Trump's war with Iran: What we still don't know

Summary

Americast – "Trump's war with Iran... what we still don't know"

Date: March 6, 2026
Hosts: Sarah Rainsford, Anthony Zurcher (BBC News)
Special Guest: Robert Malley (former U.S. Iran negotiator)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Americast delves into the sudden and dramatic escalation between the United States and Iran under President Donald Trump, examining the origins, aims, and contradictions of what has swiftly become “Trump's war with Iran.” Hosts Sarah Rainsford and Anthony Zurcher seek to unpack how America found itself in open conflict, what the real objectives and endgames are, and what might happen next. The episode features exclusive insights from Robert Malley, lead negotiator on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and scrutinizes both public messaging and behind-the-scenes policy tensions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Public Confusion and Administration Messaging

Timestamps: 01:18 – 05:09

• Surprise and Uncertainty: The American public is suddenly facing a war with Iran, with unclear reasoning from the government and shifting justifications.
  • Sarah Rainsford: “A lot of Americans are rather surprised to find that suddenly they're at war with Iran. U.S. service personnel have died and yet the public are asking, why are they in this war? Why was it necessary now? How long is it going to last and what are they trying to achieve?” (01:18)
• Boastful Tone from the Pentagon: The Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, delivers media-aimed updates sounding like military bravado rather than sober assessment.
  • Pete Hegseth (quoted): “We are just getting started. We are accelerating, not decelerating. Iran's capabilities are evaporating by the hour while American strength grows fiercer, smarter and utterly dominant.” (01:45, 03:56–05:09)
• Comparisons to Past Wars: Anthony Zurcher draws parallels to Vietnam-era reporting where military “progress” was measured in bombs dropped, not outcomes achieved.

2. War Rhetoric vs. Reality on the Ground

Timestamps: 05:09 – 09:44

• ‘Call of Duty’ Effect: Defense briefings feel like video-game posturing rather than real strategic evaluation.
  • Sarah Rainsford: “I read somebody saying that they thought Pete Hegseth sounded more like he was a character on Call of Duty than actually somebody who was running the progress of a war like this.” (06:28)
• Behind the Bravado: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Kaine, is cited as having reservations about U.S. war preparedness and the involvement of allies. Trump, however, denies any critiques exist, calling them ‘fake news.’
• Logistics and Longevity: With defense contractors called to the White House and worries over missile stockpiles, the sustainability of the campaign is in question.

3. Disputes over Purpose and Justification

Timestamps: 10:17 – 18:32

• Lack of Clear Goals or Endgame: Both hosts lament never hearing a concrete definition of what ‘success’ would look like, and note the administration’s focus on positive self-reporting rather than facts.
  • Sarah Rainsford: “Rather than worrying too much about what the endgame is here or what ultimate success might look like… they’re not getting the credit for it…” (10:17)
• Media Criticism: Defense Secretary Hegseth blames the media for highlighting U.S. casualties, accusing them of trying to make the president look bad.
  • Pete Hegseth (quoted): “The press only wants to make the president look bad. But try for once to report the reality. The terms of this war will be set by us at every step.” (10:43)
  • White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt: “That’s a fact.” (11:29–11:58)
• Contradictory Justifications:
  • Preventing imminent Iranian attacks.
  • Pre-empting an Israeli strike and subsequent threats to American forces.
  • The assertion that Iran was on the brink of nuclear breakout, though U.S. intelligence suggests otherwise.
  • Anthony Zurcher: “Shifting grounds, clearly... trying to find a justification after the fact, because they really didn’t tick through much of this at all.” (14:28)
  • Sarah Rainsford: “I’ve counted seven, I think, different justifications now for why this war is necessary.” (12:53)

4. Legal and Constitutional Questions

Timestamps: 17:08 – 18:32

• War Powers Act: The administration relies on threats to justify bypassing Congress, claiming imminent danger allowed for unilateral action, invoking a law they also declare “unconstitutional.”
  • Sarah Rainsford & Anthony Zurcher: Discussion on the necessity of Congressional sign-off after 60 days of hostilities.

