Future Negotiations and Regime Survival

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That's indeed dot com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero This is a job for indeed sponsored jobs Today. The end of the war in Iran and why everybody lost At the end of February, the U. S. and Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran Striking hundreds of military targets killing thousands of members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard and assassinating Supreme Leer Hamine. Cyber attacks produced a near total internet blackout across the country This was, the Pident's defenders claimed, a clear and unalloyed success. The latest display of a decapitation strategy that had already included Trump's kidnapping of the Venezuelan president If all went well, some commentators said, we were looking at a new paradigm. for the extension of American power it hasn't worked out that way Ftirst, the revolutionary Guard kept elevating new leaders, like some giant bottomless theocratic pz dispenser. Second a Ron struck back. And the war became a quagmire and it stated purpose of the war became a moving target Trump said the strikes were about regime change Marco Rubio said the attack was mostly about getting ahead of an expected Iranian retaliation to an Israeli strike, which made it sound weirdly like the US had been dragged into this war by Israel Other officials said, No, no, this is about reducing Iran's regional power. No, it's about stopping Iran from building a nuclear weapon. No, it's actually about seizing natural resources By June, the US had achieved none of that Much worse Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz critical tendon of the global economy, with mines, drones, and threats It produced a calamous historic reduction in oil and gas flows a ninety five percent drop in crude shipments, a ninety nine percent decline in liquefied natural gas This devastated economies across Asia, and it cost Middle Eastern countries hundreds of billions of dollars And so fourour months after the first bombs fell. Trump has signed a ceasefire that he signed it in Versailles the site of a famous surrender. has been lost on few people Karim Sajapur of the Carnegie Endowment called this framework quote, a bundle of American inducements so lopsided that it reads as if Tehran wrote the plan unilaterally and quote Iran got military and economic concessions and de facto acknowledgement of its control over the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for promising to stop pursuing nuclear weapons promise it has made many times before and ignored many times before The deepest irony is that Trump famously withdrew from Barack Obama's multinational agreement to limit Iran's nuclear program He called that the worst deal ever negotiated But many experts say this deal is clearly weaker And unlike Obama's deal, this one leaves Iran in possession of something it didn't have before, which is effective control over the Strait of Hormuz chokep for twenty percent of the world's oil and natural gas, which we've just handed over to the regime that we tried and failed to destroy Today's guest is Kareem Sjatpur Our subject is the end So it seems of the Iran War. Why has the Trump administration signed, even proposed a deal that looks like surrender Is this just a temporary embarrassment for the president or is it a legacy shifting disaster kin to. Trump's Katrina And how will the world remember this war in ten years if we remember it at all I'm Dk Thompson This is planning Karim, Sjutpur, welcome back to the show Thank you so much, Der, great to be with you. So the president just signed a framework to end the war in Iran with negotiations to follow us read this Memorandum. What is the most important thing that is in the agreement And what's the most important thing that's not in the agreement? Well, Derk, if Any objective observer reads this document, they will come to the conclusion that the war did not go well for the United States because of the fourteen main bullet points in this memorandum of understanding Really only one demands anything from Iran and that's some nuclear concessions. The rest of those thirteen points either favor Iran or they're just kind of boilerplate diplomatic language. So you can tell based on that document, what the outcome of the war was. Now I think from the vantage point of the Trump administration and their negotiating team and Vice President Vance, my sense is they're not really even focused on the text of this MOU. Vice President Vant said as much that we have you know, gentlemen's agreements I think they're really conceiving of these negotiations and that document not as a potentially narrow nonproliferation nuclear deal. They actually are hoping for a broader transformation in the U. S. Iran relationship, but kind of a grand bargain of sorts. I'm very skeptical that they're going to be able to achieve that Two points of the memorandum that I want to dive into a little bit more deeply. And both of them you can think of as kind of weapons in possession or potentially in the possession of Iran. One being its ability to control the strait, and number two being its bomb grade uranium. Let's just do one and two in that order What is this memorandum? What does this framework say about the degree to which Iran is no longer allowed to shut down the trade of Hormz and thereby shut down the global flow of hydrocarbons. what specifically is in this framework to open the strait and ensure that it remains open for the foreseeable future. That is one of the weakest points about this memo because Certainly in