Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 4/16/26 Trita Parsi on the Likeliest Outcome of the Iran Ceasefire

Episode Date: April 18, 2026

Scott interviews Trita Parsi about the ceasefire and negotiations between the Trump administration and the Iranians. Parsi believes, while this was a strategic defeat for the US, the ceasefire has given Trump the opportunity to walk away with no deal and that that’s likely what he’ll end up doing. Scott and Parsi dig into the specifics and discuss the broader regional dynamic going forward concerning Iran’s proxies and the Israelis. Discussed on the show: “How Trump Took the U.S. to War With Iran” (New York Times) Trita Parsi is the Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author of Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy. Parsi is the recipient of the 2010 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. Follow him on Twitter @tparsi Audio cleaned up with the Podsworth app: https://podsworth.com Use code HORTON50 for 50% off your first order at Podsworth.com to clean up your voice recordings, sound like a pro, and also support the Scott Horton Show! For more on Scott's work: Check out The Libertarian Institute: https://www.libertarianinstitute.org Check out Scott's other show, Provoked, with Darryl Cooper https://youtube.com/@Provoked_Show Read Scott's books: Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine https://amzn.to/47jMtg7 (The audiobook of Provoked is being published in sections at https://scotthortonshow.com) Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism: https://amzn.to/3tgMCdw Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/3HRufs0 Follow Scott on X @scotthortonshow And check out Scott’s full interview archives: https://scotthorton.org/all-interviews This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated https://rrbi.co Moon Does Artisan Coffee https://scotthorton.org/coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom https://www.libertyclassroom.com/dap/a/?a=1616 and Dissident Media https://dissidentmedia.com You can also support Scott’s work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/https://scotthortonshow.com or https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest. Reporting to the American people what's going on in this country. It's the babies I make it. We're dealing with Hitler Revisited. This is the Scott Horton Show, Libertarian Foreign Policy, mostly. When the president visit, that means that it is not illegal. We're going to take out seven countries in five years. They don't know what the fuck they're doing.

Negotiate now. End this war. And now, here's your host. Scott Porton. Welcomeing again the Great Treaty of Parsi. He is co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and is, of course, the author of the fantastic, treacherous alliance about the secret history of America, Israel, and Iran.

He also wrote losing an enemy in a single rule of the dice, which I admit I haven't read. And now that I think about how much I love that first book, I really do need to read those second two about diplomas. with Iran in the Obama years there. Anyway, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for joining us again, Trita. Thank you so much for having me.

Really appreciate it. Okay, so you just tweeted a thing very recently here from Laura Rosen, who is a long time, you know, State Department and journalist type very close to, like, for example, she did very in-depth, even minute-by-minute coverage of the diplomacy over the JCPOA back in 2015. 2015 and so forth.

And you tweeted out an article by her quoting informed sources saying looks like talks are continuing here. We also heard that from Trump. Looks like they're going to be talking. So I also noticed a piece that you had earlier saying

that you believe that Trump has the strategic upper hand here in the talks in getting his way, which is a little bit counterintuitive on the face of it considering America's strategic failure in the war. But I'm very interested to hear your explanation for that. All right. So I don't really say that he has a strategic benefit. What I'm saying, though,

is that the ceasefire enabled Trump to get the key thing he wanted, which is precisely because this war was such a strategic disaster and defeat. and would have become an even worse defeat for Trump if it continued, if the war continued. Getting the ceasefire enabled him to get the key thing that he wanted at this point, which was to just get out of the war. His key objective wasn't any longer.

The nuclear issue or whatever else it was, he will make up any narrative that he won. That's not his problem. His problem is to actually get out of the war. And prior to the ceasefire, he couldn't get out of the war without Yvonne's consent. Because Yvani's would have continued to bond, even if the U.S. stopped bombing.

But because of a ceasefire, now the Iranians cannot restart the war. Let's say that you have a scenario in which the U.S. just walks away. He doesn't lift sanctions. He doesn't open up the straits. Well, the strays will be open, but it will be under Iranian control.

