A veteran diplomat breaks down the Iran war

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In episodes that are clear, fact-based and easy to digest. Listen to NPR news now on the NPR app, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies. The six-week war between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran entered a new and uncertain phase over the weekend.

When President Trump announced that the U.S. would impose a naval blockade on Iran's ports in an effort to reopen the state of Hormuz to commercial shipping. That followed a long day of face-to-face negotiations between the U.S. and Iran in Pakistan, Saturday, that ended with the sides still far apart. It was just last week that Trump said a deadline for Iran to reopen the state.

If not, Trump threatened. The U.S. would destroy Iran's bridges and civilian power plants,

and in his words, a whole civilization would die never to be brought back again.

That led to a hastily arranged two-week ceasefire that is mostly held between the U.S. and Iran and an agreement to hold negotiations. However, Israel, the United States ally in the war, has continued to attack targets in Lebanon, and its campaign against the Iranian back-to-group has bowla. Iran claimed that that violated the ceasefire while both the U.S. and Israel said it was not part of the deal. For some insight into the conflict and thoughts on

what to expect next, we turned to veteran diplomat Aaron David Miller. Miller spent 25 years in the state department advising Republican and Democratic presidents on Middle East policy and playing a key role in the Oslo peace process in the 1990s. He received the state department's distinguished superior and meritorious honor awards. He's now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of five books. We recorded our interview yesterday.

Aaron David Miller, welcome back to fresh air. David's great to be here. I love the program. Good, good. Well, let's get into this. Maybe we should begin by how we got here. You know, when President Trump announced last week that there was this an agreement for two weeks these fire and then face-to-face negotiations in Pakistan, anybody who had read the public statements by Trump and the Iranian authorities could see that they

“were just miles apart. Was this breakdown after one day about what you expected?”

It was. I think, you know, to have a successful negotiation, David, we really need three elements. Three keys. You need two parties who are willing to enable and are prepared to use diplomacy. Not to brabe it or to issue demands for each side, but to actually create some sort of balance of interest. Number two, you need a shared sense of urgency. That's say the Iranian clock in the American clock need to be in sync. Both need to feel a certain amount of pain on one hand

and through negotiations could realize a certain amount of gain on the other. And finally,

you need an end product, right? Some agreement, some deal. Text. I think it was the great Hollywood mogul who said that an orally agreement isn't worth the paper it's written on. So you need these three things. And frankly, you didn't have them and run up to Islamabad and you don't have them now. Yeah, what Trump announced the ceasefire? There was no written agreement laying out the terms of the ceasefire. Is that unusual? Yes, and I guess no. You know, the U.S. Iranian

negotiations are really quite unique. It deals in Cratacans regard. You can't do this stuff on the back of a cocktail napkin. You can't do it on a cell phone. You can't do it. However, well intention, the Pakistanis may be, and they have clear interest, 80 plus percent of Pakistan's oil comes from Iran. Not to mention, food imports and a variety of other commodities.

“You need to do direct negotiations. I know 21 hours might seem like a long time. I remember”

it camped avid in 2000. Aude Baroque, Bill Clinton, and Yasser Arford. I mean, we spent 12 hours on one issue alone. And frankly, the issues are so complicated that you need direct negotiations. Mediators can facilitate, but they can't serve to actually negotiate in a half of the party. So no, I wasn't surprised. Nor was I surprised that the terms of this ceasefire were not understood by each side to be quite the same. Right. It's interesting that Trump said in a

green to the ceasefire and the negotiations that the U.S. had received a 10-point proposal from Iran and believed that it was, quote, a workable basis on which to negotiate. But the United States didn't release the 10 points. Right. There were subsequently released elsewhere, or at

least what it was believed to be the Iranian 10 points. And they were basically a statement of

very, very tough demands on the part of Iran. Right. They were, and the fact that the president

numbers people who basically saw most of the points as non-negotiable. Certainly, it's really

saw that way. But then the administration basically discarded it. It had its own 15 points initially to which the Iranians proposed five. So you ended up with 15 to five to 10. To basically two sorts of understandings, that the cessation of hostilities would be conditional on Iran's willingness of ability not to manage the streets or her moves but to open them. This got loaded down with all sorts of preconditions. Iranians wanted the Israelis to stop their military activities

and Lebanon. They came back with proposals to an freeze frozen acid. So it got all gummed up. There was absolutely no way. Slimden on chance at the vice president in 21 hours or frankly,

