The following is a lightly edited transcript of the August 18 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
So the sixty-day deadline for Donald Trump and Iran to reach a deal has now expired, and Trump is plainly in a terrible mood over it. In an interview with Fox News, he raged over the Strait of Hormuz, claiming that he’ll bomb the shit out of the country of Oman if its talks with Iran concerning the strait get in his way. It’s not hard to see why Trump is so angry. In a series of leaks from inside the administration, officials basically admit that Trump has lost the war.
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.
Ariane Tabatabai: Thanks for having me 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?
Tabatabai: Yeah, we’re basically where we’ve been for quite a few months now, which is to say that there was this memorandum of understanding that was supposed to set the 60-day calendar for the United States and Iran to resolve a number of issues, among them the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and very importantly, the fate of Iran’s nuclear program. The 60 days came and went, and we do not have a resolution on either of those issues, and we do not have a resolution on anything else.
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?
Tabatabai: Well, we have assets in the area, but Iran has effectively found a way to control the Strait of Hormuz when it comes to what vessels are able to pass. It can hold various vessels, commercial and otherwise, at risk. It can do it from the shore, where it has missiles and drones.
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.
Sargent: Right. So the short version is that we have blockaded the strait, which means that we can prevent Iran from doing certain types of business. But beyond that, Iran controls it in the sense that it decides who gets out and who doesn’t.
Tabatabai: That’s right.
Sargent: OK, so it’s in this context that Trump spoke with Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst about the whole situation. Listen to what Yingst said about that conversation.
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.”
Sargent: So let’s take this in two pieces. First, note that Trump threatened to bomb the shit out of Oman if it gets in the way of his efforts, as if those efforts are producing such spectacular successes. What is it that he doesn’t like about Oman’s conduct right now?
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.
The reality is that that’s not the case, right? We are not winning the war—but not because of Oman, or because there are diplomatic processes going on. By the way, the president, as I indicated earlier on, has also sought to engage in said diplomatic processes. So presumably he likes that there is an ability to reach Iran and to have negotiations with them.
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.
Sargent: This is very simple, I think, from Trump’s point of view. This can’t be his failure, so it’s got to be someone else’s failure, and so it must be Oman’s today and it’ll be someone else’s tomorrow. Is that the size of it?
Tabatabai: I think that’s pretty accurate.
Sargent: OK, well, there’s the second piece of that exchange that this Fox correspondent had with Trump. What do you make of that, where Trump says we’ve only used peanuts in terms of weaponry in this war?
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.
Just this past week, we’ve had multiple stories about service members who have been on very long deployments, where they’re, you know, missing things like prescriptions for their contacts, where they’re running out of sanitary supplies, and morale is low. And there have been incidents of sailors trying to take their lives, or just kind of harm themselves, because they are just tired, exhausted, frustrated. And that is a cost that’s not peanuts, right?
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?
And down the line, it’s something that just overall hurts our ability to compete, to deter adversaries, and to win wars when we need to fight them for real—not in the case of, you know, the Iran war, when we just choose to go blow up some things because we seem to be bored.
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.”
And then this official says that the Trump team fundamentally misunderstands Iran’s rulers, in the sense that Trump and his aides have, quote, “always felt like they can just keep applying pain and Iran will crumble, but the regime is not going to crumble,” close quote. That is quite a portrait. These officials are basically leaking word that it’s understood inside the administration that they’ve lost.
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.
The thing that was striking to me from this good piece was the point about the administration doesn’t understand Iran’s leaders. And I want to be very clear that that’s not because we don’t have the capability to understand Iran’s leaders. It’s because you’ve had an administration that, for a year and a half, has waged a war of attrition against the civil service, against the intelligence community, has sidelined anyone who had any real expertise in these areas, even as they have been, you know, very active in these policy spaces.
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.
Sargent: I think there’s a through line that connects the story you’re talking about here, which is the complete gutting of the civil service and diplomatic corps and all that, with the other stuff involving Trump’s constant threats of force. And it’s this.
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?
Tabatabai: Yeah, and it’s not just about adversaries, right? I mean, I think you’re exactly right that he thinks that he can pick up the phone. I mean, just this week too, we had the story about how he’s talked to Kim Jong-un—or he thinks that he has a good relationship with Kim Jong-un, so we can just not do the joint exercises we typically do with one of our closest allies, South Korea. So yeah, he thinks that he can talk to people, and then he gets them, and then he can just, you know, make policy on his own.
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.
You need to have maintenance. You need to have exercises and training. You need to—you know, you have the morale things that we’ve been talking about. And so there is just this fundamental, I think, misunderstanding, and lack of interest in understanding trade-offs, understanding, the pros and cons of different courses of action, and then making decisions based on what you have in your toolkit, instead of what you wish you had in your toolkit. And the unfortunate thing, going back to the cost, is that we’re all paying it.
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.
Tabatabai: Yeah, I guess that’s true.
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.
Donald Trump (voiceover): Quiet. Who’re you with?
First Reporter (voiceover): I’m with CNN.
Trump (voiceover): Fake News. You’re fake news. You’re a loud, boisterous person. You’re fake news. Be quiet. Be quiet. Be quiet! You’re a fake reporter, and you report fake news. Go ahead.
Second Reporter (voiceover): Mr. President, is there enough food on the USS Lincoln?
Trump (voiceover): Yeah. That was a CNN fake report.
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.
That doesn’t force Iran to do his bidding, even though he’s had, like, a total triumph over them or whatever. But he can, you know, viciously abuse female reporters whenever he wants to. It’s kind of like that’s MAGA’s consolation prize or something. What did you make of all that?
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.
There is nothing of substance to be said by this administration to defend what it is they’re doing. They just don’t have an off-ramp, and they have put themselves in this situation where they’re stuck in it politically, strategically, and policy-wise. And instead of trying to figure out how to get out of it, they’re just telling everyone that, you know, what they’re seeing is not correct—to not believe the evidence of their own eyes and ears.
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?
Tabatabai: Right. And this is not unique to Trump, right. Adversaries always know that we have a political clock. And often adversaries in authoritarian systems can wait out said political clock. And that’s the case for Iran. We are just a few months away from the elections. The picture that is emerging is not a good one for this administration, for the president, and for his allies. And so Iran can just kind of hang out and wait.
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.
Number two, I think that actually there is a benefit that they get out of being in this situation of war. And by “they,” I mean purely the regime, not obviously the people who are stuck in this situation—and it’s really awful from the perspective of just, you know, the human costs of this conflict for the Iranian people. But the regime is watching this and thinking to itself, as long as this war continues, it doesn’t have to provide real solutions to people’s problems.
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.
So I think they can wait this out a bit longer. And by the way, they have no choice, because from the perspective of this regime, this is a war of survival. And when you have to survive, you do anything you can to do that. It is not a war that they just chose to do on the side, on the way to Cuba. So this is very different for them than it is for the United States.
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.
Sargent: So does Iran have enough time to last through the midterms and beyond? And do you think they’re going to do that? You think they’ll hold out through the midterms?
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.
And so they know that if they just wait it out, they will probably get more concessions from this administration, at best. And at worst, they’re just continuing things as they are. They’ve already paid the price of it. It’s not like—they have really paid the price already. So it’s a sunk cost at this point for 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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