Robert Malley

I mean, that's kind of impossible.

They have the knowledge now, that knowledge is irreversible.

So if they really want to get a nuclear weapon, they could try to dash for one.

And the question will be, would it be detected on time for outside powers to prevent them?

The real challenge is, are there enough measures, constraining measures, transparency measures that make sure that Iran would not take the risk to try to develop a bomb?

Or if they were to take the risk, as I said, they would be immediately detected and thus immediately thwarted.

I think that's still possible.

What we're hearing is that Iran is prepared, for example...

to suspend enrichment for a period of time, say 10, 15 years, that they're prepared to accept the resumption of intrusive inspections, that they're prepared to limit for a long period of time the kind of enrichment that they would be involved in, also to either ship out or dilute the highly enriched uranium that they've accumulated.

It's never foolproof, it's never perfect, but it's about as good as one could get.

I think it was achievable without a war.

It had been achieved in 2015, and therefore there was no justification for President Trump to rip up that deal.

At this point, I still think a deal is achievable.

It's not the perfect deal that President Trump may be talking about.

It's not fundamentally different from the deal that was negotiated in 2015, but it would be a good enough deal at this point.

I mean, define victory.

For me, the war was lost at the moment it was waged because it had no justification, no legality.

And so I can't look at a war like that and say it's going to be won, particularly when the terms, the objectives were vague.

were ill-defined and were constantly changing and often approached sort of degrees of unrealism, such as regime change or capitulation of the regime.

So those objectives were never achievable.