21 days could have come up with a workable end to this war. And we are no closer to that end

after these failed negotiations. Right. Among the Iranians, 10 points were their continued control to the state of our moves, lifting sanctions, reparations, withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the region. Does this suggest that Trump had put himself into a box by this extreme threat

“to end Iranian civilization and felt the only way out was to find something he could latch onto”

and say, "Let's talk." I think you broke the code, David. I mean, this is one of the several boxes that the president and his own goal self-inflicted wound has created. I mean, several days ago, he faced an impellable choice, right? This extraordinarily insane, inappropriate threat public's social media to destroy civilization, you know, within a matter of hours. That was one option, right? And had he gone through that. Iranians who had responded against Gulf infrastructure,

desal plants, electricity, grids, tourist sites, oil infrastructures, or the president could have backed out. He had a lifeline, which the Pakistanis helped him create. And I think the Americans also helped shape this particular proposal. So that is a box which offered a pathway out with the negotiations in the slumber bud. But now the box, frankly, remains. It's worth making a one additional point. And that is the Iranians have deployed geography in a terrifying manner.

And the Iranians have two cards, more than two, but two cards. The capacity to close and manage the streets of Hormuz and the capacity to undermine Gulf security and stability with their residual capacity after six weeks of war of short-range missiles and drones. And that capacity remains. So CIA, DIA, my time in government, I can't tell you how many exercises were run, how many intelligence reports indicated the problems and challenges. Should the Iranians

control the streets? And the difficult time that the American military would have reopening them.

So why this was never factored into the decision to launch a war of choice is one of the many

intriguing and frankly depressing questions that need to be asked. Right. I mean, this, the closing the state of Hormuz wasn't even on the table when all of this started. It was a product of this work, right? Yeah, it was open. Yeah. That's the problem. Now it's closed. Let's talk about where that's going next. But I thought to set some context, we might listen to some comments by President Trump. This was two weeks ago in an exchange with reporters,

“I believe in the oval office in which he was saying that the US would soon wind down its military”

operations and the state of Hormuz wasn't really such a problem. Let's listen. We'll be leaving very soon and if France or some other country wants to get oil or gas, they'll go up through the straight and the Hormuz straight. There's a right up there and they'll be able to defend for themselves. I think it'll be very safe actually. But we have nothing to do with that. What happens with the straight? What not could I have anything to do with? Because these countries, China, China

will go up and they'll fuel up their beautiful ships and they'll leave and they'll take care of themselves. There's no reason for us to do it. We hit them hard. We've got rid of a lot of the radicalized loader takes along the straight. But if they want something, but I would say that within two weeks, maybe two weeks, maybe three. We're hitting a very hard last night. We knocked out tremendous amounts

“of missile-making facilities, as you probably read, or wrote. We knocked out, excuse me?”

Part of the US will be gone, or done with the war. I think we're two or three weeks.

a guy can take a mine, drop it in the water and say oh, it's unsafe. It's not like you take it out an army or you take it out a country or you can drop it or you can take a machine gun from the shore and shoot a few bullets on a ship or maybe an over the shoulder, missile, small missiles. That's not for us. That'll be for France. That'll be for whoever's using the straight.

“But I think when we leave, probably that's all cleared up today. I heard tremendous numbers”

of ships were sailing through. And that was the president two weeks ago. What does that tell you about his thinking? Those comments like so many others are that he makes or tethered to a galaxy far far away, not to the realities back here on planet Earth. And frankly, we have to take the social

media post seriously and his interviews with the media. But the reality is it reflects, I think,

a degree of confusion or a nonchalance about this whole issue, which frankly is extremely worrisome. To me, there was no real strategy here. And that's the problem in a war of choice. Look, Iran is a brutal repressive authoritarian regime. It is a nuclear weapon-stressual state that is said as all the elements or at least had all the elements required to make it deliverable weapon. The decision to make one is not been made. There's no doubt that there ought

to be a different Iranian regime. One committed to the security prosperity and freedom of its people. But we don't have that regime. The question is, what is a sensible policy? This was a war of choice.

