The Role Of Diplomacy In The War With Iran

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0:45Fighting in the Middle East continues to escalate. More than 1 ,300 civilians in Iran have been killed since the start of the U.S. and Israel's war against the country. That's according to Iran's U.N. envoy. 13 U.S. service members are confirmed dead, and the number of injured troops now exceeds 200 across seven countries. A U.S. military spokesman shared that on Monday. Meanwhile, Iran has largely closed the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most important shipping lanes. President Trump is now calling on allies to send warships to protect merchant vessels. Few have responded. That points to a significant challenge as the U.S.

1:21fights this war. Our international ties are not what they once were. Over the last year, thousands of career diplomats were reassigned or let go. More than 80 ambassadorial posts are vacant, and significant institutional memory has been lost. The career diplomats who are left have largely been sidelined by President Trump's reliance on Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. So today we ask, what happens when the institutions meant to prevent war are gutted? And in times of war, what does that loss of experience and expertise mean for finding a pathway to peace? I'm Jen White.

1:58You're listening to the 1A Podcast. We'll be back with more after this short break. Stay with us.

2:07This message comes from Mint Mobile. If you're tired of spending hundreds on big wireless bills, bogus fees, and free perks, Mint Mobile might be right for you with plans starting from$15 a month. Shop plans today at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for a three-month five-gigabyte plan required. New customer offer for first three months only. Then full-price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Welcome back, and let's dive into our conversation and meet our guests. Joining us today is Akbar Shahid Ahmed. He's senior diplomatic correspondent at HuffPost.

2:43He's also author of the forthcoming book, Crossing the Red Line, Biden, His Advisors, and Israel's War in Gaza. Akbar, it's great to have you back. Thanks for having me, John. Also with us, Aaron David Miller. He's a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International peace, focusing on U.S. foreign policy. He's also a former State Department Middle East analyst and negotiator. Aaron, thank you for joining us. Thank you, Jen, for having me. And Trita Parsi. He's co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Trita, welcome to 1A. Thank you so much for having me.

3:19And we want to hear from you. What questions do you have about current diplomatic efforts to end the U.S.-Israel war against Iran and the negotiations that occurred in the lead-up to the conflict. If you've worked in diplomacy, we'd love to hear from you as well. Send us an email at 1a at wamu.org. So, Akbar, let's start with the latest. Overnight, Israel says it killed a top Iranian security official and the head of the Revolutionary Guards all volunteer by siege force in a targeted strike. Iran hasn't confirmed those claims. But what are diplomats and governments doing today to try to keep this crisis from escalating further?

3:54there's already concern, Jen, from veteran regional watchers and former U.S. diplomats, importantly, that killing Larry Chani, while he was someone blamed for Iranian repression, certainly seen as a hardliner, is not going to make Iran more conducive to come to the negotiating table. If anything, it will potentially make more hardliners even more powerful. So what I'm hearing this morning, talking to people kind of inside and close to U.S. government sources, is hopes for diplomacy are not rising. And certainly the diplomatic expertise that is in there to kind of deal with Iran on a technical level, to look at the broader strategic picture, that's still not being tapped by President Trump and his aides.

4:36And importantly, we're also seeing upheaval increasingly inside the Trump administration. So you've actually seen the head of the National Counterterrorism Center quit today over the war in Iran, which kind of points to this question of who is really leading the charge within the administration, where we don't have professionals. So when you have this absence of diplomatic expertise and experience and the diplomatic efforts fail, who feels it first? Is it civilians in the region, Akbar? Is it U.S. troops? Is it the global markets? Where do we see that show up? Well, certainly the president has indicated that global markets are top of mind for him, right?

5:17And the Iranians have now come out and sort of said that the White House may even be leaking alleged details of diplomatic contacts to influence oil markets. That's a big claim from the Iranian government that came yesterday. So we don't know who the Trump administration is counting on, but we do know that it's increasingly, as you say, leaning on troops, sending more troops into the region and kind of floating these wild ideas of taking over an island off the coast of Iran, Karg Island, that's important to the oil industry. But what I'd hope people can understand is that it's not just a matter of experts focused on Iran.

5:53At this point, this is a regional war. And what we've seen from the Trump administration is they've removed ambassadors across the region. The additional war in the region that's very linked to any dealing with Iran, Lebanon, they don't have any indication of tapping the expertise. That's for a very complicated situation there. The president yesterday said he doesn't have an indication of an off-ramp for Lebanon or doesn't really seem to care about peace there. and you're not seeing any of the kind of US infrastructure to deal with broader allies. So Western allies in Europe, the question of bringing in China, bringing in Russia, bringing in India, any of these other players.

