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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies. The six-week war between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran entered a new and uncertain phase over the weekend when President Trump announced that the U.S. would impose a naval blockade on Iran's ports in an effort to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping. Thank you very much.
That led to a hastily arranged two-week ceasefire that is mostly held between the U.S. and Iran and an agreement to hold negotiations. However, Israel, the United States' ally in the war, has continued to attack targets in Lebanon in its campaign against the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah. Iran claimed that that violated the ceasefire, while both the U.S.
and Israel said it was not part of the deal. For some insight into the conflict and thoughts on what to expect next, we turn to veteran diplomat Aaron David Miller. Miller spent 25 years in the State Department advising Republican and Democratic presidents on Middle East policy and playing a key role in the Oslo peace process in the 1990s.
He received the State Department's Distinguished Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards. He's now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of five books. We recorded our interview yesterday. Aaron David Miller, welcome back to Fresh Air. David, it's great to be here. I love the program. Good, good. Well, let's get into this.
Maybe we should begin by how we got here. You know, when President Trump announced last week that there was an agreement for a two-week ceasefire and then face-to-face negotiations in Pakistan ā Anybody who'd read the public statements by Trump and the Iranian authorities could see that they were just miles apart.
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Chapter 2: What recent developments have escalated tensions between the U.S. and Iran?
Was this breakdown after one day about what you expected?
It was. I think to have a successful negotiation, Dave, you really need three elements, three keys. You need two parties who are willing and able and are prepared to use diplomacy, not to browbeat or to issue demands for each side, but to actually create some sort of balance of interest. Number two, you need a shared sense of urgency.
Let's say the Iranian clock and the American clock need to be in sync. Both need to feel a certain amount of pain on one hand and through negotiations could realize a certain amount of gain on the other. And finally, you need an end product, right? Some agreement, some deal, text. I think it was the great Hollywood mogul who said that an oral agreement isn't worth the paper it's written on.
So you need these three things. And frankly, you didn't have them and run up to Islamabad and you don't have them now.
Yeah, when Trump announced the ceasefire, there was no written agreement laying out the terms of the ceasefire. Is that unusual?
Yes, and I guess no. You know, the U.S.-Iranian negotiations are really quite unique, idiosyncratic in this regard. You can't do this stuff on the back of a cocktail napkin. You can't do it on a cell phone. You can't do it however well-intentioned the Pakistanis may be. And they have clear interests. Eighty-plus percent of Pakistan's oil comes from Iran.
Not to mention food imports and a variety of other commodities. You need to do direct negotiations. I know 21 hours might seem like a long time. I remember Camp David in 2000. Ehud Barak, Bill Clinton, and Yasser Arafat. I mean, we spent 12 hours on one issue alone. And frankly, the issues are so complicated that you need direct negotiations.
Mediators can facilitate, but they can't serve to actually negotiate on behalf of the party. So no, I wasn't surprised, nor was I surprised that the terms of this ceasefire were not understood by each side to be quite the same.
Right. It's interesting that Trump said in agreeing to the ceasefire and the negotiations that the US had received a 10-point proposal from Iran and believed that it was, quote, a workable basis on which to negotiate. But the United States didn't release the 10 points, right? They were subsequently released elsewhere or at least what it was believed to be the Iranian 10 points.
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Chapter 3: How did the ceasefire agreement come about and what were its terms?
It had its own 15 points initially, to which the Iranians proposed five. So you ended up with 15 to 5 to 10 negotiations. to basically two sorts of understandings that the cessation of hostilities would be conditional on Iran's willingness, ability, not to manage the Straits of Hormuz, but to open them. This got loaded down with all sorts of preconditions.
The Iranians wanted the Israelis to stop their military activities in Lebanon. They came back with proposals to unfreeze frozen assets. So it got all gummed up. There was absolutely no way, slim to none, chance that the vice president in 21 hours, or frankly, 21 days, could have come up with a workable end to this war. And we are no closer to that end after these failed negotiations.
Right. Among the Iranians, 10 points were their continued control of the Strait of Hormuz, lifting sanctions, reparations, withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the region. Does this suggest that Trump had put himself into a box by this extreme threat to end Iranian civilization and felt the only way out was to find something he could latch on to and say, let's talk?
I think you broke the code, Dave. I mean, this is one of the several boxes that the president in a sort of own goal, self-inflicted wound has created. I mean, several days ago, he faced an unpalatable choice, right? This extraordinarily insane, inappropriate decision. Threat public social media to destroy civilization, you know, within a matter of hours. That was one option. Right.
