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The Ezra Klein Show
A New Middle East?
00:48:47
For decades, Israel has wanted American support to bomb Iranian nuclear sites. But U.S. presidents, both Republican and Democrat, have resisted — until President Trump. So, what changed? And what are the likely consequences of that decision? Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a longtime diplomat in the region. He joins me to discuss recent events and how the latest attacks on Iran have changed the balance of power in the Middle East. This episode contains strong language. Book Recommendations: Master of the Game by Martin Indyk The Man Who Ran Washington by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser Tomorrow Is Yesterday by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book...
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- [00:00]
Ezra Klein
This episode is supported by Wealthfront. Markets can be unpredictable, but your cash doesn't have to be with Wealthfront's cash account. Earn 4% annual percentage yield on your cash from program banks with free instant withdrawals to eligible accounts. Get a $50 bonus when you open your first cash account and deposit $500@wealthfront.com Ezra bonus terms and conditions apply. Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage, LLC member Finras IPC not a bank. APY and deposits as of December 27, 2024 is representative, subject to change and requires no minimum. Funds are swept to program banks where they earn the variable AP.
- [01:06]
Aaron David Miller
For decades, Israel has wanted the support of the US in bombing the Iranian nuclear program, and for decades every single US President has said no.
- [01:17]
Unnamed Expert
I have always said that all options are on the table, but the first option for the United States is to solve this problem diplomatically. As I said before, military action would be far less effective than this deal.
- [01:28]
Aaron David Miller
In preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Biden told Netanyahu the US Would not participate in any possible counterattack on Iran. And then last week, one President Donald Trump said yes.
- [01:41]
Unnamed Expert
Breaking news and after days of uncertainty, the United States have completed three strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.
- [01:49]
Ezra Klein
It's mission accomplished for Prime Minister Benjamin.
- [01:52]
Aaron David Miller
Netanyahu, who thanked President Trump today. Your bold decision to target Iran's nuclear facilities with the awesome and righteous might of the United States will change history. Iran's response came in the form of.
- [02:08]
Unnamed Expert
A missile strike targeting Al Udid Air.
- [02:10]
Aaron David Miller
Base in Qatar, the largest US Military base in the Middle East. Experts call this attack mostly symbolic. Qatar did get a heads up hours.
- [02:19]
Unnamed Expert
In advance seconds ago, the President went to Truth Social and typed this it has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a complete and total ceasefire.
- [02:32]
Aaron David Miller
The mutual ceasefire between Israel and Iran is now officially in effect, but it.
- [02:36]
Ezra Klein
Appears the terms might have already been violated this morning.
- [02:40]
Unnamed Expert
We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're doing. Do you understand that?
- [02:49]
Aaron David Miller
How much damage has been done? This is a real question. It's also a political question.
- [02:55]
Ezra Klein
The Defense Intelligence Agency has assessed that.
- [02:58]
Aaron David Miller
The core components of Iran's nuclear program are largely intact and that Iran's nuclear.
- [03:03]
Ezra Klein
Program has essentially only been set back by months.
- [03:07]
Aaron David Miller
So why did Donald Trump say yes and what are the long term consequences of that decision? Going to be my guest today is Aaron David Miller, who worked on negotiations and policy in the Middle east across four successive presidencies from 1985 to 2003. He's since written a number of excellent books on the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians and American leadership. And he's a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And he joins me to talk through what all this has meant for a region that is in profound flux.
- [03:45]
Unnamed Expert
Foreign.
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Aaron David Miller
David Miller, welcome back to the show.
- [03:52]
Unnamed Expert
Great to be here with you, Ezra.
- [03:53]
Aaron David Miller
So we're speaking here on the morning of Tuesday, June 24th. Let's start with where your head is at. What are you confident the bombings achieved? What are your big points of uncertainty right now? Give me your overview of the landscape.
