Trump Thought Iran Would Collapse. He Was Wrong. | Trita Parsi

[00:00:00] Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the At the Waters Edge podcast, where we look for insights beyond the headlines to take a practitioner's view on national security and geopolitics. It's the 5th of June, 2026. Let's get started. Now, the war with Iran continues unabated, with both sides exchanging fire as casualties mount, and a ceasefire is still apparently in effect. I guess it depends on how you want to define a ceasefire. Now, what does this mean for the future of American power in the region? What should an American grand strategy look like in this new era? How did we get to this point?

[00:00:30] And how can we walk our way out of it? To help break this down, today I'm joined by Dr. Trita Parsi from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington, D.C. He is one of the most prominent voices arguing for diplomacy, restraint, and a rethinking of U.S. policy towards Iran. You can find more of his work at tritaparsi.substack.com. Link in the show notes. With that, let's get to our conversation. At the Water's Edge is supported by Grayzone Advisory.

[00:00:59] Grayzone helps businesses and organizations understand geopolitical risk before it becomes a crisis. If your company is exposed to conflict, supply chain risk, defense markets, or international instability, Grayzone provides executive briefings, strategic analysis, and decision support to help leaders understand what is changing and what to do next. Learn more at grayzoneadvisory.com. All right. Well, good afternoon and welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today? I'm doing well. How are you?

[00:01:28] Doing fine. Now, for a lot of folks outside of D.C., they haven't heard of the Quincy Institute. Could you introduce yourself and some of the work you do there in your own words for the audience? Sure. We founded the Quincy Institute about six or so years ago. So it is a relatively new think tank in D.C., but it's unique in several different ways. First of all, we favor a grand strategy that is fundamentally different from the one that the United States has had since the end of the Second World War.

[00:01:56] The current grand strategy is liberal hegemony, the idea that the United States needs to secure the world by having military hegemony in almost every significant corner of it. In our view, the endless wars are a logical conclusion of that grand strategy. If you have to dominate every corner of the world militarily all the time, you will be at war somewhere all the time. And our view is that this is not helping the United States.

[00:02:26] It's not stabilizing the world. It's not making America safer. The alternative grand strategy, which was developed in the early mid-1990s, is called restraint, which does not mean that it's for pacifists. They actually would use force, but we would have a much higher bar for when military force should be used. And it should be used primarily to defend the United States and some key interests that the U.S. has.

[00:02:50] So we would have a much more narrow definition of the U.S.'s vital national interests rather than the manner that we have right now in which almost everything is considered worthy of going to war for or use military action for. And this is a strategy that also indicates that we don't need to have hegemony in all of these different places. We just need to deny anyone else hegemony, which is a completely different proposition, a completely different military and cost structure.

[00:03:16] This, in our view, would have enabled the United States to preserve its very beneficial global position for a much longer period of time. I think it is indisputable that it is the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now also Iran that have hastened the arrival of a multipolar world, that has hastened the weakening, relative weakening of the United States vis-à-vis other states, precisely because of the very costly mistakes.

[00:03:42] But those decisions are a complete function of that grand strategy. So we favor a very different one that would be much more peaceful in our view, but still much more effective at the same time in making America safe. The other part of it that is making us very unique is that we're transpartisan. We work equally with the left and the right.

[00:04:03] This is a strategic necessity in our view because shifting the grand strategy of the United States is not something that you can do with just one party's support. You need to have support for this shift on both sides of the aisle. So we're working very closely with both sides on those who, of course, agree that there needs to be a shift. And I think perhaps the third one is we don't take any money from the U.S. government, from foreign governments, or from defense contractors and the weapons industry.

[00:04:33] That, I have to tell you, makes us very unique in Washington, D.C., in which all of these different think tanks take massive amounts, both from foreign governments, from defense contractors. And we actually do have a project, a database that is called the Think Tank Funder Tracker or something like that. You can look it up in which we have brought transparency to this issue and are revealing the funding structure and sources of all of the major think tanks in D.C. So people can go on there and look themselves.

[00:05:03] Is there a reason why a certain think tank is so favorable to the interest of the UAE, for instance, or Saudi Arabia? Is it a reason why they're so favorable towards just endless war between Ukraine and Russia? Is it because perhaps they're so supported by the arms industry that is making a killing off of these wars? So then who provides funding for the Quincy Institute? Excellent question. So from the very outset, we were totally transparent about where we are getting our funding.

[00:05:31] And some of the first donors we had made quite a headline and it was very deliberate from our end. And we, because as I mentioned, we're transpartisan, we work with the left and the right. We're also making sure that we have funding from the left and the right. So some of the first donors that we had, although they're by now by no means the largest donors we have, was on the one hand, Open Society Foundation on the left. And on the other hand, the Charles Koch Institute on the right.