6:30There's not that kind of tapping of the expertise and relationships. And again, talking to people on the inside today, I was asking, are the professionals, are the non-partisan professionals who do remain, some of them still remaining after the mass firings, being tapped? And the answer was very much no. Well, you mentioned the head of the Center for Counterterrorism's decision to resign, and this is from a tweet today. After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as director of the National Counterterrorism Center effective today. I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran.

7:04Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby. So there is the relationship or lack thereof diplomatically in the Middle East, in that region. But as we mentioned earlier, Iran is disrupting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, and the U.S. has now threatened NATO members with retaliation if they do not step up and assist in reopening that waterway. This comes after Spain earlier refused to allow the U.S. military to use its bases for attacks on Iran. And we'll talk more about the Strait of Hormuz in a moment.

7:40But Akbar, from the diplomats you've spoken with, how much of the reluctance we're seeing now is about the specifics of this war versus the state of U.S. relationships with allies and how diplomacy is being handled by this administration more broadly? Yeah, that's absolutely a broader picture here. I mean, Charles Kushner, for instance, the father of Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, is the U.S. ambassador in France. I mean, he's a great example of a Trump appointee who's really aggravating his interlocutors, right? The French government has repeatedly complained about him. And this is not someone who's taken seriously.

8:15You look at someone like Kimberly Guilfoyle, ambassador in Greece. The kind of signals the Trump administration has sent are twofold. One is we're not going to tap people who might be more diplomatic, for lack of a better term, more serious in these positions, more respectful, have more finesse. and simultaneously, it's a lot of threatening. And there's only so much threatening you can do, especially when you are, as the US is looking in this moment, increasingly looking like a rogue actor, right? The US initiated this war. The US has initiated the choice to drive up oil prices, create energy chaos.

8:51And importantly for these European countries, for traditional allies, the US appears to be helping Russia, which they've been very concerned about with the Ukraine war, in a lot of ways. Trump is easing sanctions on Russian oil. So from the standpoint of American traditional allies, there's not a lot of reason to have faith or buy-in in Washington. Will they continue to deal with the administration because they have to? Absolutely. But will they endorse or supplement plans to, for instance, reopen the Strait of Hormuz? I think that's looking quite unlikely. Trita, I want to bring you in here. How is Tehran interpreting this moment and the lack of a strong response supporting the U.S.?

9:31I think the Iranians find themselves in a conflicted situation. On the one hand, they are taking massive hits. The United States and Israel have bombed a tremendous amount of their industrial base. Their military has, to a large extent, been degraded. On the other hand, the theocracy actually feels itself to be stronger. Its base has been dramatically energized by the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei and the replacement of him by his son, a person who most likely would not have become the next supreme leader had the decision not been made during wartime. And on the other hand, they are now finally finding themselves in a position in which they actually have leverage.

10:14Because of the manner in which they control the Strait of Hormuz, they have a tremendous amount of leverage over the global economy and through that on Trump, something that the Iranians have lacked for the last couple of years. And as a result, I suspect that they will try to drive a very hard bargain in order to agree to ending the war. This is not a war in which Trump controls in the sense that he can decide when it ends. Even if he were to declare victory, it seems to me very likely that the Iranians will continue to close the straits until they get some concessions for agreeing to end the war as well.

10:50Well, Aaron, I want to turn to you and your experience in the State Department. What does it mean that the U.S. has fractured relationships with allies as they confront how to find an off-ramp in this conflict? I mean, I think it means a lot, and it's great being here with Akbar and Trita. Thanks again for having me. Look, I was part of Bush 41 and 43. You had arguably two wars of choice they may have argued necessity. In the first Gulf War, the administration spent four months getting people to pay for it, coordinating relations in the region, working with European allies. There was a strategy, a set of attainable goals and no overreach.

11:42And in essence, that war, even though it's been highly criticized as unfinished business, was a success. It led to a year of diplomacy in which the administration, former Secretary of State James Baker, managed to get the parties together at Madrid. If you're going to war, you don't form the coalition afterwards. You form it before. And I think the Trump administration, this was a war of choice. It was launched on the basis of false and unproven intelligence claims. It was done without any appreciation that the enemy, the adversary, had a vote. And it was done without considering any number of contingencies.

12:29Well, we have to take a quick break. We'll pick back up with what's happening on the ground in the U.S. and Israel's war in Iran in just a moment.

12:40These days, it feels like the news changes every hour. Well, NPR has a podcast that does that, too. NPR News Now brings you a fresh five-minute episode every hour of the day with the latest, most important headlines in episodes that are clear, fact-based, and easy to digest. Listen to NPR News Now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get back to our discussion. Now, Erin, before the break, you were talking about the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. President Bush bypassed U.N. authorization, but he did enlist the support of allies in the Gulf and across Europe, the coalition of the willing.