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Special Guest Interview: Robert Malley (Former Iran Negotiator)

Timestamps: 18:32 – 30:46

a. Reality of Negotiating with Iran

• Regime Priorities: Iran is ideological but, above all, committed to regime survival.
  • Robert Malley: “If what the Trump administration was asking… was capitulation, I don’t think you need to be an expert in Iran. You probably just need to be an expert in human nature to know that that was not going to happen.” (19:10)
• "Good Faith" in Diplomacy: Iran played for time but was proven to have abided by the 2015 nuclear deal until the U.S. withdrawal, contrary to Trumpian claims.
  • Robert Malley: “Even The Trump administration validated the fact that Iran was abiding by the deal...” (20:26)

b. Retrospective on the 2015 Deal

• The deal achieved its immediate goal: delaying Iran’s bomb capability for at least a year.
• Trump withdrew regardless, and ‘maximum pressure’ only increased Iran’s nuclear activities.
  • Malley: “Iran’s nuclear program grew exponentially.” (21:42)

c. The “Unpredictable Trump” Factor

• Could Trump Have Gotten a Deal?: Malley argues Trump might have been more able to deliver a lasting agreement, ironically because Iran trusted Republican continuity more than Democratic.
  • Malley: “The Iranians felt that a deal with President Trump would survive the political waters in America...” (28:20)
• Current Outlook: Military escalation has likely foreclosed further diplomacy for now: “I just think it's very hard now... I don't know how you negotiate under those conditions. Anything, again, other than the terms of a ceasefire.” (30:05)

d. Propaganda vs. Reality: Iranian Threats

• No Imminent Threat: Malley dismisses administration claims Iran was weeks away from a nuclear weapon as “just pure fabrication.” (25:19)
• Iran as a “Paper Tiger”? He contends Iran is militarily weak, but can still create regional chaos and asymmetric threats.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“We are just getting started. We are accelerating, not decelerating. Iran's capabilities are evaporating by the hour while American strength grows fiercer, smarter and utterly dominant.”
— Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense (01:45; 03:56)

“You can drop a lot of bombs, but we're not in the nation building business. He says we're not doing the nation building of Iraq, but if so, what happens when we're done destroying things?”
— Anthony Zurcher (05:31)

“Rather than worrying too much about what the endgame is here… they're not getting the credit for it... it's not being reported in a fashion that indicates just how well he thinks U.S. forces are doing.”
— Sarah Rainsford (10:17)

“I’ve counted seven, I think, different justifications now for why this war is necessary...”
— Sarah Rainsford (12:53)

“This is just pure fabrication. There’s nobody who has any sense of what Iran, their capabilities were, who could make that claim [that Iran was two weeks from a nuke].”
— Robert Malley (25:19)

“I thought... that President Trump had a better chance of reaching a negotiated deal with Iran... the Iranians felt that a deal with President Trump would survive the political waters in America...”
— Robert Malley (28:20)

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• Opening Context and U.S. Surprise: 01:18–02:08
• “Operation Epic Fury" and War Rhetoric: 03:27–05:09
• Strategic Skepticism, General Kaine’s Concerns: 07:13–09:11
• Cost, Supply-Chain Risks, and Congress: 09:11–10:17
• Media Criticism and White House Spin: 10:43–12:34
• Shifting Justifications for War: 12:53–15:50
• Legal Ramifications & War Powers Act: 17:08–18:32
• Robert Malley Interview Begins: 18:32
• Malley on Negotiations & U.S.-Iran Relations: 19:10–30:46

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Tone & Style

The episode is analytical yet urgent, at times wryly skeptical, and driven by a journalistic sense of accountability. The hosts push back on official narratives, dig into legal and strategic gray areas, and ground their discussion in both recent history and the lived reality of on-the-ground consequences.

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Summary

This Americast episode exposes the confusion, contradictions, and perils of America’s war with Iran under the Trump administration, with expert insight on the roots of the conflict and the challenges of finding a sustainable resolution. Boisterous official messaging is juxtaposed with policy uncertainty, legal ambiguity, and a lack of clear objectives—while guest Robert Malley offers a sober, historical assessment of how U.S. strategy may have closed off paths to diplomacy and led to a dangerous new chapter in Middle Eastern conflict.

