Host: 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.

Trump: I've made clear from the beginning of Operation Epic Fury that we will continue until our objectives are fully achieved. Thanks to the progress we've made, I can say tonight that we are on track to complete all of America's military objectives shortly, very shortly. We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We're going to bring them back to the stone ages where they belong.

Host: It's all 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 up the Strait of Hormuz. It has seen sanctions lifted on its oil and it's 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.

Host: The promise Trump made was an end to threats from Iran. He repeated that promise on Wednesday night. Tonight, every American can look forward to a day when we are finally free from the wickedness of Iranian aggression and the spectre of nuclear blackmail. Because of the actions we have taken, we are on the cusp of ending Iran's sinister threat to America and the world. 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 a 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 times.com.

Host: Suzanne Maloney, welcome to the show.

Suzanne Maloney: 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?

Suzanne Maloney: 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. Um, 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 and very much prepared for. And it, I, I think he's probably getting different opinions. Um, 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.

Host: 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?

Suzanne Maloney: 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. Um, he was looking for another 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 long-standing concerns on the part of the United States. They really do date back to even the the negotiations that the Obama administration led that produced a 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 um he's been pushing for uh throughout both his first and second terms and he's not able to achieve conclusively through military action.

Host: How did the Iranians respond?

Suzanne Maloney: The Iranians effectively um 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 uh the same sort of dynamics that preceded the June war um where negotiations were really just a prelude to military action and in some effect to some extent a ruse to uh 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. Uh, in the best of circumstances, this is a regime that has, you know, sort of based its ideology on anti-Americanism. It has often um frequently, in fact, refuse 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, um, 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.

Host: Why do they believe they have the upper hand?

Suzanne Maloney: 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 is to was to strike at ships that were passing through the Gulf and um effectively persuade insurers and shipping companies and uh oil companies to avoid the Gulf unless they had some kind of assurance from the Iranians that they could pass. Since what we've seen is, you know, originally in the pre-war period, there would be anywhere from 130 to 140 tankers traveling to and from uh over the Strait of Hormuz uh every day. Um we've seen only a handful take place over the course of the past month. And that has had a severe impact on um 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.

Host: But but go level, 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 US 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, um other kind of key components of the global economy rising, but so what? That's pain for them too. What why why do they seem so confident?

Suzanne Maloney: They can afford to wait. They have already suffered, as you know, tremendous losses to the leadership. This has had a terrible impact on um Iranian cities across the country. But in fact, you know, in effect, they're able to um 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 um political standing and uh 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 to um hear from all of its partners and allies when it's um engaged in diplomacy that they are looking to see an end to this war too. And so for the Iranians, they're prepared. This is an existential crisis. They're prepared to to wait this out as long as they can. And I think that's the real question now. Who blinks first?

Host: 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 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 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. Um 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 2 to three or 4 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 at is that accurate how you complicate that? Talk to me a bit about that that that question of the coming timing.

Suzanne Maloney: 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 the we've already seen rapid and severe increases in price prices of uh oil and other products in Asia and that's been uh they're they're closer to the source. Um, and as prices normalize over time, as the disruption is priced in, we will be seeing not just four and five and $6 uh prices for gasoline at the pump, but much much higher. And it will play out, as you note, in all sectors of the economy, particularly some of the key sectors that that are crucial for the whole affordability debate here in the United States, food and commodity prices. Um, chips are going to be impacted by the limits in supply of helium. And so that will have an impact on all the tech that we buy. Everything from our televisions to our cars could be impacted as a result of this. So you know, Prime Minister Modi in India compared this to effectively COVID and the pandemic and the the impact on global supply chains. I think that that is a very apt comparison particularly if this extends over the course of another month or so. So are we moving into a period now where the asymmetric balance of the two sides weapons are are are changing that?

Suzanne Maloney: We have done a tremendous amount of damage to Iran. We've killed many of the senior leadership and they have effectively absorbed that. The question of what we can do next that is worse than what we've already done. It's not impossible to imagine that all those things like say taking Karg Island expose us to much more risk. Whereas for Iran, the weapon they have been using which is choking off the Strait of Hormuz is about to become a much more potent and powerful weapon because a shortage has become real and material as opposed to notional.

Host: Yes, I think that's exactly right.

