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Rachel Abrams: From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams and this is the Daily. On Monday, the US and Iran exchanged attacks and increasingly fiery rhetoric for the third day in a row, leaving both sides on the verge of a full-blown return to the war. Today, my colleague David Sanger explains what brought us to this point and what this new phase tells us about how difficult it will be for the war to end. It's Tuesday, July 14th. David Sanger, welcome back to the Daily.

David Sanger: Good to be with you, Rachel.

Rachel Abrams: David, the last time we had you on the show, Iran and the United States had just reached what felt like at the time to be quite a shaky ceasefire. We knew that the agreement had been pretty rushed and since then it feels like everything has basically just fallen apart. The US just announced a blockade of Iranian ports that's going into effect Tuesday afternoon. And so I guess my first question is, is the agreement that we last talked to you about even still in effect?

David Sanger: There's not much of it left. Um, we all suspected, Rachel, that this agreement had the seeds of its own destruction built in, but I think even the most cynical about how the Iranians and the Americans would interpret it differently did not expect it to fall apart quite as quickly as it did. And I think if you're trying to figure out why that's happened, it basically lies in the fact that it was so hastily pieced together. It was so hastily announced when Vice President Vance was sent over to sign a document, he wouldn't even shake hands with the Iranians and they wouldn't shake hands with him.

Rachel Abrams: It was bound to fail.

David Sanger: Right.

Rachel Abrams: You had basically told us, I think, that this agreement essentially kicked the can down the road on a lot of of really big important issues between the United States and Iran that both sides needed to hash out.

David Sanger: That's right, Rachel. And we were all pretty focused at the time on what needed to be accomplished in this 60-day long negotiation. The first issue of course was the nuclear program on which the 14-point statement only said that Iran would blend down its nuclear material, essentially dilute it so that it couldn't be used for weapons. But it left unclear who was going to ultimately have possession of that nuclear material or whether there would be negotiations to limit Iran's missile program or whether there would be any language in a permanent agreement that would benefit the protesters who have taken to the streets. But while we were looking at all of that, Rachel, fact of the matter is we never even got to that negotiation. There were some brief discussions, but what overwhelmed the entire thing was poor wording on the question of what it even meant to open the Strait of Hormuz.

Rachel Abrams: I want to talk about that poor wording for a second. What specifically did both sides agree to vis-a-vis the strait?

David Sanger: Well, Rachel, the controversy really focuses on the meaning of the fifth paragraph of this very short agreement.

Rachel Abrams: Do you want to read it to us?

David Sanger: Yeah, I'll just read it to you. It says, "Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa." It's a single sentence.

Rachel Abrams: Seems pretty clear, but there are some wiggle words in it. It's "best efforts for safe passage." And the interpretation that the American side was pushing was that this commits the Iranians to opening up the narrow Strait of Hormuz, which has three different channels. One near Iran, one in the middle of the strait, one closer to Oman, and that traffic would essentially be restored to what it was before the war started on February 28th. But the fact of the matter is, Rachel, that never happened. The Iranians immediately said, "Yes, we'll reopen the strait, but we're only going to open up one channel. It's the channel closest to Iran, the one that takes you through Iranian territorial waters."

Rachel Abrams: And can you just explain, David, these three channels? Why are they only suggesting that that one should be open?

David Sanger: Because that channel is the one that's closest in their control. It's within their territorial waters. They patrol it with their own ships and ultimately if that's the only channel open, it's the one they plan to go charge a toll or some kind of service fee for if you want to get through the Strait of Hormuz.

Rachel Abrams: So is this basically coming down to two different interpretations about what it means for the strait to be open? The United States thinks the strait is the strait. It's all open. And the Iranians are saying well actually there's three channels and we can just choose to open one of them.

David Sanger: Well, that's right. And I asked some administration officials who were briefing us on Friday, was this just a difference of interpretation? And one of the very senior people who was involved in this said, no, no, no, no. The Iranians understood from the beginning that the open strait meant it was entirely open.

Rachel Abrams: The Iranian explanation is no. There's nothing in that language that says we had to fully open it. It just said we had to make our best efforts to make sure there was safe passage and the safest way to take your cargo in and out is right along the Iranian coast.

