Professor Michael Clarke: US 'desperate' to get out of Iran

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Stepping back a little bit from today to to the week's events. Um interested in your take obviously there was uh operation epic fury then there was briefly uh this operation to try and escort boats out of the straight of horm. How hard was that for the US to actually deliver or or could they have done had everyone wanted it to continue?

[00:00:21]>> Well, operation freedom um to get boats or ships out of the straight of was a very big operation. Sentcom had been working on it for a long time. They'd worked on it secretly to demine some channel, a channel around the coast of UAE and Oman. And it was ready to go. It had taken them a long time to put it together because it was a three-stage plan to work inland in Iran to actually stop anything moving to then work put a dome as they called it over the straits itself so that nothing in the straits could threaten any ships moving out and then to move ships out in a clear channel. They worked on it a lot and they began it. They got two American flagged cargo ships out with a couple of American destroyers shephering them out and they thought that was the beginning of it. Pete Hgsth said was it two days 48 hours ago he said right hundreds of ships hundreds of ships are now waiting to go through and within a couple of hours President Trump had said no we're not doing that. I guess my reason for asking with that that point is do you think therefore it stopped because it couldn't or wasn't going to work or because there was diplomatic pressure whether it was from the Saudis, whether it's ahead of his trip to China. Why did President Trump stop pursuing that plan when obviously as you say there've been so much work going into it?

[00:01:36]>> Yeah, I I think probably two things. One is that it wasn't obviously going to reassure the tanker owners and the uh the crews to give it a go. The the idea was once they see it working, they'll all they'll all want to get out. So, they will. Um, but we all thought it was a it was a bit of a long shot because it would have to get, you know, 1500 tankers out and then more tankers back in. There's lots of empty tankers out there waiting to go back into the Gulf to load up again to resume trade. So, it was always going to be a long process and and it it was a big operation. But I think against that too was the sense that President Trump feels boxed in by for diplomatic reasons. Um, and this uh summit he's going to in China next week, I think looms large for him. He didn't want to go with this thing unresolved.

[00:02:20]And you know, he he always expresses diplomacy as if it's a game of cards, as if it's a poker match. Um, and if that's the case, then he's he looks as if he's folding. He looks as if he's just decided he's got to fold, at least for now. Now, you never predict um because I mean, even this week, we've gone rounded a complete circle inside 48 hours. And my, you know, my heart goes out to the planners at Sentcom, Central Command.

[00:02:42]You know, they're in Tampa and and in Doha, the forward base in the Gulf, they must be banging their heads on the desk.

[00:02:48]You know, all the planning they do and it's just undercut in a in a in a in a truth social post and everything goes into a different direction. I mean, they must wonder what what are we supposed to do with this sort of political direction that we're not getting.

[00:03:01]>> What's your sense on how optimistic or not we should be about these peace talks? Oh, I think we've arrived at the point where the United States is now is desperate to get out and is looking for a way out that can be presented as somehow better than the 2015 deal, which is what Trump departed from. And you know, he wrecked that deal in 2018. And so, he's got to find a way of making the deal he might now come to, at least an interim deal, a 30-day ceasefire. Well, they talk about lots of things. In reality, it will look spooky like the 2015 deal, but in slightly worse conditions because the Iranians are now have a more hardline leadership than they had in 2015. They now know how easy it is to block the straight of to make them unnavigable um very very easily which they couldn't have done in 2015.

[00:03:48]The technologies are different against that. Um, one advantage is that Iranian um, nuclear facilities are much more destroyed, much more um, uh, much less able to reconstruct themselves. So the Iranians are somewhere some years away from reconstructing their facilities, but that doesn't stop somebody like North Korea or Russia giving them stuff um, in the future. And so the threat will will remain there. And the Iranians will make it will say, you know, we have no desire to make a nuclear weapon.

[00:04:17]They've always said that. We know they're lying. They know they're lying.

[00:04:20]and it we'll pretend that we believe them this time. We won't, but we'll pretend we do and we'll go back to the old process. There's an old phrase in diplomacy, if you can't solve a problem, you manage it. We couldn't solve the the Iranian nuclear problem back in 2010, 2011, 2012. And so, the world managed it. And it was managing it quite successfully. Now, President Trump is discovering the same thing. He can't solve the problem, but he's going to have to manage it. And he's going to have to make that management process look somehow different to the one we had before. Is there another point or is this not fair that Iran both economically and militarily is much weaker than it was?

[00:04:56]>> Yeah, undoubtedly.

