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A
Dan I'm Dan Kurtzphelin, and this is the Foreign affairs interview.
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B
Clearly, at this point in time, Iran has agreed to reopen the strait, but only on its own terms, which is fundamentally stunning. That is an outcome that the regime might have hoped for. But its ability to prevail and to continue to control the straits even after the end of the conflict would be a complete strategic rebalancing for the region and, frankly, for the United States.
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C
I'm Justin Vogt, executive editor of Foreign Affairs. Dan is away this week. On Tuesday night, as the world held its collective breath, US President Donald Trump announced a temporary ceasefire with Iran just hours after warning that, quote, a whole civilization will die, end quote, if the Iranian regime did not completely open the Strait of Hormuz. In exchange for a cessation of American and Israeli strikes, Iran has now agreed to allow oil and gas and other commodities to pass through the strait for two weeks and to stop its own attacks on its neighbors, giving both sides time to negotiate a more comprehensive peace deal. But many of the details of the ceasefire remain unclear, as do its chances of holding a war that began with Trump's call for regime change now seems destined to leave the Iranian regime in place, emboldened and more certain of its resilience than ever before. Suzanne Maloney is vice president of the Brookings Institution and director of its Foreign Policy Program. She has helped craft US Middle east policy, serving in positions in the White House and the State Department across multiple administrations. I spoke with her on the morning of Wednesday, April 8, to help make sense of the ceasefire and get a grasp of what might come next. Foreign. Welcome back to the Foreign affairs interview.
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B
Thanks so much for having me, Justin.
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C
In 1988, the historian Jeffrey Blaney published a book called the Causes of War, and it contains this great famous line that goes like this. Wars usually begin when two nations disagree about their relative strength, and wars usually cease when the fighting nations agree on their relative strength. What do you think the last six weeks of fighting have revealed about the relative strength of the two sides and maybe just as important about their abilities to estimate their own strength and that of their opponents?
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B
Well, I think that quote gets to the, you know, fundamental miscalculation on the part of the Trump administration about the durability and institutionalization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, I believe, and what we've seen from the reporting suggests that the president presumed that the regime could be easily decapitated and that with its decapitation, the system itself would collapse under the weight of mismanagement and corruption and the immense unhappiness of the Iranian people that was manifested back in January with the very large protests across Iran, that was fundamentally untrue. I think most of those of us who have watched Iran closely over the course of the recent decades would have been able to point that out to the president. And it does appear that, in fact, the intelligence assessments that were available to the administration in the run up to the war also suggested that a decapitation strike would not quickly supplant the regiment. But I think that that was fundamentally the presumption of weakness on the part of the administration about Iran that led us into what very quickly became not a quagmire per se, but a situation that was very difficult for Washington to extricate itself from. I think from the Iranian point of view, they have a very good assessment of the strengths of the United States, particularly the military and economic power of Washington, which has been wielded against them on multiple occasions as recently as June of 2025. And so they were preparing in advance for what they anticipated would be another round of strikes. And I think what they have calculated over the course of this conflict is that their own strength lies in their endurance and in their resilience. And that has been demonstrated in spades over the course of the conflict. Their ability to withstand the pummeling from two technologically and militarily superior adversaries over the course of many weeks, and still have the capacity to return fire, to retaliate with increasing precision over time, despite the immense degradation of their military capabilities. And that endurance is not just in the form of their military and their ability to continue to retaliate, but the endurance, particularly of their ability to maintain control of the Strait of Hormuz. That was a key asset for the Islamic Republic in this conflict. It really shifted the burden to the United States to try to find an off ramp, rather than enabling Washington to simply wait out the regime. And the time pressure really gave the Iranians a huge advantage. And I think it was what precipitated the truly unprecedented and frankly, quite horrific language that the President began to use with threats to essentially annihilate Iranian civilization and to attack Iranian civilian infrastructure. That was what I think forced some kind of an off ramp. We'll see how long it lasts in the aftermath.
