Middle East Roundtable: The Dumbest Timeline.

Hello and welcome to the Middle East Roundtable at Fronts.co. This is Evan Maloney. I am here with Wilfred Miner, Africa correspondent for Fronts.co and everything Fronts related.

And Kyle Moran here from War Fronts. A lot going on in the Middle East, so I just wanted to bring everybody up to speed on what has been going on there lately. Basically, it is a return to all-out war.

It's not quite at the full scale that the Operation Epic Fury saw earlier this year, but it's pretty, pretty close. The U.S. has been continuing to strike. We saw over 300 targets hit in just three days alone.

So it has been certainly much, much more than the previous sort of tit-for-tat limited exchanges over the last few weeks throughout June. Overall, Iran has been firing equally as forcefully back throughout the region, hitting just about everywhere they can land anything.

And Trump has recently been indicating and hinting that at this point, he is willing to strike energy infrastructure once

These are not new threats, I will say. He has previously threatened those during Epic Fury itself, as well as throughout the negotiation process. So he doesn't have the best track record on it, but he also is in a different position now than he was back then.

Because back then, diplomacy still looked like it could be an option. The diplomatic path was, okay, you just have to get them to agree to it, then diplomacy can take over and we can get out of this thing. We're in a different point now.

And that's really a game changer, in my opinion, because they tried the diplomatic route. There was a deal reached. It was an incredibly awkward deal because both sides didn't even agree on what was actually in it or what it would look like.

It gave huge concessions to Iran. But for the Iranian government, that was not enough. So they want full control over Hormuz.

And therefore, it's extremely unlikely that the United States would make any deal at this point that gives even more than the original MOU did.

So thus, we arrive at the situation where I think it's a much more plausible situation where he actually goes much harder at the Iranians in terms of infrastructure and potentially in terms of ground forces, which I know is going to be a pretty big topic for today's conversation. Yeah, Wilfred, I would love to get your take on this as well.

So at least from my vantage point, it seems like from Kyle's as well, it does seem as if we are on the path back to a much larger return to conflict here. Can you, one, let us know whether or not you agree with that assessment?

And then if so, what are you seeing now that gives you some reason to believe that this really will be different than the other? kind of stop and start escalation cycles that we've seen over the last couple of months i agree with you guys we are looking at a return to full-blown war either at some point soon or we are already at you know that point of

Full-blown war because both sides don't really need the mou as much as they did at you know at the point where it was signed and this is something we were discussing in our in our meeting on tuesday you just to give our listeners a little bit of behind a little peek behind the curtain of your how we work here at warfronts but i've had this idea that i've

Been toying with for a while now that both the us and iran needed the straight of home was open for very different reasons for iran so that they could relieve the pressure on their oil mining infrastructure they could you know free up storage space and you know they didn't need to worry about ruining their oil wells and for the us they really just wanted the

World's oil prices to go back to a somewhat manageable level they wanted stockpiles to be refilled so both sides have more or less gotten what they wanted which is why i think you know trump was willing to agree to an mou that by all accounts was embarrassing so that alone the fact that both sides have seemingly gotten what they want on the oil side it tells

Me that a return to the mou will be extremely difficult the leverage points are not the same the pressure points are not the same so you we're we're looking at a full-scale war at some point soon and you know that might involve boots on the ground as kyle said and yeah we're going to talk about it in a minute yeah so i'm actually really interested in

Drilling down on this point that you mentioned a moment ago which is that from iran's perspective the ability to have the straight open for a while to get oil revenues flowing may have been enough in the short term to allow iran to pivot back to open conflict so kyle i'm curious what you make of that what you make of kind of the signs and signals out of

Tehran about the risk acceptance that they're now looking at which seems to be a bit more than it was a couple of months ago so do you agree with that assessment that now that the strait's been open for a little while revenues are kind of back to well not back to pre-war levels but are certainly more than nothing kind of these reserve tanks have been closed

That has allowed iran to more seriously consider return to conflict i think that they're given the importance of hormuz in their opinion to the stability and security of the country i think that they'd be willing to do this whatever the cost and the deputy foreign minister actually said literally exactly that regardless of the cost They would ensure full

Control of Hormuz.

The situation there being that this war taught the Islamic Republic that Hormuz is their strongest leverage point, and for a good reason.

It had a significant influence over two of the world's most powerful air forces, the United States and Israel, just by being able to launch drones, cheap drones, at unarmed civilian ships that have no real shot at shooting those down. They were able to basically torpedo the war campaign.

So it makes sense. But Evan and I were briefly discussing this a little beforehand. This was the most maximalist interpretation of what they need to do possible.

Because, I mean, let's face it, Hormuz is not going anywhere. They did not control Hormuz before this war, right? Because of their geography, they can just set up shop and open fire at any point and then just close the whole thing down again.

So they don't actually need to maintain full control of Hormuz. Even if it was fully returned to normal, they would be able and free to return to closing it down in the event that another attack happens on them at any point in time.

So this insistence that they have full control over vessels flowing through, that this Omani transit route that bypasses the toll system that they want to set up, the argument that's part of their national security, I'm not really buying.