Suzanne Maloney: And um from the Iranian perspective, they now believe that they have survived this war. The regime was not taken down even though Ali Khamenei, the individual who had been the supreme leader for 37 years was killed on the first day of the war and a number of other senior figures have been eliminated. And we see this happening on on an ongoing basis. But if regime change was one of the goals of the war from the Trump administration and of course this was something that President Trump's first messages around this war really highlighted the Iranians now believe that they have been able to survive and that the regime itself despite it having been grievously wounded will remain intact. That is something that is uh also quite a threat for their neighbors. And so we we do see this I think debate happening both in public and certainly in private between the United States and some of its regional partners, the United Arab Emirates, the Saudis, the Qataris and others who are very concerned about being left with a wounded, embittered and emboldened Iran on their doorstep.

Suzanne Maloney: Um an Iran that still has managed to preserve its missiles and its drones and its capability to fire on its neighbors and also by the way has some stockpile of highly enriched uranium perhaps buried under the ground in Isfahan, perhaps dispersed at other sites and whatever restraint they had around their nuclear program um is likely to be um eliminated as well in the aftermath of this crisis. We may see a regime that would be looking to move very quickly to nuclear weapons capability.

Host: This maybe brings up Iran's counter proposal. We mentioned the Trump administration's 15-point peace plan. There's been talk of a five-point plan from the Iranians. What's been in that plan?

Suzanne Maloney: Well, the Iranians would like um compensation for the the suffering and the economic losses that they've experienced during the war. They would like to retain some control over the Strait of Hormuz and effectively continue to monetize their ability to determine who and what might pass through this particularly strategic waterway. And so they're looking to come out of this war, I think, in a stronger position. And that's not entirely inconceivable. It's going to be, you know, a regime which has taken enormous hits. The country um has suffered um tremendous losses in terms of its productive capabilities, in terms of its own economy. And as we know that was in pretty dire straits. Um you know the economy had collapsed to a point where people went to the streets back in January in very large numbers all around the country. So they're facing a really difficult situation. But their goal is to essentially use their leverage at this key moment to ensure that they come out in a stronger position.

Host: There is a difference between these two plans as I understand them which is Trump's plan 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 and the sanctions 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 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.

Suzanne Maloney: I think that's um to some extent the truth. But they do want the the reparations. They do want the sort of acknowledgement 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 um highly unpredictable and no one wants to give Iran that kind of control. Is it under anybody's power to deny it to them?

Host: Well, this is the question. I mean, there it certainly would be a military solution if we were prepared to pay the cost. It would be, you know, very time consuming, very costly and of course, we would um 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 um mitigating factors uh or mitigating missions. The escort effort that has been uh put underway with some support from the UK and others in Europe that would enable um tanker some amount of tanker traffic to reopen. So there are avenues that we have to try to undertake this without conceding to the Iranians. I think again you know the best and the best solution for everyone here is one that 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.

Host: Even for President Trump, the velocity at which his statements have become self-contradictory has accelerated. Uh you will listen to him within a single paragraph, it seems to me, take positions that are diametrically opposed to each other. But so I find it hard to 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 2 to 3 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 UK said, you know, you want the oil, you go do something. I weaken 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. Seems very embittered towards countries who 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?

Suzanne Maloney: Well, the logic of the president um is somewhat questionable. It's not clear to me or to anyone who understands the economics of the energy markets that uh you know if the strait remain closed that somehow the prices 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 um markets and 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 um 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 Iran Islamic Republic of Iran that was taken by the United States and Israel um you know I think would mean the end of some of those very long-standing partnership ship 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 and that 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.

Host: I don't know that Trump fears relinquishing that role for America. So so let's take him at his word or that particular version of his word for for one moment. Let's say in two weeks he announces, "We're done. We have hit the military targets one 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?

Suzanne Maloney: 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 to opportunity to 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 uh on on our own doorstep very quickly. We're not insulated from um these dynamics around the world and uh you know we would probably um wind up with um 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 um 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.

