Pressure before peace

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It:

Bringing Iran to the negotiating table.

Iran’s leaders have faced weeks of massive protests over bad economic conditions, and have resorted to violence to quell them, killing tens of thousands of people.

Back in January, President Trump made a promise to the Iranians in the streets:

TRUMP: And all I say to them is ‘help is on its way…’

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Well, that help is named "Abraham Lincoln," an aircraft carrier and its convoy sailing near Iran for some gunboat diplomacy. Other American ships and planes are bulking up military bases from Jordan to the United Arab Emirates.

REICHARD: Meanwhile, Iran has agreed to negotiate with the U.S. to try to head off military conflict. Here’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday:

RUBIO: Look, I think in order for talks to actually lead to something meaningful, they will have to include certain things. And that includes the range of their ballistic missiles, that includes their sponsorship of terrorist organizations nations across the region. That includes the nuclear program, and that includes the treatment of their own people.

BROWN: Can the U.S. accomplish its aims without resorting to military strikes?

Joining us now to talk about it is Mike Singh. He’s a former senior director of Middle East Affairs for the National Security Council. He’s now Managing Director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

REICHARD: Mike, good morning.

MIKE SINGH: Good morning.

REICHARD: Well, the U.S. wants to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Mike, what do we know about Iran’s efforts to re-up its nuclear capabilities after American strikes last summer?

SINGH: Well, we haven't seen too much progress... at least that we know about on Iran's nuclear program in the last half year, since those strikes. The difficulty is we're also not entirely sure where the U.S. strikes in June of 2025 left Iran's nuclear program. 

You know, to make a nuclear weapon, you need fuel. You need to be able to weaponize the nuclear fuel that you produce from that process, and then you need missiles in order to launch a nuclear weapon towards the target. And there's good reason to think that Iran may actually still possess all three of those capabilities, despite the American bombings in June.

And so that leaves us in this state of uncertainty, and that, I think actually contributes to the instability and sort of the talk of potential U.S. or Israeli strikes that we're seeing now, because that nuclear program, while certainly set back, remains a threat to U.S. interests. And Iran's ballistic missile program, which caused a significant amount of damage in Israel in June of last year, has, in fact, I think, been rebuilt significantly since the war.

REICHARD: Well let’s talk about what the U.S. is sending now to the region. President Trump calls it an Armada, but we’ve heard reports of airbases around the Middle East getting more planes and defensive weapons. Is that so, and what does that tell us about U.S. strategy?

SINGH: Sure. Well, anytime the U.S. is preparing for a significant military action against a state like Iran, which has a retaliatory capacity which we can't ignore, especially in the form of ballistic missiles. You need both offensive capability, both a strike capability, to eliminate whatever targets in Iran you may have in mind. 

But... you need a defensive capability. You need air defense. You need missile defense. Because, of course, the US has troops, around 30 to 40,000 troops in the Middle East still. We have bases. We have, obviously, ships on the water. And then there are lots of so-called soft targets, you know, there are lots of American civilians or energy infrastructure, things like that, in the region that Iran could pretty easily retaliate against, frankly. 

So the force that's being assembled is that we can see as both offensive, that sort of stuff has arrived, first, as it were, and then also defensive. And with our reports of more missile defense assets being moved into the region, even as we speak.

REICHARD: Alright, well based on all this, how much do you think the U.S. can accomplish without firing a shot? Can diplomacy work with that regime?

SINGH: I think it can. I think that what we're going to see is perhaps Iranian interest in at least having talks. And the Iranians are excellent at using talks or the prospect of talks, or the prospect of a deal, to delay and to dilute any actions being planned against them. 

And so I think the real danger here for the Trump administration is that they end up with sort of neither outcome: neither a sort of successful strike against Iran, nor the kind of deal that they wanted because the Iranians sort of string them along a bit. Make promises about what they might do in the future in exchange for American concessions or restraint today. 

I think that if Steve Witkoff, if President Trump, are firm, this could be a moment, frankly, to get the kind of nuclear deal they haven't been able to get in the past. The real question is, is it wise to do so? Is throwing the regime that lifeline really in the best interests of the United States, not to mention the Iranian people?

REICHARD: What would be in the best interests of the Iranian people that the Americans could do, do you think?

SINGH: Well, I think really, in Iran we have two clocks ticking. One is the clock on Iran's nuclear weapons capability, and the strikes that we conducted last June really set back that clock. By how much, we're not sure, but we certainly delayed the progress that Iran had made in its nuclear weapon, and we don't know, frankly, if Iran would choose to resume that path towards a nuclear weapon. 

The other clock is, of course, the clock towards regime change in Iran. And it does seem as though that clock is moving faster these days. And so I think what you don't want to do is you don't want to slow down the regime change clock for the sake of concessions that, you know, maybe in the long run aren't aren't totally necessary. 

What we want to see in Iran, ultimately, is we want to see a different kind of leadership, I think a different kind of strategy and approach from Iran than we have seen in the past. Because their past strategy, their past approach, has been very anti-American, very anti-Israel, very bad, frankly, for their own people and for the region. 

We want to see a change in that approach, whether that means regime change, whether that means a succession of leadership that's really up to Iranians to decide. And I think ultimately, the first rule that the U.S. government needs to follow is "first, do no harm." Don't slow down that regime change clock. Don't slow down the clock of political ferment in Iran for the sake of a diplomatic deal.

REICHARD: Mike Singh is Managing Director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. 

Mike, thanks so much, appreciate your time!

SINGH: Thank you.

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