President Trump promised regime change in Iran, no nuclear development and a restabilization of the region. Now that the U.S. and Iran have signed a Memorandum of Understanding, did we get any of that?

Guest

Vali Nasr, professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Non-resident senior advisor in the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Author of the book “Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History.”

Nicholas Burns, former U.S. ambassador to China from 2021 to 2025.

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Transcript of Full Broadcast

The version of our broadcast available at the top of this page and via podcast apps is a condensed version of the full show. You can listen to the full, unedited broadcast here:

Part I

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: It’s called a memorandum of understanding, not a peace deal between the U.S. and Iran, but an attempt to establish terms under which both nations can proceed to negotiating how to finalize an actual peace deal. And though the 60-day clock to finalization is already ticking, the process has been already delayed, which shows just how little agreement there may be even over the basic memorandum of understanding.

Now, I know that is a lot of confusing diplomatic speak, isn’t it? It is in keeping with the unrelenting confusion that has defined the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran. Take, for example, President Trump’s avowed position earlier this month. He was absolutely certain that Americans’ economic struggles were nowhere on his mind when pursuing an endgame with Iran.

DONALD TRUMP: Not even a little bit. The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran, they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all. That’s the only thing that motivates me.

CHAKRABARTI: That “not even a little bit” has now turned into a central reason for Trump’s support of the MOU. Here’s what he said at the G7 Summit this week.

TRUMP: I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have happened. But all I know is every time we talked about the possibility of peace, the stock market shot up like a rocket ship.

It never went down. They didn’t like it, the people. The stock market is more brilliant than anybody there is, including the people on this stage, other than me, of course.  

CHAKRABARTI: The confusion continues. Vice President JD Vance was supposed to be in Switzerland today to begin the first round of technical talks between the U.S. and Iran.

Vance’s trip has been delayed. The White House announced yesterday that logistics had not been, quote, “simple or predictable.” Why? The Trump administration had told Iran that Israel agreed not to further escalate attacks in Lebanon. However, last night, at least 18 people were killed by heavy Israeli artillery strikes in southern Lebanon.

Israel’s military said Hezbollah has repeatedly violated ceasefire agreements, and the IDF says it will continue to strike in southern Lebanon. So what specifically is in the memorandum of understanding, and does it even matter if clearly there does not seem to be a shared understanding on the ground even right now?

And what has changed strategically, both on the ground and then politically between the United States, Iran, and Israel? We will begin today with Vali Nasr, professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He’s also author of the book Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History.

Professor Nasr, welcome back to On Point.

VALI NASR: Good to be with you. Thank you.

CHAKRABARTI: I just want to start with the immediate happenings of last night and today. Now, in the MOU, it clearly states at the top of the MOU that this is an understanding between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

For as long as Israel is not a named party in the MOU does it mean that it will be very challenging, if not impossible, to actually begin negotiations over a final peace deal?

NASR: Without a doubt, because the United States went to this war with Israel. They were partners. They were hand in glove together strategically, and Israel is also engaged in a war in Lebanon.

Yet the United States wants it to finish this war with Iran, and Iran made it conditional that although it’s not talking to Israel, and Israel is not party to the U.S.-Iran talks, that there has to also be a ceasefire in Lebanon. So in a way, Israel is being put in a position to have to observe the terms of a deal to which it was not a party, and also it does not view it to be in its interest because Israel has not been reconciled at this moment in time that the United States, with or without Israel, should actually arrive at a peace with Iran.

It would have preferred the U.S. to continue fighting Iran at any cost, and that Israel wanted to continue fighting Hezbollah at any cost. So this outcome is not welcome by Israel, and I think it’s also particularly problematic for Prime Minister Netanyahu politically at home, because he’s coming under fire for these terms.

CHAKRABARTI: Indeed. Okay, so I want to bring another voice into the conversation. He’s Nicholas Burns. He’s the former U.S. ambassador to China. He served in that position from 2021 to 2025. He was also the lead U.S. negotiator on Iran’s nuclear program during the administration of George W. Bush. He’s also been a U.S. ambassador to NATO, and he’s currently a professor of the practice of diplomacy and international relations at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Ambassador Burns, welcome to the show.