David Sanger: This is why contract attorneys hammer out every single word of a contract so that there is not wording that is open to such ambiguity that can be exploited. It's also why very experienced diplomats, especially diplomats who have dealt with Iran in the past, make sure that the wording of international agreements is as bulletproof as a contract would be. But in this case, we don't have people who have negotiated with Iran before on this kind of issue involved in the talks. The president quite deliberately put this in the hands of his vice president JD Vance, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, his chief envoy Steve Wickoff. They've negotiated deals, particularly Mr. Kushner and Mr. Wickoff in the past, real estate deals largely, but they weren't involved in the Obama era negotiations that the Trump administration has so denounced. If they had checked with a couple of those diplomats, I think they probably would have been warned that this wording left huge loopholes.

Rachel Abrams: Not that it necessarily matters, David, but from your perspective, is one side's interpretation of this paragraph 5 language clearly correct or incorrect?

David Sanger: Look, I think if you came to this completely as a blank slate and you read the words that were in front of you, you would immediately think the entire strait was open. But the Iranians are known for reinterpreting this kind of thing. They do it with nuclear inspections and where the inspectors can go. We've seen them do this in a range of other areas. So, it really was no surprise when you saw wording like best efforts and no definition of what it meant to open the strait that there was probably going to be trouble here.

Rachel Abrams: Right. You're basically saying this is quite predictable because Iranians are known for perhaps in the perspective of the United States operating in bad faith.

David Sanger: Let me put it this way. When the document was first published in mid June, I ran the wording by people who have negotiated nuclear accords and other accords with Iran in the past and it was the first thing they flagged to me as potential trouble.

Rachel Abrams: And it seems like they were right. It seems like trouble has quite clearly borne out.

David Sanger: Oh yeah, they were 100% right. But you know what really strikes me, Rachel, in this is thinking about the way the Trump administration was discussing this agreement with Iran just three weeks ago. At the time, JD Vance on his way to Switzerland to sign this agreement said something pretty interesting. He said, "The coolest thing about the progress we've made over the last few weeks is that you see people within the Iranian system, senior leadership say, you know what, we may have some animosity. We may have some mistrust, but we recognize the way that we've done business with the United States for 47 years is a mistake. Let's try something else. We're going to..." So the essence of JD Vance's argument was that in these negotiations, they had not only won out in the wording, they had actually converted the Iranian leadership over to believing that we're in new territory here and we're going to put all of the disputes of the past aside and strike a deal that'll be profitable for Iran and will, of course, bring down prices for Americans. And you know that didn't take that long for that to fall apart.

Rachel Abrams: In fact, it was only last week as the shooting was starting again in the strait that President Trump called those same leaders scum.

David Sanger: Right.

Rachel Abrams: And said they're sick people. They're led by sick people and they're vicious, violent people. And as far as I'm concerned, it's just a waste of time dealing with them.

David Sanger: And I believe he also said at the time that as far as he was concerned, the ceasefire was off.

David Sanger: He did. He said it's over, but that negotiations could keep going on. Now, I don't know how you do those two parts because the ceasefire was essentially one of the legs of the stool that kept everything together while they did this bigger negotiation. And today that leg's been kicked out. And if anything, Rachel, we are now as far apart as we were before the memorandum of understanding was signed because we're back to a blockade of all traffic going in and out of Iranian ports. In other words, an effort to try to starve out the Iranians by cutting off their oil revenue. We're back to a position where the US Navy is stuck in the strait and there's active fire. And while we're not bombing the entire country the way the US was in March and the beginning of April, we are back to a period of on-and-off hostility. Neither war nor peace, but certainly a situation that the president will find very difficult to extricate himself from.

Rachel Abrams: We'll be right back.

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Rachel Abrams: So David, you just said that the United States is essentially stuck in kind of a quagmire right now. Where do both sides stand just in terms of negotiating? Like are they even trying to negotiate any kind of agreement?

David Sanger: Well, this has never really been a true negotiation where you sit down at the table and have a back and forth. And you know, for all of the critiques of the Obama era deal, at least at that time, the chief negotiator for the United States, Wendy Sherman, sat down opposite her counterpart in the Iranian leadership, and the secretary of state at the time, John Kerry, sat down opposite Javeed Zarif, who was the Iranian foreign minister at the time, and they hashed things out. And sometimes when it got too heated, they took a walk around downtown Vienna to go sort it out. That's not what's going on here. What's going on here is messages being passed through the Qataris or through the Pakistanis. It's a pretty stilted process and they haven't really gotten to even the first steps of writing a comprehensive nuclear agreement. And it's very hard for me to imagine, Rachel, right now with the two sides actively shooting at each other, the ceasefire declared off, a blockade back on the Iranian ports, that you could even start that process up again.

Rachel Abrams: Right.

