transcript

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[00:15] This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies. The six-week war between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran entered a new and uncertain phase over the weekend. When President Trump announced that the US would impose a naval blockade on Iran's ports, in an effort to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping. That followed a long day of face-to-face negotiations between the US and Iran in Pakistan Saturday that ended with the sides still far apart. It was just last week that Trump set a deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait. If not Trump threatened, the US would destroy Iran's bridges and civilian power plants, and in his words, a whole civilization would die never to be brought back again. That led to a hastily arranged two-week ceasefire that is mostly held between the US and Iran and an agreement to hold negotiations. However, Israel, the United States ally in the war, has continued to attack targets in Lebanon in its campaign against the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah. Iran claimed that that violated the ceasefire, while both the US and Israel said it was not part of the deal. For some insight into the conflict and thoughts on what to expect next, we turned to veteran diplomat Aaron David Miller. Miller spent 25 years in the State Department, advising Republican and Democratic Presidents on Middle East policy and playing a key role in the Oslo peace process in the 1990s. He received the State Department's Distinguished, Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards. He's now a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of five books. We recorded our interview yesterday. Well, Aaron David Miller, welcome back to Fresh Air.

Speaker 3:
[01:59] David, it's great to be here. I love the program.

Speaker 2:
[02:01] Good, good. Well, let's get into this. Maybe we should begin by how we got here. You know, when President Trump announced last week that there was this, an agreement for two weeks ceasefire and then face-to-face negotiations in Pakistan, anybody who'd read the public statements by Trump and the Iranian authorities could see that they were just miles apart. Was this breakdown after one day about what you expected?

Speaker 3:
[02:25] It was. I think, you know, to have a successful negotiation, Dave, you really need three elements. Three keys. You need two parties who are willing and able and are prepared to use diplomacy, not to browbeat or to issue demands for each side, but to actually create some sort of balance of interest. Number two, you need a shared sense of urgency. Let's say the Iranian clock and the American clock need to be in sync. Both need to feel a certain amount of pain on one hand and, through negotiations, could realize a certain amount of gain on the other. And finally, you need an end product, right? Some agreement, some deal, a text. I think it was the great Hollywood mogul who said that an oral agreement isn't worth the paper it's written on. So you need these three things. And frankly, you didn't have them in the run-up to Islamabad, and you don't have them now.

Speaker 2:
[03:16] Yeah, when Trump announced the ceasefire, there was no written agreement laying out the terms of the ceasefire. Is that unusual?

Speaker 3:
[03:23] Yes, and I guess no. You know, the U.S.-Iranian negotiations are really quite unique and idiosyncratic in this regard. You can't do this stuff on the back of a cocktail napkin. You can't do it on a cell phone. You can't do it however well-intentioned the Pakistanis may be. And they have clear interests. Eighty-plus percent of Pakistan's oil comes from Iran, not to mention food imports and a variety of other commodities. You need to do direct negotiations. I know 21 hours might seem like a long time. I remember Camp David in 2000, Ayudh Barak, Bill Clinton and Yasser Arafat. I mean, we spent 12 hours on one issue alone. And frankly, the issues are so complicated that you need direct negotiations. Mediators can facilitate, but they can't serve to actually negotiate on behalf of the parties, so no, I wasn't surprised, nor was I surprised that the terms of this ceasefire were not understood by each side to be quite the same.

Speaker 2:
[04:22] Right. It's interesting that Trump said in agreeing to the ceasefire and the negotiations that the US had received a 10-point proposal from Iran and believed that it was, quote, a workable basis on which to negotiate. But the United States didn't release the 10 points, right? They were subsequently released elsewhere, or at least what it was believed to be, the Iranian 10 points. And they were basically a statement of very tough demands on the part of Iran, right?

