America’s Twisted Iran Policy – Barbara Slavin

Talia Baroncelli
You’re watching theAnalysis.news, and I’m your host, Talia Baroncelli. Today, I’ll be joined by Barbara Slavin, a journalist and Middle East analyst. We’ll be discussing the state of U.S.-Iran relations.

If you like the work that we do, feel free to support us by going to our website, theAnalysis.news. You can hit the donate button at the top right corner of the screen. Make sure you’re on our mailing list; that way, you get all our content sent straight to your inbox. Feel free to like and subscribe to the show on our YouTube channel, as well as on Spotify or on Apple. See you in a bit with Barbara Slavin.

I’m very happy to be joined by Barbara Slavin. She’s a Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington and a lecturer in International Affairs at George Washington University. Before she joined Stimson, she founded the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council and led a bipartisan task force on Iran. She’s the author of Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S., and the Twisted Path to Confrontation, which she published in 2007. She’s also worked as a Senior Diplomatic reporter for USA Today.

Talia Baroncelli
Thank you so much for joining me today, Barbara. It’s great to have you.

Barbara Slavin
Sure. My pleasure.

Talia Baroncelli
Well, I wanted to get your take on the current state of U.S.-Iran relations. You’ve been to Iran many times. You even interviewed President Ahmadinejad and went to Rouhani’s inauguration in 2014. Given your understanding of hardliners and so-called moderates there, especially since the U.S. has just given the green light to Israel to strike Iran as long as it’s not a nuclear or an oil facility, what is your take now on U.S.-Iran relations?

Barbara Slavin
First of all, thanks for having me. I was thinking about the title of my book, The Twisted Path to Confrontation. I remember when I wrote it, I thought, well, what if it’s a twisted path to peace? But unfortunately, it is more of a twisted path to confrontation. The U.S. and Iran have not had proper relations since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The Shah was our good friend, and the Islamic Republic has not been our good friend.

We’ve come to direct blows from time to time in the Persian Gulf in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War when the U.S. blew up much of the Iranian Navy to protect shipping in the Persian Gulf. There were other clashes that occurred with Iran-backed groups like Hezbollah, the Beirut bombing of 1983, which killed 241 Marines, attacks on the U.S. Embassy, taking of hostages, a lot of very ugly incidents, Iran-backed groups in Saudi Arabia that killed American airmen in the 1990s.

There have also been periods when the United States and Iran were talking, indirectly and directly. To my mind, I think the real mistake was when the Trump administration withdrew from the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal. Trump withdrew in 2018, and the trajectory has been pretty poor since then. Again, there have been efforts. There were efforts to try to revive the nuclear deal when Biden first came in, and they failed for a variety of reasons. Even just as long as a month or so ago, the President of Iran, a guy named Pezeshkian, was talking about new talks with the United States. We are trapped in the legacy of our alliances.

The U.S. is a strong supporter of Israel. The Islamic Republic has called for the destruction of Israel and has more or less actively supported groups that have threatened Israel over the past 40-odd years, particularly the last 20-odd years. This makes it really impossible for the United States and Iran to have a proper relationship as long as we are allied with Israel and Iran is supporting Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and various other groups.

What is the basis? The only basis could come if we really began to talk about regional peace in a serious way, with Iran embracing a solution to the Palestinian issue that does not involve the destruction or replacement of Israel as it’s currently constituted.

Every now and then, Iran seems to flirt with something like that, but in the current situation, we’ve just seen more and more escalation. The Israelis have gone wild and are assassinating as many leaders of Iran-backed groups as they can possibly get their hands on. Most recently, Yahya Sinwar of Hamas, Hassan Nasrallah, Ismail Haniyeh, and many Iranian military officers who’ve been involved in support for these groups. How do we get out of this cycle of escalation? It’s really hard for me to see right now.

Talia Baroncelli
Well, we will speak about the escalations and the assassinations of Haniyah, as you mentioned, and also an IRGC leader who was killed in the strike that took out Nasrallah in Lebanon. That could be seen as another extrajudicial killing on the part of Israel that Iran would want to respond to.

