AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. For more than two decades, he was a State Department Middle East analyst, adviser and negotiator in both Republican and Democratic administrations, and he joins us now. Welcome to the program.
AARON DAVID MILLER: Thanks for having me, Ayesha.
RASCOE: So The New York Times headline is "U.S. Enters War Against Iran." For Americans listening at home, is the U.S. at war?
MILLER: Well, I don't think there's any doubt about it. In fact, the real question is, are we headed to an all-out war? - that is to say, an extended confrontation in which the Iranians - using their asymmetrical instruments, proxies, missiles, terrorism - will strike U.S. forces, bases in Iraq and in Syria, Americans deployed in the Gulf, oil infrastructure. Price of oil has gone up 10% since over the last nine days. U.S. only gets 3% of its oil from the Gulf, but others do. Chinese are dependent on it.
RASCOE: And oil is set on a global scale, so I mean, if it gets affected, it's hitting everybody.
MILLER: Right. So look, you know, my take on this is pretty clear. You know, attacking Iran is not a Nike commercial. It's not, let's do it. The reality is, when America goes to war - and let's be clear, we are at war with Iran - it needs to ask basic questions. Can we do it? And by the briefing I just heard from JCS Chairman Caine, president said we've totally obliterated Iran's - the three sites. Caine was much more withholding on this. He said they've been severely damaged. Can we do it? Should we do it? What'll it cost? And what's the end game? And I'd only point out that this region is literally littered with the remains of great powers who believe they could impose their will on smaller ones.
Iran is weaker than it's ever been, and it rolled the dice by advancing its nuclear program beyond levels way beyond the JC Iran nuclear agreement, and the IAEA is convinced that 19 out of - what? - 35 countries censured Iran for basically violating their agreements under the NPT. So I think we're headed for not all-out war. I don't - this is not Iraq. It is not Afghanistan. The U.S. is not going to deploy hundreds of thousands of forces to fundamentally change the regime or to ensure that it can't rebuild its program, but we certainly are not headed anytime soon for serious diplomacy.
RASCOE: Can you talk to me about that? - because you've been inside administrations. Like, who is talking to whom right now? What are the back channels, and who has the power to deescalate this at this moment?
MILLER: You know, there are three core actors in this combustible situation, and only three, in my judgment. You have Washington - president and his national security team. You've got the Israelis. And you've got the bureaucracy - the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Those are the core decisions. I suspect the Saudis and the Omanis are sending all kinds of messages to the Iranians about the need for restraint, about the need to try to figure out how to create an off-ramp. But two months was spent, and at the end of almost six rounds of negotiation, the basic bridge between Iran's demand of the right to enrich uranium and Trump's decision to say there will be no enrichment - that bridge was never constructed. And frankly, I've been around negotiations for a long time. I think you could have gone at this for another two months. You still wouldn't have gotten it.
RASCOE: Does the U.S. have the diplomatic capacity, at this point, when you've had, you know, so many agencies gutted, to really do something like this, to pull off a deescalation or to pull off an agreement like this?
MILLER: It's will and skill, Ayesha. It's will and skill. And yes, the answer is, you know, I've worked for Democrats and Republicans. I voted for Democrats and Republicans. I'm certainly no fan and advocate of Donald Trump for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with foreign policy. But yeah, the reality is, even with a set of advisers who actually don't really advise, they intuit what the president wants, and then they try to give him what he wants. But I think - yeah. I think - but again, the question is, can you find the off-ramp that they searched for for two months? And in the wake of these strikes and what the Iranian response may be, it's going to be very difficult to put Humpty Dumpty together again and to construct all the pieces of a functional negotiation. I hope that it somehow materializes, but I don't have real high confidence.
RASCOE: Quickly, how do you assess the risk to American safety right now?
MILLER: I think you've got to assume worst case. You've got to batten down the hatches at diplomatic installations. American citizens need to be advised wherever they are, and certainly American forces in the Gulf - the 40,000 we have, the 2,500 in Iraq, the near 1,000 deployed in Syria - you've got to assume the worst case until it proves otherwise.
RASCOE: That's longtime Middle East negotiator Aaron David Miller. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
MILLER: Thanks so much for having me.
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