[00:05:58] Because both of them had certain interests, I would say that the Charles Koch Institute is much more committed to restraint and has become one of the major funders of restraint. But we wanted to send a clear signal that the support for a completely different foreign policy that is much more peaceful is not just something that is like a cute idea, but there's actually financial and political support behind that.

[00:06:22] And managing to get these two entities that otherwise are so different and at odds with each other on almost every other issue to come together on this was a very critical win for us. And happen in the very early stages of the Quincy Institute's lifespan. And all of our funders, et cetera, are listed on our website. So it's a mix of individuals and foundations that are both on the left and on the right. Cool.

[00:06:49] Now, I was going to try to get to this later if we had time, but you already mentioned liberal hegemony. So I'm just going to dive right into probably the nerdiest question I wanted to ask you. So liberal hegemony, folks who don't know, this idea that there's a single player in the international community, a system that's more powerful than the rest of the world combined. And the U.S. has played that role arguably since the fall of the Soviet Union, depending on who you ask and how you measure. But that's been a general theme. Big critique of it is that it's led to the forever wars, Iraq and Afghanistan being the two big examples.

[00:07:17] And then we talk about Libya and a whole bunch of other stuff around the world. But one of the main arguments I've heard in favor of liberal hegemony is that international humanitarian law can only exist in the system where somebody can wield force to enforce it, albeit imperfectly. So how do you say to cooperate in a world without international humanitarian law if international humanitarian law can't exist without liberal hegemony?

[00:07:44] A couple of assumptions baked into that, but that was the question I wanted to ask you. Does international humanitarian law exist in any meaningful sense in a multipolar world? Yeah, I think it's a great question. And let me first start off by saying that the biggest challenge and the erosion of international humanitarian law, IHL right now, is actually coming from the hegemon and one of its closest allies, Israel.

[00:08:07] So even if one were to accept that, and I'm going to say why I don't accept that assumption, even if one were to accept that, it's creating a very bizarre situation. Because if one is supporting it because it's needed for IHL, then one also has to deal with the issue that the biggest blow to IHL right now is actually coming from the hegemon itself and one of its closest allies who could not do it had it not been for the support from the hegemon.

[00:08:30] But I think more than anything else, the element that you're pointing to is that yes, IHL is not going to have a lot of bite unless there is some muscle behind it. There is, however, a much more murky scenario or logic behind saying that that muscle has to come from just single source. That it only could be because there is a hegemon, a hegemon.

[00:08:53] But that in a multipolar world, suddenly IHL would fall apart because in a scenario in which there are several countries that are powerful, somehow the incentive structure to actually have a standard, a system of laws and norms that guide and structure the interaction between these states suddenly would not be there on the contrary. I think there's an argument to say that it's the opposite.

[00:09:20] In a scenario in which no one country can get its way, then you're going to have to have a far more adept way of compromising between states in order to retain a degree of stability. And if you have five major powers in the world, I'm not saying that this is automatic.

[00:09:37] I'm just saying that I can just as easily see a scenario in which all of them would end up recognizing that they are better off agreeing to norms that constrain them if it constrains the four others. And as a result, they make that bargain of saying, okay, we're going to abide by this. It will be costly for us if we don't, but we will abide by it because we want the norm to be as strong as possible for it to survive.

[00:10:07] And we will undermine it if we are violating it ourselves. And then you could have a scenario in which three or four of them were to come together to put muscle behind IHL if you have a major violator. So the idea that there's only one that can do it, I don't see the logic as to why that would be the case. I can see a logic that would say that in that type of scenario, yes, if you have an extremely benign, wise, thoughtful hegemon,

[00:10:33] that hegemon would be applying IHL in as consistent manner as possible, and it would be very strong. But it doesn't answer the question, which is the situation we're dealing with today. What do you do when the hegemon itself puts itself above all laws? Gotcha. Kind of like the old argument from the domestic sense, the most efficient form of government is a benevolent dictatorship. But, you know, good luck trying to get that two times in a row. Yeah. Almost a good emperor problem in China. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:04] All right. A whole other nerdy conversation we have about that, and I'd love to sometime, actually. But news of the day. Speaking of the way states interact with each other, Iran and the U.S. So we've got this apparently latest version of Memorandum of Understanding that's floating around out there. At the same time, the ceasefire is still in effect. While Kuwaiti airports are being bombed, people are dying, and Israel is still blowing stuff up in Lebanon. I'm not sure at what point this becomes the most violent ceasefire in recent history, but I think we've got to be getting close to that point at some point.

