The Decibel - U.S. and Iran weigh diplomacy as warships head for the Gulf

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

Over the last few weeks, U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened military intervention in Iran – first over the Islamic Republic’s treatment of protesters, and now, over the country���s nuclear ambitions. U.S. military warships have moved toward striking distance of Iran; meanwhile, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that a strike on Iran would spark a regional war.Thomas Juneau is a professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. He’s here to talk about how close Iran and the U.S. are to re-entering diplomatic talks, how other countries in the region are working to mediate the situation, and where this is leading for the people of Iran.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tensions between the U.S. and Iran are high. Over the last few weeks, President Donald Trump repeatedly threatened military intervention in Iran, first over the Islamic Republic's treatment of protesters, and now over the country's nuclear ambitions. U.S. military warships are currently within striking range of Iran. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamini said any strike on Iran would spark a regional war. This follows weeks of protest by Iranian citizens, calling for a regime change. Now, both countries have signaled diplomatic talks could be on the horizon. To impact how we got here and what might come next, Tamar, you know, is back on the show.

He's a professor at the University of Ottawa's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, with a research focus on the Middle East, in particular, Iran and Yemen. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the glacial. Logan Mail. Hi, Tamah. Thanks so much for coming back on the show. Thanks for having me again. So we last had you on the show a few weeks ago to talk about the protest in Iran. And since then, Trump has ratcheted up threats on Iran and now we're seeing U.S. warships in the Arabian Sea. What changed for things to get to this point? Well, there's a number of things that I've changed. Always keeping in mind the caveat that we've mentioned in the past, and I'm sure we'll get into

again today, that with Trump, things are always very unpredictable and hard to explain. It's hard to understand what exactly is he trying to achieve. But basically, the one thing that has really changed is that it is now clear that the round of protests that we saw in December 25 and January 26 is over. The Islamic Republic was successful in repressing it with a level of brutality that even by its own standards is unprecedented. The numbers are not clear, but we are now probably at a floor of 6,000 dead and arguably north of 10,000 and maybe even more than that.

If there are 6,000 or way more dead, you have to assume that the number of injured is in the tens of thousands. So that's the domestic context in Iran. It is now clear that the protests have stopped, right? So that is one aspect that has changed. So before when we talked, there was internet blackouts. We didn't have a sense of what was going on on the ground. But so we do know now that the protests are over. You are correct to point out the internet blackout, which is not completely resolved.

I mean, we are still lacking precise information on what exactly. happened in those couple weeks, but also what is going on now. That being said, there's more than enough information now coming out of Iran through various forms of media activists and so on, that we are clear that to make a long story and complicated story short, repression worked for this one. It is nothing more and nothing less than the extraordinary brutality of the government's wave of repression, which is very short, right? It happened in only a few days. Whereas if you look at the past wave of protests in 2022 and 23 after Marza Amini was killed by the Morality Police, the protests did go on over a number of months, and it took a while before repression was enough

to basically shut it down, whereas this time the regime in early January unleashed a wave of repression that was extraordinarily brutal and violent, and within a matter of days, it was over. It's over for this time. I think everybody is clear on that. There will be another wave of protests. Nobody is able to predict when it's going to be. But as of today, as of this week, it is over for now. Okay. Trump initially said that he would attack Iran because of how the government was dealing with protesters. Is that still the case?

That's hard to say, again, going back to the point that who knows what exactly Trump is trying to do. What is clear is that at the height of the protests, Trump did encourage people to go to the street and did threaten the Islamic Republic with repercussions, undefined, if it unleashed a wave of repression. that is exactly what happened. People went to the street and they were killed by the thousands, if not the tens of thousands. So there is a degree of frustration among many Iranians here that Trump promised something that didn't happen. So now that he is again referring to possible strikes on Iran, possible consequences for Iran, referring in some of his statements to the repression in the country, what are people in Iran to make of that? Are they to make of this an