And had he gone through that, the Iranians would have responded against Gulf infrastructure, desal plants, electricity grids, tourist sites, oil infrastructures, or the president could have backed down. He had a lifeline, which the Pakistanis helped him create. And I think the Americans also helped shape this particular proposal.
So that is a box which offered a pathway out with the negotiations in Islamabad. But now the box, frankly, remains. It's worth making one additional point, and that is the Iranians... have deployed geography in a terrifying manner.
And the Iranians have two cards, more than two, but two cards, the capacity to close and manage the Straits of Hormuz and the capacity to undermine Gulf security and stability with their residual capacity after six weeks of war of short-range missiles and drones. and that capacity remains.
So CIA, DIA, my time in government, I can't tell you how many exercises were run, how many intelligence reports indicated the problems and challenges should the Iranians control the Straits, and the difficult time that the American military would have reopening them. So why this was never factored into the decision process
To launch a war of choice is one of the many intriguing and frankly depressing questions that need to be asked.
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Chapter 4: What are the three key elements for successful negotiations according to Aaron David Miller?
The question is, what is a sensible policy? This was a war of choice. There was no imminent or critical threat to the United States. And the objectives of this war were so tangled and so confused. Partly, I think, David, was the fact that the president was enamored by the Venezuela operation.
Partly it's because in the January protests, he said things that no American president, Republican or Democrat has ever said. Help is on the way.
The January protests in Iran. Yes, yes.
These are institutions. Then, of course, he deployed the largest single naval and missile asset buildup since the second Iraq war in 2003. There was no chance the negotiations leading up to this war could have succeeded, given the gaps that existed between Iran and the U.S. So he was locked in. And he went to war looking for an Iranian, Delcy Rodriguez, right?
The current de facto leader of Venezuela. But what he found, as my colleague Karim Sajidpour at Carnegie said many times, what he found was an Iranian Kim Jong-un. And not just one Iranian Kim Jong-un, several. So we now find ourselves in a situation in which there is no easy way out. Diplomacy appears to have hit a dead end.
And I'm not sure there's a kinetic fix here, and nor do I believe a blockade, which will devastate even more the Iranian economy, will force the Iranians to capitulate.
Well, you and I are speaking Monday morning right about the time that the threatened naval blockade by the United States is to take effect. I'm wondering if you have a sense of how effective this might be in restoring commercial shipping, what the challenges are.
I mean, look, I'm no international lawyer, but the rules of war permit a party at war the right to visit and search, meaning that they can stop and inspect, you know, even private vessels in waters that are not neutral and decide whether or not they're going to pass. The U.S. military has the capacity. They'll identify tankers, right, loading up at Karg Island, which was the main export terminal.
connected by pipeline to the Iranian mainland, that load tankers will identify those ships. And if the Iranians choose to try to export oil through the Straits of Hormuz, largely to Asia, the US military will stop those ships. So can this degrade Iran's capacity to fund this war over time? Probably.
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Chapter 5: Why was the lack of a written agreement considered unusual in U.S.-Iran negotiations?
I mean, Scott Besant, the treasurer secretary, admitted as much. We've also unsanctioned 140 million barrels of Iranian oil and, as you know, much to the dismay of Ukraine and other European allies. have granted waivers to the Russians on sanctioned oil. I mean, Vladimir Putin right now, if the war stopped tomorrow... would hands down be the winner here.
He's getting rich because what Brent Crude was up over $100 a barrel today, he's getting rich. Every Tomahawk missile that the US launches against Iran is one less munition that Europeans can buy from the US to use in Ukraine. And to a degree, President Xi of China has benefited as well because the focus is not on the Taiwan Straits, not on the Asia Pacific. It's on the Middle East.
I think the Chinese would actually like to see this end.
A naval blockade is technically an act of war, right?
I meanā Since when didālook, let me be very clear. Having worked and voted for Democrats and Republicans, when has international law ever mattered?
Trevor Burrus And any administration.
Peter Robinson The U.S. abides by it when it serves its interests and violates it when it doesn't. And I think, again, I'm not an international lawyer. You get a very smart professor of international maritime law at U.S. Naval War College, James Kresko, who, you know, has basically said that the right of visit and search is
meaning that you can stop and inspect even private vessels and waters that are not neutral and decide whether or not they pass, is a right that parties at war. And clearly, this is not an excursion. This is a war. The president said it's an excursion. It's a war between the U.S. and Iran and Israel and Iran. And parties at war can exercise that right.
President Trump had said at one point he expected other nations to join with the United States in the naval blockade. They have not reacted with enthusiasm, right?
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