Why Iran Believes It Has the Upper Hand

What is the status of America's war with Iran? If you are trying to follow it through what President Trump is saying, you are going to be, I have become, hopelessly lost. Trump, within a single day, will veer wildly between saying the war is almost over and that he's preparing to escalate it dramatically, that negotiations are going great, and that there's no one to talk to, that Iran must open the Strait of Hormuz and that America doesn't care if it's closed. On Wednesday night, in a nationally televised address, Trump sought to finally clear the fog, to make the path forward clear to the American people and to our allies. It's so hard to say which goals exactly we've achieved because from another perspective, Iran seems to think it's winning this war. The regime has survived. It has learned how much power it can exert over the world economy by choking off the Strait of Hormuz. It has seen sanctions lifted on its oil and is looking towards a new order where it charges countries to pass through the Strait. And Trump appears to be abandoning the Strait. That, I think, was the most shocking part of his speech, telling our allies, it's their problem now. The promise Trump made was an end to threats from Iran. He repeated that promise on Wednesday night. But if you listen to experts on Iran, that is not what they see coming. What they see coming is an Iran that has learned quite a lot from this war and that might emerge from it much more dangerous. Suzanne Maloney is the vice president and director of the Brookings Institution's Foreign Policy Program. She is one of Washington's leading Iran experts, having advised multiple presidential administrations, both Democratic and Republican, and written or edited a number of books on Iran. And I was really surprised how blunt she was here. Iran, she said, thinks it's winning this war, and there's a good case that they are. We spoke on Wednesday morning before Trump's speech, but his speech reflected her analysis almost perfectly. As always, my email is ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. Suzanne Maloney, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. So I find the state of the war in Iran confusing, even as somebody who's been covering it. I hear Donald Trump talking daily now about how the war only has two to three more weeks in it. Negotiations are going great. You know, this is almost over. And I also see that we're moving about 10,000 more troops into the area, alongside other military assets. What should I believe here? Which of these should I be tracking? Well, I think at this point we have to be tracking both the language that the Trump administration and the president himself are using, especially on social media. But we also have to be watching what's happening on the ground, because, you know, what we've seen, even in the buildup to the war, is that the president has often said one thing and done something different. And that's something that the Iranians are well aware of and very much prepared for. And I think he's probably getting different opinions. And it's not entirely clear that President Trump himself has decided precisely what he wants to do, other than I think it's quite clear that he is trying to bring a close to this war that will enable him to declare victory and to walk away from the conflict. Last week, the Trump administration sent the Iranians a 15-point peace plan. This was supposed to be the basis for negotiations. What was in that plan? Well, it was a lot of the same demands that the president and his negotiators had put on the table prior to the war itself. So he wants a durable commitment to no enrichment, to no nuclear weapons in the program in the future. He was looking for a number of other steps that the Iranians would take to end their support for proxies, to end their ballistic missile program. These have all been longstanding concerns on the part of the United States. They really do date back to even the negotiations that the Obama administration led that produced a deal that temporarily put constraints on a number of Iran's nuclear activities. And I think what President Trump is trying to achieve is what he's been pushing for throughout both his first and second terms. And he's not able to achieve conclusively through military action. How did the Iranians respond? The Iranians effectively believe that they have the upper hand at this point in time. And so they have indicated that they don't really see themselves as prepared to negotiate directly with Washington. They are embittered, obviously, as a result of the negotiations that were taking place both in the days before the president launched the strikes about a month ago, as well as the same sort of dynamics that preceded the June war, where negotiations were really just a prelude to military action and in some effect, to some extent, a ruse to dupe the Iranians into complacency, even as the attack was being mobilized. And so, you know, it's a little bit difficult to get direct diplomacy with Tehran in the best of circumstances. This is a regime that has, you know, sort of based its ideology on anti-Americanism. It has often, frequently, in fact, refused to deal directly with American negotiators. And so, you know, under the current circumstances where there have been thousands of strikes and many deaths in Iran, including some of the top leadership, they're not terribly inclined to sit down, nor are they particularly inclined to compromise with the United States. Why do they believe they have the upper hand? They believe they have the upper hand precisely because they were able to seize control of the Strait of Hormuz, which is, of course, the strategic waterway through which about 20% of the