Assessing the War's Ultimate Outcome

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Rachel, great to be with you It is eight PM in New York. It's after one AM in London, where you are right now. So thank you for making the time Tell us what you know about this very late brereaking deal with Iran. Well Rachel, as you know, this deal has been brewing for a long time And it's been subject to a lot of up and down negotiations. between Iran and the United States. evenven as the war went from active combat to a ceasefire to that flare up that we saw just in the past week when the U. S. resumed bombing of Iran for Sveral days And we thought for a while that that might kill any hope of having what they've just agreed to on Sunday night which is a preliminary memorandum of understanding That's really all they've done here an agreement to reopen the strait in the blockade of Iran And to begin a serious conversation about the nuclear program. But in the end, the United States and the Iranians all determined It was in their interest to do that end the fighting and get back to the talking And David, you actually spoke with the president. Tell us about that conversation I did, Rachel. It was a little bit of an unexpected call. I'm here in London, as you said. and around four thirty in Washington, about nine thirty here The president called to talk about the deal that he put together and to celebrate it to argue that it was much better than what President Obama had negotiated in twenty fifteen, a negotiation that I followed closely at the time. And a deal that the president ripped up in his first term. We should remind listeners ripped up in his first term, criticized harshly and has criticized again, even on Sunday because he's very sensitive about the argument that some Democrats have made and many nuclear experts have made that he hasn't gotten as much yet from the Iranians as President Obama did Of course, President Obama did not resort to war So the call was mostly to make the argument that he' gotten something big here, something that had remade the Middle East and something that will make the entire region and Israel safe from an Iranian bomb in the future I should note David that one of the reasons this call, at least was surprising to me a little bit, was that it was not that long ago that you were on Air Force O, and the president said that your reporting on the war was treasonous Yeah, well, Rachel, what can I tell you? It's a hazard of White House reporting. He reacted badly to a series of news analyses made the point that he had not yet accomplished his political objectives, you know, including ending the Iranian nuclear program. And he still hasn't. But I think he wanted to try to make the case because I think he cares about what the Times reports He was on the road to something that he believes will be better than the Obama deal. be a while before we know whether that's the case. I think another takeaway from the fact that he called you, despite how angry he was with you quite recently is that this deal really matters to him. We have talked on the show about how much the president has been looking for an off ramp to this war. And I just sort of wonder, given all of that, if you could tell us a little bit about what his mood was like, did he seem, I don't know, victorious at all He sounds celebratory and he clearly thinks that he has found his off ramp Now Let's remember, Rachel that When he went into this war, Strait of Hormz was open And it was running toll free One of the things he wanted to tell me was that he believes under this agreement Iran will never impose tolls again. Of course, the agreement itself, we believe, we haven't seen the text of it only refers to suspending tolls for the next sixty days He also told me that he was convinced that Iran would apply and reach the next stage agreement on the nuclear accord talked about specific provisions But we have to remember He hasn't negotiated any of those positions yet with the Iranians And he said that if Iran didn't complete that deal He would either resume military action or begin to have the United States patrol the Gulf in return for twenty percent of all the revenues, presumably mostly oil revenues. that are received in the region. That's a very different use of American power in the Middle East. It's also very Trumpian, right So he was trying to make the case that the United States was not only recovering, not only had the blockade worked and the bombing worked but that he was on the way to remaking the region. Right. To your point, the threat of demanding twenty percent of a country or region's revenue seems like a very difficult thing to calculate, let alone in force. But Just to summarize the points that he did say to you seem to be things that we've heard for a while. He is reopening the Strait of Hormuz. There will be no tolls. There will be a sixty day ceasefire, this lifting of the blockade on Iranian ports. Have we heard from the Iranians in all of this? Like what is the status of actually signing on the dotted line for all of the parties involved? As of the moment when we're speaking, neither party has talked about actually signing this agreement although told that there will be if there hasn't already been an electronic signing I think a docue sign for an international agreement And then O Friday in Switzerland a more formal signing that presumably will include Vice President Ty Vance And that would probably be the beginning of the negotiations. for the next phase. But what was unusual about the president's call is that has he described and walked me through the nuclear agreements that he believed they were going to reach manyany of which we've already written about in the past few days He was basically describing agreements that He wanted to make sound as if they had already been reached But when pressed, acknowledge that this is all subject to this later and in my view, much more important document which would be much more like what the Obama administration negotiated eleven years ago. specifics about whether or not Iran can enrich uranium, whether it has to give up its stockpile of nuclear fuel and so forth Okay, David, so a lot of unknowns as you're explaining to us. W there anything else that struck you about the call or the deal or anything else One of the things that I thought was surprising about the conversation was that the president went out of his way praise two authoritarian leaders who we didn't think had a whole lot to do with this final deal Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China And he praised them for essentially not getting involved He was mildly critical of the Europeans. for offering to help only after the fighting ended. And he was deeply critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel who to extraordinary lengths. to try to keep this agreement from coming together We'll be right back Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. That's why Lifeelock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity, which is way more than anyone can do on their own. 