Future of US-Israel-Iran Relations

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They didn't like their apartment buildings to be bombed, their neighborhoods to bombed, their historic sites to be bombed We've been talking a lot over the course of the last few months about the Iran war. and now after four months It appears that the Trump administration is about to sign an agreement with the Iranian regime. They'll be doing that in Switzerland this agreement or memorandum of understanding is and what it will mean. It's about a page and a half and it will lead to a sixty day ceasefire, which will then give time to the two sides to come together try and come up with some kind of nuclear deal or agreement So At the moment, it's unclear what exactly is in the deal, but what it will mean is that the Strait of Hormz will be reopened, the blockade that the Iranian ships faced will be lifted. and the impact that we saw and the concern that we saw around the global economy will be east It is shaky and fragile. There are concerns about spoilers. The Israeli government has already indicated that it will defy this ceasefire. Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said that this is Donald Trump's ceasefire that he is driving and leading this It's also caused friction between Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump We'll be discussing this in this week's podcast. Richard is taking a break. He's been traveling a lot recently, and I've been speaking with Aliis. Ali Vis is a nuclear scientist. He's also the Iran project Director at the International Crisis Group As always, you can follow us wherever you get your podcasts on Apple or Spotify. You can also follow us on YouTube, and you can send us your thoughts or any questions you may have at the usual place, the world at skky. Uk Hi Ali. It's good to see you again. We've spoken a lot over the course of the last few months since the War began in Iran, and we're now seeing a potential agreement that is going to be signed between the Trump administration and the Iranian leadership. And you've been writing a lot about this deal, you've been speaking about it. One of the things that you've said is that the memorandum is not a finish line. it's a narrow ledge. What do you mean by that It's great to see you, Yala. Look, the memorandum is a page and half. It contains fourteen points. It's really doesn't have a lot of depth The two sides have decided to address the essential and basically defer the substantial This is what I mean that it is important because it is addressing the two very essential and urgent issues. numberum one, ending the war and ending the war in a comprehensive way in a way that it applies to the entire region, including Lebanon. And number two is to reopen the Strait of Hormmas, which if it had remained blocked for just another few weeks, it would really generate a massive economic downturn at the global level and it would result in a major food scarcity catastrophe, especially in the global South basasically costing hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives in a place like East Africa, for instance. So this is very important. but I'm saying it's insufficient becausecause it really doesn't resolve any of the key problems. All of the issues of negotiating a nuclear deal, a sanctions relief, all of those things have been deferred to subsequent negotiations over the following sixty days Donald Trump is declaring this is some kind of triumph, but he's essentially resolving the problems that his war of choice created That is correct. This MOU is taking us to almost to where we were prior to february twenty eighth, before the war, when the strait was open Um, but but but again, I don't want to also, um underestimate some of the things that it is achieving you know, it is the first time Iran and the United States have are signing on to a document. There have been some understandings in the past, but are signing on to a document that is not just a nuclear deal. It goes beyond that. In fact, it starts its first point is about u almost it amounts to let's say a non aggression understanding between the two sides. So it addresses regional issues It is the first time that the U S. ever has ever put a comprehensive lifting of sanctions on the table. Yes, that is to be negotiated in the later stages of the diplomatic track But nevertheless, no U. S. president had ever in the past put full lifting of U S sanctions on the table It is talking about a three hundred billion dollars fund for Iran's recovery from this war that the U. S. and its allies in the Gulf would negotiate the details of Again, I'm not story eyed in thinking that it's going to happen, But even the admittance that, you know, Iran has to benefit that a deal has to be mutually beneficial for a president that started this war. with demanding Iranian unconditional surrender. I do believe it's extraordinary When you say it's quite extraordinary, what do you mean? I truly believe that this had turned into a lose lose dynamic for both sides. Yes, it is true that the Iranians survived the hot war But they also need to survive the peace or what comes after, right? And their economy was already in dire straits prior to this conflict now to recover and to reconstruct with so much damage that they have suffered and an infrastructure that lies in ruins. It is going to be extremely difficult for them. So the United States does hold some cards. But it is true that you know the Iranians, their definition of victory was survival. and so they have survived it. Yes, it's a pyiric survival, but nevertheless, it is a win for them And I think the mistake that the US. committed was that it went into this war based on wish we're thinking in a set of wrong assumptions that the war has now clearly proven that did cost the United States probably in the tunes of hundreds of billions of dollars and did not meet any