I think they want to do it both for the money and because they've convinced themselves that they need to for regime survival.

But I think that they've miscalculated on that because I think that by doing this, they have sacrificed the most—I mean, if anyone had presented, if anyone had gone on air and said that the United States would sign an MOU with the Islamic Republic offering total sanctions relief for oil, for unfreezing $100 billion in Iranian assets and raising $300 billion

More for an internationally funded relief fund, or whatever you'd like to call that, you'd be laughed at if that happened earlier this year or in 2025 because this was such a lopsided deal.

And it's gone now, or it's at least in serious crisis that I do not see being resurrected anytime soon.

That's an interesting take to me, partly because I don't really know if I agree with the idea that this deal as it is never coming back. Like, the idea that the U.S. in this situation has more leverage than Iran does in the long term is a tough one for me to kind of get my head around.

Just in terms of, like, we have seen this immense U.S. this hesitation to accept any degree of or perception of loss or setback or whatever it may be, if it's rising oil prices, if it's the loss of troops.

I mean, the U.S. has gotten to this point in the conflict with 14 troops killed. The most recent one was a Navy pilot announced, I believe, last week. That on a tactical level is commendable, right, to achieve these kind of results with so few losses.

At the same time, it is just another indicator that Iran is willing to go much further in this conflict to get what it needs at the end of the day than the U.S. has been. Like, Iran is willing to accept costs that the U.S. just isn't.

And when we look at the idea that this deal will or won't come back, I do think it's important to look at this in terms of condition setting from the Iranians, right?

We are still in this very new gray area where it's not really clear yet what Iranian control of the strait is going to mean, what Iranian projection of power is going to mean for maritime risk insurers, for all of these different risk assessors, which we've discussed in the past that, like, the thing that matters here is not so much that Iran can hit ships

Traveling through the strait, but that the threat of that makes it so impassable for global ships trying to move through that insurers just won't pay up to allow that passage to happen.

And I do wonder whether Iran sees a moment here to really establish these, as you said, maximalist conditions for what Iranian military power and use in the strait could look like, because that then gives so much more leverage in order to set and dictate terms later, even if it does cost them quite a bit right now.

Yeah, I don't necessarily think that the U.S. has more leverage now for this.

And I don't, I wouldn't even go so far as to say that MRU itself is dead in perpetuity. I do mean it is dead for the time being. So perhaps in Syria, on Syria's life support, would be a better way to frame it.

I do have to imagine that they will need to renegotiate at least parts of it, though, because it has been clear that there were several ambiguities in this thing that just sabotaged it from the get-go, both on the Iranian side and the American side.

And in my episode, yes, that went up yesterday, there was something very interesting to me that aired in the Wall Street Journal, where it was a report on the rise of nationalism in Iran, in pro-regime sentiment amongst those who were historically opposed to the regime.

And they see the negotiators, so Pazeshkian, Basarachi, those types of people, as essentially traitors.

During Khomeini's funeral, they were following these guys around saying death to the traitors and waiving the rear. flags of revenge near them. So this is not common to see in Iran, where government officials can just be openly protested.

But the fact that it's the president and foreign minister who are able to be protested with no repercussions is telling to me where both the IRGC stands as well as the more nationalist leading in the country.

As someone who spends way too much time following internal Iranian politics, this is something that I actually expected and sort of predicted would happen. I have a video on the Warfronts channel about how peace could break the Iranian government.

And this is something I had highlighted, just the idea that as long as this war continues, there's always that rally to the flag effect.

People that you least expect to support the regime, people that you least expect to be pro-regime figures, pro-regime protesters, even going up to figures like Agachi and you're calling them traitors, that kind of stuff will happen because nationalism, patriotism, those are the feelings that come up whenever a country is at war.

And Iran is a very, very proud country. The people are very proud of its long history.

The people are very proud of each other. The people are very proud of the Iranian identity. And for Trump, Trump has consistently threatened that.

He went from being some sort of quasi-savior to the Iranian people, someone who said, we won't leave you behind, we won't leave you alone, you're not on your own, help is on the way, to now saying Iran will be destroyed, threatening the critical infrastructure.

All of that put together created a situation where nationalism and patriotism were the most likely outcomes of all of this. Yeah, this has been a consistent point of misunderstanding, if you will, or perhaps just outright failure of especially more Western government elites, if you will, where they focus so heavily on very specific things.

So going into this war, there was a sense, especially after the January protests, as well as the massacre that took place there, that Iran was both less religious than ever and less pro-Islamic republic nationalist, if you will, than ever before.

And so that created a golden opportunity where both of those things sort of converged and presented an opportunity where the U.S. would be able to come in and really maximize the pressure on the regime to come to the table, to make further concessions, etc. But...

As this drags on, there's a sense throughout any country, this is just human nature, where it's less, okay, they're attacking the government, where after months of this, it's, oh, yeah, they're attacking us.

Those guys over there are attacking us. And this is just human nature that many in the West do not necessarily understand as well as they should, where nationalism and religion and religious nationalism can play a massive role in shaping the minds and desires of populations.