Host: 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, uh, they have a more than even odds view that the US 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 uh actions connect. Um but I do think it's a realistic possibility that we will see American forces occupying some or attempting to occupy some uh ground positions in Iran. Um the most obvious contenders are Karg 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 at which the tankers are loaded. And if that Karg 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 that Iran would feel some pressure because its economy would be hit. And what they've been able to do is 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 uh on Karg Island um 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 um 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 uh 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 well as some response from the international community led by the United States to reopen it. You know the the military options for the United States in terms of reopening the strait are are not particularly attractive ones. This is a a very small and narrow passageway, but the entirety literal coast of the Persian Gulf would have to be defended if we were going to ensure that we could um have uh normal tanker traffic moving through the Gulf. And you'd really have to occupy a significant swath of territory because obviously those troops would be vulnerable to Iranian attacks. So, it's not uh it's not something that five or 10 or 20,000 troops are going to be able to do over a sustained period of time in an effective way. I think this this idea that Karg Island or Qeshm Island, which is another large uh strategically positioned island in uh the Gulf or taking parts of Iran's coastline, um you know, they sound great on paper. In practice, they don't fix the problem quickly or neatly, and they probably result in a large number of casualties for the United States. And I think that all of this just underscores that there wasn't really a plan thought through around um this military operation. The president and Prime Minister Netanyahu seem to have engaged in magical thinking that somehow that the regime which had been heavily weakened by the internal protests by the June war that had obliterated in the president's words the nuclear program and by the erosion of Iran's proxy militias around the region over the course of the past several years. And the presumption seems to have been that the regime would just collapse on day one or two or three. That hasn't happened. And it doesn't appear likely to happen, at least under the current circumstances. And so we're what we're stuck with is just an array of very bad options, bad diplomatic options, bad military options.

Host: I don't really understand in a long-term way what that achieves in a world where you are not committing the ground forces necessary for regime change and trying to install and secure your own regime. You can, you know, plausibly land our forces and, you know, secure the strait for a period of time, but so long as the Iranian regime is in place, eventually they will take it back. And what has not been discussed, certainly what the American people have not been prepared for or asked to prepare for, what Congress has not been prepared for or asked to prepare for, is a regime change and rebuilding operation such that there's not a an ongoing threat to American troops or ongoing capacity of the Iranian regime to secure the strait. The idea that we are just going to be stationed in Iran in a extended way holding the strait as the regime rebuilds itself and presumably launches constant asymmetric attacks on our forces doesn't seem like a plausible long-term equilibrium to me.

Suzanne Maloney: No, I think you said it better than I possibly could. That this isn't really there there isn't really a military solution to the strait that can be achieved by the United States as long as the regime remains in power. The Islamic Republic was in intended to fall as a result of this uh military operation by the United States in Israel. When that didn't happen, I think the the president didn't really have any other options. It's clear that, you know, he has campaigned really and in some ways he was precient in in appreciating the impact of the quote unquote forever wars on the American people, on the American economy. Something that has been a long um trend and theme in his own political career from his first bid for the presidency throughout his first term and and again in this term. And yet he has been very prone to using military action in this second Trump term. But in discreet limited ways that were intended as decapitation strikes or other you know very small bore efforts and I it seems that he didn't fully recognize the potential fallout from an Iran strike that there was no way to decapitate the regime and quickly move to some kind of an alternative power that would be more friendly to the United States. It simply doesn't exist within the Islamic Republic.

Host: Well, he seems to me to have had two theories of this. One theory was the regime will fall as the Iranian people rise up to destroy it. And the other, which he talked about at other times, was more the Venezuela option, that he would decapitate the regime, they would kill. And that a layer or two down there would be some set of pragmatic, more business-minded, more transactional leaders who would cut a deal with the US that, you know, they would get our support, the kind of structure of the regime could remain in place, but they would be friendlier to our interest and do what we said when we told them to do it. And it seems when neither of those things happened, and I I'd be curious for your perspective on why they didn't happen, but when neither of them happened, there was actually never a plan C.

Suzanne Maloney: Yes, I think that's exactly right. And I think neither of those outcomes happened for very much the same reason, which is that this is a deeply embedded regime and one that has very strong control over all aspects of society, the economy, and the government. 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 uh the decapitation happened on the first day died there was um 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 um uh sending text messages. The pace of executions of dissident 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 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 uh religious credentials, less political experience, but is very closely aligned with the Revolutionary Guard and is likely to govern in a much more author even more authoritarian way than his father. And that's been true of many of the figures who've come into senior positions um 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.

Host: Trump told the Financial Times, speaking here of Khamenei, who's now the 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?

Host: The speaker of Iran's parliament, who's also a former IRGC commander, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, he doesn't seem amendable to negotiation. I've heard from many people the I believe that he's one of the the key people in charge. But but to the point you're making, you 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 what is Iran learning here? What is the perspective on the on on the war and 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?

