Front Burner - Iran quagmire: why can’t the U.S. end the war?

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

The ceasefire in Iran has been in place for five weeks, with no clear end in sight to the war. The latest peace negotiations fell apart, with U.S. President Trump saying that the ceasefire is on “life support.” So what happens now? What kind of pain will Iran be able to tolerate? And how can the U.S. get itself out of this quagmire?The Economist’s Middle East correspondent Gregg Carlstrom joins us to discuss the latest.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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That's C-A-R-G-U-R-U-U-S dot CA. Cargooros.ca. This is a CBC podcast. Hi, I'm Jimmy Brousson. We are now five weeks into a ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. And there is no clear end in sight. The latest peace negotiations fell apart.

Donald Trump is saying that the ceasefire is on life support. It's unbelievably weak. I would say I would go it the weakest right now. after reading a piece of garbage they sent us. I didn't even finish reading it. I said, I'm going to waste my time reading it.

Today, we're going to wait through the latest. How might the U.S. get itself out of this quagmire? What kind of pain will Iran be able to tolerate? The economist Middle East correspondent, Greg Kirstrom, is back on the show. Greg, hey, thanks so much for doing this. Thanks for having me again. So let's start in China, where the two most powerful leaders in the world, She and Trump have been meeting. Iran obviously looms very large over the summit. The United States is describing the U.S. and China as being aligned on opening this trade of Harmuz and keeping it free of tolls, maybe worth noting in its readout, China only says they exchange views on the Middle East situation. They're kind of vague about it. What do you make of that messaging, though, coming from the U.S.? Is it signaling that the two superpowers are aligned here?

They're trying to signal that. I mean, I suspect they are aligned on this question. I think the Chinese may not say it in public, but if you are a country that depends a great deal on free trade, the idea of other countries starting to charge tolls on international waterways is something that you would find quite problematic. So I would imagine the Chinese are not supportive of this idea of setting up an Iranian toll booth. The question is, though, how far is Iran? willing to go in applying pressure on Iran, how much leverage does it actually have over Iran? And I think a lot of that discussion, when people talk about, can China play a role in trying to end the war, I think a lot of that may be overstated. So, yes, the Chinese are not going to sign on for an Iranian toll scheme in Hormuz, but does that mean that they're going to really step in to try and end this war in a meaningful way? I'm skeptical. And just talk to me more about that. I mean, what could China even conceivably do? And what would it take, I guess, for them to do it? I mean, there's not much, I think, that they conceivably could do. And they could, you know,

threatened to stop buying oil from Iran. And that would obviously focus mines in Tehran because China is the number one customer for Iranian oil. It buys almost all of Iran's oil exports. But would China want to do that? Does it want to stop buying discounted oil? from Iran, which China finds quite nice to have. Does it want to bail out Donald Trump at a moment when he seems to be floundering in Iran? I'm not sure that it does. I think more broadly, there's always this hope that China is going to play a bigger diplomatic role in the Middle East. Whenever there's a crisis in the region, people think, well, this will finally be the moment that China steps onto the world stage and throws its weight around in the region. And I just don't think

China wants to do that right now. I think it's content being an economic power in the Middle East, but it's happy to leave the mess of Middle Eastern diplomacy for other countries to deal with. There was worry going into this that Trump would make concessions on U.S. support for Taiwan in exchange for help with Iran. And just going back to those readouts, China said Taiwan is the most important issue in China-U.S. relations. And that quote, the U.S. side must exercise extra caution in handling the Taiwan question. Chinese President Xi Jinping acknowledged stable relations between the two countries was vital, but with a coded warning on the hot issue of Taiwan. When we cooperate both sides benefit, when we confront each other, both sides suffer. We should be partners rather

than adversaries. How much do you think Taiwan will factor into any discussions around the Middle East or will it? I'm not sure if it will. I mean, I think, you know, this summit in Beijing this week, yes, in theory, Trump would love some Chinese help dealing with the war in Iran. But on Trump's list of priorities, I would imagine that is not at the top. His main priorities here are economic, trying to secure deals for American firms, including firms run by his kids, trying to get China to open up more to the American economy, as he's been talking about. And then China, as you say, I mean, Taiwan is always a top priority for them. So I don't think either side really wants to push things too far on Iran

and sort of risk jeopardizing the summit over something that isn't a main issue for them. I want to spend a bit of time with you now going through the quagmire that the U.S. finds itself in right now. So we're five weeks into the ceasefire. Trump himself says that the ceasefire is on life support. Dr. Oz, life support is not a good thing. Do you agree? That prognostic. I would say the ceasefire is on massive life support where the doctor walks in and says,

sir, your loved one has approximately a 1% chance of living. Yeah. He says that Iran's recent proposals for a peace plan were garbage. And what would you say are the biggest issues holding back any kind of agreement right now? The same issues that held up an agreement a month ago when they met in Islamabad, the same issues that scuppered two previous rounds of negotiations before the war. I mean, in some ways, the substance really hasn't changed here. There are the questions around Iran's nuclear program, where there does seem to be a bit of convergence between America and Iran that the deal should set out a time-bound moratorium on uranium enrichment in Iran. But how long will that moratorium last? They don't agree on that. What do you do with Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium? There's no agreement there. And then so on and so forth. Will Iran have to dismantle some of its nuclear facilities, for example? They've been arguing about that point in every round of talks since Donald Trump took office again.

