The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: America and Iran inch toward a deal as Trump’s corruption hits new depths

Episode Date: May 22, 2026

Another strange ping-pong week in America's conflict with Iran — and irresponsible reporting has given us so many mixed messages. Are we any closer to a deal? And why is Iran so hung up on the issue of nuclear weapons? Also off the negotiating table — much to the dismay of Israel — is one of Washington's original war aims: ending Iran's ballistic missile program and its support for terror proxies in the region. Meanwhile, Trump is delaying a weapons shipment to Taiwan on the heels of his visit with Xi Jinping in China. Is this a signal of weakening U.S. resolve to stand up for Taiwan? And how will this be read by American allies in Southeast Asia and Europe? In the second half of the show, Rudyard and Janice turn to one of the most outrageous moves Donald Trump made this week — one that pales in comparison to past indiscretions: negotiating a $1.7 billion settlement to compensate the January 6 rioters who supported the president's false election claims. This is corruption on a scale we have never seen before in the United States and a crippling blow to the independence of government institutions. Will Republican loyalists to Trump finally speak out against his blatant misuse of power?   Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Look, but the future of the ballistic missile program is off the table, frankly. That is not, that was not in the original agreement. I do not believe that that is part of any of this. And it's not part of any of this because that is Iran's principle means of defense and its principal active operational deterrent. And the second big one that's off the table is Iranian support for proxies. like his Bala. Two stated war aims of the Trump administration at the outset of this conflict.

Off the table. Yeah. Welcome to the Friday Focus podcast for the 22nd of May. I'm Roger Griffiths, Chair of the Monk Debates, joined by Janice Gros Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs. Hey, Janice, great to see you at this week's big debate at Meridian Hall. It was a good one. And I thought substantive, feisty, the audience was, wow, really into the debate and super divided.

What did you make of it having been to almost all of our debates? It feels like our audiences are getting, I don't know, more and more engaged. For better or worse, one person had to be, unfortunately, objected from the hall for trying to interrupt the proceedings. You're right that it was a really, really engaged audience. you know, paying attention to everything. You could tell because they would applaud. And there was division in the room. It was a split room, as you said, Redyard.

And it was really substantive, and they debated. They really debated this time. I'll tell you what the personal highlight was for me, was, I'll be honest here, the way you handled that. Oh, that's too bad. No, I'm making actually, you know, a serious point here that defending the importance of civil discourse, of allowing disagreement and, you know, supporting it when it happens,

as long as it's civil and respectful, and that debate was, and not allowing anybody to interfere with that process. It is so at risk everywhere rather than so many cases. We don't have a democracy if we can't do that. So it took about one second for you to react to it. It was reflexive and neat on your part. And I think that is the core value that you were standing up for. It was really great to see.

Yeah. And just to be clear, this gentleman interrupted debate loudly three or four times. You know, he was admonished. his fellow audience members. And I think it was the fifth or so time where he began screaming again, that I was just like, okay, this is enough, you know, asking security to remove him. Janice, the debate is available to all of our monk members as part of their membership packages. They can head over to the website and log in and watch this debate from end to end.

If you're not a monk member, there are streaming packages. We urge you to check it out. Mike Pompeo, Victoria Newland, Stephen Waltz, John Mearsheimer on the question, do not go hunting monsters, i.e. the United States and the Trump administration doing something very similar in Iran. And that's where I want to go with you off the top of today's show. Another strange kind of ping pong week. You know, a lot of maybe, frankly, kind of irresponsible reporting in the media, especially from the Gulf region with, you know, false reports of imminent breakthroughs that then have to be retracted and recanted by regional media outlets. Where do you think that we've ended this week? Are we any closer to a deal? There are just so many mixed messages in so many directions, not only from the Trump administration, but obviously from the Iranian government, and from these so-called, you know, interloculars,

Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, you name it. It is a cacophony out there, and can you make sense of it all for us? You put your finger on one of the toughest issues we face that all these leaks are disingenuous. They're there to shape the audience, right? Whether it's stock markets or it's public opinion, they are conditioning. the audience all the time, and they're not reporting, as you and I would think about reporting, and they're not scopes, and they're not breaking news. There are none of these things that you see splashed all over media sites.

Right now we actually have two parallel processes going on at the same time. We have a very, very intense process going on. Pakistan-led, but Qatar supported it. Qatar is really in this time, which makes me take it a little. more seriously because the two mediators are completely aligned. And allegedly, the Trump administration has signed off on the proposal. So the question is this is now going back to Iran. And Muneer, who's the chief of the defense staff in Islamabad, will take that to Tehran if he gets the message back that there is receptivity. What is?

from everything we know, it's a framework agreement, right? We put some principles in place and the details, the rest will be negotiated. So each I can say face here, that's one channel. At the same time,

so you think, oh, this is good news, let's wait and see how much traction Munier gets when he, if and when he goes. The second channel totally, Opposite message is public. It's going on between Oman and Iran and Housa for splitting a difference.

