Gregg Carlstrom On The Situation In The Middle East

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0:37Donald Trump's war in Iran, a war the president promised would last just weeks, is now in its third month. And the ripple effects are rocking the global economy. The Strait of Hormuz still closed to most ships. Neither Iran nor the U.S. nor Israel look ready for a peace deal right now. Iran's Air Force and Navy are severely damaged. But recent intelligence reports say the regime has control of more missiles and more weapon systems than the Trump administration has acknowledged and that Iran is taking advantage of the ceasefire, possibly to rearm. This week, more threats from the president and more step downs, a familiar pattern from the commander in chief as financial markets show deep anxiety that the war may not end anytime soon.

1:25On Wednesday, President Trump said he's giving Iran one more chance. We'd have to open the strait. That would open immediately. So we're going to give this one shot. I'm in no hurry. You never think, oh, the midterms, I'm in a hurry. I'm in no hurry. I just ideally I'd like to see a few people killed. as opposed to a lot. We can do it either way, but I'd like to see a few people killed. I just wonder whether or not they have the good of the people, because some of the things they're doing to me means they don't have the good of the people, and they have to have the good of the people. Meanwhile, Iranians are living under a blockade.

2:00Gulf states are absorbing the shock of Iranian missiles and of economic uncertainty. I'm Todd Zwillick, in for Jen White. You're listening to the 1A podcast. Today we ask, what does the Middle East look like from here? Who wins? Who loses? What happens to American influence in a region that just turned upside down? We'll be back with answers to those questions and a lot more after this short break. Stay with us.

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3:39Follow Consider This wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the 1A Podcast. I'm Todd Zwilich. Joining us to talk about Iran and the Middle East now, Greg Karlstrom. He's covered the region for more than 15 years, reporting on a lot of its big events firsthand, from revolutionary Egypt in 2011 to Israel and Gaza after October 7th, from bases in Beirut, Cairo, and Tel Aviv. Today, he's based in Dubai for The Economist, where he's the Middle East correspondent. Greg is also author of the book, How Long Will Israel Survive the Threat from Within? And he's a frequent guest on our International Friday News Roundup.

4:20His voice is very familiar to you. And since Greg is in Washington on a reporting trip, we wanted to get him in the studio to catch up on the war and on repercussions. Greg, great to see you. Nice to be here in person. Glad that you're here. We hear you over the line all the time, usually from Dubai, and we're glad that you're here with us today. Better than being on the other end of a Zoom connection. Especially during this time of war and questions that so many Americans have. Greg, we'll get to a lot of the details. The war started at the end of February. It's now mid-May. What does the war look like to you now?

4:53It looks like, on the one hand, no one is eager to go another round, right? Donald Trump has made this very clear. He'll take any excuse, no matter how flimsy, to avoid another round of fighting. He did it most recently this week, saying he had spoken to the leaders of three Gulf countries, and they talked him down from another planned round of strikes. Now, when you talk to diplomats from those Gulf countries, they will say, we didn't realize there was another round of strikes coming so imminently. And we also, we don't think there's been as much progress towards a deal as Donald Trump claims, but that's the justification.

5:26So that justification this week, three Gulf leaders, Saudi Arabia, other ones called me, asked me not to do strikes. Is there any evidence that's even true? I ask because this familiar pattern, stark threats, ending your civilization, the bombs are going to fly, only to step down at the last minute. It's been over and over. And now I think at least the third or fourth time. The claim that Middle Eastern, the GCC countries reached out and said, please don't. Is there any evidence that's true? So some of them are reaching out now in general and saying, please don't, don't go another round. They're worried about further Iranian attacks on their economies and their infrastructure.

6:07And particularly now for the Saudis, we're getting close to Hajj, to the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. About two million people are going to converge on Mecca next week. And the Saudis really don't want the resumption of a war that could disrupt the pilgrimage, leave pilgrims stranded in the kingdom. So they have been telling the administration, don't resume fighting. But do I think they did it earlier this week, the way Trump described? And do I think they told Trump, we're making good progress towards a deal, so just give diplomacy another chance? I don't believe that. Because, again, when you ask them, they say there hasn't really been progress.