There was no imminent or critical threat to the United States. And the objectives of this war

“were so tangled and so confused. Partly, I think, David was the fact that the president was enamored”

by the Venezuela operation. Partly, it's because in the January protests, he said things that no American President, Republican or Democrat has ever said, "Help us on the way." The January protests in Iran, yes, yes. These are institutions. Then, of course, he deployed the largest single naval and missile asset buildups in the second Iraq war in 2003. There was no chance the negotiations leading up to this war could have succeeded,

given the gaps that existed between Iran and the US. So he was locked in. And he went to war looking for an Iranian Delcy Rodriguez, right? The current de facto leader of Venezuela. But what he found, as my colleague, Kerem Sajit Pord, Carnegie said many times, what he found was an Iranian Kim Jong-un and not just one Iranian Kim Jong-un, several. So we now find ourselves in a situation in which there is no easy way out, diplomacy appears to

“hit a dead end. And I'm not sure there's a kinetic fix here, and nor do I believe a blockade,”

which will devastate even more the Iranian economy, will force the Iranians to capitulate. Well, you and I are speaking Monday morning, right about the time that the threatened naval blockade by the United States is too take effect. I'm wondering if you have a sense of how effective this might be in restoring commercial shipping. What the challenges are. I mean, look, I'm going to international lawyer, but the rules of war permit a party at war to the right to visit and

search, meaning that they can stop and inspect, you know, even private vessels and waters that are not neutral. And decide whether or not they're going to pass. The US military is the capacity. They'll identify tankers, right? Loading up at Carg Island, which was the main export terminal, connected by pipeline to the Iranian mainland, that load tankers all identify those ships. And if the Iranians choose to try to export oil through the streets of Formus, largely to Asia,

the US military will stop those ships. So can this degrade Iran's capacity to fund this war over time? Probably the Iranians have an export terminal at Jask, which is beyond the streets and the

Gulf of Formus. But that is not a reliable pipeline. It can transport, I think, up to a million

barrels a day, but I suspect it's not practical and functional. So there will be this blockade. I suspect that at some point Iranians will challenge or probably could strike US military targets again, bases in the Gulf, or perhaps even go after US ships. More likely they'll probably go back to striking the Gulf states, much more vulnerable, and probably from their point of view, much more productive. Where the blockade leads in the end, though, is uncertain.

and you might expect the Chinese to weigh in with the Iranians. The Pakistanis might as well.

But I don't think that this blockade is going to provide a quick or easy instrument to force the Iranians not to capitulate. I don't think that's possible now, but to soften up their negotiating positions. So I don't think the blockade is going to work. And if it doesn't, it's better than deploying ground troops to seize our island, or any of the islands in Australia, if it doesn't work, we're going to be stuck again. Right. Right. It's interesting also that throughout the

course of the war, if I understand this correctly, the United States has permitted Iran to export its own oil in order to soften the impact on world oil prices. Right. Yeah. I mean, Scott,

that's not the treasure, it's secretary, and minute is much. We've also ensanked 140 million

barrels of Iranian oil, and, as you know, much of the dismay of Ukraine and other European allies, have granted waivers to the Russians on sanctioned oil. I mean, Vladimir Putin right now, the war stopped tomorrow, would hands down be the winner here. He's getting rich because what Britain crude was up over $100 a barrel today. He's getting rich every time I walk missile that the US launches against Iran is one less munition that Europeans can buy from the US to use

in Ukraine. And to a degree, President Chief China has benefited as well, because the focus is not

“on the Taiwan straits, not on the Asia Pacific. It's on the Middle East. I think the Chinese would”

actually like to see this end. A naval blockade is technically an active war, right? I mean, since when did I look, I don't want to be very clear. I've been worked and voted for Democrats and Republicans. When is international law ever mattered in the administration? If the, when, he was obliged by when it serves its interests and violates it, when it doesn't. And I think again, I'm not an international lawyer,

you, you get a very smart professor of international maritime law at US Naval War College.