There's something very interesting in that idea, because when discussing Iran, a lot of people will say that, a lot of people in the West would consider America the savior of the Iranian people if they had been able to dislodge the government, the Islamic government.

But even then, even that idea of the savior of the Iranian people feels flawed, because while there have been attempts by the Iranian opposition, both within and outside the country to reach out to the international community for help, again, Iran is a very proud nation.

It's a very, very sensitive nation when it comes to its national image, its national pride. There were actions that the Trump administration took that didn't really help build its case.

I'm looking at the World Cup, when the Trump administration basically banned Iran from being in the country for more than 24 hours, which goes against the rules that FIFA has set out.

And when Mark Wayne Mullins, who I believe is the current director of Homeland Security, he replaced Kristi Noem, he said that he danced a happy dance when he saw Iran eliminated from the World Cup. So none of these things are necessarily endearing Washington to the Iranian people.

I mean, when it comes to FIFA, we're at war with the country. So this would have presented a significant opportunity for if anyone wanted to do anything against the United States.

So I'm sympathetic to security concerns from the U.S. on that, for sure, especially given that the U.S. offered to give amnesty in the United States to the entirety of the women's soccer team when they were playing in Australia, I believe.

So, I mean, it's certainly not an anti-Iranian thing.

But to the broader point there, I do definitely sympathize with the idea that the nationalist perspective was not fully recognized in Washington and writ large throughout much of the world, where it's sort of taken as a given that nationalism is not the driving force behind a lot of decisions and feelings that people throughout the world, including.

West, I may remind people, because this is not some uniquely Iranian phenomena.

Many Western elites have also been blind and had a rude awakening to that same human nature in the West as well. So it's been sort of a learning curve, I will say.

So let's bring that human nature then back to the escalatory spiral that we're seeing, because one of the things we've seen today, Reuters was reporting on some conversations with U.S. officials who were explaining, we're seeing these strikes move northward progressively.

So a lot of things have been targeting the seacoast, whether it was Boundary of Us, some of the outlying islands, sites that are really directly meaningful to control of the strait.

That strike profile is now headed north, and according to those U.S. officials, we're now starting to see hits against targets that the U.S. would want to have disabled in advance of any larger commitment to strikes.

So now that we are on what seems to be a pretty clear escalation spiral, before we discuss what actually will happen if that kind of culminates, I do want to take a moment to really drill down here.

Do you see that there's any way here to pull this back from the brink to regain some level of normalcy, or is this just where we're headed? So ultimately, I don't want to get too deterministic here.

So I'm not going to say that we are bound and determined to have all-out war continue and even escalate into anything involving ground forces, which I think is less likely at this point than likely.

But overall, I do think that this is just going to continue to be a situation that Trump doesn't have a way out of. And when he is faced with situations he has no way out of, he has a well-determined or easily recognizable trait that he just has to continuously double down.

And that sets a sort of concerning precedent for where this might go, because with midterms coming up, he wants out.

But the Strait of Hormuz is closed, as it has been for quite some time now. So overall, what is the alternative to escalation here? Again, I come back to my earlier point.

The U.S. tried the diplomatic route back in April that led to this MOU, and I cannot imagine the U.S. giving further concessions. Although I will admit, I did not see the concessions the U.S. made in that MOU coming either. So perhaps lightning could strike twice in this situation.

But this situation just, it has no off-ramp. So where this goes, we'll have to see. I'm not going to say it's going to happen, but we inch closer every day when there's no off-ramp here to substantially increased U.S. operations, which does include ground operations.

The Wall Street Journal has been reporting on this as well. They've been covering how Trump is looking at various operations. to take various outlying islands. To be honest, I mean, I'm just going to say it.

Things like Kashim Island are completely useless for the United States. If we take that island, not only will we be sitting ducks for Iranian, all sorts of fun things that would be projectiles headed our way, but we would also then have nothing to show for it. What does Kashim Island actually do?

Nothing. It's not important. Same thing with La Rock Island.

I mean, it's not going to be a game changer. It's not going to get Hormuz flowing again. The main one that they frequently talk about, Karg Island, this has more energy relevance.

So I do understand that this would be potentially more attractive. But at the same time, we already have blockaded the Iranian exports of oil. What does taking Karg Island actually get us?

I don't see anything that it gets us, other than once again becoming sitting ducks, sitting off of the Iranian coast. And that would take a significant amount of U.S. manpower as well to do that. So if we're actually talking Hormuz, if we're talking about actually forcing Hormuz open again, what does that take?

Well, it takes, per James Campbell, who I referenced in yesterday's episode, it takes, it will almost certainly take ground forces along the Iranian coast. And that gets into a very scary situation. Because once you send those guys there, I mean, it's, that's a, that's a dangerous spiral where there's going to be a lot of lives lost.

Yeah, I want to go to you, Wilfred, in a second. But I do want to really hone in for anybody listening to this. This really would be a dramatic expansion of the risk that the U.S. is exposing itself to.

So speaking about Keshem Island, speaking about Karg Island, these are locations that are not only within Iranian drone range, not only within Iranian missile range, from really any launch points across Iran, right, which makes launch points much easier to disguise, makes mobile teams much easier to escape retaliation.

