Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
What’s really striking about this situation is that Trump seems absolutely convinced that time is on his side. Yet the opposite appears true. Literally every day that passes makes this situation worse for him, and he doesn’t seem capable of grasping this. So now what? We’re talking about all of it with Ariane Tabatabai, a former Defense Department official under Joe Biden, who’s now at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Ari, nice to have you on again.
Sargent: So the sixty-day deadline for Trump and Iran to reach this deal has expired, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, and there are these parallel talks between Iran and Oman about how to reopen the strait. Ari, can you just sum up where we are right now with all these moving parts?
Sargent: So maybe you can just settle this right now. Trump keeps saying that we’re in control of the Strait of Hormuz. Who’s in control of the Strait of Hormuz?
And it has effectively installed this, again, tolling system that I think is not going anywhere anytime soon. That is why I think that, you know, it’s pretty clear that the Iranians have the upper hand on this one.
Tabatabai: That’s right.
Trey Yingst (voiceover): Now, I asked the president about these parallel talks that are taking place between Iran and Oman about control of the Strait of Hormuz. And the president told Fox News, “if Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the s--- out of them.” We went on to talk about a variety of different regional topics, including the U.S. stockpiles of weapons that are currently stationed in the Middle East. The president says what we’ve used so far is “peanuts.”
Tabatabai: Well, look, he’s not been particularly specific about what it is he does not like about Oman’s conduct. What he has indicated, and what we can kind of get from his statement, is that he believes that the Omanis, by virtue of being engaged in this diplomatic process with Iran, are making it difficult for the United States to win a decisive victory against Iran and to close out the war.
So I think he is just, you know, essentially taking Oman and lashing out at them because of the fact that he is unable to close out this war. He’s unable to get the victory that he desires. And none of that has anything to do with Oman. It has to do with the poor planning that has happened in the lead-up to the war, and the fact that we do not have any clear objectives when it comes to the war.
Tabatabai: I think that’s pretty accurate.
Tabatabai: Well, that is just not accurate. We have spent billions of dollars in this war, and this is not me opining. This is according to Trump’s own officials at the Pentagon. Then there is the fact that there are all the costs that are not where you can put a dollar amount to it. And that includes things like military readiness, morale among our service members.
Those are real costs that are obviously, on a human level, just extremely disheartening to hear about. But on a military level, they hurt readiness. These are the kinds of things that hurt our ability to recruit into the services, that make it more difficult for us to retain people in the service. Because why would you sign up to continue serving when you know that this is the kind of future that might await you?
Sargent: Politico’s Nahal Toosi had some very good reporting on all this, in which she says we’re facing a new kind of quagmire here that is unfathomable for a lot of people. She talked to people inside the administration, and the responses she got back were really interesting. As she put it, one of the first responses she gets when she asks current and former officials what has to be done to win is like a primal scream. And it translates into something like this: quote, “We never should have started this war,” or quote, “What do you mean by win?” And then one official says to her, quote, “I don’t see a way out of this.”
Tabatabai: Yeah, so much to say about this. One, I think that it’s been obvious to anyone who’s had eyes and ears and has sort of read the news every now and again that we have not won this war. That much is abundantly clear. The fact that folks inside the administration are now starting to recognize it—or perhaps have recognized it for a while and are just starting to admit it—I think is pretty significant.
You’ve had DOGE, you have people who’ve been RIF’d, you have Laura Loomer determining personnel policy. It’s shocking but not surprising that all of this is happening. And we’re hearing about it the same week as my colleague Julia Curley writes an essay in The Atlantic talking about being pushed out of government for being trans. So, they found all kinds of excuses to push out people. So no, of course they don’t understand Iran’s leaders, because they’re not listening to the people who could help them understand Iran’s leaders.
It’s that Trump doesn’t think he needs to understand Iran’s rulers. He doesn’t think he needs a diplomatic corps to tell him how Iran’s rulers, and how Iran, understand the world. He can just use force, and because he’s infinitely strong and powerful, he will always get his way by definition. So why bother understanding anybody? Isn’t that sort of the story here?
But it’s not just about adversaries. It’s also about the fact that he doesn’t understand, as we would say in the Department of Defense, blue, right? The U.S. side of things. He thinks about readiness as something that can be replenished, right? It’s a video game. You go in, you fight a bunch of bosses, and then you can just press this button and you get your health back, you get your weapons back, everything gets replenished, and you can continue your quest. And that’s just not how the military works in the real world.
Sargent: Well, I will tell you, when I was a kid, you needed to have quarters to play video games. And so he’s kind of like the kid with an infinite number of quarters, being a rich kid.
Sargent: Right. So just as an aside here, Trump lost his temper on another front. He lost his temper with reporters while facing hard questions about foreign policy. At one point he started rebuking one of the journalists, telling her to be quiet. Listen to this.
First Reporter (voiceover): I’m with CNN.
Second Reporter (voiceover): Mr. President, is there enough food on the USS Lincoln?
Sargent: So note at the end there, a second reporter brings up the USS Lincoln, which has been in the news because of terrible conditions on it. Trump calls it just another fake report. So there’s the source of his anger for you right there. I mean, Trump threatens to incinerate ninety-one million people, meaning the whole population of Iran—threatens to wipe out their civilization.
Tabatabai: Yeah, again, I think, you know, when you start to kind of lash out at people and say the kind of things that he’s saying, it’s because you don’t have a good argument, right? If you have a strong argument and you’re sure of your argument, you don’t need to be telling people to be quiet and to sit down and that they’re fake news. You do those things when you have nothing of substance to say. And more than six months into this war, it’s clear that that’s exactly where we are.
Sargent: Just to wrap this up, he keeps saying that time is on his side, but it’s really not on his side, in the sense that every passing day without a deal, the midterms come closer. And I’ve got to think Iran is paying attention to our political clock. Can you talk about the way Iran views our political clock, the way Iran views Trump’s long-term vulnerability, and the way they’re thinking about it?
Look, they have a really terrible economy, and on that point, Trump is right—which means that at some point they need to think about how they’re going to do things differently. But they have a bit of time here, number one.
They don’t have to deal with the economic challenges that were creating the protests, the mass protests that we saw just a few months ago. The second the shooting stops, the second they have a ceasefire or some sort of agreement with the United States, they will need to govern. And this is not a regime that is particularly equipped to do that—they weren’t equipped to do it before this war killed off half of their leadership, who were actually experienced, and installed instead a bunch of people who don’t actually know what they’re doing in senior positions.
And unfortunately, again, that means that I think we’re stuck in the current space, where we’re doing this thing where we’re negotiating sometimes but shooting other days. And we have these threats on and off, with, again, the people of Iran, the people of the broader region, stuck in the middle of all of this, as well as our service members who are stuck in the middle of all of this.
Tabatabai: I think so. I think they can. And I think that they have seen that they have an administration that is ultimately going to fold, right? The administration folded a few months ago with the memorandum of understanding, front-loading a bunch of sanctions relief to Iran, telling Iran yeah, we’ll withdraw from the bases around your country, giving Iran things that no other administration would give them.
Sargent: You know, the crowning irony to all this is that Trump doesn’t think he needs to understand his adversary, but Iran has really taken a lot of steps to understand theirs. Awesome to talk to you. Thank you so much for all that.
Tabatabai: Always good to be with you. Thanks so much.
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