- [04:10]
Unnamed Expert
Yeah, you know, first of all, I don't believe in game changers, inflection points, sea changes and transformation. Most of what happens in life is transactional, whether it's marriage, diplomacy, business, and it certainly applies to the Middle East. Big changes have been afoot since October 7th, and I would argue there's some headlines and trend lines that have never existed before. The first is Israel's escalation dominance, which I think is the most important thing that has happened. And everything that we're now talking about, Ezra, flows from the notion that for the first time in its history, Israel controls the pace, the focus, the intensity of military conflict with its three key adversaries, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. The Houthis provide somewhat of an exception because of the distance problem. But the reality is the Israelis can escalate in ways that these three adversaries cannot, and the Israelis can deter that escalation, which I think is what we witnessed during the course of the last 12 days. So right now, I think you see a situation where a situational and transactional President Donald Trump, who has no real effective strategy, no grand design with respect to what, to me is this broken, angry and dysfunctional region where by and large, American ideas on war making and peacemaking have gone to die. But he has managed, as a consequence of Israel's escalation dominance, which he was wary about and has been for the last six months, to ride the tiger of Israel's owning the skies. As one Israeli retired general put it, we're playing soccer with the Iraq Iranians, but the only difference is they don't have a goalie. He's managed to ride the tiger of Israeli escalation dominance in Lebanon against Hezbollah and now in Iran. And I think he now fashions himself and sees a moment, a moment that arguably is historic. And he has expectations which probably go well beyond his capacity to formulate an effective strategy in this region to turn that escal dominance into what? Transactional arrangements, understandings, political combinations, even peace treaties. So I think we're on the cusp of something that has enormous potential. The real question is whether or not we have the leaders in Israel, among the Palestinians, in Iran and in Washington that know how to use that moment. Unless there is leadership designed to implement something more coherent and cohesive and enduring, you and I probably are going to be having the same conversation next year at this time.
- [06:52]
Aaron David Miller
What does Israel want and what does Iran want?
- [06:55]
Unnamed Expert
The Israeli calculation is a complicated one. Benjamin Netanyahu, I think high on the notion of what the Israeli military has achieved in Gaza at tremendous cost, to be sure, among Palestinian civilians in Lebanon and in Iran, now sees a moment to emerge and to essentially realize one of his two major foreign policy goals, and that is to free the people of Israel, the state of Israel, from the shadow of an Iranian bomb. Aspirationally, I think he wants to see a different regime in Tehran, but he'd probably settle making a virtue out of necessity of whatever damage the Israelis and Americans have managed to do to Iran's nuclear program. Let's be clear. The only person I trust on this right now is Rafael Grossi, who's head of the iaea, and even he is.
- [07:49]
Aaron David Miller
Can you say what that is?
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Unnamed Expert
Yeah, the International Atomic Energy Agency. Even Grossi is unsure about the degree of damage and destruction that the Israeli and American effort has done to the program. And if Grossi is unsure, and again, I trust him more than the President's assessment, who said, I think yesterday again, that we have, quote, totally obliterated Iran's nuclear program. I think that's wrong. I think Iran right now is a nuclear weapons threshold state. That is to say, it has all of the elements that are required to assemble a nuclear weapon. And again, the kind of nuclear weapon that we dropped on Hiroshima, Nagasaki, not a sophisticated weapon that could be a miniaturized warhead, a physics package that could actually be on top of a missile, but dropped from a plane, whether it's six months, eight months, a year, two years, I think Iran has the capacity. The question that everyone asks is the Iranians have chosen so far to remain my image here, one screwdriver's turn away from producing such a weapon, and they're still not there. So Netanyahu would like a different regime. I think he understands that's very difficult. Had this continued, maybe he could have gotten regime destabilization dysfunction, not going to get regime change, it seems to me. So Netanyahu won't give up on the regime Change. And let's be clear. The longest governing prime minister in the history of the state of Israel on trial for bribery, fraud and trust in a Jerusalem district court five years running, the most ruthless, politically savvy politician in Israel today sits astride Israeli politics and the U. S. Israeli relationship for now like some sort of colossus. And it is extraordinary to me, given the disasters of October 7, that there has been absolutely no accountability for this intelligence failure. No accountability for the fact that the prime minister, in my judgment, I'm an American here, I don't play an Israeli. Despite some of my critics on TV or in the media, this prime minister has managed to prioritize not ending the war of Gaza in large part because of his politics and the right wing coalition over whom he presides. He's prided, I think, and prioritize avenging the dead rather than redeeming the living. And the fate of those people gets sadder and more tragic and more fraught every single day that they remain in Gaza. So Netanyahu I think comes out of this for now extraordinarily powerful. An 86 year old Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader made a judgment to respond in a way that's calibrated not to validate Iran's honor. It's too late for that. The Israelis have revealed its sheer vulnerabilities and weaknesses, but to preserve the regime. My friend Karim Sajapur from Carnegie, my colleague, argues that even the most extreme revolutionaries the day after the revolution become conservative because preserving and conserving the revolution, and that is Ali Khamenei's objective, becomes, if you're a Star Trek fan, the Prime Directive.