Look, I think that we are making progress. The fundamental question is, do we make enough progress that we satisfy the president's red line? And the red line is very simple. He needs to feel confident that we've put a number of protections in place such that Iran will never. have a nuclear weapon, right? That is the question. Do we meet that threshold or not? I think that we've made a lot of progress since we left Pakistan. I thought we made some progress in Pakistan, but we've made more since then. So anything to do with the nuclear file is still contentious. And then on the other side, there's the question of sanctions relief for Iran. How much is it going to get? When will it receive sanctions relief? How will that be phased out over the course of the deal? America hasn't said much about how far it's willing to go. Presumably Iran will expect significant.

significant relief from sanctions, but that's going to be politically difficult, I think, for Donald Trump. And I guess as I understand it, Iran is saying that they want the U.S. to recognize its sovereignty over the Strait of Pormuz. And does this lead you to believe that they're feeling pretty emboldened here, the Iranians? They are. I mean, some of these demands on both sides are maximalists. and you put them into your negotiating outline knowing that you're not going to get those things. But you start with a maximalist demand so you can settle for the things that you actually care about. Iran is not going to get, I think, American recognition of its control over the straight of foremost. That seems quite unlikely.

But there are some hardliners into Iran who think it is plausible. And you think that should be a condition for ending the war, never mind what that means for Iran's relations with its name. across the Gulf. There is not much willingness to make concessions right now in Tehran. We see that on the question of Hormuz. We see that on the nuclear file. The Iranians think they have the upper hand right now and time is on their side and they can just, you know, sort of wait the Americans out and so they don't have to concede. I want to dig into that a little bit more with you. How much pain can Iran take? How long can they wait? They're saying that they're ready to repel any the U.S. attacks. And actually the New York Times is reporting on U.S. intelligence that says Iran is in a

much better place militarily than Pete Hague-Seth and Trump say it is. Iran has been defeated militarily, totally. They have a little left. They probably built up during this period of time. We'll knock that out in about a day. But I have a plan. Notably that they still have 70% of their mobile launchers across the country, 70% of their pre-war stockpile of missiles, crews and ballistic, and that they have regained access to roughly 90% of underground missile storage and launch facilities. And just what position does that put the Iranian regime in at the moment militarily? Well, militarily, the benefit of fighting asymmetrical wars, the benefit of fighting the way

the Iranians have with a reliance on, you know, cheap drones and short-range missiles and and fast attack boats and things like that, is those things are very hard for an adversary to wipe out entirely, and they're very easy to replace because they're cheap and not terribly sophisticated. So whatever damage there has been to, for example, Iran's long-range ballistic missile capability, the missiles that it uses to hit Israel, it still has an enormous arsenal of short-range missiles and drones, which it has been using very successfully against Gulf countries over the past few months. they still have the ability to fight the kind of war that they have been fighting.

And when Donald Trump says, well, their Navy is at the bottom of the ocean and we destroyed their air force. Their Navy is gone. 24 ships in three days. That's a lot of ships. Their anti-aircraft weapons are gone. So they have no air force. They have no air defense. All of their airplanes are gone.

I mean, those things are true. But those things, the Navy, the Air Force, the Air Force, they have no air defense. Those things, the Navy, the Air Force, they were never central to Iran's way of waging war. The things that Iran is actually using to wage war, it still has those things. And so it still has its capabilities intact to some extent. Shopping for a car should be exciting, not exhausting. But sometimes it can feel like a maze. That's where Car Gurus comes in.

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the loss of a million jobs and put two million people directly or indirectly out of work. the government has urged people to preserve water, electricity and gas. Inflation is skyrocketing 67%. It's risen in the last year, according to their central bank. The Iranian government has highed wages. They've issued coupons and goods to give cash to the poor. But how long can this go on before they start having kind of trouble paying their own people? They're already having trouble, right, with civil servants who in many cases have not been paid for months.

The economic crisis in Iran, as you lay out there, is very real and it's gotten much worse because of the war. The destruction of steel mills and petrochemical plants and things like that has all sorts of downstream effects on the Iranian economy. This internet shutdown, the months-long internet shutdown, is hurting tech firms. It's hurting small businesses that advertise their products on Instagram. They're all getting crushed right now because the internet has been shut off for months. So all of these things are a real problem. Are they going to compel the Iranian regime to make concessions right now at the negotiating table? Probably not.

