The Iran Nuclear Talks, With Karim Sadjadpour

LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President's Inbox. I'm Jim Lindsay, the Mary and David Boies distinguished senior fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is the Iran nuclear talks. With me to discuss the ongoing talks between the United States and Iran over Iran's nuclear program is Karim Sadjadpour. Karim is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where he focuses on Iran and U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East. He regularly advises senior U.S., European and Asian officials, and he has testified numerous times before the United States Congress. He wrote a piece for the Carnegie Endowment's blog, Emissary titled Iran Wants to Avoid Both Peace and War With the United States. Trump Isn't Having It. Karim, thank you for joining me on The President's Inbox.

SADJADPOUR:
Great to be with you, Jim. Thank you for inviting me.

LINDSAY:
Karim, as we speak here today, American and Iranian officials have held three rounds of talks, two in Muscat and one in Rome over the last month, and another meeting may possibly take place by the time this episode airs. Let me begin with the big question. How significant are these conversations?

SADJADPOUR:
I don't think they've yet reached the level where they're very significant in that I don't think that the talks have really gone into the technical details. And the technical details are going to determine whether or not a deal is in place. But during the Biden administration, there really weren't direct conversations between the United States and Iran. And there's clearly a will in both capitals, both Tehran and Washington to reach some kind of an agreement. But again, the nature of these talks are going to be highly technical, and this coming weekend may be the first time that the two sides start to hash out some of the technical details.

LINDSAY:
Karim, help me understand one thing. A lot of the descriptions of these conversations describe them as indirect talks. What exactly does that mean? How indirect is a discussion?

SADJADPOUR:
In the past, what indirect talks has meant is that oftentimes the two parties would meet in Oman, and they would be in a big glass room essentially and the Omanis would be in the middle. There would be one room with the Iranian team, there would be obviously the U.S. team, and the Omanis would essentially be passing messages back and forth, but the Americans and the Iranians could see one another. They'd oftentimes bump into each other in the corridors or even in the restroom. But for the Iranian regime, especially after President Trump's assassination of Qasem Soleimani, Iran's top military commander in 2020, they didn't want to appear that they were engaging directly with the great Satan.
And what we know this time around is that direct discussions between President Trump's Special Envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Iran's Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, have already taken place, so in some ways, that taboo has been broken. And I expect if these talks are to go further, they will move to direct talks. Because it's going to be very difficult to hash out such a highly technical agreement when the two sides aren't speaking directly.

LINDSAY:
Karim, you mentioned that the Iranians didn't want to talk to the Biden administration, which actually was hoping to open a channel to Tehran. Why are these talks happening now?

SADJADPOUR:
Well, I think from Iran's vantage point, there are two important objectives. One objective obviously is that they don't want to be subject to another Israeli attack this time on the nuclear facilities. Many of your listeners will recall last fall, October of 2024 when Israel and Iran had had several back and forth missile attacks on one another, Israel essentially took out Iran's air defense systems last fall. And so Iran is in many ways naked and vulnerable right now, and they want to avoid an Israeli attack that takes out their nuclear facilities. And so that's one Iranian objective.
A second Iranian objective is that they want to avert another maximum pressure sanctions campaign, something that's going to put a choke hold on their economy, in particular their ability to export oil. And there is a mechanism of the 2015 nuclear deal known as the JCPOA called the snapback mechanism of sanctions, and that snapback mechanism is going to be expiring this coming fall and the Iranians essentially want to prevent the snapback from snapping back, those sanctions from snapping back. On a macro level, the two important Iranian objectives in these talks are they want to avert another military attack on their nuclear facilities, they want to avert another maximum pressure economic campaign. And I think for them, they've probably been told this by the Russians as well, if you swallow a little bit of pride, you can make some progress with President Trump. Because at the end of the day, he's someone who is a dealmaker as well.