James Cresco, who, you know, has basically said that the right of visit and search, meaning that

you can stop inspect even private vessels and waters that are not neutral and decide whether or not they pass is a right that parties at war and clearly it's not an excursion. This is a war. President said it's a war between the US and Iran and Israel and Iran. And praise it, work and exercise that, right? President Trump, it said at one point, he expected other nations

“to join with the United States in the Naval Blockade. They have not reacted with enthusiasm, right?”

To say the least, our adversaries are delighted and our allies are pulling their heroine. And, and France was talking about putting together some kind of coalition to, I don't know, it takes some initiative of their own in the straight. I think that. Yeah, Macron is taking the lead, for the French, French, for instance, taking the lead in Oregon as many as 35 countries to talk about what I guess we could describe, gave us a sort of post-conflict maritime response.

I think the Europeans would happily, maybe unhappily, contribute intelligence, demining capacity in a post-conflict environment when it was unmistakably clear to normal humans that there would be no more shooting. I think the Europeans in large part, because look, when Russian-vaded Ukraine, the European dependence on Russian oil was a huge problem. And then they switched largely because of the Norwegians, the cutaries, and the Americans,

they ween themselves off of that Russian oil through increasing dependence on natural gas. But now you have 25% of the global supply of natural gas blocked. Can't get through the straights. No pipelines for that. And as a consequence, it's not just oil.

“It's fertilizer. Key ingredient, which requires natural gas, it's ammonia in your real.”

You have planning season right in the United States, fertilizer prices are going up. So, no, the Europeans would like to see this over. But the Brit's starmer is just announced that he's against this blockade. So no, I don't think you'll get any help from the Europeans in trying to open the blockade as long as there is a danger that they could be drawn into a war against

Aaron David Miller. He spent 25 years in the U.S. State Department. He's now a senior fellow

at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. We'll continue our conversation after this break. I'm Dave Davies, and this is fresh air. We're not going to see commercial shipping in the straight until shippers and insurers are convinced that it's safe to navigate and these expensive ships and their whatever they're carrying are safe. It seems that the Iranians have dropped a lot of minds there. Trump says the U.S. will be trying to clear them any sense of how difficult that

will be. Well, you know, this is one of the great mysteries. I talked to people who say, yeah, they bind the straits. But then others say, no, they haven't. I'm not sure the U.S. would have sent two destroyers through the straits, which they did last week without knowing where those minds actually were, which leads me to the conclusion that if there has been mining, it hasn't been

serious, which would impede traffic. The straits are not have never been closed. But the Iranians have

done, as you know, a system of preferential access, including demanding certain tolls from countries.

“So there have been ships, what the normal flow is 150. I think it's dwindled to a handful. I don't know”

how much of the of the straits have been mine, particularly that this sort of two or three mile with shipping lane, which would be easy to mine. I would expect. We've destroyed a lot of their mine layers according to the Pentagon, but there are fast boats. There are many other ways of mining and remember, forget the military with intelligence capacity. You're dealing with a world of commercial transport tankers, which cost of fortune, carrying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil.

It doesn't take much to raise shipping costs and to scare and intimidate insurance companies and shippers. You now have large numbers of humans on these ships that have been stuck there. For weeks, that's a sort of human dimension, sailors, commercial, maritimeers, on these ships. So again,

“I think bottom line here on blockade, it will badly hurt Iran. Will it be determinative or decisive”

in ending the war, either because the Iranians give up or they are prepared to meet American demands, particularly in nuclear enrichment at the negotiating table. Seven, almost seven weeks in, I doubt it. Trump indicated at one point that the United States might join with Iran in charging tolls to commercial ships moving through the strait. I mean, he said, look, we're the winner. We want, you know, why shouldn't we benefit? What's the reaction of that?

Well, this is in line with any number of other statements he's made during the first term,

and during the first year of this non-consecretive second term that this is a man motivated in large part by money and business. He's talked about owning Greenland. He's prodded himself and now opening up Venezuela and oil to American companies and seizing Venezuela and oil.

“I think it is untenable for the planet to allow any sort of toll regime to emerge.”