[00:11:33] What do you think the current state of play is between the U.S., Iran, and Israel? And what are the odds, do you think, that the current Memorandum of Understanding that's floating out there actually leads to a negotiated settlement? So first of all, there isn't one memorandum of understanding floating around. One of the challenges that has been created by Trump having a tendency of negotiating things so publicly, and also announcing deals before they have been fully clinched,

[00:12:03] is that we have quite a few variations of it floating around. It's really unclear which one actually is the one that they are currently negotiating on, if even any of the ones out there publicly are the basis of it. We cannot say that for certain. I think what we've seen in the last 48 hours, just to kind of tell us, okay, where exactly are we right now, is that we had a situation that started about nine or so days ago,

[00:12:30] in which the United States started to intensify the blockade of the blockade. It did so by targeting Iranian ships, but also some targets on the Iranian mainland, particularly in the coast area and around the city of Bandar Abbas. At first, the Iranians responded proportionately, but it didn't have much of an effect because bottom line is the United States actually can sustain a lower level exchange of fire between the two sides within the ceasefire.

[00:12:58] And it actually will arguably be somewhat to the U.S.'s favor because the cost the Iranians would inflict on the U.S. is absorbable, whereas the cost of tightening the blockade actually shortens Iran's timeline in a manner that would be problematic for the Iranians. The Iranians appear to have realized this, and as a result, 48 hours ago or so, dramatically escalated. They even announced that from now on, if the U.S. attacks, the Iranians will respond 1.5 times that strength.

[00:13:28] I think, frankly, they went quite a bit beyond that in their response because they targeted Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Iraq, the UAE, although some of those attacks were much smaller, but there was a large-scale response there. What we have seen since then is that the Trump administration so far has not attacked again. Whether that is because Trump is taking a step back, assessing the situation, the military is trying to make up their minds of what strategy to use,

[00:13:56] or whether he actually kind of climbed down. Because if you take a look at his statement, it seems at a minimum that he was preparing for a climb down because he said, oh, these Iranian attacks were not that big of a deal, etc. He played it down in order to reduce the pressure on himself to respond. But what it showed, or at least what I think the Iranians were trying to show, is that they have escalation dominance. And if a low-scale exchange of fire is intolerable for them,

[00:14:26] they will escalate and bring it up to a higher level of exchanges, which will become more intolerable for the United States because it will have that impact on the global economy, on oil prices. And we've already seen how now Republicans in Congress, in sufficient numbers, have defected in order to pass the War Powers Resolution. We'll see what happens in the Senate. So I think the Iranians escalated deliberately,

[00:14:51] because the level of pain was such that it was unevenly spread. It was mostly on the Iranian side, and they've done this to spread the pain. And they think that they can handle a higher escalation better than the U.S. not because they're stronger. They're clearly not, but because they have managed to take advantage of geography. And that's geography's control over the global economy in a manner that the United States should have known, likely would happen. But Trump appears to have completely disregarded.

[00:15:19] You know, a lot of it has been said about all the mistakes the Trump administration has made that has led to him to this point in the conflict. There are things they've done to miscalculate. Robert Pate comes on every week to remind everyone about that. But what do you think, if anything, Iran has miscalculated on? Or do you think there's not a chance that they overplay the hand that they have, which is admittedly stronger than I think anyone anticipated prior to the start of this war? I think there's a couple of things one can point to.

[00:15:47] I think overall, they have followed a game plan that clearly has been superior to that of the United States. Trump's plan was essentially just a plan A. He thought that the Iranians were going to collapse within four days, particularly after the Supreme Leader was assassinated and there wasn't a plan B. Whereas the Iranians have acted very, very systematically from the very beginning. There were certain things that they miscalculated that ended up to their benefit. They thought the U.S. was going to block the Persian Gulf entirely on day one.

[00:16:18] The U.S. didn't. It gave the Iranians about six or so weeks of not only oil income, but dramatically higher oil income. They were selling more oil than before at a much higher price, almost double the price, with no discounts. Before they had to give discounts because they were sanctioned. Now they didn't even have to do the discounts. So that injected a significant amount of money into their coffins that they had not counted on.

[00:16:44] They'd already moved out a lot of tankers outside of the Gulf in order to make sure that they could continue to sell them for the war. And that would give them several months. But this additional couple of weeks of oil income gave them even more. That doesn't mean that time is infinite on their side in any way, shape or form. But that was a miscalculation on their end in which they actually overestimated what the U.S. would do.

[00:17:06] The area where I think they miscalculated more than anything else goes before the war. And that is that I think that if they had agreed to talk to Trump directly, not just to his negotiators, but directly, I think the war could potentially even have been avoided. Trump had a very false impression of the strength of the Iranian side.

[00:17:34] It was something that had been fed to him by the Israelis, but it was also a perception that existed on the American side because of the conduct of the Iranians. And the main thing people point to when it comes to that conduct is the fact that the Iranians responded in a very de-escalatory way every time the U.S. attacked it. And every time the Israelis attacked it. You know, the first kind of exchanges between the Iranians and the Israelis essentially just showed what the Iranians could do.