- [11:09]
Aaron David Miller
To what degree are we looking now at a new Middle East? You talked about Israel's an almost hegemonic military force. You have Iran, which has seen its proxies functionally devastated, particularly Hezbollah, but also its own power revealed as much weaker than people thought, say five years ago. And, and you have the Gulf states, which are in a very different place than they were 10, 15 years ago. You think about where the Gulf states were in 2000, they are richer. Their relationships with Israel and America are much, much stronger. They've modernized in many ways. It would have been unthinkable back then. When you think about the geopolitics of the Middle east that you worked on for much of your career and you look at how it looks now, what makes it different and what possibilities and dangers are opened up by that, I.
- [12:00]
Unnamed Expert
Mean the one continuity between the period mid-80s to 2003 when I left government, at least in terms of how you could produce a new Middle East, I don't believe in it because in so many respects this is a broken, angry and dysfunctional part of the world. You have five Arab states, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon in various phases of state dysfunction. You have extractive leaders and authoritarians just about everywhere. Hopes of the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt have been essentially overturned. The authoritarians reign just about everywhere. You've got gender inequality, you've got the key major terrorist groups still emanate in the CIA's rankings from this region. I would have argued and still do, even though Iran has been hollowed out the following, that in the old days, Iraq, Syria and Egypt were the three prominent Arab states that vied for influence and power. Right now, in my judgment, Iraq and Syria are basically offline. They cannot project their power. Although there may be some hope in Syria for a better ending to what happens when an authoritarian is thrown out of office. I'm keeping my expectations pretty low there. And Egypt, which is burdened with many, many problems and no longer, despite its geographic centrality and the peace treat with Egypt, no longer is the central actor in US foreign policy. When I travel with half a dozen Secretaries of State, George Shultz, through Colin Powell, the first stop we always made was Cairo. Not the case anymore. It's the Gulf. So this fracture, this dysfunction in the Arab world has led to two important changes. The one you referred to is the Gulf. It's stable authoritarians who can make decisions. It's rich, it's got hydrocarbons. The Emirates and the Saudis are vying to become the new entrepose of the financial world. That's one power standard that has emerged. But these are also very weak states with respect to geographic proximity to the Iranians. The other argument I would make is the rise of the three non Arabs and Turkey, a member of NATO, Israel, America's closest ally, and Iran on their back foot, to be sure, to say the least. But the three non Arabs are still keepers. They're not going anywhere. The only three states in this region that can project their power abroad. They all have tremendous economic potential. They all have competent militaries and intelligence security organizations. And they have and can have tremendous influence for good and for ill. So those are the changes that I think are afoot. But again, converting what we've seen since October 7th and in the wake of the last 12 days into something that normal humans would regard as functional agreements. The end of conflict, governing empty spaces when things change. If you want to talk about the new Middle east in any serious way, you really need to talk about leadership. Leaders who are masters of their political houses, not prisoners of their ideologies or their politics. Leaders who are prepared to risk, but leaders who care about the security and prosperity of their publics rather than prioritizing keeping their seats. And the reality is, when I look around in this region, I don't see that kind of leadership. Which is why converting escalation dominance into lasting political arrangements, let alone peace treaties, cannot be done without leaders. In Israel, we do not have one among the Palestinians that is so fraught. The Palestinians are faced with an unpalatable choice between MAP and Abbas on one hand and Hamas on the other. And they won't. They won't get to choose because the notion of elections or a coherent Palestinian governing authority right now is a thought experiment. There's a degree of dysfunction here which isn't going away, regardless of what happens in the Lebanese, Israeli, Syrian, Iranian triangle.
- [16:52]
Ezra Klein
This episode is supported by Wealthfront Markets can be unpredictable, but your cash doesn't have to be with Wealthfront's cash account. Earn 4% annual percentage yield on your cash from program banks with free instant withdrawals to eligible accounts. Get a $50 bonus when you open your first cash Account and deposit $500 at wealthfront.com Ezra Bonus terms and conditions apply. Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage, LLC, Member FINRA SIPC, not a bank APY and deposits as of December 27, 2024 is representative, subject to change, and requires no minimum. Funds are swept to program banks where they earn the variable apy.
- [17:28]
Aaron David Miller
Your colleague Stephen Wertheim made an argument I thought was interesting. He wrote that Israel acted less to preempt an Iranian bomb than to preempt American diplomacy. A new nuclear deal would have lifted sanctions on Iran's battered economy, helped it to recover and grow. A deal would have stabilized Iran's position in the Middle east and potentially strengthened it over time, precisely by succeeding in preventing Iran from going nuclear. A deal would have advanced Iran's integration into the region. In this telling, Netanyahu's real aim here is keeping Iran isolated and weak. Do you buy that?