world's oil and natural gas exports pass on a daily basis. What the Iranians did in the first days of the war was to strike at ships that were passing through the Gulf and effectively persuade insurers and shipping companies and oil companies to avoid the Gulf unless they had some kind of assurance from the Iranians that they could pass. And so what we've seen is in the pre-war period, there would be anywhere from 130 to 140 tankers traveling to and from over the Strait of Hormuz every day. We've seen only a handful take place over the course of the past month. And that has had a severe impact on oil exports, on prices for oil around the world. And it will, over time, have a catastrophic impact on the global economy if there isn't a resolution to this stoppage of the Strait. Go a level deeper on that for me. Why does that give them the upper hand? They've had, I think, more than 10,000 sites attacked by U.S. and Israel. They've had a huge number of senior political and military leadership killed in strikes. They are militarily tremendously outmatched. So yes, they've been able to close the Strait. That is sending energy prices, fertilizer prices, other key components of the global economy rising. But so what? That's pain for them, too. Why do they seem so confident? They can afford to wait. They have already suffered, as you note, tremendous losses to the leadership. This has had a terrible impact on Iranian cities across the country. But in effect, they have the advantage of time at this point in time because every day that the stoppage goes on, the impact on the global economy is magnified. And that will have a direct impact on President Trump's political standing. It also hurts all of America's partners and allies in the region and around the world. This is, you know, creating huge constraints in Asia. And that is going to be something that the United States is going to hear from all of its partners and allies when it's engaged in diplomacy, that they are looking to see an end to this war, too. And so for the Iranians, this is an existential crisis. They're prepared to wait this out as long as they can. And I think that's the real question now, who blinks first? Talk to me for a minute about the timing. So Trump, as you note, he seems much more incentivized to end this quickly than the Iranians do, at least in the two sides' public statements. And my understanding is that we are entering this period where the closure of the Strait is going to start really biting the global flow of energy and commodities, that we've been in a period where tankers that had already gone through were still arriving at ports around the world. But we're moving into something where you're going to cease having the landings in Asia of energy tankers that had been needed in Europe. Fertilizer is about to get crunched, that right now we've been really worrying about futures and people are pricing things higher out of fear of the future, but we're about to hit the point where these shortages become material in the present. And so when Trump looks forward two to three or four weeks, if this keeps going, what has been modest price rises can become globally something much more severe. And for the Iranians, that they see their leverage increasing very, very rapidly in the coming weeks. Is that accurate? How do you complicate that? Talk to me a bit about that question of the coming timing. I think that's exactly right. You know, we've never had a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz. We've never had this length of disruption in terms of oil exports. And as you note, other petrochemicals and commodities that are key to the global economy. This is something that is completely unprecedented. And in effect, markets haven't fully priced in the potential impact at this point in time. Americans are still effectively paying the price at the gas pump that is determined by production in the United States and by supplies on hand. But as we've already seen rapid and severe increases in prices of oil and other products in Asia, they're closer to the source. And as prices normalize over time, as the disruption is priced in, we will be seeing not just four and five and six dollar prices for gasoline at the pump, but much, much higher. And it requires the Iranians to affirmatively do a series of things. Iran's plan, at least in some of its dimensions, seems actually somewhat under their control. They clearly have the capacity to turn the Strait of Hormuz into a toll booth, where in order to pass it, you need their permission and that either comes from alliance with them or paying them off. I doubt they're going to get reparations from America, as they're asking for, but if they begin monetizing the strait, that is a form of money coming in. And the sanctions thing, I would think, would be absurd, except for the fact that we've, in fact, lifted sanctions on Iranian oil and they're making more money from that than they were now before, is my understanding. So that also seems suddenly possible, particularly if the global energy supply is highly squeezed, and as such, the oil they are exporting, even to other players, is more valuable to them. So to what degree is this not even like a negotiating position, so much as simply them articulating what their strategy is going to be whenever this ends? I think that's, to some extent, the truth, but they do want the reparations. They do want the sort of acknowledgment that they were wronged in this war, and I don't think they're going to receive that. So the question is, what is it that they're likely to settle for? The other concern is that the international community does not want to see a toll booth put at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz because that