Suzanne Maloney on Whether Perpetual Conflict is New Normal for the Gulf

**Suzanne Maloney** (0:04)
I think that, you know, this kind of no peace, no war, occasional flare-ups of friction is likely going to be a sustained reality, even if we were able to come to a new set of terms with the Iranians, or if we were able to go back to the MOU. I think whatever happens, we should just price in the fact that it's going to be unstable and volatile.

**Jason Bordoff** (0:24)
Nearly a month after a ceasefire, the US-Iran deal seems to have all but collapsed, as both nations have slipped back into active conflict. On Sunday, Tehran announced that the Strait of Hormuz is once again closed, and moved President Trump immediately countered, stating the waterway will remain open, quote, with or without Iran. Today, as I'm taping this on Monday afternoon, the president has just announced that the US will reinstate its blockade to become, quote, the guardian of the Strait, even floating a controversial plan to charge commercial ships to ensure safe passage. We are in a critical window where both sides are aggressively trying to redefine their leverage in the region, yet neither has fully abandoned the negotiating table. The US can't maintain its high-stakes engagement indefinitely. So are we right back to square one? Is this perpetual state of uncertainty the new normal for the Strait of Hormuz? What realistic leverage does Washington still possess on the nuclear front? And with senior HUTI leaders announcing their involvement, how does the collapse of this deal reverberate throughout the Gulf region?
This is Columbia Energy Exchange, a weekly podcast from the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. I'm Jason Bordoff.
Today on the show, Suzanne Maloney. Suzanne's the Vice President and Director of the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, where her research focuses on Iran and Persian Gulf energy. Suzanne has advised Democratic and Republican administrations on Iran policy, including as an external advisor to senior State Department officials during the Obama administration, and as a member of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's policy planning staff. Earlier in her career, she served as a Middle East advisor and geopolitical analyst for the ExxonMobil Corporation. Suzanne joined me to discuss the current and unpredictable state of affairs in the strait and how the conflict might play out from here. We discussed Israel's role and how the conflict is shaping geopolitics in Yemen and Lebanon and other parts of the Gulf. We talked about the state of Iran's nuclear capabilities, and we considered the broader context, how Iran has responded to economic pressures and what its leaders are willing to do to maintain power. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Suzanne Maloney, welcome to Columbia Energy Exchange for the very first time. So good to see you. I really appreciate you making time for this.

**Suzanne Maloney** (2:55)
Well, thanks to you, Jason, for inviting me. I think you were prescient when you reached out a few weeks ago that this would be an interesting day to talk.

**Jason Bordoff** (3:02)
Well, I didn't know today. We were joking just before we started recording that I think I emailed you right around the time every headline was, a deal to end the war, finalize Strait to reopen.
So we're talking a day before this comes out. The things are changing minute by minute. But tell me how it's going with the war over and the Strait open. How's that working out so far?

**Suzanne Maloney** (3:24)
Well, the Strait was open for about 26 days. And I think from what we could see, the traffic was somewhat erratic. But we were back to what I understand was approximately 20% of pre-war traffic. And that was an important indicator. But obviously, the memorandum of understanding that was concluded between the United States and Iran had a lot of space for misinterpretation and contestation. And what we really saw over those 26 days were both sides attempting to impose their own definition of how they saw those terms, particularly around the Strait of Hormuz. And the Iranians' efforts to try to drive traffic through the route that is closest to their own shoreline over which they have very significant control.
And the United States' efforts to try to encourage and in fact guide ships through a route that hugged closer to the Omani coastline, produced an Iranian response, kinetic, and then a series of escalatory steps on both sides that appear now to have scuppered the memorandum of understanding brought us back to a much more intense phase of conflict, although still not in the height of the at the height of the war that we saw.

**Jason Bordoff** (4:45)
Yeah. So again, things could change within 24 hours. But as of 24 hours before when people could listen to this, we're talking on Monday.