How The Iran War Can Go Sideways Fast with Trita Parsi

0:00Carlo:Well, I've been called dramatic. I've been called paranoid. I've been called a doomer, all for just merely suggesting that the ways in which this war with Iran could go sideways fast. My guest today says, if anything, I'm not being paranoid enough.

0:15Trita Parsi:This country was stone cold dead.

0:17Carlo:Okay, before we get into it, just a reminder to everybody amid this crazy news cycle. If you want to hear more of these conversations, if you want to sort of try and understand the world as it is, rather than how the various partisans in the media would like you to think it is, subscribe to this channel, give us a like down below, give us a five-star rating over on the podcast app, Spotify, Apple Music. You know the drill there. And throw us a comment. You can reach me on subtext. You can also get me by my email, c.fursano at newsweek.com. Always available to you guys. Hello again from Newsweek headquarters at the top of the World Trade Center.

0:51Carlo:I'm Carlo Versano. This is The 1600 coming at you today. It's Tuesday afternoon, and the war in Iran is now on day four. So that's the topic of our discussion once again. But before we get into it, I just, you know, I've heard from a lot of people, a lot of newsletter subscribers, as well as just sort of some friends of mine who have said, you know, I've been way too dramatic and I've been way too paranoid over the last couple days and what I've been saying and expressing my concerns about this new adventure we're on in the Middle East. Maybe I am. Maybe I'm being dramatic. Maybe I'm being paranoid.

1:25Carlo:Or maybe I'm just traumatized, right? Maybe I'm traumatized from the last 25 years of U.S. intervention in this region and all of the knock-on effects that it's had. The law of unintended consequences, right? That's something that we've talked about in the newsletter a lot. You know, it doesn't seem like something that a lot of people have been thinking about, at least in the media right now, even though that law has proven itself to be the law of the land time and time again, especially when it comes to this region. So with that all out of the way, today I am joined by Trita Parsi. Trita is the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, which is a pro-peace, anti-war think tank.

2:02Carlo:Trita, how are you?

2:04Trita Parsi:I'm doing okay. How are you?

2:06Carlo:Very well. Thanks for joining me. Am I being paranoid? Am I being too anxious about all of the various ways in which this could go sideways?

2:16Trita Parsi:I fear you may not be anxious enough. Let me put it this way. Looking at the messaging, the constantly shifting justifications for this war, the constantly shifting goals for this war, as well as a change in the actual strategy of what's happening on the ground. To me, it is very clear. Donald Trump's plan A did not even survive two and a half days. And we're already at a point in which they have lost control and are improvising because they put all of their eggs more or less into the basket of thinking that taking out the supreme leader of Iran, which obviously is a tactical success, would lead to a quick implosion of the regime.

3:00Trita Parsi:and by Sunday evening it would be settled. He reached out to the Iranians asking for a ceasefire. They rejected it. And he thought that by Monday morning when the markets open, everything would be fine. That's not where we are. We're in a situation in which the Iranians are responding much more fiercely than expected, going up the escalation ladder much faster than expected. And essentially at this point, they are the ones that are defining the geography of this war, the length of this war and frankly perhaps even the intensity of this war. We have thousands of Americans that are stuck in GCC countries in Israel who cannot get out and absolutely no planning whatsoever on how to help them because they never thought that we were going to be in this position.

3:44Trita Parsi:In comparison, I would say that we didn't get to this point until after August of 2003 when it came to the Iraq War. For the first five months, the war actually looked like a massive success. It looks like a success. Yeah. Yes. It wasn't until August, five months later, when the insurgents blew up the UN building in the middle of a press conference and things really started to go south, that people slowly but surely started to realize this is not working out. But there still wasn't a loss of control until a bit later than that. We're talking about three days. And to me, given how the administration is acting, given how they don't even know how to justify this without spilling the beans and saying, well, we did it because the Israelis were going to do it.

4:28Trita Parsi:So we just had to tag along. It's telling me that they've already lost control.

4:32Carlo:That is certainly my worry. You're not making me feel any better. But you are certainly, I think, helping the audience.

4:37Trita Parsi:No one has ever accused me of making them feel better. Let me just be clear about that.

4:42Carlo:That's quite right. That's not your job, nor is it mine. So to your point, put a pin in the Israeli thinks. I'm going to come back to that in a minute. You know, one of the one of the hardest parts about covering Trump in general, but especially Trump in a war scenario, he's constantly contradicting himself. He contradicts things that people in his administration have said. It feels like he's just sort of making it up on the fly. So he was just speaking at the White House a few minutes ago with the Chancellor of Germany. And I jotted down this quote that he had. He was asked, like, basically, what's the worst case scenario?

5:17Carlo:And the quote is,

5:18Trita Parsi:I guess the worst case would be we do this and then somebody takes over who's as bad as the previous person, right?

5:24Carlo:That could happen. Okay, well, that didn't give me a whole lot of confidence that these guys know what they're doing, right? I mean, this is, of course that could happen. He's right. But that's why we don't do, we don't make a habit of doing these regime change wars, right? Actually, we do, yeah.