[00:18:04] But they really did not try to do anything that could be escalatory. That changed with the June War, of course. But up until that point, it was very clear that they avoided it. And even in the June War, when the United States hit Fordow, the Iranian response was, according to the Pentagon, a polite response. All that did is it reinforced the idea the Iranians don't have what it takes. They will collapse. They don't know how to fight. They don't, you know.

[00:18:29] And then there was another element that I think reinforced this in the mind of Trump, which is that they refused to talk to him directly. Now, if you were Trump and you came into office and the first thing you did is like, I'm willing to talk to anyone. He just said that again the other day about Moshe Bokhamene, the new Supreme Leader. And he has been. He went and shook the hand of Kim Jong-un. And he's happy to invite the former founder of Al-Qaeda in Syria into the White House. He's never had that type of an objection of talking to foreign leaders.

[00:18:58] I personally strongly support that. I think the previous president has constantly abided by these political restraints that was put on American leaders as to whether it was acceptable for them to talk to an opponent. So, for instance, for the last two years or so of Biden, he never spoke to Putin anymore. There was some communication, but never between Biden and Putin. I think that's a terrible situation. We need top leaders to be able to talk to each other in an appropriate way, of course, in order to avoid a World War III.

[00:19:28] But Biden didn't do that. As soon as Trump comes in, he talks to Putin, he talks to everyone else. And he always thought that he could do that because he's strong. And he kept on saying, I'm doing it because I'm strong. And saying essentially that everyone else prior to him was weak. So when someone else doesn't talk to him, he doesn't see that as strength. He sees that as their sign of weakness, even though the Iranians thought that they were signaling strength. They were showing that they refused to talk to the superpower.

[00:19:56] In their view, they thought they were projecting strength. All Trump saw was a validation of the belief that the Iranians are weak. Had they spoken to each other, I think there is a chance that the war could have been avoided altogether. Partly because the diplomacy could have been helpful to better make him understand what war actually would lead to. And not have this massive miscalculation that ended up happening.

[00:20:21] But also because I think at the end of the day, Trump was looking for a win and a legacy. Now that win and that legacy could be that he got rid of the Islamic Republic. But it could also have been that he struck a deal that was better than Obama's. Yeah. And if he saw that that latter part was an option because the other side was talking to him, I think there's a chance. I'm not saying that there's a guarantee or anything like that. I think there's a chance that he could have gone in that other direction. And I think it was a miscalculation.

[00:20:50] More than anything else, it was that the Iranians, for political reasons at home, just didn't have the strength, frankly, to do it. And I think that was a mistake, perhaps more than a miscalculation. Here's an inside baseball question for you. Because as someone who doesn't live in D.C. but follows the stuff closely, it was really surprising that Trump actually pulled the trigger on going into a full-blown war with Iran. The initial bombing last year, that made a lot of sense. He even called Israel afterwards to knock it off. Great. He's got his big I'm the strong man moment. Whatever.

[00:21:20] It's not surprising. But a guy that, like you said, invited a former al-Qaeda member who's now president of Syria to the White House. Happy to talk to Kim Jong-il. So massive ego narcissist thinks he's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Willing to break all the norms. Puts people in his cabinet. Stacks it with folks who said, we should never go to war with Iran. And he even negotiated the deal with the Taliban that got us out of Afghanistan. Yeah, Joe Biden gets all the credit for how badly it went. But that was actually Trump's deal.

[00:21:47] How did that guy pull a 180 and pull ourselves right back into another forever war? Because it seems like there must be some weird set of circumstances to let him find himself stuck in that corner. Absolutely. And I think this is something that many of us have struggled to explain. And I think Kurt Mills from the American Conservative said that this is the biggest betrayal of a promise to your base.

[00:22:16] Since George H.W. Bush said, read my lips, I won't raise taxes. And so this is an unbelievable 180. And, you know, the strike against Fordow in summer of 2025 at the end of the day was not inconsistent with Trump. Because it was military action, not war. It was over with in 45 minutes. No one in his base essentially noted in the sense that they had a negative effect.

[00:22:45] There were all of these other effects that the forever wars had. And that's why he got away with it. I think we may have to a certain extent misread him and also misread the situation. First of all, everything goes back to what I said earlier on. He thought that the Iranians are really weak. And I think this is really essential. Trump was not against these endless wars because he has some sort of a moral objection to war. He was against it because he saw how much it weakened the United States and how difficult they were. And that you should not put yourself in situations that are that difficult.