Suzanne Maloney: 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 uh set of strikes. This is what they experienced um 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.

Host: I want to ask about some of these other joint war aims of of America and and Israel and and and I want to do so with the recognition that maybe our aims somewhat diverge, but certainly Benjamin 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 um you know about a year ago. We were told after that that the Iranian nuclear program had been obliterated that that this was done. Um 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 ensuring the state of the goal of ensuring Iran will never have a nuclear weapon?

Suzanne Maloney: I think we are still um 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. The 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 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 knowhow to build the machines and and create the infrastructure, they can get there again. And you know what we know is that Ayat, the supreme leader who was killed was in fact one of the sources of some constraint on the decision to move forward uh or not with a weapons program. Iran had a weapons program which it put on ice in 2003 after the US invasion of Iraq. The intelligence community has been somewhat um uh confident that that uh weapons program w 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 in this second round of war.

Host: How about the ballistic missiles program?

Host: You know, if you listen to Secretary of Defense of War Pete Hugsf in his commentary, we're always pretty close to destroying Iran's ability to fire missiles, to have offensive capability. Um, 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 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?

Host: Countries learn things during wars and Ukraine is a very different country in terms of its knowhow in fighting, in terms of what it produces and how it produces it than it was before Russia's invasion. What is Iran learning during this war? Assuming some coming scenario, you know, whether it's in 2 weeks or 6 months where America and Israel are not bombing any longer. What will Iran have learned and how will that in your view change the way it tries to rebuild its defense, its deterrent capability, its strategic capabilities? What what have we turned Iran into here under this pressure?

Suzanne Maloney: I think they've learned a lot of very dangerous lessons. And this is something that we know the Iranians have studied not just America's wars. They've studied their own wars. The Iran-Iraq war was the subject of like a 100-volume study by the Revolutionary Guard. And this is something that the entire Iranian leadership has essentially been tutored on over the course of its of their careers. And so they're watching this war. And I think some of the lessons they're taking are that uh time can be on their side. They can actually seize the strait and then they have the upper hand. That ingenuity and um some of the same skills that they used to to sustain the war with Iraq at a time where they were largely cut off from international weapons supplies as well as battered economically can be applied here that they can still manage to sustain a war and again that time will be on their side. Finally, I think they're they have seen in real time that they can hit their neighbors in a way that strikes not just at the economic infrastructure but at the larger political and strategic aims of their leadership particularly in the Emirates and in Saudi Arabia. These are uh leaders that are trying to affect a massive transformation of their of their societies really and try to tie them much more thoroughly and in w more widely worked ways with the global economy through tech, through tourism, through sports. And all the Iranians need is a drone through a window of a of a luxury hotel to persuade um Americans and Europeans who might have been planning a spring break in Dubai to reconsider and a drone through an airport will cut off um the traffic that is so important to these uh countries. They have targeted very clearly, the Iranians have targeted very clearly some of the emerging tech infrastructure in the region, the data centers. And so that's going to be a really long-term concern for their neighbors.

Host: We've talked a bit about how it doesn't really appear that America had planned this. The Trump administration had planned this at a high level of detail. That's not my view about the Israelis. I think the Israelis actually did understand their war aims. I think that they did undergo quite a lot more planning over a much longer period of time. And I think that they are willing to accept outcomes that from the American perspective would not be great and not have justified this, but are from the Israeli perspective, you know, progress. So what is your sense of what they wanted and what they have achieved and what position this has put them in compared to where they were two months ago?

Suzanne Maloney: I think Prime Minister Netanyahu wanted to achieve the dream that he's had for decades, which was to see the end of the Islamic Republic, the end of the threat that it posed to Israel's existence, and that it championed um this threat to Israel, Israeli existence. So, I think that, you know, for Prime Minister Netanyahu, the persistence of the regime is going to be a tremendous disappointment. But the Israelis, I think, are very satisfied with the military objectives that they have been achieving. They are prepared to maintain a long hot war against Iran because it does present such a powerful adversary to Israel and to uh all Israelis. Um and you know they will 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 a Netanyahu-centric effort. Israelis um by and large feel as though you know they can't uh 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.