Speaker 3:
[04:50] They were. And the fact that the president referred publicly to the fact that they served as a basis for negotiations, I'm sure, upset a large number of people who basically saw most of the points as non-negotiable. Certainly Israelis saw it that way. But then the administration basically discarded it. It had its own 15 points initially, to which the Iranians proposed five. So you ended up with 15 to 5 to 10, to basically two sorts of understandings, that's a cessation of hostilities, would be conditional on Iran's willingness, ability not to manage the Straits of Hormuz, but to open them. This got loaded down with all sorts of preconditions. The Iranians wanted the Israelis to stop their military activities in Lebanon. They came back with proposals to un-freeze frozen assets. So it got all gummed up. There was absolutely no way, slim to none, chance that the vice president in 21 hours or frankly 21 days could have come up with a workable end to this war. And we are no closer to that end after these failed negotiations.

Speaker 2:
[06:01] Right. Among the Iranians, 10 points were their continued control of the Strait of Hormuz, lifting sanctions, reparations, withdrawal of all US troops from the region. You know, does this suggest that Trump had put himself into a box by this extreme threat to end Iranian civilization and felt the only way out was to find something he could latch on to and say, let's talk?

Speaker 3:
[06:24] I think you broke the code, Dave. I mean, this is one of the several boxes that the president in a sort of own goal self-inflicted wound has created. I mean, several days ago, he faced an unpalatable choice, right? This extraordinarily insane and appropriate threat, publics, social media, to destroy civilization, you know, within a matter of hours. That was one option, right? And had he gone through that, the Iranians would have responded against Gulf infrastructure, desal plants, electricity, grids, tourist sites, oil infrastructures. Or the president could have backed down. He had a lifeline which the Pakistanis helped him create. And I think the Americans also helped shape this particular proposal. So that is a box which offered a pathway out with the negotiations in Islamabad. But now the box, frankly, remains. It's worth making one additional point. And that is the Iranians have deployed geography in a terrifying manner. And the Iranians have two cards, more than two, but two cards. The capacity to close and manage the Straits of Hormuz, and the capacity to undermine Gulf security and stability with their residual capacity after six weeks of war of short-range missiles and drones. And that capacity remains. So CIA, DIA, my time in government, I can't tell you how many exercises were run, how many intelligence reports indicated the problems and challenges should the Iranians control the Straits, and the difficult time that the American military would have reopening them. So why this was never factored into the decision to launch a war of choice is one of the many intriguing and frankly depressing questions that need to be asked.

Speaker 2:
[08:23] Right, right. I mean, the closing the Strait of Hormuz wasn't even on the table when all of this started. It was a product of this war, right?

Speaker 3:
[08:32] Yeah, it was open.

Speaker 2:
[08:33] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[08:33] That's the problem. And now it's closed.

Speaker 2:
[08:36] Let's talk about where that's going next. But I thought to set some context, we might listen to some comments by President Trump. This was two weeks ago in an exchange with reporters, I believe in the Oval Office, in which he was saying that the US would soon wind down its military operations. And the Strait of Hormuz wasn't really such a problem. Let's listen.

Speaker 4:
[08:55] We'll be leaving very soon. And if France or some other country wants to get oil or gas, they'll go up through the strait and Hormuz Strait. They'll go right up there and they'll be able to fend for themselves. I think it'll be very safe, actually. But we have nothing to do with that. What happens in the strait, we're not going to have anything to do with, because these countries, China, China will go up and they'll fuel up their beautiful ships and they'll leave and they'll take care of themselves. There's no reason for us to do it. We hit them hard. We got rid of a lot of the radicalized lunatics along the strait. But if they want something. But I would say that within two weeks, maybe, two weeks, maybe three, we're hitting them very hard. Last night, we knocked out tremendous amounts of missile-making facilities, as you probably read or wrote. We knocked out, excuse me?

Speaker 5:
[09:50] Pardon me for interrupting. The US will be gone or done with the war?

Speaker 4:
[09:53] I think we're two or three weeks in. We'll leave because there's no reason for us to do this. Look, the problem with the strait, a guy can take a mine, drop it in the water, and say, oh, it's unsafe. It's not like you're taking out an army or you're taking out a country. He can drop it. Or he can take a machine gun from the shore and shoot a few bullets on a ship, or maybe an over-the-shoulder missile, small missiles. That's not for us. That'll be for France. That'll be for whoever's using the strait. But I think when we leave, probably that's all cleared up. Today, I had tremendous numbers of ships we're sailing through.

