美媒分析：美军增兵中东与伊朗谈判僵局预示升级风险

Joining us now for more, Dana Stroul, she is the research director for Near East Policy at the Washington Institute and was formerly deputy assistant secretary of defense for The Middle East. So nice to have you with us. I do wanna ask, what your take is about this meeting with Vance and, intel and military leaders, at Camp David. Reportedly, Axios is reporting this, saying that they talked about Iran and Yemen. I wanna split those two for the moment and start with Iran.

What is the status of US intervention there? What does this third carrier group give them, and does it seem like this is ramping up to escalate again? Well, I do think every time president Trump has sent more military posture, whether it's aircraft carriers, fighter squadrons, etcetera, to The Middle East in the second two years of his second administration, he's used that military force. And we're in this critical period right before the midterms where the Iranian regime is testing whether or not Trump is so desperate to get a deal that he's willing to make concessions on major issues like control of the Strait Of Hormuz or the nuclear program.

And he right now appears to be digging in. They sent home the Iranian negotiating team, and they're plussing up military force. So this looks like preparing for another escalation cycle. Dana, what did you observe kind of coming out of what happened in in New York, the kind of shuttle diplomacy on a smaller scale here on the Island Of Manhattan while you had, you know, the Iranian foreign minister here, the Iranian president here, US officials as well, and these Qatari mediators.

Did you see that as a real attempt here to find some sort of agreement, or did it seem kind of like wallpaper on the situation unlikely to lead to any kind of substantive change? I'm in the wallpaper camp. This is the Iranian regime attempting to look like it's open to real diplomacy, But what they leaked about what their proposal was was the same as the terms of that original MOU that they sought to enter with the Trump administration several months ago at the beginning of the summer.

There's nothing that's changed here. And the economic sanctions, The US military naval blockade clearly are having serious pressure on the Iranian economy and Iranian citizens at home inside Iran, but not enough pressure on the regime to actually make meaningful concessions. And I think those negotiations indirect in New York clearly weren't making progress, which is why secretary Rubio lost patience and told the Iranian team to go home.

It's interesting because, as you mentioned, the the proposals and talking points haven't really changed much. The the status on the ground has gone back and forth, but is also at a bit of a stalemate. If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, what options are left here? Well, it looks like both sides are misreading each other. So on the Iranian side, it looks like insanity to us, which is the same negotiating terms because their view is dissatisfaction, political discord here in The United States are weakening Trump ahead of the midterms.

Diesel prices are putting significant pressure on everyday Americans, and they still believe they happen to have an opportunity to divide The United States from its partners across the Middle East. And on every one those, it looks like Trump isn't ready to give in. And right now, US partners are still standing with The United States. And on the Trump side, I think he thinks he still has military options available. Whether those are diminishing or how long and whether he's prepared for what the retaliation inevitably looks like from Iran, he's sending more military buildup to the region to expand his options because he's signaling either return to military force before the midterms or more likely after.

Let's talk a bit more about that. I think a lot of us rightly seized on his comments about annihilation at the most extreme end of of what his options might might be, and dubious is the rationale and legal justification for that is as well, to to put it mildly. Pulling back from that, as you look at that broader kind of pantheon of what he could do going forward here, what are the targets that he might consider when you think about the weakness of Iran now?

And he often talks about how degraded it is. I guess, Cargilland would be some target he might consider. When when you look at kind of the full array of what's on the table, what is what is there as you see it? Well, first of all, the military campaign to date has almost exclusively, at least the American campaign, focused on conventional military targets. So Iran's air defense, the coastal radars, the missile launching infrastructure, the missiles themselves, the defense industrial base of Iran that can produce the missiles and drones, the nuclear program, the naval assets, etcetera.

And there's not that many military targets like that left. So the next phase of this, if president Trump orders it, would be energy and the kinds of infrastructure that some are gonna argue are dual use. They might be enriching the Iranian regime, but they're also for the for the people of Iran. But those are the things that are directly enriching the Iranian regime and allowing the IRGC to remain in power. So things you're right, like Karg Island, the refining and export oil infrastructure of Iran are probably the kinds of targets that the Trump administration is considering.

I wanna ask you about the other part of that reported discussion, with Vance and the security and intel officials, and that's the front in Yemen, with the Houthis. And, you know, the only relief, especially at the start of this conflict to get that oil out of the region were some of these East West pipelines going out through the Mendeb Strait in the Red Sea. That obviously... They've had to shut down that pipeline. It is now back operating again, but it's it's another complication.

We had all these reports, last week and the week before that the Saudis were urging president Trump to take action against the Houthis. And my question is, The US has sold the Saudis billions of dollars worth of military equipment. Why didn't they wanna just take action themselves? Well, two different sets of issues here. I think in terms of all the weaponry The United States has sold, Saudi Arabia, a lot of it they actually are using.

A lot of it is air defense equipment. And the Saudis, together with the rest of the region, have used a lot of that equipment quite effectively in defense against Iran's attacks all all year long. And when it comes to Yemen, part of this is about up up, defending freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and trying to open the Bab El Mandeb, this other maritime choke point. And then the question is, how do you push back Houthi advances inside Yemen on the ground?

And here, the Saudis absolutely are preparing for a... An oncoming offensive in Yemen, but there's also what The United States has done, what Israel's done, what The United Arab Emirates have done. And what we've seen now for more than a decade is air power only without a ground force doesn't actually meaningfully push back the Houthis, and there really is no military solution only. So when we look at this issue now, I think there's a lot of focus on what can The United States contribute?

What are the Saudis gonna do? The missing question here is what's the diplomatic process? What's the political process here? Dan, I wanna play a bit of sound. We're kinda mining from this interview that Mike Allen of Axios did with the treasury secretary Scott Bessent, something he addressed is, Iran's oil revenues. Let's take a listen to what he had to say in that interview this morning. For the first time in history, they...

Since they started pumping oil, they will have no oil on the water this week. They will have no revenues. So we hear the treasury sector, they're sort of indicating that this is a