Transcript

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[Anthony Zurcher]

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[Podcast Host]

thanks for listening to AmericasT. We cover the biggest news stories in the U.S. if you want to get AmericasT delivered on your phone every time we publish an episode, make sure you subscribe to us. Okay, on with the episode.

[Sarah Rainsford]

A lot of Americans are rather surprised to find that suddenly they're at war with Iran. U.S. service personnel have died and yet the public are asking, why are they in this war? Why was it necessary now? How long is it going to last and what are they trying to achieve? What would success even look like? Those are some very big questions, especially when the Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth says, this is just the beginning.

[Pete Hegseth (quoted)]

We are just getting started. We are accelerating, not decelerating. Iran's capabilities are evaporating by the hour while American strength grows fiercer, smarter and utterly dominant. More bombers and more fighters are arriving just today.

[Sarah Rainsford]

So how did we get here and where is it going now? Welcome to AmericasT. AmericasT.

[Robert Malley]

AmericasT from BBC News.

[Donald Trump (quoted)]

You hear that sound? Oh, I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money.

[Pete Hegseth (quoted)]

We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it.

[Caroline Levitt (White House Press Secretary)]

This is a big cover up and

[Robert Malley]

this administration is engaged in it.

[Sarah Rainsford]

This guy has Trump derangement syndrome. I have four words for you. Turn the volume up. Hello, it's Sarah here and this time I'm at home in Washington and it's

[Anthony Zurcher]

Anthony here in Washington also. But this time I'm in the BBC bureau.

[Sarah Rainsford]

We should say it's 10 o' clock in the morning for us in the US about three in the afternoon on Thursday. Later on in this episode, we're going to be speaking to Robert Malley and he was the lead negotiator on the nuclear deal with Iran that President Obama negotiated and signed in 2015. So he's going to be really fascinating about dealing with Iran and what the objectives of that were. We'll be speaking to him a bit later. First, we should catch up with where we are. Saturday will mark a week since the US Launched this war on Iran. And more recently, over the last few days, we have started hearing a good bit more, haven't we, Anthony, from Trump administration officials laying out a bit more about why this war began and what they hope to achieve.

[Anthony Zurcher]

Right. If you go on social media on things like X, you'll see slick videos produced by the Defense Department showing the United States bombing and all the things blowing up all over Iran. And then Pete Hegseth, the, the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of War, whatever you want to call him, has been holding multiple press conferences at the Pentagon where he has been very boastful, I guess you could say, about the progress the United States is making. This is the Defense Department line from Hagseth earlier this week.

[Pete Hegseth (quoted)]

Thus far, Operation Epic Fury has delivered twice the air power of shock and awe of Iraq in 2003, minus Paul Bremer and the nation building. The campaign has seven times the intensity of Israel's previous operations against Iran during the 12 Day War, seven times. And as President Trump said, more and larger waves are coming. We are just getting started. We are accelerating, not decelerating. Iran's capabilities are evaporating by the hour while American strength grows fiercer, smarter and utterly dominant. More bombers and more fighters are arriving just today. We are only four days into this and the results have been incredible, historic, really. Only, only the United States of America could lead this, only us. But when you add the Israeli Defense Forces, a devastatingly capable force, the combination is sheer destruction for our radical Islamist Iranian adversaries. They are toast and they know it. Or at least soon enough they will know it.

[Sarah Rainsford]

So no doubting there the fact that Donald Trump recruited Pete Hegseth to be his secretary of war straight from the couch of Fox News television where he would normally give some kind of commentary about how these things were going. Now he's telling us how it's going from, you know, his key seat in the Pentagon, but still sounding a bit like a cheerleader for it from the sidelines, I think. Anthony.

[Anthony Zurcher]

Right, dominant, incredible, historic, sheer destruction. Yeah. Definitely cheerleading this from inside the Pentagon. Although, you know, it's kind of interesting because I'm listening to what he was saying there, talking about, like, oh, all of the ordinance that has been dropped and the number of waves coming through. I'm kind of reminded of reading about the Vietnam War and how the generals there talked about all the tonnage of weapons, of bombs being dropped, a lot about what they were doing, but not what kind of political effect it was having. Yeah, we're dropping a lot of bombs. We're degrading Iran's military, but what about the purpose behind this? What about whether it's actually achieving our overall objectives? You can drop a lot of bombs, but we're not in the nation building business. He says we're not doing the nation building of Iraq, but if so, what happens when we're done destroying things?