[00:23:16] So if you want to convince him to do something along those lines, you have to convince him that it's not going to be difficult. In fact, you're going to convince him that it's going to be very easy and it's going to feed into his desire for legacy. And this is what the Israelis did. It was a very systematic campaign to just portray the Iranians. Just go back and look at the media reporting at the time. Iran is at its weakest point ever. It's about to fall. I mean, just a couple of days of protest. I'm talking about in December. There were huge protests in January.

[00:23:45] In December, they were still very small. But the media reporting was like 10 days ahead of actual events because it talked about it as if the regime was about to fall. So there was that constant reinforcement of the idea they're about to fall. And then you add Venezuela to the picture. In which Trump got really lucky and had a massive success. And a belief that, you know, he can just replicate that blueprint anywhere that he wanted.

[00:24:15] And I think that really pushed him over the edge into doing something. And when you take a look at how he spoke about this in the early phases, but also prior to it, you see that that mindset, that belief system was clearly there. Prior to the war, he was, you know, his envoy, Witkoff, expressed, mentioned that Trump was expressing frustration. Why haven't the Iranians capitulated?

[00:24:41] Because their weakness, he thought, was going to mean that just because he amasses one third of the U.S. Navy outside of Iran shorelines, the Iranians are going to panic and they're going to capitulate. And he was like, shock, why aren't they doing so? He genuinely believed that they were so weak that they would capitulate. And then he told leaders in the region when the war started, don't worry. I know you didn't want this, but don't worry. This will be over with in four days.

[00:25:08] He told Keir Starmer when he asked for his support in the war and Keir said, I need to go and do whatever consulting, et cetera, in the British government. And then Trump was kind of frustrated and said, well, don't take too long because this war is going to be over in three days, he told him. So he genuinely believed that. And I think it's precisely because he thought that it was easy, that he thought that this is not a problem. It is not a repeat of all the things that he had warned about.

[00:25:34] This is not a break of his promise because no one's going to notice that there was a war if it only lasts four days. It's not going to have any economic impact. It's not going to do any of these different things. That only comes if you fail. And you only fail if you go into a war that never had a good chance of succeeding in the first place. But this one, this is going to be a cakewalk just like Venezuela was.

[00:25:56] It's interesting to hear that because we know that folks in the DOD were on their own leaking to the press that Iran would not be a cakewalk, that our own war games were showing this would not be easy. I've seen some of those reports myself from my prior life. How did that information not make it to Trump? That just seems shocking. The entire military establishment universally, without fail, said this is not a good idea.

[00:26:23] And it had the same people that pulled off Venezuela, that crew, and they still couldn't get Trump to not make this colossal blunder. This is where the breakdown of the policy process comes in. In which decisions under normal circumstances, particularly decisions of this kind, have a very strict process in which they go through, in which information does come in. But in this case, it wasn't. I mean, to just give you an example.

[00:26:53] Right now, there are numerous journalists that actually have Trump's cell phone. And they keep on calling him. And every once in a while, he picks up. And once a week, they manage to get him on the phone for three minutes. And they'll write an entire column or 50 tweets about it. And he's just completely unfiltered. There's no one, there's no press secretary, no one that you have to go through. And that is very much how this entire policy process is.

[00:27:19] You have foreign governments that get direct access to Trump, and they can bypass everyone else in the U.S. government, including the intelligence agencies. And that's part of the reason why Joe Kent resigned. Because he felt that they had all the information, but their data, their conclusions, their analysis was not taken into account. Because they kept on just getting cut off by the Israelis who could go directly to Trump. And they could play his ego. They could play his psychology.

[00:27:47] And they kept on telling him, All these people who say that you can't do this, don't take them seriously. Because they told you, you can't do the strike against Soleimani. And you did. They said that you couldn't move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. And you did. They said that you couldn't recognize the Golan Heights being Israeli territory. And you did. And nothing happened. And they said that you couldn't take out Forlu. Because the Iranians would respond or walk out of the NPT. And none of that happened.

[00:28:16] They've been wrong on all of these different things. You're the only one that can do it. And you should. Because you have a golden opportunity. What's the point of a deal with Iran if you can just get rid of that regime? And that psychology worked. That argument worked with him. Particularly mindful of the fact that much of the rest of the U.S. government was shut out of the conversation. Yeah. What would a deal between the U.S. and Iran have to look like now to wrap this up? What would both sides actually have to agree to?

[00:28:43] And what would they have to be allowed to say about it in public? Well, both of them are going to have to try to sell something and say something to make it look as if they won. I think it's going to be very important for Trump to be able to say that this was a win. Because if it is a win, that's what erases everything else that happened up until this point. That's what enables him to, you know, instead of remembering the disaster of the war, the memory will be that, oh, this was actually a strong deal.