Speaker 2:
[10:32] That was the president two weeks ago. What does that tell you about his thinking?

Speaker 3:
[10:38] Those comments like so many others that he makes are gathered to a galaxy far, far away, not to the realities back here on planet Earth. And frankly, we have to take the social media posts seriously and his interviews with the media. But the reality is, it reflects, I think, a degree of confusion or a nonchalance about this whole issue, which frankly is extremely worrisome to me. There was no real strategy here. And that's the problem in the war of choice. Look, Iran is a brutal, repressive, authoritarian regime. It is a nuclear weapon-stretched state. That is to say, it has all the elements, or at least had all the elements, required to make a deliverable weapon. The decision to make one has not been made. There's no doubt that there ought to be a different Iranian regime, one committed to the security, prosperity and freedom of its people. But we don't have that regime. The question is, what is a sensible policy? This was a war of choice. There was no imminent or critical threat to the United States. And the objectives of this war were so tangled and so confused. Partly I think, David, was the fact that the president was enamored by the Venezuela operation. Partly it's because in the January protests, he said things that no American president, Republican or Democrat has ever said help is on the way.

Speaker 2:
[12:07] The January protests in Iran, yes, yes.

Speaker 3:
[12:10] Caesar institutions. Then of course he deployed the largest single naval and missile asset buildup since the second Iraq war in 2003. There was no chance the negotiations leading up to this war could have succeeded given the gaps that existed between Iran and the US. So he was locked in. And he went to war looking for an Iranian, Chelsea Rodriguez, right, the current de facto leader of Venezuela. But what he found, as my colleague Kareem Sajedpour at Carnegie said many times, what he found was an Iranian Kim Jong-un. And not just one Iranian Kim Jong-un, several. So we now find ourselves in a situation in which there is no easy way out. Diplomacy appears to have hit a dead end. And I'm not sure there's a kinetic fix here, and nor do I believe a blockade, which will devastate even more the Iranian economy, will force the Iranians to capitulate.

Speaker 2:
[13:08] Well, you and I are speaking Monday morning right about the time that the threatened naval blockade by the United States is to take effect. I'm wondering if you have a sense of how effective this might be in restoring commercial shipping, what the challenges are.

Speaker 3:
[13:25] I mean, look, I'm no international lawyer, but the rules of war permit a party at war the right to visit and search, meaning that they can stop and inspect even private vessels in waters that are not neutral, and decide whether or not they're going to pass. The US military is the capacity. They'll identify tankers loading up at Harg Island, which was the main export terminal, connected by pipeline to the Iranian mainland, that load tankers, all identify those ships. If the Iranians choose to try to export oil through the Straits of Hormuz, largely to Asia, the US military will stop those ships. So can this degrade Iran's capacity to fund this war over time? Probably. The Iranians have an export terminal at Jask, which is beyond the Straits on the Gulf of Oman, but that is not a reliable pipeline. It can transport, I think, up to a million barrels a day, but I suspect it's not practical and functional. So there will be this blockade. I suspect that at some point, Iranians will challenge or probably could strike US military targets, again, bases in the Gulf, or perhaps even go after US ships. More likely, they'll probably go back to striking the Gulf states. Much more vulnerable and probably from their point of view, much more productive. Where the blockade leads in the end, though, is uncertain. I mean, the Chinese get, I think, 13 percent of their imports, total imports come from Iranian oil. You might expect the Chinese to weigh in with the Iranians. The Pakistanis might as well. But I don't think that this blockade is going to provide a quick or easy instrument to force the Iranians not to capitulate. I don't think that's possible now, but to soften up their negotiating positions. So I don't think the blockade is going to work. And if it doesn't, it's better than deploying ground troops to seize Harg Island or any of the islands in the Strait. If it doesn't work, we're going to be stuck again.

Speaker 2:
[15:46] Right, right. It's interesting also that throughout the course of the war, if I understand this correctly, the United States has permitted Iran to export its own oil in order to soften the impact on world oil prices, right?