- [18:05]
Unnamed Expert
I buy the final comment, and I like and admire Stephen. I don't buy the argument because I've been around negotiations for a very long time. I understand what is required. Mostly we failed the negotiations that I was a part of, with the exception of four extraordinary years under Bush 41 and James Baker. The last time, I might add. We were admired, feared, and Respected as a great power. And I've not been involved during the Obama and Biden administrations in Iranian U.S. negotiations. But the reality is you want to make a negotiation work. You need four things. You need two parties who are willing or able. You need a sense of urgency. You need a mediator who's prepared at the right times to apply ample amounts of vinegar and ample amounts of honey. And you need a negotiation and an end game of the negotiation based on a balance of interest. The last five rounds of Trump administration negotiations, mediated primarily by Stephen Witkoff, the envoy for everything, in my judgment, given what was on the table, never had a chance of succeeding. The ultimate bridge between Iran's demand, obsession, determination against every conceivable force, and odds to maintain its right to enrich, and actually to enrich, fundamentally came in conflict with the Trump administration's notion that no, Iran will have zero enrichment capacity and forget the right, the capacity, the actual reality of enriching on Iranian soil. They never figured out how to bridge that gap. And you can't do this in six rounds of negotiations separated by a week and a half. You needed more time, a more serious effort, and a willingness on each side to be more flexible. And since there is no trust, no confidence, the Iranians view of negotiating with Americans was traumatized by the withdrawal. So you had a lot of odds stacked against you. And yes, there's no question that that negotiation impasse afforded both Netanyahu and the President Trump an opportunity to essentially deal with the problem in a different way. But I do not subscribe to the narrative that a clever, crafty Israeli prime minister willfully sandbagged a naive president into abandoning negotiations which were somehow on the cusp of a major breakthrough. Trump played an active role in the fiction and the ruse that the Israelis required to implement the first phase of their military campaign, which was the decapitation strategy. Trump's insistence, right up until the night of June 12th, 13th, when the Israeli strikes began, was that there would be a sixth round in Oman. And I think the Iranians were lulled into believing that there would be no Israeli strike until after those negotiations concluded and the President made a judgment that they had succeeded or failed. So no, Trump rode Netanyahu's tiger once he saw precisely how much damage, how much skill, how much operational capacity the Israelis had fried. Zakaria had described it as fomo, that that's what essentially motivated Trump. Fear of missing out. He wanted some of that, I do believe.
- [21:58]
Aaron David Miller
I think you're saying two things that feel like they're intention to me, one is that Trump was an active strategic participant creating a ruse to allow Israel to execute an attack. Right. It was not long ago that we saw Trump with Netanyahu saying, you have to wait, I'm negotiating. I do not want you bombing Iran. Right. That happened in public. It looked like a public rebuke of Netanyahu. So one version, which you sometimes heard from the Trump White House, I feel like I'm hearing it from you right now, is this was all a ruse and Trump was strategically operating alongside Netanyahu to lull the Iranians into a false sense of complacency. The other interpretation is that Israel acted without the US's full blessing, certainly without our full cooperation, began the bombing, and then Trump, in some reports, watching Fox News, seeing how much the Israelis were succeeding in the objective, decided to jump in and beat part of it. Those are two, I think, quite different interpretations of what Trump is doing. Either which do you subscribe to or how do you synthesize them?
- [23:01]
Unnamed Expert
Well, timing is a critically important piece here. For the last two months, Trump did warn Netanyahu off, I think, the Monday before the Thursday that the Israelis struck. I think he was quite uncertain about whether or not this was a good idea. But let's be clear. Donald Trump in the last two months has done things to Israel and without Israel's coordination and consent that no other American president that I ever worked for, Republican or Democrat, has done, he has essentially undermined two of the three political laws of gravity that have governed the U. S. Israeli relationship. Number one is the no daylight policy. We must coordinate everything with Israel. Donald Trump sanctioned his own hostage negotiator in March to open up direct negotiations, three rounds with Hamas, the external leadership, over and above Israeli objections or without Israeli even acquiescence, he cut a deal with the Houthis without Israel's knowledge, which essentially implied that as long as the Houthis restrained from attacking US naval assets and US flagged or owned commercial shipping, they could basically continue their campaign to launch drones and ballistic missiles at Israel. And he announced in the presence of an Israeli prime minister, probably over his objections, that he was initiating in April a negotiation. And then finally over Netanyahu's objections, he lifted, quite to the Israeli surprises and most of the surprise of Washington, sanctions, lifted sanctions on the regime of Ahmad Shara in Syria. So that no daylight policy, he blew through the second law of gravity, which was attention to domestic political constraints. If a Democratic president had done any of the things I've just identified, let alone all of them, there would probably be a move on the part of Republicans to impeach him. So Donald Trump, in my judgment, had their personality, had the will to say, at least to the Israeli Prime Minister, look, I understand what you want to do. You've got a compelling case, but you need to give me more time. You need to give me another two months. But Trump basically handicapped his own argument by setting this completely unrealistic deadline of two months.