Host: Does a 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 you know use other kinds of uh 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. I it's hard for you to imagine Iran just simply accepting a mowing the lawn scenario after this. And and it's a much more complex thing for Israel to do that to Iran than to to try to do that to to Hamas and in Gaza. And again, even doing that to Hamas and Gaza in the long run was not a strategy that kept Israel safe.

Suzanne Maloney: I don't think mowing the lawn is a is a strategy that is going to keep Israel safe uh in the future, but I think that they don't see better options at this point in time. And they're also counting on, you know, the fact that the regime will have to contend with a 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 you know, Iran will be a weaker, more uh 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 we simply don't know and I think the Israelis are prepared to do what they have to do. I I I don't think it's a a strategy for for regional um peace and that I think is going to be something that creates some strains with um their their new relationships. As much as the Saudis and the Emiratis um detest this regime, they're going to have to live on its periphery and they're going to want to avoid the the continuation of this crisis even at a lower clip.

Host: The the war in Iran has also led to a second front in in 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 to what is happening in Iran. But but for those who've been hearing about this, how would you describe what is now happening between Israel and Lebanon?

Host: I want to hold on that point about Hezbollah because I 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. Um, al-Qaeda somewhat comes out of uh American involvement in both Afghanistan and and the broader region. Hezbollah comes somewhat out of uh Israel's invasion of Lebanon. ISIS comes out of the war in Iraq that I I've just felt there's 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 uh does not respond to negotiation in the way that a normal statewood. Somehow the idea that this could all lead to terror or other forms of um 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.

Host: 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 we hear from the Iranian government is that there are no negotiations ongoing. Are there negotiations ongoing?

Host: How serious are the Pakistani and and Chinese efforts here? And ask this from two perspectives. One, you know, 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.

Suzanne Maloney: 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 the diminishment of our partnerships and alliances that have been so critical in the post-war era to preserving stability and 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 uh being a bit more protracted than he had presumably intended. That that new date for the summit in Beijing is May 14th and 15th and he would presumably need to have this uh 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 with um 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.

Host: 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, etc. supplies. The Iranian regime remains in place controlling the Strait of Hormuz probably charging different ships uh tolls to go through and you know or making particular deals with 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?

Suzanne Maloney: I think that's correct. I don't see a 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 uh less control over the Strait of Hormuz. And that is a a very dangerous outcome for the long term. The the wider implications of the United States having undertaken this action in a way that alienated partners and allies in the region and all around the world and effectively seated huge financial benefits to the Russians and potentially seated some diplomatic opportunity to the Chinese. And um it's not clear that President Trump is prepared to sustain American leadership or that even if he were in the aftermath of this what appears to be a a catastrophic overreach and miscalculation with the uh attacks on Iran that in fact the United States will be trusted to do that by uh countries around the world. It feels like a Suez moment in some respects.

Suzanne Maloney: And also, I mean, and I think this is one of my other concerns, maybe has left a more dangerous Iranian regime that is both learned lessons about what its deterrence capabilities actually are and has also learned lessons that negotiations cannot be trusted. We entered into a deal with Iran under the Obama administration. Trump ripped it up. He then negotiated with Iran and bombed them twice during negotiations. So you might end with an Iranian regime which has learned a lesson that you cannot negotiate with the United States. You cannot trust the negotiations even if you do have a partner you can work with. It could just be ripped up by the next administration. Your only true safety is your deterrence capability to impose tremendous pain on the global economy through the Strait of Hormuz through attacking infrastructure throughout the Gulf, data infrastructure, energy infrastructure, and ultimately perhaps trying to get a nuclear weapon.

Host: And so I mean a world in which we have somewhat degraded Iranian weapons capability in the near term but left a regime with that set of lessons in charge for the long term and with that set of battle hardened learnings. I mean that seems again not like a contribution to world security at the end of this.

Suzanne Maloney: I think that's exactly what the Iranians are driving toward. And at this point in time, it appears as though they may in fact achieve those aims of being stronger at the end of this war, even if the economy's been battered, even if they've lost thousands of their own people. Um that they believe that their ability to endure the worst that two technologically superior, economically superior uh adversaries have given them and come out on top um I think will be tremendously emboldening for a regime that has um been very dangerous even at its weaker moments.

Host: I think that's a sobering place to end. Always our final question. What are three books you would recommend to the audience?

Host: Suzanne Maloney, thank you very much.

Suzanne Maloney: Thank you.