[00:29:11] So, you know, there was earlier a lot of different speculation that he would just, you know, he would dismiss all of the important things on the nuclear issue and just sign on to anything just to be able to say that he got a deal. I'm not seeing that happening at all. Or that he would just sign on to any deal exactly the same as the JCPOA, but just with his signature. I'm not seeing that either. He's negotiating very hard on some of the nuclear variables.

[00:29:38] And based on what I understand has come to at least the territory that they're in, it is in many ways much, much stronger than the JCPOA, the Obama deal. In fact, he could have gotten a deal that was stronger than the JCPOA already before this war. But he thought that he could get an even better deal by just getting rid of the regime. So, I think, you know, being able to have a victory narrative is crucial.

[00:30:04] But it's also crucial to make sure that your narrative of victory does not cancel out the other side's narrative of victory. Because if you do, you're not going to get a deal, right? And that's true for the Iranians as well. They have to also be very careful not to deny Trump's ability to his own home audience be able to say that this was a win. Because otherwise, none of them are going to be able to be satisfactory. And I don't know if they fully have that maturity on either side right now.

[00:30:31] I think we have seen that Trump suddenly has started to become much more disciplined on social media. He is not issuing the type of tweets he did two weeks ago. In which he, you know, was looking to humiliate the Iranians. It clearly didn't work in the sense of him achieving his deal. I mean, this may be how you do things when you want to buy a building in Manhattan. But that's not how you deal with the Iranians. We're hypersensitive to this issue. Hypersensitive. Particularly when it comes to how they deal with the United States.

[00:31:01] You know, one of the things that... And I think on the Iranian side, it's not just a narrative of victory. They need to get real sanctions released. Sustainable one. It's not just a nice to have. It's a must-have. Because their economy was already really in a bad shape before this war. Now they have $300 billion of additional damages.

[00:31:24] And they have a very upset population because of the killings that occurred in January 8th and 9th of this year. A wound that has not even begun to heal within society, but it's been put on pause because the country has been under attack. Once the war is over, the Iranian government is going to have to deal with massive internal problems. And they will need sanctions relief in order to be able to manage that. So that's why I say from their standpoint, it's a must-have. It's not a nice-to-have. And that goes way beyond what Obama offered.

[00:31:53] If Trump wants more than what Obama got on the nuclear issue, he's going to have to give way more than what Obama gave on the nuclear issue in terms of sanctions relief. Wasn't one of Trump's main critique of the JCPOA is that it removed secondary sanctions so European companies could go cash in on Iranian business, but it kept primary sanctions from America. So in a weird way, isn't his theory of victory removing the sanctions that prevents American businesses from going into Iran and making a ton of money? I personally think so.

[00:32:21] And I think that if he gets a deal in which he can say, look, on the nuclear variables, I outperformed Obama. And then at the same time, have an offensive strategy also in saying, look, I'm opening up the Iranian economy to American companies. This is going to be benefiting the American manufacturing industries. This is the largest economy that has been opened up since the fall of the Soviet Union.

[00:32:50] So, and there's a massive compatibility between the U.S. and the Iranian economy, much more so than there is between the Iranian and the Chinese economy, and certainly more so than between the Iranian and the Russian economy. So this would absolutely be beneficial. I did a study a couple of years ago on an econometric model to say, okay, if you take out sanctions and just look at what the trade should be between two countries with this degree of distance,

[00:33:17] but these type of sizes of economies, et cetera, et cetera, several different variables. And you just even it out based on how things look in the world on all of those variables between all combinations of countries. It showed that U.S. and Iran, Iran would become America's top 20 trading partner between the U.S. and Iran. The U.S. would be trading more with Iran than it does with Israel, more than it does with Spain. Under those completely normalized circumstances.

[00:33:45] So there's a massive compatibility. This would create jobs. I think most Americans care more about that than they care about some details about enrichment that they probably don't understand anyways. I don't understand them. Even though I work on this issue, I'm not a nuclear physicist. So I think he can get things in which what otherwise would be considered an American concession can actually be considered an American win. Because his mindset is just so different from previous American presidents.

[00:34:14] That really, they were at pain lifting sanctions. I mean, they were more in love with their sanctions than they were in love with an actual outcome in the policy, in the negotiations. Under those circumstances, I think he can go on the offensive. But I think if this goes on for too long and it just becomes more and more and more about the nuclear issue or the Strait of Hormuz, then he will have a harder time shifting the conversation to these economic benefits.

[00:34:40] One of the things he's floated out there is that, you know, if the rest of the Gulf states sign on to the Abraham Accords, he can call that a win and we can all, you know, sunset this conflict and move on with their lives. Do you think that even if it was politically viable domestically for these countries to sign on, would more signatures on the Abraham Accords actually improve regional stability? Or would that just flare up old tensions? The current structure of the Abraham Accord was not aimed at establishing security.

