Trump’s ‘Tony Soprano’ approach to Iran shows he ‘has no cards to play’： Foreign policy expert

Joining me now, we have Joe Cirincione, National Security Analyst and Vice Chair of the Center for International Policy Board of Directors. He is also the author of Nuclear Nightmares, Securing the World Before It Is Too Late. All right, Joe, so lots of confusion, lack of clarity surrounding this peace deal. But we started with the White House claiming a deal was signed last weekend by Vice President J.D. Bantz. It was followed by another announcement of a signing ceremony on Friday. And then President Trump signed the Memorandum of Understanding in Versailles on Wednesday, saying there was going to be no ceremony on Friday. And then you have today, you've heard the reporting, the officials from the U.S., Iran, Pakistan, Qatar, they are in Switzerland for peace talks. But why all this mixed messaging? And what actually is or potentially was being debated in Switzerland, given how things have unfolded today? Right. This is yet another sign that this administration simply does not know what it's doing. It doesn't have clear strategic objectives. It doesn't have a strategy. It doesn't have competent people in charge of the government on what you would believe to be some of the most fundamental and important priorities of any administration to safeguard the national security of the United States. Basically, what's happening is Trump is blowing up the fragile agreement that he reached. It is a terrible agreement. It favors the Iranians overwhelmingly, but not because it was poorly negotiated, although that's part of it. It's because Trump lost the war. The Iranians have all the cards. They control the strait. They have the ability to disrupt and destroy the economies of the Persian Gulf states. They took one of the biggest blows Israel and the U.S. could wage against them and survived it and are stronger than before. And so they're in a position of strength negotiating this agreement. In the particulars of this agreement, they are supposed to be talking about the nuclear deal at these talks. But before they can get to that, they have to deal with the first five paragraphs of the MOU, which say in part that the United States and Israel will refrain from the threat or use of force against each other and ensure the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon. Well, they haven't done that. The president keeps violating the MOU on an almost hourly basis, and Israel refuses to stop its war on Lebanon and refuses to withdraw. So the Iranians are saying, and I would say rightfully, and I think most international experts would agree looking at this, that how can we talk about the nuclear program when you are not even honoring the agreement we just inked, you know, a few days ago? This does not bode well for the progress on these talks. You have, in fact, called the MOU a strategic disaster. But my question is, with regard to the president's behavior today, there's been a lot of criticism reflecting what you've said in the last few days. Do you think it is at all conceivable that he may be intentionally trying to put a stall on things to rework an MOU? Would that make sense at all to you? Perhaps, but it's more likely he's defaulting to his Tony Soprano method of negotiating, which is to bully and threaten and to cause bodily harm, physically bodily harm, to the Iranians and to threaten their entire country in the process. This is what happens when he doesn't have any cards to play. He's in a weak position. And now he's embarrassed by this deal. His base is revolting against it. If he would have forced to present this deal to the United States Congress, I don't think it would pass. And that's not something I would have said just a week ago. So he's frustrated. He's lashing out. He's acting irrationally, as he often does, and basically lying about what's going on. J.D. Vance just lied. He said that the Iranian nuclear program has been destroyed. No, it hasn't. It is intact and still quite capable. And that's what he should be focusing on. How do we get a deal here? A deal is possible, but not this way. Well, in fact, as you well know, Trump tore up former President Obama's 2015 nuclear deal. He called it a terrible deal. It's horrendous. It's one of the worst deals ever made. So how does what's on the table now compare? Because Trump claims this deal with Iran amounts to unconditional surrender. Does it? No. The joke in Washington is that Trump told us this war was going to end with unconditional surrender. He didn't tell us it was going to be our unconditional surrender. No, no. Iran is getting most of what it wanted, what its objectives wanted. It wanted reparations. It gets that with a $300 billion reconstruction fund. It wanted a non-aggression pledge from the United States. It got that. It wants an end to the war. Well, we intentionally had the ceasefire. It wants Israel to withdraw from Lebanon. They haven't got that yet. And it's fine with opening up the Strait of Hormuz as long as all that's possible. And the U.S. releases Iranian frozen assets and banks around the world and drops all sanctions. All of that is up front in the deal. And it's because Iran basically won this war and has the ability to close this trade. And as President Trump said, he doesn't want to end up being Herbert Hoover. And what he means by that is in about four weeks, and this is his words, in about four weeks, the world's going to run out of oil. And then the economy really ceases up and really freezes. And he would indeed be ushering in an economic crisis. So as time goes on, Iran's leverage increases, U.S. leverage decreases. He could get a deal. The Iranians offered before the war to ship out all their enriched uranium, to suspend any enrichment of uranium for a good three to 10 years. Trump could have got that without war. He decided he could take it all. He could overthrow the regime. He badly miscalculated. Now he doesn't know what to do. That's why you see him flailing. That's why you see the bluster. That's why you see the anger. He's hoping against hope that this act can somehow cause the Iranians to back down. The Iranians are not going to back down. Okay. So in the end, I mean, after this decades-long debate on the best approach to try to deal with Iran's nuclear enrichment program, it's to negotiate or it's to declare war. Is there a best way to exert control over Iran's nuclear program? I mean, which approach worked best so far? Sure. So we've had a 40-year debate in this town over this policy. And I've been tracking Iran's program from before there was a serious program. And I've always been on the side of negotiations. If you want to stop another country's nuclear program, the only way to do that is convince them to do it. You can't bomb it away. You can't do it. Trump didn't believe that. He tried last year, last June, to bomb the Isfahan complex, which is what you're seeing right now. He caused damage, but he didn't obliterate the program. That was simply a lie. He then tried to do what Bibi Netanyahu wanted, eliminate the regime, tried to do that, couldn't do that. The military option favored by conservatives in Israel and the United States for 40 years has been tried. It failed. The Obama approach to negotiation worked. If Trump hadn't torn that up, we would have a fundamentally different relationship with Iran now. And Iran would still be many, many years away from the ability to build a bomb. So the only hope is to go back to negotiations and to hope that because Iran has emerged stronger from this war, is more secure, has discovered two new superweapons, the ability to close the strait and the ability to threaten with drones and missiles the economies of its neighbors, it doesn't really need a nuclear weapon as much as they thought they did. They thought they needed it for defense. Well, they have stronger deterrence right now. So I think they are willing to compromise on the program. If Trump can just shut up and let the negotiators get to work and force the Israelis to stop their war in Lebanon, you could get a deal. You could still salvage this, but Trump has to act, not bluster. Joe Cirincione, it's always great to speak with you on these matters, serious as they are. Thank you, Joe.