[Sarah Rainsford]

Yeah, I read somebody saying that they thought Pete Hegseth sounded more like he was a character on Call of Duty than actually somebody who was running the progress of a war like this. And stood beside him at each occasion has been the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well, General Dan Kane. And I have to confess, the thing that always springs to mind first when I think of Dan Kaine is what Donald Trump says every time he ever references him, which is that the first time he met him, he discovered that his nickname was Raising Cane, and he liked that so much. The implication is he made him chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Nonetheless, he does seem to have been actually a slightly more grown up voice within the administration when talking about the planning of this war.

[Anthony Zurcher]

Right. There was a Washington Post article before these military strikes began where it said Kaine was telling people within the White House that he was concerned about the preparations for this war, whether the United States would have enough ordinance, whether it would be able to get allies to sign on and be involved, and if it wasn't just going to be the United States and Israel alone. Now, Donald Trump quickly said that that was all fake news, that the United States was totally prepared after the start of the fighting, said that we have enough ordinance to continue on indefinitely. But it was interesting, even if the details of the report are not entirely accurate, that he was someone who clearly was there thinking about how we're going to do this and what the potential consequences and risks are, because his job

[Sarah Rainsford]

will have been to plan out the campaign, presumably selecting targets, what order they're going to go after them, the manner in which you try and knock out Iran's air defenses, then allowing you to target Other sites inside Iran. That's all done at his level, isn't it? He's the one who's actually plotting the progress of how to conduct this war rather than the politics of it.

[Anthony Zurcher]

He became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff because when Donald Trump came in to the White House again last year, he fired the previous Joint Chiefs head who had been appointed by Biden. Actually breaking with tradition. Usually you don't replace people, you wait for them to serve out their term. But he wanted Cain in there, raising Cain. You know, like you said, Donald Trump likes his nicknames. You remember his first Secretary of Defense in his first term, James Maddox had the nickname Mad Dog. And Donald Trump would never stop talking about Mad Dog Maddox, to the point where I think James Maddox didn't really like the nickname and didn't like Trump using it, and they ended up having a falling out fairly early in Trump's presidency.

[Sarah Rainsford]

Yeah, Anthony, I believe that into the White House at some point soon. A lot of defence contractors have been invited to discuss accelerating weapons production. So there obviously is some kind of concern about running out of stocks of missiles and other supplies if the progress of this war goes on for too long. We have no real clear sense, do we, of how long this is likely to go on. And that would have an impact, obviously on stocks of missiles, but on lots of other things as well, not least American public opinion towards the American public

[Anthony Zurcher]

opinion, the cost to the Defense Department, to the United States as a whole. There's talk about having to come back to Congress to ask for more money. And the problem is basically right now the United States is shooting, you know, $4 million surface to air Patriot missiles to shoot down $20,000 drones that Iran is launching. And I think that's a very real concern and something that Trump didn't lay out in the beginning, how long this was going to be very clearly, or even the goals of what he wants to accomplish.

[Sarah Rainsford]

And Anthony, one thing I've really noticed is that rather than worrying too much about what the end game is here or what ultimate success might look like. So the frustration coming from people like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth who think the war is going fantastically well at the moment, but they're not getting the credit for it, that it's not being reported in a fashion that indicates just how well he thinks U.S. forces are doing

[Pete Hegseth (quoted)]

this is what the fake news misses. We've taken control of Iran's airspace and waterways without boots on the ground. We control their fate. But when a few drones get through or tragic things Happen. It's front page news. I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad. But try for once to report the reality. The terms of this war will be set by us at every step.

[Sarah Rainsford]

And just on his last comment there about him saying the press only want to make the president look bad by doing things like reporting US casualties, CNN's Kaitlan Collins asked Caroline Levitt, the White House press secretary, about that at the last White House briefing, and she was asking about Hegseth's comments on negative press coverage.