It's also well within artillery range of traditional standard firing systems. It's well within rocket launch range.

For these short-range rockets that are, you know, 30-odd kilometers in range, these can be fired from varying points across the Iranian mainland by an Iranian ground force that has been largely left out of this conflict and is very, very eager to start making an impact.

And the scale at which that can be achieved is so much greater than what Iran has been able to achieve with drones and missiles so far, especially when concentrated on these really small single-point islands where we've seen U.S. air defense shortages already. We understand that the U.S. is running out of these expensive interceptors.

It doesn't have the interceptor drones required to make up the gap quite yet. This is a really, really high-cost trap for the U.S. to fall into that one... It's very, very starkly divergent from the risk profile that the U.S. has shown itself willing to accept to this point, right?

This is dramatically inconsistent with, you know, a military that's not willing to put its troops at greater risk than what's led to 14 fatalities in a few months of open and unlimited conflict, right? It is also a really, really easy trap for the Iranian forces to exploit. So I do just want to really point that out.

This is not, you know, the start of ground operations on any of these islands or whether along the Iranian coast or anywhere else would not just be a little bit more of the same. This would be a dramatic expansion, the risk that the U.S. is taking.

And that kind of dramatic expansion comes with extreme political costs, especially for Trump, who has, again, a midterm coming up in November.

He might choose to hold off, you know, on any land invasion until the midterm elections happen. But even then, he is significantly going to hamstring the Republican Party and any Republican that believes they can inherit the MAGA movement from Trump. I'm thinking about, you know, I'm thinking about someone like the vice president, J.D.

Vance, who has shown some interest, some level of interest. And, you know, that's the understatement of the decade in taking over the MAGA movement once Trump serves his time in office. Any attack that leads to any military maneuver that leads to a large number of American deaths is going to be extremely unpopular.

It's going to be something that the American public absolutely hates. And the one thing that will make this much, much different than any engagement the U.S. has been involved in the past is the proliferation of social media and the fact that a lot of these drones are FPV drones fitted with cameras.

So we'll be getting a real-time image of America's sons and daughters being decimated by Iranian drones.

Those are images that will come back to haunt the Republican Party for decades. It's not something that, you know, they can easily politic their way out of. But even with that said, I want to go back to the very first question you asked, whether we are going to see any more escalations or what that looks like.

I think we are stuck in an escalatory trap because Iran fundamentally believes it should have the right to control the Strait of Hormuz. Its version of the MOU said that the Strait of Hormuz will be open with Iranian conditions or something along those lines.

And Trump has continued to insist that he won't let that stand to the point where he was suggesting that the U.S. could become the Guardian of the Strait of Hormuz and charge. ships about 20% of their cargo for safe passage, which is a lot more than Iran was going to charge them.

Iran was charging about one to two million. 20% of a ship's cargo is a lot more than that.

So yes, we are stuck in an escalatory cycle, but it might take a while to get to the point where ground troops are involved because one, this is a threat profile that Trump has shown himself unwilling to deal with, and two, there's also the political ramifications of any decisions in case he does accept that ground troops are the only way forward.

Yeah, I completely agree with that, and I think that hits a very relevant topic here because for so much of the U.S.'s adventures and sometimes misadventures in the Middle East, because of our geography where we have these massive oceans to both sides, the invasions from the Canadians are not frequent, and even though our relationship with Mexico is a little

Bit more hit or miss, it's also not a huge existential threat.

The Middle East, wars in the Middle East are often seen as very far away. We don't really have to worry about them too much, especially after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars where we did various operations, mostly from the air, sometimes limited ground operations. So we had a few thousand soldiers in Syria assisting the Kurds, for example.

We also had various positions throughout the region. And, you know, I mean, isolationists in the United States complained bitterly about this, but it ultimately, like, how much did this actually cost? How much attention did this actually get with the wider American public?

Not that much. So this, however, is a tipping point. Even the Iran war in the first part, Epic Fury, I mean, it certainly got more attention than something like Syria did, but it still had this, that's over there, it's not really that many people dying from that.

So it was removed, if you will. If the U.S. has to commit ground forces, that changes on a dime. That is boots on the ground, if you will.

And it's just going to be massively, massively unpopular. Yeah, I do want to underscore Wilford's point as well. Iran has been very, very good at digital media propaganda throughout this war, despite many of their other misses in other areas.

This is an area that they know how to do very well in. And quite frankly, in this element of modern warfare, if you were familiar with some of the videos coming out of Ukraine, for example, where you can see these compilations of Russian soldiers in their final moments before. they are hit by these FPV drones.

American troops in this regard are not better than Russian troops.

American troops in this regard do not have superior capabilities to defend themselves from first-person drone attack. That is just the reality of the situation.

Russian troops, as vulnerable as they are, exist within a military infrastructure that has spent years preparing to deal with these attacks, mitigate them as well as possible, and save lives when they can be saved.

And this is the result. This is the extent to which Russian troops are still extremely vulnerable. The US has not had any level of comparable experience.

The US military industry is still struggling to figure out a way to even start to address these issues.

