LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Let's bring Aaron David Miller into the conversation. He served as a negotiator and adviser on the Middle East for the State Department under both Democratic and Republican presidents. He's now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Good morning, and welcome back to the program.
AARON DAVID MILLER: Morning, Leila. Great to be here with you.
FADEL: In the span of just a few hours, President Trump went from threatening Iran with more attacks and the seizure of Kharg Island to announcing a, quote, "great settlement" of the war. He even said, quote, "we ended the war with Iran." Could a dramatic shift like the president describes really have happened this quickly?
MILLER: No. And we've been here before. There's a bit of wash, rinse and repeat here. I think my CNN's count, this is the 39th time the president, including yesterday, 39th time the president has basically put out a statement indicating we're on the cusp of an actual deal. I think it's reasonable to assume, and it is an assumption, that we are closer than ever. But ever actually has been extremely difficult to define when you're talking about Donald Trump and U.S.-Iranian negotiations.
FADEL: Can Americans, U.S. allies and foes like Iran believe the United States when the president is constantly changing the narrative so dramatically from threats of all-out war to close to peace to all-out war?
MILLER: It's hard. We've undermined our credibility, I think, by wandering all over the parking lot. That's what happens in a war of choice when, in essence, you don't define your objectives, and you overestimate your own capacities and underestimate the capacity of the adversary. As reports suggest, we have no formal confirmation from the Iranians, and I suspect that they'll want to put some distance between the recent military action that the U.S. undertook to suggest that they're not coming to the table to sign any sort of agreement under pressure.
FADEL: Prior to Thursday's announcement of a potential deal, negotiations stalled, and as we heard from our correspondent Aya Batrawy, there was a lot of violence up until today. What does that suggest to you about what might have happened, is still happening at the negotiating table?
MILLER: I mean, I think you've got two parties. The Iranians, I think, their pain threshold is a bit higher. They think they're winning. I don't think they're delusional. It's a brutal, repressive authoritarian regime, but I think it's taken advantage of this war of choice to weaponize geography and directly challenge the United States, which is new. The late departed supreme leader Ali Khamenei would have been very cautious, very risk-averse in terms of challenging the U.S. And the Iranians have done that. The question is whether they've reached the conclusion that they squeezed enough out of the United States in order to agree to this memorandum of understanding, which I hope isn't going to turn into a memorandum of misunderstanding.
FADEL: I mean, so far, we haven't heard from the Iranians that they've actually agreed to this deal. Both Iran and the U.S. have claimed to have the upper hand with control of the Strait of Hormuz, that key waterway. Who do you think is really in control, and could that change in the next few days?
MILLER: Look, the Iranians have weaponized geography. You have their nuclear program. They want to become a nuclear latent weapon state, that is they have all the elements that is required to produce a weapon - the fissile material weapon, miniaturization of the warhead, the computer modeling, the delivery system - without perhaps making a decision to actually acquire a weapon. But their new nuke, so to speak, is straits. And I think the straits will, in fact, open, but we're going to live, I think, from here on in with the ever-present reality that whenever something goes wrong or whenever the Iranians want anything, they can constrain shipping there.
FADEL: You mentioned earlier that this leadership in Iran is directly challenging the United States. I mean, what do we know about Iran's leadership at this point and their willingness to embrace U.S. terms for a deal?
MILLER: You know, I have to be honest here. I'm not an Iranian expert. I don't play one on television. I think there's a degree of opacity here with respect to what we really know about who's making the decisions and how they're being made. I think it's quite clear that Mojtaba Khamenei, the late leader's son, is involved in this process. They're invoking his name. He was apparently injured. How long it's going to take him or whether or not he'll ever emerge with the influence that his father had is unclear. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Basiji commanders, the security intel guys, I think it's safe to say that they are making the decisions.
And as someone said, we've gone from divine power in Iran to hard power. And these guys basically have now survived the onslaught of the United States, the world's most formidable military power and the region's most formidable military power, Israel. And in a way, they've called our bluff and gotten through this. So they're going to emerge emboldened. Weakened in certain respects, but emboldened and capable of projecting their power.
FADEL: And really quickly. I mean, even if there is a memorandum of understanding, the Iran nuclear deal took years to negotiate. Do you see this playing out over the course of months or years?
MILLER: Leila, weeks and months. And these negotiations are going to represent the combination of root canal operations and migraine headaches. They are going to be incredibly painful if, in fact, they continue.
FADEL: Aaron David Miller is a longtime diplomat who's now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Thank you again for your time.
MILLER: Thanks, Leila. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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