U.S. President Donald Trump has two basic options regarding Iran right now. He can either push through an imperfect deal and sell it to the American people as a victory; or he can bet that Washington can sustain more economic and political pain than Tehran and continue to play a geopolitical game of chicken.
Which will it be? The stakes get higher with each passing day. This week, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a club of industrialized economies, projected that global growth could slow to 2.1 percent—a sharp drop from last year’s 3.4 percent—if a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz isn’t reached this year.
On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with Robert Malley, a lead negotiator in the Obama administration’s 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and also a special envoy for Iran under President Joe Biden. Malley now runs the Middle East program at the International Crisis Group and teaches at Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs. Subscribers can watch the full discussion in the video box atop this page, or download the free FP Live podcast. What follows here is a condensed and lightly edited transcript, exclusive to FP Insiders.
Ravi Agrawal: So, every week now, there are new reports that we are close to a deal, and then nothing happens. What do you make of the ongoing talks between Washington and Tehran?
Robert Malley: Every day is Groundhog Day, but the groundhog is very sick. Every day is the same craziness. You just mentioned it: Within a 24-hour span, the president can say, “we’re on the verge of a deal,” that he “doesn’t need a deal,” he “doesn’t want to talk to the Iranians,” he’s “talking to the Iranians,” he’s “going to escalate,” he’s “going to end the war,” or he’s just going to “walk away.” So to measure where we are today, we’d have to measure the president’s mood minute by minute. That wouldn’t be very productive, so I think we should take a step back.
Big picture, both sides—you would think—have an objective interest in ending at least the Strait of Hormuz portion of this war. For the United States, it’s pretty self-evident what the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is costing economically and politically for the president and his party. Just today, oil executives are saying that if this goes on for a few more weeks, we could see a spike in the price of oil at levels that would make today look like a very easy phase of the economic hardship. So from Trump’s point of view, it would seem to make perfect sense: Let’s just open the Strait of Hormuz.
From the Iranian point of view, they could always close it in the future, but opening it now means that they could try to get some more revenue, which they have been forgoing so far. They would still have the deterrence of being able to close it, but at least they would start putting some oxygen back into their economy, particularly if it were wedded with some form of economic relief, which would be their demand. And then they could deal with the nuclear issues, and other issues, further down the road.
So we always seem to come to the edge of that deal, and then something pulls it back. I don’t want to put all of the blame on the U.S. side, because God knows the Iranians can be very hard to negotiate with, but in this case, it seems that the president is torn between this desire to end this phase, which is really costing him, but he hates appearing weak. People are whispering in his ear all the time, “A little more pressure, you’re gonna get them to buckle, you’re going to get them to surrender.” He’s always had an affinity for the language of force. So to give up now, when he thinks he may be close to a bigger achievement—he doesn’t seem to be prepared to do it, and the amount of mistrust just makes everything that much harder. So I think we are close, but “close” in this instance could be very far away.
RA: You know this so well, but negotiations, I think, always begin with maximalist goals. And I’m curious what you see as the minimal goals both sides must have in order to reach a deal.
RM: The minimalist goal is what I just mentioned, more or less, which is that the United States needs to know that the Strait of Hormuz is open to regular traffic, so that oil and energy prices start declining again.
RA: But Rob, that is the status quo prewar, basically.
RM: Yes. Not only is this war illegal and unjustified both domestically and internationally, but completely counterproductive for the reason you just put your finger on, which is that the main goal of the war today is to undo the impact of the war, to open the strait that was not closed before the war began. So it is obviously absurd, and that may be one of the reasons why the president hesitates, because he knows what critics will say. We went through all of this to get back to a situation that didn’t exist before the war, and is in some ways worse, because now Iran has used—and knows that it could use again, and the rest of the world knows they could use again—this ability to close down the Strait of Hormuz. But at the minimum, that’s what the president needs. If he doesn’t get that, he has nothing.
At the minimum, what the Iranians need is the end of the blockade—and some kind of end to the war. I don’t even know what that means, but they keep insisting on it. End of the war in Iran, end of the Israeli war on Lebanon, and some measure of economic relief. They probably know they’re not going to get that much simply in exchange for opening the Strait of Hormuz, but whether it’s some economic toll system in which ships that cross through the Strait of Hormuz have to pay a fee for environmental reasons, or sanctions relief with access to some of their assets that have been frozen and cut, they’re going to need some economic benefit, because otherwise they will face a calamitous economic situation. No matter how this war ends, it’s going to be very hard for them to make up for all of the economic loss that they’ve incurred. So they need to have something up front to justify them going back to a situation where the Strait of Hormuz is not closed.
