U.S. President Donald Trump has no solution for the chokehold that Iran is putting on global markets and if he escalates the war further, he would make the problem even worse, says Vali Nasr, professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and a former U.S. State Department Adviser. In an interview with The Hindu, Mr. Nasr says Iran might be open for a deal on its nuclear programme but not on its missiles or its control over the Strait of Hormuz. Once the war is over, Persian Gulf countries will have to reassess their security relations with the U.S., he added. Edited excerpts.
Mr. Trump has made several contradictory statements in recent weeks. He claimed that he had destroyed Iran’s military capabilities; he sought help to reopen Strait of Hormuz; then he said he did not need help; and now he says he doesn’t bother about the Strait. How do you make sense of Mr. Trump’s approach?
The way I look at it is that he’s at a he’s at a strategic dead end. He’s like a chess player who has been checked and has very few moves in front of him. I mean the Iranian ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, to put pressure on global energy markets, to put pressure on global trade, took the United States by surprise. It was unprepared for it and has no solution to it. And yes, the United States can escalate by either bombing Iran’s infrastructure or try to invade an island and capture an island. But it cannot prevent Iran from escalating further in the Persian Gulf. Iran could hit energy infrastructure, it could attack more targets in in Gulf countries, and that would even increase the pressure on on the global economy. And even if Mr. Trump was to attack an Iranian island, it would only prolong the war. Iran would retaliate. The energy prices would go even further.
And perhaps it would become even more difficult to get the global economy back to normal. So in a way, he started a war anticipating that it would be quick. There would be a quick victory. Either the Islamic Republic would fall or that the Islamic Republic post-Khamenei would be something like Venezuela. New leadership would come to terms with America. He had not anticipated this war, and right now he has no solution for the chokehold that Iran is putting on global markets. So he can escalate at a great risk or sit down and negotiate with Iran, which is not going to be easy, or he can just abandon the war, which still does not relieve pressure on the global markets.
You say the Americans were not prepared for this kind of a prolonged conflict. But Iran had repeatedly warned that if they were attacked, they would strike back at U.S. bases in the region or close the Hormuz Strait. The U.S. still did not anticipate such a response from Tehran?
Apparently not. It’s very clear at the way that they prepared by bringing aircraft carriers to the Gulf, USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Gerald Ford to the to the Mediterranean was that they brought those in order to protect Israel against missile attacks. So the the U.S. military was never made preparations for actually defending not only the threat of Hormuz, but their own bases and the GCC countries. It’s very clear that Mr. Trump’s conception of the war was short, decisive, and that the killing of Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, would basically pivot Iran in a different direction. But we’re now 30 days into the war, which is far longer than Mr. Trump and the U.S. military planned for. And the war is actually most difficult for the United States on a battle front that it had not calculated on at all, which is the the the Persian Gulf as a whole. The Strait of Hormoz is a tip of it.
Iran has the ability to hit oil and gas infrastructure, military bases across the Gulf, from Saudi Arabia to to UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait. And according to the New York Times, 13 U.S. military bases have become basically uninhabitable. So the U.S. never prepared for this. And now it has very few options other than either escalate the bombing of Iran, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Iran will open the Straits or try to invade Iran using the marines to capture an island. But again, what the United States cannot do right now is prevent Iran from horizontally escalating the war across the global economy. It just does not have the ability to prevent Iran from hitting targets across the Gulf and at some point the Houthis would also enter the war and put pressure on the Bab El Mandeb and the and the traffic through the Red Sea.
You have written a book about Iran’s Grand Strategy, explaining how Iran’s strategic thinking has shaped over the years. How do you assess Iran’s military response? Were you surprised?
I may be surprised by the tactics they used and how effectively they used it, but not by the way they’re responding, because everything about the war since the attack on Iran in June 2025 by Israel and the U.S. to now only confirms the way in which Iran has looked at its situation since the [1979] revolution and what I outline in the book. The Islamic revolution saw Itself liberating Iran from American imperialism. That was the grand narrative of the revolution. I know we’re very focused on the Islamic dimension always. And yes, it was an Islamic revolution, but the worldview of the Islamic Republic and its anti-Americanism come from the fact that they believe that in the 19th century, Iran was under the thumb of imperialism, much like China, much like India. And then in the 20th century, the Pahlavi monarchies were captured by the United States and that the Islamic Republic truly liberated Iran.
