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Front Burner Transcript for June 26, 2024

Host: Jayme Poisson

JAYME POISSON: Hi everybody, I'm Jayme Poisson.

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JP: On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump's frustrations with the Middle East were laid bare, to say the least.

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DONALD TRUMP: You know what, we have-- we basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the f--k they're doing. Do you understand that?

JP: This came after he announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran on Truth Social Monday night. Both countries exchanged missiles after the announcement, raising confusion as to whether the ceasefire was indeed happening. But since Tuesday morning, the fragile ceasefire has held, one that Trump insisted both sides wanted equally. What remains now is the tension between Trump and his Israeli allies after his outburst. NBC reported that Israeli leadership were stunned and embarrassed by the way the president lashed out at them and Iran. So to help us understand where things stand and what this could mean for the conflict moving forward, I'm joined again by Gregg Carlstrom. Gregg is a longtime Middle East correspondent with The Economist and author of the book How Long Will Israel Survive? The Threat from Within.

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JP: Gregg, thank you so much for making the time again to come onto the show.

GREGG CARLSTROM: Thanks for having me.

JP: It's been a very fluid few days to say the least. So I just want to timestamp our conversation. Right now, you and I are speaking at 2 p.m. eastern on Wednesday. I believe you're in Doha, right? So it's probably-- it's nighttime there. Where do things sit with the ceasefire between Iran and Israel right now?

GREGG CARLSTROM: Well, it's holding for now after some, after a bit of a rocky start on Tuesday morning here, local time, which I think was not surprising to anyone. I mean, just about every time there's a ceasefire in this region, someone tries to get in, you know, one last lick after it was meant to start. We saw that in November when there was a truce between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, which was violated an hour or two after it began. Every time there's been a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas going back many years, we've seen that. So, no one was terribly surprised, I think, that the Iranians fired one last volley of missiles and then the Israelis tried to retaliate for that after it was supposed to begin. But since then, for I guess about 36 hours now, it has been holding.

JP: Trump has claimed that Iran's nuclear sites are, quote, "obliterated," though reports from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's intelligence arm, are saying that the U.S. strikes over the weekend didn't destroy the core components of their nuclear program and may have actually only set it back a few months. The White House and Trump have disagreed with this assessment.

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DONALD TRUMP: It was-- I believe it was total obliteration. They're not-- Can you imagine, after all that, they're going to say, oh, let's go and do a bomb.

JP: What has Iran said about the extent of the damage to their program? Do we have any kind of other independent analysis here?

GREGG CARLSTROM: We don't have any independent analysis, and I think it's going to be some time before we get any. Iran initially tried to downplay the damage from these strikes. So shortly after they took place over the weekend, the Iranian messaging was that they didn't do much damage. And, you know, particularly at Fordow, which is that underground facility built into the side of a mountain. The Iranians insisted that the damage was just on the surface. The messaging has changed a little bit over the past day or so. They've acknowledged that there was some damage to their nuclear program. But I think unless the IAEA, the UN's nuclear watchdog, is allowed to actually go in and inspect these facilities -- which they had done up until quite recently, up until the war started -- unless they're allowed to do that, we're not really going to get independent confirmation one way or the other. Iran obviously has an incentive not to publicize the full extent of the damage. Trump has an incentive to exaggerate it. We just don't know at this point.

JP: Do you think the IAEA will even be able to do that? I know Iran's parliament has approved a bill to suspend cooperation with the agency, right?

GREGG CARLSTROM: They have, and I think it's going to be a tough sell, let's say, with the Iranian government. The bill that parliament passed, you know, a lot of what parliament does in Iran is basically just a recommendation, and that decision will ultimately be up to Iran's National Security Council, up to the supreme leader. So the fact that parliament did it doesn't necessarily mean Iran is going to take the step of withdrawing from the NPT and kicking out the IAEA. But there are a lot of people in, in the Iranian government military right now who are very suspicious of the IAEA, who are accusing it -- with no evidence, I should say -- but they're accusing it of, you know, somehow collaborating with Israel. That's how the agency is viewed inside of Iran right now. And so there will be a lot of people I think urging Iran to suspend cooperation.