my reading of it, what it says is that for the next sixty days while these talks are being negotiated, the strait of hormes should be open for business, back to status quo anti But beyond that sixty days, there are no reassurances that the Strait of Hormoz goes back to being an international waterway. And you if indeed the outcome of this war is that Iran retains administrative control over the Strait of Hormoz, that's an enormous defeat, strategic defeat the United States and certainly All of the statements from senior Iranian officials imply that they continue they plan on maintaining their control over the strait. For the Iranian regime control over the strait of Hormosz is both K of a fixed revenue stream could be potentially in the hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, depending on how they want to try to turn that into a fixed revenue stream. and it's also a deterrent against future U. S and Israeli coercion. We've seen even the last forty eight hours that they've threatened that if Israel attacks Lebanese, Hezbollah, they're going close down the strait. So I fear that this is now a new tool in Iran's pocket and they're going to continue to try to play it Right The irony from my perspective is that the US, at least one of its stated goals was to shut down Iran's ability to possess a super weapon in the form of a nuclear bomb. But in the process of trying to shut down their access to that super weapon, we accidentally introduce them to access to this other super weapon, which is the ability to insert a toll booth on the Strait of Formousz or even shut down flow through the strait entirely and the countries that will be paying that toll, a lot of them disproportionately are the countries that neighbor the strait and are on the Persian Gulf, whether it's Qatar or the UAE or the Saudi Arabia. How are these Middle Eastern countries responding to a memorandum that you say might after two months give Iran the ability these countries whenever they want to send their stuff through the straade into the Persian Gulf and out into the world So Iran's control over the Strait of Hormuz, as you said, Derek, is most of all an existential economic threat to the neighboring countries in the Persian Gulf in different ways and to different degrees. So Saudi Arabia is an example of a country which has access to not only the Persian Gulf, but also the Red Sea So they've diverted a lot of their oil resources through the Red Sea and then the Babel Mendab. And so far, Iran's Yemeni militia, the Houthis, haven'ving yet gone after Saudi exports and we can talk about that. The United Arab Emirates is another country which has suffered a lot from this blockade, but they also have alternative routes that can bypass the strait Arguably the country that suffered most over the last four months has actually been a country which is a friend of Iran, which is Qatar which shares this enormous natural gas field with Iran. And there's at the moment, no other way for Qatar to get their LNG, their liquefied natural gas out of the country. And so they really haven't had any revenue over the last four months. And you know some people would argue that For that reason, it's been somewhat of a conflict of interest for Qatar to be one of the chief mediators between America and Iran because you know, for them, they really wanted any deal because, you know, they they've been hurt the most economically as a result of this. Also, you know, Bahrain, Iraq have been have been really damaged by this. And so Those countries are the ones that stand to lose most. But as everyone now knows, also the bulk of the fuel, the energy, the natural gas, the fertilizer that goes out of the trade is destined for Asia and for China in particular. And so you know China in my view, doesn't want an outcome in which Iran is dominating the strait either That's interesting. just to hold on this before we get to Bombgraade, uranium and nuclear weapons What do you see as the most significant long term secondcond order effects of Iran continuing to possess this kind of control over this trit of Formz. If in fact, it does hurt the countries that you said, and it pinches off access to Eastern Asia, in particular, China, what do you see as the long term consequence of Iran now discovering that it has this geopolitical power All of those countries we talked about, Derek are already making alternative plans to not be dependent and not be held hostage by Iran. And so we're going to see and we've already started to see enormous investments and kind of a post Hormuz energy logistics whereby you're trying to bypass building pipelines. to some degree, I think there's going to be major investments in alternative energies. And so know our friend Ian Bremmer has pointed this out that even though Trump is you would argue he is not a green friendly president One of the impacts of this war a decade from now may be that we will actually see a surge in alternative energy usage because of this energy crisis which he created with this invasion of Iran. I'm looking at what's not in the deal U There's no halting long range missiles. there's no demand to stop support for proxies in Lebanon and Iraq. This puts on the table the question of the disposal of Iran's near bomb grade uranium. The outcome there is left up to future negotiations, which are ongoing. I mean, When you and I first talked about this war four months ago, we were talking about regime change in Iran. We were talking about the possibility of a liberal democratic Iran coming out of these attacks. We weren't saying it was likely But we were trying to represent the goals