And it has been in a struggle with America to protect that liberation. And they see the war in June and this war essentially as a determined U.S. effort to subjugate Iran again. And so the response is very much like the response they’ve had over the past. They now see Israel essentially as an extension of the U.S. in the region. So for them, the the grand narrative of the Islamic revolution is that for the past 2-3 hundred years, Iran had basically lacked genuine independence. Its sovereignty had been under pressure from foreign powers. It’s sort of a Ramayana, you know—a grand epic battle; this war very much fits into that worldview.
Do you think the Islamic Republic has survived the latest attempt for regime change by foreign powers?
For Israel, the objective is not just regime change, I think it’s actually more. A state collapse in Iran. In other words, Israel does not want a a better version of the Islamic Republic to come to power. Like Putin’s Russia is a reconstituted communist Russia with the same instruments, military intelligence people; or that Deng Xiaoping was a reinvention of the same communist state, but with a different mantra. Because then Iran would maintain all its capabilities to be a big player in West Asia. Israel doesn’t want Iran to become Turkey. It already is growling at Turkey too. So Israel’s goal has been in the least to break the Islamic Republic.
Israel would prefer Iran to become something like Syria, a country that’s divided internally, does not have the capacity to threaten Israel. It’s a toothless, basically a weak state. But just as was the case in the June war, in this war, Israel has not achieved its goals. The Islamic Republic is still there. It’s missiles are still there. A lot of its capacity is still there. And in a way, this war has made the Islamic Republic much more assertive, risk-taking and dangerous because a whole new generation of IRGC commanders have now come to the fore. Every civilian leader you eliminate is being replaced by IRGC.
Now Iran also has found a new strategic tool which is called the Strait of Hormuz. So in a way you have battered Iran, but you haven’t achieved the goal of either toppling the regime or making Iran a toothless, internally broken entity. Trump perhaps entered this war with different conceptions. He wanted the Iranian state to be like Venezuela: Get Khamenei out of the way, and a new leadership could come forward and say, OK, we’re ready to make a deal.
If he really expected a Venezuela like outcome in Iran, that is a very poor understanding of the Islamic Republic, isn’t it?
Well, for him, yes. But you have a President now for the first time that is not fed by intelligence and policy coming from below, and then making a final decision about how to address a problem. That the system has identified and analysed. It is rather the other way around. Based on what he hears talking to world leaders or billionaire friends, he makes decisions that then the system has to implement. So I don’t think he had a firm understanding of Iran, nor did he care to find out a firm understanding of Iran.
He decided that he’s going to go to war. This is the first time that the the reason for war was not explained to the Americans. What is the problem you’re trying to solve? Why is it urgent and why is war the the solution to it? I mean, a whole host of arguments were put forward, none of which had been actually put forward before the war. So one way or the other, maybe the under the influence of Prime Minister Netanyahu, maybe. For his own ego reasons, he decided that we’re going to do this, and so he ordered the U.S. military to just prepare for war without actually having thought through about what are the objectives and what’s the strategy here. So I’m not surprised that he didn’t quite understand the the complexity.
Let’s look at the end game. Mr. Trump keeps saying he is in talks with Iran. Iran has acknowledged that they have exchanged messages. There were reports about a 15-point proposal and a five-point Iranian counter proposal. Do you think it’s practically possible for both sides to reach an agreement at this point to shut down this war?
It is going to be difficult but that does not mean that it is impossible. I mean it’s a question of you know how far they might move towards one another at at one point and and so so I think you know the the 15-point plan that the U.S. gave to Iran, likely through Pakistan, was a non-starter because these were kind of issues that the U.S. was peddling before the war in Geneva. The Iranian position is, that they’re looking for firm guarantees that that the war would not be repeated, that there will be no mowing of the lawn, as Israel calls it every six months; they should get genuine economic relief; that they will remain in control of the Strait of hormones, both as a source of revenue but also as deterrence against future attacks. These are their most important demands.
And and I think the Iranian calculation is that the U.S. may think that it can escalate either the bombing or attack territory and that would give it leverage to go to the table. But I don’t think even President Trump is sure that is going to be the case. That’s why he’s beginning to murmur that he may just leave. But the problem for Trump is that now he’s set the goal of opening the Strait of Hormuz as a victory. So there there might be circumstances under which he could arrive at that agreement with the Iranians.
