STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Karim Sadjadpour has been listening to Daniel with us. He has studied the U.S.-Iran relationship for decades and is at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Karim, welcome back.
KARIM SADJADPOUR: Great to be with you, Steve.
INSKEEP: OK. So President Trump said over the weekend that a deal was largely negotiated, and in fact, that deal seems so solid that a lot of Republicans were upset. But since then, the president has insisted nobody's seen this deal. Maybe there's not even a deal. Rubio says there's work to do. So when you listen to all of it, does it seem to you that there is some framework for an agreement here?
SADJADPOUR: I think, Steve, they are - they've agreed to the topics of negotiation, which is the future of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran's uranium enrichment stockpile and its ability to enrich uranium. But negotiations between America and Iran are always zero-trust and zero-sum. And what that means is that they never happen quickly.
INSKEEP: Daniel said in that report just now that they are talking of allowing two months to, quote, "reach an agreement on Iran's nuclear program." I guess that means they do not have any agreement on Iran's nuclear program at this time.
SADJADPOUR: So just for point of comparison, when Obama's nuclear deal, the JCPOA, was signed in 2015, that process took about two years of negotiations, and the animosity between the United States and Iran and the mistrust is even worse now than it was then. So I expect this to be a long process. The Iranian government doesn't really want to give up control over the Strait of Hormuz because they see that as a potential revenue stream and a potential deterrent to deter future attacks. Likewise, President Trump has to demand more from Iran than he did before the war in order to vindicate the enormous costs of this war. But Iran is feeling the same way. They say that, you know, they've sacrificed so much, and so they're demanding more. And so, for those structural reasons, I expect this to be a long - much longer process than President Trump would like.
INSKEEP: You mentioned the Strait of Hormuz and Iran not wanting to give up control over the Strait of Hormuz. Is the reality that so long as Iran's government remains in power, they have the ability to close the strait 'cause they're going to be sitting right there, you can't change that?
SADJADPOUR: That is unfortunately true, Steve, and it's cheap for them to do so. There's a huge economic asymmetry in that the tankers that go through the Strait of Hormuz are, you know, oftentimes a hundred-million-dollar tankers carrying hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of oil, and Iran can disrupt this global thoroughfare with $20,000 drones. And I think because they've proven they could do it once, it may be tempting for them to try it again.
INSKEEP: President Trump has repeatedly said it is hard to know who to negotiate with in Iran, that they're disorganized, that a lot of their leaders were killed, of course, in the early phases of the war. Does that seem accurate to you that it's not clear who's in charge?
SADJADPOUR: Well, we don't know the health of Mojtaba Khamenei, the new supreme leader, but despite that, the regime has shown a surprising amount of cohesion. It's a regime which believed that they prevailed in this war and that the war intended to destroy the regime, destroy their missiles, destroy their proxies, and that hasn't happened. And they're negotiating from a position of strength. So I don't think the obstacle here is that we don't know who to negotiate with. I think the obstacle is that it's a regime which is demanding much more now than it was three months ago.
INSKEEP: I'm interested in that phrase, negotiating from a position of strength. Are you telling me what the Iranian leaders believe, or do you think that Iran is, in fact, in a position of strength here?
SADJADPOUR: Well, the metric for success for the Iranian regime was low in that all they needed to do was survive to prevail in this war, and they've done more than that, in that they have, unfortunately, been able to profoundly disrupt the global economy, disrupt the American economy. And they realize that President Trump doesn't have any easy answers for that. And so for that reason, they feel they're negotiating from strength.
INSKEEP: Is there a problem of timelines here? The president of the United States goes from news cycle to news cycle, and each news cycle is not even one day long, and you're telling me we're in a process that could take years?
SADJADPOUR: The Iranian regime has been an adversary of America for 47 years. And that hostility, that ideological war, is going to continue even if negotiations are concluded. And for President Trump, he telegraphed to Iran that this was meant to just be a little excursion. And so there is a huge imbalance in timelines in that Iran's entire identity is to oppose America, whereas for the Trump administration, for Trump himself, there's a lot of other things he wants to do in his presidency rather than just fight Iran.
INSKEEP: Karim Sadjadpour at the Carnegie Endowment. Thanks so much.
SADJADPOUR: Thank you, Steve. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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