that the Trump administration was putting on the table four months ago. I'm looking here at this thin gruel. I mean, there is nothing that the presresident initially said he was going for Is there any coherent view of American interests that says this is a good deal for America So I think the best way to judge the MOU and just you know judge the success of the war is to Pare the MOU to Trump's speech the night in which he launched the war, because he set out very clear objectives there. He was going to further obliterate a nuclear program which he had you claimed to have obliterated the year prior in the twelve Day War But he said he's going to raise Iran's missile production down to the ground the Iran's regional proxies would essentially be definct And then yes, he opened up the possibility that this war could in fact unseat the Iranian regime And unfortunately, as we've talked about, none of those outcomes were achieved and he's potentially seeded This incredibly important c, the Straits of Hormuz to Iran And so that is also something which our regional partners are very dismayed about. The fact that The question of missiles and drones There's not even part of the negotiations. Many of them will tell you, listen, we don't We don't fear that Iran is going to Nuas But they are using missiles and drones against us on a daily basis. You know, they've launched Perhaps upwards of five thousand attacks, Missilian drone attacks on their neighbors. And that's, you know, as I said, not even part of the conversation. Um And That, I think is going to be something that you those countries are going to have to contend with because you, the United States is out of Iranian missile range, but they certainly are not. I want to move our focus then next few questions to American politics. and what within American politics might have driven Trump to accept this deal. I mean, what is your understanding? of Wide administration that is on the record seeking military goals as extravagant as regime change would go to Versailles to sign something that was so transparently defeatist. obviously the irony that its signed in Versailles. that's a joke that's been made many times. But why do you think didid this deal knowing that there were recorded words of him on television that would allow Democrats to hit him on this deal over and over again Well, as always, Derek, I think in the case of Trump, he says the quiet part out loud, which is he said, I think on two occasions that he didn't want to be Herbert Hoover. You know, he didn't want to be the president overseeing another economic collapse, another depression. and he felt he feared that the war m was was taking the United States and that direction Um, And you know, from the outset You know, I argued that the Iranian regime knew it could never defeat the United States in the battlefield. so it was going to try to defeat the United States in the living room. And you know, how do you do that? You spike the price of oil, you set off explosions everywhere. So when Americans turn on their television sets, they see chaos and violence. When they go to fill up their car with gasoline, prices have doubled And you,ftunately, that has been a successful strategy for them going back decades. And so I do think for the presresident, veryery difficult thing for both President Trump and now Vice President Bance to try to reconcile is How do you make the argument that four months ago This regime is so dangerous that it requires a massive U.S military confrontation And four months later, the very same regime a slight personnel change, but no change in their internal or external conduct nor their ambitions How do you then justify that that very same regime should get, you know massive economic concessions. I don't think it's a It's something which is easily is easy to reconcile. It's hard to look at this deal and Not remember that Trump called the Obama Iran framework one of the worst deals ever signed And now you look at this deal, which doesn't necessarily seem particularly different. I mean, what are the major differences between the deal Trump has just signed and the deal that Trump has called the worst deal ever that Obama signed over a decade ago So we don't yet have a firm Trump deal. We have a deal on paper, but you know that deal hasn't yet been executed. the I would say there's a there's a couple distinctions and then you know the broader macro distinction. The couple distinction is that for President Trump and by the way, Derek, this is now, I think, going to be Trump's metric for success, that he did better then the Obama nuclear deal, the JCPA That's potentially sellable on one point, which is that the Obama nuclear deal, the JCPA, allowed Iran to enrich uranium at a very low level. And what the Trump administration is hoping for is that Iran will agree to a long term suspension and enrichment of uranium. President Trump initially said forever. He wants them to snd enrichment forever I think that number has dropped now to ten years. Even that is not clear whether or not he'll be able to achieve it, but he may well be able to achieve a few years suspension because Iran is is going to need to rebuild its itss nuclear facilities. So that's one point in which it could potentially be different The other point, know, for which is very important for Trump that he's spoken about is to get the quote unquote, nuclear dust out of the country though the stockpile of Iran's highly enriched uranium. Now, Obama's nuclear deal also achieved that. but But here is the big difference in my view, Derek, which is that Obama's nuclear deal didn't come on the