of the strategic objectives that the US and Israel had in mind and it had also turned into a into a losose dynamic for them as well But also They have ended up with an Iran that is and also in some ways weakar. Some of its military capabilities have been degraded And again, economically it's in a very difficult situation But I think the US by now, has tried every coercive policy you can imagine in the case of Iran every it's the most sanctioned country in the world, years of sanctions. and it is been the target of attacks in the course of a year by not just the strongest military power in the world, but also the mightiest military power in the region, Israel and also the mightiest intelligence organization in the world, Mossad They've done they've thrown everything they had at the Islamic Republic and they didn't succeed And so I do believe in the person of Trump and in this approach that has been adopted in this one pager You see the beginning of the realization that maybe there is a need for a different approach What about this last four months has surprised you and what can we learn more about Iran and the authorities in Iran Well, I have to admit, what surprised me was the degree of discipline and unity that the regime was able to preserve under very difficult circumstances. You know, we're talking about several hundred senior Iranian officials, political and military leaders being eliminated And yet there was no gap in continuity of governance in Iran. There was no chaos, you know, even if you talk to ordinary Iranians There was no a shortage of fuel or water or blackouts which is again, quite extraordinary. I mean, how many countries do you know in the world who can stand up to the United States and Israel and basically be able to hold ground and push back. What I'm saying is that this a degree of coherence was was a surprise to me The other thing that was a surprise to me is that we always knew that this regime had about tencent to fifteen percent of the Iranian society as its core constituents U But I was also truly surprised that they couldn mobilize them in the way that they did Every single night and even to this day, these regime proponents are coming to the streets and occupying the public squares and expressing support for the regime And and finally, the fact that in the aftermath of Ayatollah Ali Harmini in this new Islamic Republic You have a group of leaders who are bolder and more decisive. and do not hesitate to do whatever they believe is in the interest of the regime or the state, right I to harmony would ban direct talks with the Americans only because They had you know, a U. S. president had made a harsh speech about Iran. But we had the highest level meeting between Iran and the United States after the U. S. killed Iran'supreme leadader, the head of state and basically inflicted so much harm on the country The new Iranian leadership did not hesitate to meet with Vice President Vance in Islamabad directly. And if there is a signing ceremony in Switzerland on Friday is still again, an extraordinary thing to see. So yes, there have been a lot of surprises even for as much of an avid observer as myself So what do you think then the game plan will be How do you think this the leadership in Iran is going to move forward Basically in the short run This MOU is a that will test for President Trump from an Iranian perspective. is a test of whether he is able to reign in Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel in general. The second test is to see If Trump actually delivers on sanctions relief And this is a big question, right? Because with the exception of a year in twenty sixteen, half a year that the US. deliver some sanctions relief to Iran, there's really not a lot of positive experience there And if President Trump delivers on the frozen assets and on Iran's ability to export oil in this period of sixty days, it's a very important test If this experience works Th then there are two options in front of Iran. One option is to try to now do what they have repeatedly tried to do with the United States and hasn't worked which is to try to solve their problems, to try to get out from under U. S. sanctions in a much more comprehensive way. impprove relations with the West and then balance the relations between the West and the East That's one approach. If this doesn't work. If we end up in a situation that just like the Gaza cease fire This deal never goes into a phase two. It remains at the level of an MOU or we relapse into conflict then Iran would go a very different pathway in which It would double down on Russia and China it needs to basically mortgage out whatever it can to an outside actor in order to get a lifeline and survive. So it's two very different trajectories But again, the test for it is exactly this period of the implementation of the MLU When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant You keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns With Granger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts, and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place, so nothing gets in the way of getting the job done. Call one eight hundred ranger, click ranger. com or just stop by Ranger For the ones who get it done look at all the intelligence that was presented in the lead up to the war, and the Americans were saying, well, they're not a couple of weeks away from having a nuclear weapon or nuclear bomb The Israeli Prime Minister insisted and continues to insist and has insisted for decades that they are you know weeks away. But where is Iran in terms of its capabilities So look, if you had asked me prior to the twelve Day War Um how long it would take for Iran to enrich enough fissile material. to weapons grade given that it had a stockpile of sixty percent and just to explain your audience that sixty percent enriched uranium is ninety nine percent of the effort that