[00:04:57]>> And and that if peace is temporarily held is a is a positive at least for for a number of years if not for a number of decades.

[00:05:05]>> Yes. I mean I I don't know about decades but President Trump could certainly say look Iran is much weaker than it was much weaker. And that's certainly true and the but the leadership is stronger.

[00:05:15]So, you know, he's got a a less pliable group of um uh revolutionary guard leaders there now. And I do think there will be a reckoning between the population and the government in Iran. I mean, the the the situation for ordinary Iranians, you know, 90 million of them and at least 70 million, probably 80 million of them, but at least 70 million of that 90 million, they hate the government. They hate them. And there will be a reckoning, but probably not soon. Maybe in a couple of years, maybe four or five years, there will be a reckoning. And when that reckoning comes, I'm sure it will be very violent, which it might not have been before, but it will occur. I think, you know, President Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu will get their regime change, but probably not while they're in office.

[00:05:56]It'll it'll come down the road. There will be a new Iran emerging out of this because Iran is in is in such dire straits economically compared to where it was a year ago. You mentioned there President Trump and um Benjamin Netanyahu and I just interested because obviously before you were talking about how America wants an offramp, right?

[00:06:15]They want to get out of it. What does Israel want now?

[00:06:18]>> Yeah. They don't want the war to stop because Israel's got its own war. So this war within a war is is Israel's war on Hezbollah to once and for all hit Hezbollah so hard it will de demolish it. And Hezbollah is Israel's main opposition really. I mean Israel has never bothered too much about Hamas. it suited them to have Hamas in Gaza because it kept the Palestinians split.

[00:06:38]They've never much worried about the Houthies who were just a nuisance for from their point of view in Yemen. They worried a lot about Iran because Iran was the was their big problem and they think if the Iranian problem has now been at least mitigated by the destruction, now their main problem remains Hezbollah and Israel wants to carry on. This this process that we've seen this week has gone on without any real consultation with Israel. And so two things h are happening. One is that Benjamin Natu is Netanyahu is seeking reassurances from the Trump administration that they won't give in too much that they will stick to uh you know a tough plan on nuclear negotiations and that getting getting the highlyenriched uranium out of Iran this 400 kilos or so of highlyenriched uranium must leave Iran to some third country that's probably going to happen and that's very very important to the Israelis. So they they've got their their their issues that they want to press, but they're not in a good position. If Trump needs to make the deal before or a deal before he goes to China, which he probably does, which is next week, he'll tell the the Israelis, you've got to cool it in Lebanon because the Israelis can be spoilers to what is going on between Tehran and Washington.

[00:07:48]And the Israelis are very anxious now, I think, to do as much as they can against his balar in the four or five days they've got left before they're told they must stop. Um, I wanted to ask Michael just quickly about your view of the US and China's meeting next week >> and the extent to which Taiwan will be a discussion point as opposed to potentially a military target for for China and and whether it's even plausible that President Trump is willing to sacrifice Taiwan over a very long-term time horizon um in order to get some kind of agreement with President Xi on other areas. Yeah, it's entirely plausible. I mean, in the first um Trump administration, Fiona Hill, you remember who the you know, the Brit uh British analyst who worked in the first Trump administration, she said very openly, she said that, you know, President Trump made it pretty clear to China then that Taiwan was an issue, but it was it shouldn't stand in the way of better relations between the United States and China and sorting out the trade imbalance between them. I think there's a general sense in China that that Trump will not fight a war for Taiwan. On the other hand, um the Chinese, they don't want to invade Taiwan. Uh they they will if they if they have to, but what they're doing is trying is I call it the Anaconda strategy. They're trying to squeeze Taiwan uh with military deployments around it. They want to indicate to Taiwan that they're isolated. And sooner or later, Taiwan, it would be better if you made a political decision to come back into our into the fold. Make it now before it gets worse. Um before we need to invade you. And I think that's the the nature of China's policy and that's probably a 10-year policy. Now, Xiinping used to say that he wanted it resolved before he stepped down, which is 2027, but he's clearly not going to step down in 2027. He's going for a fourth term at least. So, I think we've got until 2031 before it has to be resolved in his mind.

[00:09:39]>> Well, it wasn't even meant to be 2027.

[00:09:41]>> No, of course. So, >> it's only two terms originally. I mean, like all dictators, they fix the Constitution and just keep going extra terms, which he will do. I'm sure he will. Um, as always, Michael, a pleasure. Thanks so much.