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What's happening now is more of an economic war of attrition between these two. And Iran said in recent weeks that it is now a global superpower.
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Some progress. That is how Secretary of State Marco Rubio described current negotiation efforts with Iran. We've heard that before from President Trump from his cabinet that a deal is close. So we will ask again, are we actually really close to a deal with Iran? This is Sources and Methods from npr. I'm Scott Detrow in for Mary Louise Kelly. Today's Thursday, which means on this podcast, we will dive into the week's biggest national security stories with NPR reporters who are out there covering them. Joining me today is NPR international correspondent Aya Batrawi, based in Dubai. Hey there.
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B
Hi.
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And here in D.C. nPR Pentagon Correspondent Tom Bowman. Hey, Tom.
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C
Hey, Scott.
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So it's about noon our time in D.C. it's about 8pm in Dubai. There is a lot to talk about from the recent days. I will do my best to kind of recount things from the weekend on and then you can both pick it up from there. Does that sound good?
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C
Sounds good to me.
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All right. Let's start with the weekend. President Trump announces a deal with Iran is close, though, as I said, heard that many times before. Monday, US Forces launch new attacks against Iranian boats trying to lay mines near the Strait of Hormuz. This is done in, quote, self defense, according to U.S. central Command. Tuesday, Iran shoots down U.S. drones. On Wednesday, Trump gathers his cabinet, tells reporters he will not be rushed into a deal.
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They thought they were going to outweigh me. You know, we'll outweigh him. He's got the midterms. I don't care about the midterms. Look what happened.
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Pick it up from there. More strikes overnight from both sides.
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B
Yeah, I mean, what the sequencing looks like is that there was an American tanker, an American commercial ship trying to transit through the Strait of Hormuz with its responders off so quietly without catching the attention of Iran. That's what Iran says happened. And then the Iranian Revolutionary Guards say that they shot at this tanker and turned it around. And then we saw overnight the US Saying that it struck down four Iranian attack drones and hit an Iranian launch site on Iran's coast on a city there called Bandar Abbas that sits right near the Strait of Hormuz. Then we saw Kuwait saying that they had intercepted some drones. And then we heard Iran's Revolutionary Guard say that they launched attacks targeting the launch site of that American attack overnight. And then Central Command CENTCOM came out and said that actually Iran had fired a ballistic missile at Kuwait and called it an egregious act.
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A
And yet we are still in a ceasefire, right? There are negotiations happening. How does this affect those?
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C
Well, actually, the military called it an egregious ceasefire violation, the first we've seen so far in this month and change ceasefire. So that is significant, I think. But again, where does it go from here? Is it a back and forth? Military officials I talk with say it looks like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is trying to, you know, show it has muscle, show it can still try to lay mines in the Strait, can shoot off a ballistic missile toward Kuwait and also, you know, keep firing, sending drones in. Now, President Trump has long said, well, we destroyed their navy, we destroyed their air force. They have thousands of these small boats that can lay mines. They have thousands of drones and also missiles left. So, you know, it doesn't matter if you destroy their navy and their air force. They still have formidable power.
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A
Let's get back to the negotiations, though, that over the weekend at least were being touted as this big breakthrough. What do we know about what is in this framework?
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Well, we've been speaking with people close to the talks, people involved in the mediation who tell us these talks are actually really largely negotiated. But it comes down to it being finalized. It doesn't matter if it's largely negotiated. It has to be finalized. And they say that Iran is really putting some tough demands in place despite pressure from the Pakistanis, which are the lead mediator here, and that they're not really showing any flexibility. And that really has to do, Scott, with the lack of trust. The Iranians do not trust the Trump administration. Remember, it was President Trump who pulled the United States out of the first nuclear accord in his first term in office that had been agreed upon with the Obama administration and other countries around the world. And it was Trump who launched the last two wars on Iran in the midst of nuclear talks, talks. So what we know is that this deal would only be an interim deal. It wouldn't necessarily like be an all inclusive deal that includes details on Iran's nuclear enrichment. This deal is simply an interim deal that would largely probably extend the ceasefire for just another 60 days. Get like enough points in place for that. The US And Iran actually sit Again in direct talks and meet and it would open the Strait of Hormuz. But for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, which is the leverage it has now, which it did not have before this war, it wants money. It wants billions of dollars of money. I was speaking with an Iran expert. He's a US Iran expert at the center for International Policy. His name is Sima Tusi. He was telling me there are estimates of between 60 to $100 billion of Iran's frozen money overseas. And they want some of that back, if not all of it. Of course.