And while certain military units have certainly been engaged in tactical and training advancements to prepare for this scenario, that knowledge is not yet widespread to the point that it would need to be to provide any greater level of insulation from this threat than Russian troops or Ukrainian troops are facing on the front lines in the Donbass.

So speaking as an American for a moment, you know, speaking to obviously a global audience, but also a fair share of people listening from the US, please understand if you see those videos of Russian troops on social media, those may turn out to be very, very close parallels to an American troop experience in this environment, especially in the early days of

An occupation of an exposed outlying island or a major Iranian city like Bandar Abbas, that really is going to be able to provide a multi-layered defensive environment for Iranian troops.

So please do not underestimate the severity of the prospect we're talking about when we do discuss our ground of One thing I do want to add onto this discussion is that it's not just the social media space that Iran dominates. Trump, despite the best attempt by his billionaire allies, his right-wing billionaire allies, the media is still very anti-Trump.

And by this, I mean the mainstream media.

If we get to a point where we're seeing compilations of American deaths in the same vein as we see compilations of Russian deaths, and please, please, for the love of God, do not go looking for these videos unless you absolutely have to. Guys like Evan Kyle and I, we see them because this is our day job.

We have to understand what these kinds of videos look like.

We have to understand what the thinking is. We have to understand why they are put out there and the psychological impact on future wars because that's the line of work we chose. But if you don't have to, listening to the podcast is more than enough.

If we get to the point where we're seeing those kinds of compilations for Americans, the media, the mainstream media will tear Trump apart. And not just Trump, but anyone who supported this war. It will be ugly.

And as we think about the many other ways the ones that run as well. to try and leverage control. I do want to talk about the risk of Iran really doubling down on this strait control.

And Kyle, I do want to bring it back because I know you had some other thoughts to share about this fixation that Iran seems to have on establishing control of the strait now, really, really ensuring that it can lock down its claim to control there.

So as we think about this return to hostilities, do you anticipate that retaliatory strikes from the U.S., even if they do expand, will be enough to force Iran to back off of that goal? Or I suppose, what do you think would be required to push Iran away from its goal of just full control over the strait, at least for the short term? Yeah.

Ultimately, I do think that if they want to go hardcore at Hormuz the way that they have been, it means that they're focused on the financial side rather than the national security side, even if that's not exactly what they're saying publicly. Because once again, Hormuz is not going to grow legs and walk away from them. It's still going to be there.

Remember, they did not control this thing before Epic Fury kicked off, and they had absolutely no problem shutting it down once it did. If they were to allow free flows of shipping to go through once again, as it was before, they would not only be able to shut it down again, but they would also have reaped the benefits of the waivers on oil sales.

They would have gotten their $100 billion in unfrozen assets plus $300 billion more as a sign-up bonus.

So where this really leaves the situation is that they're going for the whole house. They want as much as they can get, and they're not going to take anything less. So that leaves the United States in quite an awkward situation where it comes to, well, what the hell do you do now?

And this is where, because the diplomatic path through the MOU did not work out, that's why these potential ground operations are, I'm not, again, I'm always cautious with predictions here, but I'm not going to say that they're going to happen or even more likely than not to happen.

But you can really see where this might actually come into play, because what is the alternative? So when it comes to this, I don't know what the United States could do to get anything flowing again, because the Iranians have essentially decided that they're not playing ball.

I think there's something we do need to talk about here when we say the Iranians have decided that they're not going to play ball.

And that's the fact that they don't view America as a reliable negotiator, because in the past, twice now, when Iran and the US were negotiating, Iran was struck by missiles, the 12-day war, and, you know, at the start of Operation Epic. theory.

So from Iran's point of view, is it really worth it to make a deal with the US if when they're doing these negotiations, they will get struck?

And when they do make a deal, the deal is so big that the US can basically claim whatever it wants. And one of the main components of the deal, the fact that the money that was unfrozen, the unfrozen assets was going to be controlled by Iran, Trump was ready to rip that apart and say, no, this money is actually going to go to American farmers.

From Iran's point of view, America isn't a trustworthy country to negotiate with.

But I mean, they did reach the deal. And the points that were unclear were mostly on the US side. Trump says a lot of things.

And we just have to recognize that some of this is just blatantly not true. I mean, so the MOU's terms were that the funds would flow through the Iranian central bank. That's how it would be deposited.

Trump can go out on national television and say that Iran is then going to turn around and buy agricultural products from the United States until he's blue in the face. It's not true. It wasn't happening.

It was never going to happen. He knew it and Iran knew it as well. And they called him out on it.

So when it comes to this stuff, I mean, if or the both sides do not trust each other. So the US reached this deal. And the main point here being that Iran would open the strait and then reap all of these rewards.

There is mutual distrust. To your point, Wilfred, there is distrust from the Iranians for all of those reasons, but also from the US side of things. The Iranians do not seem willing to play ball either.

And specifically for the Gulf, the rest of the region who have just been getting shot at left and right for almost six months now. This is just a never ending nightmare where they can't export their oil because Iran's blocking it. They don't want to pay Iran tolls because it's an international waterway.

But Iran's demanding it. And they didn't even do anything. Several of these countries, as I mentioned on previous episodes, were lobbying against the war in the first place.