Aside from that, if we go back to U.S. policy, even before October 7 and before the war on Gaza, it was in support of the Abraham Accords. To me, the Abraham Accords, which encouraged normalization between countries such as Saudi Arabia and Israel, were also a regional framework to contain Iran. To me, that doesn’t seem like it’s conducive to any real collegial or proper relations between the U.S., those countries, and Iran, of course.

Barbara Slavin
Well, the U.S. may see it as a mechanism for containing Iran, but I don’t think the countries that are participating in it necessarily do. The one positive thing that we’ve seen over the past couple of years is that Iran is actually trying to improve its relations with its Arab neighbors, particularly the oil-wealthy neighbors like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait. The U.S. may be encouraging these countries to have diplomatic relations with Israel, but they don’t want to put themselves in the crosshairs between Israel and Iran or between the United States and Iran. If there’s any hope to get out of the cycle of escalation, it might actually come through regional initiatives.

Talia Baroncelli
Given all that and the recent assassinations, as you mentioned, Ismail Haniyeh, when he was in Tehran at the inauguration of Masoud Pezeshkian, the IRGC leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and then most recently, of course, Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, how do you think Iran will now position itself with regards to Israel and the United States? Do you see an Israeli attack coming anytime soon against Iran?

Barbara Slavin
I think Iran is in a real quandary. The country needs better relations with a number of countries. It needs sanctions relief, frankly, if it’s ever going to be able to pull its economy out of the doldrums. It doesn’t really want a confrontation now with the West, but it has to rhetorically support these groups. It’s been connected to them for many decades, going back to Hezbollah, starting in the early 1980s.

How do they save face but also somehow shift policy? I’ve been suggesting for the longest time that Iran really does have to come up with a more realistic posture toward the Arab-Israeli dispute, toward the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. It just can’t continue to call for “death to Israel” and a referendum among Palestinians around the world to replace the current Israeli state, especially given the setbacks to these organizations that Iran supports. It’s pathetic. I think it would be better if Iran would join a regional consensus for a constructive solution to the Palestinian issue that involves the eventual creation of some Palestinian entity that can bring about an end to these wars. Hezbollah should agree to withdraw to the Litani River, as specified in UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. Everyone should abide by the accepted international solutions to these issues. That would isolate Israel, which, of course, has been resisting any prospect of a two-state solution for a very long time. Instead, Iran isolates itself by being a rejectionist. Rejectionism just brings more and more violence.

Talia Baroncelli
Right, but you see the United States actively enabling Israel in this particular context, giving it all the weapons that it needs to launch this invasion or what some people are calling a limited ground incursion. We see the destruction, and I think it’s safe to say that it is an invasion of Lebanon. If you speak about more common sense positions for Iran, who could Iran actually ally with? As we mentioned, countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE have very different outlooks when it comes to the region, and they are in favor of normalization with Israel, which essentially means putting the Palestinian issue to bed and just having these weapons deals.

Barbara Slavin
I don’t think that’s entirely true. The Saudis, for example, have come out very strongly and said that before they normalize with the Israelis, they need to see a credible path toward a Palestinian state. Now, maybe they’re just lying, and those are words, and they won’t follow through with it, but that is certainly what they have said. There are UN resolutions, there are Organization of Islamic Conference statements that have come out, and resolutions of various sorts that Iran has nominally signed on to.

I think we’ve seen the limits of rejectionism, and most colossally from Yahya Sinwar and the attack on Israel of October 7, 2023, which has led to these horrendous wars and given Israel an excuse to go in and frankly kill many people—innocent civilians, along with the leaders of these organizations.

As far as U.S. support for Israel, that is going to continue for some time. There are many Americans who are extremely upset with Israel, and I’m among them, for the way it has conducted these wars, particularly what it has done in Gaza. But there is still bipartisan support, even including many Democrats, for Israeli defense, especially when it comes to Iran.

