nothing to create any kind of public consensus

or interest around diplomacy with Iran.

So the last time I wasn't around nuclear deal,

during the Obama administration,

they spent months and months overcoming

what is a really strong domestic constituency

opposed to any diplomacy with Iran.

Donald Trump didn't do that,

and really importantly, Joe Biden didn't do that.

So when you have a culture that very much sees Iran

as a big regional enemy,

that's been very much to thinking within military circles,

within Congress, and of course from supporters of many in Israel,

when you have that whole apparatus that still exists,

you really need to take that tackle that head on

if you're going to lead to a deal.

Instead, and I think this is still complicating

any prospect of diplomatic off-ramp,

Trump has never been out here saying,

and so this is why I want Republicans and Democrats

to unite with me in supporting this kind of effort.

In fact, just yesterday you saw the House pass

overwhelmingly with huge democratic support

to new sanctions against Iran, right?

So if you're looking at any kind of deal

with this level of a regional bokeh man,

you need to do groundwork.

The Trump administration declined to do that,

and in that they were following the footsteps

of the prior administration that I argue

really helped bring us this point, the Biden administration.

Well, we got this comment from Jerry,

who says, I'm concerned by the thoughts

that just because someone is good in business

does not make them a great diplomatic negotiator.

What we have is Mr. Whitkopf and Mr. Kushner,

essentially a couple of real estate dealers

traveling around the world to try to make deals

that is not how diplomacy works.

We also got this email from Stephanie in Washington, DC.

I recently left the State Department

after more than 20 years of working in conflicts

and crises around the world, but mostly in the Middle East.

My colleagues who are still at state are demoralized

because they know nothing they do to mitigate the crisis

will matter because it can all be offended by a 2am tweet.

Also having recently returned from an international conference,

I've seen firsthand that Americans are toxic right now,

regardless of their own political views or sector.

Diplomacy requires credibility

and we're running a vast deficit and credibility right now

in both international affairs,

as well as among our own staff.

Well, on Sunday, President Trump warned he's not ready

to seek a deal to end the US-Israeli war against Iran.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Iraqi responded

that Tehran sees no reason to negotiate with the US

and will continue fighting for as long as it takes.

Aaron, you've spent decades involved in Middle East negotiations

and your experience, what has to happen

before leaders decide they're ready to negotiate

in the middle of a war?

I mean, there's very little evidence, frankly.

If you look back the last 50 or 60 years of US diplomacy,

you could count on one hand the number

of consequential agreements that brokered conflict

in which the United States actually drove the process, right?

Richard Holbrook in the Balkans,

George Mitchell, Northern Ireland, Jimmy Carter, Egypt, Israel.

But it's a very limited set

and it's a very limited set

because in the end, what ultimately determines

whether or not a negotiation succeeds

is not who is at the state of urban or frankly,

who is on the team?

It's whether or not the leaders

who have the political will and the muscle

to conclude agreements are ready to do so.

And it's when you look at the three conflicts

that Whitkopf and Kushner have been managing,

you see a pattern developing there.

Vladimir Putin is not interested

in a conflict ending solution

to his war and aggrandizement of Ukraine,

neither Benjamin Netanyahu nor the political leadership

of Hamas, certainly not the internal leadership.

They much prefer the status quo than taking risks

that would somehow force them to make concessions

that could undermine their political positions.

And now the US and Iran,

you don't have the kind of trust

that would be required right now

even to do a transactional arrangement.

And let's be clear, our relationship with Iran

at best has been transactional,

not transformation.

That has a lot to do with our politics

as a lot to do with the nature of the Iranian regime.

But I see no chance zero

if there are a way to,

Mathematical way to quantify

a remote possibility less than zero.

I'd vote in favor of that.

I see no way right now.

And again, Woody Allen, not to trivialize,

Woody Allen once said that 80% of life

is just showing up.

He's only partly right.

It's showing up at the right time.

And timing here for any arrangement

that offers a diplomatic offering

is critical, neither the Iranian team

that is managing Iran's national security policy

or the Trump administration

is able and my judgment were willing

to create any credible pathway out of this.

Well, Akbar, I don't want us to lose sight

of the fact that this war is not just the US, Israel and Iran.

There are repercussions for the entire region.

What are Gulf State like Saudi Arabia, Qatar

and the UAE doing a straight-of-war moves crisis

continues to unfold?

Absolutely.

These are really important players in this chat

because not only are these close US partners,

these are the people who are going to be

in the region no matter what.

I mean, if the US decides to withdraw all its troops tomorrow,

they will still have to live with Iran

as a consequence of choices made

largely in Washington and to an extent Tel Aviv.

What I'm hearing from Gulf diplomats

is a lot of real questioning of their kind of choice

to use so closely to the US.

There's still a lot of fear about where this goes.

There's some effort to say, well, President Trump,

you've had such success, maybe you should call it a day,

but all of that said, there's two kind of problems here.