NICHOLAS BURNS: Thank you very much.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. I actually would like for both of you, mostly for On Point listeners, to actually read point number one in the MOU because I think it gets to the challenge that we’re seeing right now on the ground, and that point is, “The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran and their allies in the current war are signing this MOU to declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts,” and here comes the key part, “including in Lebanon, and to undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other,” and it goes on, “and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon.

The final deal will confirm the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and other provisions of this paragraph.”

The word Lebanon appears three times in the first part of, in part one of the MOU. Ambassador Burns, why would the United States, why would have President Trump actually agreed to sign this if there’s already ample evidence that the White House doesn’t have that much influence in curbing the decision-making of Prime Minister Netanyahu or the Israeli military?

BURNS: It is a very weak agreement and there are seeds of the destruction of this deal, landmines if you will, sea mines in it. But here’s why I think the president went ahead, President Trump. We were at a stalemate. The war had not worked out the way that President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu had anticipated, as Vali correctly said.

And what does this do for the United States? The ceasefire stops bombing by all sides. It prevents further loss of life on all sides. We lost 13 soldiers. The Israelis lost lives. The Iranians lost thousands of lives and it opens the Strait of Hormuz. That ends the most significant global energy crisis in half a century.

That will at some point lower the cost of gas for Americans, fertilizer, ammonium, the Strait of Hormuz, so important for the global economy. That’s what we get from this. That’s not nothing here. That’s something positive for the United States. The problem is, as you’ve correctly identified, Meghna, this, Lebanon, is the possible seed of destruction of this agreement.

They couldn’t even convene the talks today in Switzerland because Hezbollah actually fired on Israel. Four Israeli soldiers dead. Tank soldiers. And then Israel responded —

CHAKRABARTI: Ambassador Burns, hang on here for just a second because your line is kind of dropping in and out. But you had said that Hezbollah had fired on an Israeli position, four Israeli soldiers died, and then Israel retaliated, and I think at least last I saw that, what, 18 if not more people in Lebanon, in southern Lebanon died as a result of those retaliatory attacks. Your point is well taken, but it also means that we not have, do not have a cessation of of attacks. We don’t have a cessation of military operations. We actually didn’t, we haven’t achieved that, even though you said earlier that’s what this MOU brings.

BURNS: You know, I think the Iranians are going to try to keep this agreement together for a certain period of time, because what do they want?

They wanna have the free flow of Iranian oil, and therefore the revenues from that, because their economy is on the skids. And so I think it will keep the Iranians in these negotiations for that part of it, but Lebanon and Israel, that’s a quite different matter. And unless that fighting can be curbed, that’s gonna slow down this 60-day period of negotiations.

This is basically, Meghna, a ceasefire, and yet everything gets put into 60 days, which is far too short a time to resolve the nuclear issue and the terms of the future relationship between the U.S. and Iran.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Vali Nasr, I’m going to come back to you in just a second, but let’s listen to what Vice President JD Vance had to say specifically about Israeli military actions just this week.

He was in a press conference yesterday.

JD VANCE: You’ve seen people within Bibi’s cabinet who have come out and attacked the deal, and in some ways very personally attacked the president of the United States. And I guess my message to them would be twofold. Number one, Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time, and he happens to be the head of state of the world’s superpower.

If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Nasr, your thoughts.

NASR: I think these are quite strong words. And if Iran is listening to this, I think they would see even advantage in escalating tensions between U.S. and Israel.

I don’t know whether the collapse of the ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel overnight was a result of what is usually the case initially in ceasefires, that it might take some time to assert discipline on the battlefield, or that the Iranians may have even encouraged Hezbollah to test Israel and the U.S.

But the outcome, in the sense that the United States is feeling more and more pressure to deal with Israel’s unhappiness, is not a bad thing. We’re seeing a kind of strategic fissure very publicly between Israel and the United States that is very new and is a benefit to Iran. And secondly, I would say that the United States will find that the only way to, one way to manage this is that it has to make concessions to both sides.