And he just washes his hands of it and says, look, I'm done. I destroy their military. I'm good. And if the Israelis want to continue the war, that's their issue, but he will just not be in the war any longer. And his base would be very happy with him making that decision. In that scenario, the Iranians cannot restart the war without becoming the aggressors.

Right. Right. I see what you said. So the more he disengages, the more the burden is on them to figure out how to get along with everybody else. But then the thing is the key thing the Iranians want is to make sure that they end this with sanctions relief and a permanent. end to the war.

To get that, they need to have a deal. But the key thing Trump wanted, he already got. He's out of the war. So now the Iranians are in a stronger position of being the ones that have more future gained to lose if there isn't a deal, whereas Trump already has gained the key thing he wanted. Now, I think it would be better for him and for the United States to strike a deal, to make sure that, you know, the nuclear issue is pacified, sanctions are lifted,

hopefully a different relationship between the two countries, so we're not in the state of constant. Is there going to be war? Is there not going to be a war? That would be better for the U.S. But that's going to require something that Trump may not be willing to give, which is, not that he's against giving the sanctions relief, but can you imagine how upset Bibi Netanyahu will be if he's not only ending the war, but on top of that, making a deal with, you know, with Iran that lifts the sanctions on Iran. There's not been a single deal the U.S. has contemplated with Iran that the Israelis have supported or have not opposed

if it entailed sanctions relief. As soon as sanctions relief is included, the Israelis are against it. Because sanctions is in and of itself a way to degrade Iran over time. You can do it faster with bombings, more intense, more deadly, etc., or at least in the short term, but you can also do it by having these strangulating sanctions on the country over the course of decades. And they banished to get some of the strongest sanctions under Obama and later on under Trump. And they will not sit still if Trump is about to lift them.

So for Trump, he may end up in a scenario in which he thinks, you know what, I don't want to have that headache with the Israelis. They're pissed off enough that I'm even ending this war. So let me just walk away. I got the key thing I needed. The Europeans and the Asian countries are going to be upset about Iran controlling. the straits. But the U.S. is not importing a lot of war from the Persian Gulf. And the Iranians will not close the straits. They want the streets to be open. They want to make money off

of the toll. So they need to let traffic go through. It's just that they're going to insist on collecting the tolls. But the strait will be open. All prices will come down. Gas prices will come down in the U.S. And sure enough, people will soon forget about this war because at the end of the day, as bad as it was, it could have become much, much worse if he stayed in the war. So I can see him making that calculation and will leave the Iranians in a very bad situation because, yes, they control the straits. That's a strategic benefit compared to where they were before. But they need sanctions relief.

And they needed an opportunity to meet the U.S. at the negotiating table from a relative position of strength. And for the first time in 47 years, they are actually at the table from the relative position of strength. But not. They will not get the opportunity to translate that into a new status quo. if he just walks away. Right, I see.

And as you're saying, he's already halfway away now, having stopped. Yeah, I mean, he just said that we actually have a very good relationship with you on. I don't know if you saw the clip. He just said that like an hour ago. Listen, I mean, this is the very best thing about Donald Trump. He can demand unconditional surrender one day and then surrender unconditionally the next. And he don't give a damn. Yeah.

And he just flip on any dime. Oh, the new, look, I really dislike the guy's father. But the new Ayatollah comedy is fantastic. Like, what the hell? Why not, dude? You know? You can't think of a reason why not. So that's good enough.

I'll tell you what, man. You can get him to flip-flop that bad, then thank goodness. Now, you know, I got to wonder, though, whether he's willing to take that win. I mean, in fact, you know, as even the... Guess it was the New York Times, right, ran a big piece, quoting all Israeli officials, just wailing and lamenting the failure of this war to achieve all of Netanyahu's stated objectives here. And in fact, they've been tremendously empowered. The Persian Gulf is no longer an American lake.