- [25:39]
Aaron David Miller
This was two months to negotiate with Iran.
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Unnamed Expert
Exactly. And the truth is, we saw it play out in the last 12 hours. He compelled the Israelis to tone down their response to ballistic missiles in Beersheba that caused the deaths of 3, 4, 5 Israelis. But in large part, what I'm saying to you, I think, is that Donald Trump is transactionally situational, and he doesn't have a strategy. There's no core. Biden could not bring himself for over a year to impose a single cost or consequence on Israel that normal humans would regard as serious or sustained pressure. He could have restricted or conditioned US Military assistance to Israel. He didn't do that. He could have introduced a UN Security Council resolution or voted for someone else's. He didn't do that. He could have unilaterally recognized Palestinian state. He didn't do that. He could have marshaled a rhetorical campaign day in and day out, basically questioning the fact that Israel is not a reliable. He didn't do that. Biden had a core. I'm just reporting here, so don't shoot me. Biden had a core. And the core was a deep and abiding emotional and political commitment to the security of Israel, the people of Israel, the idea of Israel. That was Joe Biden in the Senate for decades. That was Joe Biden's father telling him that silence in the face of evil, the holocaust, is complicity. That's Joe Biden who was a part of Israel's story and felt himself to be a part of it. That's not Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a transactor. And if you get in the middle between him and something he really wants, this is a president who in six months has sidelined Israel, has pressured Israel, and has supported Israel.
- [27:41]
Aaron David Miller
Let me interrupt this for one second, because I think the thing, if you've been watching this, you will think hearing this is, yes, there are things Donald Trump wanted for America. He wanted to negotiate the return of a hostage. He wanted our shipping to not be endangered by the Houthis. But Donald Trump has put no serious curbs on what Israel is doing in Gaza or the west bank to Be very clear. And he just gave Israel the thing that all these other presidents, including Joe Biden, for all of his deep seated Zionism, did not give Israel, which is American participation using our most powerful depth penetrating munitions in a bombing campaign to destroy as much of Iran's nuclear program as we could. So for all the, Trump does not follow protocol in the way other presidents do. He is much freer with his language than other presidents have been. But if you ask who gave Israel what they really wanted, the thing Netanyahu could not get from George W. Bush, from Barack Obama, from Donald Trump, number one, from Joe Biden, it was this.
- [28:50]
Unnamed Expert
That's my point, though. He removed sanctions on settlers, he restored the shipment of 2,000 pound bombs, he basically has given Israel a free hand in the West Bank. No, no, I'm not here to argue that Donald Trump is the new Eisenhower. That basically he's the only American president ever to threaten serious and sustained pressure against the state of Israel as Eisenhower did in the wake of Suez, the only one. No American president has gone beyond what Eisenhower was prepared to do. My sense was Donald Trump has no core, which is why he is the ultimate transactor. That he could do both and not blink an eye. That he could basically call up an Israeli prime minister and say, don't overreact, I don't want you, I don't know what the Israelis were prepared to do, but I guarantee you it would have been as devastating a strike in response to the deaths of five Israelis, which were the fifth of all the Israelis who were killed over the course of the last 12 days by Iranian ballistic missiles. It is the absence of a core. It is Trump's response to situations. It's the absence of an effective strategy. And I would have bet you that had the Israelis not struck 6-12-13th, he would have tried to find a deal with the Iranians that would have parked the nuclear issue, parked it a transactional deal, not a transformational one, parked the Iranian issue until the end of his hopefully final term in office. So I understand exactly what you're saying, and I'm not here to whitewash Donald Trump as someone who is a standup guy when it comes to Israel. That's exactly the opposite point I'm making.
- [30:46]
Aaron David Miller
Well, the thing I'm trying to get at here is because I'm also. I don't think you're trying to whitewash Donald Trump. That's not my view is that there is a question of whether or not Donald Trump is trying to achieve something here.
- [31:01]
Unnamed Expert
Right.
- [31:01]
Aaron David Miller
He's Been working with Netanyahu hand in glove, and maybe it said he wanted to set back the Iranian nuclear program. Right. You could see Donald Trump as acting here with a goal, and you could see Donald Trump here as making decisions day by day by day by day without really a theory of how they're all going to work out. And I think what is worth thinking about, or the thing I have been trying to think about is Trump just gave Israel something that every other recent president, including Donald Trump, thought was too risky to give them. And is that because bombing Iran, given Iran's current state, is no longer that large of a risk because they cannot project power as they once could because Israel's decapitated so many of their proxies? Is that because Donald Trump has a higher risk tolerance or wants something different or wants something more than the other presidents did or than he did during his first term? We have just seen a. A massive change in US Policy towards Iran.