RA: You mentioned Israel and Lebanon there. How important a piece of the puzzle is it? It’s telling that Iran has been trying to tie a cease-fire with Hezbollah into a larger U.S.-Iran deal. But then as a result, there have also been all these growing tensions between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which are emerging now into the public sphere.
RM: It is very important, it appears, for the Iranian regime to have a linkage to Lebanon, at least for the first phase—in other words, at least in order to get a memorandum of understanding of some sort with the United States. There are many reasons for that; obviously, Hezbollah has been a core partner of Iran, and it’s important for Iran to show that it is not fighting the struggle only for itself, but for the broader axis of resistance, or what remains of it. It could score some points in that way, in saying, “We’re fighting for a broader Arab cause, not just for our own interests.” But yes, they want to preserve Hezbollah as much as possible as an asset. Just as it served them in the past, they want it to serve them in future. So I think you have to take them at their word when they say that without some cessation of hostilities in Lebanon, they’re not prepared to agree to a deal with the U.S.
Now, you could define what a “cessation of hostility” means. Does it mean no attack on Beirut? Does it mean no further expansion of Israel’s occupation? There could be some wiggle room there, but certainly you can’t see the intensity of Israel’s current fighting in Lebanon if Iran is going to enter a deal with the United States.
But right now, in order to get into this deal, Iran has made its position very clear—I must admit, clearer than I would have expected. That is one of the reasons why Trump had that difficult conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu, in which he told him, you’re “fucking crazy” if you think you’re going to strike Beirut. And it appears to have had some effect, although one of the most perceptive things that Trump said recently is that cease-fires in the Middle East mean that the fire is a little more moderate than it was before. That’s what we’re seeing, including today in Lebanon. It’s not as if Israel has stopped firing in Lebanon any more than it has stopped firing in Gaza.
RA: So true. We haven’t talked about the nuclear angle much so far, and I wonder how important you think that is in current talks, or whether both sides realize this is way too complicated to get into right now, and we need some sort of a first-phase deal before we can get to that point.
RM: One of the ironies is that right now, all the focus is on the Strait of Hormuz, not so much on the nuclear file, which purportedly was why the war was launched in the first place—although there, too, there’s an irony, because Trump claimed that he had obliterated Iran’s nuclear program last June. So irony, or paradox, and illogical point after illogical point. But it is interesting that the focus doesn’t seem to be so much on the nuclear file. It’s going to be a very complicated deal to negotiate, and it’s not the most immediate threat.
But Trump—and again, it’s one of the reasons why that memorandum of understanding, which always seems to be just an inch away, becomes elusive—hears the critics. He knows what people are saying, which is that if he gets this deal and it doesn’t touch the nuclear file, then he may never get there. Whereas with the blockade, he has some leverage. So he keeps saying, “Of course we’re going to have to deal with the nuclear file,” and he wants something up front. Now, if all he wants up front is an Iranian declaration that they’ll never seek to pursue a nuclear weapon, that existed in the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action], he could get that again. If what he wants is some commitment by Iran that they will negotiate the disposition of the highly enriched uranium that is somewhere under the rubble—the 60 percent enriched uranium, of which they have about 450 kilograms—he probably could get that, if it’s vague; if Iran promises that it will negotiate a way to dispose of it, and promises that it’ll negotiate constraints on its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. That is in the realm of the possible.
If he wants something more specific, I doubt he’ll get it, because then Iran is going to ask for up-front sanctions relief. You don’t have to be in Iran’s shoes to understand that they can’t trust anything that comes out of the president’s mouth anymore. He’s the one who withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018, even though Iran was complying with it. And twice in the last year or so, he struck Iran in the middle of negotiations. So they won’t make any tangible concessions on the nuclear file until they have tangible, up-front concessions on the economic sanctions file, and the president doesn’t seem prepared to give it. That’s why I’m very doubtful that as a first phase, you’re going to get anything detailed on the nuclear front.