Speaker 3:
[15:59] Yeah. I mean, Scott, that's what the Treasury Secretary admitted as much. We've also unsanctioned 140 million barrels of Iranian oil and as you know, much to the dismay of Ukraine and other European allies, have granted waivers to the Russians on sanctioned oil. I mean, Vladimir Putin right now, if the war stopped tomorrow, would hands down be the winner here. He's getting rich because what Brent Crude was up over $100 a barrel today, he's getting rich. Every Tomahawk missile that the US launches against Iran is one less munition that Europeans can buy from the US to use in Ukraine. And to a degree, President Xi of China has benefited as well, because the focus is not on the Taiwan Straits, not on the Asia Pacific, it's on the Middle East. Although I think the Chinese would actually like to see this end.

Speaker 2:
[17:00] A naval blockade is technically an act of war, right?

Speaker 3:
[17:03] I mean, since when did... Look, let me be very clear, having worked and voted for Democrats and Republicans, when has international law ever mattered?

Speaker 2:
[17:14] In the administration, you mean?

Speaker 3:
[17:16] The US abides by it when it serves its interests and violates it when it doesn't. And I think, again, I'm not an international lawyer. You get a very smart professor of international maritime law at US Naval War College, James Kresge, who has basically said that the right of visit and search, meaning that you can stop and inspect even private vessels and waters that are not neutral and decide whether or not they pass, is a right that parties at war, and clearly, this is not an excursion. This is a war. The president said it's a war between the US and Iran and Israel and Iran, and parties at war can exercise that right.

Speaker 2:
[18:01] President Trump had said at one point he expected other nations to join with the United States in the naval blockade. They have not reacted with enthusiasm, right?

Speaker 3:
[18:11] To say the least. Our adversaries are delighted and our allies are pulling their hair out.

Speaker 2:
[18:18] And France was talking about putting together some kind of coalition to, I don't know, take some initiative of their own in the Strait.

Speaker 3:
[18:26] Yeah, Macron is taking the lead. The French president is taking the lead. And we're going to say as many as 35 countries to talk about what I guess we could describe, Dave, as a sort of post-conflict maritime response. I think the Europeans would happily or maybe unhappily contribute intelligence, demining capacity, in a post-conflict environment when it was unmistakably clear to normal humans that there would be no more shooting. I think the Europeans, in large part because look, when Russia invaded Ukraine, European dependence on Russian oil was a huge problem. And then they switched largely because of the Norwegians, the Qataris, and the Americans. They weaned themselves off of that Russian oil through increasing dependence on natural gas. But now you have 25% of the global supply of natural gas blocked. Can't get through the straits. No pipelines for that. And as a consequence, it's not just oil, it's fertilizer. Key ingredient which requires natural gas is ammonia and urea. You have planting season right in the United States. Fertilizer prices have gone up. So no, the Europeans would like to see this over. But the Brit Stammer has just announced that he's against this blockade. So no, I don't think you'll get any help from the Europeans in trying to open the blockade as long as there is a danger that they could be drawn into a war against Iran.

Speaker 2:
[20:05] We need to take another break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with Aaron David Miller. He spent 25 years in the US. State Department. He's now a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. We'll continue our conversation after this break. I'm Dave Davies, and this is Fresh Air.

Speaker 5:
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Speaker 2:
[21:59] We're not going to see commercial shipping in the Strait until shippers and insurers are convinced that it's safe to navigate and these expensive ships and their whatever they're carrying are safe. It seems the Iranians have dropped a lot of minds there. Trump says the US will be trying to clear them. Any sense of how difficult that will be?