[Caroline Levitt (White House Press Secretary)]

Hegseth was complaining that it was front page news about these six service members who were killed. That's not what the secretary said, Caitlin, and that's not what the secretary meant, and you know it. You know, you are being disingenuous. There is not. We've never had a secretary of defense who cares more get through our tragic things happen. It's front page news. I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad. Yeah, you know, we, the presidents of U.S. service members under every president. The press does only want to make the president look bad. That's a. That's a fact.

[Sarah Rainsford]

And they're not the first administration or government ever to complain that the press aren't 100% behind their military efforts. They often want journalists to be cheerleading for war efforts rather than analyzing them. And I've seen that happen with other governments in other conflicts. But it does seem to be really quite acute with this administration, as though they were feeling quite insecure about what we've talked about before, about whether public opinions behind this war, whether they have a clear justification for why they're doing it, or if they think they can achieve the success they want anytime soon.

[Anthony Zurcher]

It's the press's job to ask questions, though, and to report. And one of the big questions they've been asking since the very beginning, even before Saturday's war started, is why was the United States doing this? And I think, Sarah, you'll agree that we still don't have a really clear answer from this administration on that very question.

[Sarah Rainsford]

How many answers do you want, Anthony? I've counted seven, I think different justifications now for why this war is necessary and why it's necessary at this point, really. I mean, the Trump administration is not on the same page about this. They've given all sorts of different reasons for attacking Iran. So have a listen to this. This is both the President and the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, with some of their reasons.

[Donald Trump (quoted)]

Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from The Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.

[Marco Rubio (quoted)]

We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher, those killed. And then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn't act.

[Donald Trump (quoted)]

We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. They were going to attack. If we didn't do it, they were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that. And we have great negotiators, great people, people that do this very successfully and have done it all their lives, very successful. And based on the way the negotiation was going, I think they were going to attack first. And I didn't want that to happen. So if anything, I might have forced Israel's hand.

[Marco Rubio (quoted)]

The President said, this is the weakest they've ever been. If we don't hit them now, a year from now or a year and a half from now, no one will be able to touch them and they'll be able to do whatever they want.

[Anthony Zurcher]

So, shifting grounds, clearly, that the Trump administration is trying to find a justification after the fact, because they really didn't tick through much of this at all. Sarah, you remember the State of the Union address? Donald Trump barely mentioned Iran. It was at the very end, and that was just a matter of days before the United States launched its attack.

[Sarah Rainsford]

Yeah. And I remember the buildup to the Iraq war in 2003 as well. How much of George W. Bush's State of the Union address was dev to that, how much time they spent on television in public making the case against that regime, why it was necessary to take military action. This was debated for weeks and months, and the public were prepared for it. Whereas a lot of people, I think, and probably not least you and I, Anthony, were hugely taken by surprise on Saturday morning. And most people I've seen asked about this say that they're terribly, terribly confused about why and why now. There was some real pushback, though, wasn't there, from that idea that Marco Rubio had said, oh, well, Israel was going to attack Iran anyway, so we had to get in there first so that we didn't suffer in the retaliation. Donald Trump didn't like that, because when he was asked about that, the idea that he was pushed into doing something by Israel, by Prime Minister Netanyahu, he is not happy with.

[Anthony Zurcher]

Yeah, There were portions of Donald Trump's base, people in the MAGA movement, who were incensed by that justification that Rubio offered, that it was the idea that Israel was the reason why the United States acted and who was calling shots in American foreign policy and whether American foreign policy should be based on decisions made outside of the United States. The whole idea of America first is that it's America calling the shots, not someone else. So I'm not surprised that Donald Trump, in that montage we heard, walked that back significantly. And Marco Rubio himself did the next day, too.

[Sarah Rainsford]

Yeah, by telling reporters that he didn't say what they'd all heard him say. Essentially, quite a lot of the justifications. While we hear estimates as to how close Iran was to developing a nuclear weapon. And also Donald Trump has talked about the capability of long range missiles being able to hit the United states. It's the US's own Defense Intelligence that says that none of this was remotely imminent, that they were about a decade away from either a nuclear bomb or intercontinental ballistic missile. So, I mean, that is quite significant. Well, exaggeration might be a kind way of putting it towards the administration when they talk about what kind of military threat Iran posed. Right.

