Learning from 2015 Diplomacy Lessons

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And it's been exactly pretty much a month since this war began. And David, I want to start with what should be a simple yes or no question under ordinary circumstances, but there's open debate about it and genuine confusion. Is the United States currently negotiating with Iran to bring this war to an end? Well, as you suggest, Michael, it's a more complicated question than it sounds like. And I would say the simple answer is that the United States is engaging in operations right now to shape a negotiation with Iran, but I wouldn't say the negotiations have yet started. Aaron Powell Well, let me highlight some of the source of the confusion. Last week we had this very explicit claim from President Trump. I'm gonna quote him. I am pleased to report that the United States of America and the country of Iran have had very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East. Okay, that's that's an explicit claim of negotiation. A few hours later, Iran's government issues a statement that says the precise opposite: quote, We deny what U.S. President Donald Trump said regarding any negotiations between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran . So they were both fibbing to some considerable degree. Trevor Burrus, Huh. President, aren't you shocked? Who are you going to believe here? The President of the United States or the Iranian government? And in this case, I would not really believe either. The president wants to make it sound as if he has forced the Iranians through the show of brute strength that has resulted in eleven thousand targets being hit to finally come to the negotiating table. The Iranians want to show for reasons of national pride and good strategy at this moment that they are not coming to the negotiating table on America's terms. And so we're at a bit of a standoff in which the Iranians are fundamentally saying, hey, we're winning by virtue of the fact that we're still alive. And the president is in the unusual position here of having to move from calling for an unconditional surr ender to calling for some kind of talks. Right. And talks almost always mean compromise. Well, let's focus for a little bit on why the president seems so invested in a diplomatic off-ramp to this war. Because despite striking 11,000 targets in Iran, the US has discovered not just the limits of its military force in Iran, but the blowback and how problematic it's become. And just to summarize what we have established in previous episodes, the Iranian regime is badly diminished, but it's not collapsing. Regime change is not in the offing at the moment. The war has locked up the trade of hormuz and paralyzed the global energy industry. Economic repercussions of this war have grown week by week, and US allies are not answering Trump's call to get involved. So Trump is looking for a diplomatic way to end all of those problems. Yeah, he has put himself in a real box here where he has discovered, as you suggest, that the kind of military power that he's exercised has not brought about the kind of political result that he envisioned. And it certainly hasn't brought it about in the time period he had in mind that he can do all of this bombing, but it doesn't necessarily lead to regime change. That he can try to speed along a capitulation, but if the Iranians play it right, the economic impact just keeps snowballing. Well, David, with that in mind, help us understand what the US efforts to bring Iran to the negotiating table, as messy as they've been so far, what they actually look like, kind of technically speaking, what the US outreach has been. Well, Michael, the outreach so far has pretty much been limited to a two-page document that had 15 items on it. Twelve of them were demands on Iran, and three of them were offers to Iran. But the essence of them is this, Michael, that Iran gives up any hope of ever being able to enrich nuclear fuel, do any of the steps that could lead to a nuclear weapon, that it limit its arsenal of missiles to a very limited number that can't reach Israel. And in return, the US has provided some incentives, starting with the lifting of sanctions, that would give Iran a pathway to re-entering the global international economy. And what has Iran's response been to that 15-point proposal? Aaron Powell You know, the response was kind of a non-response, Michael. It was five of their own points that basically started with let's talk about compensation for all of the damage you've done to Iran's infrastructure and people over the past month. And oh, by the way, we want you to recognize our sovereignty over the entire Strait of Hormuz, which we think is a pathway to expanding what the Iranians have been doing in recent days, which is charging a very large toll for any ships that Right. That doesn't sound like two sides being anywhere near close to even agreeing on what they're negotiating. That's right. And it might explain why you've heard the president move from making the case that the Iranians want to talk to making the case that if the Iranians don't talk, he's going to hit them even harder. But behind the scenes, the U.S. is thinking ahead toward what a negotiation would look like. And in fact, they had hoped that one might begin as early as this weekend, but it didn't happen. Well, to the degree that the U.S. has a plan for