LINDSAY:
On that score, Karim, I was surprised that the talks began because President Trump made his offer in early March and Ayatollah Khamenei's immediate response was no. He called it a deception. Do we know what changed his thinking?

SADJADPOUR:
Throughout history, the Islamic Revolution took place in 1979, so we now have a 46-year case study of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And over the last forty six years, this is a regime which has only agreed to meaningful compromise two to three times. One notable event was Ayatollah Khomeini's decision in 1989 to swallow poison and end the Iran-Iraq war, and a second was obviously the Obama nuclear deal, the JCPOA of 2015. And if you look at the conditions under which Iran is compromised, there's a few boxes that need to be ticked. Number one is that they need to feel existential economic angst. They need to feel that if they don't compromise, the regime could be at stake; the economy's back could be broken. Number two, there needs to be a credible military threat. Number three, they need to face a united diplomatic front. And number four, it needs to be a compromise in which there's a viable face-saving exit for the Iranians, it's not a maximalist approach in which they're being asked to totally capitulate.
And to go to your question, why is it that Khamenei seemingly backtracked on his willingness to meet with the Trump administration directly? A couple of those boxes are currently ticked. Right now, there is a very credible military threat from Israel. And we know from public reporting that Israel has actually wanted to carry out further attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities; and President Trump restrained them from doing so. Number two, we saw in Trump's first term that the Trump administration managed to bring down Iran's oil exports at their lowest point to a few hundred thousand barrels per day. For perspective, during the Biden administration, their oil exports jumped to about two million barrels per day.

LINDSAY:
And that may be easier to do today because the oil market has softened, which means that taking oil offline is not going to send oil prices into the stratosphere.

SADJADPOUR:
Absolutely. And then coupled with the Trump administration's hope to improve relations with Russia and potentially some of the sanctions against Russia diminish and Russia is able to export more oil to the world, that would be another factor which would make it easier for them to put the squeeze on Iran. And so those conditions, the harsh economic conditions, the credible military threat exists. And as I said, you also have a president who has stated very publicly he doesn't care about regime change in Iran. He's not even really asking Iran to curtail its regional ambitions or improve its human rights record. When President Trump has spoken publicly about Iran, he's consistently said the same thing: They just can't have a nuclear weapon. And that implies that they can actually have a nuclear program but stopping short of a nuclear weapon. And so that's what these talks are meant to hash out; how much of a nuclear program will be Iran permitted to have.

LINDSAY:
How risky do you think it is, Karim, that what Tehran is trying to do is really to stall for time, hoping that they'll be able to rebuild their military defenses so a threat from Israel recedes, hoping that maybe their economy rebounds, maybe Donald Trump gets distracted by other crises around the world or at home? Or do you think there really is a genuine recognition that they need to cut a deal?

SADJADPOUR:
Well, I think you summarized their strategy well, Jim. And one of the questions now is is it likely that we will see another comprehensive nuclear deal along the lines of the JCPOA? Or is it more likely that we could see what we would call an interim deal, a mini deal? The precursor to the JCPOA was called the JPOA, the Joint Plan of Action, which was an interim deal.

LINDSAY:
The C meant comprehensive.

