Going into the weekend, U.S. and Iranian officials had seemingly agreed to conditions that would allow them to meet in Islamabad to hash out a peace agreement. Yet so far the sides are offering differing accounts even of those initial conditions, and the primary parts of the ceasefire—that the fire would cease, and that the Strait of Hormuz would be open to commercial shipping—haven’t actually materialized.
With much of Iran’s pre-war leadership dead, it is unclear whether the Iranian officials remaining actually have meaningful centralized control over their country and its military. It is also uncertain if they have the willingness, or even have the ability, to negotiate the removal of enriched uranium buried under rubble at sites the U.S. bombed months ago—a central feature of a deal that President Donald Trump has announced, and the Iranians have disputed.
Is the U.S. backing away, or simply washing its hands of the Iranian mess? What would happen next? What are the prospects for a ceasefire the sides can agree to? And what is driving Trump to swerve between making threats to destroy an entire civilization and then back off?
To make sense of it all, I spoke to John Bolton, the former ambassador to the United Nations and national security adviser to President Trump in his first term, and now a frequent critic of Trump, on Friday afternoon. Our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Nicholas Clairmont: I’m just going to start by asking, what is going on with Iran and with the ceasefire? Have we lost? Have we won? And what do you predict is about to happen?