6:42It had the feeling of the guy in the bar fight, just hold me back, hold me back. Exactly. Right. His friends hold me back. Exactly. And earlier, you know, last month it was Pakistan who was holding him back. Now it's the Gulf states who are holding him back. who knows who it's going to be next time. He clearly doesn't want to do it. And yet, the longer this stalemate goes on and the longer we go without a deal between America and Iran, the more it may start to look inevitable. At some point, Trump is going to try militarily to break this impasse. Especially because the world and Iran have probably priced in the step downs now, right?

7:14I mean, we're in round four of this. And we're not seeing the changes in energy markets that we used to see when he did this a month ago, six weeks ago. It was a very predictable pattern. Oil prices would go up. Trump would say something. Or bond prices would spike. Or bond prices would spike. And then he would say, actually, no, we're close to a deal. The straits going to be reopened and oil prices would come back down. None of that is really registering anymore in the markets, because as you say, they've sort of priced in these weekly tacos, these weekly Trump the chickening out routines. And meanwhile, you still have physical shortages in energy markets, and that is starting to outweigh whatever jawboning the White House is doing.

7:53Trump said earlier today, I think on the tarmac, this is a paraphrase, Netanyahu will do whatever I tell him to do in response to a reporter's question. How much influence do people like Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia or Benjamin Netanyahu have over Trump's actions now? I think the Gulf states are discovering they have less influence than they thought they did a few months ago. You go back right around this time last year, Trump was in Saudi Arabia talking about how the era of American interventionist war in the Middle East was over. And then the Saudi crown prince came here in November and was very well received at the White House and the Saudis and others in the Gulf thought, you know, Trump is on the same page with us.

8:35We don't want conflict in the region. We want to focus on economic development. Clearly, that was not the case. Trump initiated a conflict in the region. And I think for the Israelis, there was a feeling that they managed to bring him along with this. They played a huge role in getting Trump to initiate this war in the first place in February. But Netanyahu would really like to go another round. He would like the fighting to continue. And so far, he's been unsuccessful in convincing Trump to do that. Well, ever since Trump has been painting the war in Iran as a resounding success despite the Strait of Hormuz being closed and the attendant prices around the world.

9:11He's been saying the same thing for weeks. Here he is on May 11th. We're going to have a complete victory. We've already, in theory, had a complete victory from the military standpoint. The military, look, their navy is dead. They had 159 ships. Right now they have zero, other than the little speed boats that go around that got taken out eight a day by us. The president posted AI-generated pictures on Truth Social. Iranian ships labeled Obama and Biden doing great. Iranian ships labeled Trump at the bottom of the sea. The Pentagon has released metrics of 30 ,000 attacks. How significant are these numbers of ships sunk, targets hit?

9:50I ask it because it was a little bit before my time. This is precisely what the Pentagon did in Vietnam. KIA numbers, strike numbers as metrics of success. And now history proves what a lie it all was. It didn't mean we were winning. And that's exactly what comes to mind for me when I hear these briefings, those body counts during the Vietnam era. They're correct about the number of ships that they've sunk or the Iranian planes that they've destroyed. But the Iranian Navy, the Navy that the Americans have been bombing, the Iranians didn't really use that to wage war. Some of the old destroyers and frigates, These are decades old, in many cases, naval vessels that the Iranians aren't using and haven't been using to close the Strait of Hormuz, to attack commercial shipping.

10:37Same thing with their air force. Most of the planes in this air force come from the Shah's era. They predate the revolution in 1979. So this was not an air force that the Iranians were ever going to use to launch airstrikes on their neighbors or get into dogfights with the U.S. air force. Meanwhile, the things that Iran is using effectively in this war, it's drones, it's short-range ballistic and cruise missiles, these fast attack boats that Trump derides that they're using to harass shipping in the Persian Gulf, those things are still intact. They've been degraded, certainly. They don't have as many missiles as they did three months ago, but they still have the capability to use those things to wage the sort of asymmetric war that we're seeing them wage.