So I mean, I'm certainly willing to admit many failings on the US side of things, but the Iranians have certainly not made it any easier on themselves. Oh, I completely agree. The Iranians have not made it easy on themselves.

They've not made any friends. But my point about them not viewing America as a trustworthy negotiator is less about the fact that the deal was even reached in the first place.

And more about the fact that they don't trust that even the deal that they did reach was actually a meaningful deal and not a ploy by Washington to try and put themselves in a better position.

It's from where I'm sitting, more than a thousand miles away from Tehran.

And, you know, with that caveat, with that caveat, place tehran is better served by not making a deal and just holding out until you the political pressure becomes too much on the trump administration because that's what seemed to have happened here with the first deal the reason why the concessions were so great the reason why we were all shocked that

Iranian negotiators had basically taken america's lunch money taken its allowance taken its first salary and even gotten it to name its first one after it is the fact that the political pressure was mounting on trump and gas prices being high inflation being high all of these things are things he's very sensitive about he might not outrightly say it but

There are things he's very sensitive about so from iran's point of view the fact that the deal was reached might be relevant because they don't really see america as a country that was even going to keep the terms of the deal in the first place i mean i don't think that the u.s would have signed that deal if they weren't willing to play ball on it if iran

Maintained or opened shipping in hormuz but again iran loses nothing for that again that hormuz is not going anywhere the iranian presentation where if they let go of hormuz now they're just going to lose it forever it's it's just misleading because it's not it's not true where like if the u.s reneged on it okay iran has not only the proven ability now but

More than enough military hardware to get this thing done a second time around or a third time around now because they've closed again where the only thing that they would have lost is whatever money hasn't hadn't arrived yet they hadn't remember the mou didn't even include any nuclear stuff it just promised that they would begin talking about nuclear stuff

So ultimately they wouldn't have lost anything they would have gained substantially in the financial realm and they would not they would not have lost any ability to exercise leverage over hormones but so hearing that then how much of this might be iran planning for a post trump u.s right because as of the time that we're recording this episode we're about

Four months away from a midterm election that may substantially hamstring trump's political power it may depending on control of the u.s senate in particular really set him back for the remainder of his term now we can talk about whether or not trump intended to honor the mou and i have some thoughts on that but i do think that it's highly likely that a

Future u.s administration would face pressure to really either focus an intensive effort on renegotiating terms or abandon the deal entirely because it does reward iran in ways that used to be really unthinkable and it does compromise American interests in a way that used to not really be possible in this part of the world to the extent that it's been done

Already.

So how much do you believe Iran's focus on the straight now and really kind of setting the terms that a next administration has to walk into on day one might be motivating their calculus here?

I think that we're looking way too far into the future with that because I don't think the MOU will even survive into the midterms or even slightly after that. I think Iran's best play for a post-Trump world is to show any incoming American administration that it can shut down the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeep Strait at will.

That's the most important thing that it can show any incoming administration not a deal that Trump most likely planned to renege on the minute he signed it and you know the minute he saw it and not a deal that as you quite rightfully said any American administration would be under immense pressure to renegotiate because how can you be a superpower, a global

Superpower and you're making concessions with a country that has been under economic sanction for years and its economy is like a tenth the size of the US.

You know that might be a little hyperbolic but still the fact that you know this deal is so bad for American interests tells me it's not going to survive into a next into any you know future administration.

I think your point there Evan is an interesting one because I am almost certain the Iranians were thinking long term just out of abundance of caution if anything.

They even if they didn't think that it would likely last to the next administration just based off of the way the last JCPOA went down where it was negotiated under one president and then a very different president came in and tore the thing up.

I think they have to I think it'd be reckless not to think about the long-term implications of it.

So I do think that future administrations would have been very eager to either get out of it or renegotiate or something but again they would be similarly hamstrung because if the alternative and by the way the presumably by the time a new administration would come in the 300 billion would have been distributed there would have been a nuclear deal in place

And there would have been sanctions relief and oil sales going on for two plus years at that point so or two years at that point.

So ultimately they would have to be in the situation of okay well yes Iran is like really strengthening itself but Hormuz is flowing so we could either leave well enough alone or we could go in and blow this thing up and try this all over again.

I don't know how willing they'd be to do that of either party to be honest i don't think like how many presidential candidates are going to be like willing to go in and redo even in a limited scale something like this i don't think many at all so i think even though it would be very a very bitter pill to swallow like i don't see a path where it's okay yeah

Let's tear this thing up you know i mean no i agree i don't think so either but i do want to point out there is kind of a third option here that i worry we're not really considering which is yes obviously iran would like to not have to really expend what it's doing except the losses that it has to maintain continuous control over the straight but then again

Iran has shown a really keen awareness of the precedent game that it's playing here right where prior to this whole exchange there was no precedent of iranian action in the straight prior to like or since the i believe the 1980s iran has now created a precedent in which it is willing to launch kinetic strikes in the straight and that's very important that is

A sea change for security in the region but it does also as it stands if iran were to leave it there it does leave some ambiguity as to what was this a one-off you know trump started the war voluntarily this was not something that iran opted into maybe this was just a temporary reaction to a temporary problem and i do think there's a way to interpret iran's