Let alone having the United States and Iran share in the spoils. I mean, that is a bridge way, way, way too far. So I think this is a sort of figment of the President's imagination and in quite in line with the way he sees so much of the Middle East, particularly Gaza, which he'd like to turn into a variation of Palm Beach. It's not serious and this should be a concern because we're dealing with life and death issues that are very, very, very serious. You know, one of the things that's been

interesting in the analysis of this war is what got the United States into it and the New York Times did a piece last week about the deliberations that led to Trump's decision, which seemed to support the idea that President Trump was manipulated by BB Netanyahu into starting this war. What's your sense? You know, I've no doubt, and the Times reporting is very revealing that this

con the President is, frankly, I don't think it holds up. It doesn't hold up because several reasons.

“Number one, the President's experience with Iran has, in his mind, been a relatively”

happy one. He was warned by the experts not to leave the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which he did in 2018. People told him it would be the end of the world. Well, the end of the world didn't come. Then he was warned by the experts not to kill Cossam Soleimani, which he did in January 2020, head of the Iranian quits force of the IRGC, a mastermind of Iranian proxy activities throughout the region. He was warned there would be severe response. There wasn't. And finally,

he was warned if you strike Iran's nuclear sites as the President did after Israel's 12-day war. You're going to spark a regional war. And guess what? The Iranians responded with a highly telegraphed strike against cutter. So there was no regional war. So Donald Trump's view of Iran is very risk-ready if you marry that with what he said during the January protests. And you tether that to

the incredible array of military hardware that he deployed over the course of two months.

And you don't do something like that. And then say, oops, I made a mistake or oh, I changed my mind. And you finally add to the negotiations for several rounds in Oman and Geneva that lit up to the war. You have a president that was ready to do this. And one more factor when these rallies told him, maybe this was corroborated by CIA intelligence. I don't know. That's the Supreme Leader Alechamini would be at a place at time certain, along with members of the Iranian National

Security League. It was too great of temptation. Another first for the president. And he's referred repeatedly since February 28th that I killed, we killed Supreme Leader Alechamini. In a way, you know, that might be one of the most transformative elements of this whole enterprise. Because whatever happens to Iran, it will not be the same country after the death of this man. He has been responsible for plotting, planning so much of Iranian strategy focused on death,

Israel, death to the United States, the proxies. There were calcitrants and even endorsement of the nuclear programming, including possibility at some point of weaponization. So no, I don't buy the notion that Donald Trump was conned into this. He knew exactly what he wanted. This is vintage. It seems

to me, Donald Trump and yes, Benjamin Netanyahu finally found a partner in this enterprise that he

clearly wanted to happen. Now, the other thing about Trump launching this war of choice was that he didn't seem to have taken into account the possibility that Iran would take advantage of its geographical position and close the Strait of Hormuz and shoot up oil prices and threaten the world economy. Is the failure to anticipate that? Does it say something about

“the Trump administration and the way it's organized the way it taps intelligent resources?”

I mean, it's such a depressing question, Dave, and unfortunately the answer, I think, is equally depressing. And that is Secretary-state National Security Advisor, I have to be the same person. Unless the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is not there to recommend policy to tell the President what to do, but unless you make it unmistakably clear that the enemy has a vote, that in this case, geography is destiny. It's the absence of curiosity, Dave. That's the real issue.

So I'm sitting in my desk in the early 80s in the phone rings. It's a White House sit room. I'm the State Department's Lebanon analyst, we're in the middle of a major deployment of American Marines to Lebanon. Next voice I hear is Vice President George W. Bush. I read one of

“your memos on Lebanon. Do you have a few minutes? I know you're busy. Can we talk about it?”

So the Vice President of the United States is calling me because I wrote a memo that he read, Jack Kennedy used to call the Vietnam analysts at State Department. When he wanted another review,

Trump had four secretaries of fence and six national security advisors in his first term.

You can't run the railroad if nobody is telling the boss

“that there may be a problem on the tracks to Pittsburgh and you need to fix it.”

Or if the trains are running in a bad direction, you've got to change the direction. So I'm thinking and I have had no conversations, no contact with any of these people. That in essence, you have a dysfunctional national security decision making apparatus. And I think the results seem to be pretty clear. I'm going to take another break here. We are speaking with Aaron David Miller.