[Anthony Zurcher]

And there's an extra wrinkle in this, in that the War Powers Resolution, it's an act or War Powers act that was passed in the 1970s, gives the president the ability to launch military operations if there is a clear threat to an imminent threat to the United States. So they have to say this in order to at least follow the law. And if they don't, if they say, well, we're just doing it because we decided this is an American's interest, they really should get Congress's approval ahead of time. And they didn't. They didn't seek that out at all.

[Sarah Rainsford]

No, no. And that's another controversial aspect of this as well. The President can assume the power, as you say, under the War Powers act to do that, but he can only maintain a conflict for 60 days, I think, without going to Congress and getting express authorization. Is that right?

[Anthony Zurcher]

Exactly, Sarah. 60 days until they have to get Congress to sign off on it. Although I will also add that the Trump administration says that this law is unconstitutional, constitutional, and shouldn't bind the President's hand. And he is not the only President who has said that. So this could end up being another legal dispute between Congress and the White House, but the courts have to decide. But at least for now, it is hanging over this administration's head that they need to wrap this up or in order to avoid such a kind of a conflict.

[Sarah Rainsford]

Right. Let's speak now to our guest, Robert Malley, who was one of the lead negotiators on the 2015 nuclear deal under President Obama, US special envoy to Iran for 2021-2023 under the Biden administration, a key linchpin on Iran policy. Thanks very much for joining us, Robert.

[Robert Malley]

Yes, hello.

[Sarah Rainsford]

You have actually been in the room speaking to Iranian negotiating team about exactly these topics. Is there a deal to be done there, or does the regime ideology mean it's just never going to be possible for the US to get what it wants?

[Robert Malley]

This is a regime that is both deeply ideological, but also has its main priority is survival and the perpetuation of the regime. I mean, it's ideological perhaps more than others, but it has that strong desire to perpetuate itself. And if what the Trump administration was asking, as Steve Witkoff, the envoy at one point said, was capitulation, I don't think you need to be an expert in Iran. You probably just need to be an expert in human nature to know that that was not going to happen. And the fact that he said in the midst of these negotiations that President Trump was, I think his word was frustrated that Iran did not capitulate when the alternative was a war that Iran was certain to lose, I think that said much more about the mentality on the US Side than it said anything particularly revealing about the Iranians.

[Anthony Zurcher]

One of the things that Trump said about those negotiations was that Iran would agree to something or seem to agree to something, then back away, that they were basically just stalling for time and that they were not negotiating in good faith. From your experience when you were negotiating with the Iranians, did you feel like during your negotiations they were operating in good faith and that they were trying to legitimately reach some sort of an agreement with the United States?

[Robert Malley]

I don't know what to make of the term good faith. Yeah, they played games. They would present something, then they might take it back. Their goal was to stretch this out, and often it was. And I have no doubt that they were trying to stretch out the talks with President Trump. But we did reach a deal. I'm sure there are people who could criticize the deal, but one thing I don't think one could say with a straight face is that Iran violated the deal. Iran was not just abiding by the deal based on what it said. It wasn't just abiding by the deal based on what the iea, the International Atomic Energy Agency, claimed. Even The Trump administration validated the fact that Iran was abiding by the deal between the time it took office and a year after President Trump withdrew. So good faith, bad faith, I don't know. What I do know is that they negotiated a deal, they were abiding by it. I'm not going to make a moral judgment about whether this is a good faith regime or not. It has certainly lied and killed quite enough for me to shy away from that characterization.

[Anthony Zurcher]

In hindsight, do you feel like it was a good deal? Now that we're looking back, do you have any regrets that you weren't able to get anything more in it or make it more durable deal that the Trump administration wouldn't have torn up shortly after coming into power in 2017 and now obviously moved on to outright warfare with Iran?

