A Standoff of Presidents at the U.N.

0:02From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. The war in Iran hits the diplomatic stage this week in New York with dueling speeches by the presidents of the United States and Iran, as well as the prime minister of Israel. What are we learning about the state of the war and the prospects for a ceasefire? Plus, how the looming elections in Israel and the United States are affecting chances of a settlement in that war. Those are our subjects today on Potomac Watch. I'm Paul Gigo, editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. And I'm here with Elliot Kaufman, my colleague who's following the U.N.

0:45debates as well as the war and the diplomacy over Iran. He's also co-author of the book Inside the War Room, taking you inside the debates in Israel and in the cabinet over how that country would respond to the October 7th, 2023 Hamas massacre through the current war in Iran. So, Elliot, welcome. We heard from the President of the United States earlier in the week, and then we heard later from the Iranian President Masoud Pazeskian. What message did the Iranians come with? The Iranians came with a message that they aren't giving in. Of course, they try to structure it as we're the reasonable ones here.

1:31All we want is only what's due to us. But when it comes down to it, the threat was we will keep fighting. We will keep firing on civilian ships, on our Arab neighbors, and justify all of it based on what the U.S. is doing. So Iran is still asking for real control in the Strait of Hormuz. It's asking for a U.S. withdrawal from the region. And more than anything, it's asking for full sanctions relief. Those asks haven't changed yet based on what we heard. Yeah, I think that comports with what my meetings with the Iranians suggest they're thinking. And this gets into the fact that there was a surprise meeting on the sidelines of the U.N.

2:18speeches between the foreign minister of Iran, Mr. Arachi, and Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president's negotiators, through an intermediary but on the sidelines. We didn't expect that necessarily. Certainly wasn't heralded in advance, but it did take place. And the impression I got from the Iranian side is that there were no breakthroughs, but they were happy to keep talking. But what they want is essentially the United States to agree to what they say were the terms of the original memorandum of understanding that put essentially a truce on the war back in April. And they think the U.S.

2:55broke that truce after two weeks. And they want the U.S. to go back to it. And they're willing to accept a new deal, essentially the same as the MOU, without calling it the MOU. So it still gives the Iranians the control over which ships should pass through the strait, whether or not they can charge a fee for that passage. And then they want the U.S. to stop the blockade against Iranian ports as well and in sanctions. And that's the impasse, right? And then that's just the first stage, Elliot. And then later, maybe we'll get to the nuclear program and what they say are other things. That's the Iranian ask right now.

3:35And Trump doesn't seem willing to do that, at least so far. Well, what frustrates me about that most is the revisionist history element to it. And I think it ends up informing what will or should happen next. Because when Iran's regime says that America broke up the MOU, it can only say that if it is relying on the most tendentious interpretation of that agreement, which would hold that Iran could do whatever it would like in the Strait of Hormuz, up to and including firing on civilian ships that are transiting peacefully. because they aren't submitting to total Iranian control of the straits.

4:25Unsurprisingly, that wasn't what President Trump thought he had signed. That wasn't what the deal was, I think, on a fair reading of its terms. And so if Iran's regime is talking about returning to the MOU in some serious sense, do they mean their version of the MOU, which lets them do whatever they want? Or do they mean a version of it where the Strait of Hormuz is governed as it always has been, free passage, safe passage for all? That makes all the difference. Well, I think it's the former, Elliot. My impression is that it's not the status quo in the strait before the U.S. started bombing in February.

5:08That was essentially free passage for whichever ships wanted to go through. That's not what Iran is talking about. They want the ability to say, no, you can go here in the northern passage or you can go through Oman in the southern passage, but we have a deal with Oman and we're both going to charge for it. And we'll decide who gets through and who doesn't, not the traditional view of free navigation of the seas. And I think that is something that President Trump would have a very hard time allowing because, I mean, the U.S. principle of free navigation of the oceans, the seas, has been a principle ever since the American founding.

5:49And certainly since World War II, we just don't want to set a precedent that the neighbors who are near any narrow passage like a strait can somehow dictate passage. The question that I want to ask here is, what has President Trump learned from that experience of the MOU? Because I think what he learned is that he can't rely on whatever regime officials are telling his negotiators through back channels. That is to say, if it isn't absolutely spelled out with unmistakable clarity in the text of a deal, Iran is going to walk all over you in its interpretation of every ambiguity, even if somebody told you that they wouldn't.

6:38I think that's what we saw. Another point I would make is that when that MOU was signed, we heard from Vice President J.D. Vance, a little from President Trump himself, but especially J.D. Vance making the argument that Iran's regime, the people running it, even in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, are ready to turn over a new leaf. They had 40 however many years of fighting it out with the US. They don't want it anymore. They want a new relationship. Well, they don't want it badly enough, evidently. They don't want it enough not to stop firing on civilian ships and all the rest. I think what they want is full sanctions relief.

