MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Let's take a closer look now at the indirect talks between the U.S. and Iran, as well as the U.S. military buildup in the region. We've called Dana Stroul for this. She served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East in the Biden administration. She's now a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Good morning. Thanks so much for joining us.
DANA STROUL: Good morning.
MARTIN: So we just heard from Jackie Northam that Iran's foreign minister says progress was made in his talks with the U.S. However, Vice President JD Vance sounded far less optimistic. Here he is on Fox News.
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JD VANCE: It was very clear that the president has set some redlines that the Iranians are not yet willing to actually acknowledge and work through.
MARTIN: How do you suss out these competing assessments? What does that say to you?
STROUL: I think that the two negotiating teams are on completely different sheets of music when it comes to expectations for where these talks land. And because of that, the Iranian regime is incentivized to drag this out as long as they can and make it look like progress, and the U.S. team wants to show something really, really quickly.
MARTIN: And the vice president didn't elaborate on the nature of those redlines. Just from what you've gathered over these past two rounds of talks, do you think that an agreement is still possible?
STROUL: I certainly think an agreement is possible if the Iranian regime were prepared to make meaningful concessions with respect not only to their nuclear program, but also the range of their ballistic missile program. And so far, the rhetoric from the supreme leader and a lot of the officials around him suggests that they are not at all willing to make those concessions.
MARTIN: President Trump ordered a second aircraft carrier to the region, and Iranian naval forces have begun military exercises in the Strait of Hormuz. That's between Iran and the UAE. As a former Pentagon official, how do you look at this? I mean, do you consider this military buildup to be more than - I don't know - saber-rattling?
STROUL: Oh, absolutely. The second aircraft carrier that President Trump ordered to the region is absolutely critical. In a very few number of days, there's going to be more of a U.S. military buildup in the Middle East than there has been in years, more than after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, more than what was in the Middle East last summer during the U.S. and Israeli operations against Iran. And at the same time, the risk of escalation or miscalculation is so high because of the saber-rattling by Iran, like that exercise in the Strait of Hormuz yesterday.
MARTIN: What do you think the time frame is here for the president to decide whether to use military force? I'm not asking you to sort of get into his head, but I am asking to - you to make an educated - I don't know - guess based on just what you see, especially given the assets that you see being assembled there.
STROUL: Well, the timeline, I think, is short. We know that Trump is a rather impatient person, and he's going to want to show progress, given the massive military buildup, that investment of U.S. military personnel and resources that he's placed in the Middle East. And given how much they've reprioritized from other theaters - from Europe, from the Venezuela theater, from Asia Pacific - he can't maintain all of that in the Middle East indefinitely without something to show for it at the negotiating table.
MARTIN: And the president is not shying away from talking about regime change in Iran. Given what happened in Venezuela - I mean, the president did have U.S. forces seize Venezuela's leader and his wife - should Iran's leaders be worried that he might try a similarly audacious move?
STROUL: Well, I think the regime should be worried because it is at its weakest point in the history of the Islamic Republic, both internally and abroad. This is very different, I think, from last summer. For people inside the Trump administration, the lesson they learned is that if you take military action only against elements of Iran and not the leadership itself, that leadership remains undeterred and unwilling to change its behavior. And the issue here, the threat to Israel, to the United States, to the Middle East, are the hegemonic ambitions of the supreme leader and the regime, which haven't changed.
MARTIN: But what happens after that? What happens after that? Let's just say for the sake of our conversation that that does occur. What happens after that?
STROUL: Well, first of all, the United States does not have a great track record of regime change and delivering more stable outcomes on the other side when it comes to the Middle East. And I think this is the great challenge that President Trump himself is weighing right now. If he orders these military strikes and if it is to collapse the entire regime, what does that mean, and how can he guarantee that there's not more chaos and instability on the other side? And given that unanswered question, this is a really intense time as they decide whether or not to deploy all of that military force inside Iran.
MARTIN: We have only about 30 seconds here. What would be the best-case scenario?
STROUL: The best-case scenario would be a verifiable nuclear deal which assures the international community that Iran will not obtain a nuclear weapon and will scale back the range of its ballistic missiles and stop supporting terrorism across the Middle East.
MARTIN: But I take it you're not optimistic.
STROUL: I'm not optimistic. Nothing coming out of Tehran right now gives me any assurance that they're willing to change their behavior in a meaningful way that would give Trump a reason not to direct those military strikes.
MARTIN: That is Dana Stroul. She was a former deputy assistant secretary of state for the Middle East in the Biden administration. She's now with The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Dana Stroul, thanks so much for sharing these insights.
STROUL: Thanks for having me today. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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