SADJADPOUR:
Exactly, exactly. And so I actually think that it may be easier for both capitals, even though President Trump has said he doesn't want a mini deal or an interim deal, I think an interim deal or a smaller deal is going to be a much easier political lift in both Washington and in Tehran. Now, I think one of the things that people get wrong about the Iranian regime... And in fact I just saw a quote yesterday from Vice President J.D. Vance about this. Vice President Vance said yesterday that one of the administration's goals in reaching a deal with Iran would be to, quote, unquote, "Reintegrate Iran into the global economy." He said that's what we're negotiating towards. It's a mistake to think about the Iranian regime as a regime that is primarily interested in advancing the economic wellbeing of its population. On the contrary, this is a regime, like many dictatorships, whose primary objective is to remain in power. And like many dictatorships, I think the Iranian regime has proven time and again that it believes its power is better preserved in an isolated environment.
An anecdote, which I may have shared with you privately before, Jim, many years ago, I was at a dinner party at the home of the late Great British Writer, Christopher Hitchens, in Washington, DC. And one of his dinner guests that evening was the Actor, Sean Penn. And Sean Penn was, at that time, very interested in U.S.-Iran relations, and he asked me know, "Why don't we just normalize relations with Iran?" And I said, "Well, it takes two to normalize. The United States cannot unilaterally normalize. And we're dealing with a government in Iran whose identity is premised on hostility toward the United States. And they believe that's a key way of staying in power." And Sean Penn shared with me an interesting anecdote. He had just come from Havana visiting with his old friend, Fidel Castro, the late Cuban leader. And he said, "Fidel always jokes that if America were to remove the embargo, he would do something provocative the next day to get it reinstated because he understands that his power is best preserved in a bubble." And so that is the case certainly with Ayatollah Khamenei and the senior clergy and revolutionary guardsmen.
And the reason why this is relevant to the discussion about a comprehensive nuclear deal versus an interim deal is that I actually don't believe that the Iranian regime's chief objective is to have all the sanctions removed and to reintegrate into the global economy and become another Dubai. They want to be able to export their oil, they want to be able to repatriate those assets back to Iran. But this is a regime which is very much an economic mafia regime. And they don't want to compete with global companies. They don't want civil society from around the world to be pouring in. I think this supreme leader, he's eighty five years old, so he's not going to be around that much longer, but he's understood that his power, his continued survival as leader is best preserved in this isolated environment.

LINDSAY:
I would imagine a fair number of the elites in Iran actually make a profit over the economic scarcity created by sanctions because they're determining what comes in, what gets smuggled, who gets a cut of the pay.

SADJADPOUR:
Absolutely. And I think that's the important point, which is what this regime has always prioritized is their survival and their own personal political and economic power. It's not the wellbeing economic or financial wellbeing of their population. For that reason, I think that sanctions in many ways have further entrenched some of these hardline figures.
And then if we take it back to Washington, one of the challenges that President Trump has is that he was the one who he left Obama's nuclear deal. He denounced it as the worst deal in history. He left that agreement in 2018, and therefore it's going to be very difficult for President Trump to agree to something which is not as strong as the deal that he left. And it's going to be very difficult for him to get a stronger deal given how much time has passed.

LINDSAY:
Well, let's drill down on that, Karim. I'm struck by two things that you just mentioned. One is that Trump in the current conversation is focused primarily on nuclear weapons and be solely on Iran's nuclear program. Second issue being whether or not you can actually get a deal that improves upon what the Obama administration negotiated. To go to the first point, what's striking about that to me is that the criticism that Donald Trump and others made of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was not only that it wasn't sufficient in dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat, particularly given many of its key provisions are going to sunset after ten years, fifteen years, but their argument was it did nothing about Iran's ballistic missile program or its malign regional activities. But what I'm hearing you say, that's not a prominent feature of what President Trump's negotiators are talking about. Help me understand that.

SADJADPOUR:
Well, you summarized it very well. And I think what the Trump team determined after brief deliberations is that an agreement which would encompass not only nuclear but also regional and missiles was too heavy of a lift, too ambitious. And so they essentially made the same determination, which they criticized of the Obama team in 2015. In my view, focusing only on Iran's nuclear ambitions is an insufficient Iran strategy.
Iran is central to numerous U.S. national security concerns. Obviously, nuclear proliferation is a big part, but you also have regional security. Up until six months ago, Iran was dominating five Arab lands: Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Gaza in the Palestinian territories. As a result of Israeli hard power, one of those proxies, the Assad regime in Syria, is no longer around. And Lebanese, Hezbollah, and Hamas have been profoundly weakened. The Shia militias in Iraq and the Houthis are on thin ice as a result. But still, Iran is arguably one of the most powerful actors still in the Middle East. And they're going to continue to want to project power. Even though they've gotten a bad bloody nose over the last six months, their resolve hasn't diminished. And then there's a whole host of other issues in which Iran is very important, whether it's Iran's support for Russia's war in Ukraine, terrorism, cybersecurity, energy security, disinformation. Iran is not just a non-proliferation concern.

