MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Let's talk about where the U.S. and Iran may go from here with Richard Nephew. He was the lead sanctions expert for U.S. negotiators for the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. He also served as deputy special envoy for Iran in the Biden administration. He's now a senior research scholar at Columbia University. Mr. Nephew, good morning. Welcome back.
RICHARD NEPHEW: Good morning. Thanks for having me.
MARTIN: So as we just heard, President Trump says his representatives are headed for Islamabad, Pakistan, for negotiations. Iran says it will not join the talks. As a person who's negotiated with Iran, what do you think is behind Iran's refusal to return to the negotiating table?
NEPHEW: I think two things. One, the Iranians still think they're winning. And I think we need to really keep that front of mind. The Iranian perspective of all of this is that they have been able to successfully coerce the United States to sue for peace repeatedly. And I think they read into a lot of what the president has been saying, what he's been tweeting or Truth Social-ing or whatever, that the United States wants a deal and wants a deal much more than the Iranians do. I think the second thing is the Iranians simply don't trust the United States. And there's a lot of reports now the Iranians believe the United States is preparing for a sneak attack against Iran again in the midst of talks. And so it very well could be the Iranians are, at this point, wary of committing themselves to a process they think is fraudulent.
MARTIN: So U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright was asked on "Fox News Sunday" about the president's latest ultimatum, for Iran to accept U.S. terms or face the destruction of all power plants and bridges. Let me just play that for you.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FOX NEWS SUNDAY")
CHRIS WRIGHT: OK. I think things are actually going quite well for the United States. I think we are not too far away from a deal, but, of course, these are the dying gasps of a desperate regime.
MARTIN: Which, to your point, but do you see a way for the U.S. and Iran to come up with a deal before the ceasefire expires on Wednesday?
NEPHEW: Not really. I think the best that the United States and Iran probably can do at this point is to agree to extend the ceasefire. And I think that seemed likely to me before we had yesterday's events of the United States boarding an Iranian ship. Now, the Iranians have not really engaged in response and retaliation activities to the degree that you would have thought, but that doesn't mean that they won't. And it very well could be that the Iranians at this point don't see the value of a ceasefire as being for them, you know, that they think it will just help the United States try and tamp down global oil prices, which they keep pointing to as a thing the president wants desperately.
MARTIN: So, you know, the president has talked about that - the U.S. naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz - as leverage, saying, Iran loses when the strait is closed, and shipping traffic is currently at a virtual standstill. Now, I understand that you say that Iran thinks - from the Iranian perspective, they think that they're winning, or at least they're winning by not losing, right? But do you see the...
NEPHEW: Right.
MARTIN: ...Blockade as something akin to sanctions, or is it fundamentally different?
NEPHEW: Well, it's different in its structure but certainly not its intent, right? The intent is to starve the Iranian government of funds such that it, you know, has to make some sort of concession and, in this case, agree to a deal with the United States. But I think the more fundamental problem is the Iranians have a blockade of their own on the Strait of Hormuz, and the differential between the impact the Iranians can have on the global economy and the impact the United States can have on the Iranian economy is such that I think the Iranians feel pretty good about that change.
So, like, you know, take as an example, the Iranians have something like 130 million barrels of oil outside of the Persian Gulf area. If they're able to sell that at expanded prices - right? - double the prices as what it was a few weeks ago, well, they're going to make a fair amount of money as a result of all that. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is looking for 15 million barrels of oil per day and not finding it. And that's a differential that favors the Iranians, certainly over the medium term.
MARTIN: But they say that - Iran is saying that removing the blockade is a condition for more talks. So...
NEPHEW: Exactly.
MARTIN: Yeah.
NEPHEW: Yeah. Well, that's where they're - I think what they're saying is, listen, we agreed to a ceasefire that would have involved a ceasefire in Lebanon, a ceasefire between the United States and Iran, and we would release our grip on the Strait of Hormuz. We didn't expect this blockade to be in place 'cause remember, the blockade came into place subsequent to the failure of the round of talks last week. So I think from the Iranian perspective, they're saying, let's go back to where we were supposed to be two weeks ago, ceasefire in Lebanon, ceasefire across the straits, and then we can have a discussion. So that doesn't change the way they are perceiving both the blockade and what their leverage might be.
MARTIN: So before we let you go, recognizing that, you know, the president has his own advisers and is going to address this in whatever way he's going to, given his own sort of particular template. But if you were advising the president right now, given everything you've just told us, given that the Iranians think they're winning and given that the president really does seem to need an agreement and wants to get out of this, what would you advise them to do?
NEPHEW: Well, I would say, look, there's no reason for you not to announce that we're going to relieve the blockade for the time that we've got a ceasefire, the time that we're in active talks, get the Iranians to release the Strait of Hormuz, see if stripping can continue and then to buy space for your diplomats to be able to work in Islamabad or wherever else they might be. There's no damage done to U.S. coercive measures by simply backing off for a period of time if you, in fact, do want to get a deal.
MARTIN: That's Richard Nephew. He's a former adviser on Iran in both the Obama and Biden administrations. Mr. Nephew, thank you so much for your insights.
NEPHEW: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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