He spent 25 years in the U.S. State Department. He's now a senior fellow at the Carnegie

Endowment for International Peace. We'll continue our conversation after this short break. This is fresh air. You recently wrote a piece in foreign policy, a co-wrote a piece in foreign policy about Trump's diplomatic team on this. The Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and Steve Wittkov, his friend from the real estate business. You said they deserve an F in diplomacy. You don't want to give us an example of that?

Yeah, I mean, I co-directed this piece with my friend and colleague Dan Kertzer, former ambassador

“to Israel in Egypt. Look, this semester isn't over yet, right?”

So we base that analysis on what we've seen. And let's be clear, these are very heavy lifts.

You could get my former voice, James Baker, bring Henry Kissinger back, and they'd have a hard time with these negotiations. But the president has deployed his best friend and his son-in-law to mediate three of the world's most difficult and intractable problems. Russia Ukraine, failing. Israel, Palestine, Gaza, 20 point plans succeeded in releasing hostages, ending the war even though the Connecticut activity, these rallies are still striking.

Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in those attacks, but the rest of Gaza remains divided dysfunctional and sporadically violent. Those negotiations are dead, at least for now. And then you have, in the lead up to the June war, five rounds of negotiations with Steve Wittkov in the Iranians and a couple sets before this war. So no, I don't think they're doing a good job. Again, hard conflicts. But you need a structure. You don't need professional diplomats.

I don't want the U.S. Congress running our foreign policy. And frankly, I don't want to state to be running our foreign policy. You don't want professional diplomats, you're saying. I said, you don't need professional diplomats. James Baker was not a professional diplomat. Neither was Henry Kissinger. Those are the two best negotiators. One I work for, the other, I got to interview for a couple of my books. They had a sense of how to negotiate.

“They realized that you need to strike a balance of interest, that you had to understand at least”

what the other side wanted and how to try to reconcile the two. They were both great actors with real charisma each in their own way. And they work for presidents who new foreign policy Kissinger for Nixon and Baker for George H. W. Bush, who new foreign policy. So, that you don't have that. You don't have a Baker. You don't have a Kissinger. You don't have Bush 41. You don't have a Richard Nixon on foreign policy in the White House right now.

But you know, the other thing about, it strikes me that you need negotiators who are going to take into account the depth of the issues that you're dealing with. You know, the Iran nuclear agreement that the United States signed in 2015 took two years to negotiate. They got all of these experts from the Bremore labs and everywhere else to to get into the details of, you know, nuclear materials and all of that. And it still took two years. Whereas I think my senses, that you had

a customer and Steve Wittkoff, they want the Iranians to pledge that they will, you know, give up any ambitions to have a nuclear policy. You really need more detail than that, don't you? Yeah, you need teams to advise the negotiators. You need people who know culture politics, history. And again, it's such an obvious point. Didn't anybody look at a map

think they've had an Atlas analogy of history and common sense in judgment would really be enough

to get you started. And frankly, I don't, I don't think any of those things were evident. The other thing is that, you know, diplomacy typically requires great care and discretion in one's communications, especially public communications. And I'm wondering, you know, what's been the effect of having a social media platform in the president's hands, which allows him to

“share his thoughts without review or editing at any time? Well, I think you saw partially what”

happened in January with a public declaration that help is on the way. I mean, how do you say that? To the Iranian protesters who were being gone. Yeah, when they're being killed, I mean,

it basically assumes that president is is is communicated notion. He's going to accept

responsibility for redeeming and saving these people. So yeah, and then, of course, you've got the, we're going to destroy civilization. So again, no, it's no way to run the railroad. It, to some degree, even confines our adversaries, it undermines our alliances. And it reflects the lack of discipline and structure. You know, some people argue that it's the madman theory, right? I mean, Trump may actually refer to this as well, that, which is from the Nixon era,

right? And yeah, it's the unpredictability. It's my unpredictability that helps me advance matters. I mean, I, I'm just not persuaded. And I'm not saying suggesting that Trump foreign policy has been a total disaster. I think it's been, the notion of getting Europeans to step up and assume more responsibility for European security. It's hard to live for them,

“but it's a start and it's critically, I think critically important, recognizing that China is a,”

is a peer competitor, at least on the economic side. Some of these things seem to have worked.