[00:35:10] It was essentially aimed to create an anti-Iranian alliance between Sunni states and Israel and keep American military domination in the region at a high level. It would be an absolute disaster. It would not bring about peace. It wouldn't bring about stability. And more importantly, it would entrench the United States further in the Middle East rather than allowing the United States to be able to extract itself from the Middle East, which is by now what four presidents in a row have promised that that's what they want to do.

[00:35:38] And I think the overwhelming majority of Americans would like to see as well. So no, I think the Abraham Accord would be an absolute disaster. Trump doesn't understand, it seems to me, the details of the Abraham Accord. He just sees it as a legacy thing. And the fact that he can say he got normalization between certain states. I mean, Kazakhstan just joined the Abraham Accord. Kazakhstan had already normalized relations with Iran. But they joined it because it makes them look good in Trump's eyes. It tells you how little he understands. But also, Trump at one point said Iran should join the Abraham Accord.

[00:36:08] It truly shows that he didn't understand the real point of the Abraham Accord because it was an anti-Iran alliance that was being created. How can that be an anti-Iran alliance if Iran joins it? It just completely negates the entire thing. I think there's certain instincts that are valuable. So yes, is it great if we actually get a regional security architecture in the region that enables the region to shoulder the responsibility of security of the region on their own shoulders? Absolutely. That's not the Abraham Accord.

[00:36:36] The Abraham Accord was designed to keep the United States in the Middle East. So if he wants a legacy issue, again, it's the legacy that matters, not what's inside the legacy. Then I think he can still turn that around, go for a different type of an architecture, an inclusive one. Call it peace because it actually would be peaceful. It wouldn't be the same thing such as, you know, normalizing relations with Israel and some of these states.

[00:37:03] And point to that as part of his legacy. He can still do something along these lines. But Abraham Accord and a bunch of these countries now under these circumstances, normalizing with Israel, first of all, it won't even happen. One or two states perhaps, but you're not going to get Saudi Arabia to do it. And if you don't get Saudi Arabia to do it, really, you're not making a big difference. I mean, Kazakhstan joining didn't make the slightest difference, of course.

[00:37:28] But I think, frankly, this is something that the Israelis and some of their supporters in Washington were pushing him to do because it was designed to be a poison pill. So it was designed to do something that would just make it impossible for him to actually get the nuclear deal. What do you think of the idea of this one floated out there that, you know, first Trump term comes around, Abraham Accords gets signed. Now we have states recognizing and normalizing relationships with Israel absent a resolution to the Palestinian issue. Hamas takes that and goes, OK, we're about to be cut off.

[00:37:58] We need to go full ham right now. Does October 7th. Israel rolls in massive genocide. Maybe you want to call it something else, but. Description is pretty good. Massive genocide in Gaza. Genocide seems to be a quite fitting description. Yeah. If you can't use it for that, I'm not sure what you can use it for. So war crimes, humanitarian catastrophe, substitute the word you want. That happens. Israel realizes it's losing the American public and goes, OK, now we need to press the American administration to go full ham on Iran.

[00:38:25] So in a way, this is the spiral effect of the original Abraham Accords being signed. Do you think that oversimplifies the case? No, no. Where do you think of that argument? You know, anything that you would have to put in 45 seconds by definition oversimplifies this. So obviously there's going to be a degree of simplification, but I think you're absolutely right. And this is part of the reason I said the Abraham Accords did not stabilize anything. He actually sowed the seeds for further conflict because it tried to completely hide the Palestinian issue.

[00:38:54] In fact, Kushner was very clear. He said, our aim is not to resolve the Palestinian issue. Our aim is to leapfrog, to move beyond the Palestinian issue. He said that because the argument was, let's just make sure that we have economic relations between these Arab states and Israel. And then later on, perhaps something can be done on the Palestinian issue. But we're not going to let the Palestinian issue be an obstacle to these other normalization, which means that the United States completely adopted the Israeli position.

[00:39:22] By the way, this was the direction the U.S. was moving in anyways. The United States' policy on Israel-Palestine had been overwhelmingly in favor of the Israelis and was overwhelmingly an obstacle to a two-state solution. I really strongly recommend all the viewers to read Rob Malley's book on this issue. He is a longtime U.S. negotiator. He was in the room. He was negotiating with Arafat. He was negotiating for the United States in these.

[00:39:50] And he's very explicit about it, that the U.S.'s role ended up becoming an obstacle to this. What Trump did with the Abram Accord is that he just fast-forwarded to the logical conclusion of America's policy, which would be to completely throw the Palestinians under the bus and just go for normalization. Take whatever leverage the Arab side had to get a solution to the Palestinian issue away. And it's just a typical thing that Trump does.