negotiation and assumes that at some point in this conflict there will be a negotiation, who do they see as being the face of these negotiations for the U.S.? And what would that negotiator be empowered to get and give up well they haven't said precisely who would participate in the negotiations but what they have dangled is that JD Vance, the vice president, would lead the effort. And administration officials have said to me that this is an effort to signal to the Iranians that this is a serious conversation, that we're sending the country's number two official empowerment. Wow to actually negotiate. And what's fascinating about this is we haven't seen vice president Vance involved in any of the negotiations to this point. And of course, it's Vance who is widely reported to have been the least enthusiastic about getting into a conflict with Iran to begin with. Right. Does the fact that he has been skeptical of this war potentially give him greater credibility in bringing it to an end, or is this simply just the fact that he's the number two in our system that's supposed to lend some prestige and credibility to the idea of him as a negotiator? I think it's all of the above, Michael. The Iranians' view him as probably the one they'd most like to talk to because they think he opposed this idea from the start. I think to President Trump, it's an opportunity to show to the Iranians that he's serious about these talks. And I think the third message that it sends is actually to the MAGA base. It's don't worry, this is under control. J.D. Vance, who was the most outspoken in favor of staying out of foreign wars, is the one we've put in charge of ending this one. It seems difficult to close out the conversation about the U.S. plans for negotiation without mentioning Israel, its partner in this entire operation. And my sense is that Israel's enthusiasm for ending this war may not be the same as President Trump's, because Israel has simply more going on in this conflict. It's got ground troops in Lebanon, even as it's also continuing to assault Iran. It has more of an agenda in this conflict, in a way. With every passing week of this war, the differing objectives of the U.S. and Israel have become more and more evident to us. President Trump is obviously quite concerned about the effects on the stock market, the effects of oil and gas Israel really isn't concerned about almost any of those. Right. To them, the one question here is at the end of this process is Iran so defanged that it couldn't even think of striking beyond its borders again? The U.S. has an interest in an Iranian government emerging from this that is at least cohesive enough to make decisions and engage in international negotiations. The Israelis might be perfectly happy with sheer chaos that would then lead to enough social upheaval in Iran that it would overthrow the current regime. And better yet, as far as the Israelis are concerned, might result in such internal upheaval that Iran can't even think about Israel. But what's really interesting to me, Michael, is that while this dance takes place about whether and where and when negotiations would take place. The Israelis are using every available minute to hit more targets across Iran. On Friday, they went after a number of nuclear sites. And the Iranians, for their part, are using every moment to go after American targets in the Gulf. And they had one big success from their point of view, which is they took out two major American aircraft, one a in-air refueling aircraft, and the other one of these command centers that cost half a billion dollars or more that are used to go defend the Gulf against incoming drones and missiles. And they did that on the same day that they were exchanging messages about where negoti ations Which sounds like the opposite of Iran getting ready for negotiations. Well it could be. Or it could be a negotiating gambit in itself . We'll be right back. Does checking your bank statements feel like digging through a dusty attic full of forgotten subscriptions and old free trials . Experian can help take the pain out of canceling by handling it for you. Think of it as operation get your Over 200 subscriptions are cancelable. 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Not asking you to click on any link, just subscribe to a real news organization with real journalists doing first-hand fact-based reporting. And if you already do, thank you. David, as I think we pretty clearly established here, Iran's position at this moment is basically saying to the US, good luck with your negotiated end of this war. You started it, we're not gonna help you quickly end it. And you had suggested at the beginning of this conversation that that could be a function of pride or strategy. Let's try to get to the bottom of that question. If President Trump is offering Iran an end to a daily barrage of attacks that took out its supreme leader, have decimated its military, have crippled a lot of its infrastructure. Why isn't Iran somewhat eager to take up that offer? You know, Michael, this is the question the president seems to ask his aides very regularly, which is why haven't they capitulated yet? And I think the answer is complicated. But the first part of it is that the surviving Iranian leadership asked the question, why should we trust them in the negotiations? Back in June of last year, they were engaged in negotiations and it