it takes to get to weapons grade. So that one last step is it really doesn't take a lot of effort. I would tell you it would take Iran six days to enrich enough uranium for a single nuclear weapon. Now that's not a nuclear weapon. It's the ingredient for a cake. You st have to bake it into the cake, you st have to weaponize it manufacture weapons And there, there were different timelines depending on whether they wanted to have a sophisticated nuclear warhead or a more rudimentary one It will be a matter of you know, three months to a year U If you ask me now, what's the timeline? I tell you it's the exact same thing because Um Iran still has that sixty percent stockpile. It still has a stockpile of addvanced centrifuges. It has scientists, it knows how to do this. That's all it takes, right? So so I wonder then, you know, Benjamin Netanyahu sounding this alarm constantly Is he right to So look, it kind of turned into a self fulfilling prophecy. What President Trump doesn't say, what Prime Minister N Netanyuvu doesn't say is that If the U. S. had stayed in the JCPOA. And President Trump had not exited the deal in twenty eighteen Um Iran would not have a stockpile of sixty percent in rerissy uranium That was banned Until twenty thirty one The entire deal was designed so that the amount of time that it would take for enriching enough cimeter for a single nuclear weapon, the so called breakout time was more than a year until we get to twenty thirty one So by destroying that deal Netanyahuu basically brought The timeline forward And then again, by pushing the Iranians, for instance The Iranians were not enriching to sixty percent until He sabotaged Israel. I mean sabotaged Iran's key nuclear facility in Natans. and in response, the Iranians started enriching to sixty percent al backfired Eactly. Exactly. The Iraniis were not enriching even to twenty percent, even after the U.S exited the agreement But they did so in Israel killed the top Iranian nuclear scientists. In reaction, they started addition to twenty percent So yes, it's all backfired. And if you look at US intelligence assessment, every director of National intntelligence in yearly briefings to Congress, I mean, this is all public They always say Iran has the technical capability to develop a nuclear weapon, but it does not it has not yet made the political decision to do so. And the political decision comes from what comes from your threat perception Right? And if you attack a country twice in less than a year You're basically arguing U four developing a nuclear weapon when they have Again, the know how, the machinery, the manpower and the material I mean, thats that's quite extraordinary because you've laid it out in quite, you know basic terms there for us in a way that we understand. So you're saying the capability is there The green light hasn't been given. And part of that also was that the Supreme leader himself, you've just described him as a very cautious fig and conservative on these issues and risk averse had issued this fat word to say, we're not going to develop a nuclear weapon. But why are we being restricted in terms of our nuclear programs? though you put your finger on a very important thing, which is that know, Ayolah Hamani had a religious edict against developing nuclear weapons But that wasn't really the main obstacle He had calculated that if Iran crosses the Rubicon and goes towards developing nuclear weapons, it risks inviting a devastating U.S attack which is something that now has already happened And you know, and the Iranians are no longer afraid of it because they have survived And the second thing he was worried about was that there might be a domino effect in the region of other countries in the region trying to acquire or develop nuclear weapons, and then the balance of power in the region will become a game of nuclear deterrence, which is extremely costly and you know Iran would not have the resources to win that when a lot of other countries in the region have the U. S. umbrella and much more resource financial resources available to them. Even you can say that game is now to a certain extent lost because you know we've seen the Saudi deepening of relations with Pakistan. We have seen the UAE deepening relations with Israel, all of these nuclear weapons states So I would say now there is more motivation. ever before U in Iran for developing a nuclear weapon. U even at a popular level, right? Because even people who don't like this regime you know, they didn't like their apartment buildings to be bombed, their neighborhoods to be bombed their historic sites to be bombed, to be subject to threats of civilization or erasure So there is now even more bottom up support for weaponization And again, this is why a wise policymaker at this moment would look at this picture and would say Time has come pursue a different strategy towards ion. containment, coercion, you know, all of these things that we have tried again and again in the past haven't really worked. But again, I'm not story eyed because I know you know, I lived in DC for fifteen years. I know the culture in that town. I know it's a city surrounded by reality. And a lot of people will continue to say, you know true communism hasn't been tried You know, true coercion hasn't been triied. a little bit more sanctions, a little bit more bombing And this will magically conjure the victory we have in mind All the while, as you were saying, the threat level has increased for the Iranians as has the motivation. So while DC is mulling this over and trying to figure out what to do over the course of the next sixty days, there's a lot of clarity, it seems, for the Iranian leadership in terms of what the threat level is, what red lines no longer exist that they thought perhaps probably did exist and And so their calculus is going to be very different to what DC or the Trump administration, or frankly, even