Ex-Nuclear Negotiator Criticizes Trump’s Push for Abraham Accords in Iran Deal

Nearly two months after the United States and Iran agreed to a ceasefire, are the two sides any closer to a lasting peace deal?

We speak with Robert Malley, the Middle East program director at the International Crisis Group, who worked in multiple Democratic administrations and helped negotiate the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal with Iran. He says Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of that deal in 2018 “was a completely reckless and absurd one,” with the Trump administration renegotiating many of the same issues, as well as pushing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran did not previously control. “We should never have been in the position we’re in now.”

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Tensions are rising in Iran and the Persian Gulf after Iran and the U.S. traded military strikes early on Thursday, just hours after President Trump said he was getting closer to sealing a deal with Iran. Following the U.S. strikes in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards say they targeted an unspecified U.S. air base that was the source of the American strikes. Kuwait’s military says it has activated its air defenses in response to a drone and missile attack, and the U.S. military is accusing Iran of violating the ceasefire agreement by attacking Kuwait.

During a Cabinet meeting at the White House Wednesday, President Trump warned the Gulf state of Oman, a longtime U.S. ally, that it would face a bombing campaign if it entered into an agreement with Iran to share control over the Strait of Hormuz. This is an exchange with ABC News reporter Rachel Scott.

RACHEL SCOTT: Would you accept a short-term deal that allows Iran and Oman to control the strait? And would they have to open it immediately, or would you be open to that happening over a period of time?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, the strait is going to be open to everybody. It’s —

RACHEL SCOTT: And who would control it?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It’s international waters. Nobody’s going to control it. We’re going to watch over it. We’ll watch over it. But nobody’s going to control it. That’s part of the negotiation that we have. They would like to control it. Nobody is going to control it. It’s international waters. And Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow them up. They understand that. They’ll be fine.

AMY GOODMAN: “Have to blow them up,” President Trump said about Oman, U.S. ally. President Trump also said he felt no pressure from the looming midterm elections to make a deal. He also suggested signing a deal with Iran might be contingent on more Arab and Muslim countries signing the Abraham Accords.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And we’d like to have the countries we were talking about — Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and the others — we’d like to have them immediately join the — and Steve Witkoff is working on that with Jared and some others, but we’d like to have them join the Abraham Accords. It will be historic if they do it. And we would — I think they — I think they owe that to us, to be honest. … I’m not sure we should make the deal if they don’t sign.

AMY GOODMAN: For more on all of this, we’re joined by Robert Malley, the Middle East program director at the International Crisis Group, was a senior Middle East official under Presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden, and most recently former U.S. special envoy for Iran in the Biden administration, co-author with Hussein Agha of the new book Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine.

Robert, welcome back to Democracy Now! First, talk about the U.S. threatening to blow up its own ally — I should say, Trump threatening to blow up Oman around this — around sharing control of the Strait of Hormuz, and then go into the Abraham Accords.

ROBERT MALLEY: Yeah, well, first, thanks for having me.

Listen, we could spend hours trying to dissect every statement by the president. It’s not clear that it’s particularly useful, because he says the most extravagant things. Yesterday may have taken the cake in some respects, threatening to blow up Oman, but also making this connection between a negotiation with Iran and expanding the Abraham Accords, including to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and making this strange argument that somehow they owe it to the president, even though, if anything, right now what they have towards the president is real resentment, because he’s the one who got them into this mess. It’s because of his unlawful, unnecessary war that the Strait of Hormuz is closed. So, I don’t know by what logic he thinks that they owe him something because he’s going to get them out, perhaps, of the mess that he created. In any event, it’s a completely illusory, elusive chase. There is not a chance at all that Qatar, Saudi Arabia, coming out of this war, with this Israeli government and under this — in this context, are going to normalize relations with Israel. One hopes that he just threw that out and will quickly forget it. But if it becomes, in his mind, a condition for a deal, there simply won’t be one.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Robert, you were one of the key negotiators for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal during the Obama administration, and several people are now speculating that whatever deal emerges between Iran and the U.S., it will not be very different from the 2015 deal. Could you just elaborate on that?