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Musle Milk, protein for all David, we've talked a lot on the show about Now even though the United States and Israel started this war together, their interests have pretty quickly diverged. We've seen that play out in the negotiations in recent days. We've seen that play out during the course of the war. Can you tell us a little bit more specifically about how Prime Minister Netanyahu has been a stumbling block to this deal that we saw announced on Sunday Oh Rachel, when the history of this war is written. The dynamic between the United States and Israel is going to be one of the most fascinating chapters. You'll remember that it was Prime Minister Netanyahuu who made the case that if the U. S and Israel attacked Iran together The country was so fragile that the government would probably collapse in about three days. and that it would be taken over by forces Israel and the United States would be able to control. And it was at that time that the president said to some of my timeess colleagues and other conversations. This is going to be like Venezuela And the only peace deal that he would be interested in He said toward the beginning of the war, was an unconditional surrender by Iran But as the war got more and more complicated, and as the president needed a way out of a conflict in which there was going to be no quick victory and certainly no unconditional surrender He and Netanyahu began to separate And they separated in large part over Netanyahu's insistence that he continue the attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon becausecause the Iranians began to make the case that the only she's fire that they would sign would be a whole regional one also call off Israel's ability to attack Hezbollah Now if you ask American officials around the president That didn't mean that Israel couldn't defend itself if attacked by Hezbollah But the splits you've seen in the past few weeks all been over Netanyahu's insistence that he was going to finish the job and crush Hezbollah. in Lebanon. Right. Israel does not want to be forced into an agreement that prohibits them from attacking what they see as an existential threat. That's absolutely right. And so did not want to agree to any kind of accord that would put limits on their own military activity, or even their ability to strike Iran at some point in the future. This agreement is supposed to be a regional agreement and includes a commitment that the U. S would not reattack Iran and presumably that its allies would not as well So this turned into some screaming fights between Netanyahu and Trump, details of which began to leak out And the conversations didn't get any easier. And the president told me he had really hard conversations with Netanyahu in the past forty eight hours after Israel attacked Beirut and other parts of Lebanon. David, did President Trump tell you what argument he is using to push Netanyahu to fall in line Well first, he told me that Netanyahu was a very difficult guy evenven while making the case that the president's a longtime supporter, of Israel. The president cast himself as the one who had Israel's long term interests in mind more than N Yahoo did He said to me, to be honest with you, he should be very thankful for us for doing this Because if Iran had a nuclear weapon Israel wouldn't be around for two hours C President tell you why he thinks that this time will be different? Like why Netanyahu will listen to him and not continue attacks against Iran and its proxies He didn't. And the Israelis have made it pretty clear They're not going to be bound to an agreement to which they weren't a party They weren't involved in negotiations And yet the Iranians are making the case this agreement applies not only to the United States, but to all of its allies. At the end of the day israel's ultimate guarantor of security is the United States and its ultimate supplier of arms is the United States. And while the president has never threatened either one of those you can imagine that amidst what we are told are cursing matches between these two pretty strong willed leaders is the underlying threat that if Israel doesn't go along, the United States' commitment may in some ways weaken. And we know that the presresident in recent weeks, basically made the case to Netanyahu that he's lost a generation of Americans whose views of Israel are nowhere near what they were in President Trump's generation That is really interesting. and I feel like I should pause here because I want to remind people This is at the end of the day, not a formal peace deal, right? Everything we're talking about is a memorandum of understanding. So it's essentially an agreement to engage in further talks. And I wonder, David, you are a White House correspondent, you are a national security expert. So given all of what you have reported so far on this war How durable do you think this agreement actually is You know, I think this is as durable as each side ultimately decides to make it The fact of the matter is that a memorandum of understanding doesn't have any particular enforceable capability. This isn't a peace deal, as you said. It's not a nuclear deal. It's more like a table of contents, as one of the president's aides put it to me, for what needs to be negotiated next does have a couple of more specific limitations. For example, it says in the memorandum of Understanding that Iran is going to have to rid itself of its nuclear stockpile and begin to blend that down to a form that can't be used in nuclear weapons It's a long way from that general statement to saying who's going to dig this out from under the rubble in Iran who's going to go melt it down and who's going to have possession of the nuclear material later on So it's not really an enforceable document. And it's very possible that the Iranians think This is all they need to get through two and a half more years of the Trump administration and that they'll worry about the next steps, which will be lengthy difficult to execute when they see who's the next president David, you have made the points to us before on this show that the demands from the White House about what they want in order to reach a ceasefire have shifted or what their goals are for this war have shifted, such that what we might actually see if this war ended is simply a return to the status quo before it began Now that you've spoken to the president and given what you know about what might be included in this deal, I just want to ask you Has your assessment shifted It hasn't shifted much, Rachel The course of more than four months of war We certainly have seen the United States succeed at destroying a good deal of Iran's missile capability, not all of it, but a good deal It has indeed sunk the Iranian Navy There wasn't much of one, but it's gone. It has certainly wiped out what was left of the Iranian air Force But this agreement largely gets us back to where we were before the war started, which is to say with the straight of four moves open, assuming it happens as the President describes and expects withithout a blockade of Iranian ports And with a negotiation over the nuclear program resuming in Switzerland does raise one interesting question though, Rachel While the presresident said to me that he wants to make sure the nuclear material that's in Iran gets dug up from beneath the rubble of the facilities that were attacked a year ago by the US. Air Force It didn't sound like he was in a huge rush And he thought that the United States could keep an eye on it from satellites and from other means. We can make sure the Iranians don't use it produce a weapon. don't have an urgent reason to get it out. does raise the question Why did this war happen to begin with becausecause the overarching justification for the war at the time was that Iran was just weeks or months away from being able to build a weapon In other words Did we need to have these Three months of violence. an incredible disruption or Was there another way to get to where we find ourselves today David Sanger, thank you so much Thanks, Rachel. Great to be with you We'll be right back. This podcast is supported by Everpure. Storage and data management so simple, it feels like second nature Data It's everywhere and vital for all your apps and AI initiatives Managing it all has become a major challenge. Traditional storage just can't handle it There's a better way