encouragement to go back in the street at some point at the risk of being. killed, or are they to receive this with a degree of suspicion, given that Trump's intentions may not be intentions that are aligned with democratic reform inside Iran? And here, one precedent is Venezuela. What did Trump do in Venezuela? He went in with American Special Forces. In three hours, they were back out. They removed a president, a brutal and corrupt dictator, but now the system is still in place. And it is clear that the intention of the U.S. and Venezuela, at least as of now, is not the democratize in any way. So for a lot of democracy activists in Iran right now and outside of Iran, as there is growing concern that the intent here by the U.S. may be to weaken the regime,

maybe to make a deal with the regime, but that democratization is not at the top of the list of priorities. What has Trump said about his plans for Iran? So Trump, as is usually the case, has said a number of different things that were not always logically coherent from one to the other. a number of media leaks have said that the U.S. basically has three objectives now in negotiations with Iran that appear to be ongoing, you know, behind the scenes right now. One is the nuclear program. Trump has asked for a complete dismantlement of Iran's nuclear program. Two is the missile program. Iran has the most advanced missile program in the Middle East, probably not completely dismantling the missile program, but at least restraining it. And that probably means not having missiles that have the range of about 1,500 kilometers to reach as, Israel. Shorter range may be fine, but not longer range or mid-range. And the third thing that Trump

would be asking Iran is dropping its support for a number of non-state actors, violent actors, terrorists in the Middle East, think about Hezbollah, think about Hamas, think about the Houthis in Yemen, and a range of others. That seems to be the ask. Is there a chance that Iran could agree to that? Never. But can it be the starting point for negotiations whereby they could meet somewhere in the middle. That's what we're going to see in the next few days. And so the way that we're seeing this escalation is through this equipment that has been building up in the Arabian Sea. Can you talk about what equipment the U.S. has positioned near Iran? So there's two levels here. There's the extensive military apparatus and infrastructure that the

U.S. already had in the Middle East around Iran in a number of countries in the Persian Gulf, in the UAE, in Qatar, and a bit beyond bases and so on. But what made it to the Middle East in the past week or so is primarily a carrier strike group. So that's an aircraft carrier that carries several dozen ships as well as special forces capable of possibly mounting raids inside Iran. The carrier strike group, in addition to the aircraft carrier, includes a number of specialized ships, destroyers that are able to launch missiles and sometimes even more specialized, perhaps smaller ships like mine countermeasures ships, for example, to protect the carrier strike group. There have been also a lot of media reports that in the past couple weeks, the U.S. has sent

a lot of air defense capabilities to American bases in the Middle East, around Iran in particular, with the objective here clearly being that in the event of American strikes on Iran, of Iranian retaliation, that these air defense anti-missile batteries in particular would be able to better protect American installations in the region. There is a broader point to make here, though, that yes, there is a serious possibility this week or next or the week after that that the U.S. could attack Iran. But what is clearly happening right now as well, not excluding the possibility of eventual strikes is classical pressure, right? You deploy military assets, perhaps with the intention of attacking, but also with the intention

of threatening your adversary to extract additional concessions in what appears to be negotiations going on right now. And in the context of these negotiations, with the three objectives that I mentioned, the nuclear program, the missiles and support for terrorist groups, the more the threat of military strikes is serious, the more that can potentially push Iran to make sessions. How has Iran responded to the increased U.S. military presence in the region? So Iran at the public level has responded in an entirely predictable way with threats of its own. Iran has said that if the U.S. attacks, it will be regional war. It will be retaliation on every

fronts. That's predictable. Of course Iran is going to say that. Does Iran mean that is the more important question? And here there's a bit of a more complicated debate. Of course Iran will likely retaliate if the U.S. attacks. But to what extent? In June of 2025, but also twice in 2024, when there were confrontations between Israel and Iran, Iran retaliated in a very limited and calibrated way. Its retaliation was calculated to signal that it was doing something, quote unquote, not to lose face, not to appear weak and doing nothing, but at the same time, calibrated to be really restrained to signal to the U.S., okay, guys, we don't want escalation. And this is a key point, right? In scenarios of escalation, yes, Iran can hurt the U.S.