[Robert Malley]

So it's a great question. I don't know that any negotiator in the world doesn't end the negotiation and think, well, if I got this, I probably could have gotten something better. I also think, yeah, probably there are things that could have been stronger. What I do know is that President Obama had one objective, which was to deal with this issue. As he put it, he wanted Iran to be at least one year away from being able to develop a bomb if it rushed to it for at least 10 years. That was the mandate that was achieved. The other thing I'd say is it's rare in history that you have two pathways that you could compare in only a few years distance. One pathway was the one President Obama chose, which is a negotiated deal. As I said, years after the deal, even a year after Trump had withdrawn from it, Iran was abiding by the deal. The nuclear program was in a box. They had no ability to dash for a bomb and get it quickly. And if they had tried, if they had started to go down that path, as I said, the United States and its partners had at least a year to deal with that, whether it was militarily, diplomatically, or other ways. Then we have the counterfactual. The other one was President Trump. He withdrew from the deal. He imposed maximum pressure sanctions, and he and his US Officials said the sanctions are going to be so crippling that Iran is going to have no choice but to come back to the table and sue for terms that are going to be much better for us. What did we see between 2018, 20, 21, 2024, 25? Iran's nuclear program grew exponentially. But the last point I'd make, you said, do you think that maybe there could have been a deal that would have survived President Trump? No, I don't think that the kind of deal that President Trump would have accepted was realistic. Because, again, if the test is zero enrichment, Iran has to give up its nuclear program de facto. That we could never have achieved. We could have achieved maybe a deal that was marginally better. I am convinced that President Trump would have torn it up no matter what.

[Sarah Rainsford]

And that's partly just because Donald Trump has such an incredibly different way of approaching negotiations, foreign affairs, all of these kind of things. And it's often speculated about whether his unpredictability, the fact that he's prepared to do things like suddenly launch a war on Iran one weekend, actually is a real strength in foreign affairs. For all the quibbles people have about the manner in which he's going about this, stopping the Iranian regime from getting a nuclear weapon is the same goal everybody is trying to achieve. He's going about it very differently in a way that might be effective.

[Robert Malley]

In some ways, his unorthodoxy could help, right? I mean, he is immune to the laws of political gravity, and he could do things like press Prime Minister Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire, like open channels to Hamas, and yes, sometimes playing the crazy man to try to get things done. But in this case, if he had used the leverage of threatening war and achieved a deal, people could have looked back and said, well, maybe this was a smart move, but it didn't work. And we're at a war now, that, again, is unjustified, unlawful, extremely dangerous. I'm sure we'll get to it. But even in the best scenario, the best case scenario that one could conjure up, it's hard to see how this ends.

[Anthony Zurcher]

Well, now, Trump said that if we hadn't launched these attacks on Iran, that Iran would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks. Now, I know you don't have the intelligence in front of you, but knowing what you do about where Iran was now, is that a justification that is valid? Was there any kind of evidence, do you think, supporting something like that?

[Robert Malley]

So this is one of those rare cases where intelligence wouldn't make any difference. This is just pure fabrication. There's nobody who has any sense of what Iran, their capabilities were, who could make that claim. Let's assume that Iran's nuclear program had not been obliterated, destroyed, whatever term you want to use back in June last year, let's just for the sake of argument, assume that that was the state of Iran's nuclear program. Even then, it would have taken them I think the estimates were at least six months, maybe nine months, maybe longer, to. To try to develop a bomb, because they hadn't and they didn't have a military program. The flimsiness of the argument, I think, is demonstrated by nothing more powerfully than how they shift their argument for why they went to war and what the objectives of the war are. I mean, it really is not only a matter of changing the version on a daily basis, it's hourly.

[Sarah Rainsford]

One of the other explanations put forward is that Iran's stock of conventional ballistic missiles was a real threat to US Targets in the region. The possibility of them developing an intercontinental missile that could hit the United States in the coming years. What do you think is the state of Iranian weaponry? Can we see them having enough to sustain this for a long time, or does the response we've seen so far show that? Actually, that was a bit of a paper tiger as well? They were not as dangerous as Donald Trump wants us to believe.

[Robert Malley]

No, I think it's a good point. I believe, based on what we've seen now, but basically what We've seen since October 7, 2023, that Iran's military simply is no match to Israel's or the United States, certainly not the combination of the two. One of the reasons that the US And Israel are waging this war is precisely because Iran was weakened and was relatively weak, and they knew that. And so this notion that Iran is 10ft tall and that it presents such a threat, again, never stood the test of logic or any scrutiny. That doesn't mean that Iran doesn't have responses. It has responses that are asymmetric, whether it's terrorism, whether it's drones, whether it's other means of warfare. And again, that's why I say, even in the best case scenario, in terms of the American and Israeli war planners, it doesn't mean that you have stability, that you have a new government that's going to be oriented towards the west or friendly towards Israel at best, from their own perspective, it's chaotic, it's fragmented, it's violent. You may have a civil war and you have hundreds of thousands of people, maybe more than that, not just in Iran, but across the region, who for ideological, political reasons, are going to have only one goal in mind, revenge.

