SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
We're going to bring them back to the Stone Age, where they belong, is what President Trump vowed in his White House address on Wednesday.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Our armed forces have delivered swift, decisive, overwhelming victories on the battlefield - victories like few people have ever seen before. Tonight, Iran's navy is gone. Their air force is in ruins.
SIMON: The president also said Iran had very few weapons, rocket launchers or factories left. Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former State Department official. He joins us now. Thanks so much for being with us, Mr. Miller.
AARON DAVID MILLER: Scott, thanks for having me.
SIMON: As we just heard, Iran shot down two U.S. aircraft yesterday. How significant a reverse is this to U.S. military efforts?
MILLER: I mean, it's extraordinary, frankly, in the thousands of sorties that both the Americans and Israelis have flown, that this is the first time that you had a downed aircraft. But it is, I think, tremendously symbolic. It suggests that airspace in Iran is - that the Americans don't have total escalation dominance of the airspace, it is contested, and that the Iranians still have - we're in the - what? - fifth week of this war? Iranians still have capacity. It's - not to mention the propaganda value of this, assuming the Iranians find the airman and it becomes a central issue in whatever passes for negotiations right now. And I suspect there's not much going on on the diplomatic front.
SIMON: Well, let me ask you about - because the search for the airman continues, and you've said recently this raises memories of Iran's hostage-taking in 1979.
MILLER: It does. And I think you have a president who, for reasons that are still not clear, made a decision to launch what I would describe to you as a war of choice and deploy the largest amount of missile and naval assets in this region since the 2003 Iraq War. There was no critical need here for that sort of deployment or this sort of war. But it has now, Scott, become, sadly - certainly for the airmen and the civilian casualties - it has now become a war of necessity in which the president cannot find a way out.
SIMON: Well, president's read - said this week that the war is, quote, "nearing completion." How do you read that?
MILLER: I think we're - where we are in this, I don't know, but we clearly are not near the end. I suspect that in the next several weeks, you may see an escalation. And the reality is that this has been a tactical set of brilliant operations by the American military. But if the war ended today, Scott, April 4, 2026, it would be, by any standard - no amount of spinning is going to change the fact that if the war ended today, it would be a strategic disaster.
The highly enriched uranium has not been retrieved. The regime not only survives but has demonstrated a terrifying capacity to make - to undermine Gulf security and stability. And more than anything else, it's weaponized geography and asserted control over the Strait of Hormuz and essentially set up a toll booth - preferential access, who gets in, who gets out, what they're charged. The Iranians are making these decisions. So all of this, to me, represents a major defeat for the United States unless some way, and I don't see how, can be found to turn this around.
SIMON: Do you see a diplomatic solution in the offing?
MILLER: I don't. I've been around negotiations for quite a while. I mean, if you want a deal, you need a couple things. You need two parties who are serious and willing and able. No. 2, you need a shared sense of urgency. There has to be a sufficient amount of pain, on one hand, that both parties share and a sufficient amount of gain, in fact, that they both, if they negotiate, would actually walk away with something of value. And then you need an end state. I don't see any of these factors, Scott, right now, relevant to this situation.
SIMON: Mr. Miller, you worked at the U.S. State Department across several presidencies. How would you characterize President Trump's leadership of U.S. foreign policy?
MILLER: I think that the concept of the American national interest - and it applies to domestic policy as well, I think - is tethered not to a clear and conceptual, well-thought-out set of interests. It's tethered to the president's whims, his prejudices, his financial interests, his politics. And I think that is doing an extraordinary amount of damage. The State Department essentially is hollowed out. Diplomacy - Russia-Ukraine, U.S.-Iran, Israel-Palestine - all of that is fraud at the moment.
So I think that there are elements of the president's policy that could be described as redemptive and actually smart. But by and large, I think we are no longer admired and respected to the degree that we need to be. And right now, the president has gotten himself into a war of choice that is going to - shows no sign right now, Scott, of the president finding a way to extricate the U.S. from it.
SIMON: Is there a role for popular - public opinion right now?
MILLER: It's hard to know. I mean, the president seems not to - seems to be relatively impervious to the fact that the Republican Party is likely to suffer devastating losses in the midterms. Three-month interruption of normal maritime commerce here is going to drive oil prices - according to Bloomberg, could drive them in excess of $170 a barrel as we enter the summer driving season. So you would think that politics would be important because they do get to the issue of the prosperity and security of the American public. But again, here, I think you have a president, frankly, Scott, who has a very hard time turning the M in me upside down so it becomes a W in we.
SIMON: Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and, of course, former State Department official. Thanks so much.
MILLER: Thank you, Scott.
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