back of a war, which potentially cost American taxpayers over one hundred thirty billion dollars, according to some estimates um, And so the cost to the country were negligible compared to what Trump has done The second major difference is that President Pident President Trump, as you alluded to Derek, said Obama's deal was the worst deal in the world because it provided Iran one point seven billion dollars in cash relief The numbers we're now talking about are in the tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions of dollars that the Trump administration has vowed to potentially offer on. Now, what they argue is that we're only going to pay upon performance. But there's already evidence that Iran has been getting billions of dollars in sanctions relief. if they're able to sell their oil again. In my view, there's really no comparison here when you compare Obama's twenty fifteen nuclear deal in this MOU, which is just a deal on paper. There's not significant nonproliferation upside for the United States And it's cost American taxpayers significantly more and Iran will get significantly more economic concessions as a result of this deal Obviously, Democrats are going to say that Trump is surrendered. But it's not just liberals who say the Trump is surrendered. That's what's particularly issue to me. You have Israelis People close to the Israeli government and writers and commentators in Israel saying, this is effectively surrender. You have Republican commentators like Ben Shapiro who are saying there is nothing that we initially said we were fighting for, that we get with this new framework. Is it too simplistic to say that Iran has simply won the war You know, the critique of the conservative commentators and the Israelis that I' read is that You know, they would argue that the United States obviously prevailed militarily in this war. It did enormous damage to to Iran's military industrial complex. But it was a political capitulation on the part of the president And one person he didn't mention is Sed Cruz who will likely be a twenty twenty eight candidate. And I expect that a lot of those folks are going to go after JD Vance in the Republican primaries on this issue And how they're going this is exactly where I wanted to go Um me let me try it again And how exactly are they going to go after JD Vance? Because this is exactly where I want it to go. I think what we're going to see is that if this deal is seen widely among even Republicans as a failure Well, they can't attach that sense of failure to the president himself. I mean He is still in charge the Republican Party. And in many ways, the Republican Party is a cult unto Donald Trump So someone has to be the fall guy here. and it seems like JD Vance, I think Trump even might have sort of somewone jokingly said, he was prepared to make J Vance the fall guy. this didn't go well A lot of people are pointing at him. Can you explain to us exactly What pproach JD Vance, what philosophy JD Vance is espousing right now on his media tour to explain this framework and how you think it might be attacked within the Republican Party So I think one thing that seems central to JD Vance's foreign policy view is this idea that America needs to get out of wars in the Middle East and forever wars. I suspect he's banking on the idea that Ending this war is going to be popular with the American public U you know, at the same time, I think that's right that the American public doesn't want to be involved in wars in the Middle East. I suspect that at the same time, American public doesn't like to lose. wars in the Middle East against anti American adversaries. We saw that with Joe Biden when he pulled out of Afghanistan. On one hand, I think Probably a large chunk of the population wanted us to end the war in Afghanistan. but humiliation under which that war concluded really hurt Joe Biden's public support. You know, I suspect the idea of providing an Iranian regime with billions of dollars and incentives a regime whose official ideology, official slogan remains death to America and death to Israel is' going to be terribly popular. And you're right, Derek, that President Trump did say on two occasions. he said, if If this deal succeeds, I'll take credit. If it fails, I'll blame JD Vance. Now The other way in which I think this is going to be relevant to our internal politics is the question of Israel And it seems to me that JD Vance is making a calculation that Republican voters or Republican primary voters are no longer as committed to the U. S. Israel relationship as they once were. His public comments, Dance his public comments about Israel have been you know, extremely extremely critical saying that, you know, America is basically Israel's only ally and therefore Israel you know, should should practice gratitude. And so I think that is going to be a line of attack from his Republican primary competitors and I've heard this from my Democratic friends as well that The upcoming midterm elections are going to be a real litmus test on popular views on the U.S. Israel relationship It's funny becausecause it almost seems like two different administrations went into this war and finished this war. The administration that went into this war was an administration that was almost neoconservative in the George W. Bush tradition. We had just knocked off the leader of Venezuela. We were feeling really proud of ourselves. We wanted to puff up our chest and decapitate the leadership of Iran. The people who supported that effort were often folks who embraced the neoliberal, excuse me, the neoconservative label twenty years ago