5:38Trita Parsi:Well, we shouldn't make a habit of doing it, unfortunately. Right. Look, I think it's very clear. Trump was on the mother of all sugar highs after Venezuela. The Israelis very effectively, very skillfully played his psychology, saying the Iranians are at their weakest point. They're so weak. All you need to do is push a little bit, threaten them a little bit. They're going to collapse. They're going to capitulate. You are going to be the president that finally puts an end to this 47-year-old theocracy. Nothing more, nothing bigger than that will define your presidency. And all of the people who said that you couldn't move the embassy, You couldn't recognize the Golan.

6:18Trita Parsi:You couldn't take out Soleimani. You couldn't bomb Fordo. Have been proven wrong. You were proven right. You're going to be right on this one as well. And he went in with these high expectations, no planning for how things actually could go. And the plan A essentially did not survive more than two and a half days. The plan A being we're going to wrap this up before Monday morning and it'll be like Venezuela.

6:40Carlo:And, you know, American people say they're not, you know, say they're into a war, but they're really just anti-losing. And as long as we do it quick and dirty, get the head of the snake cut off, we'll be okay in the court of public opinion.

6:52Trita Parsi:And I got to tell you, I've had conversations with the administration and I've sent my messages as clearly as I could, that you have to remember this is an administration. This is a theocracy that is a revolutionary government. It was built to withstand a counter-revolution. It has created redundancies and all kinds of duplications precisely for this reason. So, for instance, even the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is that redundancy because the revolutionaries did not trust the Iranian military. So they created this alternative military that is now far more powerful and far greater budget than the Iranian army precisely for that reason.

7:32Trita Parsi:After the June war of last year, they defined every person who would replace top officials about five rows deep in order to make sure that they would be able to survive whatever the U.S. result would throw at them in the next war, in which, of course, again, regime decapitation would have been the first phase of that confrontation. so they've prepared for this it doesn't seem to me that trump really had prepared for what would happen if his first bid if his first bet did not work out and now we're seeing this constant shifting of the motivations i mean at one point he said that we had to do this because iran is at war with civilization what does that mean i don't know anyone when i heard that i thought george bush dick cheney all over again yeah but i mean who in middle america sits there and is worried about this issue.

8:23Trita Parsi:I mean, for those who voted for him, I think a very large number of them did because he really took on the anti-war mantle and to logics and stole it, took it away from folks on the left. I think they must be feeling profoundly betrayed, particularly if this goes as badly as I fear that it will. And with the news today that he's now talking to Kurdish separatist groups that are armed in order to potentially arm them further and use them as a way of as ground troops in Iran, essentially, and with the Turkish foreign minister immediately calling the Kurdish leaders in Iraq, asking what on earth is this?

9:00Trita Parsi:Because this is going to be very, very bad for Turkey. So all of these things, it seems like he's improvising at this point, not taking into account all of the different repercussions, instead feeling very angry that his first bid didn't work out, that the Iranians had a smarter game plan that would offset this plan A. And now he's just throwing everything he has at the wall, hoping that he can turn this around some way, somehow.

9:25Carlo:I mean, this is this is the gambler's psychology, right? This is like you get on a roll, you know, a hot streak at the tables like, OK, nothing I can do no wrong. Let's keep it moving. Let's keep it coming. And then eventually you lose everything because the house always wins. So you have been one if it's not obvious here, you've been one of the voices expressing extreme skepticism about this war before it began. Right. This is you've been you've been out there pounding the streets on this for a while. I want to play a clip of you actually talking to Steve Bannon. So this is from last Thursday, February 26th, right before these strikes took place.

9:59Trita Parsi:I don't think the president's intention is to do something that spreads in any way, shape or form. I think it's quite clear that he wants to have clean, quick, glorious victories. But I don't see that happening in this situation. The Iranians will very likely respond. This is part of the reason why we have so many assets in the region right now, because they've made it clear that they will respond. And I think the escalatory risk here is just so massive that it would be very dangerous to go down that path. I see it as a lose-lose situation. Yes, undoubtedly, the United States is the far more powerful party here, but it doesn't mean that Iranians cannot inflict tremendous amount of damage onto the United States, which at the end of the day would cause this whole thing to end up becoming a losing thing for Donald Trump as well.

10:43Carlo:So, Trita, you were right. Right. I mean, I'm not trying to glaze you here, but you were right. This is spiraling. And at the moment, this is becoming a losing issue for Trump, at least if you believe the first batch of public opinion polls. What do you think went down between that in that sort of 24-hour period between when you were talking to Bannon on Thursday and the decision to launch these strikes on overnight Friday on the East Coast? Because the war was not a foregone conclusion. When I went to bed Friday night, I thought there was a decent chance that this was going to happen. just based on the movements of the military and the messaging from the administration.

11:20Carlo:But I was surprised when I woke up on Saturday and saw that it actually had. What do you think happened in the last sort of moments here?