It is, again, the Persian Gulf in every sense of that term. It's a massive strategic benefit that they've gained there. I don't know if we can even reopen any of those Gulf military bases. ever again or what would be the point of trying it. So I mean, the U.S. could. The question is, okay, a lot of these bases have taken a lot of things. We did not really change the regime. We did not, you know, somehow uninvent their ability to enrich uranium to whatever percent that they want and et cetera, et cetera.

We did not force them to abandon Hezbollah and the Hs and their Shiite militia friend, the PMUs in Iraq. Right? So none of the strategic goals stated have been achieved at this point. I think, I mean, obviously that's absolutely true. I think it's at the same time important to understand most of those things were never achievable anyways. Right. The only reason why he even pursued him was because the Israelis had essentially

called them into believing that he could do these things. And it was clear he couldn't. The U.S. cannot do those different things. So there's a part of me that don't want to begrudge him for not. having achieved things that were unachievable, that I have ridden for years are unachievable. I think some credit needs to be given to the fact that he recognized that this was a strategic mistaken, and as a result found the way out of it and is apparently trying to end it. Whereas most American presidents in the past, when they end up in these debacle, they just

keep on going and kick the can down the road and hope that the next president will have to deal with it. And that's how we end up in these endless wars. and the fact that he didn't do that and he didn't compare where he is to what he said he would achieve but he compared where he is and what he can achieve to the cost that would be inflicted

if he didn't end this war and all of the significant damage that will come after that. To me it's kind of like imagine if we are in May 22nd, 2003. Sorry, 2003. That's the day before Paul Bremer decided to dismantle

and disband the Iraqi army. Right. Which was one of the most crucial, dangerous decisions that made that really set the stage for the insurgency and everything else. Imagine if on the day before, George W. Bush woke up and said, you know what, I actually campaigned on no nation building. We got rid of Saddam, but this is the country of the Iraqis, not our country. I'm just going to leave it to them to figure it out.

Would it be criticized? Absolutely. Would there have been some instability? No doubt. Would it be in a good situation? No, because we shouldn't have gone in there in the first place. But compared to staying for another decade, birthing ISIS and all of that other stuff, it would have been better if he pulled out and on May 22nd.

And that's kind of what Trump did in this situation, I think. Well, I sure hope it sticks. I mean, there's so many stories saying he's sending more troops to the region, re-arming and getting ready. And if the Iranians don't give in and give up enrichment and all of this, then we're going back to war. I don't know if this is credible, man. You know, anti-war.com is running a story a little lower down on the page today

from a Turkish paper saying that the Russians had repeatedly offered to take all of Iran's uranium stockpile out of the country and convert it to fuel rods. And then America continues to reject these offers. In other words, they need this pretext to keep fighting. Otherwise, why when they just let the Russians take the damn uranium then and call, and even use that as a basis for ending the war. See, we achieved our objective. The stockpiles gone now.

Even though, of course, that would have happened under the JCPOA if he just stayed in the JCPOA. That was where they had already agreed to ship all their stockpile. Look, the Russians have made it off several times. I've written about it. And again, earlier on, the reason why Trump didn't accept it is because these Israelis had convinced them. Don't make any deal.

Right. You can get rid of this regime. You'll get the best possible deal by simply getting rid of it. this regime. Why make a compromise when you can actually get them to surrender? So he rejected that proposal. He rejected what the Omanis put on the table, all of them far superior to the JCPOE in many aspects. He rejected all though because he was under the belief that within four days, he would have either had gotten Iran to surrender or for the regime to collapse. And again, completely unachievable. This was never really in

the cart. U.S. intelligence said that, but he chose to listen to the Israelis instead of listening to the U.S. intelligence. Yeah. Hey, I don't know about you guys, but I don't even have health insurance anymore. The system is so rigged and the prices are so high. Insurance for just my wife this year cost as much as it did for both of us last year. Something like that. Pretty close anyway.