But the administration that's ending this war is an isolationist administration, led by JD Vance, who has for years now been very critical of America's military adventures abroad, is so desperate to get out of the war that he's giving billions, tens of billions, even hundreds of billions of dollars to Iran, saying, please, please just let us end this war and open the straight and let us go home and bring down inflation by a tch So that's one big irony here. The second point that I wanted to make is in addition . this this irony that we started this war to stop Iran from getting access to the super weapon of a nuclear bomb, but ended the war by showing Iran that it had access to this other super weapon, which is shutting down the Strait of F Muz There's this other irony, which is that I remember a few days after the war started Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that we did this. Because Iran was about to be attacked by Israel and they were going to retaliate and the US had to get ahead of that retaliation, which very weirdly made America seem like the robin to Israel's batman at the beginning of the war. A lot of people hated it, and so the administration came up with a lot of other justifications for the war. But now you've got JD Vance going around on television and on podcasts essentially driving the bus over Israel, saying the US. cannot just do Israel's bidding indefinitely. Again, very strange to remember that this is the same administration that said everything it said just four months ago It brings me to this question Do you think it's possible Biggest loser. of this war in the short term Is Israel? That could well prove to be the case, Derek. I always say that these kinds of wars, their impact is often measured in many years, if not decades. And so we're taking a snapshot four months into it. Certainly at the moment, you know, Israel is, I think, very demoralized by the outcome of this war and by political trends in the United States And one of the big questions is that have American American public opinion, especially younger generation public opinion permanently shifted on Israel Is this related to the person of Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and with some new leadership in Israel, the state of popular perceptions of Israel both in the United States and globally, couldould it change? Your first point is absolutely right, Derek, that at the very beginning of this war The people who were most excited about it were those who are the most prominent supporters of Israel and the most prominent Iran Hwks. Four months later, it's exactly the opposite. The most prominent apologists for the Iranian regime and the biggest critics of Israel who are oftentimes kind of borderline anti Semitic are the ones who are who are most supportive of this MEU. And so That is just another reflection of the fact that, you know, I called Donald Trump the The Jackson Pollock of Grand Strategy. you know, there's really no great coherence there. He doesn't have any fixed foreign policy principles. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zbounds terzepetide may be able to help. 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In the last week of february twenty twenty two Russia invaded Ukraine Russia believed it had the military capability of toppling that regime in days or weeks. and today, it is obviously engaged in a protracted war due to, among other things, Ukraine's drone capabilities. Four years later to the week In the last week of February, this year, the U.S. attacks Iran believes it has the military capability of toppling that regime in days or weeks, but finds itself engaged in a protracted war due to, among other things, Iran's drone capabilities. And I can't get over this evenven if it's a cosmetic coincidence that the two great powers of the second half of the twentieth century have both They found their military superiority stymied by a drone wielding enemy that feels like a significant development me in terms of the lessons that it will teach great powers in the future or lesser powers in the future about the ability of drones to dictate The shape of war And I wonder what you make? of this apparent coincidence that might be more than a coincidence. I mean, will we remember this period, do you think, is the beginning of an era where drone power changed the calculus for war It's a great question. And first, let me start with, I think, an additional parallel between the Russian war in Ukraine and the US. war against Iran, which is in both cases It was a war of choice by Russia and by the United States And for Ukraine and the Zomic Republic, Iran, it was a war of survival. And so for that reason, you saw in the case of both Ukraine and Iran These were countries that had T out of ten resolve for the Ukrainians, it was obviously a national issue. Um, for the Islamic Republic of Iran, it's a regime survival issue. You know, this is a regime which is incredibly unpopular. And last January, it just said massacred thousands of its own citizens to stay in power And they knew that if they lost power now, it was killer be killed. And so they had ten out of ten, will ten out of ten resolve And what we saw in this war, which resembled the Ukraine warar is that The weaker countries have figured out cheaper and asymmetric means to respond to a stronger military power In the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran, I think their military budget is something like one percent that of the United States They figured out that with twenty thousand dollars drones, You can take the global economy hostage. They were