Speaker 3:
[22:20] Well, you know, this is one of the great mysteries. I talk to people who say, yeah, they buy in the Straits, but then others say, no, they haven't. I'm not sure the US would have sent two destroyers through the Straits, which they did last week, without knowing where those mines actually were. Which leads me to the conclusion that if there has been mining, it hasn't been serious, which would impede traffic. Straits are not, have never been closed. What the Iranians have done, as you know, is set up a system of preferential access, including demanding certain tolls from countries. So there have been ships, what, the normal flow is 150. I think it's dwindled to a handful. I don't know how much of the Straits have been mined, particularly this sort of two or three mile width shipping lane, which will be easy to mine, I would expect. We've destroyed a lot of their mined layers according to the Pentagon, but there are fast boats, there are many other ways of mining. And remember, forget the military with intelligence capacity. You're dealing with a world of commercial transport. Tankers, which cost a fortune, carrying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil. It doesn't take much to raise shipping costs and to scare and intimidate insurance companies and shippers. You now have large numbers of humans on these ships that have been stuck there for weeks. That's a sort of human dimension, sailors, commercial, maritime-ers on these ships. So again, I think bottom line here on Blockade, it will badly hurt Iran. Will it be determinative or decisive in ending the war, either because the Iranians give up or they are prepared to meet American demands, particularly on nuclear enrichment, at the negotiating table, almost seven weeks in? I doubt it.

Speaker 2:
[24:38] Trump indicated at one point that the United States might join with Iran in charging tolls to commercial ships moving through the Strait. He said, look, we're the winner, we won. Why shouldn't we benefit? What's your reaction to that?

Speaker 3:
[24:52] Well, this is in line with any number of other statements he's made during the first term and during the first year of this non-consecutive second term. This is a man motivated in large part by money and business. He's talked about owning Greenland. He's prodded himself in now opening up Venezuelan oil to American companies and seizing Venezuelan oil. I think it is untenable for the planet to allow any sort of toll regime to emerge, let alone having the United States and Iran share in the spoils. I mean, that is a bridge way, way, way too far. So, I think this is a sort of figment of the president's imagination and quite in line with the way he sees so much of the Middle East, particularly Gaza, which he'd like to turn into a variation of Palm Beach. It's not serious. And this should be a concern because we're dealing with life and death issues that are very, very, very serious.

Speaker 2:
[26:11] You know, one of the things that's been interesting in the analysis of this war is what got the United States into it. And the New York Times did a piece last week about the deliberations that led to Trump's decision, which seemed to support the idea that President Trump was manipulated by Bibi Netanyahu into starting this war. What's your sense?

Speaker 3:
[26:36] You know, I have no doubt, and the Times reporting is very revealing, that this Israeli Prime Minister pushed very, very hard on this president. The notion that Netanyahu conned the president into this, frankly, I don't think it holds up. It doesn't hold up because of several reasons. Number one, the president's experience with Iran has, in his mind, been a relatively happy one. He was warned by the experts not to leave the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which he did in 2018. People told him it would be the end of the world. Well, the end of the world didn't come. Then he was warned by the experts not to kill Qasem Soleimani, which he did in January of 2020, head of the Iranian Al-Quds Force of the IRGC, a mastermind of Iranian proxy activities throughout the region. He was warned there would be severe response. There wasn't. Finally, he was warned, if you strike Iran's nuclear sites, as the president did after Israel's 12-day war, you're going to spark a regional war. Guess what? The Iranians responded with a highly telegraphed strike against Qatar. So there was no regional war. So Donald Trump's view of Iran is very risk-ready, if you marry that with what he said during the January protests, and you tether that to the incredible array of military hardware that he deployed over the course of two months. And you don't do something like that and then say, oops, I made a mistake or, oh, I changed my mind. And you finally add to the negotiations for several rounds in Oman and Geneva that led up to the war. You have a president that was ready to do this. And one more factor, when the Israelis told him, maybe this was corroborated by CIA intelligence, I don't know, that the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei would be at a place at time certain, along with members of the Iranian National Security Elite, it was too great of a temptation, and another first for the president. And he's referred repeatedly since February 28th, that I killed, we killed, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. In a way, you know, that might be one of the most transformative elements of this whole enterprise. Because whatever happens to Iran, it will not be the same country after the death of this man. He has been responsible for plotting, planning so much of Iranian strategy, focused on death to Israel, death to the United States, the proxies. There were calcitrants, and even an endorsement of the nuclear program, including the possibility at some point of weaponization. So no, I don't buy the notion that, that Donald Trump was conned into this. He knew exactly what he wanted. This is vintage, it seems to me, Donald Trump. And yes, Benjamin Netanyahu finally found a partner in this enterprise that he clearly wanted to happen.