- [31:59]
Unnamed Expert
Yeah, we went to war with Iran. Yes.
- [32:01]
Aaron David Miller
So what is that change in service of and how do we know if it will have worked?
- [32:05]
Unnamed Expert
Well, that's a separate analytical question. The first one is theoretical. I mean, I think Trump saw an opportunity and he took it.
- [32:13]
Aaron David Miller
Was Trump right to take the opportunity?
- [32:16]
Unnamed Expert
Well, that's another question as to whether or not what we have done, ultimately we're down to an advancement of American national interest or retardation of those interests.
- [32:27]
Aaron David Miller
What is our interest, our vital interests?
- [32:31]
Unnamed Expert
That is vital regarding a situation where American presidents would risk putting Americans harmed in harm's way. We have three interests in the Middle East. Number one, counterterrorism. Number two, maintaining access to hydrocarbons. And number three, ensuring that there is no regional hegemon with a nuclear weapon happen. That's not to say we don't have other interests. I worked on one of those interests for my entire career, but it was never deemed to be a vital national interest. Which is one of the reasons, I think, that in so many administrations there was never a serious effort to look at the Israeli, Palestinian, Arab, Israeli issue as a national interest. Particularly at the end of the Cold War, it was viewed as a discretionary problem. Would be nice to have.
- [33:42]
Ezra Klein
This episode is supported by Wealthfront. Markets can be unpredictable, but your cash doesn't have to be with Wealthfront's cash account. Earn 4% annual percentage yield on your cash from program banks with free instant withdrawals to eligible accounts. Get a $50 bonus when you open your first cash account and deposit $500@wealthfront.com Ezra bonus terms and conditions Apply cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC. Member Finras IPC not a bank APY and deposits as of 12-27-2024 is representative, subject to change and requires no minimum funds are swept to program banks where they earn the variable apy.
- [34:19]
Aaron David Miller
You say one of our vital interests is preventing the emergence of a regional hegemon, probably in this case Iran with a nuclear weapon first. Why is that our vital interest? I mean it seems obvious, but I think it's worth spelling it out because as much as Trump did diverge from other presidents here, not allowing Iran to develop a nuclear weapon has been a very, very consistent view of every recent American president. And second, when you say there can be no regional hegemon with a nuclear weapon militarily, isn't Israel a regional hegemon with nuclear weapons?
- [34:52]
Unnamed Expert
Yeah, I mean I use the term escalation, dominance. I probably shouldn't have used the term regional hegemon. Israel is not a regional hegemon the way the former Soviet Union was in Eastern Europe.
- [35:01]
Aaron David Miller
But Iran wasn't going to get there either with a weapon.
- [35:04]
Unnamed Expert
Right, but Iran would emerge. My definition is Iran emerg in a competitive and antagonistic way as a threat, as a threat to Saudi Arabia, as a threat to Israel spreading its ideology in five.
- [35:18]
Aaron David Miller
So an expansionary power with a nuclear weapon.
- [35:21]
Unnamed Expert
Yeah, that'd be a better way to frame it. An expansionary power with a nuclear weapon. Right, because that threatens our core interests. I mean Iran clearly has an ideology which seeks the influence of and convert the so called Shia access. Baghdad, Beirut, Sana' a with the Houthis, Damascus. That seems a stretch these days in large part given Russian retrenchment, given Ahmed Shara's rise. You're now talking basically about a Sunni regime in Syria. I don't see. And you now have the hollowing out of Iran's ability to project its power abroad. So I don't think that is as critical in interest. But Iran's pursuit of the weapon and Iran, 90 million people. Iran's a keeper. It's been a keeper for centuries. It's a real country. Is Israel an expansionary power with a nuclear weapon? Israel has a new definition of border security which I find to be very intriguing and it goes beyond their security doctrine that they have. They will preempt or prevent. But if you look at what the Israelis have done in Gaza, they are there for an indefinite period of time in the west bank they are now more entrenched than they've ever been since the second Intifada In Lebanon, they still have not withdrawn from the five strategic points obligated to withdraw, and the Trump administration has acquiesced in that. And in Syria, they've declared much of the area southwest of Damascus as an Ogoza. It's a fascinating sort of anticipatory hedge against October 7, and partly also because it does advance Israel's operational and offensive capacities. So an ongoing Israeli Iranian conflict is basically going to endure even if the Iranians don't make a major effort to try to reconstitute the program or worse. Right. Push for an actual weapon.
