A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Let's ask Robert Malley about the mixed messages from Iran and the White House. He was U.S. special envoy for Iran in the Biden administration and a lead negotiator in the Obama administration for the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. He's now a lecturer and senior fellow at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. Robert - mentioned that you're a negotiator. So how do negotiations happen when there are missiles and drone strikes happening all around?
ROBERT MALLEY: Well, I'm tempted to say, welcome to the world of ceasefires in which the fire keeps going. I mean, that's - you just heard it. It's true in Gaza. It's true in Lebanon. It's true in Iran. And the negotiations are going because both sides have an interest in a deal, but at the same time, they want to show that they're not afraid of returning to war, and they are - you know, they're managing the diplomacy also through warfare.
Now, the negotiations are particularly difficult in this circumstance, I'd say, for three reasons. One, they're not direct. And whenever you have an indirect negotiation, whenever you have a mediator, that mediator tends to send slightly more positive messages to each side than it actually hears because it has an interest in reaching a deal. And so that creates confusion, misunderstanding, frustration.
Second - and put yourself in Iran's shoes - they have no trust right now that anything they're going to agree with with President Trump will be respected because they have pretty bad experience. So they're trying to make sure that everything they get, they get in advance, which is also a complicating factor.
And then third - you just mentioned it - you have in the White House an erratic, whimsical president who seems to disdain one day what he liked the other and for whom up is down, down is up. And so you never really know whether he knows what he's negotiating or what his negotiators are saying and whether what he accepts one day, he'll reject the next.
MARTÍNEZ: You mentioned ceasefires. So this morning, CENTCOM is accusing Iran of, quote, an "egregious ceasefire violation" after it launched a ballistic missile toward Kuwait that Kuwaiti forces intercepted. And this comes after the U.S. says Iranian forces launched attack drones in and around the Strait of Hormuz that the U.S. says it intercepted to maintain the ceasefire. So, Robert, what would make this ballistic missile launch from Iran a violation - a ceasefire violation - and not any of the other attacks from the U.S. or Iran?
MALLEY: I mean, they all are, in some respect, a ceasefire violation. You know, the Iranians would say that the U.S. blockade was a ceasefire violation because it was an act of war. There have been, as you've seen, strikes and counterstrikes. As long as the parties are talking, as long as they claim that the ceasefire is more or less in place, I guess it's a ceasefire. The main issue now is, are they going to be able to get over the finish line and reach this deal, at least this preliminary deal? We're not there yet. We're closer than we have been. But in this environment, close is certainly not good enough.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. Now, so during yesterday's Cabinet meeting - Wednesday's Cabinet meeting - President Trump said Iran is trying to stall negotiations. Let's hear the president really quick.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: They thought they were going to outwait me, you know. We'll outwait him. He's got the midterms. I don't care about the midterms.
MARTÍNEZ: So based on your experience in dealing with Iran, Robert, would you say Tehran is trying to run out the clock on this Republican-controlled Congress?
MALLEY: I don't know about running the clock. I think what they certainly are trying to do is play time to their advantage, and they do this. I think any negotiator would do it. They do it particularly assiduously. They read the same newspapers, the same polls. They look at the same economic indicators that you and I do. And they believe that as time goes by, the U.S. is going to suffer more economically, the president is going to be more concerned about the midterms, regardless of what he may say. And so they want to prove to the U.S. that they're less afraid of time going by, despite the suffering that they're enduring, than the U.S. is. We'll see whether they're right. But certainly, they want to prove to the president that, despite what he says, he's more concerned about the clock than they are.
MARTÍNEZ: I think what makes a lot of people wonder what's going on here is because we hear President Trump talk about an imminent deal, and Iran denies it. Then Iran talks about progress, and the White House calls that a fabrication. I mean, how do you explain the mixed messages from both sides?
MALLEY: I mean, this is really - it's Groundhog Day, but the groundhog is unwell because every day that we see these zigzags, these pronouncements that get denied by the other - I mean, there is sort of a psychological game here, where each side wants to project that it doesn't need the deal any more - it needs the deal less than the other side does, and the other side is more eager for a deal than they are. But, you know, when you hear the president say over and over again that he doesn't care about the midterms, that he's not in a hurry, you know, thou protest too much. Every time he says it, I think what the Iranians are hearing is the exact opposite - that he's trying to disprove what everyone knows to be the case. He really wants this deal. Now, he also wants to prove that Iran capitulated and surrendered, and he's going to have to choose between the two because he can't get both.
MARTÍNEZ: Do you think the president truly does not care about the midterms or - and is just sending that message out to Tehran as a way to make them think, hey, if you think that's going to pressure me, it's not going to work?
MALLEY: I mean, I'd really hesitate to try to put myself in the president's mind. I don't know what he thinks. It's very hard to follow him day to day. I suspect that on one level, he really does not care about the midterms. He's not on the ballot. He believes that he needs to do what he needs to do for his own sake. But every other day, he probably looks at the polls and dreads the fact of losing the Senate and the House. So I think it's both. And depending on the time of day, he will put the emphasis on one or the other, which kind of explains the zigzag between saying a deal is close and the next day saying he doesn't care if he reaches one.
MARTÍNEZ: But does a deal exist where both sides can feel they've walked away with at least some wins?
MALLEY: I mean, I think I could construct, I think, a narrative in which both sides claim victory. Iran claims victory because it proved its resilience, because it emerges with somewhat relative control of the strait, because it didn't surrender, and it didn't surrender against the most formidable armada you could assemble between the U.S. and Israel. And the U.S. could claim that it won, as the president likes to say virtually every day, because it decimated Iran's military, its navy, its nuclear facilities. It decapitated its leadership. So yes, I think there is a possible narrative that both sides could claim to have, in which both sides could claim they have won. Again, they're not there yet. And whether we get there or not, I really can't tell at this point.
MARTÍNEZ: So, Robert, on the show yesterday, a former State Department official, Jennifer Gavito, told Steve Inskeep that the Trump administration fundamentally misunderstands the Iranian regime as Iran doesn't believe it lost the war and doesn't have to make any compromises. What do you think of that assessment? Does that hold water?
MALLEY: I mean, it is really paradoxical. I think Jen Gavito's absolutely right. I mean, objectively, Iran's economy is battered and pummeled far more than ours. Same with their military. Their leadership has been assassinated and killed. Yet, ask virtually anyone in the region, who is winning today? Who has proved that it is more resilient? Who proves that it could withstand the test of time more? And all - virtually everyone would point to Iran. That's because we tend to look at the wrong metrics. We look at numbers of people killed, how many bridges we destroyed. Remember what Einstein said - not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. What matters here are some of the intangibles, and on that score, Iran is prevailing.
MARTÍNEZ: That's Robert Malley, former U.S. special envoy for Iran in the Biden administration. Robert, thank you very much.
MALLEY: Thank you.
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