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C
I mean, in a sense, Trump ramped up the pressure on himself more than on the Iranians through that language. I wonder, you know, thinking about this, the ceasefire that has now been announced, I should say that we're speaking on Wednesday morning this is about 14 hours or so after this announcement was made. There's still a lot of uncertainty about the terms of this ceasefire and the extent to which it applies, for example, to Lebanon. But going back to the idea of the Straits of Hormuz, it seems to me that that might have been one thing that was a bit of a surprise, even to the Iranians, was the extent that they would be successful in sort of using that as a deterrent. In other words, in the end, they didn't need a nuclear deterrent. They had this kind of conventional choke point deterrent the whole time.
- [06:46]
B
Yeah, I think that that was something that the Iranians had brandished on many, many occasions. Threats to close the Strait of Hormuz were almost cliche coming out of the Iranian Parliament and Iranian security and military officials, but they have never actually undertaken a mission to fully close the Strait over a sustained period of time in the past. And I think that some sense of uncertainty about how successful it might be and how easily the United States, its allies, their neighbors, might have been able to find alternative workarounds. It became very clear in the initial days after Iran began to threaten traffic in the Strait and the international shipping companies and insurance companies began to respond, there wasn't a quick workaround, that even where there was some capability of finding alternative mechanisms, alternative routes, this wasn't enough to salvage the tremendous impact on the global economy, not just from the diminished supplies of oil and liquid natural gas, but also all of the other commodities that flow through the strait, especially fertilizer and helium and some of the other key byproducts of the petroleum industry, for which there are no easy, quick replacements.
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C
One question I had throughout the past couple days, where there's this kind of whipsaw quality to what was going on, is what do we know about who is actually running Iran right now, and who the Trump administration was negotiating with, and who was authorizing whom on the Iranian side to kind of either accept or refuse the terms?
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B
I think these are key questions, and there's still a lot of opacity about who's in charge. But what we can take away from this episode is that Iran maintained some kind of command and control, even over the course of a conflict that really decimated its leadership structure, that there was clearly some mechanism for coordinating within the system and ensuring that they were all effectively aligned on this decision. Although it is clear also that they have continued to fire even after the formal announcement of the ceasefire, presumably trying to continue to extend their leverage in the run up to a round of formal talks that will come later in the week. So, you know, I think that we know that those who are left at this point in time are primarily hardened and experienced members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, who have had, you know, a long experience in terms of managing Iran's conflicts as well as contributing to the security environment within the country as well. The individual who is most frequently pointed to as a potential interlocutor, I don't know if it's been confirmed for the talks with the United States. Mohammed Bakr Kalibaf is actually the speaker of the Parliament, but he had a long role in the Revolutionary Guard and in both the military aspect as well as its construction wing, which is a very central economic actor in Iran. He is someone who's going to be quite important. We have not yet seen evidence of mod, who was named as Supreme Leader a week after the conflict erupted after the death of his father, who had held that position for nearly 37 years, and a strike which killed the younger Mujtaba Khamenei's. A number of members of his family. Muj Saba may be injured, he may be incapacitated entirely, but the system has functioned incredibly smoothly, irrespective of that change and whatever his status might be, which just speaks to how well oiled a machine the Islamic Republic has become. This is not a regime that was going to be quickly taken down by the elimination of its top leadership. There has been a continuation of the targeted strikes against key figures in the military. And still what we've seen is a system that can not just perform militarily, but is also performing in terms of its ability to engage with the adversary and with interlocutors who are trying to broker a ceasefire. It's really extraordinary. I think there was an underestimation by the Trump administration, but I also am surprised at the extent of. Extent to which things seem to be running in a relatively smooth way at this point in time, given how heavy the strikes have been.
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C
I mean, they seem to be running fairly smoothly. And I also, I can't help thinking, looking at the. The ceasefire and thinking about where it leaves us, it seems to me that in a way, Iran didn't quite dictate the terms, but it seems to me that the terms of the ceasefire play mostly to its advantages. Is that your read of it as well?
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B
Well, well, I think it remains to be seen what a longer term ceasefire looks like. But, you know, clearly at this point in time, Iran has agreed to reopen the strait, but only on its own terms, which is, you know, fundamentally stunning. That is an outcome that the regime might have hoped for. But its ability to prevail and to continue to control the straits even after the end of the conflict with would be a complete strategic rebalancing for the region and frankly, for the United States.
