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Strikes, Strategy, and Stalemate: What’s Next for US–Iran Diplomacy?
5 Plays2 months ago
Adam Weinstein, deputy director of the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute, joins William Roberts to assess the fallout from recent U.S. air strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites. He argues that Washington must place real restraints on Israel and pursue a broader diplomatic initiative—one that’s currently missing from the Trump administration’s approach to the region.
Transcript
Introduction and Background
00:00:00
Adam
Thank
00:00:00
William Roberts
Hi, and welcome to Truth to Power. I'm William Roberts. I'm here with Adam Weinstein. Adam is the director ah ah Deputy Director of the Middle East Program at the Quincy Institute. His current research focuses on security and rule of law in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.
00:00:18
William Roberts
Adam's analysis has been featured in the Washington Post, the UK Guardian, Foreign Policy Magazine, War on the Rocks, Lawfare, and The National Interest. Before coming to Quincy,
00:00:31
William Roberts
Adam worked for a big five accounting firm in the international trade practice and assisted multinational clients in navigating Asia's trade landscape, incorporating human rights, due diligence into supply chains, managing sanctions risk and utilizing free trade agreements.
00:00:49
William Roberts
He also worked as a senior law and policy analyst at the National Iranian American Council, where he focused on the securitization of U.S. immigration policy. Adam, welcome.
00:01:01
Adam
Thanks for having me.
00:01:02
William Roberts
Adam also received his JD from Temple University Beasley School of Law in Philadelphia, where I spent many years as a reporter with a concentration in international law and transitional justice, and importantly, served as a U.S. Marine in Afghanistan in 2012 as part of a detachment to the Second Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company, where he served in Arrugan province in support of Australia's second commando regiment.
00:01:36
William Roberts
Adam, thanks for joining us. Just quickly, before we jump into our topic today, which is the US, Iran and and the Middle East, tell us about the Quincy Institute, if you would.
US-Iran Relations and Recent Events
00:01:51
William Roberts
who What is the Quincy Institute and what is it you guys do?
00:01:57
Adam
Well, the Quincy Institute is based in Washington, D.C., although we have some staff in other places and we're a think tank. We sometimes call ourselves an action tank because we're proactive in promoting policies.
00:02:08
Adam
But essentially, we're a i think tank that's rooted in the theory of restraint, which is, you know, the short of it is the idea that, you know,
00:02:09
William Roberts
Thank
00:02:17
Adam
Many of the United States interests can be solved by diplomacy, not through wars of choice and military interventions and that the the pursuit of primacy. David By the United States shouldn't be the default and that instead we should focus on cooperating with other countries, including adversaries.
00:02:38
William Roberts
So you guys are advocates for diplomacy first. And, you know, this is why I was excited to have you on because the the recent US strategic bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities is ah ah is a major shift in US posture it's It's had a dramatic effect, I think still kind of unknown, unwinding, reverberating effect.
00:03:11
William Roberts
So I'm curious what your assessment is of those strikes that President Trump ordered, what it means for the Middle East and the U.S. population.
00:03:29
William Roberts
U.S. nonproliferation policy and and the the long and and fraught efforts to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. But i'm I'm curious, we saw Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House last week with President Trump.
00:03:51
William Roberts
They talked about a possible ceasefire between Israel and Gaza. that hasn't materialized yet. what What do you expect to see out of that? And where do we where do we think that conflict is headed?
00:04:06
Adam
Well, first on the the strikes, I mean, the the the negotiations that Trump claims he had given the Iranian 60 days to achieve, I mean, that's not serious.
00:04:21
Adam
Trump took 18 months to negotiate with the Taliban for a US withdrawal that both of them wanted. Okay. ah The original JCPOA, believe but or a Iran nuclear deal, I believe took 20 months. So 60 days is just not serious. So I'll start there.
00:04:34
Adam
Going to the meeting,
00:04:34
William Roberts
Yeah, JCPOA is Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
00:04:39
Adam
Yes, correct. ah We can just say the nuclear the Iran nuclear deal for shorthand.
00:04:43
William Roberts
Yeah, and that was negotiated by former Senator John Kerry on behalf of President Barack Obama.
00:04:44
Adam
like
00:04:51
Adam
Correct. And that, you know, that took something like 20 months. Trump's deal with the Taliban, which was much, much simpler by comparison, took something like 18 months. So 60 days just isn't serious.
00:05:03
Adam
We also have to remember that the Iranians waited, you know, something like four plus years after the agreement was abrogated, to to and they still came back to talk. So 60 days is just not a serious number.
00:05:18
Adam
I think what really happened is that Netanyahu saw that there was progress being made in the negotiations, so he decided that it was in Israel's interest to conduct strikes, both to eliminate the the senior command of the IRGC,
00:05:32
Adam
sabotage the talks and hopefully pull the U.S. and and convince the U.S. s to conduct these kinds of strategic strikes against the nuclear facilities. Trump saw that the strikes were going well on a tactical level and that you know much of the senior command of the IRGC was was killed many nuclear scientists as well.