It has to give Israel certain things that it would want out of a final deal. And it also has to give Iran certain things in order to keep it in the negotiations. For instance, right now the question is how quickly would the blockade go? How quickly would Iran get on the market? Whether there are other concessions that the United States might make in order to keep this going.

One important outcome of the way this was signed is that it was originally, Vice President Vance was supposed to go to Geneva and sign this memorandum. But it’s the signature of the President of the United States that is on it, and he owns it. And it is really up to him to keep it going, and he’s going to find it difficult.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: Let’s listen to a little bit more of what Vice President JD Vance said yesterday and after the MOU was announced, the vice president says he believes the United States’ actions against Iran have been a military success.

VANCE: Their nuclear program has been completely destroyed. Their capacity for enrichment, the facilities at which they were using to develop enrichment and develop a potential nuclear weapon, those facilities are still destroyed. Their conventional military is still destroyed. Their capacity to threaten their neighbors is still largely gone, and now we see whether they are willing to comply with the next step of the president’s peace plan.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, and so what in the MOU is the enforcement mechanism to get that compliance, as Vice President Vance said? There isn’t actually anything specifically written in the MOU, but here’s what President Trump said he believes the compliance mechanism actually is.

TRUMP: It’s a memorandum of understanding, and if I don’t like it, we’ll go back to shooting at them, dropping bombs on their head.

If I don’t like it, if they don’t behave, we’ll go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so Ambassador Burns and Professor Nasr as you both know, there have been numerous hot takes all over media and the internet about, who, quote-unquote is the winner in just the outline of this MOU.

I’d actually like to hear your, both of your analysis on this. And Ambassador Burns, let me start with you. A lot of people are saying that the memorandum of understanding essentially is total capitulation by the United States to Iranian demands. Your thoughts?

BURNS: I think it’s an extremely weak agreement.

It gives Iran far too much that it doesn’t deserve, and it asks too little of Iran. Here’s the specific problem, Meghna, if you’re a negotiator. We’ve given up a lot of our leverage before the talks already begin. We remove the U.S. naval blockade from the Strait of Hormuz so the Iranians can export oil.

It gives Iran far too much that it doesn’t deserve, and it asks too little of Iran. Nicholas Burns

We remove U.S. forces near Iran in 30 days, and Iran gets a free export of oil, the removal of sanctions. Iran gets a $300 billion fund potentially, and here’s the problem. The United States, and I’m reading from the text, the United States terminates all types of sanctions against Iran, United Nations Security Council, International Atomic Energy Agency, as part of the final deal.

So part of this is conditional. If the talks don’t proceed well, the United States could fail to do all this, but then where are we left? And when President Trump, you played it. He answered the question yesterday, “We’ll go back to bombing.” But President Trump has shown he has no kind of strength and patience to conduct the kind of sustained military force that might make a difference.

In fact, I think this whole war is a sense that Iran was tougher, more patient, they could withstand the pain more than we could, and I think the Iranians have read that and anticipated that for these negotiations. So I think we’re in extremely weak position for the next 60 days.

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Nasr, let me follow up on that because to Ambassador Burns’ point again, the section four of the MOU, as he said, that “The United States of America will begin the removal of its naval blockade and any disturbances or impediments against the Islamic Republic of Iran and will fully end the naval blockade within 30 days,” will fully end.

Whereas for Iran’s choking off of the Strait of Hormuz, section five says, “Upon signing the MOU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge,” and then here’s the real important little phrase, “for 60 days only from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa.”

This MOU as Ambassador Burns is saying, isn’t even requiring Iran to say, “We’re gonna hold Hormuz open, period.” It’s just, oh, for that 60-day period, Professor Nasr.

NASR: To your last two points, first of all Iran has not conceded in this MOU that it is giving up its claim of control and sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, and only that it’s going to allow it to open and that for the 60 days duration of the negotiations, it will not exercise sovereignty in the ways that it has asserted in the past month or so.