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Is that the priority then?
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It's one of its top priorities. They're saying they want some of that money, $12 billion of it, according to Iranian state linked media, $12 billion of it. Upon any announcement of an agreement with the United States, there was actually Iran's central, the head of Iran's central bank and the lead negotiator in Iran, they were in Qatar this week to talk about that money, to unfreeze that money because some of it is locked in Qatari bank accounts. And also what we know just overnight is that from a senior official in the region not authorized to speak publicly, is that President Trump sent to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as other regional leaders a draft of an agreement. And so we don't know what's in that draft yet, but he sent it to them for their comment. So we know something is close. But one more thing, Scott, I'll note here, Iran is demanding also an end to the war in Lebanon. Israel's war against Iran backed Hezbollah. And what we've seen today is Israel expanding that war, pushing deeper and actually strikes on the capital, Beirut today.
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And again, we don't have details on this memorandum of understanding, but clearly it looks like what Iran wants is decouple the Strait of Hormuz from the nuclear talks. And again, they want the end of the blockade. They want the US to move their ships and military hardware back. And A is right. They want money for this to happen. And also here's what's important too. Iran with Oman, they want to manage this Strait of Hormuz, which of course has always been international waterway, freedom of navigation. And that really upset President Trump who said we'll bomb Oman if they try to push this deal, which is really incredible. Getting back to the Money though, as EA pointed out, that $12 billion, now remember, Trump and the Republicans criticized the Obama administration for giving Iran $1.5 billion. Right.
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So now we're looking at that money on the pallets or whatever that's right
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now we're looking at $12 billion. So you can imagine what, you know, some retired military officials, right wing members of Congress will say if Iran gets $12 billion. But again, getting back to the nuclear talks, you know, even Rubio, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, listen, you can't just do this in a couple of days in the back of an envelope. It's going to take some time. And again, the Obama nuclear accord, that took almost two years of negotiating.
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Of course, the US Launched this war alongside Israel. How does Israel play into negotiations? How does Israel's distance or closeness negotiations play into this? And how is President Trump trying to broaden this conversation to include Israel?
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Well, what we know is that Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, is against any deal with Iran and he wants to continue the war in Lebanon as well. Iran, again, has made very clear that upon its conditions to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, that war needs to end. What we've seen is Israel expanding in this week that we were supposed to see, like final details of a deal announced, pushing deeper into Lebanon. They ordered the evacuation of one of Lebanon's biggest cities tier. That's the top people in Lebanon already displaced because of this war. And like I said, bombing Beirut, the capital today, we haven't seen that in nearly a month. So there's a lot of ways that Israel's prime minister can push back on a deal and make it harder for Trump to achieve that. We also know from Israeli officials and others that have been speaking to our colleagues in the region that there was a tense call between Netanyahu and Trump as well just last week in which President Trump was pushing for the diplomatic path and Netanyahu didn't want that. A key factor here are Gulf Arab states. They also have a say in this. They were the hardest hit, Scott, in this war as far as like Iran's counterattacks. Their energy infrastructure was hit. So these countries are now all speaking actually in one voice, including Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan. So a lot of regional heavyweights telling Trump, end this war.
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Eiya, this is something that we talked about on ALL Things Considered the other day. We're also hearing that President Trump is now trying to expand the Abraham Accords as part of that way to get Israel on board with any sort of agreement. Is that what's going on there?