attacking hundred million dollar tankers filled with hundreds of millions of dollars of oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz. And as I said, you know they took the global economy hostage They also with cheap drones and missiles inflicted enormous damage on their neighboring countries. And the logic there was They hope that countries like Saudi Arabia and the UA and Qatar would go to the United States and say, please end this work U because u You know, our economy, this is an existential threat to us and You know, The other big lesson here is that I did a Fulbright scholarship in Beirut a couple decades ago. and my big takeaway from that year was that building things takes decades Destroying things takes days And in the case of Iran and its neighbors, you have countries like Saudi, UAE, Qatar They're trying to be hubs for international transportation and finance and technology, you know, data centers, AI Dad requires stability and stability is expensive. It takes years to be able to build But what we've seen with instability is it's incredibly cheap. It's you, twenty thousand dollars drones And it's very quick. And so positive lessons were learned from that outcome in the Ukrainian context. and in fact America's Gulf partners are now forging new security relationships to learn from Ukraine But you know the negative example was learned in the Iranian context that you know, these cheap asymmetric weapons can prevent this America the world's greatest military power the United States from prevailing in these wars of choice I wantan to move to the near future. We've been using the words memorandum and framework and understanding because this is a war that is not over. We have an agreement about how the war might and officially in several months after final negotiations are in place. Help us understand what's on the table for these negotiations. what's left to be hammered out And you know, given the prevailing wins right now, how do you think they will be hammered out So what vice President Vance announced in his recent visit to Geneva and his closed door meeting with the Iranians is that they are going to start to commence technical discussions with the Iranians. Now The U.S. team so far hasn't brought technical experts to the table. And so Um on paper, the plan is to try to come to a technical agreement on the nuclear issue in the next sixty days The likelihood of that happening is extremely low. If you keep in mind that the JCPA Obama's nuclear deal almost two years to negotiate. And so then Derek, we go back to the question of the psychology of President Trump. I used to joke always with my Georgetown students that to Ustand the Middle East, you're better off studying psychology than political science because You know, oftentimes so so often this the Middle East has been shaped by the ambitions and manias of individual men rather than the national interests of those countries. and likewise and If you're trying to understand how America is thinking about these negotiations Really, you know, how is President Trump thinking about these negotiations? and, you know, how does it impact his internal politics, his legacy. And so if he feels that Iran is essentially just stonewalling and they are not willing to make any meaningful compromises because they believe they prevailed in this war is a big question of what he chooses to do I've spoken to people who are journalists who speak to Trump on a daily basis and also some of his aides and they will give you different predictions about what he will choose to do Some of the reporters I speak to who speak to Trump frequently say he's done with this war U you know, as he indicated, he doesn't want to be over whoever he's done with Irani wants to do other stuff. Um, Some of his aides say the opposite that if he feels that Iran is not willing to make any meaningful nuclear compromises It's not willing to give out give up its quote unquote nuclear dust. It's stockpiled of highly enrich uranium It's not willing to suspend enrichment and do the kinds of things that Trump needs to be able to say he did better than Obama Those aides say he may well go back to blockade the naval blockade of Iran or potentially even bombing Iran And Lindsey Graham has said as much as well. And so You know, we we we can't predict what's inside the president's head Um I do think that Iranians are not going to make it easy for them for President Trump. I've spoken to some of the negotiating the mediating countries and I've asked the negotiators does is the Iranian regime trying to do anything to make it easier for President Trump to sell this deal at home, given he said the Obama deal was the worst deal in history And they said not at all. They're not interested in doing any favors for President Trump. you know, I am not optimistic we're going to see a quick resolution here So you think this could be a quagmire that you could have a war that is lukewarm and then hot and then cold again and then lukewarm. and then there's another bombing campaign in order to get you know Iranian negotiators back to the table. But this is just not something that's going to end in the next few months because you don't have enough of the revolutionary guard motivated to that signature on a deal that plausibly be on the table in the next few months Unless it's that the Trump administration just decides to capitulate and offer what will almost universally be perceived as an extremely bad deal for the United States, a good deal for Iran. And that is certainly a possibility. As I've said, you know, people who speak to a president frequently say He's done