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I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
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Hey, guys, on the line, I got Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President at the Quincy Institute, and of course, author of Treacherous Alliance, one of the most important books you'll read in a long time, I promise, and also Single Roll of the Dice and Losing an Enemy about negotiating in the Obama years there and the nuclear deal and all that.
And here he is writing at foreignpolicy.com, why Mohammed bin Salman suddenly wants to talk to Iran.
Welcome to the show.
How's it going?
Doing well.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Why does Mohammed bin Salman suddenly want to talk to Iran?
Well, lo and behold, four years ago, he said that there's no reason to even try to talk, that you simply could not talk to the Iranians, and now he is telling Saudi TV that we need to have a good relationship with Iran, it's a neighbor.
And I think the most important reason as to why we see this shift is because the United States has shifted.
After all of these years of politicians talking about leaving the Middle East militarily, we're starting to see it happen.
And we're starting to see the United States also pursue diplomacy in other areas.
I'm not saying in any way, shape or form it's perfect, but it's been sufficient to convince Saudi Arabia that continuing to hide behind the United States and counting on some form of a blank check from the United States is not as reliable of a promise as before.
And as a result, their incentive structures have changed.
If you can't hide behind the United States, your second best option is to pursue diplomacy, and that's what they're doing.
And part of the reason I think this is so important is because the hawks in Washington, the blobbers, have always been saying, if the United States pulls back, chaos will ensue, it will be Armageddon, the whole region will fall apart.
The only reason that there's a modicum of stability in the region is because the United States is guaranteeing it with its military forces there.
We're seeing that the opposite actually is true.
Once the United States pulls back militarily, regional states pull forward diplomatically.
And that is exactly what people in the restraint community have been predicting for decades.
Which makes perfect sense too, right?
As long as the Saudis think they have the Americans to do all their fighting for them, then that's what the economists call a moral hazard, isn't it?
Exactly.
I mean, as you said, it's totally logical.
If you're sitting in Riyadh and you have to choose between engaging in a tricky, excruciatingly painful negotiation with the Iranians, and you're going to have to give painful concessions, and all of that stuff, or alternatively, just hide behind the United States and the United States will do the job for you, why on earth would you not hide behind the United States?
They did the rational thing.
They took advantage of an unwarranted protection that we so foolishly offered.
Now when we are starting to make clear that we're not going to offer it for much longer, or at a minimum, the Saudis are coming to the conclusion that that offer may not be reliable any longer, we're seeing that the Saudis are then shifting towards diplomacy.
That's an important point.
And for anybody who's misreading it as Pollyanna here, I think you've made it clear a couple of times now that you're not saying that from your point of view, Biden has quit the war on terrorism and wrapped the whole thing up.
Just he's backing away enough to make the Saudis feel like they need to make a change in their policy.
So now tell us about these talks.
I mean, this is really incredible stuff.
Yeah, so they've been happening since January, initiated and led by the Iraqi government and the Iraqi prime minister himself, which makes sense.
He's the former head of intelligence there, so he has all the right connections.
But most importantly, one of the countries that suffers the most from this Iranian-Saudi-U.S. rivalry in the region is Iraq.
I mean, Soleimani was killed in Iraq with no heads up to the Iraqi government.
If a war were to break out, it would take place in Iraq when the Iranians are retaliating, or if their allies in Iraq are retaliating, they're attacking military bases in Iraq.
So the Iraqis have a clear interest in making sure that these countries resolve their problems peacefully because otherwise the war will come on them, and it's not as if the Iraqi people haven't suffered enough.
But the first meeting apparently was between the UAE and the Iranians in Iraq.
Later on, the Saudis came in, then the Egyptians and the Jordanians.
One of the things that I think is most promising, and I think we have to be very clear, we do not know for certain whether this will work or not.
There is a high likelihood that it will not, but there's also a decent likelihood that it will.
Part of the reason why I am somewhat optimistic is because, precisely because, this process was initiated and led by the regional countries themselves.
We're not talking about an Abrams Accord in which some of these countries are essentially pressured into recognizing Israel in order for them to be able to buy F-35s, or the U.S. is recognizing their occupation of West Sahara.
No.
They're doing it because they all concluded that this is a better option for them.
That makes it more sustainable, but it also means the United States doesn't have to be involved or overly involved and lead these things and pressure them to do this, et cetera.
That's a good thing because the United States should help when it can, if it serves its interests, but it should not have to be involved in everything all the time.
Right.
