“For Israel, this is the worst possible outcome!” — Trump, the Mullahs, Israel: what happens next?
An interview with Stefan Wolff conducted by German journalist and author, Constantin Schreiber
Instead of bombing Iran back to the Stone Age — as was loudly threatened — there is now to be a deal between the US and the Mullahs. How should this development be assessed? What does it mean for the Middle East, for the standing of the United States in the world, and what lessons are autocrats worldwide drawing from the past few weeks? Constantin Schreiber discussed this with Professor Stefan Wolff from the University of Birmingham. Stefan Wolff is co-founder of Navigating the Vortex , which publishes analysis and assessments on geopolitics and the global economy, and has built a community of over one million people in more than 140 countries.
Q. The stock markets are jubilant, the economy relieved. The Strait of Hormuz may be navigable again. But how does this ceasefire look geopolitically — is it good or bad?
A. Overall, this is initially a positive development — but one must also consider that Donald Trump’s foreign policy is not characterised by great consistency. A somewhat more pessimistic view would be: deferred is not cancelled. We now have a ceasefire for approximately 14 days, but it is entirely unclear what will ultimately be agreed in an actual deal between Washington and Tehran, how far that would be acceptable to both sides, and whether it will lead to a longer-term resolution of the dispute between Iran and the US, but also between Iran and Israel.
“Deferred is not cancelled.”
Q. The Mullah regime has been described as the control centre for terror networks across the entire region. But it now looks as though this regime will in some form remain, even after the war?
A. Yes, absolutely. And it is not just that the regime itself remains — the regime now has considerably stronger incentives to pursue a harder line within the region. There was the agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, brokered by China — a normalisation of relations, an exchange of ambassadors. At the time, it was seen as very positive. But now it has become essentially irrelevant, given the direct conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia. That is an uncertainty the ceasefire announcement does not resolve. At the same time, Israel has confirmed the ceasefire with Iran but insists it does not extend to Lebanon and the conflict with Hezbollah.
Q. You say the Mullah regime now has an incentive to act even more confrontationally in the region. Was the war, then, counterproductive?
A. Absolutely — as is almost every war. And there is also cause to ask whether wars today can be won at all, even by superpowers like the United States. Trump originally insisted on regime change in Tehran, on the destruction of Iran’s nuclear programme, on eliminating Iran’s capacity to develop ballistic missiles. Essentially none of that is now being discussed. What Trump announced overnight on his Truth Social channel is just the vague hope that Iran’s nuclear programme will end — but that is not an immediate improvement compared to the situation before the war, when the universal assessment was that Iran was neither on the verge of building a nuclear bomb, nor that it was even clear Iran was moving in that direction at all.
Q. On the subject of nuclear weapons — there is still around 400 kg of missing highly enriched uranium. How close is Iran actually to developing nuclear weapons?
A. This so called highly-enriched uranium — which at the moment nobody quite knows where it is — is still not at a stage where it could be used immediately to build a nuclear bomb. It could potentially be used for a so-called dirty bomb, but even for that you still need rockets or other means to deliver it. So even the worst scenario one can imagine is not the immediate outbreak of a nuclear confrontation in the Middle East. That does not mean Iran has not thought strategically about maintaining a certain leverage — staying just short of nuclear weapons production capability. But there was no definitive proof that a nuclear strike was imminent, let alone that Iran was on the verge of a nuclear attack against Israel or the United States.
Q. I was on the ground in Israel at the start of the war and witnessed the first waves of Iranian missile attacks. At the time, it was said that within days up to 90% of Iran’s missile launch capabilities would be destroyed. Weeks later Iran is still firing at full capacity. Was there a massive miscalculation?
A. It was impossible to have 100% accurate information about how far Iran’s capacities were developed, or what stocks existed. The clear miscalculation, in my view, was in the access to the enormous underground facilities where Iran stores its missiles and launchers. There was simply no way of knowing how many of those there were, or how many had actually been effectively destroyed. The number of Iranian missiles and drones being sent toward Israel, US bases, and allies in the region has definitely declined — but the overall capacity persists, and one cannot say definitively when Iran will run out of launchers, missiles, or drones, or the capacity to produce more. One of Trump’s stated war goals — reducing Iran’s military capability — has definitely not been achieved.