LINDSAY:
It's a very thick file, as they say, the intelligence community.

SADJADPOUR:
Absolutely. I think after Russia and China, Iran probably comes in third when it comes to credible U.S. national security concerns.

LINDSAY:
Karim, one of the things I've heard supporters of President Trump say is that he's a great dealmaker and he may be able to produce the equivalent of a Nixon goes to China moment with the Iranians, that he is going through both his willingness to talk, willingness to do a deal, and the implicit threat that either the United States will act militarily or allow the Israelis to act militarily, get the government in Tehran to make wide-ranging concessions that they weren't planning to make. How do you assess that line of argument?

SADJADPOUR:
Well, I'm glad you asked me that because I've seen several editorials saying this is a Nixon to China moment with Iran, and I think that's a misunderstanding of the current context with Iran. First, let me... I remember an anecdote from Henry Kissinger's great book on China, in which he talked about visiting Beijing to set up Richard Nixon's visit with Chairman Mao. And he said that on his way to go see Chairman Mao, he passed several huge billboards in Beijing that were calling for America's annihilation. And he said when he went to go sit with Chairman Mao, one of the first questions he asked him, he said, "Are you certain that you are ready for this rapprochement?" And Chairman Mao said, "Yes. We have a common adversary in the Soviet Union which necessitates this rapprochement." And Chairman Mao asked Kissinger, "Well, why are you asking?" He said, "Well, I passed all these billboards calling for America's annihilation." And Kissinger wrote that Mao started laughing, and he waved his hand and he said, "Don't worry about those. Those are just empty cannons."
And in the Iranian context, death to America is not an empty cannon. It's not an empty statement which they don't believe. It's not only something that Ayatollah Khamenei still very much believes that's central to his worldview, but as we talked about earlier, he also believes it's critical to their survival to have this external adversary in the United States. And he very much fears that a U.S.-Iran rapprochement would be a far greater existential threat to the Islamic Republic than actually U.S. bombs dropping on Iran's nuclear facilities.
And you could argue that over the last decades, there have been common adversaries between America and Iran. You had Saddam Hussein's Iraq as one prominent mutual adversary. Most recently, you've had ISIS and the threat of radical Sunni jihadis. But for Khamenei, we've now seen and we now have 36 year track record of his record. He's been ruling since 1989; one of the longest-serving dictators in the world. He's consistently prioritized America and Israel at the very top of his enmity pyramid.

LINDSAY:
It's a foundational part of his legitimacy, the legitimacy of the ruling regime.

SADJADPOUR:
Absolutely. A hundred percent. And so for that reason, I think Trump would love a Nixon to China moment.

LINDSAY:
Well, he's made it very clear he would love to do a deal and it would be a significant accomplishment.

SADJADPOUR:
Absolutely. I remember during Trump's first term, a quite senior Trump administration official told me... This was shortly after President Trump had met with Kim Jong Un in Singapore. The senior Trump administration official told me the worst nightmare that Bolton and Pompeo have is that the Ayatollah is going to write Trump a letter saying, "Let's get together in Dubai," because they know that Trump would jump at that opportunity.

LINDSAY:
Well, we saw what happened on North Korea. And we ended up having love letters, as Trump put it, exchanged with the leader of North Korea.

SADJADPOUR:
And I think this is one of the big disconnects between the president and his chosen envoy on this file, Steve Witkoff, and the Iranians, which is this is not a real estate negotiation in which both parties are looking to come to some type of an agreement. You have an Iranian side, which is very reluctantly entering these talks because they want to avert a military attack, they want to avert another maximum pressure sanctions campaign. But their motivation is not a normalization of relations with the United States, which as I said, for Ayatollah Khamenei, that would pose an existential threat to his rule.