David Sanger: And to the extent that they are talking now, it's really just about free passage in the strait and maybe even getting back to a ceasefire. But all of those basics, the sort of fundamentals you need in order to start a conversation, that's what's collapsed here.

Rachel Abrams: Basically, what you're saying is that they cannot even begin to negotiate on some of these really complicated, intractable problems until they get the strait open, which just to remind everybody was open before this war started.

David Sanger: That's right. It was wide open. It was wide open during the 1979 revolution. It was wide open during the Iran Iraq war. It was wide open during our nuclear crisis. And now, of course, it's sucking up all the oxygen in the negotiating room.

Rachel Abrams: It feels, David, like the administration has sort of been treating the strait as if it's like the easiest problem to solve compared to all these other issues that you've described. But what it sounds like has been revealed to us is that the strait is kind of an issue that's just as intractable as the others. Do you think that's fair?

David Sanger: It is because the Iranians have discovered that it was a lot easier to close down the strait and the weapon was a lot more powerful than they had imagined. And so now they have no interest in giving it up. Look, they only have two forms of leverage against the United States. One is the ability to build a nuclear weapon on fairly short notice and that's not really available to them now. It hasn't been for a year since the US attacked the three major nuclear sites at Natanz, Fordo and Isvahan.

Rachel Abrams: The second piece of leverage they have is the ability to cause havoc in the world economy and world energy markets.

David Sanger: Now, Rachel, that is not necessarily a lasting power for the Iranians. You're already seeing countries figure out how to get energy elsewhere. Over time, you're going to see more pipelines built to avoid having to send oil across the strait. The Saudis have already reactivated an unused pipeline they had to route around the strait. So the Iranians know that this is not going to be a forever weapon, but it's pretty good for right now.

Rachel Abrams: If that power is, as you described, just kind of short-term, what is the value in deploying it? Like what is the endgame?

David Sanger: Well, I'm not sure that they've got a long-term endgame here, but the value of deploying it right now is they are showing that they can invoke as much pain on the United States as the US can invoke on Iran by resuming military action. And what we've learned over the past few months is that the Iranians have a two-step play every time things get rough with the United States again. Step one is try to shut down the strait and step two is direct missiles or drones at US bases in the Arab world that they can strike because they're relatively nearby. What they're doing is sending a message that they can still target their Arab neighbors, that there's a price for hosting the United States. You know, as one former official put it to me, for years the Iranians sort of kept a blind eye to the fact that the US was keeping all these bases in the Arab world and now they're outright attacking them.

Rachel Abrams: It feels David like what you were saying is that Iran's main goal here is simply to demonstrate to the United States that hey watch it because we can actually really hurt you.

David Sanger: I think that's right Rachel but I think it goes deeper than that. Coming off of the funeral services last week for Ayatollah Ham who was killed in the first day of the war. I think that the message from the Iranians was we went up against the world's biggest superpower and we survived.

Rachel Abrams: Mhm.

David Sanger: And then they tried to go buy us off with some kind of agreement to give up our nuclear program and give up control over our own territory. And we're going to show them that we're not just motivated by money, although obviously the Iranians would love to be able to sell their oil on the open markets, but that this is about pride. It's about nationalism. It's about showing that a larger power, an imperial power in the minds of the Iranians is not going to push them around. And I think you could argue that that was something the administration missed from the beginning. That they viewed this fundamentally as the equivalent of a real estate deal that everybody's going to act in their rational economic interest. And in fact, the administration was up against a revolutionary government whose ideology has been hinged for 47 years on direct opposition to the United States.

Rachel Abrams: It's really interesting, David, that the United States may have totally misunderstood or misinterpreted or sort of misjudged Iran's motivations here. And yet, as we've talked about on the show before, Iran knows that time is on its side, right? Because they know that the longer they keep the strait closed, the higher gas prices will be. That is painful for Trump. We're entering a midterm. So, it almost feels like they kind of understand us, but perhaps we have not really understood them.

David Sanger: That's right, Rachel. But I think they also understand one other thing. President Trump has said publicly a few times. He's just let it slip. You know, I can't fight this war the way I'd like to fight it, which was basically be putting ground troops on to take the nuclear material, grab Car Island where they export oil from, do all the things you would do if you were at complete and total war with the country. And he can't do it because he knows the American people and the Congress would not stand for a ground war that results in significant casualties. And so the result is he has been relying on the power of the US military to bomb Iran into submission. Then he got to the second phase of this Rachel where he believed that even if he couldn't make the government collapse, he could make them give up their nuclear program. When he couldn't do that and oil prices went so high, he called for a ceasefire and then eventually turned to diplomacy. And it's that diplomacy that has now fallen apart perhaps because it was rushed. And now he's looking for plan C or D depending on where you think we are.