got cut short by the attack on Fordo, Natans, and Isfahan, the three major nuclear. That's right. In February, they were negotiating on a broader agreement and suddenly Trevor Burrus, Right. Negotiations are kind of a cover for the U.S. to attack Iran. And to buy the time to assemble the forces. And so the Iranians are saying, we're not going to listen to what you say, we're going to look at what you do. And currently what they're seeing is that the U. S. is sending thousands of more troops to the region, starting with two marine expeditionary units. And so from the Iranian point of view, they're looking at this and thinking, well, the president is building up to another attack. Right, here we go again. Yeah, right. And of course, Michael, we don't know if the president is actually planning to go use these troops or whether he's just using them for leverage for whenever those negotiations start up. Dave, can I ask you, because you've covered a lot of diplomacy in your day, is it understood that if you attack people, not once, but twice during formal negotiations, you're really disincentivizing them from ever seeing diplomacy as anything other than a Trojan horse. Well in most administrations I've covered, and this is the fifth president I've covered, that would have been the case. But in the Trump administration, I think there's sort of a more general view that force isn't necessarily the last resort. It could be an early tool that you use before you come back for negotiations a second time and say, want that again, want worse. And so I think that this administration views the use of force as truly an element of the negotiations. I'm not sure that their adversaries always see it the same way. Okay. So that's a major reason why Iran would be reluctant to engage in negotiations. But beyond that, what does Iran gain from the war lasting any longer, given that the pain of it is so disproportionately felt by that govern ment? Well, there could be an element of pride to this, as we suggested. And this is a deeply unpopular government. Probably at any given point in time, as we've discussed on past episodes, something like 80% of Iranians would give you a long list of complaints about economic mismanagement, corruption, and the sheer brutality of the Iranian government. Right. So the idea that foreign actors are coming in to attack the core of the society, terrorize ordinary Iranians who are just trying to get by, the surviving Iranian leadership may see that as a way to go unify a populace that otherwise hates them. Interesting. So not necessarily just pride, but kind of a strategic understanding that the longer the war goes on, the more likely it is that Iranians alienated from this regime might start to look to it as a source of strength or see it as the victim of US excess. And in that sense, time is just on their side. Well that's right. And there's another thing that time buys the Iranians, the ability to hurt Donald Trump where it counts the most. Watching markets slide, watching oil prices go up, watching international anxiety increase, watching the Western Alliance fracture. And all of that takes time. So take a look at what happened just at the end of last week. The president, late on Thursday, said that he was going to allow another ten days for negotiations to take place. And you might expect the markets to jump the next day, saying, Oh, there's an ending to this coming. Right. Instead, the markets kept their meltdown underway. The president is now presiding over what people are going to begin to call the Trump slump or the Iran slump. And the Iranians understand that if the markets continue to melt down, if the price of oil continues to go up, that only gives them more leverage whenever negotiations begin. Aaron Powell David, just play that out. So let's presume that the 15-point proposal from Trump is actually something that represents the U. S. position in any negotiations. And Iran has the war play out for a few more weeks, maybe even longer. Oil prices stay really high. Markets are gyrating. I mean, does Iran think that suddenly they're gonna get one of those proposals removed, that sanctions are going to be taken away faster. I mean, like just logistically, what are they going to gain that would compensate for the losses that they're going to be taking every single day to their infrastructure, to their military, to their people. I can't crawl inside their heads, but I can just take a guess from having covered negotiations with Iran before. One of the big hang ups has been this question of whether Iran will permanently give up its right to enrich nuclear fuel. And the U.S. has insisted: no, this time the Iranians have to agree, they'll never again make nuclear fuel. And the Iranians have had a consistent position that they're a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, that all signatories have a right to enrich uranium, as long as they are not diverting it to bomb projects, they maintain that they've long committed to never building a nuclear weapon. None of us believe that, but that has been their formal commitment. I think they believe that the administration may well relent on this point and that they will get a pause of a few years in which they agree not to produce any nuclear fuel. And then some limited amount of enrichment after that, that they would stay in the game. Now, if the Trump administration agreed to