LINDSAY:
Karim, how much can Tehran lean on Moscow in Beijing in these negotiations? There's been a lot of talk about the emergence of an axis of autocracies growing bilateral cooperation between Moscow and Tehran, Tehran and Beijing. China buys an awful lot of Iranian oil. Is there something to this argument that, at the end of the day, the Iranians know that the Chinese and Russians are going to help them keep American power and pressure at bay, or is that wishful thinking?

SADJADPOUR:
Well, that's also a very important question. And I'd emphasize that those countries are far more important to Iran than Iran is to them. There's a huge imbalance. On China, around ninety percent of Iran's oil exports are currently bound to China. And one of the things that Trump, I think, has tweeted about is making an example of some of those companies to diminish Iranian exports to China. That's going to be a big question mark. And one of the things, which it was actually the Obama administration and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, did well was to encourage Chinese commercial relations with some of our Gulf partners, Saudi Arabia and U.A.E., to get them to wean China off of Iranian oil by buying more oil from our Gulf partners.

LINDSAY:
And those trade investment flows are far larger than what China has with Iran.

SADJADPOUR:
Absolutely. One of the things that Chinese officials commonly say when they're accused of having too close of relations with Iran, they'll point out the fact that their trade with Gulf partners is probably more than double that with Iran and that their senior leadership has regularly visited and met with Gulf leaders and they have not visited Iran. Now, Russia is much more important militarily than they are economically.

LINDSAY:
Well, they're both oil producers, so they don't have complementary economies.

SADJADPOUR:
Absolutely. In fact, they have competitive economies. And I would say that Russia really benefits from an isolated Iran and that Iran has probably the second or third-largest proven reserves of natural gas, but they're barely in the top fifteen when it comes to exports because they're so isolated, and so that's been beneficial to Russia.

LINDSAY:
They don't have the technology to shut it more—

SADJADPOUR:
Exactly. They don't have the technology. They don't have the ability to liquefy their natural gas LNG technology. And so that's been a boom to Russia because it's given Russia enormous leverage over Europe, and Iran hasn't competed with them in European gas markets. And so the big question is to what extent can and will Russia help to rebuild Iran's air defense systems? And depending on whom you talk to, this is going to influence and impact Israel's calculations. Because if Russia decides that that's a priority for them and they will provide Iran that technology, it may alter Israel's calculations in thinking of our time to act.

LINDSAY:
Our window of opportunity is closing.

SADJADPOUR:
Exactly. But some would also argue that that Russian technology actually proved ineffectual the first time around, and therefore even if they provide Iran the technology the second time around, it's not as big a game changer as people might think.

LINDSAY:
Well, and obviously Russia has its military resources being preoccupied by the war against Ukraine, so it's not clear how much flexibility the Russians have, even if they were to choose to make this a priority. You mentioned Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Karim. How are they viewing these talks between Washington and Tehran? And I ask that against a backdrop of a number of years, decades of messages coming out of Riyadh, coming out of Abu Dhabi, which was urging the United States to take a really tough line with Iran skeptical that a deal could be done. But we've had developments in recent years that suggest maybe those two capitals are viewing their interests somewhat differently. Saudi Arabia and Iran established diplomatic relations partly because of Chinese mediation. I don't get the sense that the Saudis or the Emirates are banging on the table saying, "Don't negotiate with Tehran." Help me understand that complicated relationship of countries that are neighbors in the Persian Gulf War. I guess it may soon be called, by the U.S. government, the Arab Gulf.