Actions here as wanting to really really firm up that precedent that not just iran will close down the straight when you attack it and instigate a major war against it but that iran will shut down the straight at will and i do think that if that's the message that iran tends intends to send and wants to use as a negotiating point of leverage in the future

That precedent is close to being established but it's not quite there yet so when we think about a future administration i think it is worth asking is iran trying to set the conditions now to be able to come to that administration with not just you know to put that administration in a corner where it's not just a matter of oh well if we go and attack iran

Then that will get the straight closed but no we're now dealing with an iran that has the ability to close the straight as they please that i think does seem to be worth fighting for on the iranian side yeah i do think that they're gonna try to play this for all it's worth there is just and by the way we also now have news out of reuters where the iranians

Are in discussions with the houthis to get them to ostensibly close down the bab al-mendeb straight which would be the is sort of the west coast version west coast of the arabian peninsula version of hormuz so when it comes to all of this i mean it's quite a mess the question i would pose to you gentlemen you say you're in command of this on both the iranian

Or the u.s side what do you do and i have my own answers on this but i'm curious you as to what you think, because it's easy to sit around and say, yeah, this is bad, this is bad.

But when it comes to actually figuring out a way out of it, is there a path that we see here? We're looking for an off-ramp.

Let's get this out, right? If I was in charge of the Iranian side, my off-ramp would be to try and drag out the negotiations as long as possible, to try and collect as much money as possible, because it doesn't seem like this is going to be a war with a definitive outcome.

So drag out the war for as long as possible, not the war, rather, drag out the negotiations for as long as possible, try and collect as much money as possible, both from any tolls we are able to impose, and at the same time, any oil revenue that's coming in, and of course, the money that we're getting in form of unfrozen assets.

So drag that out, accumulate as much wealth as possible, try and use this time provided by the ceasefire and the MOU to really rebuild the capabilities of the Iranian army.

The air defense systems that are destroyed, the missile interceptors, the missile stockpiles, the drone stockpiles, just rebuild it, because there's going to be a further confrontation at some point. And we're already living in that world where there is a further confrontation.

On the American side, I think negotiating in good faith is the best possible route to an off-ramp, negotiating with the knowledge that they are actually going to implement the terms of the MOU. They're not going to use them as a tool to just stockpile their own weapons, prepare themselves for war again.

I mean, so does that mean you think the U.S. should agree to Iranian tolls in Hormuz?

No, no, no. I'm not saying the U.S. should agree to Iranian tolls on Hormuz, because just from a diplomatic point of view, that doesn't make sense. The UN law of the sea is very specific. It's an international waterway.

I would like America to find a way to work with Iran, not on the tolls, but to lift enough sanctions that the money they're getting from the sanctions relief covers anything they're getting and more from the Strait of Hormuz. And it's not purely about money.

There's also that element of this is something that the Iranians view as one of their main levers of power.

So don't give them a reason to use it. Just pursue diplomacy. I just can't.

Yeah, I can't see them in these negotiations because they weren't previously in the last round. And they have been very clear consistently now that they're not going to give this up.

So they do not seem willing to make concessions in any way, shape or form on Hormuz, including with their own whatever, I'm not going to call them allies because they're firing missiles at them, but whatever you want to call Oman and Qatar in the region.

But Evan, I would love to hear your thoughts. Yeah, quite frankly, I do think that at this point, I don't believe that the U.S. should enthusiastically cheer for the imposition of tolls on the Strait of Hormuz.

I do think that the U.S. is in a position now where it needs to acknowledge that there is not really a way out of this, by my estimation, in which a Hormuz Strait toll is not a fundamental condition of the Middle East moving forward.

I've been very clear in prior episodes of this. I do not believe that this war should have happened in the first place. I feel that, you know, both in my capacity as a private U.S. citizen and also as somebody who spends day after day immersed in this completely, I believe that it's been bungled from the start.

It has been such an incredibly disappointing display of strategic lack of foresight, lack of thought, whatever you want to call it. But the U.S. should not be here. The U.S. is in this position because of its own failures, quite frankly.

And I don't think that there's anything to celebrate about that. I don't think that there is any joy in saying that the conditions of the Middle East have fundamentally changed.

But, no, at this point, if we accept that we have gotten ourselves here, right, I don't believe that it is worth the U.S.'s time to continue drilling down in the Strait of Hormuz issue.

Because, quite frankly, as far as they push it, Iran can and will push it further. When the U.S. eventually leaves, Iran will remain. Iran is not going anywhere just like the Strait's not going anywhere.

So, while I don't believe that it's a positive outcome for the U.S. to have to accept an Iranian toll on the Strait, I don't think that the U.S. has left itself any options. The option to avoid that was to not instigate this war in the first place, and certainly not to grow it to the size that it eventually metastasized into.

We are where we are now as a result of U.S. political action.

And the result of that action is that Iran has been given control of the Strait and will impose tolls, whether it's now or whether it's a little bit later after the U.S. has left. So, I know it's a very pessimistic take, but that's where I come down on it. I am similarly pessimistic on this.