One is for these Gulf states,

for important US partners in the region who are wealthy,

where there's a lot of business, there's a lot of industry,

they're now looking at the future

where they're going to be a lot less reliant on US judgment

and they're going to be a lot more open to others in the region,

whether that's China or whether that's Russia.

And it's been a long time US goal predating Trump

to kind of keep those players out of the region.

I think that's going to be undermined in the long run.

And the second player is the kind of misery

that the Trump administration had there

with those governments I've heard from my sources,

inside the administration of frustration,

a sense of, well, why aren't the Saudis

with all the American military technology that they have?

Why aren't the Saudis, the Emirates,

others helping us attack Iran?

And that is really kind of drawing on

on a fundamental misreading of those countries'

security assessments, and that's alarming in itself,

because what it says is the Trump administration

is not only misreading Iran because of a lack of expertise,

it is not misunderstanding the closest US partners in the region,

and don't forget that many of the US ambassadors

in these countries, career US ambassadors, not political,

were pushed out by the Trump administration in December,

less than two months before the war.

So again, kind of making it harder for Washington

to understand what its partners in the region

are thinking at a time of tremendous chaos.

I want to look ahead a bit here.

To treat it to your mind, if diplomacy does restart,

what conditions need to exist for real agreement to be possible?

What could Iran offer that they didn't

in the lead up to the war?

It frankly shinks that the Iranians

are going to offer less than what they did back then.

I think some of the nuclear concessions

they were willing to consider at the time

are likely off the table at this point.

I also worry that this new Iranian theocracy,

because a lot of key people have been killed

and have been replaced by more hawkish younger elements,

elements who opposed the Iranian strategy

of strategic patience, the one in which they did take

a lot of hits from Israel over the course of years

without responding very forcefully,

playing for time.

And in their view, that was a mistake

that actually brought about this moment.

These are elements who oppose the ceasefire in June.

They believe that towards the end of the war,

Iran had actually gained some advantage

because the Israeli were running out of interceptors.

And people who at this point also would oppose a ceasefire

on their current circumstances.

So I think you're going to have a harsher,

a more hawkish Iranian government in place.

And I think one of the key things they will be requesting

that I think will probably be non-negotiable from their end

is that they will require some sanctions relief

or sanctions exemptions as part of a deal.

And the reason for this is not just that they have leverage

and they want to get something out of it.

It's because for them, it will be seen as a guarantee

that there will not be another attack.

The kind of guarantees they're looking at right now

is a, making it as costly as possible for the United States

and Israel so that everyone concludes this war was a mistake.

And as a result, no one tries it again in a couple of months.

But also, if they stop at this point,

they will be in a worse situation

because they will have no pathway for sanctions relief

and they absolutely need it.

That will mean that they will be in a position

of gradual weakening after the war.

And in their view, that will only invite another attack

by Israel and the United States down the road.

They need to change your trajectory positively.

So I think they will insist on some level of sanctions relief.

Aaron, briefly, you suggested one possible scenario

that eventually both sides simply declare victory

and stops you day.

How often do wars actually end that way?

Well, I mean, wars could enter different sorts of phases.

I mean, take the Israeli, the 67 war between Israel

and Syria's early Egypt, it evolved into a war

of attrition along the canal zone.

That ultimately lasted several years

until the Egyptians and the Israelis realized

that Sadat in particular, that he had a break

the impasse and you ended up with the 1973 war.

So my prediction here is that there isn't going

to be a transformative diplomatic off-ramp.

It was hard enough when there wasn't a major conflict.

And the war may just evolve into a different phase

in which you have a significant de-escalation.

You don't have military strikes every single day,

but the war goes into a sort of gray area

in which you see black ops,

you see targeted hits on Iranian officials.

The Israelis in the US would strike Iran episodically.

What you do about opening the straits

is a significant problem.

So no, I don't believe in no diplomatic off-ramp

that is going to lead to anything

that normal humans, the four of us,

would regard as a significant agreement.

In just a couple of sentences, Akbar,

what are diplomats saying privately to you

about whether they see an off-ramp?

Today, Jen, I'm hearing a lot of despondency,

not a lot of faith, and I just invite people

to think about the human cost of this.

There hasn't been a public buy-in on the Iranian side

of kind of negotiating with the Americans right now,

and we're still not seeing from the American public

a real clear message to President Trump of we want a deal,

even though that's rising to satisfaction.

So that's what I would keep an eye on,

that kind of public pressure.

That's Akbar Shahed Ahmed of Huff Post,

also with us, Treadaparci,

of the Wednesday Institute of Responsible Statecraft

and Aaron David Miller,

Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment

for International Peace, thanks to you all.

We're broadcasting today's program

from WFDD and Winston Salem, North Carolina,

as part of the station's 80th anniversary,

special thanks to the staff who helped make this happen.

Today's producer was Allison Brody.

This program comes to you from WAMU,

part of American University in Washington,

distributed by NPR.

I'm Jen White, thanks for listening,

and we'll talk again tomorrow.

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