00:05:53
Adam
and And so he just couldn't help himself and he joined the strikes and he sabotaged his own diplomatic talks that were actually making progress. That's the short of what happened, I think.
00:06:05
Adam
In terms of what happened at the meeting between Netanyahu and Trump after the fact, well, they congratulated each other on the strikes. So did Secretary Hegseth with Netanyahu and they patted each other on the back.
00:06:16
Adam
And then, I'm not sure much more came out of it. Supposedly there's this ceasefire deal, but Palestinians in Gaza are still being killed by the dozens. The only silver lining is that some UNA was permitted to enter Gaza.
00:06:33
Adam
That's really all that came out of it, in my view. you know the The other thing that came out of it is that Trump appears to be essentially extorting the Israelis and saying that if you pursue Netanyahu in court for And hold him accountable. he's Trump is going to halt weapons transfers to Israel. So that's a level of foreign interference that or blatant foreign interference that I thought i don't think we've seen in some time. So that's what came out of it.
00:07:03
William Roberts
Mm hmm. The where does this leave the the government in Tehran? I mean, they they have been funding proxies in Yemen and Lebanon and elsewhere. What of course and and in Gaza where where you know, there's there's this narrative that's emerged that israel has defeated its enemy and enemies or set them back in in each of these places but there's as yet no resolution to the conflict in gaza so what what should we expect going forward from tehran and and its posture towards israel
00:07:50
Adam
Well, I think Israel has had incredible success against its enemies. I mean, it eliminated Hassan Nasrallah, it eliminated Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, Hassan Nasrallah being the leader of Hezbollah.
00:08:01
Adam
It essentially decapitated the leadership of Hezbollah, the leadership of Hamas.
00:08:01
William Roberts
Mm-hmm.
00:08:06
Adam
the leadership of the IRGC, Iran's axis of resistance, which is this constellation of of non-state and state actors that are or at least supported by Iran.
00:08:18
Adam
It includes the Houthis, it includes Hamas, it includes Hezbollah, it includes certain Iraqi militias and so forth.
Diplomacy vs. Military Intervention
00:08:24
Adam
It's been decimated in many ways. There's a government now in Syria that's unfriendly to the Iranians.
00:08:32
Adam
So in many ways, the Israelis have had success, but somewhat like a gambler whose you know hand is up at a blackjack table or a poker table, they don't know when to stop.
00:08:44
Adam
And so I think what they've inadvertently done is actually given the government in Iran a certain level of confidence. And the reason I say, I'll tell you why I say that, because it might be It might be counterintuitive to people who don't watch Iran closely, but I think the Iranian government was feeling extremely vulnerable.
00:09:02
Adam
that's why they were willing to come to the table with the Trump administration, despite the fact that the Trump administration killed the former Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani. So this is an incredible grievance to the Iranians to the Supreme Leader himself.
00:09:11
William Roberts
Mm-hmm.
00:09:15
Adam
The Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was very close with Soleimani. Soleimani. ah Despite that, they were willing to come to the table because I think they felt very weak and very cornered.
00:09:26
Adam
What these Israeli and U.S. strikes did, though, was they let the regime know that even when the regime is backed into a corner and at its weakest, the Iranian people won't necessarily rise up against it.
00:09:40
Adam
I mean, if there was ever a time where you were going to see perhaps an organized resistance to the regime from within Iran, you would have thought it might be as these strikes were happening.
00:09:47
William Roberts
Thank you.
00:09:50
Adam
because the Supreme Leader was in hiding. the and Almost the entire IRGC senior command had been killed. And yet we didn't see that. We almost saw a rally around the flag effect. And that doesn't mean that Iranians support the regime. It means that they don't support foreign powers, in particular, the Israelis in the United States conducting strikes inside their country.
00:10:09
Adam
And so if you're the regime, you might think, okay, well, we're economically isolated. Our access of resistance assistance has crumbled, but look at what happened. You know, the thing that we fear most, which is an internal uprising that didn't happen even when we were at our weakest.
00:10:25
Adam
So maybe our regime is stronger than we think it is. And I think in some sense, it's probably given the Supreme leader and and the regime renewed confidence. And it also revealed that there just is no, there's no organized resistance inside or outside of Iran. I mean, there's there a bunch of Iranians that would like to see a more democratic system, but that hasn't translated into an organized resistance. So I think that's in some ways, breathe new life into the Iranian regime.
00:10:53
William Roberts
I mean, there was there was talk in Israel and a little bit here in Washington that you know this bombing campaign might be a regime change effort by the Israelis or the U.S. I mean, bombing other countries never leads to regime change.