ROBERT MALLEY: I mean, you know, the situation is different from 2015, so the comparison is going to be very inexact. Iran is not in the position it was before. It has discovered a tool, the control of the Strait of Hormuz, that it didn’t really know it had, or if it knew it had it, it wasn’t prepared to use it. Its nuclear program is in a very different state than it was in 2015. In some ways, it’s weak, because it’s been bombed. In other ways, it’s strong, because Iran has accumulated irreversible knowledge. I think the comparison, in some ways, is sort of a futile exercise. I don’t think — I don’t want the president to think that whatever deal he reaches is going to be worse than the JCPOA, because that will just give him another incentive not to conclude a deal.

I think the main question is, number one, what this war shows and where we are today demonstrates that his decision to withdraw from the deal in 2018 was a completely reckless and absurd one, because we’re now in a position where we’re renegotiating issues that had already been settled, and negotiating a new issue that never should have been on the table in the first place, which is reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

The one lesson, though, the comparison where I think some of the critics of the JCPOA are having a very hard time with the current reality, is that the two main criticisms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — number one was that Iran retained its right, what it considered its right, to enrich uranium, something that critics thought never should have been the case, and, second, the deal never addressed issues like Iran’s ballistic missile program, its support for regional allies or its — now its drone program. Whatever deal comes out of the current negotiations, one thing is for sure: Iran will retain what it considers its right to enrich, and the deal will not touch on those other issues that I just mentioned.

So, the logic of the deal, even if the details will be different, the basic construct of the deal, which is nuclear constraints in exchange for sanctions relief, that’s the only deal that’s on offer. And again, we should never have been in the position we’re in now. You know, the president’s decision to rip up the deal, to impose maximum-pressure sanctions and then to go to war has left us in a weaker position and without any option for getting a deal that would be dramatically different from the one that was concluded in 2015, at best.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Robert, you’re back at the International Crisis Group. You were previously the president, now Middle East program director. The latest Crisis Group monitor on Iran has, of course — as you have, too, now — cautioned against any speculation about the deal, because it’s not clear exactly what it contains yet, but also elaborates on a new institutional arrangement Iran has made around the Strait of Hormuz. The so-called Persian Gulf Strait Authority was formalized by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council earlier this month, on the 18th and 19th of May, which, quote — and this is taken from the Crisis Group Monitor document — quote, “appears designed to turn ad hoc Revolutionary Guards interdictions into a permanent regulatory apparatus. Vessels seeking transit must file ownership details, insurance documentation, crew manifests and cargo declarations with the authority before receiving a permit.” Now, this is presumably entirely unacceptable, not only to the U.S., but also to Gulf countries. If you could talk about the significance of this, and where it might fit into any potential deal?

ROBERT MALLEY: Right. Well, so, first, just a reminder, I said it earlier, but we’re now negotiating over an issue that wasn’t even existing before the war, and the main topic of negotiation is opening the strait, that was not closed prior to the launching of this illegal war. So, that’s point number one.

Point number two, yes, what Iran — it’s discovered that it has this ability — again, it always had it, but it’s now put it into practice — of stopping and restarting and imposing conditions for naval — for vessels to cross the Strait of Hormuz. That is something that is unacceptable under international law. It’s unacceptable to the neighbors, as you just said. The point is, it’s a reality. And so, when President Trump says Iran will not be in control of the strait at the end of this, if there’s a deal, he’s right in one respect, which is, I suspect, the deal will not entrench and formalize any form of control like the one you just mentioned. On the other hand, it’s a simply — it’s a statement of fact that if at any point Iran is dissatisfied with the implementation of the deal or feels like it’s being violated or for any other reason it decides to close the Strait of Hormuz or to impose conditions, it can do so.