11:28Trita Parsi:So let me first say this. I do not believe that war was a foregone conclusion. And I know a lot of people are now saying that the diplomacy was just a ruse. It was never sincere from the beginning. I have a different view. I want to explain that view as well and explain the dangers of thinking that this all was a ruse. But also on your first question, what happened? I think that Trump had been sold a false narrative in which he thought that the Iranians are so weak that they have to capitulate. They have no other choice. So even when the Iranians actually put forward an extremely attractive proposal, I just had a webinar with Rob Malley, who was in the JCPOA negotiations, who led the talks with Iran under Biden.

12:09Trita Parsi:And essentially, if that proposal, in his view, was correct, and I know that is correct, this is what the Omani foreign minister said, it undoubtedly would have been easy for Trump to say this is a stronger deal than the JCPOA. He could have taken that victory. The Obama deal. But if his expectation was, no, they're so weak, they have to capitulate and surrender. And it doesn't matter how good of a deal they would put on the table that would be a compromise. The only thing that is acceptable is total capitulation. So he didn't accept it. He could have declared victory. Instead, he declared war.

12:44Trita Parsi:And I think that is what happened. And again, it goes back to how people had been working on his psychology to make him think that this is going to be easy. Don't take that. Don't be the president that strikes a deal. Be the president that ends this theocracy. It's within your reach. I do think that they went to these negotiations unprepared, not particularly interested in the details. They only went in to check in to see, are you guys ready to surrender? That's what they would do. So it wasn't that the talks were completely fake. No, if they had surrendered, I think Trump would have taken it.

13:15Trita Parsi:And I don't think he would have gone to war. So if he had surrendered, he would have declared victory. Right. So I don't think war was a foregone conclusion. Now, here's where I think it's very dangerous if that narrative takes hold, particularly if it's false. Now, if it turns out that it's true, of course, a different story. I don't think it is true. And if it's false, this is the danger. This would be truly killing any credibility left of America's diplomatic standing. If America has no credibility in diplomacy, no one will bother negotiating with the United States. Now, whose interest does that serve?

13:51Trita Parsi:Well, the Israelis take a huge benefit if they are in a situation in which America's adversaries, who the United States occasionally does want to talk to, refuse to talk to the United States, refuse to engage in diplomacy. They spend so much resources in preventing diplomacy and sabotaging diplomacy. All of those resources would be saved if America's diplomatic credibility is in shatters and no one even bothers to negotiate with the United States.

14:19Carlo:So let me play devil's advocate on this, right? Because I've read this argument. I think you made it to Al Jazeera the other day. I believe the quote that you gave them was, Trump chose an avoidable war over a good deal. The devil's advocate argument there, I suppose, is why would we believe that that deal was legit? Why would we believe anything the Iranians say? They've been lying about their nuclear ambitions forever.

14:44Trita Parsi:So this is not coming from the Iranians. This is coming from the gentleman that the United States chose to be the mediator in this conflict, the foreign minister of Oman. He's the one who laid out these details in his interviews with CBS News. So that's one part of it. The other part of it is when it comes to trust. Certainly, you cannot and you should not rest on trust in any deal with the Iranians and the Iranians certainly don't have any reason to trust the United States. But if that is the litmus test, then forget about almost any international diplomacy, because in most cases you're dealing with countries or actors that you cannot trust.

15:21Trita Parsi:So you have to make a deal and then you create verification systems to make sure that they're actually engaging in what they said and they would do the same to you. But to believe that trust already exists before you make a deal is essentially to assume that the problem is resolved before you strike a deal. So that's not the way the world works.

15:40Carlo:And to your point about verification, I mean, you know, say what you will about the deal that Obama made, but there were verification elements in there, right? I mean, it was built on verification of their, you know, from third parties on their nuclear abilities.

15:53Trita Parsi:The verification was actually in some ways the strongest elements of it because the verification would be permanent. And I want to also clarify one thing that oftentimes people misunderstand about the verification. We're not talking any longer about, you know, UN inspectors with white helmets running around looking under, you know, the desk at some place in Iraq seeing if there's a WMD there. I mean, that's the way it was 30 years ago. The verification they had in the JCPOA was actually IAEA instruments installed in all parts of Iran's nuclear program that pick up everything from radiation and other things and automatically, constantly is sending, feeding that data into the IAEA headquarters in Iran, which means that if the Iranians were to cheat, they would be caught within hours because the radiation is not something that the Iranians could hide.

16:46Trita Parsi:So when it comes to the verification, it was just frankly outstanding. And anything the Trump administration would do would probably rely on that as well. Now, the Trump administration managed to get the Iranians to give way more on other aspects of this deal, such as how much they would have in stockpile, etc., etc. But the verification is absolutely essential because the premise of what you're saying or the element of what you're saying that there's no trust is absolutely true. But that's precisely why you needed you in order to be able to get a pattern of behavior that you can predict and you can verify if they're if they're consistently pursuing that pattern.