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JP: What do we know right now about personnel or knowledge that was taken out in these strikes? I'm thinking about the nuclear scientists, right? The people who have the knowledge to do this kind of stuff.

GREGG CARLSTROM: You know, it's a bit opaque, right? We know that, according to the Israelis, a number of very senior nuclear scientists, people that Israel describes as key figures in Iran's nuclear program, were assassinated. And obviously, that's going to be a blow to the program. At the same time, this is a program that's been going on for decades, right. It's not like there's only handful of people in Iran who understand the nuclear fuel cycle or who understand, you know, steps that you might take towards weaponization, towards building a bomb. That knowledge is somewhat more dispersed at this point. So, we can say that it's a blow to the program, but the idea that killing a handful of scientists somehow derails it for good, I think is probably far-fetched.

JP: Trump says that the U.S. will be meeting with Iran next week. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman told Al Jazeera that, quote, "While they," U.S. officials, "have been talking about diplomacy, they green-lighted [to] Israelis to attack Iran." "They," the U.S., "torpedoed diplomacy." Do you think that the U.S. will be able to prove that they're serious about diplomacy here, you know, when it comes to next steps?

GREGG CARLSTROM: Well, I think there are two questions. One is, will the U.S. and Iran want to make a deal, sort of in the abstract. And then the other question is, can they actually make a deal that will satisfy American and now Israeli demands? And I think on the first question, Iran doesn't really have a choice but to negotiate, at some point, with the United States. It's obviously mistrustful of the U.S. in general, and of Donald Trump in particular. Not just because of what happened over the past two weeks, but going back to Trump's first term, when he tore up the previous nuclear agreement with Iran, he assassinated Iran's top general. He's someone who is considered, you konw, very untrustworthy in Iran. But if Iran wants to make a deal and it needs to make a deal to make this ceasefire durable and to prevent, I think, future Israeli or American attacks on its nuclear program, it has to make that deal with the U.S. Nobody else can, can sort of guarantee that deal. On the other question though, sort of can they, can they make a deal? Can they meet America's demands? The issue before the war, going back to April when Donald Trump started negotiating with Iran, was can Iran continue enriching uranium under a new agreement, or does it have to forego the right to enrich uranium domestically? Trump insisted it give up that right; Iran insisted on keeping that right. That was the main sticking point in negotiations for months. And it's still a sticking point. I haven't seen any signs that Iran is willing to concede that point, even though now its two main enrichment facilities have probably been heavily damaged. They're still insisting in public, in their statements over the past few days on keeping the right to enrichment. And I think as long as they're not willing to budge on that, it's going to be very hard to find common ground for an agreement.

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JP: Let's talk about that outburst from Trump on Tuesday, please, if we could. Um, so before he, he swore, right, he told reporters, quote:

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DONALD TRUMP: I'm not happy with Israel. You know, when I say, okay, now you have 12 hours, you don't go out in the first hour and just drop everything you have on them. So I'm not happy with them. I'm not happy with Iran either.

JP: He was not mincing words there, right? He was visibly frustrated. And just, I'm so curious what was going through your head when you saw that from the president.

GREGG CARLSTROM: I thought it was actually quite relatable. I mean, I think all of us who work on the Middle East are kind of cranky and sleep deprived at this point. [laughs] So, watching Trump react that way, that was, that was how we're all feeling right now. I mean, I think -- you know, I get it. I think over the weekend when Trump approved these American strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, there was an understanding clearly with the Israelis that if America was entering the war, America had ownership of the war at that point, right? It wasn't just Israel's war in Iran; America had a stake in it too. And the quid pro quo there was that if America bombed Fordow and these two other facilities, that that would essentially be the end of the war, that Trump would then want a ceasefire shortly afterwards. He communicated that to Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel, the Qataris communicated that to Iran. I think Trump probably, you know, went to bed on Monday night in Washington thinking that everybody had agreed to a ceasefire and then woke up in the morning and it seemed like it was falling apart, and was understandably peeved about that because he thought he had an understanding with the Israeli prime minister. And it wouldn't be the first time that Prime Minister Netanyahu told an American president, yeah, yeah, we have a deal, and then tried to almost wriggle out of it.