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C
Yeah. And meanwhile, the. The question of its nuclear enrichment, its nuclear material sanctions relief is on the table again. It just seems that all of the key questions that undergird the conflict have remained just kind of unsettled, while Iran has one kind of added level of leverage. Let's take the other view a little bit. What are some of the things that Iran has lost in terms of. In what ways is the regime going into these talks weaker than it was previously? We kind of understand that they have certain advantages now, including Hormuz, that they didn't before. What are some of the things that they're lacking now that they might have had at an earlier stage before the fighting?
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B
Well, they have lost key figures in the leadership, and that it will be felt over time. Exactly how the regime reconstitutes itself once the war winds down is still unclear. And I think that some of the figures who've been taken out were people who were quite critical to creating the set of circumstances that enabled Iran to survive this round of strikes. It's not entirely clear at this point in time if the current array of individuals who are in charge are going to be able to sustain. Sustain that over a long period of time. So there is, I think, some loss there. There's the symbolic loss of Ali Khamenei. The fact that Iran's two foremost adversaries were able to strike him and kill him in his own home, along with a number of members of his family, is a humiliation for the regime itself. And of course, there has been significant degradation, not just of Iran's military capabilities, but also of its broader economic and industrial infrastructure. And so Iran, which already had a struggling economy, was very much closed off from the international financial system, is going to have to rebuild under potentially really negative circumstances. So I think we have to be careful to presume that this is going to be a moment of glory for the system itself. Iranians are terrorized by their own regime. They have been seeking change, and economic issues have been a huge vulnerability for the system. And that will continue even after this war. Despite whatever the regime may be able to extract at the negotiating table, it will be a much battered economy.
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C
You know, it strikes me that it took about two years for the Obama administration to negotiate the JCPOA The Iran nuclear deal. We now have a situation in which many of the same questions are going to have to get hashed out over two weeks. What do you think are going to be the most sort of problematic disagreements or, you know, stumbling blocks to any kind of lasting deal? And if there isn't a longer term arrangement that seems realistic, do you think it's likely that either or both of the parties will actually return to fighting?
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B
Well, I think there's almost no hope of negotiating anything that looks like the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which took several years to negotiate and built upon a foundation of a number of years beforehand in which the parties were meeting and discussing and eventually produced an interim agreement. So, you know, the jcpoa was about 159 pages of dense text and appendices. That's not going to be possible over the course of the next two weeks. I think that, you know, the goal would be to try to establish some principles that all sides can agree to. I think even that will be a very high bar to meet because fundamentally, what we've seen of the ten point plan that the Iranians have put forward, of the 15 point plan that the Trump administration was proffering even before the war began, that they fundamentally have different end states. The Iranians want to formalize their control of the Strait of Hormuz. They want compensation in, in some, you know, very direct form of, of economic benefits. They would like to see the United States leave its bases in the region and the list goes on. And from the US side, they would like the Iranians to give up their proxies, their ballistic missile program, the entirety of the industrial nuclear program that has been bu built over the course of the past 30 years. The Iranians say they won't do anything of the kind. And so there's a very high likelihood that this ceasefire will be difficult to maintain, except for the fact that the economic concerns, I think, of all the parties are so severe that there is an interest in trying to get to something that at least drives a cold peace or a hot ceasefire, whatever that might look like. The President has other business to attend to. He has an upcoming visit from the King of England. He has a forthcoming trip to Beijing to meet with Chairman Xi. He wants to put this war in his rearview mirror. And he'd also like to see an end to the economic disruption, the rising prices for jet fuel and gasoline, especially as Americans go into the summer holiday season. The Iranians, I think, believe again that they can control the timeline, but at some point they have to recognize that their ability to respond will have some kind of a shelf life, that, you know, they will want to sell high while they have control and while they still have what they believe is the upper hand. And they clearly have been amenable to some of the pressure that the Chinese and others have been applying to try to drive towards some kind of a solution. So I think the best case scenario is something that enables both sides to walk away and live to fight another day.