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three months. Get a great discount there at crowdhealth.com. Use the promo code Horton. It's interesting. That New York Times story, widely cited, and I guess credible because you could tell like it was, you know, the highest level principles for the sources for the story, however authorized they were to frame it the way they did. I don't know exactly. But the way I read it, and I should probably reread the thing too, but the way I read it was sort of like in two pieces, right? The first part is Netanyahu came and blew all this smoke

about how it's going to be like a magic wish is going to be so easy and fun and great. And then when he left the room, everybody said, no, actually, sir, he's really embellishing about how easy it'll be. It won't be that easy to change the regime. but they did go ahead and reassure him that with military power, we can severely set them back in terms of their missile force and in other ways. And so he seemed to, the way the story read to me, Trita, was that he was launching the war, not really on Netanyahu's promises, but on General Keynes,

that, look, we will be able to degrade their missile force, to a substantial enough degree that you might even think of worth it to get started even at the risk of them retaliating back and they sort of let him feel like it was okay to do that on a military basis except then came in.

I think something that needs to be remembered is that. But he did say in his, when he launched the war, he announced it like, now is your chance Iranian people to rise up and all that. So you can tell there was still a bit of that in there.

But yeah, yeah. Because look, look, the way the military tends to operate is that if the president says, hey, I want to do this, the military has to come up with plans, okay, this is how you can do it. And these are the resources you need. Very rarely do they say, sir, this cannot be done. Yeah.

Right. So when he asks. The Joint Chiefs of Staff job, though, by the way, for people who don't know, and I know you know this, but he's actually not even in the chain of command. He is not under the Secretary of Defense. The Secretary talks straight to the Chiefs. He is the military advisor to the President more than any other thing. It's his job to say, sir, this really isn't realistic unless you're really willing to pay this price.

And I don't even remember what's in the New York Times story on that, but people I spoke to throughout this entire period were oftentimes saying it's not just him, but many others who are very, very skeptical and are not expressing. their skepticism as strongly as they want to and as they should and as they probably could out of fear for a variety of things. Others who had fell out with Trump and were no longer at the table. There were several people who were very much part of the conversation in June and in May of last year, but because of their opposition to the war and because Trump thinks that that war was an amazingly successful war, he's not even considering their opinions any longer, despite the fact that they should be at the table given their titles. This thing creates that type of a scenario in which people just don't contradict the president

when they see that he really wants to go in certain direction. And he had really been convinced by the Israelis to go in that direction. And the pushback ended up just being too polite, too soft. One of the things that kept on happening is that the Pentagon kept on saying, well, if you want to do this, you're going to need another aircraft carrier. And you're going to need more of this and more of that. And I'm sure you remember in January that was just like this constant reporting that actually there's a decision to send even more stuff.

Part of that is to convince him it's not a good idea to do it. Right. But it's just not a very effective way of doing it with someone like Trump. Other presidents probably would have understood that, okay, they're telling me this because they're trying to tell me don't do it. Right. It's tough, man. You know, I don't know exactly how it went down.

I'm sure you remember this story by Joe Klein in Time Magazine about. the chiefs took, not just the chairman, but they all kind of took Bush to the tank in the basement of the Pentagon in the skiff. And they said, look, we'll do Iraq. We'll do the surge. This is January 07. We'll do the surge, but please don't make us do Iran.

We do not want to do Iran because, yes, ultimately we can defeat them, but they can hit back. And we will not, as they said that, we won't have escalation dominance. We won't be able to choose every stage of the war. They will also be. punching us in the mouth the whole time too. And so that's why we want to not go.

We've got all our troops in Iraq, embedded with Shiite forces, by the way, and at risk. And we've got bases all up and down the Gulf and a bazillion dollars worth of economic targets. And Iran can reach out and touch all of them. And so, yes, we're the superpower and they are not, but can they defend themselves in an effective way

that makes the cost for us way too high? Yeah, they can. And that's why we don't want to. And Bush said, okay, boys, forget it then. That was it. And they left that spring trying to pressure him in changing his mind. But his mind was made up in January that the military says, forget it. So forget it.

Exactly. Exactly. And I think the sugar high of Venezuela made Trump even less receptive to any arguments that there's something the U.S. military cannot achieve. Right. the riots, the protests, further intensified a belief on his mind that, wow, this regime is really about to fall.