SADJADPOUR:
That's also a very important question, Jim. And what I'd say to summarize it is that the views of these Gulf countries toward Iran, and in particular Saudi and U.A.E., has not really changed one iota over the last decade. But their strategy has changed. And the strategy has changed in that they've realized that if they're the tip of the spear of a U.S. strategy to isolate and sanction and threaten Iran and they're partaking in that strategy, they're going to really feel the blowback. And they no longer can count on the United States to have their back.
We saw this during Trump's first term when the leadership in Saudi Arabia was making very bombastic statements about Iran. Mohammed bin Salman compared Ali Khamenei to Hitler. And at some point, in reaction to this maximum pressure campaign in 2019, Iran launched a major attack on Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil company. And it really surprised people how precise Iran was able to hit these Aramco facilities.
Now, Saudi managed to regroup within a couple of weeks, and their oil output didn't suffer significantly. But what that showed the Saudis, and there have been similar attacks on the U.A.E., is that Iran has both the capabilities and the will to make life very difficult for them. And the way I think about this is if you're Mohammed bin Salman and you're spending perhaps one trillion dollars to create a city like Neom, futuristic city, and you have this very costly vision 2030 endeavor. You could spend a decade and hundreds of billions of dollars pursuing that vision and Iran could come by in a couple weeks or a few days and just destroy that with rockets, missiles and drones. And I shared this with a friend of mine recently that I did a Fulbright in Beirut two decades ago, and one of the big takeaways from my year in Beirut is that, as others have said, it takes decades or centuries to build something and days to destroy it. And so—

LINDSAY:
Aleppo is another example of what can befall a once great historical city.

SADJADPOUR:
Absolutely. And so if you're the Emirates and the Saudis and your goal is to build these world-class cities and companies and societies, you can't afford to have a hostile relationship with a neighbor which has proven that it's not good at building anything, but it's quite effective and willing to destroy things. And so for that reason, their views about the nature of the Iranian regime have not changed one iota, but their strategy toward Iran is to try to de-conflict and de-escalate. And they don't want to be the tip of the American spear against Iran.

LINDSAY:
Let me ask you a question on a related issue, Karim, and that has to do with the Houthis in Yemen, which have fired off attacks not just on Israel, but also on Saudi Arabia and I believe also on the Emirates. Now, recently President Trump announced that he had struck a deal with the Houthis; they're not going to attack shipping in the Red Sea. Do we have a sense as to whether or not Tehran exercised some role in those discussions? Use, dare I say it, their good offices. Or are those just sort of unrelated events?

SADJADPOUR:
The Iranian public position, when one of their proxies is doing something maligned, they will say, "We don't have any control over them." But then when they agree to a compromise, they will want to take credit. Iran wants to take credit for that.
What I'd say is that Iran's influence over the Houthis has only increased over the last years. Most of the weaponry the Houthis have are from Iran. And like their other regional proxies, they don't micromanage all of the conduct of those groups. It's not like Iran was calling up Hezbollah every day and telling them what to do. But there's certainly macro management.
And I suspect that at a time when the Iranians are trying to avert an attack on their nuclear facilities, it's in Iran's interest for the Houthis to cool it a bit. When people ask about prospects for war between either the U.S. and Iran or Israel and Iran, my view nowadays is that what's more likely to lead us to conflict is not Iran making a dash for a nuclear weapon which triggers military action, but it's more likely that the Houthis actually, they launched an attack on Israel; they were pretty close to hitting Ben Gurion Airport last week. But in the event that the Houthis actually do land a strike that kills many Israeli civilians or hits an Israeli military nuclear facility, there's a lot of pressure on Bibi Netanyahu, including from politicians to his left, to retaliate, not in Yemen, but in Iran. And so it's in Iran's interest if they want to avert military conflict to just tell the Houthis to cool it for now.
And this is something that, one of the things, Ayatollah Khomeini, as I said, he's been leader since 1989; he hasn't left the country since 1989. And so I wouldn't say he has a good grasp of American politics, but he usually has a decent grasp of U.S. resolve. And one of the things he does effectively is he knows when to cool it when U.S. resolve or Israeli resolve is high, when we have our fingers on the trigger. But then when we've been distracted by other issues, that's when they ramp it up mean. I was based in Tehran when the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, and I saw in those early days and months of the Iraq War, Iran was initially on best behavior because they were worried at that time that the Bush administration, they could—

LINDSAY:
The other shoe was going to drop.