the Israeli government is going to hope that it will be I think that's absolutely right. but there is also something else that I should add to the picture, which is that in this process where tal we're talking about a weapon of mass destruction The Iranians also discovered a weapon of mass disruption, which I would say, again, this war gifted to them, which was their ability to shut down the Strait of Formos and therefore take the global economy hostage Now that is a tool that has an expiry date, meaning that now that The world economy has has suffered through these past few months Um over some over the next few years, there will be a reduced reliance on the stit of Hormos and also diversification in terms of energy so that, you know, this the risk of this would be diminished. But this is not a short term thing it's sort of a medium to long term phenomenon. You know, for instance, again, the pipelines that the Saudis or the Iiratis had to go around the strait or foremost, that's a legacy of the Iran Iraq warar and the realization that the strait is vulnerable in wartimes. But it took years to develop an alternative. And so yes, it would take some time to develop an alternative. But in the short run, Iran has that very powerful tool and deterrence at its disposal as well So yes, the threat perception has changed. But there are also new tools available today Iranians Again, all of these things are important to understand in order to come up with a realistic policy that has a chance of working. I always said to my students at Georgetown uh, that uh, you know, half of the battle is understanding your enemy Um, if you don't Understand your enemy, you' by definition going to make mistakes And of course, this war was a strategic blunder of epic proportions. Yes. Operation Epic Fury, as you say, a strategic blunder is what it's being described at. But clearly lessons have been learned. despite the failure from both sides I just wonder, there are a lot of reports over the last couple of days that there's like this fracture in the relationship between Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump. Do you think that's real? And what kind of conundrum does the Israeli Prime Minister now face It's a very good question. Look, I think Netanyahu in the short run doesn't really have a lot of good options in front of him because he can't really challenge Trump beyond a certain limit President Trump at this point really needs the strait to reopen, really needs energy prices to start coming down in the run up to the midterm elections in November, which is after the Israeli elections. And in that sense, the timeline is designed in a way that Netanyignu would not be off the hook before President Trump's political calculations would shift. And and, you know, one downside of military operations against Iran twice in the course of a year As it becomes more difficult to do it. the threshold for convincing President Trump that this is a slam dunk, It's easy to achieve, that the Iranian regime is on the brink of collapse, that the Iranian people will come to the streets and with you know, cheer him as a liberator, etcetera This is very difficult to do, you know multiple times in a row, especially when some of his u assumptions turn out to be so inaccurate. U So I do believe that that hors has left the barn U in the short run And finally, in Lebanon, I think Israel will continue to put pressure Sauder Lbon whether it will cross the Iranian red line of targeting Beirut or not Again, I'm skeptical because I think his arm has been twisted But we will see, it does provide Israel. Lebanon does provide Israel with a way of undermining this understanding I think what this war has also shown us from the greatest military power in history is its limitations as well. It's another U.S president dragged into a war in the Middle East that they promised they wouldn't get sort of caught up in. And I remember for Joe Biden, it was the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which felt like the beginning of the end of his presidency. and sort of every president seems to have some great challenge that they deal with Perhaps do you think that for Donald Trump, this is it I think that's absolutely right. President Trump, by the way, is going back to his initial instincts in his first term. Also, Israel wanted President Trump to strike Iran and he resisted In the second term, I think, first of all, some experience with Iran, including killing Iranian top General Soleimani in twenty twenty which resulted in very limited performmative Iranian response by firing missiles into U. S. bases in Iraq and also in last year, in response to U. S. bombing Iranian nuclear sites, again because of Ayatu Ali Khmini's cautiousness, Iran responded with a symbolic attack in Qatar Um, President Trump had concluded that he will be able to get away with using kinetic options against Iran. Plus he had a hot hand because he was coming out of the Venezuela experience and he he had started to really believe that Um this mighty tool of American militry could be used in a limited fashion to achieve objectives that other U. S. presidents could not because they were not bold enough and not creative enough I think that image has now broken in has been shattered in his mind I'm not saying that the United States would not once again commit these mistakes, You know, I was was looking at you know, some of the conclusions that President Kennedy and Johnson's seecretary of deffense McNamera had drawn which is from the Vietnam War, which is that the U.S. should never go into a war in a unilateral fashion that doesn't have the support of a wide range of U. S allies But that lesson has been lost again and again and again. Now for the next two years, I think President Trump is probably going to be more risk averse. I'm not saying, you know, he's acted in erratic ways at times. So I'm not predicting