MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We wanted to get additional perspective on this from Michael Singh. He headed up Middle East affairs at the National Security Council under President George W. Bush. He focused on Iran's nuclear pursuits and regional activities. Now he is the managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. That's a think tank that says it wants to advance a, quote, "balanced and realistic understanding of American interests in the Middle East," unquote. And he's with us now. Good morning, Mr. Singh. Thanks for joining us.
MICHAEL SINGH: Good morning, Michel.
MARTIN: As we just heard, Iran's deputy foreign minister is talking about a deal made with Oman to come up with a path for ships to enter the strait near Iran and leave near Oman. What's your reaction to that?
SINGH: Michel, we've seen a remarkable week in this conflict, I would say. You'll remember that Iran, about a week ago, rejected a previous Omani proposal that would have set up a mechanism - a sort of cooperative mechanism to govern the Strait of Hormuz like the one that exists in, say, the Strait of Malacca. And then we saw Iran actually resume military operations against the United States in a surprise attack.
President Trump threatened to attack Iran massively, but of course, that didn't materialize. And I think a lot of countries in the region - and maybe Iran itself - didn't find the threat credible. And the result now is that we're nearing a deal, it seems, that would hand Iran much more control of the strait and is, frankly, better for Iran than the deal that they rejected last week.
MARTIN: Iran seems to keep insisting on implementing a fee or a toll. Do you think the days of an open and free Strait of Hormuz are officially over?
SINGH: Well, I worry that they're over for now, Michel. I think that if this deal does come to pass - and it is looking that way - it does hand Iran significant control over traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. I think Iran will try to exclude, for example, the U.S. Navy and other Western navies from the Persian Gulf as part of this deal. And then I think, you know, the U.S. will be hard-pressed in coming months and years to continue to defend that principle of freedom of navigation. And it's going to take a lot more effort to get back what we've lost than it would have been to keep it in place in the first place.
MARTIN: Could this have been anticipated? I mean, I just have to believe that, at your time at the National Security Council, at some point you did what we call a tabletop exercise - you kind of analyzed, like, what if this happens? What if that happened? Did you envision, at any point, the Strait of Hormuz being closed or being under this kind of Iranian control?
SINGH: Well, it's a scenario that we looked at a lot, obviously, both in the government as well as in the think-tank world. And I think we all envisioned that Iran would try to close the Strait of Hormuz. I'm not sure we quite understood how they would do it. This combination of drone warfare, of relatively inexpensive missiles and replenishable missiles that Iran has - they have used that not to directly attack U.S. Navy ships, for example. They haven't tried to close the strait using mines. They've really deterred private entities - shippers - from using the strait.
And that has proven much more difficult for the U.S. military to counter 'cause the only way to counter is either to somehow reassure the shippers, which has proven impossible, frankly, or to eliminate Iran's drone and missile stores, which has also proven very difficult without a significant increase in military effort.
MARTIN: So what does this mean? Let's project this out sort of going forward. What does this mean for the U.S., for commercial shipping and for Gulf countries in the region? I mean, does it effectively mean that the strait is closed, particularly to the U.S. and to commercial entities or any entities allied with the U.S.?
SINGH: I don't think it means it's closed. I think that it will mean, at least in the short run, that it's open to those Iran chooses to open it to. And that is a big problem for the United States because there's every chance that Iran will choose to close the strait to Israeli-linked shipping, U.S.-linked shipping or shipping linked to any country that's doing something Iran doesn't like. And, you know, frankly, the Iranians have also made pretty clear they don't want to allow U.S. naval vessels to go through the strait. They want to deny innocent passage, as we say, to Western militaries.
You could also, I think, see this agreement fall apart very quickly. You know, these - this route near Iran will put ships very close to the Iranian coast and in danger of not just missiles and drones but of sailors being captured - you know, U.S. forces being captured - by Iranian forces. And so this could face a crisis very quickly.
MARTIN: Forgive me, though, for pressing the point. It does sound to me like you're saying the Strait of Hormuz is officially closed to U.S. ships, commercial vessels and anybody who's allied with the U.S. or isn't aligned with Iran. Is that, in fact, what you're saying?
SINGH: I think that in the near term, effectively, that will be the case. There's one big issue here, Michel, which will remain really to be addressed, and that is the U.S. still has sanctions on Iran. The U.S. still has - is preventing Iran from exporting its oil, and so the U.S. still has cards to play. The U.S. still has, for example, that threat of escalation, which so far we've backed down on for the most part.
MARTIN: OK. All right.
SINGH: So I don't think we should treat that as sort of a fait accompli at this point, but yes.
MARTIN: OK.
SINGH: This deal seeks to accomplish that.
MARTIN: All right. We'll have to leave it there for now. That's Michael Singh, managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He's a former Middle East lead at the National Security Council under President George W. Bush. Mr. Singh, thanks.
SINGH: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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