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It I don't know what he's signaling here, but countries in the region are not, I don't think they've taken this seriously because this is a very big move to make. And actually aligning with Israel at this point wouldn't give them more protection. It would actually could expose them more to being seen as part of the axis enemy that Iran targets. We saw that happen with the United Arab Emirates and we saw them shift their tone after an attack on their nuclear power plant just days ago. Luckily, there was no radiation leaks. But, you know, we have seen the UAE shift its tone in recent last couple of weeks or so. And Abu Dhabi really changing its tone after Iran really focused a lot of its rhetoric against the UAE for that close alliance with Israel. So these countries don't need to rush into an alliance with Israel or a diplomatic breakthrough with Israel. Also, the publics here, like in Saudi Arabia and Turkey and Pakistan, they are opposed to Israel. You know, the war in Gaza is very unpopular around the region. So there's no reason to rush into that just because Trump says so.
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We are going to take a quick break. When we come back, what makes this deal any different? That is ahead on Sources Methods from NPR Foreign. This message comes from the NBC News podcast here's the Scoop. This month, senior legal correspondent Laura Jarrett talks with experts and lawyers behind Supreme Court cases of the past and how those cases are shaping decisions today. Listen now on here's THE scoop.
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we are back. And Tom, we have been here before.
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Oh yes, we have.
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What, if anything, makes this alleged deal different from other conversations that we've been having along these lines in recent months?
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Well, basically, Trump is saying no enrichment whatsoever. And under the Obama accord, Iranian nuclear accord, they could enrich at very, very low levels, 3.67% or so. So that's different. And also, you know, Trump wants to remove the 60% enriched uranium from the country. It's at Esfahan, this nuclear facility that was bombed by the US And Israel. Trump's going back and forth on this. At one point he called it, I don't really care about that, he called it nuclear dust. Now he wants it removed or destroyed there. So that's different. It's important to point out that the 60% enrichment by the Iranians came after Trump scrapped the deal that Obama put together. So that was created as a result of what Trump did in scrapping the Obama deal. And also the straight up or moves
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that that wouldn't have been enriched, that that activity would not have happened had he not backed out of the agreement.
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That's right. Once he backed out of the agreement in 2018, Iran started enriching its uranium to higher levels. And also, as we've been talking about, the Strait of Hormuz, that has never closed and now it is effectively closed by the Iranians who have this ace in their hand to play. And it also shows them once this is resolved, if it is resolved, Iran can do that once again, can basically send missiles or drones or mines out into the Strait of Hormuz. They now realize they have that leverage over the United States and the world.
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I mean, a, I hear this Iran is the country that was bombed so heavily for so many weeks, and yet it seems like Iran is the country that holds the cards at this point in time. Is that the right way to think about this?
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I mean, its leadership was killed, its supreme leader was killed on the first day of the opening strikes of this war by Israeli attacks. And they lost a lot of top commanders and their armed forces. And yet the regime is still intact. The regime is still able to call the shots domestically within Iran. They just this week, for the first time since the war began, allowed some Internet to return to the country and for people to slowly access Internet there. You know, school kids need to access end of year exams, online businesses need the Internet, you know, to survive. So they still are very much intact. And, you know, I would just say, like I, you know, I covered the Gaza war from since October 7, 2023, and I saw how Israel was talking about decimating and annihilating Hamas there. And, you know, whether it was a siege, naval blockade, a, you know, full clampdown on aid entering for months at a time, you know, over 70,000 people there, killed, thousands missing. Hamas is still somewhat able to name new commanders and still have some battalions, you know, commanders being replaced and that kind of thing. So imagine we're talking about Iran, right? Like a regime change there from the sky, as Israel's prime minister said was part of the aim of the war for Israel at least wasn't going to happen in, you know, with a few weeks of war. And I think what we're seeing now is that both sides, both Iran and the United States, see that more war isn't going to achieve anything for the United States. I Think President Trump sees that more war on Iran isn't necessarily going to give him what he wants. This regime is actually hardened. Now. I've been speaking with a lot of analysts who say this regime is actually it's weaker, but it's harder than it was before.
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And also it's important to note that more than 15,000 targets were hit and the regime is still in charge.
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At the same time, though, AAU say that both sides kind of don't see more conflict as the step forward. But we heard this from President Trump just the other day.