If you remember in December when the protests first began, they were very small, but only back then, the narrative in the Western media was, oh my God, is this regime going to fall? I remember talking to one guy in Tehran, I was asking him, like, okay, how widespread are they protests? And this is, you know, the first two or three days

of the protest. and he said, I drove around Tehran all day yesterday, I couldn't find them. Now, later on January 8, they became massive. But the narrative that the regime was on the brink of falling started on December 29, long before the protests actually were that large. It's such an important. And again, I don't think that was coincidental, by the way. I think this were things in which certain interests are pushing a specific narrative.

And they were doing it partly. And I actually wrote about it at the time. They're trying to convince Trump that this is going to be so. easy. So they're overstating what actually is happening in New York. Right. So that's such a crucial point, right? Because the main propaganda about that is look how horrible they are, that they would kill so many people. And everyone they killed were all peaceful protesters. As Trump said the other day, they killed 45,000 entirely innocent, peaceful protesters. And the thing is about that is obviously the main point is to drive outrage among the public that, oh my God, these guys are so evil.

Can we continue to allow them to rule Tehran? It would be the way that they get to phrase it. But then the real point is, like you were pointing out there, is that this convinced Trump that they had to kill 45,000 people in order to apparently convince the other, I don't know, half a million to go home. Otherwise, they would have been overthrown right then. And obviously, this. This proves that they cling to power only through violent force, and they have no popular support at all.

And in fact, I saw when Joe Kent did this interview on Newsmax, which is, you know, boomer, right wing, you know, ox, pro war, mongery, Zionist kind of thing. And Joe Kent said to the guy, listen, when you bomb a country, you drive up support for the government. people, it's called a rally around the flag effect, and that's what's happening in Iran now. And the interviewer quite sincerely, Trieda, he thought, said to Joe Kent, that's not the case here, though, because we saw in January,

they had to kill 40, 50,000 people just to be able to cling on to power. And that proves that no one in Iran supports them at all, no matter how many regime targets we bomb, that's never going to increase support for people who are essentially just captives of whatever, this alien force that is their government. And he totally believed what he was saying there,

that the protests proved, never mind popular sovereignty, they had no popular support whatsoever because they had to kill that many people, which, by the way, it was like half as many people, were slaughtered by Israel's merciless genocidal campaign in Gaza over two years, right? But whatever, you're supposed to just believe that happened in two days, even though we did not be a Dresden-style firestorm anywhere in Tehran.

Yeah. No, look, I think that whole thing, again, was part of, you know, the normalization, the manufacturing of consent in favor of the war. And what's fascinating is that it really didn't work outside of the media class and the blob because the population in the United States was still overwhelmingly against this war. Now, he had his own base, but his own base doesn't pay attention to these issues. They just pay attention to what he says. And they tend to trust him and they believe him.

But this really reminded me of what happened in 2003. Because back then as well, the mainstream media was parading Iraqi Americans on TV begging for their country of birth to be bombed. And now suddenly the same thing happened here. What was fascinating was that there was a campaign going on for about four years prior to this that started, which was aimed at discrediting all Iranian-American voices that opposed war or post-sanctions so that they were out of the scene.

So by the time this war started, they would be able to fill the airwaves just with these people who are saying, please bomb us, please bomb us. Or do you want to cry if you don't bomb them? And they succeeded, again, in doing that. and dominating the airways for the first two weeks. But it collapsed very quickly because it became clear that this is not only not a good war is a disaster, but also it really wasn't supported,

not even by the Iranian-American community, but by also inside the country at all, that level of support never existed. It was one of these other things that was done to give the impression that this is a good moral war. It's the moral thing. Remember, some of these voices said on TV, oh, this is not a war.

This is a rescue mission. I mean, these type of things that were being used to convince the American public, I'm actually very impressed to see that the American public never fell for it. I mean, in the beginning of the war, roughly 70%, 75% were against it. And then those numbers have just gone up. So it's very different from Iraq in which, of course, it was like a hero propaganda that started before the beginning of the war. But by the time the war started, 79% of the American public were in favor of the war.