But that actually requires him to get serious with diplomacy. I think there’s a lot of conversations are happening between Ankara, Islamabad and and Washington at a high level and very importantly the the Pakistani Foreign Minister went to China. Because the kind of guarantees that Iran wants, only China can provide in a way. And you know what with negotiations during a war, they could always collapse. And there’s going to be more fighting and each side tries to get an upper hand. But I think we’re getting to a point where I think President Trump is really understanding that there’s no easy victory here and the costs from here on could mount exponentially higher for the global economy and for the U.S.
If Mr. Trump decides to escalate it or send ground troops, what kind of an operation he is likely to order?
For a ground intervention that is kind of like Iraq or Afghanistan post-9/11, the U.S. would need 5,00,000 to 6,00,000 troops because of the size of Iran. It literally has to go to conscription. The U.S. doesn’t even have enough troops to do that. So I see that as as far more improbable. Yes, it can try to capture an island, let’s say Kharg Island or another island. But how does it hold it under Iranian fire? And what might be the Iranian response, which may, which might be escalation in the Gulf?
So the problem there is not only that you might have Americans getting killed, but also what you’re trying to solve can actually become more difficult. If your problem that you’re trying to solve is to open the Strait of Hormuz and bring down the price of oil and facilitate trade, it actually may be counterproductive. So in a very narrow way, people who are advocating this, they’re hoping to get to a position where an invasion of Iran would become inevitable. I’m not sure that Trump is actually supportive of that view.
Do you think this war would change Iran’s nuclear posture or is there still scope for another nuclear agreement?
I think they would [be open for a deal], but it has to be part of a larger deal. Iran would not want to give up the right to enrich. One country that understands Iranian pride about these things is India. These are the kind of national issues that you know you just won’t give up. It’s ingrained. But they they might agree not to have a de facto nuclear programme. Even in Geneva they agreed that they would not stockpile –zero stockpile. If you’re not stockpiling anything, you’re de facto not enriching. I mean, the point of enrichment is to build a stockpile of material. If you have zero stockpile, doesn’t matter if your centrifuges are turning because you immediately will hand over the whatever you whatever you produce.
It’s very clear that that the nuclear program did not protect Iran militarily unless Iran like ends up with a bomb. It’s not going to protect Iran. And secondly, it has invited all kinds of sanctions on Iran. I think Iranians, as they were in Geneva, are open to giving it up, and it can be part of a larger deal if Iran gets guarantees of no war and Iran gets real genuine economic relief and there’s guarantee that that economic relief that is promised at the table will actually be implemented. What the Iranians are not going to do: negotiate on their missiles and on the Strait of Hormuz, because those are now Iran’s real deterrence.
Let’s look at the Persian Gulf monarchies. All of them got attacked. The U.S. failed to protect even its own bases. Their economies got affected. The White House now says Mr. Trump is interested in asking them to pay for the war. How do you look at these countries’ responses?
They were also caught off guard and are shocked at what’s happened. They they’ve paid very heavily for this war. Their economies have been ruined. Iran has attacked them directly. the U.S. has not been able to protect them. The U.S. war strategy was all based on protecting Israel, not protecting Arab states, and it’s very difficult to see how their economies will go back to where they were. Yes, oil might ultimately flow, but a lot of the economies, particularly the UAE and Qatar, were based on this idea of being the global hub for varieties of kinds of services. And it was all built on trust and peace for investment to come in, expats to come in. It’s going to take a lot for going back to that level of trust in those economies. Right now they are angry, very understandably. They’re very angry at Iran for attacking them, violating their sovereignty. There’s also anger at the U.S. for not defending them and for having brought the war onto them, for not having listened to them before the war when they were trying to say don’t go there. That’s not really beneficial, but let’s say when the war ends, countries ultimately have to look at their interests.
Some of their reactions are that you shouldn’t have started the war, but now that you started the war, you need to finish the Islamic Republic off. But based on what you were saying from Mr. Trump’s statements, it doesn’t look like Mr. Trump actually is interested in that level of investment in a war to remove the Islamic Republic. So now if Islamic Republic is going to be there, these countries have to really look again about their overall security. Is the United States a source of threat or is it security? Now it’s now very clear that the U.S. is either unwilling or unable to protect them. So my sense is that once the war is over, the Gulf countries will have to assess where their national interest is and what’s their national security priority and how to protect it. And it’s also conceivable that there won’t be a single answer. Oman and Qatar have decided to distance themselves from the war and to be much more conciliatory towards Iran than the UAE, Bahrain are and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. So, one of the consequences of this war is that the security architecture of the Gulf will change as a whole.