Okay.
Now, the most important thing at the center of all of this, of course, or should be at the center of it, but literally it's the periphery, is Yemen and the fight over who controls Sana'a, a terrible fight which this audience knows well, the different sides and everything like that and also understand the importance of that issue, possibly in these talks or should be the most important thing for these different factions, these different governments to resolve right now.
Right?
Absolutely.
Yemen was actually topping the agenda and it appears also that some progress was made on that issue.
If Yemen can be resolved, you know, it's easier to move on to some of these other issues.
That's right.
I mean, what would they have to agree?
Do you know anything about the outlines, what they're talking about for, I'm trying to imagine what Saudi and, and you know, what Riyadh and Tehran would have to agree on for the future of the government in Sana'a in order for them to call a halt to this thing.
It's, it seems like it would have to be a pretty significant compromise on both sides.
I think it would have to, and I think the most important thing is that, you know, there would have to be a political process that they're both signing on to and that the Houthis are signing on to.
I was going to say, yeah, it ain't like the Iranians can just tell the Houthis what to do.
It has to, they have to think it's their idea too, or it's going nowhere.
Absolutely.
And I think this is where one of those things in which the Iranians probably had some coordination and conversations with the Houthis during these talks, but ultimately an Iranian signature is insufficient because the Iranians don't control the Houthis.
In fact, the Iranians are taking advantage of the fact that the Saudis have created a perception that the Iranians control the Houthis.
That perception may be useful for the Saudis to get the United States to impose punishing acts against Iran, but it's also useful for the Iranians because it gives the impression that they have much more leverage and influence than they actually do.
Yep.
And you know what, it's, as long as we're talking about foreignpolicy.com, there's a great piece there by Joost Hilterman, I can't say it right, back, let's say, it must have been 2015, maybe 2016, called The Houthis Are Not Hezbollah.
And it explains that, yeah, you know, it's a stretch probably to say Hezbollah is Iran's 51st state, but you're just lying if you say that the Houthis in Yemen are, because they're just not.
Yeah.
I mean, Tom Friedman, I think, has been using words like the pro-Iran Houthis.
It is, you know, absolutely ridiculous.
The Houthis are there for themselves.
The Iranians have taken advantage of the fact that the Houthis were fighting the Saudi coalition and as a result gave head, you know, some inroads for the Iranians into Yemen.
But ultimately- Yeah, but Trita, Shiite.
Nonsense.
The Houthis are a completely different sect.
I mean, I remember, I think I told you on one of your shows, I had a conversation, I think it was 20, must have been 2012 or 2013, with a senior Iranian official who explained to me that he didn't even know that the Houthis were an offshoot of Shiite Islam, or adhere to an offshoot of Shiite Islam until just a couple of months earlier.
So the idea that there's like some longstanding religious affinity, et cetera, it's just simply not true.
It's not a driver of this conflict.
That is, again, one of the things, in fact, there was a very interesting study, I think it was done by Carnegie, that showed that it's not until 2011 that the Saudis started to refer to the Houthis as Shiites.
Before that, they weren't even using that language, and it was very much part of their effort to try to paint Iran behind everything in order to justify what the Saudis themselves were doing, and try to make sure that the support of the United States would be automatic.
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I'm almost certain, Trita, you should double check me before you quote me, but I'm almost certain, or you probably know even better already, that it was 2018 before the Ayatollah even invited the head Houthi to come to Tehran and recognize him as the leader of the sovereign government of Yemen, which they literally had been, quite literally, for three years by that time, four years.
Yeah.
I don't know about the exact date, but I think you're quite right.
And again, I want to emphasize, this doesn't mean that the Iranians do not bear responsibility as well for the horrible suffering that is taking place in Yemen right now.
I mean, the UAE, the Saudis, the Iranians, as well as the Brits and the US are all responsible for what is taking place there.
And the biggest problem, I think, on the American side is that we have no reason to be involved in this in the first place.
Absolutely no reason whatsoever.
And the fact that, I mean, it's not even as in the case of Afghanistan, in which someone can make an argument at least, well, you know, this was a legitimate reaction to 9-11 because of the Taliban hosting the Al-Qaeda.
What on earth is the parallel when it comes to the US being involved in Yemen?
I mean, look, we were there fighting AQAP, but this was for them against their enemies.
So that ain't going to cut it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And now, listen, I'm not sure if you know this, but I would be remiss to not mention that last week, Admiral Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, admitted to a Vox reporter at a press conference that the US is still supplying maintenance support for the Saudi Air Force, which is exactly against what they said they were going to do there at the beginning of February.