But I do think, I mean, that one of the reasons why the negotiations are complicated is that Iran is insisting that it wants some form of economic relief for the damage that was caused by this war, and the most obvious one, from its perspective, other than sanctions relief, is imposing some kind of toll, some kind of payment system in the Strait of Hormuz. Very difficult, as you said, for the neighbors to accept it. They’re trying to see whether they could do something in which some of the proceeds of that tolling system, of that fee system, could be shared with other Gulf countries. That’s going to be a very tough sell, again, for the neighbors. But the reality remains. At this point Iran has proven and demonstrated that it has this ability to switch the light on or off in terms of transit through the Strait of Hormuz, and that’s something that’s one of the legacies of this war that everyone is going to have to contend with.

AMY GOODMAN: So, the Iran monitor of your group, the International Crisis Group, has criticized the U.S. position for, quote, being “mired in confusion.” Now Trump says he doesn’t care about the midterm elections, but there’s been speculation suggesting, to say the least, that domestic considerations are weighing in heavily, and that may force Trump’s hand to reach an agreement fast. But according to other observers, this may no longer be the case following the Supreme Court’s decision on redistricting. If you can respond to that, also the war pushing President Trump’s approval ratings to an all-time low?

ROBERT MALLEY: Yeah, so, obviously, you know, I’m not in the president’s head. It’s not somewhere I’m going to speculate getting into. But I do think listening to him — and let’s put it this way. If you are an Iranian official listening to the president every other day saying he doesn’t care about the midterms, he’s not in a hurry, I think every time he says it, they believe it’s proof of the opposite, that he’s sort of protesting too much, and he’s trying to project an air of confidence, an air of not caring about what will happen at the midterms, what will happen to his political fortunes. I think that’s very hard to believe, at least from their perspective. So, every time they say it, they view it as confirmation that they hold that upper hand in terms of who is more in a hurry to reach a deal.

Now, I think, you know, again, watching the president, myself, I’m confused, because you would have thought that given the poll numbers — and this is one of the most, if not the most, unpopular war waged by the United States in decades. One can’t even think of a precedent where there was not even a rallying-around-the-flag instinct at first. This has been unpopular from day one, and it’s only grown more unpopular since. It’s having a drag on the economy. It’s having a drag on the Republican Party’s prospects in the midterms. So, you’d think that the president would really try to get out of this war.

And he’s had many, many exit ramps since he first launched it. He hasn’t really seized them. He’s changed. He’s gone back and forth. He’s zigzagged. And I think what that reflects is the president is torn. On the one hand, yes, he sees the politics. I’m sure that people — his chief of staff, vice president — are telling him, “Beware. This is coming at a cost.” And he sees that. On the other hand, he’s somebody who hates to appear weak. He is determined to show that Iran has capitulated and surrendered. And those two instincts can’t coexist. He’s going to have to choose one or the other. Either he’s going to want to continue this war until that elusive triumph, which he won’t achieve, or he’s going to have to settle for less than full victory. And depending on the time of day, depending maybe on who has spoken to him last, he seems to incline more in one direction or the other, which really is a reason why these negotiations seem to be going through all these ups and downs, when we think we’re going to reach a deal a week ago or few days ago, and now who knows?

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Robert, finally, we just have 30 seconds. If you could comment on the fact that Iran has at least partially lifted its internet blackout in the country, the longest in history, 88 days, and what this might say about what the Iranian government feels its position is vis-à-vis its own population?

ROBERT MALLEY: Listen, I don’t know, and I don’t want to speculate. I’m not there. I’m not sure how widely open it actually is. So, I think you’d have to ask people who are there and who are witnessing it. Certainly, closing the internet has been an economic drag for Iran. I think they have found that it’s very difficult to do business without the internet. I think it’s a great difficulty for them. On the other hand, they have security considerations. They are probably afraid of what some of the people in their country feel, and also of outside interference. So, we’re going to have to see whether it really materializes and how open it actually is. That’s one of the slideshows in this conflict.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Malley, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Middle East program director at the International Crisis Group, former U.S. senior Middle East official under Presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden. His new book out, he co-authored, is called Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine.