Dave Davies

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?

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 –

The way it's organized, the way it taps intelligence resources?

I'm going to take another break here.

We are speaking with Aaron David Miller.

He spent 25 years in the U.S.

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.

Trevor Burrus 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?

But the other thing – it strikes me that you need negotiators who are going to take into account the depth of –

the issues that you're dealing with.

The Iran nuclear agreement that the United States signed in 2015 took two years to negotiate.

They got all of these experts from the Libermore Labs and everywhere else to get into the details of nuclear materials and all of that.