11:20How are regular everyday Iranians living now? They're under a blockade, dueling blockade, Strait of Hormuz closed, at least selectively closed by Iran, as we know, American blockade on the Iranian coast and all shipping. That can have a strangulating effect on daily life in addition to sanctions that have been in place for decades. And I'll caveat this by saying it's hard to know how people are living because the internet has been shut down in Iran for the better part of three months now. So you're relying on fragmentary conversations with people who have VPNs or who have spoken to their relatives there.

11:55It is having a real impact on ordinary people. Inflation in Iran was about 50 % even before the war. The currency had lost something like 98 % of its value over the past few years. They were in a deep economic crisis. This is making things worse. Food prices are going up. People are saying, you know, I couldn't afford meat before the war. Now I can't even afford chicken. Basic essentials are getting much more expensive. The war itself has caused widespread economic damage, which has potentially put as many as a million Iranians out of work, again, in a country where unemployment was quite high to begin with.

12:31So, yes, the blockade hasn't yet compelled the regime to make the sorts of political concessions that Trump wants, But it is having a very serious impact, I think, on people's daily lives. And if Iranians are fed up with high meat prices, high prices overall, they can't make ends meet, the option of taking to the streets to protest, well, they got that message earlier in the year already, didn't they? Exactly. And this is not a moment, even if you wanted to protest and take that risk that I might be killed the way thousands of people were in protests earlier this year, you're not going to do that in the middle of a war.

13:04So as long as this conflict is going on, I don't think there's any prospect for civil unrest in Iran. We're going to take a break. Coming up, how has the Middle East changed in the 15 years since the optimistic start of Arab Spring protests? What is life like around the Gulf now? And your questions and comments for Greg Kallstrom. Stay with us.

13:27This message comes from NPR sponsor Carvana. Carvana believes selling your car should be refreshingly simple. Enter your license plate or VIN, get a real offer down to the penny, and schedule a pickup on your time. No surprises. Sell your car today at Carvana.com. Pickup fees may apply. This message comes from Cachava. It can be tough to stick to your wellness routine, especially when you're on the go. Cachava's new travel packs make it easier. Just one packet provides nutrition ready for wherever life takes you, with protein, fiber, grains, probiotics, electrolytes, and more. Take your daily ritual with you.

14:06Go to cachava.com and use code NPR. New customers get 15 % off their first order. That's K-A-C-H-A-V-A dot com. Code NPR. Welcome back. We're talking about the U.S. and Israel's war in Iran and how it's changing the power dynamics in the Middle East. Mark asks, has the war accomplished any of President Trump's stated goals? He has so many stated goals that, I mean, at some point it will accomplish one of them. Pick one. Listen, let's go through the list. Has it toppled the regime? No, it hasn't. Has it freed the Iranian people, which he said on day one in that speech that he gave it was meant to do?

14:46No, it hasn't done that. Has it compelled Iran to make significant concessions around its nuclear program? No, it hasn't yet done that. Has it compelled Iran to change its foreign policy, to stop supporting proxy groups in the region, or eradicated its missile arsenal? Hasn't done that either. So what you're left with are these very narrow, almost silly metrics around the Navy and the Air Force and the things that we were talking about a few minutes ago. Trump has pointed to those things as goals. His ministers have pointed to them as goals as well. Yes, it's accomplished those things. But the big strategic aims, the things you would think a superpower would want to set out to do in this war, no, it hasn't accomplished.

