SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
The Trump administration says it perhaps has the makings of a deal with Iran. You can be forgiven if you feel like you've heard this before. It was just last weekend that President Trump said a deal was close, but the promise of that deal seemed farther away on Monday when U.S. forces launched attacks on Iranian boats near the Strait of Hormuz. CENTCOM says those attacks were in self-defense. And it was just yesterday, Wednesday, that the president told his Cabinet and reporters that he wouldn't be rushed into a deal.
So here we are on Thursday, and a deal is once again close, or so says the administration. Regardless of when a deal between the U.S. and Iran comes to pass, the future of Iran's nuclear program will be central to the future of that agreement. I talked about the challenges of getting to a final deal with Iran on NPR's national security podcast, Sources & Methods - joining me, NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman and NPR international correspondent Aya Batrawy.
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DETROW: I mean, Aya, I hear this. Iran is the country that was bombed so heavily for so many weeks, and yet it seems like Iran is the country that holds the cards at this point in time. Is that the right way to think about this?
AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: I mean, its leadership was killed. Its supreme leader was killed on the first day of the opening strikes of this war by Israeli attacks. And yet the regime is still intact. The regime is still able to call the shots domestically within Iran. They just this week, for the first time since the war began, allowed some internet to return to the country and for people to slowly access internet there.
And I think what we're seeing now is that both sides, both Iran and the United States, see that more war isn't going to achieve anything for the United States. I think President Trump sees that more war on Iran isn't necessarily going to give him what he wants. I've been speaking with a lot of analysts who say this regime is actually - it's weaker, but it's harder than it was before.
DETROW: At the same time, though, Aya, you say that both sides kind of don't see more conflict as the step forward, but we heard this from President Trump just the other day.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: They're negotiating on fumes. But we'll see what happens. Maybe we have to go back and finish it. Maybe we don't.
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: I would say not negotiating on fumes. They're negotiating on water, and that water is the Strait of Hormuz.
DETROW: But, Tom, we've heard a few different times as negotiations stall or get to an inflection point, Trump threaten broader, renewed attacks. Anything different this time?
BOWMAN: Well, here's the thing - he's talked about broader attacks. It could hit bridges. It could hit the oil facilities, power plants. And also, again, what do you hope to achieve by continuing to bomb? He thinks it'll bring them to the table. But as we've been talking about, it seems like this regime is more hard-line than what you had before. So again, the only thing they can do, really, is try to get the strait opened again. They're going to have to negotiate with Iran. They're going to have to probably give them some money. There's talk that maybe the Gulf States will loan Iran some money, billions of dollars, just to get this thing off the table.
DETROW: And, Tom, I was surprised at the types of voices that we heard criticizing this framework that's been out there - at least, people like Ted Cruz, people like Lindsey Graham, people like Mike Pompeo, people who are not usually the Republicans out there criticizing the Trump administration, saying this is a bad deal. This is not what we wanted to see out of this.
BOWMAN: No. No, I think that's right. And of course, they want clear regime change. That's what Trump promised. But clearly, that's not going to happen. And getting back to what Trump said, I don't care about the midterms. Well, a lot of Republicans are worried about the midterms because the higher gas prices and so forth. And he's going to have to bend and give back some money to Iran to get that strait reopened.
DETROW: We cannot talk about this peace deal without talking about nuclear weapons. Iran has the materials to make them. President Trump is trying hard to strike a deal to prevent Iran from doing that. But, Tom, we've talked about this a bunch already - seems pretty familiar. The United States, in fact, did have a deal in place with Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.
BOWMAN: That's right. It's called the J-C-P-O-A, or JCPOA. It was under the Obama administration. And again, it allowed a small amount of enriched uranium, 3.67%, basically for nuclear power plants. And it also had a 10-year moratorium on any additional enrichment of uranium for 10 years. I remember talking with a senior military official back then, and people criticized the deal. You know, it had flaws. This general told me - he said, Tom, you know, the great thing about this, we, the military, don't have to step in. Let the diplomats talk about this for the next decade.
So if Trump allows some enrichment, which is what the Iranians demand, then everyone's going to be saying, well, wait a minute. How is this different from what Obama had? And you have 13 American dead. You have 2,000 or more Iranians killed, right? You have 29 billion in operational costs for this war for the United States and also billions more rebuilding infrastructure, U.S. bases that were hit around the Middle East. And, as Aya knows, in Dubai and some of the other areas in the region, they're going to have to be rebuilding their infrastructure as well.
DETROW: So, Aya, that gets to my last question, then. If a nuclear deal is still in place, if the regime is stronger than it was before and if Iran ends up with more control over the Strait of Hormuz, is it accurate or fair to say that Iran will have won this war?
BATRAWY: It will have not lost against the world's most powerful military and its ally in the region, Israel, which is supposed to have qualitative edge and what many believe has its own nuclear weapon. So it has shown its teeth. It is no longer a regional threat. It is seen as a real, formidable force in the region. It showed that it can hit U.S. bases. It can kill American soldiers. It can hit civilian infrastructure as well as energy infrastructure across multiple countries. And it can do so relatively cheap with drones, thousands of drones. It can do so with its missiles, and it has nothing to do with its nuclear enrichment. They haven't even gotten that deterrence yet.
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DETROW: That was NPR international correspondent Aya Batrawy and Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. We were talking on NPR's weekly national security podcast, Sources & Methods. You can listen to our full episode wherever you get your podcasts. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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