I think there's going to be a need for more action from Congress to really make sure exactly what has the Biden administration decided and exactly how is it implemented.
Thing is, they don't want peace now because the Houthis are winning and they're about to take this city, Marib, and if they call a truce, then they might just walk right in.
Right.
So they don't know what to do to prevent that.
They can't beat them back either, it doesn't seem like, so I don't know.
I think you're quite right.
I think, you know, they are trying to avoid a scenario in which this ends up becoming a complete victory for the Houthis.
Even if that were to be the case, you know, similar to Assad, even if he were to win the civil war, it's only the end of one phase.
The political victory is a completely different thing, and I don't think the Houthis will have that capability.
But the idea that prolonging the war and prolonging the blockade will actually shift the balance of power in a way that you would have an easier time to get the negotiations is a rather, yeah, it's difficult to justify it on strategic or moral grounds in my view, because, you know, this is a population that is already suffering tremendously.
The big lesson from all of these different things, in my view, always is, why did we get involved in the first place?
Stop doing this.
Don't get involved in the first place, and you will not be in a situation in which all of your options are bad options.
Right.
And, you know, I interviewed Yemeni expert, Yemeni-American expert, Aisha Juman, just last week, and she was explaining how at the very beginning the Houthis wanted to, yeah, they had sacked the capital city and with Abdullah, but still that meant that they had to share power with 100 different factions, and they knew that.
They weren't trying to be just the lord monarch over everything and what, convert everybody to their version of Zaydi Islam or what, no.
It wasn't about that, and it wouldn't be about that now.
If the war ended, they would have to cut deals with the Southern Transitional Council, with what they no longer call al-Qaeda, but still are down there, the al-Islah group, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the, you know, whatever other factions, and, you know, in the capital city and down in Aden and over in Marib, where now everybody's gotten rich because they got to keep all their oil money for the last few years, as I learned from Scott Paul on the show.
So they have all kinds of politics to accomplish without war.
Nobody thinks, nobody could imagine, honestly, that they're going to be the dictators of Yemen in any real way, even if they win the war, as you're saying, just like with Assad.
If we finally got out of the way of Assad in Syria, he'd cut a deal with the Kurds rather than going to war with them, and then he'd have to make a deal with everybody else, including in the Idlib province and everything else.
Which is actually your thesis of this whole thing, this whole article about the whole region.
If we get out of the way, everyone has to make a deal, because how are they going to fight without us there to do their fighting for them?
And that goes for both sides, the Shiites and the Sunnis in this thing.
Yeah.
It's not necessarily, you know, that simple.
I'm not saying that, you know, world peace will break out the minute.
But the point is that while we're there, we're actually incentivizing further military action.
And we are preventing or postponing a shift towards diplomacy.
And that's a problem.
Now, that diplomacy may or may not end up working, but we also know this, even if there were to be warfare that were to break out, or even civil war, particularly with civil war, civil wars usually never last more than a year, unless foreign powers get involved and start fueling the civil war by pouring in more money and arms.
Because most countries don't have actually enough ammunition and arms to be able to sustain a civil war for that long.
I can think of a few examples from recent history here.
Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, well, I mean, take a look at Syria.
It would not have happened for this long had it not been for everyone just getting involved and supporting.
And you know, the Saudis essentially wrote a complete bank check, whatever Nusra wanted they got.
So us getting out and pushing the countries by virtue of our move out to move towards diplomacy will become the beginning of what can become a solution.
Hey, let me ask you a thing real quick here, Trita.
It will prevent the beginning from even happening.
Yeah.
And I'm sorry, I know you're in a hurry.
I want to get one word from you real quick on the nuclear deal, the progress on the talks and the nuclear deal, where we are with that and the sanctions and all that, because the news changes every day about that.
But one more thing on the Houthis real quick here, or pardon me, on the war against them, the Yemen war.
You know, I know, you know, from your books and all of your great writing that you do have a lot of, you know, I don't know, sources, close sources and people that, you know, inside the Democrats, national security apparatus type thing, especially from the Obama years left over there.
And I wonder whether, because I never saw this reported anywhere, but I wonder whether you ever heard any talk about when they had announced their policy in February about backing off of the Yemen war.
Was there anything that you heard that said that they had told the Saudis, Hey, we really mean it.
We want you to wrap this thing up.