Rachel Abrams: And that's kind of what I'm curious about, David. What phase of the war do you think we are entering now?

David Sanger: I think we're in the phase of the war where we're trying again things that didn't work the first time.

Rachel Abrams: Mhm.

David Sanger: You know, when he did the blockade for the first time, he said, "This is going to cause the Iranian economy to collapse within days. They won't have any place to pump their oil. Their tanks are full and so forth." And then 3 weeks ago when he did the agreement, he essentially allowed the Iranians to go ship that oil around the world and get dollars for it. Now he's trying that whole process all over again. But the administration has not made an argument to us yet that this is going to be any more effective the second time than it was the first.

Rachel Abrams: Do you think though, David, even though we seem to be going back to square one, do you get any indication from your reporting that the Trump administration is in some way beginning to reckon with the idea that there is no quick way to end this conflict?

David Sanger: Rachel, it's the most fascinating question because I think until a week or two ago, I would have said no. But in recent days, I've heard the doubts voiced sort of in smaller voices in unanswered questions. And I think they now recognize that a war that they initially told Americans would be over in four to six weeks. a war where the president said repeatedly, "Oh, I just need another week or so to clean this up and the forces will begin withdrawing." I think they now realize that they are stuck there for some time. That if the Iranians are going to claim sovereignty over the strait of Hormuz, that there is no way to withdraw a significant American naval force if you are determined to keep that commerce open. You may remember that when we were closing in on this 14-point plan, the president called me. I was in London. I think you and I talked the same night, right? And what he said was, I'm going to try this agreement, but if it doesn't work, I'm going to patrol the entire Middle East, basically ad infinitum, and charge everyone in the region, the Arab states, everybody who's protected by the US, a 20% fee, 20% of the value of the cargo they are delivering. and the US will basically be the paid peacekeeper of the region. It was kind of a shocking thing because his own secretary of state was telling us that the goal was to actually restore the strait to the pre-war period where there were no charges for anything. No tolls, no service fees. And here was his own boss, the president, saying, "Yeah, there'll be a 20% security charge that goes to the taxpayers of the United States." He dropped it after that phone call until Monday.

Rachel Abrams: Well, we're taking over the strait. They have nothing. They've got nothing. So

David Sanger: when he went on Fox News and repeated that exact same concept, it will become the guardian of the strait. Maybe we'll call it the guardian angel of the strait. Well, inherent in that concept is sort of an admission that the US could be there for months, for years until there's an alternative way to get the region's oil to the markets of the world. And even if we are not at full-scale war, even if we are just caught on the precipice between war and peace, more like a counterterrorism operation than a full-scale war, that is the definition of the kind of forever war presence, even if we're not taking significant casualties. Unfortunately, so far we have not. But that is exactly what his MAGA supporters were worried about with Iran, that we would go in and get stuck.

Rachel Abrams: David Sanger, thank you so much.

David Sanger: Always great to be with you, Rachel.

Rachel Abrams: We'll be right back.

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Rachel Abrams: Here's what else you need to know today. A federal immigration agent shot and killed a person in a vehicle on Monday morning in Maine. The second fatal shooting in a week involving an ICE agent firing into a vehicle. Agents were looking for a person who was in the country illegally, according to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security, and they stopped a vehicle belonging to what the agency described as a quote illegal alien. The agency claimed that the driver then quote weaponized his vehicle toward law enforcement, prompting an officer to open fire. It was unclear whether the driver was the same person that agents were searching for. No video footage had emerged as of Monday night to confirm the government's version of events. And

Governor Henry McMaster: Lindsay took care of his little sister in years long departed. It's my honor to ask his little sister Darlene Graham to finish his work for him. Now,

Rachel Abrams: Governor Henry McMaster of South Carolina said that he would appoint Senator Lindsey Graham's sister, Darlene Graham Nordone, to finish his Senate term after Graham's death on Saturday. McMaster said that he asked Nordone to fill the seat after they spoke immediately after Graham's death and that she had accepted quote through tears.

Darlene Graham Nordone: Lindsay has always been there for me and now I will be there for him. My brother

Rachel Abrams: Today's episode was produced by Asta Chatterbatty, Chris Benderev, and Michelle Bonja. It was edited by Chris Haxel, and Devon Taylor and contains music by Marian Lozano. Our theme music is by Wonderly. This episode was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. That's it for the daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.

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