Yes, Iran can hurt Israel and other U.S. partners in the region like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and we'll talk about them in a few minutes. But at the same time, Iran understands very well that in a scenario of escalation, it loses. Everybody loses, but Iran loses far more than everybody else. Because in military terms, what the Americans like to say is that in the latter of escalation, the U.S. always has control of the last rung on that ladder, right? Iran will not win an escalation with the U.S. It can hurt, but the U.S. can always hurt it far more. So what does that mean? Of course, Iran has to rhetorically threaten the U.S. But in practice, the cost-benefit calculus will be

very complicated for Iran in the event of Iranian attacks because it understands that if things really spiral, it becomes very, very costly. We'll be right back. want to put two scenarios in front of you of potential the U.S. might attack and why they might hold back. Let's start with why the U.S. would attack Iran at this point. What would that accomplish? That is an extremely difficult question to answer for two reasons. First of all, there are multiple possible scenarios of American attacks on Iran. And B, within these scenarios, outcomes are extremely unpredictable. So there is no simple answer to your question. You know, among the scenarios, there are limited strike scenarios. And then at the other end of the spectrum,

there are far wider and more prolonged sustained campaigns. Even among the limited, at the limited end of the spectrum, there are multiple options. One thing that is being discussed now, apparently, is decapitation strikes, i.e., target Iranian leaders. If the Americans do that, Iran will retaliate. There are other limited strike scenarios that appear to be under consideration, which is not to decapitate leadership, but to target strategic assets like missile production facilities or nuclear sites. Iran would probably retaliate in those instances, but the provocation would not be as hard as if it were leadership assassinations, right?

Whereas at the other end of the spectrum, with multiple points in between, of course, there's the scenario of a prolonged sustained campaign that would aim to decapitate and overthrow the regime, the Islamic Republic. If we are in those more prolonged scenarios and if, as we get through them, the Islamic Republic considers that its very existence is under threat, which it would not be in the more limited strike scenarios. Then it will likely unleash retaliation on a lot of various fronts. It will hit American bases in the Gulf.

It will hit American allies. It will hit shipping in the Persian Gulf and not just American military ships and so on. Because the Islamic Republic would then consider that it has nothing to lose, right, as a last resort to ensure its survival. These are scenarios, the prolonged and sustained campaigns that I think are very unlikely at this point. I would not completely rule them out because we're talking. about President Trump, but I find them very unlikely because Trump has been so clear if there's been one thing that he's been consistent on, not only in Trump too, but over the past 10 or 12

years that he's been politically active, is to avoid entanglements in Middle East wars. Right. In that prolonged campaign scenario, we are talking about a serious war with Iran. We're not talking about limited and isolated strikes. We need to think about that scenario because it would be so massive in terms of its consequences, but it is a low probability one. What do experts say about why the U.S. might hold back? So there's a couple different ways to answer that question.

The first one is the coercive diplomacy argument, i.e., the U.S. is threatening to strike Iran. It may actually strike Iran, but there are serious negotiations going on right now. There were a lot of talk on social media on Sunday and over the weekend on the Iranian side, but also on the American side, that behind the scenes there are serious negotiations going on. if the goal of Trump is really to negotiate what we used to call a grand bargain with Iran. So a big deal that would resolve at least a good portion of the issues, maybe not even just the nuclear one between the U.S. and Iran, then the U.S. would not attack after that. It will keep up the pressure. It will maintain the threat of attacks to extract as many concessions as possible from Iran. But the goal here would be a grand bargain with Iran.