Or was the idea that like, eh, you know, for PR reasons, we have to back off a little bit, but the war is going to continue on and Lender King's going to run interference and it's going to be a little, you know, they're just jerking our chain a little bit, but we're going to be in the same place a year from now kind of thing or either way.
I don't know if there was such a communication, but I am under the impression that with or without that communication, the Saudis kind of got the message that, you know, the Trump years and then, you know, it's not that as if the Saudis didn't have much of a blank check before.
I mean, Yemen started under Obama and Obama relighted it, but whatever, however blank it was before, my God, it got blanker under Trump.
They know that period is over now.
And to what extent are they making these moves to try to reduce tensions with the Trump Biden administration?
To what extent are they doing it?
Because they realize that this is a real shift and they are going to have to shift this.
I don't know that for certain, but I think based on their own conduct, they got in the message, whether that message was sent explicitly or indirectly.
OK, talk to me about the Iran deal real quick or those talks, and then I'll let you go.
All right.
Just a quick 30, 60 seconds.
Progress is being made.
I think both sides have a bit of an incentive to downplay it for a variety of reasons.
But progress is being made.
It's much slower than what was needed.
But we are running into potentially a natural deadline that is going to be quite risky to ignore.
And that is that on May 18, the Iranian Guardian Council is going to come out with a list of folks that are being permitted to run for president.
It's a very undemocratic element that they have in their system.
And it's likely going to be seven to nine candidates, and a good portion of them will be hardliners.
And the hardliners, at that moment, the election season begins in earnest.
And the hardliners are likely to compete with each other.
Who is most anti-JCPOA?
And that's going to further put pressure on the Iranian negotiators and reduce their maneuverability.
So I think all sides are quite well aware that this is not an artificial deadline.
And when's the actual election there?
June 18th.
I mean, they have like essentially a month long election season.
Imagine that.
Sounds nice.
So I think the hope is that something can be done before June 18th, because after it's going to become trickier.
And if this pushes, sorry, May 18th, and if it pushes all the way to the election, then we're in a completely different scenario, because we do not know what the next president of Iran's thinking will be on this issue.
And it may very well end up being like with Trump, someone who gets elected, who ran on a platform opposing the JCPOA.
And I'm sorry, but I saw where on Twitter, some hawks were saying, aha, the Ayatollah denounces Zarif, the foreign minister, for some leaked comments here.
And does that really weaken his position now?
Because he's a major driver in favor of this deal in Iran.
Yeah, but I think in some ways it showed that what Khamenei did there is essentially saying that, you know, the foreign minister doesn't make these decisions.
The foreign minister is implementing the decisions that are made by the system as a whole.
And as a result, he's kind of putting himself behind the negotiations and the JCPOA in a manner that he didn't do before, depersonalizing the JCPOA.
So it's no longer Zarif and Rouhani's deal and essentially saying that this is a system as a whole.
It's actually not a bad thing.
That would be the equivalent of us over here talking about the JCPOA as an agreement the American government made, rather than talking about it as an agreement that Obama made.
And even in a way, there's a shade of Ayatollah himself taking a little bit more ownership of it, too, because this is a system he presides over.
And he clearly allowed Rouhani to pursue this then.
And you know, so his reputation is on the line, too, here.
So that's good.
Yeah.
All right.
And then the Americans are really willing to lift the sanctions and let this go?
Or can they?
I think so.
The question is, there's going to have to be some form of an agreement on the extent, you know, the number of sanctions that are lifted.
And I'm sure, I mean, that's what they're negotiating over right now.
But when it comes to the idea of lifting all of the JCPOA sanctions, as well as lifting at least some of the Trump sanctions that Trump imposed in order to make a JCPOA return impossible, that is clear.
That principle has been accepted.
Now, that doesn't necessarily mean all of them, but some of them will be lifted.
And whether that will be sufficient to get an agreement remains to be seen.
But I'm personally optimistic.
OK, great.
Hey, thanks very much for your time, Trita.
Appreciate it.
Talk to you soon.
All right, you guys.
That's Trita Parsi.
He is the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute.
Responsiblestatecraft.org is the website.
And of course, he wrote Treacherous Alliance.
You got to read that book, man, I'm telling you.
And a couple more like that about Obama's administration's negotiations over the nukes.
Over their civilian nuclear program, I mean.
The Scott Horton Show, Antiwar Radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A., APSradio.com, Antiwar.com, ScottHorton.org, and LibertarianInstitute.org.
