How Iran and Israel are part of the Trump-Saudi nuclear deal

**Kusha Navadar** (0:05)
This is Brian Lehrer's Daily Politics Podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Monday, July 27th.
I'm Kusha Navadar. I'm filling in for Brian today. Last week, the president was looking at plans for ramping up attacks on Iran. Secretary of State Rubio said this on Thursday.

**Marco Rubio** (0:29)
I saw Arachi, their foreign minister, who the other day say something about their policies, an eye for an eye.
The president's policy is a head for an eye. I mean, honestly, that's what it's going to be. I mean, they will pay a very heavy price for the things they're doing. They're already paying a very heavy price.

**Kusha Navadar** (0:45)
And the price of oil spiked to over $100 a barrel. But this weekend, no attacks on either side, and it seems diplomatic efforts are starting up again, and the price of oil has dropped. There was also an announcement of a deal to provide nuclear power to Saudi Arabia, which the president then seemed to throw a wrench in a social post the next day following strenuous objections from Israel and others. So for more on the status of the war, the deal with the Saudis and Israeli President Netanyahu's visit to the White House this week, we're joined by Fred Kaplan, Slate's War Stories columnist, contributor to the British publication, the iPaper and the author of The Bomb, Presidents, Generals and the Secret History of Nuclear War, and of the novel A Capital Calamity. Fred, welcome back to WNYC.

**Fred Kaplan** (1:38)
Thanks, always good to be here.

**Kusha Navadar** (1:40)
Always great to have you. So Fred, I mentioned that on Friday, word was that President Trump was meeting at the White House with advisors on whether to escalate attacks on Iran after the June ceasefire collapsed and the latest US offer for resuming it was rejected by Iran. But he evidently decided to hold off. Here's UN Ambassador Mike Walz on Meet the Press just yesterday.

**Mike Walz** (2:03)
What the president is doing right now, as we've seen all along, is giving some talks some space. Talks are ongoing. They're happening at every level from the more technical aspect of it, all the way to the highest levels, of course.

**Kusha Navadar** (2:18)
Okay, so Fred, there's a lot to parse through here. I guess just right at the top, is there any word on where talks stand now?

**Fred Kaplan** (2:27)
About the same place that they were a week ago, two weeks ago, three weeks ago. I don't know how many times President Trump has said of Iran, oh, rational people there now, they want to make a deal. I got a call this morning which said, sir, we want to make a deal.
And it's not happened because, I mean, if this is really, you know, we are now involved in what back in Cold War days used to be called a half war. In other words, you would prepare for the major war, you know, with the Soviet Union or whatever, and then you'd have enough left over for a small war. I mean, you know, Vietnam was considered a small war when it began too. Didn't turn out that way. But we're, the reason why Trump has not gone ahead with further attacks, well, there are two reasons. One, he's been told by his military advisors that given that they've attacked more than 13,000 targets and it hasn't affected Iranian behavior in the slightest, there really aren't that many more targets to attack that stand any chance of affecting their behavior in the future. And second, those 13,000 attacks back starting in February, they depleted a lot of our major weapon systems, especially air defense systems, to the point where if a major war did start right away, we would be in serious trouble. And so why go to the trouble of resuming the war against Iran with quite possibly no impact except for further depleting our own arsenal? So that's why he's taking a break. And the Iranians know this.
And they see that they have the upper hand because of their control of the administrative Hormuz, which we cannot change just by attacking a half a dozen more military targets.

**Kusha Navadar** (4:43)
So what I hear you saying is that the talks are in about the same place as they have been in the past couple of weeks. And there's two real main reasons why Trump is considering no further attacks. One you mentioned, there just aren't that many targets. And secondly, you know, a lot of the resources for those attacks are being depleted, actually, of those 13,000 attacks. I'm wondering, on the Iranian side, do you know more about what was offered in the last ceasefire proposal and why the Iranians rejected it?