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C
Yeah. On your point about China and other powers, I mean, it strikes me that there might have been some. I don't. Not exactly empathy or acceptance or patience with the Iranians for having closed the Strait of Hormuz, but at least an understanding of that they were doing it in response as a sort of retaliatory measure. If there's a ceasefire, if, in effect, the Israelis and the Americans are not bombing anymore, I can sort of imagine that the patience for this on the part of the Chinese, the Russians, Indians, would really diminish. And in a way, the pressure that was taken off the Iranians by kind of anger at the United States would start to build. Do you think that's a dynamic that we might see that, in a sense, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz will become more and more seen as Iran's doing and something that they are inflicting on everyone else, rather than sort of as a byproduct of this American and Israeli war?
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B
Well, I think we've already seen that way by a lot of parties around the world. I think, you know, one of the concerns that those in Beijing may have at this point in time is just the destabilizing impact of a global economy that is racked by huge disruptions and huge price increases for key commodities. And so Beijing has invested all over the world. They don't want to see a global recession any more than the Trump administration wants to see a global recession. And so I think there was a bit of time pressure from those capitals that have a stake in ensuring global economic stability.
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C
We'll be back after a short break.
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D
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E
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D
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C
We recently published a terrific essay of yours titled the Third Islamic Republic, which will also appear in the forthcoming print edition. In it, you wrote in part, what Iran's leaders want is to push their country's revolutionary project forward, ushering in what might be described as the third Islamic Republic of Iran. I think this is just a great way of understanding the sort of phases of this regime. Can you talk a little bit about what the first two Islamic republics were and what makes this third one different?
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B
Well, the first Islamic Republic was born not at the time of the revolution, but frankly later, when the clerics managed to seize control within a very diverse, ideologically diverse revolutionary coalition and impose their view of an Islamic state on the Iranian society that occurred over the course of 1979 and 1980. And the key figure in that period of time was, was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was, of course, the charismatic cleric who helped galvanize diverse strands of society, people who were seeking an end to the monarchy but had no real agreement on what might follow. And he was very much the dominant figure. He built a state in which his word was law, but in fact, one in which there were also institutions that resembled a normal state, a parliament at that time, a prime ministerial system, but also clerical bodies that were able to maintain control. That period was largely dominated by the experience of the war with Iraq and the experience of trying to build this new and very unique state. And over the course of the first nine years of the Islamic Republic, this first Islamic Republic, Khomeini was the towering figure, but there were fierce disagreements about how the State should evolve about mundane policy issues around the economy, about the future of the relationship with the rest of the world. And when Khomeini died in June 1989, the Second Islamic Republic began to emerge. That state was again also evolving in a period of considerable change in the international system. The most important figure in the Second Islamic Republic was Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, who was put in Place in 1989. He had an excellent relationship with the security establishment, particularly with the Revolutionary Guard, as a result of his previous service in a ceremonial role during the initial First Islamic Republic. And what occurred over the course of his nearly 37 years of leading this state was the deep institutionalization of the role of the supreme leader, of the power of the Supreme Leader, but also of the authority and scope of the military and security bureaucracy, which became deeply entrenched in the political establishment, but also in Iran's economy. And those were two versions of this Islamic Republic. What we're seeing now, I think, in this third Islamic Republic is going to be one in which Khamenei's project is brought to fruition, in which the military takes the upper hand. The clerics are in some respects shoved to the side, but there is a symbiotic relationship between them. They have a common vision of essentially a corrupt state, one in which the political elite continues to control all elements of society as well as the economy, and one that they believe will be strengthened by this war.
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C
One party to this conflict that we haven't discussed yet, that we don't think we should, is Israel. And I'm curious to know what you make of the Israeli reaction to the announcement of the ceasefire and what it suggests about a kind of underlying divergence between US Goals and strategy and Israeli goals and strategy and their kind of sense of Iran and sense of their own endgames here. Do you think there's going to start to be some tug of war between Washington and Tel Aviv in the coming weeks over this?