00:11:13
William Roberts
i the The only example of regime change I can think of in the Middle East through military action is what the U.S. did in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that's boots on the ground.
00:11:24
William Roberts
We're not about to send boots on the ground to combat troops to Iran. I mean, that would be folly.
00:11:35
William Roberts
where
00:11:36
William Roberts
Where do we go now? So we're we're not going to have a different government in Tehran. Diplomacy really is the only viable path to getting another country to agree not to build nuclear weapons. where where Where is that process now? Where do we go from here?
00:12:00
Adam
You know, the the process is is stagnant right now. the The Iranians have kicked out the observers from the International Atomic Energy Agency. They're not going to go back to the table easily because if they do, it will, you know, erode their own legitimacy. They can't, it will demonstrate weakness.
00:12:19
Adam
And, you know, by even the Israeli accounts, not all of the enriched in irandium uranium was destroyed. Now, the Israelis claim that it's inaccessible, so you know that they can't access it, and that if they if there was you know they have satellites and drones observing things, and that if they saw if they saw an attempt by the Iranians to access this enriched uranium, they'd conduct further strikes. But we don't know that for sure. Some of it might have been taken away. ah Some of it, you know, there there might be renewed attempts to to reestablish the nuclear program. I mean, now, of course, if you're a younger Iranian, you might not want to become a nuclear physicist these days.
00:12:56
Adam
but But the fact is that they they have an incentive now to to put that program into overdrive and to put it underground, literally and figuratively. we have no eyes on. I mean, what we had before was we had a verification process. It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty good.
00:13:11
Adam
And now we have nothing. And, you know, if you were going to conduct these strikes, it should have been done in a coordinated way where the Israelis and the Americans were on the same page and it happened out of the blue.
00:13:23
Adam
You know, perhaps you could make a case for that. I still think it would be the wrong move. But the way they did it was a particularly sort of ridiculous way in which they're telegraphing that they're going to do it and then they do it.
00:13:35
Adam
And then the Trump administration refuses to accept even questions about whether whether the strikes were successful because they know that they probably weren't completely successful. That's why they don't want to entertain those questions.
00:13:47
Adam
terms of diplomacy, I will say diplomacy is never dead. I mean, the the Iranians are still backed into a corner. Their axis of resistance is still decimated.
00:13:58
Adam
They're seeing the region move on without them. they have economic problems. ah There's still reasons for them to come back to the table, but getting them back to the table gonna involve more concessions.
00:14:10
Adam
the It's gonna involve less trust. The timeframe it's going to take to eke out an agreement is going to be longer. And I think something that, you know Americans are not good at this kind of strategic empathy that's required for good diplomacy.
00:14:28
Adam
I mean, i'm I remember a photo of Vladimir Putin where he's gifting the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei an antique Quran from the Caucasus region of of Russia.
00:14:40
Adam
And you can see the Supreme Leader you know is a assigning value to that. And I think a lot of i think I think a lot of US diplomats or US technocrats would be like, well, what's the value in that? That's just for a photo. Yes, exactly. It's just for a photo. But it's a a respect that Putin is is showing Khamenei. Now, I'm not holding, Putin is not.
00:15:00
Adam
not someone to emulate when it comes to diplomacy. But the point I'm trying to make is that Iran sees itself as a great civilization. Iran sees itself as a leader in the Muslim world.
00:15:12
Adam
Putin, as an example, understands that. I think when the US negotiates with with Iran, it we tend to project our own views of Iran onto it.
00:15:23
Adam
And so we see them as a backwater, we see them as an economically isolated sort of backwards country that's not important. And we're going to treat them like that when we negotiate with them. But the Iranians see themselves as as the descendants of the Persian Empire.
00:15:38
Adam
uh this great civilization and in fact you actually see see in ira in tehran right now some of the the regime propaganda that has followed these strikes is actually making reference to uh you know the persian empire rather than islam because they're trying to galvanize the sense of persian nationalism to sort of lift the country's spirits up and so you have to treat the iranians with a certain level of respect if you want to get a good diplomatic outcome from them. you They don't respond well to coercion. They don't respond well to to being commanded what to do or being threatened. And they're willing staying to sustain an incredible amount of punishment.
00:16:21
Adam
I mean, look at the Iran-Iraq War. Look at the, they've they've theyve dave basically taken a beating in terms of sanctions. For decades, they've been one of the most sanctioned countries in the world.
00:16:34
Adam
And yet, they, it hasn't broken them. So they're willing to take a real beating. And they don't respond to coercion. They actually would respond to a respectful engagement, I think.
00:16:49
Adam
So,
Historical Context of US-Iran Relations
00:16:50
William Roberts
I'm interested in, in and this goes back to history a little bit, how the Iranians view the United States. I mean, we, the CIA, in in conjunction with the British in 1953 overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh and installed the ah ah Shah as a monarch who ruled as a dictator a brutal dictator with US backing until the revolution in 1979. And then
00:16:50
Adam
that's cool.