effectively means that the Iranians retain control in perpetuity and can change the terms if and as they like. And that would be highly unpredictable, and no one wants to give Iran that kind of control. Is it under anybody's power to deny it to them? Well, this is the question. I mean, there certainly would be a military solution if we were prepared to pay the cost. That would take, you know, much larger numbers of troops and military assets moving to the region than we've already seen happening at this point in time. It would be very time-consuming, very costly, and, of course, we would feel the hit to the economy even before we succeeded, and it could take many months to do. But that is certainly an alternative that's available to the president. There could be mitigating missions, the escort effort that has been put underway with some support from the U.K. and others in Europe that would enable some amount of tanker traffic to reopen. So there are avenues that we have to try to undertake this without conceding to the Iranians. The best solution for everyone here is one that ends this crisis as quickly as possible. And so that probably isn't going to be a military solution. It's going to have to be a diplomatic solution. Even for President Trump, the velocity at which his statements have become self-contradictory has accelerated. You will listen to him within a single paragraph, it seems to me, take positions that are diametrically opposed to each other. So I find it hard to take anything he's saying at this point too seriously as a statement of American policy. That said, he has begun saying something in various interviews over the past week that has surprised me, which is that America will simply leave in two to three weeks without any agreement with Iran and without opening the Strait of Hormuz. And Trump told the New York Post on Tuesday, my attitude is, I've obliterated the country. They have no strength left. And let the countries that are using the Strait, let them go and open it. He has talked about this specifically about the U.K., said, you know, you want the oil? You go do something. I weakened them. You go secure the Strait. What would it mean for Trump to simply say, we're done. We have declared victory. We are not worrying about the Strait. Trump's view seems to be that we don't really need the Strait. You can buy oil from us, or you can secure the Strait if it's so important to you. He's very embittered towards countries that did not participate in this operation and almost seems to see it maybe as a way to punish them for that. What would that mean? Well, the logic of the president is somewhat questionable. It's not clear to me or to anyone who understands the economics of the energy markets that if the Strait remained closed, that somehow the price in the United States wouldn't be impacted. It's very clear that we would feel the hit both in terms of energy prices but also to wider markets. And that's something the president himself is very sensitive to. So it's not a very well thought out plan. I think the other piece of it is that, you know, to put the burden on our friends and partners and allies or even on other world powers like China to try to drive towards some solution to this crisis when none of those parties were consulted or in any way participated in the decision to launch the war against the Islamic Republic of Iran that was taken by the United States and Israel, I think would mean the end of some of those very longstanding partnerships and alliances that have been so critical to our ability to promote security and prosperity around the world. They're core to the identity of the United States as a global power. There's no other party that's going to come in and play that role in our absence. And it will mean a much less safe and much less prosperous world as a result. I don't know that Trump fears relinquishing that role for America. So let's take him at his word or that particular version of his word for one moment. Let's say in two weeks, he announces, we're done. We have hit the military targets we want hit. We have set their programs back. We've obliterated them, as he said last time. And if somebody else wants to open the strait, good on them. What would happen then? I think the likely outcome of a United States withdrawal from this conflict would be that, first of all, the Israelis would probably continue to try to strike Iran. And so the conflict itself would not be over. The Iranians would essentially assume the role of toll collector at the Gulf, and they would use this opportunity to really rebuild their own finances and to exert more power over their partners and allies. I think it would have a very destructive impact on the global economy over time because we would still see a continued constraint in terms of traffic. And so, again, that's going to fall on our own doorstep very quickly. We're not insulated from these dynamics around the world. And, you know, we would probably wind up with very different relationships with countries that have been very important to our security in the region as well as around the world, whether that's our NATO allies or countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar that have been really important and important frankly to the president in terms of his own monetization of his role. They have, in many cases, invested in the president's family. And I can't imagine they're going to be very happy holding the bag for this crisis. This podcast is supported by Nurtec ODT from Ajephant. We know you didn't ask for an interruption, but migraine doesn't wait for the right moment to interrupt either. It just barges in, takes your time, and throws everything off. So when migraine takes your time, take Nurtec. It's for