ARE THEY SERIOUS?’: Iran needs to ‘make up its mind’ on peace talks, former ambassador warns

Right now the United States and Iran are working to get back at the negotiating table. Special Envoy Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner are leading the U.S. delegation in Qatar, with the future of the Strait of Hormuz remaining a key sticking point in the talks, with his now former ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism Nathan Sales. So the president said after the latest counter-strikes against Iran that Iran called up, they want to have talks with us. Well everybody's over there and Iran's not talking to the United States. What, you know, what is going on? Well the Iranians need to make up their mind. Are they serious? And all evidence so far has been no, they're not. What they're serious about is they want to control the Strait. And that's an absolute non-starter for the United States. This is an international waterway. This is not a private toll road for the IRGC. So the United States has been absolutely clear that the Gulf needs to be open for business. The Strait needs to return to its pre-war state, where it's freedom of navigation. That's a basic principle of American foreign policy for 250 years. Freedom of navigation. The Iranians don't get to hold hostages. But that's been the message on the part of the United States throughout this process. So what needs to change or give at this point in the process? I think leverage. The key to this is coercing the Iranians into behaving properly and not lashing out the way they've been doing. And right now the Iranians think that there's a little bit of opportunity for them to try and between the United States and Gulf allies to try and see what they can get away with. They're testing us. That is what they're doing. They're testing us like a toddler. And when your toddler tests you as a parent, what do you do? You don't indulge them. You show them tough love, emphasis on tough. Yes. Consequences for their actions. Yeah. But the IRGC doesn't seem to get that because they take actions. They get the consequences. They go running to mommy to say, we want to get back to the table. And then when they get back to the table, they just keep doing the same old stuff over and over and over again. So at what point does President Trump say, you know what, this ain't working. Let's go back to the way we were doing it before. Make sure that everybody's okay. First, make sure China's got enough oil reserves that their economy doesn't take. Make sure that our Gulf allies are in a pretty good position to get oil out, maybe through pipelines in Saudi Arabia. And then just go after the IRGC and say, you know what, you're done. Yeah. That may be where this ends up, John. I don't think we're there yet. I think the president and his team are still willing to give diplomacy a chance. But at a certain point, you have to say. But to what end? Because this just keeps going around the circle into nowhere. Well, as we saw over the weekend, the Iranians lashed out and took a shot at shipping going through the strait. And it was really important that the United States responded in kind. We said, we established a bright line. We are not going to allow you to hold hostage all these ships. If we had backed down, the lesson the Iranians would have drawn from that was, we can get away with this. Let's take it one step further. They know that there are going to be consequences if they take it one step further. And so my hope is that we continue to look for ways of using leverage over these guys, because they are not going to cooperate out of the goodness of their heart. They're only going to cooperate if we force them to do so. Are you optimistic? It's the Middle East. It's hard to be optimistic. I think I'm optimistic about the tools at our disposal to force a good outcome here. The question is, under what circumstances and under what timing are we going to use those tools, economic, diplomatic, and otherwise? You know, negotiating with the terrorist regime sometimes just leads you nowhere. Yep. And eventually the president's got to say, basta. Yeah. So watch the clock and see how close to the midterms the president is willing to make that call, or whether the Iranians read the clock as well and figure out, well, we've just angered mom and dad, and we're going to rein it in now. We'll see. Time will tell, I guess. Nice to see you in person here in DC. All right. Thank you, John. Learning curve is very steep on the IRGC's part. Good to see you. Great to see you, guys. All right.