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00:00Joining us now is Ian Bremmer. He's the president and founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media.
00:05It's nice to see you. I'm wondering, as you look at this rocky start that these talks have had,
00:10what do you think the biggest priorities for the U.S. need to be? And can they get done
00:14everything they want to get done? Not only those 14 points, but we heard Vice President J.D. Vance
00:20talking this week and talking about how the end goal seems to far surpass what's on that paper.
00:27Can they get there at any point, do you think, if the MOU is the starting point?
00:31No, and I'm not sure Trump really cares, to be honest with you. I mean, his back was against
00:36the wall. You heard that the United States faced economic catastrophe and he didn't want to be
00:42Herbert Hoover if they didn't end the blockade. That is certainly my understanding of where they
00:49were. But it was very interesting to hear Trump admit that because it shows a lot of leverage
00:53on the part of the Iranians just how much the United States does not want to return
00:58to military conflict, just how important it was for this off-ramp to be taken by President Trump.
01:06Now, this war has completely failed in terms of being able to accomplish any of the war goals
01:12that President Trump put to the American people back when he launched the strikes on Iran four months
01:20to go. And I think he wants to put this behind him. I think he wants Iran out of the
01:26headlines.
01:26It took years for the Obama administration to negotiate the original Iranian nuclear deal,
01:32the JCPOA. Trump would want the nuclear agreement to be substantially tougher than that. And he has
01:37considerably less capacity to force the Iranians to the table to accept it. Not to mention the fact,
01:44as we just saw from Israel, that the ability to undermine this agreement just by starting fighting
01:52again with Hezbollah and Lebanon, which is part of the memorandum, but which the United States has
01:58no jurisdiction over. So, I mean, it's 60 days. Trump has already said that that's a soft, not a hard
02:04deadline. It'll be extended. I'm sure there's going to be continued engagement and negotiations
02:09between the U.S. and Iran. But as the strait is reopened, as the ceasefire continues to hold,
02:15that is going to be sufficient for Trump to move on to Cuba, move on to the Western Hemisphere,
02:21talk about some things that are much more positive for him than Iran, which has been the biggest
02:27failure of his administration by a very long margin. Ian, I want to stick with Israel if I could.
02:32And the president sat down with Axios in recent hours, talked to them about the status of these
02:36negotiations and what's happening in the Middle East broadly. Let's take a listen to what he had to say
02:39in that interview. If it weren't for Donald Trump, Israel would have been eviscerated.
02:46What's your relationship with Netanyahu? It's good, but we have to keep him a little bit
02:52sane. Are you going to be able to control Israel from attacking Lebanon? Yeah, I will be.
03:00I mean, I wonder. They have a lot of respect for me, and they do as I say.
03:07Yeah, I want to ask you about Israel not being party to this memo of understanding, which we knew
03:11about kind of going into it before it was signed. But of course, going back to February, this was a
03:15war that was launched by the U.S. in concert with Israel. So as you look to some signs of
03:21progress,
03:21the potential for progress here in these negotiations, it seems to my mind at least very
03:26problematic that one of the parties to the initial start of this war is not party to that
03:29memo of understanding. Do you agree? Of course. I mean, again, there was no way that the United
03:35States could have gotten the Israelis to sign on, despite the fact that Trump says that Israel does
03:41what he says. They're a sovereign country. Hezbollah does more of what Iran says, because Hezbollah
03:48is operationally controlled in terms of military decisions by the Iranians. That is not true
03:52of Israel, which is not only a sovereign state, but also has a prime minister facing elections in
03:58October with a very restive Israeli population in the country's north that has been facing lots of
04:05these strikes from Lebanon, from Hezbollah. Now, Israel presently is occupying a significant piece
04:12of southern Lebanon, but they don't control all the territory that they would need
04:16to feel comfortable about that occupation. And as a consequence, they're going to continue to fight.
04:24Furthermore, Lebanon and Hezbollah, they want the Israelis out of that territory that Israel has
04:32no interest in moving away from. So the likelihood that we see ongoing strikes in the coming months
04:37as Israel's elections are coming up is, I would say, virtually certain. It's not 50 percent. It's more
04:44like 90 or 95. And if the Iranians wish to use that to delay, to extend and pretend, as we
04:52say,
04:52their engagement in these nuclear talks, it is certainly within their right to do so. So look,
04:58the other fact is that there are a lot of other countries that aren't signatories of this agreement.
05:03None of the Gulf states are signatories of this agreement, but they're going to want to engage
05:08directly with Iran to figure out how they can ensure that they don't get attacked by Iran going forward
05:15and that they can use the strait going forward. So do the Chinese, so to the Indians, so to the
05:22Europeans, all of whom have a stake in stability, all of whom have a stake in engaging with Iran,
05:27none of whom are going to be negotiating directly with the Americans on this 60-day deal. So a lot
05:34of
05:34the action that we're going to see in terms of Iranian diplomacy in the coming months is not going
05:41to be dictated by J.D. Vance or Jared Kushner or Steve Witkoff. It's going to be dictated in Doha
05:48and in Abu Dhabi and in Riyadh and by the Chinese and the Europeans and the Indians. And that, I
05:55think,
05:55shows just how much leverage the Iranians have and shows why I have so little confidence that you're
06:02going to get an ultimate agreement on the disposition of Iran's enriched uranium stockpiles
06:09and their willingness to limit their uranium enrichment going forward.
