LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Let's turn back to these negotiations now, the strategy behind Iran's leadership's approach to these negotiations, and whether they're motivated to make a deal with the U.S. To discuss that, we're joined by Karim Sadjadpour. He's a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an expert on Iran. Welcome back to the program. Good morning.
KARIM SADJADPOUR: Good morning, Leila. Great to be with you.
FADEL: So it's really unclear, as we heard, whether these talks are going to happen at all. And I'm wondering if Iran's leadership is really all on the same page right now over how to deal with the U.S. and whether these talks should happen.
SADJADPOUR: I think, Leila, there, I would put the Iranian political elites into two different groups.
FADEL: OK.
SADJADPOUR: There are those who say, we need to continue to resist the United States. We cannot trust the United States. And they tend to put revolutionary ideology before national interests. And there are those who say, listen; the country is under desperate economic conditions. We've prevailed in that this was a war of survival. We survived. Now it's time to put national interests before revolutionary ideology. And they advocate for a compromise. And so the big question we don't know, Leila, is what is the state of the - of health of Mojtaba Khamenei, the new supreme leader.
FADEL: Right.
SADJADPOUR: And what is his disposition? People speak for him, but we haven't heard from him whether he approves of these talks, whether he approves of compromise, or whether he advocates for more resistance.
FADEL: I wonder, though - I mean, we've been hearing some mixed messaging from different leaders within Iran. The spokesman for the foreign ministry won't say if Iran is going to participate in talks. Iran's president says war won't serve either the country's interests and that Iran will participate in the talks. I mean, what do you make of these contradictory messages? What does it signal to you?
SADJADPOUR: Well, ultimately, I think that Iran doesn't want to return to war. It's a country which is - even before this war commenced two months ago, it was in dire financial straits. So you can only imagine how economically desperate they feel...
FADEL: Yeah.
SADJADPOUR: ...Right now. But it's - that's a question which we don't know for sure. You know, how badly is their economic situation? I spoke to someone who was in the room on the U.S. side in Islamabad, and he got the impression that they are in desperate need of cash, and therefore, they're going to be compelled to soon do a deal. But what we know from Iran is that since 1979, it's a regime which has only agreed to three or four major compromises. And those compromises have tended to only happen after many months, sometimes years, of very difficult negotiations.
FADEL: Now, the American delegation has so far been led by Vice President JD Vance, who returned empty-handed from a first round of talks earlier this month. He's expected to lead the delegation this time as well. He has limited experience as a negotiator. How is he seen by the Iranian leadership?
SADJADPOUR: Well, what's interesting, Leila, is the Iranians actually requested to negotiate with JD Vance for a few reasons. No. 1, they see him as an anti-war MAGA Republican. No. 2, they believe, given that he has presidential ambitions, he likely is highly incentivized to wrap this war up as quickly as possible. And No. 3, they believe if he actually becomes president, he will ostensibly abide by any deal that he's agreed to negotiate. And this is the interesting paradox of U.S.-Iran relations right now in that we've been fighting a full-blown war, but at the same time, the contact between Vice President JD Vance and Iran's speaker of parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, is the highest-level contact we've had since - America and Iran since 1979.
FADEL: Oh, interesting. I'm curious - I mean, you mentioned how strained the economy is, and maybe that will be a situation where Iran has to agree to concessions in order to survive. But on the flip side, Iran has demonstrated its ability to inflict pain on the U.S. and global economy. Does it also possibly come down to who has the greatest threshold for pain here?
SADJADPOUR: That's definitely a key point, and what the Iranians are paying very close attention to are President Trump's public approval ratings and the public approval ratings of - for the war in the United States. The advantage, obviously, the dictatorships have when they fight democracy is they don't care about their public opinion. You know, it's a regime which has shown itself willing to kill a lot of its own people in order to continue stay - to stay in power. And when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz, you know, that is their key source of leverage. And what the Iranians have asked for are reassurances that they won't be attacked again and reparations for all the damages they've endured. But so long as their official slogans are death to America and death to Israel, they're not going to be getting them.
FADEL: Karim Sadjadpour is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Thank you for your time, as always.
SADJADPOUR: Thank you, Leila. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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