the acute treatment of migraine with or without aura in adults. Nurtec can provide pain relief in two hours, which can last up to two days. Ask your healthcare provider if Nurtec is right for you, because your time is for you, not migraine. Don't take if allergic to Nurtec ODT. Allergic reactions can occur even days after use. Get help right away for trouble breathing, rash, swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or throat. High blood pressure and Raynaud's syndrome can occur. Get help for high blood pressure, numbness, coolness, pain, or color changes in fingers and toes. Common side effect is nausea. For full prescribing information, call 1-833-4-NURTEC or visit nurtec.com. All right, back to your podcast. All right, then let's flip the possibility here. So we know, the Iranians know, he's moving more military assets into the region, about 10,000 troops, as I mentioned before. I've seen many military analysts, and at this point, if you look at betting markets, they have a more than even odds view that the U.S. will be conducting ground operations in Iran before the end of April. How likely do you think that is? You know, it's very difficult to assess where the president's tweets and his actions connect, but I do think it's a realistic possibility that we will see American forces occupying or attempting to occupy some ground positions in Iran. The most obvious contenders are Kharg Island, which is the export terminal through which much of Iran's oil passes. It is not the production facility. It is really just the place of which the tankers are loaded. And if that Kharg Island was taken by American troops, then theoretically the Iranians would not be able to export their oil. And that's been one of the interesting dimensions of this crisis, that in all the war gaming and planning and thinking about what might happen in a closure, the assumption was that Iran would feel some pressure because its economy would be hit. And what they've been able to do is very selectively enable their own exports to go. If that changed, then they might have some more time pressure. But, of course, you know, the risks to American troops on Kharg Island would be severe. Our ability to resupply them with munitions as well as just basic living conditions would also be severe. We would have the impact to the global economy because we would have turned off the spigot on another million or million five barrels a day. There have been war games that have looked at what a United States-Iranian war might, how it might play out. And they have all involved some threat to the Strait of Hormuz as It is not a personalistic regime where, you know, you can swap out a leader and somehow get one that might have a different view. This is a regime that came to power through a popular revolution, so it has spent 47 years ensuring that no one can do to it what it did to its predecessor, the monarchy. Which meant that when the decapitation happened on the first day, Ayatollah Khamenei died, there was joy heard from many Iranians, but they were also still terrorized. They also did not have a political movement that they could turn to that could, in fact, potentially challenge the system at a moment of vulnerability. They could go to the streets, but they had done so only a month before and they had been slaughtered in historic numbers by the regime itself and they could see that those forces were still out there. Government officials were sending text messages. The pace of executions of dissidents and protesters has remained high. They're sending a very clear signal to the population, don't you dare take this opportunity. And in the aftermath of the massacres that occurred in January, it's understandable that Iranians weren't going to take that risk. For the same reason, the deeply embedded nature of the regime, this is why we're not seeing a different perspective or a more pragmatic or rational perspective from those who are somewhere lower in the ranks of the regime itself. When the top echelon was killed, their successors in many ways are more radical, are more hardline. That was true of the supreme leader himself. He's been replaced by his son who had fewer religious credentials, less political experience, but is very closely aligned with the Revolutionary Guard and is likely to govern in a much more, even more authoritarian way than his father. And that's been true of many of the figures who've come into senior positions as individual leaders have been picked off. It is a much more heavily militarized regime but one that has no real differentiation in terms of the anti-American, anti-Israeli radical ideology. Trump told the Financial Times, speaking here of Khamenei's son, who's now the new supreme leader, quote, The son is either dead or in extremely bad shape. We've not heard from him at all. He's gone. What do we know about who's in charge? It's a very good question. What we know are that there are still a number of officials, most of which have senior military experience, who appear to be essentially running the government. There is also a sort of administrative side to the governance in Iran, which is still being led by a president who was elected in the aftermath of the death of another potential contender for the supreme leader just a couple of years ago. He has very little power, but he can keep the system running. The key figures are those from the military. Mojtaba Khamenei, who has been named the supreme leader, who has issued several statements, has not been seen in public. There are a wide range of rumors about the state of his health, that he may have been grievously injured in the same attack that killed his father, his mother, his wife, and other members of his family on the first day of the war. But