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They want very much to make a deal. So far they haven't gotten there. We're not satisfied with it, but we will be. We will be. Either that or we'll have to just finish the job. But their navy is gone, as I've said a thousand times, and navy is gone, their Air Force is gone, everything's gone. And they're negotiating on fumes. But we'll see what happens. Maybe we have to go back and finish it, maybe we don't. I would say not negotiating on fumes, they're negotiating on water. And that water is a straight up hormuz.
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But Tom, we've heard a few different times as negotiations stall or get to an inflection point, Trump threaten broader renewed attacks. Anything different this time?
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Well, here's the thing. He's talked about broader attacks. It could hit bridges, it could hit the oil facilities, you know, power plants. Some of those sites would be used for civilian use. That could possibly mean violation of international law, war crimes and so forth. And also, again, what do you hope to achieve by continuing to bomb? He thinks it'll bring them to the table. But as we've been talking about, it seems like this regime is more hardline than what you had before. So again, the only thing they can do really is try to get the strait opened again. They're going to have to negotiate with Iran. They're going to have to probably give them some money. There's talk that maybe the Gulf states will loan Iran some money, billions of dollars just to get this thing off the table. But as we know, there are 1500 ships stuck right now in the Persian Gulf, a thousand of them ocean going vessels with oil and so forth. Fertilizer as well. We've seen the cost of gas go up a dollar and a half in the last several months. And also the cost of fertilizer has gone up quite a bit as well. One third of the world's fertilizer comes through the Persian Gulf, through the Strait of Horamuz and analysts are saying that you could see a serious spike in food prices as early as this fall as a result of what we're seeing here.
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Trump insists that he is not under pressure. He has said things that I think Democrats are quite excited to turn into campaign ads. Among them, I'm not worried about the midterms. I'm not thinking about costs on Americans. That last one's a little bit of a paraphrase, but he said that as much that he's focused on trying to get an agreement in this war. A how aware is Iran, though, of the real political pressure, economic pressure that the president of the United States is facing?
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I would say that what's happening now is more of an economic war of attrition between these two. And Iran actually sees itself now, or at least it's said in recent weeks, that it is now a global superpower. And so for them, they see that they can pressure Trump economically with these elections coming up as well as Israel. Israel's also having elections this year. And also, of course, the United States has its naval blockade on Iran out at sea. So Iran is not able to easily evade that and export its oil. So it's also suffering economically. And of course, there's sanctions. But again, because Iran doesn't trust the Trump administration to go into this talk what they say in good faith, they want what they call these, you know, confidence building measures. And I actually spoke with an analyst, Sina Toosi. He's a senior fellow at the center for International Policy in Washington. He's a U. S. Iran expert. And I asked him exactly that sort of where are we right now in the war and what is the possible release of billions of dollars of Iran's frozen money overseas, say about where we are right now overall, America being willing to do this just shows how much it's, I would argue, is kind of
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strategically retreating that, you know, Trump famously lambasted Obama for sending pallets of cash
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to Iran in 2016. Now Trump is seemingly himself willing to release some of Iran's assets. So that's a big, you know, indication
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of this war went terribly.
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And this agreement, again, is not a
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nuclear agreement, is not resolving these outstanding issues.
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It's just an end of war agreement. And each side is seemingly going to
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agree on easing up on their blockade. And Tom, I was surprised at the types of voices that we heard criticizing this framework that's been out there, at least people like Ted Cruz, people like Lindsey Graham, people like Mike Pompeo, people who are not usually the Republicans out There criticizing the Trump administration, saying this is a bad deal, this is not what we wanted to see out there.
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No, no, I think that's right. And of course they want clear regime change. They want, that's what Trump promised. But clearly that's not going to happen and they want to finish the job. So what does finishing the job actually mean? They've never really talked about that or explained that. And getting back to what Trump said, I don't care about the midterms. Well, as you know, covering politics, a lot of Republicans are worried about the midterms because the higher gas prices and so forth and farmers worrying about high cost of fertilizer. But you know, he's going to have to bend and give back some money to Iran to get that strait reopened. And Iran said even if it is reopened, it's going to take at least a month or more to get those ships to you get it to pre war levels of ships going through the strait, I think roughly 130 per day. But it's going to take a while.