with this war Now the other caveat is what happens with Lebanon and there's a big Po of contention about Lebanon between Iran and Israel. And it's over the question of The word sovereignty So the Iranian regime says that and this was I think the very first point of the MOU that that Lebanon must be a sovereign country. What Iran is trying to say is that Israel shouldn't attack Lebanon, should respect Lebanon's sovereignty. Now, the Israelis say the same thing. Yes, Lebanon should be a sovereign country and therefore Iran shouldn't be operating militias within Lebanon, Lebanese, Hezbollah that are launching strikes on Israel. So there's a big dispute about the word sovereignty And so long as you see Hezbollah launching strikes on Israel from Lebanese soil I don't think President Trump is going to be able to restrain Pident Prime Minister Netanyahu from responding. And there's the danger that Iran will say, OK, you've just violated the MOU, We're going to block the Stit of hormes again I think I have a prediction about what's going to be in the final document, but I want you to tell me if this is a plausible one I think the president is as you've alluded to powered much more by interpersonal competition and envy than he is powered by any sense of geopolitics or philosophy What he wants is to be able to claim Numerically, objectively, that this deal is better than the deal that Obama signed that he called the worst deal ever. So why isn't it implausible they essentially just get onn the piece of paper a number that is better than the three point five percent enrich uranium number that the Obama deal technically allowed, but with very little enforcement mechanism So that the deal itself could essentially both be bragged by Donald Trump as being better than the Obama deal, but also be so toothless P peopleople in Iran feel like we can sign this deal And it doesn't even matter. It might as well be child scribbling on a piece of paper, it has nothing to do any enforcement mechanism, whether it's transnational like UN or national like one particular country coming into Iran in order to inspect our nuclear facilities. Why is it implausible essentially that we get a deal that's a little bit of a fiction that allows Trump to go on the campaign trail and say this is better than Obama So that is certainly a plausible near term outcome, Derek. And I think certainly America's partners in the Gulf would be potentially okay with that outcome if it indeed keeps the Straits of Haros open And you know, it ceases hostilities For the near term, that's a decent outcome for them The Israelis will obviously take enormous umbrage to that outcome and It will be interesting to see how this impacts Trump internally. will those u some of those key senators accept this outcome, peopleople like Lindseay Grahams and Tom Carton and Ted Cruzes Or will they essentially be looking beyond Trump to know the primaries of twenty twenty eight and start to sharpen their knives and go after Vance for this? How will Marco Rubio react to an outcome like that You know, he's on the record opposing that kind of outcome And so u I suspect if I had to make one prediction that and it's not really a bold prediction, but I don't think that This war and the potential deal that follows it is going to be popular for any politician associated with it I agree. I think this war forces attention and attention on This schism that's existed in the Republican Party for the last few years, but hasn't had a litmus test like this. Either you are of the George W. Bush more neoconservative school that says that America needs to flex its power in order to make the Middle East safe for Israel and take the battle to Iran, or you are the sort of person who believes that America is better off embracing a more Jacksonian isolationist position that puts the American consumer way, way, way above international concerns. And so therefore, the second that it looks like Iran is starting to put pressure on the global price of oil and drive up inflation for Americans, we're out. The deal no longer looks good for us. Those are entirely different philosophies that in fact do not cohere when you're forced to answer one question, which is should we invade Iran and try to topple their regime? And so I'm incredibly interested to see not only what the final language of this deal looks like, but also how the Republican party thinks about itself as the author of this deal. I mean, will this will have been a war started by the Trump administration, ended by the Trump administration, signed by Donald Trump himself and negotiated by the vice president. And yet, as you said, I don't think it's going to be a very popular final document among that wing of Republicans precisely because Trump points out. and if you want out, then that's not a lot of leverage Um What's something we haven't talked about that we should talk about? I mean, in terms of what could happen, what we should look out for in the next few weeks and months? I mean, to a certain extent This war has gone very much like you and I predicted four months ago, which is to say we talked about four ways the war could end, beginning with the most optimistic for the Trump administration, which was regime change, and ending with the, we said most probable outcome, which is a kind of muddling along. know someone in the big pz dispenser of the revolutionary Gard takes over at the top And you essentially deal with a state that is very much like the state that came before those first bombs. So I think we've seen this war somewhat similarly and somewhat accurately. But what should we look out for for