The Abraham Accords and the first Abraham Accords. But I just, I don't, when it comes to crisis

and conflict, particularly this one, and let's be clear, this one will, will shape, however, turns out, the legacy, foreign policy legacy of this administration. Let's take another break here. We are speaking with Aaron David Miller. He spent 25 years in the U.S. State Department. He's now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. We'll continue our conversation in just a moment. This is for a share. You know, you authored a co-authored NSA with Daniel

“Courtsor about the prospects for transformational change in the region. I think suggesting that”

American policy makers have overestimated the extent to which the United States can really rearrange things in the Middle East. You want to explain what you were getting at here? Yeah, and remember, again, a piece of cake hurts in New York Times. This is our view. I mean, you can talk to any number of other folks and they give you something different. Based on our collective experience, including dance of them as 50 years, dealing with this region.

This region eats up transformational ideas. It's more often than not a place where American ideas on warmaking and peacemaking go to die. And at times, I feel Dave, like we're some sort of modern-day gullver wandering around in a part of the world that we don't understand, tied up by tiny powers, larger powers, large and small, and burdened by our own illusions. And I think we have to be careful. We have interests. We have allies. We have adversaries in this region. And we need

to lead to protect them. But we need to really get a grip on how much we can actually change. You have five Arab states now. Inactive phases of some kind of dysfunction, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Syria, maybe the Syrians will prove the exception of emerging from authoritarian rule with something sort of clearly something better than the Assad's. We can't do this for them. We can't fix this. And someone said that in the history of the world, nobody ever washed a rental

car. It's a profound piece of philosophy. People care about what they own. And there's an absence

is really, really important as we seek to protect our own interests. You know, we were talking

about diplomacy. There is a point of view that Iran's experience over the past, you know, 10 years or so is likely to make it more committed than ever to developing a nuclear weapon because it discovers that it really can't count on negotiations with the United States to be respected and honored. You know, that was Trump withdrawing from the 2015 agreement. And then more recently, you know, talks were going on and were, you know, dramatically interrupted by the outbreak of this conflict.

“What do you think? It's a fair point, David. I think it's a serious and legitimate concern.”

Then I'm 100 pounds of highly enriched uranium in 60%, you need 90% to get the bomb grade,

could provide a foundation on which to continue that search to first become a nuclear weapons

threshold state with all the elements. And then at some point, decision to make a weapon, I don't think we've destroyed all of their enrichment facilities between the US and the Israelis. It's a very real concern. We've set their program back. There's no question about it. And the IAEA have been denied inspections, but our capacity to monitor intrusively, I think will be important, but it is a very real concern. And one that will bear watching. Assuming this regime

survives in the months and years ahead. Before I let you go, I have to ask you about the other development of the weekend, you know, the right wing populist Prime Minister of Hungary,

“Victor Orman, was defeated after 16 years in power. What's the significance here, do you think?”

I think for the Hungarian public, even though the new guy was a former Orban guy and shares some of Orban's views of the dangers that they present about what can all the rest, I think it was largely corruption in self-dealing that ended up being Orban's demise. And it will send a signal, I think, the other populists in Europe and beyond. I think it's extraordinarily welcome development, and maybe I want to say it's a wake-up call. Maybe it's a data point that

democratic governance and effective leadership and coloring between certain moral and ethical lines

“is still alive in the world today. Aaron David Miller, thank you so much for speaking with this”

again. David was a pleasure, I love fresh air, it's a wonderful program. Aaron David Miller spent 25 years in the US State Department. He's now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. We recorded our interview yesterday. On tomorrow's show we speak with actor Amanda Pete. She starred in the whole nine yards, something's got to give, and studio 60

on the sunset strip. Her series, your friends and neighbors just started its second season,

and her new film is called Fantasy Life. Pete is also a writer. In a recent piece in the New Yorker, she writes about being diagnosed with breast cancer while both of her parents were in your death. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show, then get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh air's executive producer is Sam Rigger, our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Her interviews and reviews are

produced and edited by Phyllis Myers and Marie Baldenado, Lauren Crenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thayda Challenger, Susan Yacundi, Annabellman, and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital producer is Molly CV Nesper. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley. I'm Dave Davies.