00:17:25
William Roberts
and then and then there was the the you know embassy hostage crisis. President Jimmy Carter ordered a special operations mission to try to free those hostages. It failed before even getting to Tehran.
00:17:44
William Roberts
tehran and the hostages weren't released until Ronald Reagan became president, uh, potentially under threat of war.
00:17:54
William Roberts
Uh, Reagan was making a lot of, uh, strong statements about the Iranians to better release our people. And, you know, we've been in, in this kind of diplomatic deadlock with them, uh, pretty much ever since um,
00:18:13
William Roberts
what is the what What does that history mean for the the Iranian nation, the Iranian people?
00:18:23
Adam
Well, by the way, the Shah was a complex character. I do agree there were brutal elements to him. A book that your listeners could read is called The Fall of Heaven.
00:18:32
William Roberts
Thank
00:18:33
Adam
Andrew Scott Cooper is the author's name, The Fall of Heaven. I think it's a very nuanced history of the Shah that's both critical, but also gives him credit where credit is due.
00:18:43
Adam
also gives his wife credit where credit is due, because his wife was quite a shrewd politician herself.
00:18:45
William Roberts
Thank you.
00:18:50
Adam
That being said, I mean, the average Iranian does view the U.S. You know, it's the they both view the in my experience with Iranians, whether they're pro regime or anti regime or monarchists or not, they view the U.S. s with a mix of awe and resentment.
00:19:07
Adam
they do resent the role that the U.S. played. they They think that the U.S., many of them think the U.S. undermined Iran's democratic moment. They shot down, you know a new U.S. warship accidentally shot down ah and Iranian airliner.
00:19:21
Adam
and We don't hear about these things. I mean, can you imagine if Iran shot down a U.S.
00:19:23
William Roberts
Mm-hmm.
00:19:25
Adam
airliner? and We would hear about this for eternity. yeah Americans are very, very quick to forget the things we do. I mean, we still talk about the Russians shooting down an airliner.
00:19:36
Adam
but We did the same thing. oh
00:19:38
William Roberts
Mm-hmm.
00:19:39
Adam
and And Iranians view it that way. At the risk of, you know, sounding Orientalist, but I do think it's true, conspiracy theories run abound.
00:19:50
Adam
in Iran and among the diaspora. And a lot of times things are viewed in a very conspiratorial way. But the reality is that some of those conspiracies are true. I mean, the the United States has meddled in Iran. The UK did meddle in Iran, and we can't escape that history. So the perception of the United States is that basically the United States has undermined Iran's progress. And so this is this is true even among people who dislike who disliked the regime.
00:20:18
William Roberts
So now we have the second Trump presidency. we discussed, Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal, which was not just between the US and Iran, but it also included the EU, the United Nations, China, Russia, Britain, and France. the the the You described kind of a
00:20:47
William Roberts
ad lib process, I think, at the White House in deciding to engage these strikes. How do we understand Trump's decision making process and the people around him? And what what is driving U.S. policy in the Middle East now?
00:21:07
Adam
Well, what decision-making progress? I mean, that's the real question. i don't I'm not sure there is a decision-making process. Now, some people will say that, okay, well, Trump is purposely unpredictable and this is a tactic.
00:21:19
Adam
And that would make sense if he had a clear end goal he has clarity about and he engages in this unpredictable behavior you know to keep people on their their toes. and But he knows what he wants in the end. I don't think that's the case. I'm not sure Trump knows what he wants. I think it's more of a schizophrenic policymaking process. process And his NSC is not, you know, organized. And it's, you know, he likes to have different people in his cabinet who have very contradicting views, but he changes his position from one day to the next. I mean, you hear him right now, he's talking about Ken Zelensky bomb Moscow.
00:21:57
Adam
You know, and then a month ago, he was talking about making the peace deal of a century. So you what what he what he thinks from one day to another really does does change. Now, in the Middle East, I do think he has a genuine desire to be viewed as a dealmaker and a peacemaker.
00:22:13
Adam
And he thinks he's going to remake the Middle East. And in some cases, you see him making. decisions that are congruent with that, such as lifting sanctions on the new, I'm going to call it a regime because it's not democratic, the new regime in Syria, trying to give them a chance, it you know, accepting, we sometimes we refer to it as facts on the ground, accepting the reality that al-Shara is the new leader of Syria.
00:22:27
William Roberts
Mm-hmm.
00:22:38
Adam
So let's just see what, they let's see what he does, you know, instead of living in fantasy land where we're going to have, we're going to have this perfect democratic leader. So you see him doing that.
00:22:48
Adam
But on the other hand, you see him, you know, conducting strikes on Iran, basically not putting real pressure on Netanyahu to stop his his his war and ethnic cleansing and and war crimes and in Gaza.