15:27It's remarkable that we've reverted to the very topic of the Pentagon Papers. One of the biggest, the biggest story probably of the waning of the Vietnam era, that and my lie. The lie of the Pentagon Papers was that the Pentagon and the White House were telling America it was winning using metrics and it never was. Yeah. And you hear that from Marco Rubio, from Pete Hegseth. I mean, they have tried to be really on message about this Navy, Air Force, et cetera, using those as barometers for success. And they're just they're not. Well, we've been getting lots of questions on a similar theme. One listener from the 1A Text Club says, why don't Arab countries do something about Iran instead of the U.S.

16:10and Israel do it? A similar question from another listener. Arab countries must have known for years that Iran was a bad actor, both on the world stage and in the area. Why don't they do anything to try to contain Iran? And we got this from John in North Carolina similarly. Knowing what we know about Iran and their sponsoring of terrorism, what options did we have? I only wish the UN would have been more behind this war too. So support from John for the idea that Iran is a bad actor and had to be reined in one way or the other, I think that would be the Netanyahu argument given voice to right there.

16:45But a lot of people want to know, why don't the Gulf countries take care of their neighborhood? And they recognized Iran as a bad actor too for many, many years. I mean, they have seen Iran as their main geopolitical threat rival in the region. They have watched Iran sponsor militias from Hezbollah in Lebanon to various militias in Iraq, prop up the Assad regime in Syria. So they certainly recognize that Iran is a destabilizing force in the Middle East. Why don't they do anything about it? I think it comes from a position of weakness and fear on their part because they have always been worried about overt conflict with Iran, what that might mean for their own economic models, which are based on free trade, which are based on making themselves attractive places for businesses, for expatriates to live.

17:34And we've seen over the past few months what overt conflict looks like. It looks like missiles and drones raining down on cities across the Gulf, which is having a real impact on business, on the individual decisions that expats are making about, you know, is this still a safe place for me to live, to do business, to be with my family? That was always the worst case scenario for Gulf countries. That's why they didn't do anything directly about Iran. And now they're living that worst case scenario. Well, we've been hearing from lots and lots of 1A listeners. We got this note over the text club.

18:07Is this the same never-ending story but with some new players? Does anyone care about the individuals and families across the world whose lives are being taken or ruined by the horrific price of war? It seems chances for intelligent solutions have been scrapped for the sake of misplaced ego and greed. Greg Karlstrom, you've been covering the Middle East since 2010, just as the Arab Spring started. That was the wave of pro-democracy protests, uprising, armed rebellions swept across the Middle East and North Africa. There was a lot of hope in those days that some of the region's authoritarian regimes would fall and that green shoots of democracy would sprout up.

18:49I think that's the spring part of Arab Spring. Take us back in time a little bit. What stands out in your memory from those years as you look back over this war? I think what stands out from then and what's so different now is it was a moment when you felt like the Arab countries in the Middle East, the Arab populations in the Middle East, were trying to exert some agency, right? We're trying to take control of how their countries were governed, how their countries were run. And so it was this hopeful moment because after decades of dictatorship, people were demanding political change and it felt like they were trying to take charge in Egypt and Libya and Syria.

19:29Obviously, much of that went sour in the years to come, sometimes due to external intervention, interference, sometimes due to internal dynamics. But you contrast that with today and you feel like all of the Arab countries in the Middle East are bystanders at this point. There are decisions that are being made in Washington, Jerusalem, and Tehran that are determining the fate of the region right now. And if you are in the Gulf, you're hostage to those decisions. Even the Gulf countries, which had thought, you know, they found a way to sit out the wars of the region. They were going to focus on economic development.

20:04They were going to have close security ties with the Americans, do a bit of strategic hedging. They thought that would keep them safely out of the wars that swept the rest of the region. And here we are now, their security guarantor is the one that initiated a war in the region. So even for them, they've become bystanders. We've seen brutal civil war in Syria, another in Yemen. Saudi Arabia, of course, was deeply involved in the October 7th attacks and the Israel-Hamas war that ensued in Gaza. Now, of course, the United States war along with Israel in Iran. How do you feel like your beat has changed across all of those conflicts?