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B
I think there's always been some misalignment between what President Trump wanted and needed from this war and what Prime Minister Netanyahu wanted and needed from this war. And in that, there probably is wider than just the two men. It's actually the policy ecosystems in both capitals that for the Israelis, this was part of a larger effort to ensure that the country could never again experience the. The kind of traumatic surprise attack that occurred on October 7th. And there is, I think, a shared determination across the political spectrum to some degree, to take whatever action is necessary, even if it is highly disruptive even if it comes at tremendous cost to their own country and to the rest of the region and the world. So their response in the aftermath of the initial announcement of this temporary ceasefire was seemingly to step up their attacks in Lebanon against Hezbollah. And I think that that just reinforces what the worldview is from the Israeli leadership that they need to ensure, they are determined to ensure that their adversaries cannot be strengthened as a result of this. They're going to have a more difficult time, of course, with sustaining attacks against Iran, because if the United States agrees to maintain the ceasefire, the Israelis will have to respect that. The Iranians, of course, have demanded that this should be a ceasefire that ends all the wars, including Lebanon. I suspect that that will be a situation that the Trump administration is prepared to give the Israeli government some continuing scope, at least in the short term. But we'll see if that particular point, the question of Lebanon, emerges as an issue. Just to finish up, I think what Trump needed was quite different from this. What he needed from this war was at least the appearance of victory. And what he needs to do is also be able to move on. Unlike the Israelis, who will continue, the President has many other interests around the world. The United States has many other threats to deal with around the world. And this war could not become the overwhelming and dominant focus for the US Military or for the US President. So, you know, the timeline was always going to be much shorter from Washington. And, and President Trump in the June war made very clear that he was going to determine the end of the conflict. In this case, it has been and may be still the Iranians. But the President will have to apply some pressure to the Israelis if, in fact, they are determined to continue.
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C
Yeah. And of course, Netanyahu is going to face voters eventually this year as well. This is an election year for him as well. I'm curious about your read of whether, you know, with the Israeli security establishment, Israeli political establishment, Israeli public sort of see this as a sufficient outcome of cold peace. It seems we already had a cold peace before. The whole point of doing this was to kind of completely change the nature of the balance of power in the region. It doesn't really seem to have done that.
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B
No, I don't think this war has succeeded in achieving the war aims of either the Israelis or the United States. But I think there will be greater tolerance among the Israeli electorate for the attempts and for even the short term benefits of an Iran that is somewhat degraded. That will not be true among the American electorate. We're seeing already that there is pushback within the mega sphere about this war, the costs entailed and the impact on the United States and our security interests, I think is far less clear.
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C
We just mentioned the Israeli public, the American public. I'm wondering about the Iranian public, the ordinary Iranians who were really the people bearing the brunt of this. What is your sense about what this war has done to the legitimacy of the regime inside Iran?
- [29:38]
B
We know that Iranians have long sought a more representative and more responsible government, and they have been stymied by the repression that this regime has been willing to undertake, including the obscene brutality that took place in January when at least 7,000 Iranians civilian protesters were killed and probably many more. However, under bombardment from external adversaries, I don't see a rally around the flag effect. But I do think that the Iranian people have continued to pay the price for their regime. And as a result of American and Israeli strikes, it's a terrorizing experience to be in a war zone. And that's what the country has been over the course of five and a half weeks. And you know, this is not going to create a very helpful platform for those who are trying to build an opposition to the system. There's a military government very much in place now in Iran. It will be even more determined to ensure that it retains control of society. Society. We've seen a brisk pace of executions continuing even at the height of this conflict. We've seen messages distributed via the national Internet because the connections to the rest of the world have been cut off, messages that threaten Iranians not to dare protest. And so if one has to point to the side that has lost the most as a result of this conflict, I think it is the Iranian people the cause of democracy in Iran, and it is why the decision to undertake this war was so deeply misguided by the Trump administration.
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C
I think that's a sobering but very revealing point to end on. I want to thank you for your time this morning, Suzanne, and for your terrific article, which we're always happy to publish you and we're looking forward to people reading it in the next issue.
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B
Thanks so much, Justin. It's always great to be with Foreign Affairs.
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A
Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show@foreign affairs.com this episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Ben Metzner, Mary Kate Godfrey, Rachel Powell and Kanish Tharoor. Our audio engineer is Marcus Zachariah. Original music is by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Irina Hokage. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and if you like what you heard, please take a minute to rate and review it. We release a new show every Thursday. Thanks again for tuning in.