Fareed: Trump is looking to ‘simply leave’ Iran war

Fareed, I want to start with a new timeline the president gave tonight. Among many of the things he said about the war in Iran, he said it will be done in two

to three weeks.

What does that tell you?

It tells me that President Trump is trying to find a way to end this war unilaterally. The problem he has is that he wants to end the war clearly at this point. The Iranians have a get a vote and their vote seems to be to continue it because they want to exact a price by stressing the world economy, driving the price of oil up, keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed. So the president seems to be in a sense unilaterally saying, look, we're going to wind down activities.

My guess is what he's doing is saying two to three weeks, because that gives him enough time to pummel the Iranians even more, which is what his Gulf state allies want, Saudi Arabia, the UAE. And then it seems as though they're preparing for a strategy where they simply leave. And maybe the Strait of Hormuz is still closed. Maybe it's not. Maybe they get an agreement. But it's a way out.

It doesn't it strikes me as a rather bizarre situation because you would have the the the the Strait of Hormuz closed, oil would still be extremely expensive, but it appears that the White House is searching for a way out, and as they have through this entire process, they're sort of freelancing and throwing stuff up

and seeing if it will work, and that seems the new idea, just quit and go home after a few more weeks of this pounding.

And as for the Strait, he really seemed to confirm all the reporting over the last few days that he'd been telling A's that we can end this without reopening the Strait of Hormuz. He flat out said tonight what happens in the Strait, it's not going to be us that has anything to do with it. Basically saying the United States will not be the one to open the Strait. So where does that leave things?

Well, as I say, it's completely bizarre because not only are the strategic objectives of the war then not achieved, you have the same Iranian regime in place with even more hardliners with the revolutionary guards in place. They are earning twice as much from their oil as they were before because the price of oil has has almost doubled. And they are making potentially hundreds of millions of dollars charging fees two million dollars per boat that goes through the Strait of Hormuz. In that way they are holding hostage the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia.

And so you've created a situation which is much, much worse for America and its allies, much, much better for Iran. Yes, they are militarily in very bad shape, but they have enough power to do what I just described, which seems to me to be a very, very difficult situation to spin as a win for the United States or its allies.

You say Iran, they have enough power. The question is, who is they? Because the president, I think the third bit of news he made tonight is he flat out said what others have been saying the last few days. He said there has been regime change. The regime has changed in Iran, and he's claiming the regime now is much more reasonable. So how accurate is that assessment?

Well, I mean, it's frankly makes absolutely no sense. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but look, when you say regime change, what you are referring to is the system of government. The system of government in Iran is fully in place. The people who have replaced the old office holders appear to be more hardline more militaristic. They are the ones who struck a block the Strait of Hormuz. They are the ones who attacked Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Qatar. They are the ones who are Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Qatar.

They are the ones who are refusing to open the Strait of Hormuz. How you can claim this is a new regime? I don't understand. How you can claim they're being more reasonable while at the same time you're admitting they're not coming to a deal? How can they be so reasonable if they're not coming to an agreement?

The whole thing makes no sense. And I think frankly, it's just a it's a it's it's political spin. It would be like saying that the United States had a regime change when you know, when one party changes control of the House of Representatives. That is not what regime change means. What regime change means is what President Trump implied in his declaration of war, which was that the people of Iran will rise up, throw out this regime, put in place presumably a democracy. I'd say there's a very simple test of whether there is regime change in Iran, whether it has taken place. Go

ask an Iranian in Tehran. Go ask any of the people who have suffered through this regime for four and a half decades whether they think there's been regime change. And I think they will tell you no. The same clerical military regime that has been oppressing them for the last 47 years is still firmly in place.

Fareed Zakaria, thank you so much for being with us.

As always a pleasure.

And with us now, New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman. Maggie, the White House announced just a few minutes ago the president's going to address the nation tomorrow night at 9 p.m. on Iran. I know this news just broke a few minutes ago, but do you have any idea what we can

expect him to say? I don't think that he is likely to say, but again, John, it's President Trump and we have heard various versions of what the U.S. could do over the last days and weeks, frankly, and as you noted earlier in the show, it is still within the four to six week time frame. I don't expect that he is going to say, yes, we are there for the long haul. I don't expect that he is going to say, we're going to go, you know, send ground forces in to overtake Karg Island, but obviously anything is possible. Everything that he has

indicated, including what he said today, is that he wants to start wrapping this up in terms of the U.S. involvement. There are, you know, aspects of this campaign that the U.S. can point to as success in terms of degrading aspects of Iran's military equipment, in terms of degrading aspects of their Navy, their air fleet, but is it a regime change as Fareed said? Certainly not in terms of what the country actually looks like.

This doesn't seem like it's trending toward a democracy. It's a theocracy of 90 million people and has been for many decades now, number one. But number two, Iran does have a say in this. And so if what ends up happening is the Strait of Hormuz is still closed, even if there are some permissions allowed, that's different than what it was before.

And if there is no agreement about the nuclear enrichment stockpile, the US is going gonna be back here at some point, most likely, no matter what.

Maggie, what are you hearing is going on behind the scenes with the mixed, sometimes conflicting messages? Just take the Strait of Hormuz, for instance. Yesterday morning when I was on TV, he put out this statement saying if Iran doesn't open it immediately,

we're gonna bomb oil plants, desalination plants, et cetera, et cetera. And today he's saying really the exact opposite, that we don't need the straight open. It's not our problem.

I don't think it is a deep strategy, John, other than the fact that the president on a basic cellular level likes to keep people off balance and likes to preserve what people have known him for a long time would describe as optionality. And that certainly is optionality. It's just hard to do optionality moment to moment with a military that has to go to the Middle East, and that takes days to get a fleet in place, and people can track movements and so forth.

I know you see this, we all see this. This is much more of a one-man-ban presidency than what we saw in term one. It is a very small group of advisors around him. There are fewer leaks that come out. It doesn't mean that they don't happen at all, but you know it is a tighter group and in general they want to see him succeed. Unlike you know term one where people either you know actively wanted to stop him or disagreed with what he was doing, in this case he is running his own show. You will

notice that you do not see a lot of people leaning out ahead of him, other than when you see Pete Hegseth, who is clearly, very strongly a voice for military action against Iran, and you've seen that over and over again. That's also true behind the scenes. But he doesn't say anything that would upset the president or jostle the president. Generally what you see either the White House press office say or the Secretary of Defense say or others say is the press is trying to harm President Trump by evaluating this war as anything other than the success that he says it is. So there's not some grander thing happening here. He is reacting and he is engaging and he is trying

to keep people off balance. We will have a better sense of what his plan is tomorrow night. Again, I just don't know We will have a better sense of what his plan is tomorrow night. Again, I just don't know what it means in terms of what Iran will do.