13:19And as you said, this time the U.S. is struggling to rally allies. If allies don't step in, what does that mean for the potential length, the potential danger, and the expense of this war? I think, again, Jen, I think, let me get down to what I think the trenchant point is. To paraphrase Ecclesiastes, there's a time for this and there's a time for that. Right now, there is not a time for diplomacy. There is not a time for allied coordination. There is certainly not a time for an off-ramp. And Trita makes a powerful point. Negotiations work when, in fact, you have two parties who are willing and able.

13:59You do not have that. Negotiations work when there's a sense of urgency, and that urgency has to be shared. I don't see a sense of shared urgency here. Trump may want out, but the Iranians, as Trita rightly points out, have leverage. And number three, you need an end state. You need what I call a doable deal. You don't have that. You don't have it in Ukraine, courtesy Witkoff and Kushner. You don't have it between Israelis and Hamas in Gaza. Again, another Witkoff and Kushner managed negotiation. and you do not have it between the U.S. and Iran. So the notion that somehow allies are going to make a difference in the Trump administration strategy, you have an American president who in the wake of Venezuela said to the New York Times, the only constraint that I have is my morality, the constraints of my own mind.

14:58This is incredibly idiosyncratic. We've never experienced working for Republicans and Democrats and voting for Republicans and Democrats anything like what you are watching play out. And I said to Tritta offline, people studying international conflict, studying every war since 1815, have concluded that the average interstate war lasts between three to four months. We're only three weeks into this, and we're not looking at anything that remotely resembles a diplomatic off-ramp. Well, on Monday, President Trump had this to say to NATO allies who have refused the request for military support. I think we have one or two that will not do it that we've been protecting for about 40 years.

15:47Why are we protecting countries that don't protect us? And I've always felt that was a weakness of NATO. We were going to protect them. But I always said, when in need, they won't protect us. Now, as oil prices skyrocket, President Trump has launched a pressure campaign on European allies to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The request has largely been rebuffed. Here's German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius on Monday in Berlin. It's not our war. We didn't start it. We want diplomatic solutions and a swift end. Now, historically, the U.S. has built multinational naval coalitions to protect the waterway during moments of tension.

16:25Akbar, what are you hearing about why allies are hesitant to answer President Trump's call this time? I think the most important point is something Aaron just raised, which is there is no clear endgame for the Trump administration here, right? The goals of this war have shifted from regime change to we want to encourage the Iranian people to rise up to, oh, we're degrading Iran's navy and we're degrading its ballistic missile capability. It's really not clear what any other power would be signing up for. And I'd really point people to also the rupture in faith in U.S. credibility and planning that came from Gaza.

17:01I mean, this is the second now major regional conflagration that the U.S. has gone into under now presence from both parties with Benjamin Netanyahu, a leader who a lot of European governments, a lot of governments around the world are extremely skeptical of. So if you're looking at the track record of the U.S. and Netanyahu's missions, the Gaza war has yet to conclude and there's no sort of recourse for the two million Palestinians there who are still living in extreme deprivation. Lebanon, again, a place where the U.S. was helping Israel bomb less than two years ago, is again facing bombardment and a probable Israeli invasion.

17:36So if you are someone sitting in Paris, Brussels, Berlin, London, why would you sign up for a U.S. that's repeatedly demonstrated again on the presence of both parties that it's going to go in with Israel and kind of lead into these rudderless missions that don't seem to have moral or strategic bases for success? Well, that leads us to this question from Brock, who says, I wonder, is this really a war on Iran by the U.S., or is it a war by Israel with the U.S. assisting? And we should acknowledge here, Akbar, that the messaging around who's leading this effort hasn't been clear from the administration.

18:15Certainly, there's been close cooperation with the Israelis. And, of course, Prime Minister Netanyahu was a major factor in encouraging President Trump to choose to begin this war right now. most importantly in convincing him that right now was the moment to go for it, right? That we still haven't seen any indication of imminent threat or a reason for the U.S. to be pulled in. All of that said, I'd encourage people to look at the broader context here of how Israel is kind of treated in U.S. politics. And what I mean by that is, even in the resignation statement today from Joe Kent, the now former National Counterterrorism Center chief, chief, he's really pointing the finger at Israel.

18:56He's saying President Trump got deceived by Israel. Now, certainly President Trump was influenced by Israel, but the choice to go to war was his, right? And we also see many actors, Joe Kent has previously been associated with white nationalists, the far right. It's important to kind of look at where responsibility lies with the US and then also who might be jumping on a narrative of this isn't an American war, This is an Israeli war for their own domestic political gains and agendas. Trudy, I love your thoughts on that as well. I think the administration has made it quite clear in several statements, including by Trump yesterday, that this decision would never have been made had it not been for the pressure coming from Israel.

