NTK: The New Princess Bride Rule: Never Fight a War in Southwest Asia

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And I, 12 and 28, 22, 23.

“This is Deep State Radio, coming to you direct from our Super Secret Studio in the third sub-basement of the Ministry of Snark in Washington, D.C.”

And from other undisclosed locations across America and around the world. Hello and welcome to Need to Know. I'm David Rothko. If you're hosting this week, as every week, we're going to sit down with some experts and talk about what's going on on a story we want to track. For the past few weeks, that story has been the war with Iran and since it's still going on and since there's a lot of questions about it, we thought we would get three of the best experts we can find to discuss it with us, and that's just what we have done.

We have with us Daniel Benain, who is a distinguished diplomatic fellow at the Middle East Institute. He previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Arabian Peninsula Affairs and NSC Senior Director for Speedriding and Strategic Initiatives. How are you doing? Great. Good to be you. Thank you for joining us. We also have Dr. Kenneth Pollock, who's the Vice President for Policy at the Middle East Institute.

“Who was previously a senior fellow at AEI. How are you doing today?”

I am World Data. Thanks for having me. Thank you for joining us. And we have with us Ambassador Daniel Shapiro distinguished fellow at the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council. Once upon a time, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to Israel. How are you doing, Dan? David, good to be with you and with Dan and Ken. Well, thanks guys. So look, obviously the place I'm going to begin is the where we are right at this minute.

And we know the facts. I don't think we necessarily know exactly where we are at this minute. A few minutes ago, the White House Press Secretary said that the two U.S. negotiators Steve Witkov from Jared Kushner would be getting out of plain tomorrow Saturday morning and flying off to Pakistan to meet directly with Iranian negotiators. Ken, let me start with you.

“Do you think this means anything or nothing or something in the middle?”

Very hard to know, David. Let's start with there. It's hard to know. Obviously because it's difficult to get inside the Trump administration and figure out what they're up to, but it's even harder with the Iranians. What I say is, you know, whether I see it strategically, United States and Iran both have their hands around the others neck and both are trying to throttle the other. We both have competing blockades of the Strait of Formus, and at the very least, I'll put it this way. I think the Iranian leadership believes that they are now inflicting more pain on the Trump administration than the U.S. and Israel are inflicting on Iran.

And that's going to make it very, very difficult to negotiate with them. They put some very big demands on the table. Tows for ships going through the Strait of Formus, reparations, end of U.S. military personnel in the region.

And the problem is they seem to mean it. I think they mean at least some of it. And nobody knows exactly how much they are willing to, how much pain they're willing to absorb. And this is the issue.

Maybe it will historically that takes a long time. And you know, the problem is that this Iranian leadership needs to remember this is a different leadership.

Same regime, different leadership, much more ballacos, much more anti-American, much less interested in Iran's economic well-being or the lives and livelihoods of its people. So it's going to be very, very difficult to convince them to give up of these very far reaching demands that they've made the United States. Hey, Dan Shapiro, let's go to you for the next come. And response to the question.

“Look, I think it's healthy that some dialogue is going to resume in Pakistan over the next day or two.”

It doesn't appear it'll be at the decision-making level. So if it gets serious, maybe vice-president bands will join, maybe the speaker of the Iranian Parliament.

All of us will join, but at least they're talking. And of course, it's positive that President Trump decided to extend the ceasefire when he did earlier in the week. That's better than a resumption of major military operations. But it probably also is an indicator, turn up to Ken's point, that the U.S. side is worried about the impact of ongoing fighting or returning to fighting. Already, of course, the mutual blockages or closures of the straight are adding to the economic attention and crisis really that's emerging across the globe in Asia.

In the Gulf and Europe, and at the pump here in the United States.

But that would get worse still if fighting resumed if the Iranian started again striking Gulf energy targets.

“So I think they understand that they're better off talking, doing this kind of standoff, but talking than resuming open fighting.”