00:23:03
Adam
gaza which is a festering wound, which is going to undermine everything else he wants to do in the Middle East. So again, it's just a bit schizophrenic. I think his intentions are are positive in the sense that he does want to see deals made in the Middle East. I don't think he has this sort of neoconservative ambition to remake the Middle East by force.
00:23:25
Adam
the problem is he contradicts himself and he engages in this impulsive kind of behavior. that undermines what he actually wants to do. And of course, he's cheer, you guys cheerleaders like, you know, Lindsey Graham and other types types of people who were probably pushing him to do these things.
00:23:43
Adam
But he's, you know, ultimately, he's the he's the decision maker. i he lacks a certain kind of strategic patience that you need for diplomacy. Diplomacy is not fast.
00:23:55
Adam
Diplomacy is slow. Diplomacy sequencing matters, messaging matters. You know, if if the president says something off the cuff while he's boarding Air Force One and it's completely off message to what his own diplomats are telling, you know, an adversary at the negotiating table, that can erase two months of work in in in five seconds.
00:24:17
Adam
And he's extremely unpredictable. and I suspect his own his own diplomats are frustrated with that. I don't know that, but I suspect they are.
00:24:26
William Roberts
How do the Arab nations view
Regional Dynamics in Middle East Diplomacy
00:24:28
William Roberts
this? you know You have Jordan, which is you know host to, want to say millions of Palestinians.
00:24:37
William Roberts
Egypt, which is you know neighboring Gaza. Saudi Arabia. where Trump went for his first foreign trip with a couple dozen U.S. corporate executives in tow and where he and his sons are are developing business relationships in in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and and Qatar.
00:25:05
William Roberts
What's the, how do we, How do we see the role of of of the Arab states in serving as brokers, mediators, partners um in in resolving either the Gaza crisis or the or the tension with Iran?
00:25:25
Adam
Well, i you know as an example, I think the Saudis and the Turks were instrumental in convincing Trump that he should lift sanctions on Syria and that she should accept the new government. So I think he does listen to them.
00:25:36
William Roberts
Mm-hmm.
00:25:38
Adam
he And certainly the Gulf Arabs are happy with Trump in office. And I think Trump is very receptive to their their version of diplomacy. And they know how they know how to put on a show for Trump, and they do.
00:25:49
Adam
do it quite well. they, they, I don't know how much of an interest they have in resolving the Gulf, uh, the Gaza crisis. I mean, they prefer for it to go away, but they have bigger things. Uh, you know, they want, you know, the Saudis want a deal with the U S uh, uh, they want investment. That's where their priorities lie. The Gaza, the Gaza crisis is an annoyance for them.
00:26:11
Adam
Uh, they would prefer to resolve it, but I don't know that they're going to, i don't know that they're really going to, exert like significant political capital or expend political expend significant political capital to resolve it. But it it is an issue.
00:26:27
Adam
the Jordanians, I think are more involved. I think the Jordanians really do want to see, a resolution to Gaza. They want to see a resolution to what's happening in the West bank with the expansion of settlements.
00:26:39
Adam
The Jordanians don't like the rhetoric that's coming out of Israel, which is that Jordan is Palestine. That's you know right wing was Israelis will sometimes say that Jordan is Palestine. The Jordanians really don't want to, um, to,
00:26:52
Adam
to to to listen to hear that. And they jordan Jordan also views itself as a sort of caretaker of Jerusalem and that any ultimate compromise made between the Palestinians and the the Israelis also needs to have Jordan's approval.
00:27:07
Adam
So the Jordanians are a little bit more more involved. You know, the Qataris are certainly involved when it comes to Gaza. But, you know, ultimately,
00:27:19
Adam
to To resolve this, the Trump administration is going to have to rein in Netanyahu.
00:27:24
William Roberts
Thank
00:27:24
Adam
And also not just Netanyahu, but Israeli society writ large. Because sometimes we say we we use Netanyahu as a shorthand for everything that that Israel is doing in Gaza, but or even the West Bank. But we have to remember that Israeli society has...
00:27:42
Adam
been radicalized since October 7th. And even though many Israelis don't like Netanyahu, they don't like him for domestic political reasons. It's not necessarily that they don't like what he's doing in Gaza.
00:27:53
Adam
And so i think the U.S. is going to have to, and the Trump administration is well-placed to do this, is going to have to remind Israeli society just how reliant it is on U.S. military uh, weapons transfers and support and technology, and that this is not actually not an equal relationship and they should disabuse themselves of any fantasy that it's an equal relationship.
00:28:20
William Roberts
the
00:28:22
William Roberts
So I guess the larger question here is, you know, what what would a policy of diplomacy and restraint coming from the Trump administration look like? I mean, if you were Trump's national security advisor or secretary of state, what would, what would what would the framework be, the diplomatic framework be that you would want to put together there?