[00:40:15] Instead of allowing that process to move forward at its own pace, he just moved to the last station, to the end station of that policy right away. And then to kind of confirm or validate what I just said, the Biden administration did everything they could to build on the Abram Accord. So this was not a Trump-unique thing. They set aside all of their other priorities in the Middle East.

[00:40:40] The only thing that was important to that was to get the Saudis to normalize with Israel. And they even pursued it after October 7th as well. So it shows you that there's a continuity. It is the same direction. It's just that Trump dramatically accelerated the speed in which it was moving in that same direction. It's a disaster for the region. It's a disaster for the United States.

[00:41:04] Because I think the critical thing for the United States, this goes back to our differences between restrainers and liberal hegemony, proponents of liberal hegemony, is that we don't think that the United States should be present in the Middle East because the region is no longer vital to the United States. We're not the ones buying this all. The Strait of Hormuz closure, frankly, has affected other countries far more than has affected the United States because we're not buying that all. I'm not saying it's good that it's closed.

[00:41:31] I'm just saying that we have significantly less vulnerability to this region. We should not accept that anyone else established hegemony over there, but we don't have to be present militarily. In fact, look at these wars that the U.S. have had recently against Iran. Every time the United States is going to attack Iran, it has to empty all of its bases in the region. So if the bases are not useful in a war against a country that they're there to deter against, then what are they there for? Right.

[00:42:01] Yeah. If all the power projection comes off the aircraft carriers that you can park wherever you want, do you need the real estate? Exactly. Exactly. So, but the Abram Accord further entrust the United States in the region, and that's why I think it's absolutely detrimental to U.S. interests. What do you think the impact of House representatives actually passing a resolution demanding that Trump either gets approval for the war or pulls everyone out of the waters around Iran?

[00:42:26] Do you think that's going to push Trump and further constrain him and make him go into negotiations? Or do you think that the, you know, public slight he just took is going to make it more difficult for him to find his way to a face-saving resolution? No, I think it's the former. The cat's out of the back. The mask is off. He cannot pretend that this is not an issue.

[00:42:51] We always knew that at some point, Republicans in the House and in the Senate would cave before he caved. Because he's not on the ballot in November. They are. They will pay the price of this war before he does. And at some point, they would break with him to save themselves. And in some ways, this has perhaps happened later than many of us expected. But it has now happened. It's a barometer of where things are heading.

[00:43:20] And had it happened earlier, I think there would have been more pressure on him. Does this resolution, even if it passes in the Senate, force Trump's hand? No. But it's a barometer that shows that he's losing his own base and his own party over this issue. And again, it goes back to what we talked about earlier on. There's two different timelines. Does America have more time on its side or does the Iranians? The blockade of the blockade limits Iran's timeline. But at the same time, all of the other economic consequences of this war,

[00:43:49] which then translate into political challenges in Washington and throughout the country, limits Trump's timeline. Regardless of how much he makes statements saying, I don't care about the midterms. I don't care about how this is oil prices are affecting the pocketbook of Americans. He can say that as much as he wants. It affects him. It limits him. It constrains him. And it is part of the negotiation at this point. Well, speaking of time, we're coming up on ours. But what is it that you're watching to see what happens next?

[00:44:19] Where are you focusing as you're trying to unpack this? When it comes to the very immediate thing, I'm watching to see, is the United States going to go back to attacking Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf? Or did the escalation by the Iranians lead to a scenario in which both sides will now take a step back? If we have a step back, then I think it's going to give renewed momentum for the negotiations. It doesn't resolve anything in and of itself.

[00:44:46] If we don't, then I think we are really heading towards a very dangerous situation in which things can really escalate out of control. What is very important to understand, though, that yes, Trump played down the risk of the damage that the Iranians committed in Kuwait and elsewhere. But at the same time, neither side has broken off talks. Neither side have said that talks and diplomacy is over. At one point, the Iranians threatened, although it was misreported, they threatened to suspend talks, but they never did.

[00:45:16] So diplomacy has continued. If that changes and they actually break off, that's a very, very bad sign. The third thing is, of course, what happens in Lebanon. That's where Netanyahu has the easiest way of sabotaging this diplomacy by escalating in Lebanon. And that's part of the reason, of course, why Trump had that colorful conversation with him a couple of days ago. Cool. Well, where can folks find your stuff if they're looking for more of your work?

[00:45:42] I hope they subscribe to my Substack, which is treatupparsi.substack.com. They can find me on Twitter as well, which is tparsi, although increasingly I'm not so sure how much longer I can survive on some of those other platforms. That's why Substack has become my home of choice at this point. And of course, they should go to the Quincy Institute's website, which is quincyinst.org. Awesome. Links to everything mentioned will be in the show notes. Treatuparsi, thank you so much for talking with us today. Really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.