19:37Now, I agree 100 percent with Akbar that ultimately the president is responsible for the decisions he makes. The buck stops with him. But take Israel out of the equation and this war would never have happened. Trump did not come into office with any type of an obsession to go to war with Iran. Netanyahu has had an obsession for more than 25 years to push the United States into a war, and he's now finally succeeded. And I think what happened or may have happened in the terms of the assassination of Ali Darijani, who was a very critical figure within the Iranian theocracy, whether intentional or not, But the effect of that killing may very well have ended up being the destruction of some of the potential off-ramps that Trump could have had.

20:21Because Lora Jani was someone that the U.S. had actually engaged with before and could potentially have engaged with in the future. But from the Israeli standpoint, any effort by Trump to end this war, in their view, prematurely would be problematic. They want this war to go on for much longer and destroy as much as possible of Iran's military capabilities in order to shift the balance in Israel's favor. So, again, in previous cases, there may have been some speculation about what Israel's role was. And in this case, I think it's utterly clear that, however, does not take responsibility away for Trump for having made the final decision to go into this war.

20:57Aaron, can I, Jen, can I jump in here for a second? I think Akbar's right on this, that basically this is not Bibi's war. And Trudeau's notion, I think, is also accurate. Previous American presidents, Democrats and Republicans rebuffed Israeli more risk readiness when it came to Iran. But Trump was an idiosyncratic figure. And the notion that somehow a craftier, clever Israeli prime minister con Donald Trump into war, I think, frankly, misses the point. It is Trump's idiosyncrasies, not Benjamin Netanyahu's pressures, that explain why we are where we are. And when you say idiosyncrasies, what do you mean specifically?

21:50I mean, Trump operates outside the lines, both in terms of his domestic policies and his foreign policies. He thinks in large part about conflating his own personal, financial, and political interests with the national interests. We've never had a president like that before. In June, Benjamin Netanyahu offered Trump a piece of history. the first American president, the only one, Republican or Democrat, to strike Iranian nuclear sites without cost or consequence. And on February 23rd, during that famous phone call, when Netanyahu said we have information that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and members of the clerical establishment and numerous Iranian national security officials were gathered in place or would be at date time, date cert, he offered Netanyahu another piece of history and excuse me Trump and Trump who in January encouraged demonstrators by saying help is on the way seize your institutions will hit them hard then mobilized the largest deployment of American missile and naval power since the Iran since the Iran war since the Iraq war and then because Witkoff and Kushner I think reported back that in essence, Iran was not interested in an off-ramp, Trump was going to war for all of his own reasons.

23:21I think Netanyahu made it easier for him. This is a good moment to remind ourselves that before the U.S. and Israel struck Iran, there were negotiations in Oman and Switzerland. And as those talks were happening, the U.S. was building its military presence in the region. So, Akbar, What is your read of whether those talks were a serious attempt to avoid conflict or something else? I do think that President Trump and some of the people around him have expressed a pretty serious desire to cut a deal with Iran. He certainly sees that as something that could differentiate him. He wants a better deal than President Barack Obama got from Iran.

24:02All of that said, the way that those negotiations went, Jen, really undercut any chance of success. So they didn't bring in people who had the technical expertise to talk to the Iranians. They didn't bring in people who had history. And on the Iranian side, of course, you had people who had been doing these talks for, in some cases, upwards of 20 years. I mean, so you really are looking at a U.S.-Iran dynamic that was extremely difficult. All of that, again, coming with deep distrust in President Trump after his being someone who had assassinated the Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani.

24:37and a sense that Prime Minister Netanyahu had a huge influence over him. So there wasn't a lot of trust. I think the Trump administration wanted quick results. And when they didn't get quick results and their definition of really quite total capitulation from Iran, they weren't willing to pursue it further or look at what a middle ground compromise could be. So that's very much their responsibility. Tridi, your thoughts? Look, I think these were not serious negotiations in the sense that there was a search for a serious compromise. Akbar is right. This was a search for Iranian capitulation. And this, again, I think was an outcome of the manner in which the Israelis had very effectively played Trump's psychology, telling him the Iranians are so weak.

25:27This is the most weak point that they've had since 1979. You have the opportunity to just get rid of this regime or to get them to complete it, capitulate, don't strike a compromise, doesn't matter if it's better than Obama's deal or not. And Trump went in to these talks with that mindset. So they were not really negotiations. They were just checking in every two or three weeks to see, are the Iranians ready to capitulate? But capitulation was never in the cards. And as a result, he ended up going to war. But now that same war is being turned into a debacle because he again is expecting incapitulation, not realizing that the Iranians fear surrender far more than they fear war.

26:07They can even afford to lose the war, but they can never afford a surrender. I'm talking about the specific theocracy here, whose base will never forgive them if they actually surrender in this war. And so this is over. Some supporters of the administration argue that Trump's unconventional diplomacy, relying on personal envoys and leader to leader relationships can actually break diplomatic logjams. When is that an effective approach? Sorry, I didn't quite understand the question. So some supporters of the administration say that, you know, Trump, yes, he has an unconventional approach to diplomacy.