Secondly, I think the calculation is that the U.S. is lifting its naval blockade much more quickly. Because actually it might not be sustainable at the cost and what it takes from the U.S. Navy, to keep it in a prolonged way, which goes back again to some of the ill-conceived decisions the president took very hastily, expecting the Iranians to capitulate.

But to building on what Nick said, I would say if you read the entirety of this memorandum, it looks like the United States is far more eager for this war to end than Iran is. And it was willing to basically continue to give concessions to Iran to actually end the war. Money, as Nick mentioned, ceasefire in Lebanon promises of further concessions if there is a final deal.

And so when the president says if I don’t like their handling of the agreement, I’m just going to go back to war, that’s a hollow statement. Because very clearly if he goes back to war his worst nightmare, which obviously drove his decision-making, namely that he might be Herbert Hoover, may very well happen.

So the Iranians don’t believe he’s going to go to war, because his eagerness to end the war suggests that that he was really worried about where this was going economically. And as Nick says I think the U.S. has really damaged its strategic understanding. The thing in international affairs is that if you use force, if you threaten to use force then you have to come through with it in a meaningful way, otherwise after that the emperor has no clothes.

And it takes a lot for the United States, not with Iran, but with China, with the rest of the region, to restore the credibility that it has lost in this war and particularly in this agreement.

CHAKRABARTI: Global credibility. Okay, we’re going to come back to that in a second. Ambassador Burns leaning on your experience as a negotiator, you had talked about Section 7 of the MOU which outlines the U.S. actions regarding sanctions, and you were right to point out that it says that the U.S. would agree to terminate all types of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and all unilateral U.S. sanctions, primary and secondary, in an agreed-upon schedule as part of the final deal. So they’ve already made that commitment.

Now, again, just keep us educated here with the facts. How does that different from, for example, the JCPOA? Because if memory serves, previous agreements said that the U.S. would perhaps end sanctions in relation to Iran’s nuclear program. Correct me if I’m wrong, Ambassador.

BURNS: No, you’re right.

And these sanctions have been put upon Iran over the last 20 years. Many of them are United Nations Security Council sanctions that Russia and China agreed to, and they’re Chapter VII of the UN Charter. That means every single country in the world needs to sanction Iran. So that’s leverage, and in negotiations, you want leverage on your side.

I think anybody listening to this who’s negotiated anything in their life knows you need leverage. You need to be able to have strength on your side. We have unilaterally given up most of our strength, and you and I have just read through part of it, and there’s more, that leaves us in a very weak and vulnerable position as Vice President Vance and the other negotiators go into this.

And that is, it’s a form of diplomatic malpractice. The Iranians, on the other hand, have a lot of leverage here. Now, they have not been asked, Meghna, to do anything in this agreement, to restrain Hezbollah, a creature of Iran, Hamas, the Houthi rebels who can shut down the Red Sea traffic, and they’ve done that before.

And I would have been obviously more supportive. I want the United States to succeed here, obviously, if we had actually imposed some restrictions on the Iranians, but the agreement doesn’t do it, and I think Vali has really hit upon the fundamental point here. It looks like our president was far too eager to get any type of deal, and therefore agreed to a deal that is very much one-sided in favor of Iran. That’s a shame.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. Okay, so maybe I imagine that the White House might argue all the provisions that you just named, Ambassador, regarding requests or demands made to Iran would be done so in the course of negotiating the final peace deal, this was just an MOU to get those talks started.

However, I also hear both of you saying the U.S. has given up all of its leverage, including, as Professor Nasr said, Iran just is, would call the president’s bluff in terms of, “You’re going to bomb us again? Go ahead.” So I wonder, if you were on the negotiating team right now, Ambassador Burns, and this was the MOU in front of you, your tool to begin negotiations, where would you start?

How would you get started?

BURNS: I would advise Vice President Vance, and if I were in the position, I would tell the Iranians on the first day, We have 60 days and all of the benefits fundamentally to Iran flow out of their performance over the next 60 days, i.e. if you don’t get to the end of the agreement in the way that we expect you to, we’re not gonna come through on sanctions relief.