Speaker 2:
[30:06] Now, the other thing about Trump launching this war of choice was that he didn't seem to have taken into account the possibility that Iran would take advantage of its geographical position and close the Strait of Hormuz and shoot up oil prices and threaten the world economy. Is the failure to anticipate that, does it say something about the Trump administration and the way it's organized, the way it taps intelligence resources?

Speaker 3:
[30:33] I mean, it's such a depressing question, Dave. And unfortunately, the answer, I think, is equally depressing. And that is, the Secretary of State, National Security Advisor happened to be the same person. Unless the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is not there to recommend policy to tell the President what to do. But unless you make it unmistakably clear that the enemy has a vote, and that in this case, geography is destiny. It's the absence of curiosity, Dave. That's the real issue. So, I'm sitting at my desk in the early 80s in the phone rings. It's the White House sit room. I'm the State Department's Lebanon analyst. We're in the middle of a major deployment of American Marines to Lebanon. Next voice I hear is Vice President George HW. Bush. I read one of your memos on Lebanon. Do you have a few minutes? I know you're busy. Can we talk about it? So, the Vice President of the United States is calling me because I wrote a memo that he read? Jack Kennedy used to call the Vietnam Analysts at State Department when he wanted another view, another opinion. That doesn't exist here. His advisors, President's advisors are scared of him. Trump had four secretaries of defense and six national security advisors in his first term. You can't run the railroad if nobody is telling the boss that there may be a problem on the tracks to Pittsburgh, and you need to fix it. Or if the trains are running in a bad direction, you got to change the direction. So I'm thinking, and I have had no conversations, no contact with any of these people, that in essence, you have a dysfunctional national security decision-making apparatus. And I think the results seem to be pretty clear.

Speaker 2:
[32:39] We're going to take another break here. We are speaking with Aaron David Miller. He spent 25 years in the US. State Department. He's now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. We'll continue our conversation after this short break. This is Fresh Air.

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[34:32] You recently wrote a piece in Foreign Policy, or co-wrote a piece in Foreign Policy, about Trump's diplomatic team on this, Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and Steve Witkoff, his friend from the real estate business. You said they deserve an F in diplomacy. Do you want to give us an example of that?

Speaker 3:
[34:51] Yeah, I co-wrote this piece with my friend and colleague, Dan Kurtzer, former ambassador to Israel and Egypt. Look, the semester isn't over yet, right? So we base that analysis on what we've seen. And let's be clear, these are very heavy lifts. You could get, by former boss James Baker or bring Henry Kissinger back, and they'd have a hard time with these negotiations. But the president has deployed his best friend and his son-in-law to mediate three of the world's most difficult and intractable problems. Russia-Ukraine failing, Israel-Palestine, Gaza, 20-point plan succeeded in releasing hostages, ending the war, even though the kinetic activity, the Israelis are still striking. The hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in those attacks. But the rest of Gaza remains divided, dysfunctional, and sporadically violent. Those negotiations are dead, at least for now. And then you have, in the lead up to the June War, five rounds of negotiations with Steve Witkoff and the Iranians. And a couple of sets before this war. So, no, I don't think they're doing a good job. Again, hard conflicts. But you need a structure. You don't need professional diplomats. I don't want the US. Congress running our foreign policy. And frankly, I don't want the State Department running our foreign policy.

Speaker 2:
[36:27] You don't want professional diplomats, you're saying?

Speaker 3:
[36:29] I said, you don't need professional diplomats.

Speaker 2:
[36:31] You don't need professional diplomats.