But that doesn't mean that a deal is easily within reach. To reach the Iranian demands that Ken referenced certainly things the United States is not going to concede on. But the things the United States is demanding, which is a complete and total capitulation and the dismantlement of the entire Iranian nuclear program. The leadership that Ken reference is also very unlikely to achieve it. Certainly, this is not going to happen in just a couple of rounds of talks. Maybe months and months of talks. But I think that the opportunity, the best opportunity perhaps in the short term, would be to extend the ceasefire and gradually untangle these mutual blockages in the Gulf.

That's the most pressing me for the U.S. right now to get out of this global economic crisis. And it may mean that the nuclear negotiations just simply have to wait for later.

“We might be better off, frankly, in a standoff over their nuclear program, which we've sort of been in since the 12 day war last June.”

We were able to monitor to make sure they didn't resume enrichment or dig out the the highly enriched uranium. Then a deal that would look at least from President Trump's point of view like barely any better than the JCPOA that he derided and withdrew from. So it's possible that the negotiations will focus on ending the blockades, but not actually dealing with the core issues that were heard on the table when the war started. Dan, Ben, I am. Your take on where we are at the moment. Yeah, I agree. I mean, it's kind of a funny negotiation that's unfolding here where we keep adding stumbling blocks on the way to the table to deal with the long term issues that were ostensibly the reason we went to war, which was not to open the straight of war moves because it was open before the war.

So, we're kind of have put each other in a mutual chokehold here. You know, at a time when we're going to need a lot of time in space to deal with the long standing issues here like the nuclear issue. I mean, Iran's going to need at the end of this. They're going to need money. They're going to need some kind of deterrence or guarantee against aggression, which is going to be painful and difficult to create and they're going to need to save face. We decided that this war was about nuclear issues, even though Iran wasn't enriching at the time when this war began. We're going to need a solution on the nuclear issue eventually, but obviously we're going to need to open the straight, which I think has become a kind of past fail test for American leadership in this region, certainly with the Gulf States.

So from from my perspective, they're going to need to create a much longer runway than they've got now to deal with any of those big issues, which means they're going to probably need some interim agreements. Some of the kinds of easing steps that allow you to do this kind of work. There's a pretty fundamental mismatch between how the two sides negotiate, which I like to think of as sort of fast food versus slow cooking.

And I think the Trump approach of sort of shock and awe, fast deadline and try to put something out fast isn't going to cut it.

“So we're going to need to some interim arrangements. We're going to need to create some deals that get us to where we need to go.”

There's a lot of chips to trade and the urgent priority is to stop throttling the global economy while we do all those other things and to start negotiating from a place of realism instead of maximalism. Well, you know, there's maximalism can mean one thing and negotiating position, but it could also mean something regarding expectations of the world.

And when I listen to the three of you and frankly, when I listen to a lot of experts who are talking about this, I wonder if we haven't got the question.

Right, and and because the question is, how does this end? And I'm not sure it ends. You know, I mean, you know, with listening to you guys, it could just be we're in.

“Somehow and you'll forgive me for mixing my geopolitical metaphors. I was never a regional specialist. I was kind of hopeless. So let me call this a Mexican standoff in the Persian Gulf, right, where we're kind of entangled.”

There's some threats, but interestingly, the thing that's putting the most pressure on Trump is the market. And the markets are kind of learning to live with it. And to the extent to which markets are like, okay, we'll live with it. And the Gulf states are kind of okay, well, there aren't missiles flying at us at the moment. And, you know, there are sanctions that have been lifted and the Chinese and others are willing to help the Iranians.

“Could we be in a news kind of steady state here, Ken?”

So obviously, again, anything is possible, David, but I think we need to be very careful. First, the markets are not a perfect representation of the global economy.

I did it. Grim from people who are making decisions, often times about very short-term trade-offs and about, you know, the profitability about certain industries. Second point, not yet seen the full economic impact of the closure of the streets of form moves as any number of people who are much more steeped in economics. Having pointing out, you know, we had a fairly long runway pipeline, six-state weeks of oil, fertilizer, helium, all kinds of other incredibly important goods that were in the pipeline that are only just now trying up.