We’re gonna continue to impose the sanctions. We’re not gonna come through with a $300 billion fund of Arab money to reconstruct Iran. We’re gonna keep our naval and air forces in the region, i.e., leverage, and that’s the only thing that will motivate that kind of attitude, the Iranians actually to come forward in 60 days, and I think, Meghna, the 60 days is a fantasy.

In the George W. Bush administration, we actually never got to the negotiating table over four years. We ended up sanctioning them. They refused to negotiate. In the Obama administration, it took over two years, so 60 days, simply not enough time. The Iranians will run out the clock in those 60 days thinking that the United States will not go back to war and the use of force, as President Trump threatened yesterday, and that they’ll emerge the winner.

So I think you’ve gotta establish on the very first day of the negotiations that all of these benefits to Iran, they’re actually provisional, and they’re provisional dependent upon Iranian good behavior. That’s the only way forward, but we’ve already given away most of it.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so Professor Nasr, let’s listen to what Vice President Vance said about who he sees on the other side of the negotiating table.

Here’s how he described Iranian leadership again just yesterday.

VANCE: What we’ve seen over the last couple of months is that the pragmatists within the Iranian system, the people who really do want to transform their relationship with the Middle East and with the world, those people are winning the argument.

The United States wants those people to win the argument.

CHAKRABARTI: Is that in Iranian leadership, Professor Nasr, a pragmatist?

NASR: Being pragmatist does not mean that they’re going to be easy to deal with. In other words, they’re gonna be pragmatically difficult to fulfill Iran’s interests. We should not get lost in our own words.

You’re dealing with a leadership which unlike what Vice President Vance or Secretary Rubio have said, I think are fairly, have a consensus about how to deal with the United States. They had a strategy about how to wage the war, and now they have a strategy about how to wage diplomacy, and they’re very pragmatic about it.

It’s very clear that they pragmatically got out of the United States a memorandum of understanding, and then they’re going to approach these diplomatic talks also very pragmatically. You know, pragmatism does not mean that they’re soft or they’re liberal or they’re, you know, all of a sudden pro-Western. But I also would add to Nick’s point, it’s written in the memorandum that actually the 60 days could be extended by mutual consent. So the pressure would be again on a president who doesn’t want to go to war and has basically sold this as a deal that he can live with and wants to build on.

The pressure would be on him to say, “Yes, we’re having enough progress, and we’re gonna extend it another 60 days or another 30 days,” and then we end up in 90 days, 120 days. And even if Iran doesn’t get everything it wants, it gets still to sell the oil that right now the waivers that are supposed to come off immediately will be in effect so long as the negotiations are going on.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. I wanna just stick with who in Iranian leadership we really should be thinking about or concentrating on right now because I presume, and again, maybe I’m wrong, I can’t read the vice president’s minds, but the one he talks about, pragmatists, again, not to get lost in a specific use of that word, but his meaning, maybe he’s talking about Iranian President Pezeshkian.

I don’t know. But, because it doesn’t seem to me that Iran’s current Supreme Leader, the son of the previous Ayatollah is, he maybe, he is also, as you said, Professor Nasr, pragmatic insofar as he is seeing no reason to change Iranian strategy or even harkening back to what the vice president says, relationships with the Middle East and within the world, I don’t see the current Supreme Leader of Iran thinking yes, we should end our support of Hezbollah in order to become a more a bigger part of the global community.

We should stop our support of Hamas or the Houthis. None of the things that have defined the Iranian revolutionary spirit amongst Iranian leadership seems to have gone away.

NASR: I would say their support for Hezbollah has nothing to do with revolutionary ideology at this point. Okay. It is an instrument of power.