00:28:52
Adam
I would be immediately exploring backdoor channels of communications with the Iranians and try to restart the talks. would I would let the Israelis know that if they try to sabotage the talks again, they're going to get no US support. And in fact, US support will be rescinded for other things they want to do. i would put pressure on the Netanyahu government to seriously engage a ceasefire with with the Palestinians in Gaza.
00:29:20
Adam
to and and And to abandon this fantasy that they're going to be able to kill every last Hamas militant or that they're going to be able to transfer the Palestinians out of Gaza.
00:29:31
Adam
would create some red lines when it comes to settlements in the West Bank. I would do i would probably follow a little bit of a similar playbook in Syria, except you know I might not have I might not have given 100% sanctions relief until I saw that the government was going to behave responsibly. But you know i think on balance, the sanctions relief was positive.
00:29:53
Adam
I would be withdrawing u s troops from the Kurdish areas in Northeast Syria and letting the Syrian Democratic Forces, which are our syrian our ah Kurdish partners in Syria, letting them know they have to come to some understanding with the government in Damascus because we're not going to be there forever.
00:30:09
Adam
I would continue to withdraw US troops from Iraq, but I i wouldn't do it precipitously. i would do it you know gradually. So some of these things he is doing.
00:30:19
Adam
basically, i wouldn't i what ah what I would do differently is i wouldn't assume that I can compartmentalize the Middle East, you know make progress in one area while letting another area compete completely fester.
00:30:26
William Roberts
Mm-hmm.
00:30:30
Adam
Because what happens is that the area the area you let fester and ends up sabotaging and undermining ah the other area where you're making progress.
00:30:39
William Roberts
Mm-hmm. the which kind of brings us back to the American public.
Current US Administration's Approach
00:30:44
William Roberts
I mean, we fought the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and and withdrew from Afghanistan, and that was a painful experience.
00:30:55
William Roberts
And, you know, there's certainly a public sentiment in the U.S. s that the U.S. should not be engaged in these forever wars in the Middle East. But I wonder if, you know,
00:31:06
William Roberts
on under the Biden presidency, where we didn't see kind of a neglect or failure to prioritize a wider strategy for the region that that could be successful.
00:31:20
Adam
Yeah, the Biden administration was completely skittish. I mean, he was part of the Obama administration that negotiated the Iran nuclear agreement. On day one of his presidency, he should have reinstated the JCPOA vi via executive order, and the Republicans would have complained, and so what?
00:31:39
Adam
They would have forgotten about it. I mean, one thing the Trump administration knows, they might not have forgotten about it, but the new cycle would have moved on. one one One thing the Trump administration knows is the power of the news cycle. It can do something and people can complain about it.
00:31:53
Adam
And 48 hours happens and there's something else to talk about. The Biden administration was completely scared of the news cycle, completely scared of criticism. I think they also had this maximalist approach. And they so they got in the office and they thought, OK, well, we have this JCPOA that the Obama administration, one that I was part of,
00:32:12
Adam
and many of his many many many folks in his administration were also part of the Obama administration, you know we could just reinstate it, but what if we can get a little bit more? you know and and they had this maximalist kind of greedy attitude um they should have just re-entered the JCPOA and then moved on from there.
00:32:30
Adam
they weren't willing to do, i mean, and I wouldn't even call it a risky thing. They weren't willing to do moderately risky things like that. They were very, very, very risk averse and it blew up in their face. I mean, you have Jake Sullivan writing in Foreign Affairs that the Middle East is quieter than quieter than it's ever been. We're just going to move on. And then the October 7th attacks happen.
00:32:50
Adam
I think one thing we've learned since October 7th in the last couple of years is that people's predictions are useless.
00:32:59
Adam
I mean, I don't know if you're going to ask me for a prediction at some point during this interview, but I'll tell the listeners right now that whatever I say is completely useless.
00:33:07
Adam
You should reject it. People, you know, professionals in the intelligence community, academics, almost all their predictions are wrong. I know people, you know, people will twist what they said or wrote in the past to say, well, actually it was really right. If you read between the lines of what I said, it was right. Even though I said the exact opposite of what happened.
00:33:26
Adam
But I know virtually nobody who has predicted any of this correctly or once in a while they predict one thing that happens to, you know. So predictions are are quite useless. But what you what you can look at is trends.
00:33:39
Adam
the trend of the the Biden administration is that it was risk averse and it wasn't willing to do big things diplomatically. And it was just in a sort of reactive mode. um And then the Trump administration is the opposite.
00:33:50
William Roberts
Yeah. I mean, it was kind of it was kind of it was kind of tragic to to watch it unfold. I mean, especially for me. i mean, I covered Biden in the U.S. Senate back in the aughts after 9-11 when he was chair of the of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and and played a really vital role coordinating U.S. policy with the Bush administration in the region.