- [37:31]
Aaron David Miller
And as somebody with long experience in the region who has thought deeply about these questions, do you think it served America's national interest to drop bunker buster bombs in Iran?
- [37:44]
Unnamed Expert
Given the fact that we don't know what the damage was, given the fact that we don't know what the end state is, it's a highly arguable proposition. At the same time, it reminds me of the guy who jumps off the 10 story building and as he's passing the fifth floor somebody yells out, how you doing? And he responds, so far, so good. I think it was a judgment call and it was not, in my judgment, a slam dunk judgment call. I guess if I were running the railroad, I would have asked for two more months to determine whether or not Iran was serious about this negotiation. I would have probably varied what I would put on the table in an effort to get the Iranians to agree. It wouldn't have been anything like the jcpoa, which was the Obama era nuclear.
- [38:44]
Aaron David Miller
Deal with Iran that Trump ripped up.
- [38:47]
Unnamed Expert
And then at the end of that two month period, if the Iranians were not interested, I think I would have agreed with the decision.
- [38:57]
Aaron David Miller
So there's an argument, you've heard it made recently from a number of Democrats that look, Obama signed this deal with Iran, that a lot of other countries were counterparties in this deal in some way or another. We had inspectors there, there was a framework, there was a structure. Trump ripped it up, then was trying to make a new deal that sounded kind of like the JCPOA and then ended up bombing during the deal making process, which probably makes it very hard to imagine that you will ever convince Iran back to the table in the future. So first, do you buy the argument that the deal we had was sort of fine and the problem was just Trump ripping it up and causing a problem that he now needed to solve. And two, since you said if you were running negotiations you would create something very different, what would have been different about it?
- [39:43]
Unnamed Expert
Well, first of all the JCPO was flawed but functional. It restrained, it constrained. It created a degree of intrusive inspections that I think frankly were working. That doesn't mean that the Iranians weren't cheating. Of course they were cheating. Preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, in my judgment. Never had a good answer. This is not the best answer either. And it leads into the analytical question of how do you permanently ensure that Iran can never acquire a nuclear weapon? There's only one way to do it and it's tethered to a galaxy far, far away rather than the realities back here on planet Earth. And that is to fundamentally change the regime and create one. Or the Iranian public will create one that is not interested in acquiring a nuclear weapon. I might add the Shah was well on his way and wanted one as well. Iran has a profound sense of entitlement and insecurity that is a very bad combination in any nation. Profound entitlement and profound insecurity. And I think that the Iranian program is not dead. It hasn't been totally obliterated. The 800 pounds of highly enriched uranium fissile material went missing. Where is it? How many centrifuges advanced centrifuges survived Iranis, I think over time, even though it'll be very difficult given Israel's command of airspace. But if they don't deal with the IAEA any longer or they withdraw from the npt, the non Proliferation Treaty, you can see that this operation, which is now being touted as an unqualified success, I certainly wouldn't call it that, is going to be looked at quite differently. Which is why in the end, in my journey we talk about the new Middle east, we come back to the same two unanswered questions. How do you translate this escalation dominance into something more enduring that reflects a better balance of interests? And number two, do you have the leaders to convert that? And it seems to me Benjamin Netanyahu is not interested. He's already demolished Israel's enemies, now he seeks to become the peacemaker. I don't see it because it assaults at least one of the core principles, which is there is not going to be a Palestinian state and there will be no division of East Jerusalem and there will be no major Israeli concessions with territorial concessions on the West Bank. I don't see it among the Palestinians. The Ayatollah Ali Khamenei 86 every Iranian expert I talk to tells me that if there is regime change, it's likely to be particularly in this environment, it's going to be an IRGC heavily military securitized regime and figure that the only borrowing a page out of Gaddafi's book, the one Gaddafi didn't read, but one Kim Jong Un did read, basically you need a nuclear weapon to guard against, hedge against regime change. I don't see the leadership.
- [43:02]
Aaron David Miller
I want to say from my perspective, I just claim no knowledge of how any of this will turn out. I've actually felt, even in preparing for this conversation, it's hard to find anything that feels like strong commentary to me because everybody's just speculating.
- [43:16]
Unnamed Expert
Ezra, you're, I mean, Ezra Clyde, you're a very wise man.
- [43:19]
Aaron David Miller
Thank you.
- [43:20]
Unnamed Expert
And one of the lessons I've learned after decades of failure in negotiations, you really need to respect, not admire, not countenance, but respect the degree of difficulty that the issues and the leaders in this part of the world pose. It is more often than not a place where American ideas on war making and peacemaking go to die. No one that I know, and I'll put myself at the top of the list is prepared to make predictions. Hard and fast predictions. The Israelis now believe that what's happened to Iran is going to open the door to a dramatic expansion of the Abraham Accords. I don't know what Middle east they're.