I think the American public has become much more savvy. There's also another aspect of it that is very important. Voices like yourself and others because of the emergence of the alternative media has made it much, much more easy for Americans to get a diverse perspective on these things and not just fall for the single unitary voice that comes out of most of the mainstream media. Yeah, I mean, the polls show that there's the Fox News Watchers versus the rest of the population, essentially on this, right? Yeah.

Absolutely. And even there, I think if Trump had gone on with this war for another week, he would have lost the Fox News borders, not all of them, but a big portion of them as well, because it was really going towards a disastrous situation. Yeah. Yay, guess what, everybody? I'm a total twin. Well, actually, no, I'm me. I'm Skater Scott.

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if you have school age kids then you will absolutely love their stuff and especially now because now i'm in it too so all you got to do is uh go to total twins.com slash free magazine get it Felt twins.com slash free magazine and they'll send it right to you. And isn't that great? And now, but what about the great Satan, Benjamin Netanyahu? I mean, he can just do whatever the hell he wants here.

Man, I mean, as we're recording this, they just announced a ceasefire in Lebanon, which makes me suspect that Netanyahu drop an atom bomb on them tomorrow. I don't know. Well, the Israelis intensified the bombing today and Hezbollah responded as a result of the ceasefire because it's not coming into effect yet.

But it will be interesting to see if this actually is a response, a preliminary effort to actually secure a final deal with Iranians. Because the Iranians are going to insist on Lebanon and actually Gaza to be included in this. Yes. Because if, particularly for Lebanon, it's very hard for them. There's already a narrative that Iran betrayed Lebanon in 2024. And the Iranians want to be very careful

so they don't do anything that reinforces that narrative. There's also the realization that if the war continues in Lebanon, it will eventually spill over into Iran as it has already done twice. But most importantly, and this goes back to what we started off talking about,

I think from the Iranian side, they look at this as this is a test for the United States. Is the United States capable and willing to reign in Israel? Because if the United States is not capable or unwilling to reign Israel, and Israel can restart these wars and the Israelis can drag the U.S. into these wars, what's the point of an agreement with the United States?

If the United States is not a decision maker, why make a deal with the U.S.? If the decision maker is sitting somewhere else, you either continue the war or you make a deal with that decision. So I think from the Iranian perspective, they're insisting on this really strongly because it will be a reflection as to whether the rest of the agreement is worth the paper is written on. Yeah. Well, you know, it seems just as likely, doesn't it, that the agreement would be between the Lebanese government,

every faction but Hezbollah, or at least the most important factions with the Israelis, to let Israel keep bombing Hezbollah, just not other parts of Lebanon, something like that. Because they're not even included in the talk. and they probably don't want to quit fighting either until they've taught Israel a lesson the same way that the Iranians apparently succeeded in teaching America one here. I think if the outcome is one

in which through the pressure of the Iranians, there is a ceasefire in all of Lebanon, Hezbollah will see that as a significant victory because it will essentially mean the disarmament of Hezbollah is not possible by the Israelis. And it's certainly not possible by the Lebanese government. The Lebanese government is essentially propped up by the U.S.

in order for it to be strong enough to take on Hezbollah but not strong enough to deter Israel. But the Lebanese clearly have chosen that between getting bombed by Israel or going towards a civil war, they prefer to get bombed by Israel. That doesn't mean that they don't want to disarm Hezbollah. But it's not about disarming Hezbollah.

about integrating Hezbollah into a larger Lebanese system, which has to be done by the Lebanese terms on Lebanon's time frame, not on Israel or the United States' time frame. And if this ends up becoming a ceasefire that also includes them, I think they believe that they're much closer towards reaching that goal. And it will be a strategic defeat for Israelis. And this is part of the reason I'm saying it's bad enough for Israel if there is a peace. It's, terrible for them if there is sanctions relief. So I think they will do everything they can in their power to sabotage that. And I'm not sure or confident of how effective Trump will be in standing up against

now. Now, if he has a really good deal on the table and he can be a historic figure that actually gets a deal that resolved this issue, he may be able to erase the memory of the stupidity of starting the war in the first place. Yeah. Will he say no to that? in order to avoid a conflict with Netanyahu remains to be seen. Yeah.