Former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice wrote a piece, and I don’t agree with much in the piece, but she says the focus should be on the Strait of Hormuz, and that on the nuclear issue, the military strikes have done enough damage, so if Iran starts trying to dig out this highly enriched uranium, or reconstitute its nuclear program, American and Israeli eyes and ears will probably be able to detect it. So even though Iran—and again, it is one of the outcomes of this misguided, misbegotten war—is probably more eager to get a nuclear weapon than at any time in its history, it also knows that it’s under greater surveillance than at any time in history from Israel and the United States, so it might be very difficult for them to reconstitute their program. So that’s not the most immediate issue, and I could imagine you get a deal and then postpone the nuclear negotiations. Whether you ever get to a deal, who knows, but the United States and Israel could make clear that if Iran is about to reconstitute their program and they detect it, they will bomb again.
RA: I want to step back a little bit. You and Stephen Wertheim wrote a great piece in the New York Times when the war began. You made the case that there is a structural problem in how the United States sees Iran, and that war was a “logical conclusion” of decades of policy. Talk about that a bit.
RM: Logical, not inevitable. I do think it took a president like Trump to bring us to this war, which is catastrophic and illegal. But the point we’re making is that since 1979, basically, Iran has been defined as almost the devil on Earth. This is not to take their defense. They’ve done plenty to kill Americans, destabilize the region, and hurt their own people. But the United States has built them into this threat in which Democratic and Republican administrations alike have normalized two things. One is normalizing the use of sanctions in a way that is really harming the Iranian people. You don’t have to be an expert to look at the situation in Iran over the last several years, since sanctions were imposed, and say, “Who really has suffered?” Is it the regime? The regime finds ways to circumvent sanctions as every regime does. It’s not great for them, but some of them benefit quite a bit. It’s the people who suffer, and who suffer significantly, particularly when a regime is prepared to sacrifice the well-being of its people. And we’ve normalized the possibility of the use of force. Every past president has said, “We keep the option of force on the table if we can’t reach an acceptable agreement with Iran.”
So you make it possible for people to imagine that Iran is this existential threat, a threat that has to be dealt with by devastating the economy of its people. And if that doesn’t work, the use of force is always there as an alternative. How many times does Trump say, “I’m the only one who was prepared to take care of a problem that all my predecessors were describing in these existential terms, the evil regime that we have to get rid of and we’re prepared to use force to get rid of it”? And he said, “You were prepared to, but you didn’t do it. I was prepared to and I acted.” And it is true. Even the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [the 2015 Iran nuclear deal Malley helped negotiate] didn’t address the problem of Iran as it’s been defined. If you define a problem in those terms and you legitimize and normalize those tools, it’s not that much of a leap to say, “What else do we have but military force to tackle it?”
Again, I’m not saying that if we’d had a President [Kamala] Harris that we would have a war, but I am speaking about that ecosystem, that mindset. When [Barack] Obama was running for the presidency, he said that we have to not only end the Iraq War but also end the mindset that led to this war. There is a mindset that looks at the Middle East—and this goes back far earlier than President Obama or even the Iraq War—through a certain lens, almost always without due regard to the consequences on civilians. But it’s become normalized, so I do think that there needs to be an introspection by Democrats when they come back into power, to look at what they’ve done to contribute to this over-militarized understanding of the Middle East.
RA: A last question, Rob, given everything we’ve been discussing so far. If you were still in your old job and you had to recommend to Trump some way of getting out of this war quickly, given all the economic pain for the United States, but also for the world, what would you say?
RM: I always hesitate to answer that question because I would never have gotten here in the first place. Historians are going to have a field day trying to figure out why this war was launched, and maybe psychologists would be better placed than a diplomat or political scientist.
Being where we are now, I think it’s ending the blockade, opening the Strait of Hormuz, and some form of economic relief for Iran. It won’t be anything near what Iran would like, but at least something, because otherwise, what benefit would Iran see in this deal? It’s important for the United States and Iran, but it’s mainly important because we’re now in a situation of no war, no peace, and countless innocent victims.
RA: But Rob, with this plan, assuming Trump can sell it, you’re OK with leaving the nuclear issue unresolved?
RM: Can the president sell it? The beauty—the absurdity—of Trump’s method is that he can paint failure in a way that his followers and sycophants will buy and echo and sell. He could declare victory almost regardless of the outcome. Just by the way, he could also resume bombing almost regardless of the cost. He does have that ability.