Speaker 3:
[36:33] James Baker was not a professional diplomat. Neither was Henry Kissinger. Those are the two best negotiators. One I worked for, the other I got to interview for a couple of my books. They had a sense of how to negotiate. They realized that you need to strike a balance of interests, that you had to understand at least what the other side wanted and how to try to reconcile the two. They were both great actors with real charisma, each in their own way. And they worked for presidents who knew foreign policy, Kissinger for Nixon and Baker for George HW. Bush, who knew foreign policy. So you don't have that. You don't have a Baker. You don't have a Kissinger. You don't have a Bush 41. You don't have a Richard Nixon on foreign policy in the White House right now.

Speaker 2:
[37:34] But you know, the other thing about it, it strikes me that you need negotiators who are gonna take into account the depth of the issues that you're dealing with. You know, the Iran nuclear agreement that the United States signed in 2015 took two years to negotiate. They got all of these experts from the Livermore Labs and everywhere else to get into the details of nuclear materials and all of that, and it still took two years. Whereas, I think my sense is that Jared Kushner and Steve Whitcoff, they want the Iranians to pledge that they will give up any ambitions to have a nuclear policy. You really need more detail than that, don't you?

Speaker 3:
[38:13] Yeah, you need teams to advise the negotiators. You need people who know culture, politics, history, and again, it's such an obvious point. Didn't anybody look at a map before they decided on February 28th to go to war? Geography and atlas. You know, I sometimes think, Dave, that an atlas, a knowledge of history and common sense and judgment would really be enough to get you started. And frankly, I don't think any of those things were evident.

Speaker 2:
[38:49] The other thing is that, you know, diplomacy typically requires great care and discretion in one's communications, especially public communications. And I'm wondering, you know, what's been the effect of having a social media platform in the president's hands, which allows him to share his thoughts without review or editing at any time?

Speaker 3:
[39:09] Well, I think you saw partially what happened in January with a public declaration that help is on the way. I mean, how do you say that?

Speaker 2:
[39:19] To the Iranian protesters who were being gunned down.

Speaker 3:
[39:21] Yeah, when they're being killed. I mean, it basically assumes the president is communicating a notion that he's going to accept responsibility for redeeming and saving these people. So yeah, and then of course, you've got the we're going to destroy civilization. So again, no, it's no way to run the railroad. It to some degree even confounds our adversaries. It undermines our alliances, and it reflects the lack of discipline and structure. You know, some people argue that it's the madman theory, right? I mean, Trump may actually have referred to this as well that-

Speaker 2:
[40:09] Which is from the Nixon era, right?

Speaker 3:
[40:10] Yeah, it's the unpredictability. It's my unpredictability that helps me advance matters. I mean, I'm just not persuaded. And I'm not suggesting that Trump foreign policy has been a total disaster. I think it's been the notion of getting Europeans to step up and assume more responsibility for European security. It's a hard lift for them, but it's a start, and it's critically, I think, critically important in recognizing that China is a is a peer competitor, at least on the economic side. Some of these things seem to have worked.

Speaker 2:
[40:52] The Abraham Accords in the first year.

Speaker 3:
[40:54] Abraham Accords. But I just, I don't, when it comes to crisis and conflict, particularly this one, and let's be clear, this one will shape, however it turns out, the legacy, foreign policy legacy of this administration.

Speaker 2:
[41:16] Let's take another break here. We are speaking with Aaron David Miller. He spent 25 years in the US State Department. He's now a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. We'll continue our conversation in just a moment. This is Fresh Air.

Speaker 5:
[41:30] Support for NPR and the following message come from Warby Parker, the one-stop shop for all your vision needs. They offer expertly crafted prescription eyewear, plus contacts, eye exams, and more. For everything you need to see, visit your nearest Warby Parker store or head to warbyparker.com. This message comes from Capital One, presenting sponsor of the 2026 Tiny Desk Contest, NPR Music's annual Tiny Desk Contest, called on musicians from all corners of the country to submit an original song performed behind a desk. The lucky winner will play a Tiny Desk concert and headline a tour with NPR Music this summer. While the judges are busy reviewing the entries, you can follow along and choose your favorites. Explore a variety of original talent with videos performed everywhere, from bedrooms to staircases to rooftops. See where this year's entries will take you at npr.org/tinydeskcontest and travel even further with the Capital One Venture X Card, offering premium benefits like a $300 annual Capital One travel credit. Plus, earn unlimited double miles on every purchase. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com for details.