SADJADPOUR:
Absolutely. And they could take their regime, change policy eastward to Tehran. What Iran did was that they had a bunch of Al-Qaeda prisoners inside Iran, including figures that would turn out to be prominent like Abū Muṣʻab Zarqāwī. And they essentially released those Al-Qaeda fighters in Iraq like a bag of vipers. And when those Al-Qaeda forces started to make life hell for the United States and it quickly became clear that America's effort in Iraq was going south and we were bogged down, that's when Iran really started to ramp up the attacks on U.S. forces. And this acronym came out of the IEDs, improvised explosive devices, which, according to some sources, killed as many as one thousand American troops in Iraq.
And so that came a year or two after the war when it was clear that Bush no longer had a popular mandate to attack Iran. I expect that this is how the Iranian regime is currently handling the Trump administration. Right now, we're not trying to provoke; let's try to de-escalate. But then once Trump is bogged down on other issues and he's been weakened domestically, he loses his mandate, he loses popularity, he loses resolve, that's when we're going to start to ramp up our attacks.

LINDSAY:
Karim, let me ask you the question from the other side. How long do you think that the Trump administration can afford to be in negotiations with Tehran before they either get a deal or decide to pursue other options?

SADJADPOUR:
As long as Iran is not advancing its nuclear program forward, I think that the current reality in which we're in in which Iran is maybe a week or two from enough fissile material for several bombs, that would have been unheard of a few years ago, but it's quickly proven to be the new normal and the world hasn't ended. I suspect that we could be in a situation in which Iran has essentially put its car in park and are not going to put their foot on the gas. And there is a possibility that Iran will agree to reverse its program a bit in exchange for some modest sanctions relief. And that is the interim deal that we talked about. And I'm skeptical that that interim deal will lead to a much more comprehensive deal because it's a very heavy political lift in both Tehran and in Washington.
But I do think either a continuation of the status quo or, as I said, a slight reversal, Iran reverses its nuclear program a bit in return for modest sanctions relief, that is something which I think is an outcome that President Trump would welcome. I think after the killing of Qasem Soleimani, I think there came to be a misperception among some that Trump was trigger happy and willing to pursue conflict, another war in the Middle East. And I think that's been proven as recently as the last couple of days in this deal with the Houthis that that's not something he's interested in.
Now, let me add one thing, Jim, which is I actually think that a potential deal with Iran, a potential nuclear deal with Iran, whether it's an interim deal or a more comprehensive deal, I think that could be one of the first major fissures in the MAGA movement. And we're already starting to see these debates play out online between prominent conservative figures like Tucker Carlson. I would put J.D. Vance in that same category who they probably would take umbrage to the word isolationists. But they're certainly anti-interventionists, and they've really raised the alarm about conflict with Iran; spoken out against that. And those more hawkish voices in the Trump administration who are not only more hawkish toward Iran, but feel much more strongly about Israel's security, those fights, in some ways online, intra MAGA fights are more fierce than the Republican versus Democrat fights at the moment.

LINDSAY:
On that note, I'll close up The President's Inbox for this week. My guest has been Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Karim, thank you for chatting with me.

SADJADPOUR:
Pleasure to be with you, Jim. Thank you.

LINDSAY:
Please subscribe to The President's Inbox on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, wherever you listen. And leave us a review. We love the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode and a transcript of our conversation are available on the podcast page for The President's Inbox on cfr.org. As always, opinions expressed on The President's Inbox are solely those of the host or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. Today's episode was produced by Justin Schuster with Recording Engineer, Jamie Stoffa, and Director of Podcasting, Gabrielle Sierra. This is Jim Lindsay. Thanks for listening.