JP: Well, do you think that outburst worked to kind of get the Israelis in line there? Because I note, like earlier that same morning, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz had said, quote, "I have instructed the IDF to respond forcefully to Iran's violation of the ceasefire with intense strikes against regime targets in the heart of Tehran."

GREGG CARLSTROM: You know, every conversation that I have had with Israeli officials, current or former, since November, since Donald Trump was re-elected, they have told me, Benjamin Netanyahu is afraid of Donald Trump in a way that he is not of other American presidents. Because Netanyahu has spent so long building Trump up as, you know, Israel's greatest friend, Israel's greatest defender. This is someone that he can't then turn around and cross. And if he does so, he's going to risk a lot of his support in America. You know, the Republican Party will side with Donald Trump over Bibi Netanyahu. And that's different from... You think about Joe Biden, the last year that he was in office in 2024, and every week or two there was a news story about how Joe Biden is sick of Benjamin Netanyahu and the relationship is breaking down and, you know, Biden is about to lay down the law and tell him to end the war in Gaza. And that never happened, right? It never seemed as if Netanyahu was actually afraid of Biden, which is why time and time again he, he sort of did everything he could to sabotage Biden's efforts at a ceasefire. He just can't do that with Donald Trump.

JP: Can you tell me more about why you don't think that he can do it with Donald Trump?

GREGG CARLSTROM: I mean, look at um, look at how every world leader is dealing with Trump right now. He is... I'm trying to find the word. I mean, he is unpredictable. That's probably an understatement. Everybody is worried about if you get on his bad side, what he might do. And I think that's particularly true for Israel. I mean, put yourself in Netanyahu's shoes right now. He has been dependent for the past 20 months on American support: he has needed American military resupply so that Israel could fight wars on multiple fronts; he's needed American help defending Israel from ballistic missiles fired from Iran. Obviously, diplomatic support at the UN and elsewhere. More than $20 billion of American military aid since October 7th. Israel could not have fought these wars without the United States. I think Netanyahu was acutely aware of that. If you piss off Donald Trump, does some of that support go away? Look at how he treats other close allies in NATO, for example. Look at how he treats Canada. Look how he treats, you know, people who have been American allies for many, many decades. Look at how transactional and fickle Trump is with them and then imagine you're Netanyahu. You don't want to risk that happening to Israel as well.

JP: Right, right. And so, it was just fascinating to hear you say that you were talking to people in Israeli or around Israeli leadership who actually think that that could legitimately happen. Like that they could use sanctions or that they could actually halt military aid, that he would actually do it. There's also the diplomatic stuff that's happening recently, right? I'm thinking of like Steve Witkoff. Um, how he was able to get Israel to come to the table and agree to a ceasefire deal with Hamas at the beginning of the year. Um, in part, using like some strong-arming, right? Like including demanding that Netanyahu come meet him while he was observing Shabbat. And then they've kind of gone around Netanyahu too, a couple of times, too, right? Like I'm thinking about, recently, didn't they negotiate directly with Hamas for hostage releases? This kind of stuff. Is this very unusual?

GREGG CARLSTROM: Right. I mean, it is. America has not had any direct interactions with Hamas for, for decades. Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organization in the U.S. and so you cannot talk to them. So having Trump's hostage envoy, Adam Boehler, hold these direct talks with Hamas to secure the release of an American-Israeli hostage -- he had dual citizenship of both countries -- that yeah, that was shocking to a lot of people in Israel. All the more so because it was done without notifying Israel. They found out about it because their own intelligence agencies were spying on the particular member of Hamas who was the interlocutor there. But they weren't notified by the Americans. So, Trump is willing to do these things that, you know, other presidents have not been willing to do with regards to Israel, and he also has a big chunk of his coalition that is very critical of the relationship that America has historically had with Israel. His decision to carry out these strikes on Iran was not popular with people like Steve Bannon, his first term advisor, with other members of this MAGA coalition who worried that...

JP: Yep, Tucker Carlson.

GREGG CARLSTROM: Exactly. You know, Trump campaigned on, ‘I'm not going to get us into wars in the Middle East.’ And then he turned around and got America into a war in the Middle East. And okay, for now it was just a single strike on one day. But there's a big fear that it won't end there, that this is going to become a longer-term commitment. So he did something to support Israel that was very unpopular with many of his supporters.