They can wield it against Israel. They have in the past, and they are using it again. They, the Houthis to them is an instrument of power. The Houthis threat over Bab el-Mandab and closure of Red Sea trade is an instrument of power. So Iran sees in these proxies an ability to project power beyond what a country under massive sanctions and in the situation that it is capable to do, I think we’re dealing with a very tough, very dug-in, if you would, regime that is hostile, is a hostile adversary to the United States, but it’s also very calculating. And it’s not working off of ideology alone. Its ideology sets it against the United States, but its decision-making is based on calculation to maximize benefits to them.

And they are playing a game of chess with the United States, and in that sense, they are following a strategy. And I think we ought to remain focused on that and not get lost in the fact that they are clerics or they’re driven by religion and ideology because then we miscalculate as has been shown in this war that you are dealing with a tough adversary that is, that knows how to play this game.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: Let’s listen to the president again just for a little bit. He was at the G7 Summit this week, and he was asked specifically about Iran’s ballistic missile program, and when the war began, the president had said at one time that eliminating Iran’s ability to fire ballistic missiles was one of the goals of the war.

This week at the G7, he said something else.

TRUMP: I’m saying that if other countries have them, it’s a little bit unfair for them not to have some. A ballistic missile is not the same thing as what we’re talking about when we talk nuclear. But if Saudi Arabia and Qatar and they all have some, I would say in relative proportion, I think it’s okay.

That’s what I mean.

CHAKRABARTI: Ambassador Burns, the president is careful there to say, “We’re not talking about nuclear, but ballistic missiles, okay.” What, how do you think about that?

BURNS: I think there’s a lack of strategic coherence. At the beginning of the war, February 28th and 29th, the president said, “We want regime change. We want an end to their ballistic missile force. We want an end to their Shahed drones.” We achieved none of that. And so I think it’s really kind of justification that we’ve had to give in, that we’ve had to trim back completely on the war aims, which leads to the question, was this war even worth it?

I think not. And I think, Meghna, we were talking about what’s next. The United States needs to broaden a coalition of countries and lead it, basically to put a lot of pressure on Iran. We need the Arab Gulf States with us. We need Israel with us, and that relationship right now is as strained as I’ve ever seen it.

I think not. Nicholas Burns

We need to close and form up ranks with Israel. We particularly need the Europeans. Why? The NATO allies, because they’re willing to come in with a maritime force, naval vessels, to both demine the Strait of Hormuz and escort ships for the next 60, 90, 120 days. Because ships are going to be, this is going to be difficult.

CHAKRABARTI: They are? They’ve communicated that willingness?

BURNS: They’ve communicated that willingness. Okay. But what happened, what also happened yesterday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth went to the NATO headquarters, and he lectured the Europeans on the fact that they hadn’t joined us in the war and said they’ve been shameful.

So we’re not doing the things we need to do to keep our friends and allies with us to gang up on the Iranians politically, diplomatically, put pressure on them on the issues that we’ve been talking about, the issues of the MOU in this 60 or 120-day negotiations ahead. It’s all about leverage. We need a bigger coalition, but the Trump administration keeps insulting our closest allies.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. Professor Nasr, I’d love to hear you on this, because this gets back to the, really one of the bigger long-term questions is, how has not just the war with Iran, but even these next steps with the MOU and the already troubled, quote-unquote, 60-day peace process, how has that fundamentally changed the power of American influence maybe forever going forward?

NASR: I think some very fundamental things have changed in the Middle East which will be difficult to undo. The United States’ alliance with the Arab countries in the Gulf region was around defending them against a potential Iranian attack. This was like the idea of a mini NATO, if you want to use it as a parallel.

The idea of GCC, that there’s a coalition of Gulf countries backed by U.S. bases, U.S. military, and the promise that we will come to their defense. Although I have to say, even when Iran attacked Saudi oil facilities in 2021, 2020 when President Trump was in office, the U.S. did not come to Saudi Arabia’s defense.

But this time around, the United States started a war with Israel, which was not a war of defending the Arab countries. It was an offensive war to change the regime in Iran and break it. And so that already changed the terms under which the United States had bases in the region and the terms for war and peace in the region.