[Sarah Rainsford]

The US has always been known, or for the last few decades been known in Iran as the Great Satan, partly for its support for Israel, also because of other policies towards Iran. And that has been consistently the case for decades. Whoever the president is, is there a really significant difference? Do you Think in Iranian perception of America when you're dealing with Presidents Obama, Biden or Trump.

[Robert Malley]

I don't know. I actually thought, and this is why I was maybe naively more optimistic than I ought to have been, that President Trump had a better chance of reaching a negotiated deal with Iran for several reasons. Number one, because the Iranians felt that a deal with President Trump would survive the political waters in America, that unlike President Biden or President Harris, whose, if they were to negotiate a deal, it would be vulnerable to the next Republican president who is going to actually question, challenge or tear up a deal negotiated by President Trump himself. So I think they felt that that was a safer bet. And I have to say, in the negotiations that we led under President Biden between 2021 and 2023, that I led, one theme that the Iranians would always bring up was, how do we trust that you're not going to do the same thing you did last time? And we would tell them, we can't give you any guarantee. And I think that was an obstacle that we were never able to overcome. I'm not saying it was the major one, but it was an important one. And number two, here's a president who defies orthodoxy. He was prepared, I believe, to lift parts of the primary sanctions against Iran. In other words, to authorize direct commercial ties between Iran and the US on the argument, which is not a silly one, that one of the flaws of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal was that it allowed Iran to improve its economic situation. Europe to trade with and make money with Iran, Asia to trade and make money with Iran. The one entity that didn't benefit economically was the United States. And I think Trump thought, that's absurd. That's ridiculous.

[Sarah Rainsford]

Is that still possible? Can we go through a few weeks of a punishing military campaign against Iran and then that gets the regime, or whatever regime takes charge back to the table and produce just that result that you were describing.

[Robert Malley]

I just think it's very hard now. I mean, just think the killing of the Supreme Leader, the killing of the leadership, innocence obviously, being killed as well, the country being destroyed. I don't know how you negotiate under those conditions. Anything, again, other than the terms of a ceasefire. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there'll be a leadership that emerges and is prepared to negotiate. It's not impossible. So it's not the most likely scenario at this point. I think the most likely scenario is an Iran that is weakened, debilitated, chaotic, fragmented, but with the regime still more or less in control and not interested in negotiating with the US and frankly not sure the US Would be interested in negotiating with it.

[Sarah Rainsford]

Well, thank you so much for sharing your perspective on that, Robert Mallet. It was great to have you on the program to get that kind of insight for somebody who has been in the room for this sort of thing. Is it invaluable at times like this?

[Anthony Zurcher]

It's great having you on.

[Robert Malley]

Thanks very much.

[Anthony Zurcher]

That was a fascinating conversation. I think one of the most interesting things was what he said to you, Sarah, there about how the possibility was there for the Trump administration to negotiate something with Iran, that they might have been even more open to negotiating with Trump than they were to Biden, and that I think the history books may record as a missed opportunity here.

[Sarah Rainsford]

Yes, that idea that Donald Trump does have a kind of almost unique power on the world stage if harnessed properly, but one that they've not chosen basically to use in in this instance when they've gone for the option of a military campaign instead. Well, we should leave it there for now.

[Anthony Zurcher]

Bye bye bye.

[Podcast Host]

Thank you for listening to another episode. If you liked what you heard, why not subscribe to America, BBC Sounds, or indeed where you get your podcasts. That way you will be notified every time we publish a new episode. We also want to hear your thoughts, your feedback, questions, anecdotes, ideas, so do keep them coming in. We do look at every single bit of correspondence that we get so you can email us americastbc.co.uk the WhatsApp is 443-301-239480 and you can get involved in the AmericasT Discord server. The link for that is in the description and you can also watch us on YouTube. You just search for americast. Until next time. Bye bye.

[Anthony Zurcher]

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