JP: And do you think that his stranglehold kind of on the party itself also gives him some leeway too? That he might not face the same kind of blowback in Congress that other presidents might have faced?

GREGG CARLSTROM: Yeah, I mean, I think he-- I mean, he can do just about anything, right? And the Republican Party will find a way to contort itself to get behind it. So Trump ordering these strikes on Iran, you know, that was quite a popular decision with the more hawkish elements of the party. People like Lindsey Graham, for example, the senator from South Carolina. But if Trump hadn't done that, I'm sure people like Graham would have found a way to support him in not doing it, and to say that actually, you know, he made a brilliant decision and he never should have done this.

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JP: So I know in 1982, Ronald Reagan, then-president Ronald Reagan, famously halted arms and jet shipments to Israel to pressure then-Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin to halt a bombing campaign on southern Lebanon. Do you see any parallels between that moment and today?

GREGG CARLSTROM: I don't think we're there... yet. I think the things that Trump has done, like carrying out direct talks with Hamas, like ending the U.S. bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen, even though the Houthis were still bombing Israel. He did those things, you know, arguably out of a sense that there was an American national interest at stake: getting back a hostage who had American citizenship and ending a bombing campaign that was turning out to be very indecisive and costly and, and wasteful. Um, I think to go a step further than that, to impose punitive sanctions on Israel, uh, I think there'd have to be some interest at stake there as well. Now, if Trump feels like, we need to make a deal with Iran, you know, we've hit them hard now and it's time for diplomacy and the war needs to end, and Israel had decided to go ahead with the war over his objections, I think at that point you would probably see Trump start to, to contemplate more punitive measures. But I think absent that, I think, you know, Netanyahu would have to give him some reason to do it. And I'm not sure he's quite given him enough of a reason yet.

JP: We've talked a little bit today about where things could go with negotiations with Iran next, um, even though that does seem like quite a tall order, considering the sticking points that you talked about. Before we go, I would love to hear your thoughts on where things could go with Gaza. Do you have any sense that Trump will now turn his attention back to what is happening in Gaza? Will it be part of a larger negotiation? Um, might we see a ceasefire there now?

GREGG CARLSTROM: My... I mean, I hope. First of all, I really hope there is. There should have been a ceasefire long ago in Gaza. But my, my concern is I think what a lot of American presidents have done historically is they are willing to restrain Israel when it comes to things that Israel is doing in other countries -- in Lebanon, Syria, Iran. As we've seen Trump do, you know, he's tried to obviously limit the campaign in Iran; to some extent, limit what Israel is doing in Syria. But then at the same time, give Israel essentially free rein to do what it wants with the Palestinians. And I worry that we're going to end up there as well. That Gaza is just not going to get enough attention in the White House. That's what we saw earlier this year. There was a bit of attention during the transition where Trump was engaged, as you said before, with strong-arming Netanyahu into a ceasefire. But by March, when Netanyahu decided to abandon that ceasefire, Trump had really lost interest in Gaza. And so there was no pushback from the White House to try to keep Israel, uh, in that ceasefire. And since then, we haven't really seen a serious effort to revive it. So, I'm not sure that push is going to come from Washington. There is some talk in Israel right now that Netanyahu was, you know, politically buoyed by the war in Iran over the past two weeks. It's been broadly supported by the Israeli public, and it's helped his poll numbers. So there's some talk that maybe now he will think about calling a snap election in the next few months, uh, trying to reconfigure his coalition so he's not then as dependent on the hard right. And as part of that, perhaps he'll be willing to talk about a ceasefire in Gaza. Which is what most Israelis want -- 60 to 70 percent of Israelis in every poll for months now have supported a hostage deal and a permanent end to the war in Gaza. So if Netanyahu now thinks that his political fortunes have improved and it's time for an early election, if he's going to do that, I think there's a chance that he would then, for entirely self-interest and political reasons, decide that this is the moment to finally make a deal in Gaza.

JP: Okay. Gregg, thank you so much for this.

GREGG CARLSTROM: Thank you. My pleasure.

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JP: All right, that is all for today. I'm Jayme Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.

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