By the way, the implications are important here because this is a deal that would, in all likelihood, ensure at least for the short to midterm, if not the longer term, the survival of the Islamic Republic of Iran, right? It would also be a way to basically, to be blunt, throw under the bus all the Iranians who are pursuing democracy in their country, whether from inside Iran or from outside of Iran. So this would be a very controversial scenario. Beyond the grand bargain scenario, the other reason why the U.S. could, and in the end, not attack, even if there's no grand bargain is pressure domestically from inside the MAGA coalition from those isolationists. And even those who are not pure isolationists, those who are restrainers, and there's a lot of them in

the Trump administration, who don't want entanglements in the Middle East, who don't want a war with Iran, who have seen the U.S. under Trump attack Nigeria, attack Yemen, attack Somalia, attack a number of other countries, and who are right now pressuring Trump not to launch another war, even if a limited one in the Middle East. And that in that scenario, we would basically see no successful grand bargain negotiations, perhaps a saving face lowest common denominator agreement on both sides, agree to agree on future talks or something like that, and then pressure ramping down. You mentioned negotiations. What do those negotiations look like? Very hard to say, because we are in such a unique context right now with Trump, with the

military pressure, with the Islamic Republic being weakened. So precedence of talks between the U.S. and Iran are only of limited use to understand what's going on. Because there have been many rounds of talks between the U.S. and Iran under the Islamic Republic. Obviously, the nuclear deal that was agreed to between Obama and Iran in 2015. But to take one other example, at the height of the violence in Iraq in the late 2000s, there were a lot of talks between the U.S. and Iran on how to manage that violence inside Iraq. Based on what we saw over the weekend on social media in particular, the U.S. has asked, three big things of Iran on the dismantlement of its nuclear program,

serious constraints on its missile program, and serious constraints on its ability to support violent or terrorist groups throughout the Middle East. That's a non-starter for Iran, right? I mean, Iran will not agree to all of that. But is there scope for Iran to try to negotiate something on these three issues without conceding on everything? My understanding is that there's a big debate in Iran right now.

hardliners around the supreme leader are not open to concessions because this is the very identity of the Islamic Republic that they've built for 47 years now that they're being asked to concede on. But more moderate elements inside the regime do understand better perhaps how dire the situation is for the Islamic Republic economically, domestically, politically, but also regionally at the geopolitical level. So those factions are making a push for greater concessions with the argument that this is the only way to save the Islamic Republic, not to overthrow it, but to save it. On the negotiations, though, are they at the table? Like, I've been reading a lot about, you know, some of the concessions that Trump wants to see, but are they sitting together talking about this? There have been no public indications of direct talks as of yet. What we have seen, though, is that two countries in particular and perhaps a number of others are really mediating these. conversations between the U.S. and Iran. And these two countries are Qatar and Turkey. And that's

not a coincidence. Qatar has good relations with the U.S., difficult but functional relations with Iran, has the trust of both sides to play that role of mediator. And we've seen Qatar, right, play that role in Gaza and in other circumstances. Turkey is not as frequently mentioned as a mediator or facilitator as Qatar, but Turkey under President Erdogan does have functioning relations with both sides, which is essential, right, to play this role. You can. can't be too close to one side and then claim to play a role of mediator. Turkey has difficult relations with Iran. They have a lot of disagreements.

But Erdogan has been very pragmatic in managing these tensions and having, you know, functional channels of communication with Iran. Turkey has had difficult relations with the U.S. over the past few years, in particular with Obama and Biden. But Trump and Erdogan, and there's a bit of, you know, illiberal affinity here that is at play. But they have been able, Trump and Erdogan, to build a. report that is quite functional. In addition to Turkey and Qatar, there are reports that Egypt and Saudi Arabia have also transferred messages from one side to the other, which does indicate

how badly a lot of these countries want to avoid the full out war scenario. Yeah, I've also read that Saudi Arabia and UAE have both said they won't allow their airspace to be used for any attack. Yeah, so Saudi Arabia and the UAE are in a difficult position here, right? The U.S. is 12,000 kilometers away from Iran. So yes, Iran can retaliate and hurt American assets in many ways, but it's the U.S. attacking Iran on Iranian territory 12,000 kilometers away from the American homeland. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are just a few kilometers away right across the Persian Gulf. So any instability that comes from that war, they are at the front line. So in various scenarios, they are seriously threatened. If things escalate, Iran could very well target American bases in the Gulf,

in Qatar in the UAE assets in Saudi Arabia, which would hurt them directly. There's two other reasons why Saudi Arabia and Qatar are seriously anxious right now, which are important to keep in mind. One of them is anything that smells of democratic protests is obviously something that very autocratic Saudi Arabia and UAE deeply dislike. So they do not want to encourage that. And if anything, they want to actively discourage anything that is democratic revolutions. The other thing is that they fear a scenario of regime collapse in Iran, whether triggered by American strikes or not, that would not be replaced by a democracy, which obviously they would dislike, but that would be followed by years of prolonged instability and perhaps civil war.