06:15We want to pick up on nuclear, but before we do, I do want to ask you about another
06:18glaring omission from these 15 points, and that is nowhere in there does it talk about
06:23the ballistic weapons program, which, as you mentioned, the Gulf allies, obviously that's what
06:28they are incredibly concerned about because those are the weapons used to hit Dubai, Abu Dhabi,
06:33you know, everyone in the region. And the president was asked about that very issue at the G7 and had
06:39a pretty surprising response.
06:41If other countries have them, it's a little bit unfair for them not to have some.
06:47A ballistic missile is not the same thing as what we're talking about, what we talked about here.
06:51But if Saudi Arabia and Qatar and they all have some, I would say in relative proportion,
06:58I think it's okay. That's what I mean.
07:02Now, J.D. Vance was also asked about those remarks and the program in general, and his argument was
07:07the U.S. has done a lot to take out the missile launchers, which he said, you know,
07:12it's not about the bullets, it's about the thing that fires them. But what is your assessment of
07:16the capacity of Iran's ballistic weapons program and what can be done to assess that threat,
07:22as well as the threat of Iranian proxies, which is what people in the region,
07:26U.S. allies in the region, are really concerned about?
07:28Well, it turns out that Trump's assessment of what he thought he could get out of Iran and what
07:34was and what was not acceptable was significantly greater when he thought he was winning the war.
07:40And when it appeared clear that he wasn't winning the war, that he couldn't achieve his outcomes
07:46militarily, that the Iranians were not going to capitulate or engage in full surrender,
07:53as he told American allies and the American public that they were about to in the first weeks of the
08:00war, then suddenly his war goals changed. And what was acceptable from Iran changed. We saw that
08:07in terms of Trump saying suddenly that they could have ballistic missiles. He wasn't saying that
08:12at the beginning. Trump saying that this new regime is pragmatic and that he can engage with
08:16them. He was saying that that was not the case at the beginning. He was going to rescue the Iranian
08:21people. He would choose the new supreme leader. Obviously not happening. Just in the last two days,
08:27he said that the frozen assets are Iranian money. Why would we, the Americans, steal Iranian money? That
08:34wasn't what he was saying a few weeks ago. It wasn't what he was saying a few months ago. On
08:39literally
08:40every issue being demanded by President Trump in the early stages of the war, he has backtracked. He has
08:50flip-flopped. He has backed down. In that regard, this war's outcome is very much like Trump's effort
08:58with the Chinese a year ago, where he was going to force complete capitulation on a smaller, weaker
09:08Chinese economy by hitting them very hard with American tariffs. Turned out the Chinese were
09:15capable of taking that pain and hitting back the Americans hard, so much so that the U.S. would have
09:21been driven into a catastrophe economically. A lot of their companies would have been shut down,
09:28by the absence of critical minerals in rare earth. So what did the U.S. do? They backed down against
09:34the Chinese. Trump treated the Chinese with much more caution, much more flatteringly, much more
09:41willing to find a compromise as opposed to demand a set of unilateral requirements that China was never
09:49going to accept. That is exactly what has happened with Iran, except the consequences for the United States
09:56are much greater, much more embarrassing. And Iran, of course, is a much smaller country, a much clearer
10:02enemy and adversary of the United States and of its closest ally, at least thus far, in the Middle East,
10:09Israel. So that's why Trump has changed his view on the ballistic missiles. And you're right. Him
10:16saying that Iran should be able to have ballistic missiles is surprising, but it's only surprising
10:21when you view it by itself. It's not surprising when you view it in the context of everything else
10:27Trump has been to saying about all the other demands that he used to have of the Iranian regime.
10:34And somehow, somehow those demands no longer matter now that Trump needs an off-round.
10:40Ian, very quickly here, the prelude to this war, of course, were these talks that the Omanis were
10:45intermediaries, too. And now we have Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, the same principles
10:49traveling to Switzerland, presumably in the coming hours, to engage in these talks once again.
10:55Does that engender any optimism in you? Yes, they've been to Oak Ridge. They've been traveling
10:58around eastern Tennessee trying to develop some nuclear expertise here. Do you think these two men,
11:03perhaps in concert with the Vice President, have the technical manpower at their disposal to be able
11:10to kind of get through this 60-day period and make tangible progress when it comes to the nuclear file?
11:15You know, progress, maybe there'll be some signs over the coming weeks or months that the talks are
11:24constructive, but that's very different. There's been tangible signs of progress over the past several
11:30months. And then, you know, Trump says, I'm going to destroy your civilization, or I'm going to attack
11:35your energy infrastructure. I'm going to blow you up like you've never seen before. No more Mr. Nice
11:40Guy. I know I already killed your supreme leader, but no more Mr. Nice Guy. I'm sure there will be
11:46some perspective on progress. What I'm saying is I would bet a great deal that there will not be a
11:53successful executed nuclear deal between the Americans and the Iranians. I think that Iran is
11:59going to focus much more on the money that they can extract, together with Oman, from the Gulf states,
12:06from other countries that wish to have continued access through the strait. And it won't be a toll,
12:12as you suggested earlier, before we started talking. It'll be insurance. It'll be, you know,
12:18some form of authority for their responsibility over geography that they, of course, still have.
12:24But ultimately, I do not expect that all of Iran's enriched uranium stockpiles will be diluted or turned
12:32over. Nor do I expect that there will be an implemented, inspected deal that prevents them
12:39from enriching uranium at beyond civilian levels. I hope I'm wrong about that. I would love to be
12:45wrong about that. I don't expect that I'm wrong about that.
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