Playing for time

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 26th of May. So glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. 

Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

First up: The Iran negotiations.

Headlines over the holiday weekend suggested movement toward a possible agreement—Iranian negotiators in Qatar, oil prices reacting, and President Trump saying a deal could be “great and meaningful.” 

But the details seem fuzzy, and some of the toughest issues appear to be pushed into later talks.

Joining us now is Clifford May. He's founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He’s also a former journalist and foreign correspondent who has reported from Iran and across the Middle East. 

Cliff, good morning to you. 

CLIFFORD MAY: Nick, good to be with you.

EICHER: Well, when you strip away all the diplomatic nuance we've heard over the holiday weekend, what we heard in media reports, what do you think that we're actually looking at here? Is this beginning to resemble a genuine peace agreement, or maybe more of a temporary off-ramp? What do you think about that?

MAY: I would say, Nick, neither of the above. 

I think it's very important to understand who we're dealing with here. These people are self-proclaimed jihadis, they don't believe in peace with infidels. They may think, they may be convinced that a ceasefire is in their interest. They may want money because they don't have much right now. If they can get some money and make some concessions, they may be willing to do that, it's not entirely clear. 

Let me be honest with you, the off-ramp is—I can't stand the phrase—there's no such thing as an off-ramp from wars. Again, what we're negotiating here is a possible cessation of hostilities temporarily that might be in the interest of both parties, and if there is an agreement, it could also disappear an hour afterwards.

EICHER: I think I can stipulate to the idea of no-off ramp, and as you were suggesting, I'd like to delve into this a bit. Who's buying time, do you think? Is this Washington or is this Tehran?

MAY: Well, both have an interest in it, and it's a matter of who is tougher on this. Why? Because, as you know, the Strait of Hormuz is not open for traffic, and that's having real impact on the global economy. 

Meanwhile, as I mentioned, the regime in Iran has been cut off from revenue at a certain point, that becomes very difficult for the regime, in that they can't pay salaries to, for example, the pilots of the fast boats that go out on essentially suicide missions during when you're doing a ceasefire into the Strait of Hormuz to either drop mines or board ships or do other things. They need to be able to pay them. 

But what you have to understand here is that these are people who say "the way we win wars is by, we have to be willing to accept bloodshed, conflict, pain, possibly martyrdom. We should celebrate if we get killed, and if this means our people get killed, in any number, that's fine with us. If our people starve, that's fine with us. We'll just blame the U.S. for that." So that's what's going on. 

The regime in Iran—who ever's ruling it, we can talk about that too—they're saying we can hold that, we're tougher than Trump is. He'll blink before we do. And Trump's thinking, okay, I'm not so, I'm not going to blink so easily, but let's see if I can't work out a deal that helps me, even though I have to help them, but not too much.

EICHER: I don't want to read too much into this, and this is why I want to ask the question this way. Do you read much into the fact that the reporting that we're getting is that the first thing we're talking about is ending the fighting or keeping the fighting in that stopped mode and reopening the shipping routes, but not yet fully addressing the nuclear program of Iran? Is there some significance to that?

MAY: Well, the significance is that the regime doesn't want to address that at all. What they think is, 'okay, we got you over a barrel with a Strait of Hormuz. That's our trump card, we're going to play it.' The basics is ok, the regime will let ships sail through the Strait of Hormuz, and the U.S. will stop the blockade of Iranian ports. And so is Hormuz for Hormuz, and then everything else to be negotiated later. In addition, they'll make more money if the Strait is open and no longer blockaded, so they can do all the things they do, build missiles, build drones, build and rebuild enrichment facilities under mountains, support terrorist proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis in Yemen, Shia militias in Iraq, all of that and more.

Long negotiations benefits them as they see it, because they just drag it out and wear you down. They never win on the battlefield, but they almost never lose at the negotiating table.

EICHER: Oof. If we look back six months from right at this point, when we look back here, what will tell us whether this was a genuine turning point or simply an intermission before a lot more hostilities?

MAY: Yeah, if this doesn't work out the way we would really like, it still can be seen as what the Israelis have long called mowing the lawn, right? Mowing the lawn means you set your enemies to be back, but you know, put the lawnmower away in the garage, make sure it's got gas, because you're going to need it again. 

That may be what this ends up as. It won't be useless by any means, but it won't be a turning point by any means if the regime is still in power and still has, as it will, what it calls its Islamic revolutionary ambitions. And that's the goal of the jihad, that's what the regime is all about. Very hard for a revolutionary regime like that to say, "you know what, we changed our mind. What we want is to give our people the best darn health care plan in the Middle East, and, and they should be able to retire at 65 with security." 

That's not what this regime is about.

EICHER: Clifford May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. 

We appreciate your work over there, and thanks for making time for us.

MAY: My pleasure.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. 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 WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.