And we also need to recognize that the Gulf states are dependent on the state of form moves for more or less everything, right? All their food, all of their supplies, everything comes in. And again, they, too, are still living off of stockpots, so not yet seen before economic ramifications of it. Last point I would make is that we need to recognize that an end to this war, if you want to call it that, that simply has the Iranians pulled back from their closure of the state of form moves, but leaves them able to re-close it at any point in time.

And leaves them in the position to once again start loving missiles and drones at the Gulf states is an incredibly unstable Middle East. It's one where they're going to have access to tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars that they didn't have access to beforehand, and they are not going to use that for good. For one, they have their leadership with choppy fein and business. And with the checkout with the world for the best conversion, that's right. The checkout with the world for the best conversion.

The legendary checkout of choppy fein is just on their website, a bit to social media, and over everything else. And that's the music for that one. The video is also released on Vendus with choppy fein, considered to be a real hip band. Start it and test it for one of your promonate. Okay. Well, let me try different approach here again, Dan number one. The kind of smart money assessment of where we're going to end up on this was the Iranians will promise not to have a nuclear weapon, which has been their position all along, but Trump will celebrate that as a commitment that lasts forever because that's what he's been talking about.

In exchange for that, you know, they will agree to open the straight on straight on some kind of basis, possibly one where they can make some money. This seems to be something Trump is okay with.

In other words, February 27th, but it'll cost more than it did on February 27th, both with regard to the straight and with regard to, you know, the Iranian nuclear stand up.

“Doesn't seem like the Iranians will give up their of what Trump likes to call for reasons. I don't quite understand the nuclear dust, but.”

And of course, the Iranians also have the scientists there that got access to centrifuges from other places in the world. They is the same kind of centrifuges as the North Koreans, for example. They have access to, you know, other kinds of support. So is that what it looks like is that what, you know, is Steve Whitkov going to call JD van sometime this weekend and say, okay, I've got a deal. And, you know, let's declare victory and go home and JD van splies off and then Trump declares victory and everybody starts, you know, learning their execute in songs.

“It may be the direction this has had it, but it's entirely sort of unsatisfactory ending no matter how you slice it. Certainly it's unsatisfactory from the Trump perspective he was calling for total and complete surrender.”

This was before the straight was even really close to that meant complete dismantlement of the nuclear program and the missile program and the drone program, maybe even regime change was sort of being floated in the early days. And so we're so far from that marker that you can't even see it anymore to essentially reduce ourselves to having to get the straight open and by the way, if the straight is open and flowing again. It does hang like a sort of dameccles over the region and over the global economy in perpetuity now it was always understood and it was a theoretical possibility that the Iranians could use that tool and they were under pressure.

But since they had never done it to this extent, no one had seen it, no one had understood the pain it could cause, no one had understood it even in Iran, the power it would give them.

So in a way, that's a value can't unring even if you get the straight open again. But yeah, on the on the you know, they're already in the talks at Vice President Vance attended missiles were not even on the table. There was maybe some vague reference to regional proxies and trying to reduce Iranians support for that, but that seems to fall and off. Hopefully, they were talking about something on the nuclear deal. And again, we don't see any prospect that the fundamentals that we went in with, which were removal of all the highly enriched uranium.

And the underlying of any nuclear enrichment facility with full monitoring of all of them so that we had absolute confidence that an Iranian commitment could be more than just on paper that they could never achieve a nuclear weapon. We're not going to get that, at least not in the near term of these negotiations. So of course, it will be unsatisfying to any of us who of course take this regime as a blight and a source of violence and mayhem to its own people and across the region, but we'll probably hang on in this weekend, but still potent form.

We'll be unsatisfying to Trump for the reasons I stated. You'll certainly be unsatisfying to these railies who wanted to push all the way to regime change and definitely still see the missile threat as a real threat that could post strategic threat even if it's even if the nuclear program is contained. So it'll be unstable and raise the possibility that there could be future rounds between Israel and Iran, maybe between the United States and Iran, and then the straight comes back into play every single time.

So it really raises the question, what was the strategic logic going in, which we all, if they got understand, it wasn't really thought through if these are your choices to get out. It's interesting because as I do the math between these various options, the math of not really reaching a deal and the math of reaching a deal leave you and roughly the same place, which is an unstable region. Dan, you know, it's kind of ironic here.

“I don't remember exactly each of your three positions on the JCPLA in 2015.”

But I suspect that at each of you, like me, were critical of some aspects of the JCPLA, thought some aspects were good.

And almost certainly seems like he's going to get us to a place that is not quite as good.

“After spending $2 billion a day for a couple of months, loss of life, racial instability, global economic upset, and so forth. Do you think I'm overstating that, Dan?”

Look, I don't think you're overstating it. I think that, you know, Iran obviously even under a nuclear regime posed a lot of other threats, and those threats had to be dealt with one way or another. But it's hard to look at what's happened on the nuclear file in particular, and then the decision to go to war, which, after all, was the JCPLA's critics when they were told that the alternative to the JCPLA was war, or outrage by the accusation, but we've now had two rounds of war. Here, and the problem with war is that it gets more war, as opposed to some of these diplomatic solutions, which at least leave more options open.

I think it's probably, you know, they're just telling people that they should have done something different in 2018 or 2019, maybe sort of politically unsatisfying, compared to some of the more recent decisions like getting into this misbegotten war, but I do agree with you that a nuclear agreement was the way to deal with this problem in the past, and frankly, was the way to deal with this problem on February 27, and one of the two instances when we were having nuclear negotiations with Iran, and they were offering things that were, in some cases, far beyond what they offered during the JCPLA, and instead of doing that, we chose the path of war.

“So I think it's, yes, and yes, we certainly shouldn't have torn up the JCPLA in my mind for all its words, and even more than that, we shouldn't have gone to war with a set of maximalist nuclear goals.”

And I will say, last June's war, when we first took out the nuclear program in significant, to a significant extent, there's rallies in the United States.

In many ways, left us in a better position than I thought it would. I wouldn't have advised that we do that, but it did significantly prevent Iran from enriching and pull them back from the nuclear threshold, and created leverage for negotiations that were ongoing, despite our having surprised attack them during nuclear negotiations once, but I think what was kind of, maybe history that occurred the first time as a sort of moderate tactical success was repeated as like a debacle, the second time in terms of what we've done here and the damage that it's done.

And then the last part of this is we barely know who we're negotiating with, having killed so many of the leaders of the country. I was thinking about my Princess Bride, and I can't remember the part of Princess Bride where it says, "My name is Enigo Antoya, you killed my father, now prepare for a reasonable and punctual negotiation." Generally, you kill someone's father, and you create a more radical regime with the successors who come next year. So from my perspective, I think it's a series of streets of regret that we could have taken some important tactical successes in going after elements of Iranian power that I think deserve to be taken seriously, but shouldn't have gotten out, shouldn't have done this war, probably shouldn't have done the last war, if that was where it was headed.

Do you remember the scene in Princess Bride where they say, "Never find a ground where in southwest Asia?"

Exactly.

“I think we should overdub the movie to get to that point.”

Let me sort of move to the crystal ball section of this with all the caveats, and I'm going to presume that none of you are immediately going to move to polymarkid or calcium on this. But can you, I'm going to ask each one of you just a different question, a different part of the place. Let's say we end up in one of the places we've just talked about. There is some kind of stabilizing development. It's either an agreement or it's learning to live without an agreement, but something is stabilizing.

But Iran has been pit, whatever it is, 13,000 targets and lost 3,500 people and lost a chunk of its leadership and sustained big economic bloats. It has gained some in terms of some geopolitical leverage, perhaps. And frankly, bizarrely, it has gained some in terms of global sympathy, which can't hardly think of a regime that doesn't deserve global sympathy that much. But they've also gained in terms of credibility insanely in all of this, but it's happened. And I mean, I think Ken and Dan Benayne and I were in a room last week and something happened in the region.

But you know, what are these cluster of people who are from the IRGC and from the parliament, so what do next?

“Do they go and seek big global funds and start rebuilding? What is going to be the priority for them?”

Sure. So with all the usual caveats, I don't think that we should assume that the Iranians are going to suddenly become benevolent. And look to integrate into global economy. That's not who this group of leaders is in Iran. This is a group of leaders who absolutely believes that the United States and Israel are their mortal enemies.

And of course, we've now reinforced that.

But it's also recognized this is the group of people who opposed the JCPOA. They didn't want to do the JCPOA. They want the nuclear weapon.

“And so I think having been struck twice by the United States and Israel, they now have been even greater incentive to try to acquire a nuclear weapon.”

What's more, they've learned a lot from this war. They've learned about what they can do to inflict pain on the United States and its allies. And on Israel, they've learned what doesn't work.

They're going to wind up with my guess is quite a lot of money out of some settlements, which I expect that they're going to use to build monopolistic missiles, more drones.

I suspect that they are going to want nuclear weapons and they're going to do whatever they can to acquire them clandestinely. And at the end of the day, it is a group of people that now knows I want to go back to a point that you're talking about with the entrepreneur, which is that, I'll take it a step further about the straight-up formulas. Before this war, the Iranians never touched the straight-up formulas because they were always terrified that if they touched the straight-up formulas, we would take out the regime.

This was something very clear that I had to eliminate understood. Well, we've now demonstrated to them that if they closed the straight-up formulas, not only will we not make a determined effort to remove the regime, we'll start making concessions to that. That is an unbelievably dangerous lesson to have taught this group of Iranian leaders. A good point. Dan, you know, we're left as we look back on the past two months with this phrase, which has not been a particularly good phrase. I think for you as Israel relations, you know, or this image of Netanyahu in the situation that this has been a war that he kind of drove.

And, you know, the administration, US administration has not done a lot to dissuade from this perception. But the Israeli and the Netanyahu objectives are clearly not completely aligned with the US, with regard to Lebanon, with regard to Iran.

“I think they'd like to go on. What happens next if we get into this stasis for one reason or another?”

With Israel and Lebanon and Israel in the US? So, of course, that recount of the meeting in the situation room is striking. I, you know, don't accept the notion of, even though I, you know, kind of disagree with the advice that I was giving, it's not new. He'd been preaching that to multiple US presidents, I sat and I'm sure dozens of meetings with him when I was in the ocitor, in which he made the case for military action against Iran at different times to different audiences. It was President Trump's decision, a poor decision, a decision not thought through a decision expecting to achieve quick results rather than to get stuck in this long slog.

It's apparently even some of his advisors understood that at the time and were very skeptical of, and you know, his presentation, but it's, it's a president's decision. But it's true also now that in the several weeks of the conflict that the divergences have emerged between US interests and Israeli interests. Netanyahu and his defenseman is saying to set the other day, you know, we're waiting for Trump's approval and signal to go back to fighting to finish off the regime to go after the nuclear targets to further degrade the ballistic missile program.

You know, there was probably a case, I think it was discussed at an earlier meeting in Mara Logo in December for some Israeli action this year. In 2006 to address the ballistic missile program before I expanded in production capability to really pose a potential strategic threat. But at this point given the costs we've already endured and the global economy continues to and has prospect of even worse.

I think that's a pretty significant divergence doesn't mean if we hit a kind of a calming arrangement, whether it's an agreement or a calm without an agreement that there couldn't be some future round.

“I think I mentioned that earlier, but I do think that's not something Trump is looking for now.”

And it's similar in Lebanon, you know, it was pretty clear that the Iranians insisted on some sort of Lebanese ceasefire and for for them to agree to the ceasefire. It was separated in time and through the channels, but it pretty quickly came on board.

And President Trump just announced yesterday a three week extension of the first 10 day ceasefire.

And he's clearly trying to get some momentum going on peace talks between Israel and Lebanon. All of this will hinge on whether the Lebanese government and the Arab Lebanese armed forces will really take on the difficult task of disarming his ballad because otherwise Lebanon has held hostage by that terrorist organization and Israel in a way is subject to that ongoing threat. And communities are still unlivable because of his ballad threats. But with Israel now, you know, controlling occupying some portion of southern Lebanon and feeling like they've got if needed the upper hand to continue to press their campaign against his ballad.

That clearly also is a divergence between what the direction the president is trying to go. I expect that to be a source of some degree of tension other than to say, especially as he's closing in on an election campaign and President Trump has called for his pardon. Netanyahu does not really have an option in the near term, but to do what President Trump decides. So he won't be able to proceed with either campaign if President Trump is telling him we're done.

“So Dan, what about the other key countries in the region? What about the Gulf states?”

You know, I'm here reports out that their business model was not disrupted, but clearly I think their focus is going to shift. Where do you see them with regard to their neighbor in this new situation? You know, it's been really interesting to watch this thing. I think before these wars in some ways the Gulf states really thought they had it figured out with their 2030 model.

It was basically diversification, data on globalization and then American security backstop.

They thought they had a winning formula, Trump went there, celebrated them, you know, not even a year ago. And at the time, I thought it was quite a successful trip in terms of business diplomacy, most of which was at least for the national interest of the United States. If not all, but I thought that was the model that they thought they could pursue. I think this was obviously a huge blow to that. Every single leg of that table was attacked by Iran, one way or another. The Gulf is kind of rewiring itself for this moment. They're looking for different pathways.

There are different pipelines, different export routes, Saudi and some ways comes up a little better because they can export some oil at a higher price out west. And because they have the kind of geographic depth that the shoreline principalities that are really right next to Iran don't. And particularly the UAE was hit with half of everything that Iran threw. And they performed incredibly on the military side in terms of knocking this stuff out of the sky. But it's just a fact that this has been an enormous economic blow.

“However, I think what that America at the end of this has what I consider kind of an undeserved opportunity.”

We pursued this war, which I think somewhat of a folly of a war in my view. And they warned that this war would ravage their economies because Iran would attack them, which is exactly what Iran did in the first hours of the war. And we went from there. And yet, the Gulf countries also saw America come to their aid militarily. In the wake of what they understood to have been a real threat, even if they were pursuing date on.

They never doubted that the Iranian threat to their territory was real.

So they're in some ways less unforgiving about this than we are because they saw a show up at the end of them. They also have basically nowhere to go. China is not really interested in providing a real alternative. They'll give their good offices and they'll try to sell their widgets, but they're not particularly interested. Russia is pretty preoccupied.

The kind of more carny idea that we're going to go to a bunch of middle powers that are going to somehow replace either the US defense foster or the US tech stack. I think has been proven wanting. Those are kind of nice garnishes, but they're not the main dish. You know, they dealt with Iran will be something that Gulf countries will have to think about how despite their fury. If Iran controls all of their exports through the Strait of Hormuz when this is done.

So I think, you know, you can expect to see Gulf countries kind of walk in a tight circle around all these alternatives.

“Send people to Beijing and Moscow and try to figure out what they can get separately and together with Iran.”

Go talk to Japan, Canada, Korea, India.

But at the end of the day, they'll probably be back with America.

“Their priorities are going to look different.”

It's more secure to taste. They will want to show that they're open for business.

They'll want to have help with their redundant kind of critical infrastructure and national security.

They'll want to make sure everything air defense under the sun will probably be bought and tried to try to harden these facilities. It's not as sexy as the gleaming marvels that Trump was sort of highlighting a year ago. But I think they'll live on economically one way or another. They're pretty stuck right now, but they'll look for the first chance to get unstuck and start planning for some version of 2030 light with the kind of more armored car version of the sports car that they were driving before.

“Yeah, and they all did start out or mostly started out pretty well off financially and I think they remain well off financially.”

All right, well look, you know, we've taken something incredibly complex and dissected it for 30 minutes. And obviously there's a lot more we could do, but I can't think of three people who could do a better job in 30 minutes than each of you did. So thank you, Ken, and thank you, Dan, and thank you, Dan, and thank everybody for listening. We've been following this with expert after expert each and every day and we will continue to do that. So join us at the DSR network on YouTube, join us at need to know on substact join us at the DSR network by podcast and we will look forward to being with you then.

But for now, thanks everybody, have a good weekend, bye bye. [Music]