There's an assumption sometimes that if the Islamic Republic falls, it will be succeeded by a democratic alternative. And that's something that I certainly would wish and that a lot of Iranian activists, including here in Canada, would wish. The problem is that there's no alternative democratic ready to take over from the Islamic Republic. There are plausible scenarios of prolonged instability after regime collapse,

which Saudi Arabia and the UAE would be at the front lines of having a country of 90 million people, two million square kilometers, almost two million, right across the Persian Gulf from them going through years of prolonged instability. Yeah, very high stakes here. What about the allies? What about Russia, for example?

Russia and China are interesting here. Russia and China are in a bind right now because we are not talking about them. And what this shows is that they are helpless to help their Iranian friend. Is Russia or China doing anything to help Iran right now? Israel, for example, hit a lot of missile production facilities after the June 2025 attack. And there have been a lot of reports that China has been providing some support to replace and rebuild Iran's missile capability. Russia has been providing Iran with a variety of military and other diplomatic assistance,

for example, in crowd control and repressive capacities, right, which is always an important point to keep in mind. That being said, Russia and China are not coming to Iran's rescue. Look at Venezuela. Did Russia and China do anything to save Maduro? No, absolutely not. They were helpless. And there was also a lesson, by the way, that neither Russia or China could,

ever have come remotely close to achieving the extraordinary technical sophistication of the American mission to go and kidnap Maduro. And I mean that only in technical terms, not to say whether it was legal or not, morally or strategically sound or not, strictly on technical grounds. What we're seeing here in Iran is the serious limits to Russia and China's power and their inability to do more than small things to help their Iranian friend. So it's a very tense situation right now. are there potential off-ramps here?

Well, the off-ramp is successful negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, which is a plausible scenario. It will depend on how maximalist the U.S. is with its demands. If the U.S. absolutely sticks to its initial demand of no nuclear program, serious limits on the missile program, serious limits on Iranian assistance to terrorists and violent groups in the region, then no, there will not be an off-ramp. But if the U.S. is willing to compromise, and on the Iranian side,

if the domestic debate that is vicious right now on how much Iran should compromise, if on both sides there is a willingness that emerges in the next days or weeks, then there is an off-ramp. With the major caveat that the result of that off-ramp is a deal that, yes, staves off immediate war

or fighting and tension between the US and Iran, but likely ensures the survival of the Islamic Republic. In a different form, but as the Islamic Republic. So that is on another layer, on another level, problematic in many ways. Tamar, what seems to be getting lost in this is the actual citizens on the ground. Where does this all leave them? This leaves Iranians in a very difficult position, or at least the majority of Iranians who oppose the Islamic Republic.

Are they being thrown under the bus in the event of a grand bargain between Iran and the U.S.? very possible. Are there false promises from the Trump administration? That's what we saw in early January when Trump promised support that didn't come and people got slaughtered in the streets. There's always a caveat here that they would have been slaughtered in the streets anyways, even if Trump hadn't made those threats. The Islamic Republic would have done that to ensure its survival. But it still does raise the issue of how can Iranians as they ponder the next steps trust commitments or promises by the Trump administration, while it may be negotiating a deal that would ensure the survival of the regime that is killing them. That puts them in an even more

difficult position than they already were in. Tama, I really appreciate you making the time. Thank you so much. Thanks to you. That was Tamar Juno, a professor at the University of Ottawa's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our producers are Madeline White, Mikhail Stein, and Rachel Levy McLaughlin. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.