the next few days and weeks? What's going to happen next I think one of the big questions that is yet to be determined, Eric, is how How does Iran regroup internally because This is a regime which is very good, It's shown itself to be very good at resistance against the United States It's very effective at repression. you know, it's been perfecting the science of repression for forty seven years, killing and imprisoning thousands of its citizens, but it's a regime which is terrible at governance. And so It's in my view, not a foregone conclusion that There's been a quote unquote rallying around the flag effect. That is what you know, many argue that the regime now has newfound popularity among its citizens. that certainly, I think they've benefited from the tremendous nationalism of Iranian citizens in the near term But that could well prove to be a sugar high, six months from now, one year from now. when and if the war has concluded, and the daily indignities of life rise to the fore again. Remember, this is a regime which is Daling with seventy percent inflation, triple digit inflation when it comes to food items And there's probably no country on earth with a greater gap between its citizens and its government than Iran and I think the lesson they've taken away from this war is probably the wrong one, which is I think they believe that revolutionary ideology isn't this albatross which is driven the country to wars and to economic malise It's in fact this lifesaver, which has helped keep the country afloat amidst popular uprisings and war. And let's double down on it. But that's not going to get Iran out of the moras that it's been in for many years. It's long been my view, Derek that Perhaps the best parallel for this regime is the Soviet Union. It's a regime which is not suicidal. It wants to stay in power. And therefore, from the vantage point of the United States, it can be contained. It's not Nazi Germany So the containment approach the containment doctrine, I think applies to Iran But at the same time, it's a regime which has shown itself incapable of putting economic and national interests before revolutionary ideology. This is what JD Vance is trying to test now He says that behind the scenes It's a regime which is fundamentally rethinking its revolutionary ideology, its approach towards the United States I don't doubt that some folks may have said those things from behind the scenes. There's no public evidence that they are rethinking that. If you look at the top men ruling Iran now, None of them or very few of them are people you would describe as pragmatists, you know aspiring den Xiaoppings And so I think the big question for the future, looking in the years ahead is what emerges within Iran internally And you know, unfortunately, as I said, they probably learned the wrong lesson from this war in more than one way. One is that, you know, revolutionary ideology prevailed for them. Number two is that You win concessions from the United States N by compromising, but by punching back hard By closing the strait of Hormz, by attacking your neighbors with missiles and drones. And that is certainly a dangerous outcome as well Economic warfare works. That seems to be the clearest lesson of this conflict for Iran We were attacked, we were demolished by a salvo of missiles that's among the largest, like twelve salvos in world history And we ended the war on terms positive to us. becausecause we sent so many twenty thousand dollars drones after liquid natural gas refineries and other pieces of economic infrastructure for other Middle Eastern countries along the Gulf and along the strait. Economic warfare worked? It seems to me to be the clearest lesson here and it's hard to think how economic warfare works is a good lesson for a country to learn if you want it to become more peaceful in the future. I mean, it seems to me very last question I'm sure I'm not a military historian. Maybe there are many wars that end where historians collectively feel like there was no winner and everyone was a loser. But right now it really does feel like this is one of those wars where everybody is a loser. I mean Iran Even if the regime remains intact, lost their suupreme leader, lost thousands of revolutionary guards, lost tens of billions of dollars, maybe hundreds of billions of dollars of economic activity on top of the dozens, hundreds thousands of civilians, innocent civilians that were killed in Iran. The Middle Etern countries around the strait, sureurely they don't think that they've won this war. They suddenly have to pay this toll booth tax to access the Strait of Hormz. Eastern Asia definitely doesn't feel like it won anything. Whatever the opposite of a Jack pot prize is is what they won from this war. Israel can't feel like it won this war. It's more alone than it was before february twenty eighth that you vice president saying that it's Ameran foreign policy to no longer allow Israel and its geopolitical interest to walk the dog of America's military. Trump certain isn't a winner. His approval rating is down. Vance has the knives out for him. The Republican Party can't feel like a particular winner. you don't want to say like the Democratic Party is a winner for something that's this terrible, but it seems like the only group that you can almost conclusively and objectively say won something from this terrible military engagement Trump critics who are now looking at someone whose popularity and strength in the party has been obliterated by this whatever four month misadventure. am I right to see that one conclusion of the war is that basically everybody lost