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Real quick, before we take a break, do either of you want to boldly predict if this is resolved a month from now? Is there an agreement in place a month from now?
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Oh man, I don't know. I think again there's going to be a lot of pressure to open that strait, you know, as we get closer to the midterms. Right. And if gas prices continue to go up, that's even more pressure. Now with Iran, it's an autocratic state. Right. I don't think they care as much about their population as you do here in the United States. Right. In this country, when people start complaining and they go to their congressmen, they get very, very worried.
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Well, I'll just say Iran's regime is fighting for its survival. They see that, you know, there were calls for regime change in Iran and so they know that this is a war of survival and they will fight to survive. And but I just don't see any way out besides a diplomatic solution. So let's say yeah, most likely we will find a way out.
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I feel validated with my follow up questions.
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C
Nice work. Appreciate it.
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We're going to take a short break and then President Trump says his Iran nuclear deal will not be like President Obama's. Are we sure about that? Plus we will open up our reporters notebooks for osint. That's ahead on Sources and Methods from npr.
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We are back with Tom Bowman and Aya Batrawi. And we cannot talk about this peace deal without talking about nuclear weapons. Iran has the materials to make them. President Trump is trying hard to strike a deal to prevent Iran from doing that. But Tom, we've talked about this a bunch already. Seems pretty familiar. The United States, in fact, did have a deal in place with Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.
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That's right. It's called the JCPOA or jicpoa. It was under the Obama administration and again, it allowed a small amount of enriched uranium, 3.67% basically, for nuclear power plants. And it also had a 10 year moratorium on any additional enrichment of uranium for 10 years. I remember talking with a senior military official back then and people criticized the deal, you know, had its flaws. This general told me, he said, tom, you know, the great thing about this, we the military don't have to step in, Let the diplomats talk about this for the next decade. So again, what if Trump allows some enrichment, which is what the Iranians demand, Then everyone's going to be saying, well, wait a minute, how is this different from what Obama had? And you have 13American dead, you have 2,000 or more Iranians killed, right? You have billions of 29 billion in operational costs for this war for the United States and also billions more rebuilding infrastructure, US Bases that were hit around the Middle east and as a knows, in Dubai and some of the other areas in the region, they're going to have to be rebuilding the infrastructure as well as.
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So, Aya, that gets to my last question then. If a nuclear deal is still in place, if the regime is stronger than it was before. And if Iran ends up with more control over the Strait of Hormuz, is it accurate or fair to say that Iran will have won this war?
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It will have not lost against the world's most powerful military and its ally in the region, Israel, which is supposed to have qualitative edge and what many believe has its own nuclear weapon. So it has shown its teeth. It is no longer a regional threat. It is seen as a real formidable force in the region. It showed that it can hit US Bases, it can kill American soldiers, it can hit civilian infrastructure as well as energy infrastructure across multiple countries. And it can do so relatively cheap with, with drones, thousands of drones. It can do so with its missiles and it has nothing to do with its nuclear enrichment. They haven't even gotten that deterrence yet.
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What do you think, Tom? Yeah, I think, listen, if the regime is still in place, they're emboldened, they know they can close the Strait of Hormuz, they'll likely get billions of dollars back. Right? So, yeah, I would say they come out on top with this whole thing.
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All right, with that, we will end as we always do with OSINT open source intelligence, the not so secret but telling details. We have stumbled in our reporting. I'm the guest here, so Tom, I'm going to ask you to kick us off.
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Okay. There's an exercise going on today at Fort Carson, Colorado, and it involves the army and all sorts of defense contractors, large and small. And it is called a hackathon. They're going to hack into all the Army's systems, sensors, weapon systems and so forth. And basically what they're. The name is the best, it's Operation Jailbreak, which I just love. And basically what they're going to do is hack into these systems. You go through the firewalls. And the goal is basically to make sure all these systems operate in a single network. So you want to have your weapon systems, your sensors all talking to one another, but they can't do that now. But what's really interesting is this comes from something that the Ukrainians have already done, their system. The Army Secretary Dan Driscoll was telling the Hill, Capitol Hill a while back that the Ukrainians integrate every single drone, every sensor, every shooting platform into just one single network. So here we are, still learning from the Ukrainians. We learn a lot about them from drones, how to use them tactically, how to, how to build them, how to change the software. We're learning from the Ukrainians once again with this Operation Jailbreak.