I mean, this is a government that was very happy to massacre thousands of its own citizens earlier this year when they came out to protest over the economic crisis. And so they're not going to care that people are suffering a bit more economic pain. So does that economic crisis help the Trump administration on an immediate timetable? No, it doesn't. But I think after the war, it starts to look like a very acute problem for the regime. Unless it can secure really significant sanctions relief as part of a deal, it is stuck in what looks like an economic death spiral. And once the fighting is over, once this sort of moment of emergency has passed, I think there's a very real chance that you see more protests over the economic situation in Iran. and those protests potentially pose a threat to or a challenge to the regime. Yeah. The Washington Post is reporting that the CIA believes Iran can survive the U.S.'s

negaville blockade around the Strait of Pormuz for three to four months before facing more severe economic hardship. Do you think that's part of the U.S. calculation here? I think putting a timetable on these things is always difficult. I mean, if you go back to was the second week of April when Donald Trump announced this blockade. And you had people in Washington saying, you know, in two weeks, Iran's oil facilities are going to be so backed up that it will have to completely halt oil production. Here we are more than a month later. That hasn't happened. Trump at the end of April went on Fox News and said their oil facilities will start exploding in three days because they have nowhere to put the oil. That didn't happen. The timetables are really hard to nail down here.

I think the Trump administration went into this, though, thinking that the blockade would cause such immediate short-term pain that Iran would have no choice but to capitulate. That clearly turned out to be wrong, whether it's another month or another three months or another six months, however long it is that Iran can endure, that's probably longer than the rest of the world can keep enduring the economic crisis, the energy crisis that it is now facing. So the blockade, yes, it's having a real impact on Iran, but just not on the timetable that the Americans hoped. Well, on that point, you know, what about the U.S. here? You know, this is, of course, existential for Iran, not for the U.S. How desperate is the Trump administration to get out of this war? Let me say they don't seem eager to resume the hot phase of the war. Despite all of these threats we've heard from Donald Trump to attack power plants and infrastructure in Iran.

They're going to have no bridges. They're going to have no power plants. Stone ages, yeah. He doesn't seem enthusiastic about going another round with the Iranians. And he would like a way out of this because higher energy prices are fueling higher inflation. And that's really raising concerns about what's going to happen in the midterms. But does that make Trump so desperate to end the war that he will make major concessions in a deal that he will sort of accept anything that the Iranians offer him.

That also doesn't seem to be the case. So he seems content for now, despite the economic pain, to leave things in this stalemate for a while, somewhere in between war and peace. There's no fighting, but there's also no permanent deal. The U.S. allies in the Gulf are also feeling a lot of pain. Their oil and gas exports have been disrupted. Their tourism industries have taken a hit.

There are concerns about how ongoing instability, could affect other investments and businesses. Are they putting pressure on the U.S. to end this war? Some of them are. They're not a monolith, of course. You have, on the one hand, Oman, which has sounded very sympathetic to the Iranians. Since the beginning of the war,

on the other hand, you have the United Arab Emirates, the UAE, which has been extremely hawkish on Iran since it came under Iranian attack. And so they have been urging the Trump administration to essentially keep going until the regime is no longer a threat. The rest of the Gulf states, though, are somewhere in the middle now. They are less hawkish than they were, say, back in March, when most people in the Gulf were urging Trump on. Now the message from the Saudis or from the Qatari's is in favor of diplomacy. They want these Pakistani-mediated talks to succeed.

They're worried about what sort of deal those talks might produce. They're worried about a deal that gives Iran too much sanctioned. relief and therefore allows it to rearm and rebuild and become an even bigger power in the region. So they have those concerns. But at the same time, they are desperate to avoid another round of fighting, which will lead to probably even worse attacks on their infrastructure. And they're desperate to get Hormuz reopened so they can start both exporting and importing products again. Just on Hormuz, you know, Trump has called, he seems kind of the most interested, obviously,

in getting the straight of Hormuz opened. He has called on NATO allies to come help. I think NATO's making a very foolish mistake. And I've long said that, you know, I wonder whether or not NATO would ever be there for us. So this was a great test because we don't need them, but they should have been there. I was reading a column by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times.

And he was making the argument that NATO essentially needs to put their distaste for Trump aside and come to the aid of the U.S. and help open the straight. His argument essentially is that if they don't do it and make clear to the Iranians, their control of the straight, including charging tools, is unacceptable that the straight will be in a permanent state of instability. And the consequences for Europe and also for the Gulf especially will be huge. And what are the odds you think that that will happen? I think there's a willingness to contribute to a post-war military mission in Hormuz. There are NATO countries.

there are Asian countries, Arab countries, that are all willing to help with that. But the key word there is post-war. No one wants to do it right now because they are worried about getting sucked into what seems like an open-ended conflict where the Americans don't even know what they're trying to achieve.