We agree on at least parts of that. I don't see a way that the U.S., short of massive commitments to this project, which I think would be enormously unpopular for good reason, would be able to sort of just escape out of this. The way I frame it, if $300 billion is not enough to get Hormuz flowing again, then what is?

If they weren't willing to do this previously, I would say... I don't think that they're going to come around under these new circumstances.

And so while an I don't know answer is not necessarily the perhaps most clickable version of such a deal, I am at least not alone in saying that because I can assure you the staffers at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue also do not know.

Yeah, no, it is just a real shame that this situation has devolved so far in what was an entirely optional conflict for the U.S. to initiate at this stage. There was no imminent need to take military action against Iran on any level, quite frankly. There's just no justification for this having gone as far as it has.

And while the U.S. obviously would like to return to a pre-war status quo, it has made the decisions that have led that status quo to no longer be a possibility that could be returned to. It just it's it's gone so far beyond the what should have been the reasonable limitations of U.S. military action for exactly this reason.

But I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this and if there's anything that we've missed or any other insight you would want to add.

No, no, I think as you guys have rightly said, this is a war that should have never happened at any point.

And the fact that it did happen is a testament to just how little the Trump administration has invested in understanding Iran beyond that surface level feeling that they would have been ushered into Tehran as the saviors of the Iranian people after, you know, they toppled the government of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

But again, just reaping, reaping what has been sown at this point.

That's all I'll add. Yeah. And on that note, because unfortunately we are coming up on the time limits of our episode, I do want to turn the attention outward to the coming week and also everything that's going to happen after that.

But the U.S. has now engaged in its fifth day as of today of night after night strikes on Iran. Those are, as we said, moving northward. They are also starting to take place more and more often during daylight hours.

All of that to indicate that the U.S. probably is planning to step up further from here. So, gentlemen, before we log off for the day, could you let us know some of what you were watching in the coming week and what we as viewers and as watchers of this situation should pay attention to as well?

So what I'm going to be watching is whether or not we have any new intel coming out on specifically ground operations.

This is what I'm most concerned about. I am genuinely quite concerned that this would be just a massive loss of life, not just for the U.S., but also for Iran as well, just in terms of unnecessary casualties.

And, of course, sitting here as an American in the U.S., I would be... very opposed to seeing actual ground commitments like that take place in a war that was explicitly promised.

And again, I was the one earlier saying we need to take what is coming from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue not so seriously sometimes. So I certainly need to keep that in mind here, but overtly promised not to be a ground operation. But, you know, man plans, God laughs.

While God is laughing, I will be very busy watching what's happening in the Pickaxe Mountains, which is a fortified facility buried deep underground near one of Iran's main nuclear sites, because Trump on the 13th of this month, which is about three days ago, at this point said the U.S. was going to take it out.

And he isn't the only one who's been raising some concerns with Pickaxe Mountains. And Danny Citrinowicz, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, said that there were concerning signs at the complex that seem to indicate that Iran is trying to restart its nuclear program.

So for me, that will be the most important thing to watch.

And for me, in addition to everything you guys have mentioned, I will be keeping an eye on Yemen, where, as we mentioned earlier, the Iranians have apparently made overtures to the Houthis to close down the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which leads north into the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aden, from the Indian Ocean.

And for the Houthis to meaningfully step up engagement in that area would be a really significant expansion of this conflict and would throw maritime trade into a whole other level of chaos from what we've seen.

The Houthis recently have been giving a lot of signs and indicators that they would like to step up conflict. If you're a premium subscriber, we covered this on the briefing room last week, so you can check that out here on fronts.co if you would like. But short story is they're mobilizing their forces.

They're starting to engage in tribal confrontations with some of the Saudi-backed tribes under the internationally recognized Yemeni government.

They've been threatening direct action against Israeli interests in Somaliland and a number of other indicators that would suggest that they are more interested than they have been in a little while in entering this conflict.

Of course, during the last round of full-scale engagement between the U.S. and Iran and Israel, it was kind of surprising that the Houthis didn't get into the fight in a more substantial way, but they are now indicating that they are willing to do so.

Most recently, the Houthis actually bombed an international airport in southern Saudi Arabia after the Saudis struck the international airport in Sana'a, which is the capital of Yemen that the Houthis control. So they are very clearly willing to take kinetic action pretty soon.

So on that note, on that kind of pessimistic ending to what has been a pessimistic episode, but that's kind of what you get here.

Thank you. least round table sometimes i do want to take a moment to just thank everybody who was listening if you are a premium subscriber to fronts you are really truly invaluable in helping us to do what we do we could not do any of this without you so thank you for your support thank you for all of the you know the views the donations the subscription

The all of it you know thank you for just the support that we get from you guys truly this would not be anywhere near what it is today and what we want to grow this whole fronts universe into in the coming few months if you have not yet subscribed please consider doing so again it does go a very long way in helping us keep our independence do what we do all

That fun stuff on that note this has been evan maloney here with kyle moran and wilfred mayana of warfront sorry warfronts defense fronts fronts.co home fronts etc the list goes on thank you very much and we will see you next week