And that’s why actually the Gulf countries, even before the war started, were not supportive of starting a war that was not in their defense. And then once the war started, the United States proved itself to be incapable of defending them against massive Iranian missile and drone attacks on their infrastructure, on U.S. bases, on oil facilities.

And so they have now, are seeing a very difficult situation in which they are seeing a much more aggressive Iran that has crossed lines that had not been crossed before. But a United States that has come up short in defending them against those, and also started a war that was not their war.

In other words, it brought war to the region, caused tremendous amount of economic damage to the Gulf countries, and was not able to defend them. So once the emotions subside about Iran’s very aggressive behavior against them, they’re going to recalculate their security. And I don’t think the trust in America ability and willingness to defend them is going to be there.

So they have to come up with different models, and we’re already seeing that there’s a breakup of rank among the Gulf countries in terms of how do they wanna go about that. And that’s gonna be there for some time, and it also will become an issue as to what role China or Russia may play in the region.

It opens a whole Pandora’s box once the old order is gone and we don’t know what replaces it.

It opens a whole Pandora’s box once the old order is gone and we don’t know what replaces it. Vali Nasr

CHAKRABARTI: I’m glad you said old order. Because Ambassador Burns, I was just gonna ask you, this seems like we’re seeing the dawn of a new order in terms of global influence and power. Ambassador Burns, are you there?

We’re gonna try and get him back. So Professor Nasr, I’ll just turn the same question to you since you said old order. Do you think that really there’s, this is almost a point of no return and that there will be a new or already is a new ordering of power and influence in terms of the biggest global powers in the world?

NASR: Definitely it is in the Middle East. And I think it will permeate from the Middle East outwards. Not only did the United States come short in this war, but it’s also really telegraphed very clearly that it doesn’t want a bigger war, and it’s willing to give Iran anything it wants in order to finish this war and then even try to get a bigger deal that the United States can wash its hands of the mess that it has created.

And if you’re sitting in China and you’re sitting in Russia and you look at this picture, you would say the 10-feet-tall image of America that President Trump tried to project is not there, and that the U.S.’s ability to achieve its strategic aims are not as compelling as they were before the Iran war.

That’s the danger of what President Trump did. Once you test America’s power, then it better come through because otherwise the calculation has changed. And we already saw this very well reflected in the president’s visit to China. That at least the imagery was that it came up less than what President Trump had hoped for.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. It’s so interesting that you bring up China because we actually a couple weeks ago did a show that was a view of the China summit from the perspective of Chinese leadership, and our guest on that show, Yangyang Cheng, she said specifically, I asked her this question. I said, were the visuals around the United States and China being equal partners, were they compelling?

And she said, Clearly, it’s more than just visuals. It’s the reality right now. And I think we’re seeing an analogous, potentially analogous truth emerging, as you said, in the Middle East. But Professor Nasr, I wanna go back to, we’ve been going almost point by point through the MOU.

Eight and nine, points eight and nine specifically have to do with Iran’s nuclear program, and I’d love your thoughts on this because point eight begins with, “The Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons.” Then, there’s more detail there, which we can go into.

And then section nine says, “Pending the final deal, the U.S. and Iran agree to maintain the status quo. The Islamic Republic of Iran will maintain the current status quo of its nuclear program, and the U.S. will not impose any new sanctions or deploy additional forces in the region.” What is this actually saying, Professor Nasr?

NASR: I think the point about not wanting nuclear weapons is pretty easy for Iran because they’ve always have said it and the previous supreme leader had a fatwa against nuclear weapons. So they can always say we never wanted nuclear weapons. We’re reaffirming it.” But the issue is that in the past 20 years, between 2003 and let’s say 2025, Iran had maintained it doesn’t want a bomb, and the United States and the rest of the international community did not believe it.

Why would the United States now believe that Iran does not want nuclear weapons? That will only be assured in the details of a nuclear deal that has to yet be negotiated. And so is this just very a fluffy argument that allows President Trump to say, “I got something big out of Iran,” that they’re saying they’re not gonna get a bomb, but they’ve always said they don’t want a bomb in the past 20 years, and previously we didn’t believe them.

