How Donald Trump will leave Iran and what he will leave behind

0:00Pressure is mounting on the United States and Israel to find an off-front for the war against Iran as the conflict in the Middle East continues. Overnice Iran kept up its attacks on Israel and its Persian Gulf neighbours with airstrikes also pounding Tehran. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump has again made contradictory statements about whether he's ready to wind down the war or escalate it. Dr. Nimrod Novik is a former special envoy and policy adviser to the late Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Parris is now distinguished fellow with the Israel policy forum and a member of the leadership of a group known as Commanders for Israel's security. I spoke with Nimrod Novik earlier. Dr Nimrod Novik, welcome to Radio National Breakfast. Thank you for having me. Donald Trump on Truth Social overnight demanded that Iran stop blocking the strait of hormones or the US would bomb Iran, quote, back to the stone ages.

1:04A day earlier, the President had said the US won't have anything to do with ensuring the security of ships passing through the strait. What do you take from the President's mixed messaging? It's very difficult to try and figure out where he is and where the crisis is headed. What we do see is from the Israeli vantage point, it can go either way, either for escalation, which is likely to be mutual, not just US escalating, but so will the Iranians. Or he will look for an off ramp and I'm not sure the Iranians are prepared. We hear conflicting views about the deliberations among the Iranian leadership. So yeah, the Iran has a vote on whether it's over or not. How will this war end and when is the big question right now? You've recently modeled what you call a Trump-made diplomatic framework for ending crises.

2:06Can you walk me through how that works? Yeah, I just tried to deduce from his policy and his actions in bringing about the ceasefire in Gaza and his early moves vis-a-vis Iran trying to figure out if we are watching the emergence of the Trump model for conflict resolution or conflict ending. And what I saw in both contexts is if you will, a three-stage approach. Stage one is tabling a multi-point, multi-close memo and getting back and forth, getting the parties to agree to it. It was 20 points in Gaza and it is now 15 that he presented to Iran, which is probably it will evolve if at all. The second stage was once the parties agreed to the memo to the concept,

3:12there is a hands-on American involvement in bringing about the cessation of hostilities. In Gaza, the formula was basically ceasefire in return for hostages release and a surge in humanitarian aid. And I speculated that in Iran, it might look like ceasefire in return for the reopening of the Hormuz, plus some minor sanctions relief. And then come the third stage where the more substantial issues are to be discussed and resolved in Gaza, it is disarming Hamas, it is Israeli withdrawal, it is reconstruction, it is an alternative government to Hamas, and so on and so forth. And with Iran, I'm afraid that phase three will include the 440 kg of enriched uranium to 60% plus other elements of the nuclear program, the need for intrusive verification,

4:16the whole issue of their ballistic missile program, proxies support and all that. And looking at Gaza, after the ceasefire was implemented successfully and hostages released, everything else is stuck for months now. And I'm asking myself, if indeed we go with the same model, will after a ceasefire and opening of Hormuz, the president will be busy elsewhere and the more pressing issues for which the war was launched are going to linger behind and the clock will start ticking for another round. It sounds like even if the fighting stops, you're very concerned about what happens in the stages after that. That is correct because we don't detect, at least you know, I'm not privy to classify the information, but as a junkie of the subject and close observer, I don't detect any inclination on the Iranian part

5:25to raise a white flag, quite a contrary, with the computation of the previous regime or the regime leadership, political and security, as well as scientists and so on. Even more hard line players took over for the vacancies that were created. And from everything we hear, they are out for a war of attrition because anything short of assurances, they're not going to be struck again. Some substantial financial relief, some recognition of their control over the state of Hormuz and recognition of their right to enrich uranium and reconstitute their ballistic missile system. Any of those, I mean, giving up on any of those is viewed by those hard liners as reported here

6:31as capitulation and given that from the outset, both my prime minister Netanyahu and President Trump of the U.S. both declared regime change as the objective for the Islamic Republic. This is an existential issue and we're told that giving in on those terms is worse than allowing the country to suffer even more in a war of attrition, calculating that possibly their resilience as a dictatorship and a fanatic religious one, the damn more resilient than the two democracies that face them and that the pressure on the world economy, the world energy economy and political pressure on President Trump work for their favor in trying to get better terms

7:31for cessation of hostilities. Dr Novik, do you think the United States has underestimated Iran? Well, I don't think we need to think. The president is on record. Having been surprised that he did not raise a white flag when they saw the enormous force that he put in front of them, then he was surprised that they struck and quite heavily their Arab neighbors in the Gulf and then he was surprised that they closed the straight of Hormuz, all of which were anticipated, yet he was surprised. So yeah, I think that the absence of serious interagency staff work in Washington, we're paying the price of it. Dr Nimrod Novik, thank you very much for joining me this morning. My pleasure. Dr Novik is a former special envoy and policy advisor to the late Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Perez.