20:41And even outside of just conflict. Well, it's become all conflict the last few years is one way it's certainly changed. But I think also the inaccessibility of many of these conflicts now. During the Arab Spring, the revolutions and wars of 15 years ago, you could go to most of these places and cover them on the ground as a journalist. I was in Tahrir Square when the Egyptian revolution happened. And you could go to Libya, to Syria, to Bahrain and experience it and cover it firsthand and speak to people. The wars of the past few years, Gaza, unless you're going on an embed with the Israeli army, you cannot enter Gaza.

21:19And when you go in with the Israeli army, you don't meet a single Palestinian the whole time that you're there. So you're getting a very skewed view of what's going on in Gaza. Lebanon, there are parts of southern Lebanon that are really difficult to access for any journalist, particularly for foreign journalists. Iran, very few of us are able to get visas to go there. And so you're covering these wars that are reshaping the region, but you're doing it remotely because it's just physically not possible to go to the places where these are taking place. What do you think are the most important stories the mainstream media is missing?

21:52I mean, bureau after bureau of American outlets have pulled back from them in the least, pulled back from the whole world, of course. What kinds of stories across these conflicts do you think Americans are missing? I think the economic angle to this current war and sort of the ripple effects that we're going to see from it, we don't know quite how it's going to play out yet. It's too early to say. But these consequences are going to be with us for some time to come. If you go back to the first Gulf War in 1990, 1991, when Iraq invaded Kuwait and then America expelled it from Kuwait, what happened after that war?

22:29You saw hundreds of thousands of migrant workers across the Gulf countries who were either thrown out because their governments had sided with Saddam Hussein or they had to leave because of an economic downturn in the Gulf. And what followed from that were recessions and economic downturns across the Arab world, right? So one invasion of one small country in the Gulf had ripple effects across the Middle East. And I think what we're seeing now, the tens of thousands at least of migrant workers who have lost their jobs over the past few months, the knock-on effects of higher energy costs and what that means for populations in Southeast Asia or in Africa or in other places, I think it's going to be years until we can really assess the full scope of the damage, the economic fallout from this point.

23:16As you look over the last 15 years of your career, Dubai, Cairo, Tel Aviv, other places, you just mentioned these days it's all about conflict. It's really all about war. It's horribly depressing to hear that, but I think it's right. Who stands out to you? What person that you've talked to? What family that you've covered? I mean, you've met people that Americans will never meet. Who stands out to you that you've talked to? I mean, I think when you go back over the past few years, you know, you cover a region for long enough and it becomes personal, right? It's not just the story that you're covering.

23:53It's a place that you live in. My wife is Lebanese from the region. So, you know, even family now in the region. But, you know, I think the past few years, just you think about the number of people that you met prior to all of these wars who have been impacted by it. from a friend who lived in southern Israel whose kibbutz was attacked on October 7th and spent the day hiding with his family in a shelter, not sure if they were going to live or die, to people that I met, friends and acquaintances in Gaza over the years, many of whom now have either been displaced by the war there in Egypt or further afield, some of whom have been killed.

24:31Same story in southern Lebanon. You spend all of this time meeting people and building these contacts across the region, And then everything is sort of reshaped in a very short span of time. Can you do the job without therapy? I mean, don't answer a personal question about your health care, but you know what I mean. I've met so many journalists similarly situated to you in a region just riven by conflict, human cost after human cost after human cost, getting to know people who are in the crossfire on all sides of this conflict. and the toll that it takes on people's ability to keep their journalistic distance, it's harrowing.

25:16It is. At the same time, I mean, you constantly remind yourself that you can leave, right? I mean, I'm here now. I can jump on a plane and come to the States and be here for a couple of weeks anytime I want. And you have a luxury that the people who live in this region, who are from this region don't have. And that makes it very different, I think, to deal with. Well, Greg, let's talk about Israel. Israel sees Iran and its proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas as existential threats. I think there's plenty of evidence that they are existential threats, in a sense. Right now, Israel's fighting all three at once.