00:34:18
William Roberts
And you know I think that experience was was very formative for him. Biden, to me, seemed to be very sensitive to the sectarian divisions in Iraq between Sunni and Shia and elsewhere in the Middle East between different ethnic groups.
00:34:39
William Roberts
And I wonder if that didn't play a role in what I view as his failure to to apply greater pressure on the Israelis for restraint after October 7. I mean, when those attacks happened, he actually came out and warned the Israelis, don't make the same mistakes we made after 9-11.
00:35:02
William Roberts
and and And so here we have a president who in retrospect and ah ah and observationally even at the time was getting on in years. and and was a bit dotary. I mean, with all respect, and I do respect him, it appeared that Sullivan and and Secretary State Antony Blinken were driving policy, and they gave the Israelis, and and and probably with with Biden's agreement, a lot of lot of room to run.
00:35:37
Adam
Yeah. And, you know, I think one thing we have to remember right after October 7th, you know, it was hard to tell the Israelis, hey, you know, you really got to be calm. You got to react in a very calm way.
00:35:50
Adam
yeah we a lot of people were calling for a ceasefire like within 48 hours after October 7th. And I think that was delusion.
00:35:56
William Roberts
Mm-hmm.
00:35:57
Adam
There's no country in the world that wouldn't have a reaction to October 7th. And I think it broke the psyche of Israelis the same way nine eleven broke the psyche of Americans.
00:36:09
Adam
Now, people dispute whether this is true or not, but let's just say perception is reality. I mean, the Israelis believed that October 7th had a sexual component. Now, imagine if 9-11 also had a sexual component, what that would do to the psychology of Americans.
00:36:23
Adam
So it broke Israeli society and it was hard in the Initial days to call for restraint, but there came a period very early on in the conflict, you know within a couple months when it was clear that the Israelis were not behaving in a rational or strategic way.
00:36:38
Adam
And it was on the Biden administration to to to reign them in. Could they have reigned them in? Maybe, maybe not. The Israelis might view the destruction of Gaza as such a vital interest that they're going to go ahead with anyway.
00:36:52
Adam
But the the Biden administration didn't use the tools that it did have and worse it enabled it. So there is some some blood on their hands. I also think that you know Biden was ah ah was a true you know in is in Israel and and was also worried about the domestic ramifications politically of of being too hard on the Israelis. And I think they genuinely believe that.
00:37:19
Adam
Yeah, i but i I don't know. I don't know.
00:37:21
William Roberts
of
00:37:21
Adam
One thing I always say is that we shouldn't be enabling.
00:37:22
William Roberts
I mean
00:37:25
Adam
There's different versions of it and Israel. And unfortunately, we're when we're enabling the worst version of Israel.
00:37:32
William Roberts
i mean, you mentioned that the I think you described it as a fantasy, this idea that the Israelis are going to remove the Palestinians from Gaza.
Post-Conflict Considerations in Gaza
00:37:40
William Roberts
I mean, can all see that they've reduced Gaza to a moonscape.
00:37:47
William Roberts
It's hard to envision how it's ever going to become habitable without without Israeli direction or Israeli control.
00:38:00
William Roberts
We they're talking about a humanitarian city where they're going to herd 2 million Palestinians together. i don't really understand how that's going to work.
00:38:12
William Roberts
And maybe you don't either, but what I mean, and we, you know, we have ample evidence of war crimes. The International Criminal Court has indicted Netanyahu. And, know, there's, there is real problem here. be the,
00:38:34
William Roberts
ah real problem here what would be
00:38:40
William Roberts
the expected How do you expect the Trump administration to to try to fix this? are we Are we looking at, I mean, you've recommended that they advise the Israelis against this plan, but it seems to me that that Trump is not going to do that. In fact, he's going to support it.
00:39:04
Adam
Well, it's neither humanitarian nor is it a city. You know, some people refer to it as as as ah as a concentration camp. I mean, we can we we can go back and forth whether that language applies or not. But, you know, at its most basic definition, they are concentrating a bunch of Palestinians into one place. And I'm sure it's going to be an absolute disaster. And they're doing it not with the intention of rebuilding Gaza necessarily, but I think with the intention of continuing their whack-a-mole campaign against Hamas and making Gaza even more uninhabitable.
00:39:40
Adam
I don't think the Israelis can be the leaders of the reconstruction of Gaza. I think what would have to happen is that there'd have to be a third party, probably a Gulf state that comes in and and rebuilds it.
00:39:52
Adam
You know, it's an, I don't, I don't pretend to have the answers, but I know that the current, the current approach to Gaza is not the solution.
00:40:01
William Roberts
Yeah, I don't pretend to have the answers either, but I am very worried about the future and what it
Pakistan's Regional Focus
00:40:08
William Roberts
holds. I don't want to let you off the hook, Adam, without talking about Pakistan, which is a nuclear power and its role in the Middle East and its relationship with the United States. How do they how do they view all of this in Islamabad?