Q. And yet — given the scale of the underground infrastructure, the tunnel systems, the way Iran has been firing in all directions including at Gulf states — surely removing this regime was the right goal?
A. Absolutely. But the question is whether the currently heightened hostility of the regime was not itself provoked by this war of aggression. That is not to say a longer-term deal could have been made with the regime — even with the old regime under Khamenei senior— I do not think so. But one could possibly have found other and more effective means to remove from the regime both the ability and the incentives to create an entirely new level of misery across the region.
Q. What could that have looked like?
A. One could simply have continued on the diplomatic track. Just before the war began, mediation through Oman had been relatively productive. The Omani foreign minister said literally the night before Trump and Netanyahu launched the attack that they were extremely close to a deal. In my view, what is ultimately achieved in a new agreement between the United States and Iran will be very close to what was already negotiated in 2015 under Barack Obama — but with a ten-year delay, a massive war in the Middle East, and consequences for the global economy that are far from resolved.
“What is ultimately achieved will be very close to what was already negotiated in 2015 under Barack Obama — but with a ten-year delay and a massive war in the Middle East.”
Q. When I speak with Israeli representatives and American security experts, they say the Mullahs are simply a partner you cannot trust — that any deal would be cover for continuing to build toward nuclear weapons. Is that unrealistic?
A. That is by no means unrealistic. Though I would also say the question of trust operates in both directions — how far can Iran trust the United States under Donald Trump to behave constructively, rather than using talks merely as a pause before resuming the war. As for Iran — of course there are massive doubts — but we must keep in mind that for decades there have been fears Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, and yet even today Iran does not have nuclear weapons. The greatest uncertainty exists for Israel, which is far more directly at risk given its geographical proximity. For Israel, what the US is now probably enabling is arguably the worst outcome: a considerably more hostile regime, with sufficient capabilities, remaining in Tehran. That will further increase Israel’s fears — and partly explains why Israel will definitively continue trying to eliminate Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Q. But it is also tragic for the people of Iran — tens of thousands dead, people who wanted to overthrow this regime, who have been oppressed for decades. A regime so unpopular with its own population.
A. Absolutely. And that underscores the complete loss of confidence in a consistent US foreign policy. The protests in Iran at the start of the year — which by some estimates led to up to 45,000 deaths on the protestors’ side — were partly a direct response to Trump’s promises on social media that help was on the way. That help did not come. In his first statement after the war began on 28 February, regime change in Tehran was clearly stated as a war goal. That is entirely gone now. Trump is in effect negotiating with a regime he has partly destroyed — and that regime’s own capacity to engage constructively in negotiations has been at least decimated.
Q. What does this mean for other authoritarian systems? What have Russia and China learned from the past few weeks?
A. I think different conclusions are being drawn in Moscow and Beijing. For Moscow, the fundamental lesson is that Trump cannot be trusted — that his foreign policy is entirely inconsistent. That also has consequences for the deal Putin and Trump were trying to arrange, which is not something Moscow can rely on long-term. For Beijing, the lessons are different. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has had massive consequences for the global economy, and for China as the world’s second-largest economy there are direct effects. Beijing can also lean back somewhat, since US leadership capacity has been further eroded — we also see this in how transatlantic relations have suffered. On the other hand, the complete collapse of the existing international order is also problematic for China. If there are no rules that global actors feel bound to respect, that is not good for anyone, including an economy the size of China’s. The challenge for China now is to decide how far it actually wants to take on a global leadership role, and how far it has the capacity to do so. Those questions have not yet been definitively answered in Beijing.
Professor Stefan Wolff is co-founder of Navigating the Vortex. This interview was conducted by Constantin Schreiber. The English-language transcript has been slightly edited for clarity. This episode is also available as a podcast.
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