- [44:06]
Aaron David Miller
Looking at one version of what just happened. There's a sort of precedent in Israel bombing the Iraqi nuclear program back in the 80s is this sets things back quite a bit and it just kind of defers it and people are able to keep it contained and keep it in a box. There is a tension there. I mean, you've spoken to the Israelis about the Iranians much more than I have, but I've spoken to them enough about the Iranians that the completely universal opinion within the Israeli security class is that America does not understand Iran. Iran is a patient strategic power with an imperialistic past and deeply ideological hegemonic ambitions. And they will wait and they will strategize and they will act on a longer timeframe than America ever acts upon. It seems to me that if you believe that, then a bombing campaign that, you know, depending on who you. I believe set Iran back six months, two years, but at the same time made it almost impossible for the Iranians to ever trust diplomacy with us again. You sort of knocked out the idea of a deal and so what you're left with either regime change or the expectation that the thing Iran is not going to do is wait one screwdriver turn away that when the new hardliners come in or when there's quiet, or America is distracted by something else, they're going to sprint to a bomb, and that what they'll do is what Pakistan did, what North Korea did, which is emerge one day and say, we've got one now. And so now you can't attack us. Now, maybe that doesn't happen, but that seems very plausible from where we sit. Because making diplomacy into a ruse seems like it has at least one very obvious problem, which is if you ever need diplomacy in the future, how do you persuade your counterparty it's not again, a ruse?
- [46:06]
Unnamed Expert
Well, ever is a very long time. Sure, declaring the end of anything is a hard proposition, because the truth is, neither you nor I can see what's in front of us. I was in Israel on October 6, 1973, right until now, the greatest intelligence failure in the history of the state of Israel. And within six years I watched Sadat begin and Carter sign a full treaty of peace on the White House law enforcement. And in that case, trauma for the Israelis turned to hope. I sat on the White house law on September 13, 1993, watching Rabin Arfatin Clinton sign the Oslo Declaration of Principles. And yet everything on that day now lies somewhere broken, bloodied and battered. In that case, hope turn to trauma. So what do you conclude from this? Well, you conclude that we occupy a tiny space on the planet for a very short period of time. You can say you never say never. That is a very strong proposition of my worldview. I have two kids and four grandkids. I'm not going to mortgage their futures by saying the American Republic is doomed to failure or Israelis and Palestinians cannot find a way forward. I don't have the right, the morality right to do that. So in answer to your question, I've been around the Middle east to know it doesn't offer up very often transformative, happy or Hollywood endings to everything. So when people talk about a new Middle East, I shake my head. But I listen. I listen a lot more now. I have a lot more uncertainty and a lot more humility. But this is one complicated region. And we are like very often a modern day Gulliver, wandering around in a part of the world that we don't understand, tied up by tiny powers, some large, some small, whose interests are not our own. And more than that, Ezra, burdened in essence by our own illusion.
- [48:19]
Aaron David Miller
I think that is the place to end always. Our final question, what are three books you'd recommend to the audience?
- [48:24]
Unnamed Expert
I actually prepared for this. I have two books.
- [48:28]
Aaron David Miller
The rest are just winging.
- [48:30]
Unnamed Expert
I have two books on how to do successful Middle east diplomacy, since that's kind of what we're talking about. Martin Indig's Master of the Game, Henry Kissinger in the Art of Middle East Diplomacy, and Peter Baker and Sudan Glasser's masterful the man who Ran Washington A Life at Times of James Baker. Those are two books I would recommend about. There are real lessons there about how to do successful diplomacy. I have a third book, one that isn't out yet that argues that the US including many who worked on this process for a very long time, has gotten it profoundly and utterly wrong when it comes to peacemaking. It's called Tomorrow is Yesterday, Life, Death and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel, Palestine by Hussein Naga and full disclosure, my friend of many years, Robert Malley. Those are the three I would look at.
- [49:28]
Aaron David Miller
Aaron David Miller, thank you very much.
- [49:30]
Unnamed Expert
Those are your great phenomenal questions. Love the conversation.
- [49:53]
Aaron David Miller
This episode of the Historian show is produced by Annie Galvin, Fact Checking by Michelle Harris and Jack McCordick. Our senior engineer is Jeff Gelb, with additional mixing by Amin Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Marie Cassion, Roland Hu, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Jan Kobel and Chris Dinlin. Original music by Pat McCusker audience strategy by Christina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.
- [50:30]
Unnamed Sponsor
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