7:20They want the money. They want control of the straits. if the Trump administration has learned that, then they can approach diplomatic talks, negotiations in a very different manner and not fall into the same mistakes. But what Iran's regime is counting on, I believe, is that President Trump has taken a different message from the time since that MOU collapsed. Maybe he's taken the message that even if he doesn't like the terms of a deal, he needs a deal anyway, because this oil thing is a problem for him. Even if he says, I'm not thinking about midterm elections, all politicians are thinking about elections.

8:05Do they have that pressure on him? President Trump has done well to suggest they don't. He has done well to say, I'm sticking with this economic naval blockade of Iran, which is imposing real costs. But I think it's all going to come down. What lessons has the Trump administration learned from this MOU experience? And the president of the United States has simply been all over the map, even this week, about what he plans to do in Iran. I mean, first he started out with a comment that, I have a big decision to make. I could destroy the country. I hope he doesn't come to that, but we could also do a deal.

8:46Then he says in his speech at the UN, notably, that I could annihilate them. He used that word annihilate, which I know did not go down well with the Iranians for obvious reasons. But then he also, you know, quickly said, well, you know, we hope I don't have to do that. I think we could do a great deal. And he then said that the Kushner Whitcoff negotiations, talks with the Iranians had gone very well, as he put it, and without much detail about why he thought so. And then here we are at the end of the week with no real movement from the talks. There's a deal on the table between the Oman government and the Iranian government, it seems, to allow for some kind of passage through the strait.

9:34Iran, of course, control is the country that is on the southern side of the strait. Iran is on the north. But there are no details there, and that's not something that President Trump has agreed to. And I believe Iran is saying that that won't solve his problem. Even that deal with Oman, while it might work out some logistical manners of transiting through the straits, that won't cause Iran to stop firing on ships there. For that, it needs this whole laundry list of things from the United States. President Trump, one point that he has made repeatedly is that Iran's regime has a choice. And it can choose great prosperity and working with the U.S.

10:18and all of that, or it can choose to receive annihilation, destruction, however he puts it. I think I disagree. I think it's the wrong way to frame it. Iran's regime has already made its choice. The decision now is President Trump's. He can keep saying that over and over again, but really it's up to him. Is he going to hit the regime harder than it can bear? Once you keep making the same threat over and over again without acting on it, it loses its power. And I think we've all seen that that is what has happened. And it damages his ability to negotiate with Iran when they've stopped taking a lot of those threats seriously, but it may also damage American deterrence around the world.

11:07You know, in the past, the U.S. president saying he will annihilate you meant a lot more than it does right now. Yeah, I think the president has been up and down, back and forth so many times with threats, claiming that there's peace right around the corner or peace is at hand, that it is a he is losing credibility when he says we're going to issue another threat. Clearly, he thinks that somehow that's going to move the Iranians, but I think they make their own calculations about whether to believe it. All right, we're going to take a break. When we come back, I'll be back with more with Elliot Kaufman on diplomatic efforts this week to end the Iran war when we come back.

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12:27There's a lot of fun stuff in the newsletter that you can only read in the newsletter, and I don't want you to miss any of it. Sign up for free expression today. We'll see you in your inbox. Welcome back. I'm Paul Gigo here on Potomac Watch, the daily podcast of Wall Street Journal Opinion. and I'm here with Elliot Kaufman. One point on the nuclear program, the Iranian nuclear program, which was, of course, a major justification by President Trump for attacking Iran. The Iranians are basically saying, that's not even on the table here in the immediate negotiations. That's kind of stage two after we would strike a new deal, new memorandum of understanding, if you will, to open the strait, then we can get to discussions about the nuclear program.

13:16But Pazeshkian, President Pazeshkian, when he spoke to the United Nations this week, and I think that's the same thing you hear privately from Iranians, is we're never going to give up our civilian nuclear program. They call it a civilian nuclear program, of course. They have no intention of building a nuclear weapon, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. But they're not going to give it up. And they haven't even let in the United Nations inspectors, as they are obliged to do under the nonproliferation treaty, which they've signed. They haven't let them back in since the June 2025 bombing by Israel and the United States of those couple of those sites, nuclear sites.

13:58And the president says that's so crucial to his view of the talks, but that's not even on the table right now. And even that MOU was a similar first step process, meaning we're going to stop the fighting, offer various forms of sanctions relief. The U.S. would get economic relief, we thought, because ships would be transiting Hormuz. And then we'll work out all the nuclear issues. Well, we said at the time, the and then might never come. If Iran wasn't making the nuclear concessions at the time, there wasn't really much to celebrate. And as we look ahead, and as we look at the prospects of a new MOU, a new deal, if it doesn't have those nuclear concessions, I don't think that's going to be the kind of diplomatic victory that President Trump is looking for in the way that he's spoken about this war as a whole.

14:56He has emphasized the nuclear issue heavily. And that's always struck me as a little curious because this war hasn't actually focused so much on the nuclear issue. In the 12-day war back in June 2025, that's when Israel and the U.S. really hit Iran's nuclear program and left it in rubble. What remains at this point is a stockpile of enriched uranium, which is buried underground in rubble now. And there's one major potential enrichment site at Pickaxe Mountain, which is deep beneath a mountain. and for that reason is very hard to hit. If those two were the focus of this war, then okay, do something about those two.