The second part is basically a nuclear a nuclear/ sanction ceasefire. The ceasefire in the Gulf is extended, let’s say, to nuclear talks. Iran won’t touch anything which actually it cannot anyways because everything was damaged during the bombings. It will not do anything if the United States doesn’t do anything on its side, which is with sanctions, and that they maintain where they are until they go through negotiations.

So it doesn’t say anything new about the nuclear file other than the fact that things have to be decided by larger negotiation in 60 days.

CHAKRABARTI: It brings to mind George Orwell’s magnificent essay Politics and the English Language, when he said that political speech often is fashioned so that it takes on the solidity of pure wind.

Okay. We have Ambassador Burns back here. Ambassador Burns, let’s pick up with, continue to talk for a second or two about the provisions of the MOU of the nuclear program because, I’m seeing here it says, “The U.S. and Iran have agreed to resolve the disposition of stockpiled enriched material pursuant to a mechanism which will be mutually agreed upon in accordance with the schedule,” the 60-day schedule in Section 7 of the MOU.

I guess really what I want to know is do you think there’s any hope that as negotiations hopefully begin and then proceed, that the U.S. and Iran could get to anywhere near what the JCPOA was back in 2018?

BURNS: I think it’s going to be extremely difficult. What President Obama had going for him and what President George W. Bush did when I was the negotiator is that we had Russia and China and Britain, France, and Germany all on our side of the table making the same demands with us and pushing the Iranians with us. We had world public opinion with us. We had the Arab states with us. So I think that what President Trump and Vice President Vance should do now, and I hope they will, broaden their coalition.

If we just try to make this U.S. and Iran, we’re giving up a lot of the potential leverage we’ve had. Now, I don’t think that given the war in Ukraine and given the vast deterioration of our relationship with Russia, that Putin’s going to join us on our side of the table. But frankly, knowing the Chinese well, they want the Strait open.

They want energy from the Gulf. I don’t think the Chinese want Iran to have a nuclear weapon or a weak deal that might give them a path towards eventually a nuclear weapon. And so I do think there’s some diplomatic options here for the United States. And, I worry, Meghna, about the advantage we’re giving to China.

Chinese are, I must say, the Communist Party leadership of China is quite hypocritical. But what they’re saying now publicly, “Our leader, Xi Jinping, is the responsible guy in the world. He hasn’t gone around invading other countries.” And they point to our invasion, our takedown of the Venezuelan government back in early January, the fact that we went to war with Iran over the last three months, the fact that we’re now threatening Cuba, the Wild West tariffs we’re imposing.

And the Chinese, very cynically, are saying, “We are the responsible country for global order. Look at that government in Washington.” And that’s a painful thing to see. And so I do hope that these significant setbacks that the Trump administration is facing will get them to reassess their strategy and try to form a wider global coalition to isolate the Iranians.

This is a very destructive regime in Tehran, a lot of American blood on its hands, and we should not want to see the government in Tehran succeed here.

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Nasr, we’ve just got about a minute to go left in this conversation today. Over the next, let’s say, days and weeks, what are you going to particularly be looking for as an indication that some kind of peace negotiation process can actually get underway?

NASR: First of all, they have to meet. And then we have to look at whether both sides will decide to at least generate enough momentum in order to be able to implement this agreement and then to be able to even justify extending the 60-day time horizon going forward. I would find that the Iranian ultimate concessions in the deal pretty difficult for the administration, partly because, as Nick said, they have got so much so easily out of this memorandum of understanding that they probably will see why not squeeze for more and get a much, much larger deal out of President Trump.

But secondly, because they also have their suspicions as well that if they gave up a lot of their program, then they actually have no leverage to protect them against a return of sanctions, partly because they don’t trust President Trump. They see him as the president who left the deal, who bombed them in the middle of negotiations, that he may agree to anything on paper, but it remains to be seen whether he will implement it.

So they’re going to run a very hard bargain. That’s how they see President Trump because that is what he did, right?

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.