You heard Kamala Harris the other day say Iran was the chief American adversary, which frankly floored me. I certainly don’t see Iran in those terms, but many members of the political class in both parties in this country see Iran as an enemy and have for a long time. So that’s a fact. Israel will continue, certainly, to get defensive arms. We will see after our election whether there’s any space for some pressure on Israel to stop the war.

Talia Baroncelli
Well, Masoud Pezeshkian, the current President, ran on a campaign of sanctions relief. He wanted to get sanctions for Iran and better relations with the West. We could argue whether the elections themselves are actually democratic, given that the Guardian Council is able to vet certain candidates so that only specific candidates can actually run for the Iranian election.

Now that all of these assassinations have taken place, including the assassination of Haniyeh on Iranian soil and the killing of the IRGC leader in Lebanon, Pezeshkian couldn’t actually foretell that all of this would happen. But at the same time, he’s put into this difficult position. Do you think the current situation, as well as the sanctions, is perhaps emboldening other people in the government, such as the other hardliners or the people who are more affiliated with the Iranian and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, for them to weigh in even more and to sideline Pezeshkian?

Barbara Slavin
Well, let’s be frank here. Pezeshkian is President. He’s not a Supreme Leader, so he doesn’t make these decisions. He has an influence, and the people that he appoints, particularly his foreign minister and so on, have an influence over how Iran is perceived in the world. The decisions are being made by the Supreme Leader, by the IRGC, and by the deep state of Iran. There was always a limit to what he could do.

Now, look, I think Iran, like everyone else, is waiting for our elections. If Kamala Harris wins, there’s a possibility, I think, in Biden’s lame-duck session for some de-escalatory measures, perhaps on the Iranian nuclear program as well as on the wars that are going on in the Middle East.

If it’s Donald Trump, I’m very worried that the Israelis will feel even more emboldened to do even more. Netanyahu is clearly hoping that Trump will win, and that will put Iran in a very difficult position. We are waiting to see what Israel does to Iran in response to the October 1 missile attacks. Bibi Netanyahu made some pledges to Biden, but who knows if he’ll actually carry them out. The Israelis have surprised the United States with some of these assassinations, with the exploding pagers in Lebanon, and many things that it has done that the United States was not warned about in advance. We will see what Israel does when it does it.

Talia Baroncelli
I do have to take issue with the argument that Trump would be so much worse. I do believe that he would be worse. But if you actually look at the policy right now where the U.S. says they didn’t know about the “pager attacks,” which even Leon Panetta called terrorist attacks because they struck indiscriminately and wounded and killed so many people, but also not really having any conditions on Israeli operations. There already is a genocide underway. How much worse could it get? Would you say that under Trump, for example, there would already be strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities? Is that what the difference potentially could be?

Barbara Slavin
It’s very hard to know with Trump. He says a lot of things. One minute, he’s talking about making deals, and the next minute, he’s talking about nuking Iran and destroying its precious heritage. I have no faith in his stability whatsoever. If he’s elected to another term, he’s going to be surrounded by people who are not as experienced as his first set of advisors. Whether they’re more or less risk-averse, I just don’t know. He’s very unpredictable. He has taken a huge sum of money from a woman named Miriam Adelson, the widow of Sheldon Adelson. I think that means he intends to support the Israelis if they annex the West Bank, if they resettle Gaza with Israeli settlers. Lord knows what he would do.

As bad as the Democrats have been, and I agree with you, I’ve not been happy with Biden. I think he’s been much too enabling of what Israel has done. I still would rather see a Harris administration than a Trump administration. I think I’d have a better idea of how it would conduct itself.

Talia Baroncelli
There is the possibility that she said Iran is the United States’s greatest adversary because she was caught off guard. It did seem like she was not ready for that question. It’s maybe part of her political strategy at the moment to get the Dick Cheney’s and the other Republicans on board because she keeps hammering home that she has 200 Republicans supporting her. I think that’s a horrible strategy. That’s my own personal take. We can talk about that another time. But maybe, and I hope, I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt, and I hope that she was just saying that to present herself as this tough neocon to appeal to a certain segment of the American electorate. But obviously, we don’t know.

Barbara Slavin
That’s a question. If I were a White House journalist and I had the chance to ask her a question, I would press her on that because it was a really strange response. Maybe she had Iran on the brain because we are in a situation where Israel and Iran are now fighting an open war, not a shadow war, and where the United States has been dragged in, in Israel’s defense. How many times have we sent aircraft carriers? Now, we’re sending a new missile defense system, which will be manned by Americans to protect Israel from whatever Iran does in retaliation for whatever Israel does. We are being sucked into this conflict in a very dangerous way. I would hope that whatever administration comes next tries to reach some understanding with Iran that will keep us out of a direct confrontation with them.

Talia Baroncelli
I do have another question on Lebanon. There was a television address, I think it was on October 8, by the Chief Deputy Leader of Hezbollah, [Sheikh] Naim Qassem

Barbara Slavin
Naim Qassem.

Talia Baroncelli
Sorry, Naim Qassem, correct. I think it was incorrectly reported that, and I referred to this in a previous interview when someone flagged it. It was incorrectly reported that he said that he would support a ceasefire that was led by the Speaker of the Parliament in Lebanon, [Nabih] Berri, and that this ceasefire would be supported even if it would be decoupled or not tied to one in Gaza. He didn’t actually say that in the televised address. However, if you look at Hezbollah’s discussions or their statements since then or the way that they’re behaving, they’re essentially saying that they’re allowing Berri to continue on his path of trying to get some diplomatic deal.
Based on that particular fact that they would welcome a ceasefire separate from one in Gaza, does that mean that Iran is leaving Hezbollah out to dry, that Iran is maybe not giving the support that Hezbollah needs to continue this war with Israel? We did see that they sent additional rockets at military targets. It’s not that they’re not capable of launching attacks, but is this any indication that they’re maybe not getting the support they want from Iran?

Barbara Slavin
I don’t know, frankly. Hezbollah has suffered massive blows, and the Israelis have apparently blown up a lot of their missile stockpiles. So they still have the ability, obviously, to send some missiles against Israel. We saw an attack on a military base that killed four Israelis. They still have the ability to fight as guerrilla fighters in the south of Lebanon, where the Israelis have invaded again. No shortage there.

This is a devastating war for Lebanon, which was already in bad shape. A million people displaced, over 2,000 killed. It’s not something that Lebanon really can afford. Syrians are leaving Lebanon and going back to Syria, which shows you exactly how bad it is. I’m not sure what leeway Iran is giving Nabih Berri or others, but it’s in the interest of everyone in the region, frankly, that these wars come to an end.

To the extent Iran has any influence left with Hamas, now is the time to figure out how to get the Israeli hostages out because that could be a turning point. Then, there would be pressure on Netanyahu to end the wars. While those hostages are still being held, Netanyahu can justify continuing to pummel Gaza and also Lebanon.

Talia Baroncelli
Biden just made a statement saying that this can be an opportunity to find a ceasefire in Gaza, to bring an end to the war, and to get the hostages back. Do you think Prime Minister Netanyahu sees it that way?

Barbara Slavin
Well, possibly, but you need… I don’t know what the state of Hamas leadership is now after Haniyeh’s death. Who’s in charge? Who’s in a position to actually get these hostages freed? Where are they being held? Some of them are apparently being held by private militias and mafia groups. There was a question of whether Hamas could actually gather them together, those still alive and the bodies of those that have died, and produce them if there were a settlement with the Israelis. There’s a lot that’s still up in the air. Clearly, Biden would like this war to end before his presidency does, and it would be a huge relief if we could see some progress before the elections.

