NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with author Max Boot about President Trump's recent foreign policy setbacks. Boot writes that Trump's "zigzagging" approach to Iran is "guaranteed to fail."

Transcript

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Let's dive a little deeper into President Trump's handling of this war in Iran with historian Max Boot. He's a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and also a Washington Post columnist. Good morning, and welcome to the program.

MAX BOOT: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

FADEL: Max, Iran is now threatening to wait till the midterms and basically wait out the president's term - President Trump's term before they negotiate on reopening the Strait of Hormuz. In your view, why is Iran willing to wait out the pain of U.S. attacks and the severe economic strain Iranian people are living through rather than negotiate?

BOOT: Well, I think that President Trump has found himself in a very unenviable position with regard to Iran, which explains why he has been unable to end the war, with the war now going on more than five months after President Trump had estimated it would only last four to five weeks. I think the basic situation that Trump is in is that the Iranians neither fear him nor feel like they can make a deal with him. And that's not where you want to be, but that's kind of where we are...

FADEL: And...

BOOT: ...In terms of - yeah. Go ahead.

FADEL: And how did the United States get to this point where Iran either fears them or trusts the administration to make a deal?

BOOT: Well, the first part - neither - why the Iranians no longer fear Trump - I mean, part of it is that for all these years, the U.S. has threatened military action against Iran. And now that it's happened, the Iranian regime seems - sees that it has survived American military action. It has not been destroyed, even though obviously the supreme leader was killed. Some other leaders were killed. But nevertheless, the regime is very much in control.

And so many of Trump's threats have not come to pass. I mean, he's threatened at least seven times since the start of the war on February 28 to unleash devastating violence on Iran and then pulled back each time to say, well, you know, I'm going to give negotiations a chance. So, you know, that doesn't inspire a lot of fear in Iran because they see that Trump is desperate to get out of the war. He's making threats that he's not carrying out.

The other part of it about why they feel like they can't make a deal with him is because when they did make a deal in June - the memorandum of understanding - it unraveled. And part of that was simply because it was so badly drafted that each side thought that they had something that the other side didn't think that they had. And this was over the control of the Strait of Hormuz, with the Iranians assuming that all traffic would have to go through their checkpoints and the U.S. thinking that, no, it could - the U.S. Navy could escort ships through Omani waters outside Iranian control. That led Iran to start attacking cargo ships and then led to U.S. retaliation, and the whole accord unraveled.

But that's the most - you know, that's the most recent time where the U.S. and Iran tried to reach a deal, and the Iranians feel like Trump betrayed the deal. Now, of course, Trump feels that the Iranians betrayed the deal. But the Iranians also, I mean, have this longstanding suspicion of the U.S., to include the fact that just in the last year, there have been a couple of times when Trump was negotiating with Iran and then ordered military attacks on Iran at the same time. The last time was in June of last year, the so-called 12-Day War. Then, of course, the same thing happened on February 28 of this year, leading us to the current war.

So basically, the Iranians are intensely distrustful of Trump, but they also are not that fearful of him anymore. And so that's why they feel free to continue taking actions that prolong the war.

FADEL: So if Trump's strategy continues to be threatening, quote, "military terror," as he has done, then saying - oh, actually, no. There's a deal in the making. It'll happen - what happens then with this war?

BOOT: That's a great question. I think that's basically a recipe for endless war. I think, you know, in Trump's mind, what he's doing is the so-called art of the deal - that, you know, he is constantly threatening violence and then, at the same time, saying, like, let's talk. And so he thinks this is a brilliant negotiating strategy. But in fact, that's not how it's coming across to the Iranians. To them, it simply seems incoherent, and that makes Trump somebody they feel like they can't negotiate with seriously. And so that's why we're in this war - in another forever war. And remember, President Trump ran for office promising to extricate the United States from wars. But now he's started one that he doesn't seem to know how to get out of.

FADEL: But what is different here? I mean, Trump has made deals with this kind of strategy in the past during this administration. He did broker a ceasefire that freed the hostages from Gaza. What makes his approach here guaranteed to fail, as you've put it?

BOOT: Well, I think part of it is that the Iranians feel like they have the upper hand here. That wasn't the case with Hamas and Gaza, which had taken quite a pounding. In this case, the Iranians feel like they are in the driver's seat because this war has led them to discover their true power, which is not the nuclear program. But it's their ability to control traffic in and out of the Strait of Hormuz, which is the waterway through which 20% of the world's oil passes. The Iranians feel this is a weapon. This is a tool that they can use for the long term to guarantee their own security against U.S. attack. And so they're determined not to give up control of the Strait of Hormuz.

So that's really the sticking point here, is - it's not the nuclear program. It's not all these other issues that Trump cited in starting the war. It's this entirely new issue of the Strait of Hormuz. And the Iranians have made clear they're not going to give up control. And so basically, to try to extricate himself from the conflict, they're demanding that Trump cede Iran control of this international waterway. And so far, Trump has not quite been willing to do that, even though he's made other concessions to the Iranians. And so therefore, the war continues.

FADEL: In your view, what should he be doing in this situation?

BOOT: Well, I think he's got the - two basic options. One is conciliation. The other is confrontation. In other words, he can either continue the conflict as it is, he can escalate or he can try to end it. I mean, I think, at this point, he's in such a weak position that conciliation is the path that makes the most sense, which probably means ceding some degree of Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz.

But remember, this is a war that has the support of less than a third of the American public. We're running out of munitions. So I don't think he has any real choice. But if he wants to, and that seems to be the way he's leaning now, he can continue the conflict. He can continue the blockade on Iranian shipping and hope that as the economic damage to Iran grows, Iran will become more malleable. But the one thing he should not do is zigzag back and forth between conciliation and confrontation. That is an approach guaranteed to fail. But unfortunately, that is exactly what he is doing.

FADEL: That's Max Boot. He's a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a columnist for The Washington Post. Thank you for your time and your insights.

BOOT: Thank you so much.

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