Robert Malley

speaker

322 appearances 3 recordings 3 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 8 Jul

Robert Malley’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Today in Focus · Iran’s show of strength · 8 Jul 2026 podcast

I don't like this sort of arithmetic, who won, who lost.

Between the U.S.

and Iran, there's no doubt that given their relative expectations at the beginning of the war, Iran comes out with a stronger hand.

And they could say that strategically they withstood the strongest war.

you know, military in the world combined with the strongest military in the region, that they're still standing and that they could negotiate terms that were, you know, on paper more favorable to them than to the United States.

The reason I hesitate about talking about who won and who lost is that, you know, Iran, it's hard to paint them as a victor when you look at the enormous economic damage that they have suffered as a result of this war, which is going to take them a very, very, very long time to recover from.

And that regardless of what

the sanctions relief they're being offered in the memorandum of understanding, none of it will compensate for the loss in human life and in material infrastructure that they've suffered.

So yes, they won relative to the U.S.

You know, when the dust settles and when the Iranian people and the Iranian government and regime are going to have to look at where things stand, they're going to find it very hard, as I said, to recover economically from the damage they suffered.

And so to call them victors is only a relative term.

In the broader sense, everyone has lost from this war.

So I'd say it's really we're in apples and oranges territory here.

There's no real comparison to be made between the two.

Now, one is several hundred pages of detailed provisions on the steps that Iran would have to take to reduce its nuclear capacity, to agree to very strict supervision inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, something that took years to negotiate.

detailed sanctions relief from the US, from the United Nations, from Europe.

The other is a page and a half of broad principles that previews what a nuclear deal might look like in very, very broad times, previews very broad and generous sanctions relief, but in essence doesn't delve into any of them in any detail whatsoever.

So they really are not, you can't really compare the two.

Broadly speaking, I think they all thought this was a terrible idea because they knew in a way that perhaps the Trump administration didn't, that Iran would respond by attacking them and by trying to affect international commerce and the passage of the Strait of Hormuz.

So they knew it was going to affect them.

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