in effect, it's almost irrelevant at this point. Mojtaba can remain kind of a cipher. He can govern from afar because there are these military officials who are essentially running the show. And the system that his father set up has ensured that, you know, this is highly institutionalized. The supreme leader had representatives in every administrative office of the government. They will continue running the state in the vision of the Islamic Republic. And if Mojtaba is never seen in public, if he is known to be grievously injured, of course, his father had experienced a significant terrorist attack early in his career, lost the use of his right hand. That actually just plays into the themes of martyrdom and sacrifice that are so important to this regime. So I don't think it's actually a deficit that we have this kind of shift in the balance of power away from the clergy toward the military. It's something that I think the regime is leaning into at this point in time. The speaker of Iran's parliament, who's also a former IRGC commander, Mohammad Baqar Ghalibaf, he doesn't seem amenable to negotiation. I've heard from many people the belief that he's one of the key people in charge. But to the point you're making, he posted on X, which is kind of amazing that this is a place where Iran and America are communicating, quote, We believe the aggressor must be punished and taught a lesson that will deter them from attacking Iran again. So what is Iran learning here? What is the perspective on the war and future security for Iran that has taken hold among the people who do seem to still be there and who are still in charge? That's a really important point. The Iranians want to ensure that they don't face yet another round of attacks. And so one of the concerns that they have about a potentially preemptive end to this war is that it will just be the prelude to another set of strikes. This is what they experienced in June of 2025, and they were waiting for the next round. They understood it was coming. They studied the war in June and they have studied how the United States has prosecuted its wars in other parts of the region, particularly in Iraq. And so they were very much prepared this time. And what they want to do is ensure that the pain level is high enough that the United States and the Israelis will be dissuaded from taking further action so that they can rebuild, so that they can reconsolidate their power without the fear that there's just another set of strikes lurking around the corner. I want to ask about some of these other joint war aims of America and Israel. And I want to do so with the recognition that maybe our aims somewhat diverge. But certainly, according to Netanyahu's long-term advocacy for a war of this nature, was eliminating the threat of Iran's nuclear program to Israel. We had a bombing campaign, you know, about a year ago. We were told after that that the Iranian nuclear program had been obliterated, that this was done. Then at the launch of this war, we were told they were, you know, days away from getting a nuclear weapon. To what degree has that game been achieved, pushed forward, set back? Like, how would you describe the state of the goal of ensuring Iran will never have a nuclear weapon? I think we are still some ways away from ensuring that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. And that is simply because Iran still has the technical expertise and it still has potentially large quantities of highly enriched uranium, which would enable it to move quickly. This current state of the war, this current round of strikes has done even more significant damage to Iran's nuclear infrastructure than was done during the June war. And so it has compounded the technical challenge that the Iranians will have to reconstitute the program. But as long as they have the expertise, as long as they have the potential fuel, and they have the know-how to build the machines and create the infrastructure, they can get there again. And, you know, what we know is that Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader who was killed, was in fact one of the sources of some constraint on the decision to move forward or not with a weapons program. Iran had a weapons program which it put on ice in 2003 after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The intelligence community has been somewhat confident that that weapons program was not active at this time, but we can't verify that. And we know that much of Iran's activities were underground. And so there isn't the level of visibility and confidence that we have hit every possible element of the program, even in this second round of war. How about the ballistic missiles program? The latest that we've heard is that the U.S. assesses that about 30% of Iran's missile capabilities have been taken out by strikes. They've also expended some of the rest of their missiles in their own strikes. But we believe that they still have both the missiles, the launchers, and again, even if the production facilities have been destroyed, they have the capability to rebuild at some point in time. We have seen the Israelis in particular take wider strikes, clearly aimed at undermining the larger economic infrastructure in Iran, whether it was at the South Pars gas field or more recently the steel manufacturing plants around the country. I think that's all intended to make the road harder and longer toward reconstituting a really industrial scale ballistic missile program. But the Iranians have also been very calculated in how they've used those missiles. They appear to be improving their accuracy over the course of this war and they still have the capability to both strike their neighbors and Israel with ballistic missiles. And they