Trita Parsi

It was the craziest thing any president has ever done.

And I specifically told them that you are misreading Iran.

You think that the Iranians are much weaker than they are.

I'm not saying that they were strong.

In fact, I didn't think that they're going to be as successful as they frankly ended up being, but they were never as weak as the administration thought they were or as the Israelis were telling the administration.

But also there was another major mistake, I think, in the administration's outlook on Iran.

They thought...

that the Iranians feared war more than they feared capitulation and surrender.

And Trump thought that by just taking one third of the US's Navy there, all of this mobilization, the Iranians would realize that war was real and as a result, they would surrender.

It was a complete misread.

The Iranians feared surrender far more than they feared war.

They believe that they could survive war, perhaps even come out on top in that war, which I think they have in some ways.

Surrender would be the end of the Islamic Republic.

They would never surrender.

Their system is incapable of surrendering.

Their system- Who would ever surrender?

Who would ever proffer an unconditional surrender?

Well, from Trump's perspective, having just gone through Venezuela, he probably thought that the Iranians would be no different, but they were very, very different.

It's very important to understand right now, the difficulty they have had in getting their system to agree to this deal.

And as I mentioned, some of the ultra hardliners are dead set against this.