So it's understandable from the perspective of Britain or France or other countries. I mean, why would you want to get involved in that? I understand where they're coming from. But I think the point about Hormuz and sort of persistent instability there. I think it's a good point. It's a valid point.

I mean, we are now in a world where Iran has demonstrated not just the capability, but the will to close the strait and to do it on the cheap, to do it with a few anti-ship missiles and unsophisticated drones. It really doesn't take much, it turns out, to close a waterway. And so, yes, I do think after the war, it will be important to show that the rest of the world is united in trying to keep that straight open, even if right now, That's getting lost somewhat because, as always, Donald Trump just hangs over everything and that distorts everything. Yeah, I mean, they seem to want a deal before they do anything to secure the strait, but they can't get to a deal.

So it's really this stalemate. It is. And, you know, I think people throw around terms like reopen the strait as if that's something that can be easily done through military means. And it's not. even if NATO countries send warships and start escorting tankers and merchant ships in and out of the strait. First, there's a limit to how many of those convoys you can run. It doesn't restore traffic to the way it was. And second, you still need those merchant ships to be willing to take the risk of going through the strait. Even if you have a French or German or whatever destroyer accompanying you, there is still a risk that someone fires a missile at your ship.

and do commercial shippers, do the sailors themselves, want to take that risk? I'm not sure all of them would. The last actor I wanted to ask you about here is Israel. We know from reporting, I'm thinking here of the new book from New York Times reporters, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, is just one example that Israel played a significant role in convincing Trump to attack Iran. Marker Rubio has even said that the U.S. struck because Israel was going to strike anyways. What do we know about the role Israel is playing at the moment?

vis-a-vis influencing the U.S. on its next moves? Well, there's the Israeli Prime Minister, and then there are other people in the Israeli security establishment. I mean, Netanyo, I think very much, would like to see another round of fighting. He would like to see Trump make good on some of these threats to attack energy infrastructure and other bits of infrastructure in Iran. He believes that that might force the regime to capitulate, and he also has, of course, self-interested political reasons for wanting that.

There is meant to be an election in Israel later this year. Netanyahu had expected to go into that election with a decisive victory in Iran, and that was going to be his sales pitch to voters. But I would say at this point, Israel is not a monolith on this question. There are Israeli security officials who think Israel has achieved all that it can achieve in this current war and that dragging it out is going to do more damage to Israel itself, to Israel's partners and the Gulf, to Israel's standing in the United States. And they think that actually stopping the war right now might allow for renewed protest in Iran over dire economic conditions and other things. But the only

way to have any hope of political change in Iran, they argue, is to stop the war, which for now has put protests on ice, obviously, and sort of unified the population. Right. Great. Given everything that we've talked about today, I wonder what you see as the most likely path forward here, how this could play out in the weeks and months ahead who you think might blink first, et cetera. I think we're in for further stalemate. I don't think either side really wants to resume fighting.

We've talked about Trump not wanting it. I don't think the Iranians want it either, because they're really. aware of how destructive it will be for them. Whereas this question of economic pressure, yes, Iran is feeling it, but it's not forcing them to capitulate. And I think the remarkable thing about America now, too, is you have an American president who seems very unresponsive to economic signals coming out of the U.S. The only thing that matters when I'm talking about Iran, they can't have a nuclear weapon. I don't think about American's financial situation. I don't think about anybody.

I think about one thing. We cannot let Iran have a nuclear one. Inflation being at its highest rate in three years, gas being above 450 a gallon. And then the far worse circumstances in some of America's allies overseas. I mean, we're talking about Asian countries that are facing shortages of oil and gas

and other refined products. We're talking about Europe, maybe not having jet fuel this summer because they're going to start training down their supplies of jet fuel. And the American president doesn't seem to care about any of this. So both America and Iran, even though they're facing economic pressure, their governments are not responsive to that pressure. And that suggests to me that we could be in for some further period of stalemate, mutual blockade,

largely unsuccessful talks, and things just muddle on as they are for a while. Greg, this is great. Thank you so much for this. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. All right, that is all for today. Front burner was produced this week by Matthew Amha, Joitha Shangupta, Kevin Sexton, McKenzie Cameron, Mia Johnson,

Kristen De Jagger, and Dave Modine. Our YouTube producer is John Lee. Our music is by Joseph Shabbison. Our senior producers are Imogen Bertrand and Elaine Chow. Our executive producer is Nick McCabe Locos. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you next week. For more CBC podcasts, go to CBC Podcasts,

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