Why the Cease-Fire With Iran Keeps Crumbling

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It's your place, your life, to love, to dream, to change, it's your world, to understand. The New York Times. Find out more at nytimes.com/yourworld. On Monday, the U.S. and Iran exchange 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 14. David Sanger, welcome back to the daily. Good to be lady Rachel.

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 is basically just fallen apart. The U.S. 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 you about, even

still in effect? There's not much of it left. 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. 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. It was bound to fail.

Right, you'd basically told us, I think, that this agreement essentially kicked the can down the road on a lot of kind of really big, important issues between the United States and Iran that both sides needed to hash out. 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. That 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 and a permanent agreement that would benefit the protesters who have taken to the streets. But while we were looking at all of that, Rachel,

if that 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 Formus. I want to talk about that poor wording for a second. What specifically did both sides agree to be the Strait? Rachel, the controversy really focuses on the meaning

“of the fifth paragraph of this very short agreement. Do you want to read us?”

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 Iran and vice versa. It's a single sentence, 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 Formus, which has three different channels, one near Iran, one in the middle of the Strait, one closer to Oman, and the traffic would essentially be restored to what it was before the war

started on February 28th. But the second 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.

Can you just explain David, these three channels? Why are they only suggesting that that one should be open? 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 Formus. 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." That's right. And I asked some administration officials who were briefing us on Friday. Was this just a difference of interpretation? One of the very senior people who was

involved in this, and I don't know, the Iranians understood from the beginning that the open

Strait meant it was entirely open. The Iranian explanation is, "No, there's nothing in that language

that says we have to fully open it. It just said we have to make our best effort to make sure

“there was safe passage. And the safest way to take your cargo in and out is right along the Iranian”

coast." 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, J.D. 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 is 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. Nothing necessarily matters David, but from your perspective is one side's interpretation of this paragraph five language, clearly correct or incorrect. Look, I think if you came to this completely as a blank slate and you read the words that weren't front of you, you would immediately think the entire straight 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

straight that there was probably going to be trouble here. 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. Let me put it this way. When the document was first published in mid-June, Iran, the wording by people who have negotiated nuclear records and other records with Iran in the past and it was the first thing they flagged to me as potential trouble. And it seems like they were right. It seems like trouble has quite clearly worn out. 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, J.D. events on his way to Switzerland design 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 as a mistake. Let's try something else. We're going to say the essence of J.D. events is argument. Was that in these negotiations, they had not only one 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. It'll be profitable for Iran

and will of course bring down prices for Americans. And you know, that didn't take that long

in the straight that President Trump called those same leaders scone. Right. And said,

they're sick people, they're led by sick people and their vicious violent people. And as far as I'm

“concerned, it's just a waste of time dealing with them. And I believe he also said at the time that”

as far as he was concerned, the ceasefire was off. 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, and effort to try to starve out the Iranians by cutting off their oil revenue, we're back to a position where the U.S. Navy is stuck in the

“straight and there's active fire. And while we're not bombing the entire country, the way the U.S.”

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 execute himself from. I'm Jonathan Knight, and I'm the general manager of New York Times games. If you play our games, you probably know there's something a bit different about them. Just like there are writers behind the articles you read in the times,

there are creators behind our daily puzzles. Tracy Bennett curates the day's world of solution to keep it lively and varied. When a Lou creates each connections board, including all those categories that try to stump you. Sam Azarsky comes through every last letter, word, and pangram, and spelling B so that loyal players of all skill levels enjoy it. Our puzzles are human-made every day with the standards you'd expect from the New York Times,

and this matters because when you choose to spend time with our games, it should be time well spent, solving puzzles that are challenging, surprising, and joyful. Puzzles handcrafted for you. We think that's something worth investing in and something worth paying for. 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? Are they even trying to negotiate any kind of

agreement? Well, this has never really been a true negotiation where you sit down at the table

and have a back and forth. And 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 Kirk counterpart in the Iranian leadership, and the Secretary of State at the time, John Kerry, sat down opposite Javid Zareef, 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 of that,

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. This is fire declared off, a blockade back on the Iranian ports that you could even start that process up again. And to the extent that they are talking now, it's really just about free passage in the straight, 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. 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 straight open, which just to remind everybody was open before this war started.

the Iran-Araq war. It was wide open during our nuclear crises. And now, of course, it's sucking up all the oxygen and the negotiating group. It feels David like the administration has sort of been treating the straight 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 straight

“is kind of an issue that's just as intractable as the others. Do you think that's fair?”