that, it would be a big backing away from their position. It would also end up looking a lot more like the agreement that President Obama got out of Iran in twenty fifteen, in which the Iranians shipped almost all their nuclear fuel out of the country, but kept low level enrichment. I suppose since you mentioned nuclear enrichment and nuclear weapons, we should probably acknowledge the point that this entire war so far has no doubt increased the incentive for Iran to seek out a nuclear weapon. It's not exactly a strategic secret that when you have a nuclear weapon, you're a lot less likely to be attacked by the US and Israel than when you don't. Absolutely. The Iranians cannot have missed the point that the Trump administration has not attacked North Korea. North Korea has missiles that can reach the United States, not sometime in the future, but now. North Korea has 60 or more nuclear weapons. Not at some point in the future, but now. And that's the very reason that the U.S. wouldn't even consider an attack like this on Pyongyang. And so, you know, depending on how this all plays out, we may have just given Iran every incentive to follow the North Korean moms. David, I want to end just by asking you to reflect on something that you know very intimately, which is that the US and Iran did engage in very serious and successful negotiations back in 2015. And And you got a really up-close view of those talks. I remember reading your coverage of that. You were there during the negotiations as they reached their apex and this deal was signed. A historic deal between these mortal foes. So we know these two countries are capable of serious high-level history-making diplomacy if they want to. They are capable of it, Michael, and I did cover that negotiation for the year and a half or two years that it went on, and it was long and painful, and in the end, it resulted in an agreement that the Iranians largely kept to until President Trump pulled out of the accord in twenty eighteen. And historians will be debating for a long time whether you can draw a straight line from that decision in twenty eighteen to this attack. Right. Because that that diplomacy was intended to ensure we never had a war like this. And he tore it up and now we do. It was intended to make sure that the Iranian program stayed in a box and that you would have at least a year's notice if the Iranians were racing for a bomb. Then President Trump pulled out, and the Iranians stayed in accord with the agreement for a year or two, then decided they were chumps to do that. And they did race right to the edge of a bomb. Right. But you know, Michael, I've been thinking about this and there's no chance that we can go back to the kind of negotiation that took place in 2015. Why? That was quite limited. It was just focused on the Iranian nuclear program, and even the effort by the U.S. to expand it out to missiles failed. But today the war has unleashed so many more issues beyond the nuclear program itself. I mean, first the Iranians have demonstrated a huge ability to disrupt the global economy, to shut off the Strait of Hormuz. That's now going to become a focus of negotiation in a way it wasn't even a month ago. Right. In 2015, there was very little trust between the Iranians and the Americans. Unpopular as the Obama deal was in Washington, it was even more unpopular in Tehran. We forget that because no one believed the U.S. would carry through and lift sanctions. Today there's even less trust. Back then, the Iranians committed as part of the 2015 agreement that they would never seek a nuclear weapon, I'm not sure that the new government of Iran could get away with that today. And finally, I think we have to recognize that after war has started, after you have shattered a government, after you have bombed its people, that you've then unleashed a whole series of new political forces that none of us really under stand. Maybe this will end the way President Trump envisioned and Bibi Netanyahu envisioned on February twenty-eighth, with an uprising against the Iranian government. But it's very possible that we have triggered the opposite effect, and we're just not going to know that for Aaron Powell So as infinitely complicated and delicate as the twenty fifteen negotiations that you covered were, what lies ahead between Iran and the U.S. will be even more so. Wildly more complicated, Micha el. Before we were just negotiating over the status of their nuclear program. Now we're negotiating over their future survivability as a state. And that is completely existential for the Iranians. And it's going to add dramatically to the complexity of bringing this war to an end. Oh David, thank you very much. Appreciate it. As always. Thanks, Michael . On Sunday night, the Times reported that several hundred U.S. Special Operations Forces, including Army Rangers and Navy SEALs, have arrived in the Middle East as President Trump weighs his op tions. In the latest sign of how far off diplomacy may be, the Speaker of Iran's parliament, a potential partner in any negotiations with the U.S. warned that if the United States deploys any ground troops into Iran, that Iran would quote, set them on fire . We'll be right back. Does checking your bank statements feel like digging through a dusty attic full of forgotten subscriptions and old free tri als? Experian can help take the pain out of canceling by handling it for you