美前官员：未见美国对伊朗处于守势，经济施压有效

I'm curious your thoughts today with Iranian state media reporting that Iran has closed the strait. On one hand, Pakistan is telling us on the other that once again, we're on the verge of peace. Which do you see as more realistic? Maybe all of the above. Listen, going into these negotiations, I can tell you, being a part of Steve's team last year before we ended up doing the bombing in June of 25, there were negotiations that were started.

And so what you often see, we must have had 20 different countries reaching out to us, asking us to, uh, to be a part of the negotiations, to help facilitate. So I'm not sure what's going on with the Pakistanis today. It may be a cry for relevance. Um, so far in the negotiations, I actually, though I think I disagree with, uh, the the woman that you had, um, from AEI that said, the president is sort of out of options or in a holding pattern.

I actually seen it from an entirely different perspective. I was I was nervous about the war over the summer. I'm in a much more peaceful state now because I think the president is doing what he did in his first term. That actually worked really well against Iran. Um, and that was in the first term, uh, we had the maximum economic pressure campaign against Iran. We have that now, plus a naval blockade. So while the IRGC likes to make these, um, large and loud protestations about the strait and what they're doing and not doing, the undisputable fact is nothing is going into Iranian ports or from around the ports.

That blockade is incredibly effective. It works. It's important. We're still seeing Axios reported about 8 million barrels per day that are going through the Straits. Plus you have eight and a half and some of the overland methods. Uh, as you just reported earlier, the price of oil, I think is but is in the lower 80s. And then when we were looking at the Biden midterms, for example, in 22, the price of oil was higher than this.

So I actually think that the president is in the best spot that he's been in this entire year. Uh, inflation is through the roof in Iran. Young people don't have jobs. People can't buy basic needs. Okay. What is this regime most scared of? They're scared of their own people and their protests. Well. So if maximum economic pressure is ultimately the answer here in your mind, Morgan, it begs the question of why we launched a hot war in the first place.

Why didn't we just do this from the very beginning? If it's enough? So I don't think it was. I don't think it's the enough, and I don't think it's our only option. And I think military force is incredibly important. Why is that? What were the headlines that we heard for the last four years leading up to the Trump administration, for the four years of Biden? I was constantly reading that Iran was weeks away from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Uh, they were charging forward, I mean, the world. And by the way, the people that were the most aggressive in that time, especially when we entered office last year, were the E3, France, Germany, UK. It was our European partners. When I came in, I swore in 15 minutes after the president on January 20th, 2025, and it was our European allies that were sounding the alarm to us about the seriousness of how close Iran was from attaining a nuclear weapon.

And we knew that we were going to have to quickly negotiate. And if that didn't work, take kinetic action, which the president took in June. So there's never one sure thing that works like I know you and your listeners, uh, you're used to, you know, a company that says, here's how we're going to get to our projected revenue goal or earnings call. And here's the plan. Foreign policy and national security is can be very opaque.

It can be very gray. And you normally have to look at a series of options and judge it by the day in the week. So I think that the president's military campaign was important. We no longer see the headlines that Iran is close to a nuclear weapon. President Trump was the first president to say that Iran would never get a nuclear weapon on his watch, and he was the first president to actually take serious action for that to happen.

So, I guess, you know, this whole narrative that the administration is sort of on a on its back heels, uh, with Iran. For me as an analyst and as someone who's been a part of these negotiations, I don't see it at all. I think the president is actually in the bird seat, not the Iranian regime. I mean, they can't even establish proof of life of the supreme leader. It's like the weekend that of us. So when does Steve Widdicombe get back at a table?

I that was actually just saw that movie last weekend. When does Steve Wycoff get back at a table? Or does this indirect, uh, negotiation through the likes of Pakistan and Qatar continue indefinitely? It could continue, uh, indefinitely. I think that the administration is exhibiting in the president's exhibiting a lot of patience right now. And I do think strategic patience is on our side. The president has been clear that all military options are still on the table.

Uh, Centcom still aggressive. It's still there. It's still enforcing the naval blockade. It's the U.S. Treasury still enforcing the sanctions. And every day that goes by that Iran doesn't have a deal. They are hurt economically. Now, an important and crucial point. Economic pain will not necessarily change the behavior of the of the people that, uh, Steve Wyckoff is negotiating with. Economic pain probably won't even change the behavior of the IRGC.

However, economic pain does change the behavior of what I mentioned earlier, of what the IRGC is most scared of, is most fearful of. It's not any foreign military. It's not America, Israel. They're most scared of their own people. And the economy today is, of course, much more. Again, if I could if I could jump in there. Wasn't that the narrative at the beginning? When the president announced the launch of major combat operations, he said it was the time of the Iranian people to rise up.

That didn't happen. Why would it happen now? What has changed? Well, it did happen in January, which is why we actually saw, I'm talking post the launch events that you're on because you can't really predict this stuff from foreign policy. I mean, listen, I actually said on Bloomberg a few days after Assad fell and none of us were predicting that. Thank you have been going on your network for a while, and I remember that very vividly, that that was just not a day that we were all predicting.

So these things happen in foreign policy. You can't really predict when the people are going to rise up and take on a regime. But what you can ensure is that the people who terrorize the IRGC, who terrorizes the Iranian people, you can make sure that they don't have extra money in their quivers in order to continue to terrorize their own people. And that's one of the goals of this economic campaign.