It is because the Iranians have discovered that it was a lot easier to close down the straight.

And the weapon was a lot more powerful than they had imagined. And so now they have no

interest in giving it up. But 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 Natans, Florida, and Esfahan. The second piece of leverage they have is the ability to cause havoc in the world economy and world energy markets. Now, Rachel, that is not necessarily

a lasting power for the Iranians. You're already seeing countries figure out how to get an

“energy elsewhere. Over time, you're going to see more pipelines built to avoid having to send oil”

across the straight. The Saudis have already reactivated an unused pipeline they had to route around the straight. So the Iranians know that this is not going to be a forever weapon. But it's pretty good for right now. If that power is as you describe just kind of short term, what is the value in deploying it? Like what is the end game? Well, I'm not sure that they've got a long-term end game 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 straight. 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. It feels David like what you're 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."

“I think that's right, Rachel. But I think it goes deeper than that.”

Coming off of the funeral services last week for Ayatollah Haminate, 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. 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 look 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 our larger power and imperial power in their 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. But 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. 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?

that is painful for Trump or entering a midterm. So it almost feels like they kind of understand

“us, but perhaps we have not really understood them. That's right, Rachel, but I think they also”

understand one of your things. President Trump has said publicly a few times. He 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 carg Island where they export oil from, do all the things you would do if you were a 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 this as 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 plans to see your D depending on where you think we are. And that's kind of what I'm curious about David. What phase of the war

“do you think we are entering now? I think we're in the phase of the war where we're trying again”

things that didn't work the first time. 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 three 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 is not made in argument to us yet that this is going to be any more effective the second time than it was the

first. 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? 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

voice 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 straight of four moves,

that there is no way to withdraw a significant American naval force if you were 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 bought 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 mid-East, basically, out in finitum, and charge

everyone in the region, the Arab states, everybody who's protected by the U.S., a 20% fee, 20% of the value of the cargo they are delivering, and the U.S. will basically be the paid piecekeeper 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 straight 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." Well, he dropped it after that phone call, until Monday. Well, we're taking over the straight, they have nothing, they've gotten nothing, so. When he went on Fox News and repeated that exact same concept, we'll become the guardian of the straight, maybe we'll go to the guardian angel of the straight." Well,

inherent in that concept is sort of an admission that the U.S. 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.

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.

David Sanger, thank you so much. Always great to be with you, Rachel.

“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 "illegal alien." The agency claimed that the

driver then "weaponized" is 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 Lindsay took care of his little sister in years long departed. It's my honor to ask his little sister, Darling Graham, to finish his work for him now. 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." Lindsay has always been there for me

and now, how will be there for him? Today's episode was produced by Austin Chatter-Bady, Chris Bender-Ev, and Michelle Bonsha, who's edited by Chris Haxel and Devontailer, and contains music by Marian Lzano. Our theme music is by Wonderland. The episode was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. (Music)

That's it for the Daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow. I'm Gilbert Cruz. This week on the Book of Your Podcast, author and Placicist Madeline Miller gives us a primer on the Odyssey. They are flawed characters who try and fail and try again to get angry and make mistakes. Plus times critic at large Tony Scott, on all the genres inside the Odyssey. It has tons of its own action,

some of which is quite gory. Is it a sexy story? Well, yes it is. Listen to the book review or if you get in podcasts. Isn't that beautiful?