have an even larger and probably more flexible capability when it comes to drone construction. You know, if you listen to Secretary of Defense of War, Pete Hegseth, in his commentary, we're always pretty close to destroying Iran's ability to fire missiles, to have offensive capability. You know, Trump himself talks constantly about obliterating their ability to project power. We don't seem to have been able to do it. Why is that? Why has this proven militarily so hard to kind of shut Iran's capability to threaten infrastructure throughout the region, to threaten ships coming through the Strait? We have destroyed a lot of Iranian capabilities, but they have more than we fully appreciated and they've also been able to both hide and reconstitute some of those capabilities that were already hit. I think that kind of resilience was something that was not fully appreciated by the Trump administration or by the war planners. That this is a regime that has seen the worst before. I often point to the first several years of the Islamic Republic when there were tribal revolts, there was urban street fighting, there was intense factionalism and terrorist attacks on the leadership and severe economic constraints. And then the Iraqi invasion in September Continue to mow the lawn as long as they have the opportunity. And there is, I think, a consensus around this goal among much of the Israeli national security establishment at this point in time. It's not purely a Netanyahu-centric effort. Israelis, by and large, feel as though, you know, they can't wait for the threats to come to them. They have to go out and proactively eliminate those threats. They learned this horrific lesson on October 7th and they're not prepared to live with a monster on their doorstep in perpetuity. And so they will continue. Does the mowing the lawn strategy, which refers to how Israel for many, many years treated Hamas and notably that in the long run did not actually work, but where when they see a rise in capability in their enemy, they bomb, they use other kinds of sometimes more covert means to try to reduce their enemy's capability. Does that actually work with Iran in the long term? Because it seems to me that after this war, that if Iran is repeatedly bombed by Israel, but they are back in full control of their area and they've rebuilt their weapons programs to some degree, they're going to use the Strait of Hormuz to force the international community to stop Israel from repeatedly bombing Iran. It's hard for me to imagine Iran just simply accepting a mowing the lawn scenario after this. And it's a much more complex thing for Israel to do that to Iran than to try to do that to Hamas in Gaza. And again, even doing that to Hamas in Gaza in the long run was not a strategy that kept Israel safe. I don't think mowing the lawn is a strategy that is going to keep Israel safe in the future. But I think that they don't see better options at this point in time. And they're also counting on the fact that the regime will have to contend with a very unhappy, very much impoverished population. It will have to figure out how to rebuild potentially without the support of the international financial system. And Iran will be a weaker, more embittered state in many respects. And we don't know what will happen six months from here. We may see the tremors that were created by these attacks produce some fissures within the regime and actually make it less strenuous and less threatening. We simply don't know, and I think the Israelis are prepared to do what they have to do. I don't think it's a strategy for regional peace, and that, I think, is going to be something that creates some strains with their new relationships. As much as the Saudis and the Emiratis detest this regime, they're going to have to live on its periphery and they're going to want to avoid the continuation of this crisis, even at a lower clip. The war in Iran has also led to a second front in this war where you had Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy in part, launching missiles. And Israel has undertaken a pretty significant invasion now of Lebanon. I mean, the death toll is very, very significant. There is a large amount of troops and material involved in this. I think in America, we're really paying attention to what is happening in Iran. But for those who've been hearing about this, how would you describe what is now happening between Israel and Lebanon? I think what's happening in Lebanon deserves much, much more attention. It's really worrisome. The Israelis are planning to occupy a large swath of territory in the south of Lebanon. We know how that ended the last time, you know, perpetual war. It contributed to the long-term weakening of the central state, the long-term strengthening of Hezbollah. And it also was very costly for Israelis as well. They lost many people. And, you know, if Lebanon becomes a failed state, if hundreds of thousands or millions of people are forced from their homes and Israel continues to occupy a significant swath of Lebanese territory, then again, I think it's going to be very difficult to build on the nascent Abraham Accords to create a real normalization across the region. And it's going to be disastrous for a country that has so much potential, so many educated people, such an incredible, rich, and diverse history. And, you know, it will leave us here in the United States once again tied to an unstable, violent Middle East that we can't seem to withdraw from. I want to hold on that point about Hezbollah, because I think it gets at something that felt like a lesson many people seem to have learned after 9-11 that has now been forgotten, which is that you can think you are destroying an enemy and create a vacuum in which