Speaker 2:
[42:44] You know, you authored a, co-authored an essay with Daniel Kertzer about the prospects for transformational change in the region. I think suggesting that American policy makers have overestimated the extent to which the United States can really rearrange things in the Middle East. You want to explain what you were getting at here?

Speaker 3:
[43:07] Yeah, and remember, again, a piece with Dan Kertz and New York Times. This is our view. I mean, you can talk to any number of other folks and they'd give you some something different based on our collective experience, including Dan's of almost 50 years, dealing with this region. This region eats up transformational ideas. It's more often than not a place where American ideas on warmaking and peacemaking go to die. And at times, I feel, Dave, like we're some sort of modern-day gulliver wandering around in a part of the world that we don't understand, tied up by tiny powers, larger powers, large and small, and burdened by our own illusions. And I think we have to be careful. We have interests, we have allies, we have adversaries in this region, and we need to lead to protect them. But we need to really get a grip on how much we can actually change. You have five Arab states now in active phases of some kind of dysfunction. Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Syria. Maybe, maybe the Syrians will prove the exception of emerging from authoritarian rule with something clearly better than the Assad's. We can't do this for them. We can't fix this. Someone said that in the history of the world, nobody ever washed a rental car. It's a profound piece of philosophy. People care about what they own. There's an absence of ownership on the part of the leaders of this region. We can't compensate for that. I think humility is really, really important as we seek to protect our own interests.

Speaker 2:
[44:57] We were talking about diplomacy. There is a point of view that Iran's experience over the past 10 years or so is likely to make it more committed than ever to developing a nuclear weapon because it discovers that it really can't count on negotiations with the United States to be respected and honored. There was Trump withdrawing from the 2015 agreement and then more recently, talks were going on and were dramatically interrupted by the outbreak of this conflict. What do you think?

Speaker 3:
[45:31] It's a fair point, David. I think it's a serious and legitimate concern. The 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium is 60%. You need 90% to get to bomb grade. Could provide a foundation on which to continue that search to first become a nuclear weapons threshold state with all the elements, and then at some point decision to make a weapon. I don't think we've destroyed all of their enrichment facilities between the US and the Israelis. It's a very real concern. We've set their program back. There's no question about it. And the IAEA has been denied inspections. But our capacity to monitor intrusively I think will be important. But it is a very real concern and one that will bear watching, assuming this regime survives in the months and years ahead.

Speaker 2:
[46:29] Before I let you go, I have to ask you about the other development over the weekend. You know, the right-wing populist Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, was defeated after 16 years in power. I don't know, what's the significance here, do you think?

Speaker 3:
[46:41] I think for the Hungarian public, even though the new guy was a former Orban guy, and shares some of Orban's views of the dangers that they present about woke and all the rest, I think it was largely corruption and self-dealing that ended up being Orban's demise. And it will send a signal, I think, to other populists in Europe and beyond. I think it's extraordinarily welcome development. And maybe, maybe, I want to say it's a wake-up call. Maybe it's a data point that democratic governance and effective leadership and coloring between certain moral and ethical lines is still alive in the world today.

Speaker 2:
[47:44] Aaron David Miller, thank you so much for speaking with us again.

Speaker 3:
[47:47] Dave, it was a pleasure. I love Fresh Air. It's a wonderful program.

Speaker 2:
[47:51] Aaron David Miller spent 25 years in the US. State Department. He's now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. We recorded our interview yesterday. On Tomorrow's Show, we speak with actor Amanda Peat. She starred in The Whole Nine Yards, Something's Gotta Give and Studio 60 on The Sunset Strip. Her series, Your Friends and Neighbors, just started its second season and her new film is called Fantasy Life. Peat is also a writer and a recent piece in The New Yorker. She writes about being diagnosed with breast cancer while both of her parents were near death. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at nprfreshair. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Her interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Challener, Susan Yakundi, Anna Baumann and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital producer is Molly Sivi Nesper. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.