MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Let's take a step back and have a conversation about this with someone who has experience with conflict and diplomacy in the region. Jake Sullivan served as former President Joe Biden's national security adviser. He also worked on negotiations with Iran for the nuclear deal reached during the Obama administration. Jake Sullivan, good morning. Thanks for joining us.
JAKE SULLIVAN: Thank you for having me.
MARTIN: So let's start with negotiations. Pakistan said it would host talks between the U.S. and Iran, although it's unclear whether either side accepted the offer. Do you think Iran could be encouraged to come back to the negotiating table?
SULLIVAN: I think they will be reluctant to sit down directly with the United States across the table face-to-face. They have been over the course of the past few years. They've preferred to negotiate indirectly, passing messages through intermediaries. Oman was the country that was organizing those indirect talks before. Now it appears that Pakistan is in that seat. But it's possible, given the stakes of this, that the new supreme leader would authorize direct talks, so we will have to see. I expect that the Trump administration will be eager to sit face-to-face with the Iranians to try to find a way forward. I think the ball really here is in Tehran's court.
MARTIN: So President Trump, during his first administration, withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal that you helped to negotiate, and during the Biden administration you tried to revive that deal. Based on your experience, are there lessons from that effort that would be helpful now, that would help negotiators now?
SULLIVAN: Well, you're right, President Trump did pull out of the deal, even though Iran was in compliance with it, and those of us who objected to him pulling out warned that we could end up in exactly this situation if he did so. During the Biden years, we got close a couple of times to reviving the deal, but one of the biggest sticking points was that the Americans had withdrawn and that the Iranians were nervous about recommitting to a deal when we had already pulled out.
Now, President Trump was the president who did that, so I think he is in a unique position to be able to put a deal back together because he can give assurances to the Iranians that no other president - certainly no Democratic president - could give. So if President Trump actually authorized his negotiators to do a nuclear deal, I think a nuclear deal is available. And then the big question is would Iran accept it, particularly given the fact that we've chosen to go to war instead?
MARTIN: And what about that? I mean, there seems to be this dual strategy or parallel strategy. The U.S. is simultaneously building up troops in the region while also saying it wants to negotiate. The president has said this several times. So how effective is that, in your opinion?
SULLIVAN: Well, I think there are two things happening here. One is that I think the president, whenever he negotiates, always looks for leverage. So part of what he's doing through these leaks and announcements that the U.S. is adding troops, is considering more aggressive military options, is about trying to shape the diplomacy. But I think there's something else going on, too, which is I think he's genuinely uncertain about what to do here. And he's giving himself options, but he's standing at an intersection between trying to de-escalate this and bring an end to the conflict and escalate it in quite dramatic ways, including the potential introduction of ground forces into Iran for a variety of potential purposes that have been floated, but all of which would end up extending this war and exposing U.S. men and women to much more grave risk.
MARTIN: I want to ask about the boots-on-the-ground issue here. When you were national security adviser in the Biden administration, it would be accurate to assume that you would have at least been advised on any plans drawn up by the Pentagon against Iran. Would that be accurate?
SULLIVAN: Of course.
MARTIN: OK. So how do you assess the effectiveness of boots on the ground here?
SULLIVAN: Well, we've heard a number of different theories for how they would be used. One is that they would be deployed to seize islands that are relevant to Iran's oil industry. Another is that they would forcibly reopen the strait by seizing islands near the strait or the coastline along the strait. And a third is that they would go in to try to retrieve the highly enriched uranium at one of the Iranian nuclear facilities and try to either destroy it on site or bring it back out of the country.
I think all three of them have an unbelievably high-risk quotient that almost certainly would leave American casualties and with no high level of confidence that they would succeed. The ones that involve open-ended commitments - actually putting troops on an island or putting troops on the coast for some indefinite period of time - this is the very recipe for a quagmire that we have seen before in Iraq and Afghanistan. And everything that I saw when I was national security adviser led President Biden, as it did previous American presidents, to say we would prefer diplomacy to a war that leaves American men and women physically on the ground in Iran, fighting and dying in a Middle Eastern country for a third time in this century.
MARTIN: And now I want to move to the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen have entered the war, firing missiles and drones at southern Israel. What would be a productive role for the U.S. to play there?
SULLIVAN: It's hard to know if there's a productive role. I think the thing we have to watch for with the Houthis is right now they're only firing at Israel, but of course their capabilities - their missiles and their drones - can reach not just ships in the Red Sea to potentially shut down that vital artery, but actually can reach all the way to the Persian Gulf and to the Gulf countries that are currently under fire from Iranian missiles. So if the Houthis decided to fully enter this war, they could be a significant military player that could only deepen the disruption, the damage and the death that has been caused so far.
I think the United States is probably trying to message them indirectly not to do so, but frankly, over both the Biden administration and the Trump administration, it has been clear that the Houthis really march to the beat of their own drum. They don't listen to the West. They don't even really entirely take orders from Iran. So this is an area to watch very carefully, and it's another reason why trying to find a path of de-escalation to bring this war to an end is so vital in the coming days so that it doesn't spin even further out of control than it already has.
MARTIN: Recognize that we could spend all of our time talking about any one element of this conflict. I do want to just spend the last minute we have here on Israel's expanding this war with an invasion of southern Lebanon. And I just want to get your take on that. What is your concern there, if you have any?
SULLIVAN: Yeah. Late in 2024, the Biden administration negotiated a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon that really did try to lock in a long-term approach in which the Lebanese government would be empowered to deal with militant threats in its country. Israel has now decided, in light of the war in Iran, to go ahead and take dramatic action to potentially seize a large swath of territory in Lebanon. I think this would be complete strategic folly. It is not right. And my hope is that the American administration will impose some degree of restraint with respect to Israel and Lebanon.
MARTIN: We have to leave it there for now. Jake Sullivan was the national security adviser during the Biden administration.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