more lethal, more ideological, more radical enemies arise. Al-Qaeda somewhat comes out of American involvement in both Afghanistan and the broader region. Hezbollah comes somewhat out of Israel's invasion of Lebanon. ISIS comes out of the war in Iraq. That I've just felt as a very strange level of short-termism in a lot of the discussions I've been hearing, as if we've never had the experience before of having, you know, Western powers or Israeli military power appear to score victory and then what emerges later on is more radicalized, more dangerous, does not respond to negotiation in the way that a normal state would. Somehow the idea that this could all lead to terror or other forms of asymmetric revenge does not feel very present in the conversation, but as somebody whose kind of formative political period was 9-11, I don't really understand why. I think that Americans have put the 9-11 and the wars that were spawned in its aftermath very much in their rearview mirror. And President Trump is very much part of having shifted that conversation. However, you know, it's a very real possibility. We know the Iranians have had relationships with terror networks all around the world. They've had the capability to affect terrorist attacks from Asia to Europe to Latin America. And while we haven't seen a lot of that on American soil in the very near term, we know that they credibly threatened both Iranian dissidents living in the United States as well as former senior officials, some of whom served in the first Trump administration and retained their government protection until President Trump came back into office last January. We began this conversation by talking in part about the proposed 15-point peace plan from the Trump administration. We talked about the Iranian response to that. One thing you hear from Donald Trump is various reports on how negotiations are going. One thing you hear from the Iranian government is that there are no negotiations ongoing. Are there negotiations ongoing? There are always negotiations ongoing. I think it's highly unlikely that we have Americans and Iranians sitting across the table from one another, but there are messages that are being passed. There are efforts that are being launched. And particularly if the president goes forward with his announcements at various points in time that we are simply going to leave once the mission is finished, even if the strait is not open, we do see other actors coming to try to play a larger role, particularly the Chinese, the Pakistanis, others are looking for some sort of an opportunity to end this crisis because, you know, this will impact the entire world if it plays out for weeks and months unended. How serious are the Pakistani and Chinese efforts here? And ask this from two perspectives. One, could they actually create the form in which this is brought to some kind of conclusion? But two, if America launches a ill-thought-through war with Iran that then ends in some kind of confusing, somewhat humiliating absence of achieved objectives, and the people who end it are the Chinese who come in as the adults in the room to sort of help negotiate a settlement. I don't know, if I imagine a historian writing a book on changing world orders in 50 years, that might feel to me like one of those moments when you begin to see the balance of responsibility and weight shifting in the global order. Well, I think however this ends, it is a critical juncture. It is the end of American global leadership. It is the end or the diminishment of our partnerships and alliances that have been so critical in the post-war era to preserving stability and security and prosperity in many places. And what's also interesting is that the timeline for the end of this crisis is very much also influenced by the Chinese, because the president had scheduled a summit in Beijing. He moved that as a result of the war being a bit more protracted than he had presumably intended. But that new date for the summit in Beijing is May 14th and 15th. And he would presumably need to have this in his rearview mirror by the time he goes to Beijing. And that will give all the parties a bit of a stronger hand to try to push for a solution. But it will not be a solution that will probably be driven by the United States at this point in time. President Trump went into this war without a plan for the day after, not even a plan for day two or three of the war. And what we now see is that, you know, the rest of the world is going to have to pick up that mantle and try to drive toward a solution for this crisis, because if it continues, it will have absolutely catastrophic impact. Just thinking through our conversation here, if you imagine a world a month from now where the war is winding down or has wound down because America couldn't bear the disruption to global energy, helium, fertilizer, et cetera, supplies. The Iranian regime remains in place, controlling the Strait of Hormuz, probably charging different ships tolls to go through and, you know, or making particular deals for different countries that benefit Iran in order to have safe passage through the strait. That feels to me like a war we would have lost. Is that wrong? I think that's correct. I don't see a victory in real terms at the end of this crisis. We may be able to extricate ourselves without even more catastrophic human losses than have already been experienced. But there is very little evidence that we're going to be able to come out of this war with a different regime in Iran, with less control over the Strait of Hormuz. And that is a very dangerous Oh, because we're a team now? That's a nice story. The Devil Wears Prada 2, rated PG-13. May be inappropriate for children under 13. Only in theaters May 4th.