Interesting. So you know what's funny, man, is no one is saying as part of this that Iran has to cut off all support for Hamas in the West Bank. I mean, pardon me, in the Gaza Strip. No one is pretending this week for whatever reasons. I guess because trying to end this war is too serious. So they're not going to sit here and pretend Hamas is the same level of proxy as Hezbollah. And Iran is not demanding that Israel ceasefire against Hamas, even though they have an official

ceasefire, Israel bombs Gaza almost every day. They kill, you know, maybe a dozen people a day instead of 120 a day like it was before the so-called ceasefire. But it didn't seem like the Iranians are sticking their neck out for the Palestinians here at all, right? and demanding a real end to that as part of this deal? I mean, I think if the Iranians could, from their standpoint, that would be a feather in their cap,

if they could make sure that this also ends the campaign in Gaza. But the Iranians have a very different relationship with Hezbollah than they do with Hamas. And so I think they have a much stronger commitment to Hezbollah than they have to Hamas and to Gaza. And I can see that within their own base, and not talking about the Iranian population as a whole, but within the base of support for the Islamic Republic inside of Iran,

which I think is probably around 15 to 20 percent, still about 18 million people. Giving up on Hezbollah is probably a red line. I am not so sure if it is a red line of Gaza, particularly if they have an otherwise very attractive deal in front of them. Yeah. And after all, as Bala jumped into this fight on Iran's side by launching these missile salvos and whatever.

Exactly. Exactly. Whereas Hamas started the attacks on October 7th against Iran's wishes and recommendation. Okay. I got to run. Tell me more about that because, you know, I just heard what I knew were false claims to the contrary the other day. And I just argue that, well, look, obviously Iran and Hezbollah and the Houthis could have all attacked at the same time if they'd been ready. And that didn't happen.

But you obviously didn't know more about it. So please do. Yeah, no. I mean, there's intelligence that has been revealed that show that Hamas tried to convince Dvanians that this was a good idea. They didn't reveal all the details or the date or anything like that. But the Iranians were not ready. I mean, the Iranians have their own issues to deal with. same thing with Hezbollah.

So they never really joined in, never supported it. And once it happened, it was kind of like Hamas was trying to force their hands. And you saw that both Hezbollah and Iran, well, I mean, Hezbollah did start some low-level attacks to kind of keep the Israelis engaged in the north so they wouldn't turn all of their efforts against Gaza. But it was nothing compared to what a real war would be. Of course, there's always been this ladder of acceptance. escalation, if one can call it out, between Israel and Hezbollah.

The Iranians didn't join in at all and, you know, pushed very hard for a ceasefire from the outset. So if this actually was coordinated, if this was something they were in on, the golden opportunity would have been to attack immediately after October 7 when the Israelis were going to complete this raid. And the Iranians and Hezbollah did absolutely not do that. So I think that in and of itself tells you what's going on. Yeah. In fact, that reminds me. There was a Wall Street Journal story where the CIA was saying that they did not believe that Iran told. Hamas to do it or had ordered the... It was a Wall Street Journal story that said that they were.

And it was so badly forced. It was an embarrassment. Okay. Yeah, and said that, you know, all of it was actually planned, if I'm not mistaken, in Beirut. It was like, it was just so ludicrous. He actually got a tremendous out of pushback. And they...

I'm so sorry, I'm going to run right now. Yeah, and they saw the Iraqis give Muhammad Atta a flask full of anthrax there too. Yeah. Exactly. All right. Hey, man. Thanks. Talking to you, around.

I really appreciate you, man. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Talk you soon. That is Trita Parsi. He's at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. The Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Roberts & Brokerage, Inc., Moondos Artisan Coffee, Tom Woods Liberty Classroom, and APS Radio News. Subscribe in all the usual places and check out my books, Fool's Aaron, Enough Already, and my latest, Provote.

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