00:40:27
Adam
What's going on in the Middle East?
00:40:28
William Roberts
Yeah.
00:40:30
Adam
you know I think they're viewing it with a 10-foot pole. They don't really want to be too involved in it. mean, there's there's protests in support of the Palestinians that happened in Islamabad, but they're kept in check by the state, and the state makes sure that they don't you know surround the U.S. embassy or anything like that. so you know, Pakistan has, has bigger problems right now. Pakistan's ah ah essentially in a war with the Pakistani Taliban or the TTP, Tariki Taliban Pakistan.
00:40:57
Adam
and that war is, is, uh, causing Pakistani military casualties re that that are basically at the same level that the U S was experiencing during the surge in Afghanistan.
00:41:07
William Roberts
Thank you.
00:41:08
Adam
So they have that going on and, you know, they had their, their flare up along, uh, the line of control with, with, with India, which, you know, led to military strikes inside Rawalpindi.
00:41:20
Adam
So that would be like a military strike happening in in Arlington. So, you know, they have bigger, bigger problems to deal with. They're observing what's happening in the Middle East. And I think ultimately, the way Pakistan tends to view things is, is they'll follow ah ah little they'll lag behind a little bit what direction the Gulf and the Saudis are going.
00:41:43
Adam
And so you you saw some statement some statements by Pakistani officials where they sort of were very ambiguous about you know what would happen if saudi the Saudis normalized with Israel. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't. They'll go with the region. And they'll always say that you know they'll support whatever the Palestinians decide.
00:42:02
Adam
you know I think it's an issue that matters to ordinary Pakistanis to some degree, but the Pakistani state has is has bigger problems to deal with right now.
00:42:12
William Roberts
Adam, thank you for all of that. Any final thoughts for our listeners or questions I should have asked but didn't?
Media Perspectives and Future Plans
00:42:22
Adam
I mean, there's this, so we would need like five hours to really go through the the Middle East. And i'm I'm frankly not expert enough. I mean, I'm, I don't consider myself an expert in anything really.
00:42:33
Adam
So I don't know i'd be if I'd be qualified to to go through all of those those questions. But I guess what I i would say to to listeners is if really careful about what you're reading with the sort of the the column the the columnists and the New York Times and and the Washington Post and what you might be hearing on NPR and CNN, because it really is an echo chamber in which a certain narrative gets repeated and reflected back and And And um a those ah voices aren't really aren't really based on any kind of firsthand knowledge on the ground. So I would recommend reading news sources from folks who really do spend a lot of time on the ground. All Monitor is a great source for that because they do investigative reporting on the ground.
00:43:20
Adam
Amwaj is another good source for things going on in the Middle East. a You know, or if you're going to, if you're going to watch big media, make sure that it's it's balanced. ah ah Maybe you watch CNN one day and Al Jazeera another day, you're going to get two very different perspectives.
00:43:36
Adam
maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle. So that's what I'd say, because it's funny when I talk to people who don't think about these things every day, you can really just by speaking with them for one or two minutes, you can, you can immediately know what media they're consuming because they're reflecting it right back to you.
00:43:52
Adam
And I'd say that a lot of it is just talking points. and they're And they're finding interviews that confirm those talking points. But it's not real investigative journalism. There's just not that much real investigative journalism left. And I'd say they should try to seek that out.
00:44:11
William Roberts
Are you going to be traveling to the region anytime soon to do your own work there?
00:44:16
Adam
Yeah, i am I am traveling to Beirut in about five days now, which I haven't been to. And I was last in Beirut maybe this point, literally a decade ago, is going to be interesting because a decade ago was in the middle of the Syrian civil war. Hezbollah was quite strong. they were they had They had achieved some significant victories against the the Syrian revolution because at that time Hezbollah was backing the Assad regime, of course.
00:44:46
Adam
And now I'll be traveling to a Beirut where There's significant action being taken against Hezbollah by the Lebanese state. In fact, just today, I think the Central Bank of like Lebanon announced that ah certain transactions with Hezbollah-related entities are going to be blocked. I didn't read the report, so i don't quote me on those details, but it was something like that.
00:45:07
Adam
And so you see this you see this shift happening in Lebanon. So it's going to be really interesting to see firsthand what it's like. And I might be going some other places in the region, and we can talk when I...
00:45:17
Adam
when i when I come back.
00:45:19
William Roberts
No, definitely. Yeah, I'd love to have you back and here your hear your thoughts and assessment. Adam, thank you so much for that. That was brilliant.
00:45:28
Adam
OK, appreciate it so much.
00:45:29
William Roberts
All right, take care. Safe travels.
00:45:31
Adam
Oh, OK. Thank you, thank you.