15:46But we haven't seen a bombing raid, a daring special forces raid. That hasn't really been the case. Instead, there's been a focus on the missile program, which would defend Iran's nuclear program, so it's not unrelated, and on Iranian leadership, commanders, economic pressure, ability to repress its own people. There have been these other things. But if President Trump really wants to hang his hat on the nuclear issue, on these final two prongs of Iran's nuclear program, he needs concessions on those or he needs military action on those. Well, and I don't think we're likely to see that anytime soon, certainly before the election.

16:28Maybe I'm wrong on that. But what's also been happening here in the United States, of course, is we have a midterm election, something they don't have to worry about in Iran. And what we now hear are Republican candidates on the stump for the Senate and even for governor and the House saying the war should end. It should end soon because it's having a detrimental effect on prices, diesel, gasoline. So let's get this war over. Tom Tiffany, the Republican congressman running for governor of Wisconsin, just came out and said that. We've seen it from Mike Rogers, The Senate candidate in Michigan, nobody's idea of a dove on foreign policy.

17:06Former head of the House Intelligence Committee when he served in the House. And we've heard it from Ashley Hinson, the Republican candidate in Iowa. Now, both of those are responding to what they see or all of those to what they see in the polls. And that is something that the Iranians can also read. And they know that this is happening. And this is, I think, further weakens the president politically. Not that the president has to respond to it necessarily, but we'll have to see what happens after the election. We are going to take another break. When we come back, we'll talk about the speech by the prime minister of Israel and what his goals are as he addresses the United Nations in the wake of the Iranian president speaking at the UN when we come back.

17:54Don't forget, you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker, play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast. That is, play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast. From the Opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. Welcome back. I'm Paul Gigo here on Potomac Watch with Elliot Kaufman. Let's turn now, I want to turn before we go to the Israel and the appearance of Netanyahu, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. We're taping this conversation shortly before he will have his speech at the United Nations. He's always colorful, of course, often makes news, and maybe this year especially so, because his audience isn't just the rest of the world and the American people and the White House.

18:46It's Israeli public back home because there's an election in Israel in late October. And he is going to have a hard time retaining the prime ministership. What do you expect? I mean, my expectation is that this is going to be an attack on Israel's critics. It will focus on Iran, of course, other threats. And it's going to go directly at, maybe even mentioning by name, New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani because Zamdani has said that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. And Mamdani repeated this week that Netanyahu should be arrested, although he is not going to do it himself. Yeah, I think that is a good bet.

19:28In Prime Minister Netanyahu's pre-speech video, which he put out before getting on the plane to New York, he mentioned only one foreign leader. It wasn't Iran's supreme leader. It wasn't anyone in Lebanon, in Gaza. It was Zoran Mamdani, the mayor of New York. And so on the big UN stage, he can, for the cameras, face down Mayor Mamdani, who has had to back off claiming he would actually arrest Netanyahu because that would be illegal under US law, which in the end, Mabdani did have to concede that he has to follow US law. Well, thank you for that. But Prime Minister Netanyahu, I think you're right, is going to give a rousing defense of Israel.

20:22He's going to say what Israelis want to hear said on the world stage, all the things that they've wanted to tell the world whose criticism, much of which they see as hypocritical and not understanding the real challenges they were faced with, all the lies that have been told about them, how they fought. I think a lot of that stuff, it can't stand up to scrutiny. It crumbles on first contact with the reality of the war and how it was fought. And the terror army of tens of thousands that Israel was facing, working out of more than 400 miles of tunnels. So I expect we're going to hear all of that from Prime Minister Netanyahu to make Israelis feel good about hearing this said on the world stage.

21:11Of course, what it won't do is erase all of the diplomatic damage that Israel has taken over the course of this long war. Israelis know that, they understand it, and they are starting to understand part of the price that they will pay going forward. A speech can make all the right points. I expect Netanyahu to speak very well, as he always does, but there is a real diplomatic challenge ahead. Well, and as one is really equipped to me, please, Mayor Mamdani, arrest the prime minister. Try to arrest the prime minister because it would actually, they think, help his re-election prospects enormously.

21:51Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but it's possible. And of course, Mamdani is not going to do it because it would create a huge diplomatic row. All right, we shall see what Netanyahu says and how this plays out and whether these negotiations that seem to have resumed will go anywhere before the midterms. For what it's worth, for the record, the Iranians are saying we don't care about the midterms, but we would like to do a deal right away. I'm not so sure. I think they wouldn't mind dragging this out to see if the damage to the Republican Party and the president's party in the midterms is significant, and then maybe the president of the United States will have different incentives to strike a deal.

22:34But we shall see. Thank you, Elia Kaufman, for coming on. Thank you all for listening. We are here every day on Potomac Watch.