Talia Baroncelli
Right. I don’t think we’re going to see progress before the elections on the war between Russia and Ukraine. I just have one question there, because we recently heard Ukrainian President Zelenskyy say that North Korea is sending 10,000 troops to Russia. South Korea said that something like 1,000 or 1,500 troops have already been sent to Vladivostok. What’s your take on this? If that’s the case, Zelenskyy is saying that North Korea getting involved could lead to a world war. That also means that the United States has been involved this whole time, and that’s been incredibly escalatory as well. It proves the point that this war needs to end. What’s your take on that?

Barbara Slavin
Well, I would think the North Koreans are doing this for hard currency or for something else that they desperately need. Sending mercenaries to fight in Ukraine on behalf of Russia is pretty drastic. There are already North Koreans that labor in mines, that do all sorts of horrible, dirty jobs around the world for hard currency. The North Korean regime is essentially a family mafia regime. They sell counterfeit cigarettes, scotch, and commit cybercrime to get money to keep that country afloat and to support its nuclear program and the elite of the country, the military elite, and the Kim family. It’s not that surprising to me. It’s in line with the things that the North Koreans would do. I just don’t know what they’re getting from the Russians, whether it’s money or stuff.

The Russians are also buying a lot of North Korean artillery because they’re running out to use in Ukraine. There’s been a troubling, I don’t call it a formal alliance, but we do see more and more connections between Iran, which supplies drones to the Russians to use in Ukraine, North Korea, China, and Russia.

I did a discussion with Foreign Policy magazine recently on whether we were seeing some new axis of authoritarians. I think these are very transactional alliances of convenience between countries that are all sanctioned to one extent or another, and see an advantage in cooperating with each other in this way. I don’t think these are deep-seated alliances between countries that really trust each other.

For Iran, it’s so sanctioned that it has to do what it can to survive. Certainly, the regime is doing that. If that means sending drones to Russia to use in Ukraine, despite Russia’s violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and how much Iran purports to care about sovereignty as a country that’s been invaded by Iraq and so on, they will do it, and they will find a rationale for it. Again, I think it’s time for Iran to really reevaluate its strategies in the Middle East and also regarding Russia, because it’s not benefiting the Iranian people, certainly, and I don’t think it’s benefiting even the Iranian government, ultimately.

Talia Baroncelli
Well, if it can only do deals in that space with countries that are under sanction or maybe are not affected by Western sanctions, what other alternatives does it have?

Barbara Slavin
Well, it can try, and hopefully will, to reach a new agreement with the United States about its nuclear program that would entail sanctions relief. It could try to patch up relations with the Europeans by no longer sending drones to Russia to use in Ukraine. This has been a big sore spot with the Europeans who are furious about this. It can change or not.

We just ran a piece at the Stimson Center from an Iranian writer about how this is the orientation of the deep state toward Russia and China, the so-called Look East policy, and that they’re not going to change, in which case they’re going to have to live with the consequences, which mean continued economic sanctions.

Talia Baroncelli
It’s only if there is some form of sanctions or relief that people can actually mobilize, organize, and demand change in their government. Otherwise, there’s not really much that they can do. They’re not in an economic position to be able to demand these things from their governments when they’re just struggling and trying to make a living.

Barbara Slavin
It’s ironic. People who say that they want to help the Iranian people who support these sanctions don’t realize that they do put people in a position where it’s very, very difficult for them to rise up because they’re so dependent on the little bit that they earn to get by. The sanctions, the government, the elite manage just fine. They have access to hard currency. It’s the ordinary people who suffer. These are the only tools that we seem to have to deal with Iran. I wish there were some other way, but politically, it’s very difficult. These sanctions have been supported by both political parties in the United States.

Talia Baroncelli
Yeah, and Joe Biden didn’t sign an executive order to get the U.S. back into the nuclear deal, unfortunately. That was really-

Barbara Slavin
He did not.

Talia Baroncelli
All right, Barbara Slavin, it’s been really great speaking to you. Thanks for joining theAnalysis.news.

Barbara Slavin
My pleasure. Thank you very much. I enjoyed it.