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A
Interesting. Eya, what about you?
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B
Well, this week, actually today is Eid. I'm speaking to you from Eid. It's a Muslim holiday and it comes after the end of the Hajj pilgrimage which was taking place this week in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. And it was a very different Hajj this year because of this specter of this Iran war. For starters, there were pilgrims that had to pay more money to travel because of extra costs because of the Iran war. Extra travel costs. You know, these are people who saved like years, I'm talking decades, a lifetime for the chance to perform the Hajj. So costs did go up. Countries like Indonesia did help subsidize some of that extra cost. Other countries like Pakistan say they didn't for their pilgrims. There were also only 30,000 Iranian pilgrims this year at the Hajj. So there were. But last year there were 90,000. So a the number. So Saudi Arabia didn't give as many permits this year to Iran for them to perform the Hajj. Another thing that was interesting was that the Saudi Crown Prince reportedly spoke to Trump before the Hajj and told him, hold off on any strikes because the Hajj is going on. We need to preserve the sanctity of the Hajj, the safety of these pilgrims. A lot of them, more than 1.6 million of them, are actually coming from outside Saudi Arabia. So they all need to travel back around the same time and get on planes. And then the last thing that was really interesting is the Saudi Defense Ministry actually put out a video showing security preparations for the Hajj. And rather than showing the usual kind of screens that they show of crowd control and that kind of thing, they actually showed all these anti missile batteries and anti missile kind of technology around the Hajj this year. Yeah. So pointing towards the sky. Yeah. Showing that the Hajj this year was going to be safe. Because a lot of people around the world, Muslims are saying, you know, they can't believe that some people went to perform the Hajj in the midst of all this. But for other people, this is really a chance of a lifetime. But luckily it was a very safe Hajj. It finished with, with no complications this year.
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A
So I will, I will go last, I will stick to the religious theme. I will say that I think one of the most interesting things happening in national security space right now is the way that artificial intelligence is playing more and more of a prom in warfare. We've seen this with the Iran war, we've seen this with the ongoing Ukraine, Russia war. Pope Leo has a lot of moral concerns about artificial intelligence and this week released the first encyclical of his papacy. This is like a big formal church teaching and it's all about morality and ethics and AI. And as somebody who has done a lot of reporting on Pope Leo over the past year and somebody who loves the Lord of the Rings, I lost my mind when I saw that in the encyclical, which is official church teaching, Pope Leo quotes Gandalf from Lord of the Rings. He has a long quote from Gandalf just kind of about what the current generation owes the next generation. I could not believe this was a real thing. I fact checked it. It was really in there. And that means that Gandalf the White is now an official part of Catholic social teaching.
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B
Timeless words.
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It's a good quote. All right. I have been speaking with NPR International Correspondent E.A. batrawi and NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. Thanks to both of you.
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C
You're welcome.
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B
Thanks, Scott.
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A
And before we go, all of this month we have been saying thank you to listeners who have taken the time to rate and review sources and methods wherever you listen. These ratings are really important to a growing podcast like this one. Today we are going to shout out the listener who left this review on Apple. It reads, I listen to so many news podcasts daily same. But Sources and Methods is nearly always far and away the most insightful on looking at global news on a deeper level. This is my go to. We appreciate that. And again, thank you to those of you who are posting these ratings and reviews this month. That is it for today's episode. Thank you for listening. I'm Scott Detrow in for Mayor Louise Kelly. We will be back in your feeds next week with another episode of Sources and Methods from npr.
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- [33:15]
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This message comes from the CBS Evening News podcast hosted by Tony decouple, delivering breakthrough national and world news along with original reporting and insights. Stay informed when it works for you. Listen to the CBS Evening News podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
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