MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We wanted to get a better understanding of what it's like to negotiate with Iran, so we've called someone who has. Robert Malley served as U.S. special envoy to Iran under President Biden. He was also a lead negotiator on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, from which Trump withdrew during his first term in office. Mr. Malley, good morning. Thanks for joining us.
ROBERT MALLEY: Good morning.
MARTIN: So President Trump, as we just heard, says the U.S. and Iran are in productive talks. Tehran denies talks are taking place at all, calling Trump's comments fake news. You're somebody who served in U.S. administrations going back to the 1990s in senior roles. You sat up in many of these rooms at many times. How do you understand what's going on here? Like, who do you believe?
MALLEY: Well, first, expect a lot of information and even more disinformation because there are a number of wars that are taking place in parallel, and one of them is a propaganda or narrative war. I think it's pretty telling that at this point, I think most commentators are liable to believe what the Iranians say, which is saying something, more than they do what President Trump is saying. So, you know, they may or may not be passing messages. They may or may not be pre-negotiating. They may or not be about to meet. We don't really know. You know, there always are messages that are being passed. But I'd say that the truth is, even if those discussions are taking place, by far the most relevant and important conversation that's taking place right now is not between Iran and the U.S., but between the president and himself. That's the conversation that matters. He needs to decide where he wants to go.
MARTIN: Oh. Well, say more about that. What do you mean?
MALLEY: What I mean is that he is the person who is - as your report just suggested, he says one thing and it's opposite, not just within a day, but within the hour, sometimes within the very minute that he's speaking. And he is torn between, on the one hand, the impulse to escalate and to exert even more force, and the other one - a more wise instinct, in my view - is to try to find a way out. So at this point, it looks like he did blink. You know, he had given that deadline. But, you know, all things considered, I'd much prefer he blink than he bomb, and I'd much prefer he listen to the market and the polls, as your report just suggested, than to his mood swings. But right now, the shape of the war, where it goes, is being decided in that conversation, in President Trump's head. Of course Iran has a vote, but the first decision has to be made by the president.
MARTIN: Well, having said everything, taking into account everything you've just told us, NPR has confirmed back-channel efforts with regional players working behind the scenes, the Iran's foreign ministry confirmed initiatives - that's what they're calling it - by other countries to reduce tensions. Could those be significant?
MALLEY: So, you know, those back-channel conversations always take place. I can't recall a time when I was in government where some country was not talking to the Iranians, and that same country was now talking to us. So that will always take place. And even more so at a time when this war - which was - which is unlawful, unnecessary, unjustified and extremely dangerous - is having a huge economic impact, negative impact on countries around the globe. So those countries are going to try to step up, pass messages. I'm sure that's happening. The problem right now is that both sides are speaking about different things, have a different outcome in mind, in part because both sides believe that they're winning.
And each side is waging a different kind of war, and each side is actually winning in the kind of war they're waging. The U.S. is winning militarily because it's destroying everything in sight that it wants to destroy in Iran, but Iran is also winning in its asymmetric warfare. As you just mentioned - and I assume the Iranians are listening to programs like you - like yours. They know what's happening to the market. They know what's happening to the price of oil. They know what's happening to the political polls in the United States.
MARTIN: This morning, Iran appointed Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council. That's the top security post in Iran. He's replacing Ali Larijani, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike last week. I don't know if you know him, but what do you think that means? Do you have any sense of how this could affect any possible discussions?
MALLEY: I don't know him. I really don't think, at this point, it's a matter of personality. I know that President Trump seems to be getting into this game - kind of strange game when you get rid of one set of leaders, hoping that a more pliant one will emerge. When that doesn't work, you believe that you kill enough people that you could hand-pick who they going to - who's going to be - you're going to be talking to. Anoint him your counterpart. It's not - this is not a system. Paradoxically, the more individualist system is the American one, where President Trump decides everything. The Iranian system has been very institutionalized. They've killed, decapitated scores of leaders. New ones emerge. The policy doesn't change. So I would not focus on the names of people - in this case, a person I don't know, I've never heard of. I would focus on what the policy has been now since the onset of the war, and it's been pretty consistent on Iran's part, no matter who they've eliminated, who the U.S. has eliminated.
MARTIN: So can you stay with me for a few more minutes? I wanted to ask, turning back to President Trump, as you've said in your analysis, he's the ultimate decider here. How do you read his decision to delay his ultimatum for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz? What do you think that suggests?
MALLEY: Yeah. So as I said, I think he blinked. I mean, I think he saw - he - you know, he always believes that his threats are going to get people to surrender to his will. And when that doesn't happen, he has to decide, does he live up to this threat? Does he escalate, or does he not? And in this case, I think it was clear to him - and people must have told him - that if he were to strike Iran's energy production facilities, Iran would've responded. It would not have ended the war. You would have seen a spike in oil prices. You would have seen a collapse in the market and maybe a further collapse in the poll numbers of the Republican Party. So I think, faced with those two options, he chose the wiser one. It doesn't mean that he's going to be as wise going forward because he is unpredictable. He is pretty moody in his choices, and we just don't know what he will do when he discovers that Iran is simply not going to say yes to whatever demands are being conveyed through intermediaries.
MARTIN: Let's say, for the sake of discussion, that the president is attentive to these factors that you have sort of laid out for us. What do you see as a realistic path to ending this war? What do you see as an on-ramp - off - forgive me - an off-ramp that you think that this president could ultimately follow?
MALLEY: Yeah. Maybe you're right. It will be an on-ramp because there won't be an off one. But, you know, it goes to the point I'm making earlier. It's very hard to imagine a negotiation, although this war will end at some point, because both sides believe that they're the ones who deserve the other one to make concessions. So the U.S. is going to want to hear something on the nuclear file, on the missile file, on the drone file and on the Strait of Hormuz. And Iran's position is going to be, wait a minute, you're the ones who want to end this war, we're fine keeping going, so what we want to hear about is guarantees that the war won't resume, and we want some economic compensation for the destruction that you and Israel have wrought. So it really is going to be two parallel discussions. They're going to be talking past each other. Hopefully, at some point, as I said, the president decides enough is enough. He ends the war, and at that point, Iran decides it's taken its pound of flesh. It needs to stop it as well.
MARTIN: That is Robert Malley. He's a former U.S. special envoy for Iran, and as we mentioned, he's had senior roles in several U.S. administrations dating back to the 1990s. Mr. Malley, thank you so much for talking with us - bracing, but thank you for talking with us.
MALLEY: Thanks for having me.
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