What are they talking about? Iran has gone the message that fees are not okay because you can't charge fees for traversing international water. Oh, but what you can do, you can charge for services. Are you refueling? Are you taking waste off the ships that go through? And Oman is now working with Iran a set of service charges for trips, for tankers that go through you. You're smiling, Roger, for tankers that go through that street.

And those service charges will be considerable. And for Oman in particular, and for others that are really landlocked that don't have pipelines and are not able to get their energy out overland. So the Emirates, the Arabis, as the Emirates are, it's become an attractive proposition. So, in mind, in a sense, is defective. And join the Iranians, the same one to reopen the strait, but they're going to be surrogers.

That's the other one that's going on now. I think this is going to come to the head in the next few days. Yeah. One way or the other. It seems, Janice, that the irresolvable, issue continues to be the uranium stockpiles inside Iran. Again, if we are to believe Iranian media, the Supreme Leader, Kamenei, the son of the, I don't know what the correct word is.

I would probably say assassinated leader at the start of this war. Was, you know, was on, supposedly on the record this week saying that the uranium and will not be going out of the country. They will not be giving this out. They may agree to blend it down to lower levels of concentration. Why is Iran so kind of hung up on this issue? Is it a sunk cost fallacy that they feel like they have, you know, foregone all kinds of economic development vis-a-vis sanctions because of their

enrichment program for all these years? Is it a source of, I guess, I don't know, national pride of kind of boasting right? Or more sinister, Janice, is it because they want to maintain the nuclear option? They want to maintain the capacity to leap to an atomic device precisely because they've been repeatedly attacked now, and they would feel that that either in reality or the threat that they could quickly achieve a breakout to nuclear power status is part of the deterrent, you know, package that they want to assemble after this war that also includes the Straits of Hermuz, that includes their ballistic missile program, which seems to be recovering quickly along with their drone factories.

It's no question. It's the third, Roger, because let's remember, under the previous agreement, reached under Obama, they sent all their stockpile and enriched uranium to Russia. And they didn't have any principal objections. But that was in the context of agreement where they expected the sanctions would be lifted. And, you know, when Putin was in China this week,

he made public again his willingness to take that stuff. stockpile of enriched uranium. And thus far, now, the Iranians have said, no, let me just say, Roger, that there are internal media games going on inside Iran as well. So Mostabakhamani allegedly issued this decision, which you just talked about. And within two hours, a leak from somewhere inside that administration. No, no, no, no, that's not true. He did not say that.

So who to believe here again? And by the way, those kinds of leaks explain what people like Rubio keep talking about the fact that there's fractured politics. What do you really means are there are factions, even inside the Iranian. This particular Iranian administration, there are clearly factions. So there's a more hardline faction that has probably taken this position. No go on exporting uranium. but people like the Speaker of the National Assembly, the Foreign Affairs Minister, and others are much more open.

Trump has said, but their argument, the hardliners, this is a deterrent against a further attack. There's no question. That's their reason. I don't really see how that works, Roger, to be honest. Why, how does that stop an attack? It would only allegedly stop an attack if they made an attempt to break out and convert that to a nuclear weapon. But that would be detectable, frankly.

That site is under 24-hour satellite surveillance. It would be known immediately and would probably prompt an immediate attack. So they are making an argument of deterrence, but I don't understand how the mechanics of the, that really work. So what do I expect if we get really lucky over these next few days?

We will get some kind of framework agreement in which there's some principle which will be read one way in Tehran another way in Washington, a third way in a Gulf and a fourth way

in Tel Aviv. And that's what the negotiations will be about. over the next two or three months. Negotiations that will have to encompass the Straits of Hermes, the future of the enrichment program, the future of the weaponized high-grade uranium, the future of the ballistic missile program. I could go on through a list.

I think you in a previous show had said that the original JCPA had taken how many years to negotiate just an agreement around one of those five elements, which was the enrichment program. Look, but the future of the ballistic missile program is off the table, frankly. That was not in the original agreement. I do not believe that that is part of any of this, and it's not part of any of this, because that is Iran's principal means of defense

and its principal, active operational deterrent. And the second big one that's off the table is Iranian support for proxies like Kisbalah. Two stated war aims of the Trump administration at the outset of this conflict. Off the table. Yeah. Let's just the remaining moments of the first half of the show, which is available free on YouTube and our podcast feed. Talk about the president's decision just in the last 24 hours to delay. an armed shipment to Taiwan. It sounds, Janice, as if the timing here is more than just a coincidence.

This is not being announced by the president. Obviously, it's being announced by the Pentagon, but let's face it. Pentagon officials are taking instruction from Pete Hague-Seth. It was taking instruction, no doubt, from the White House. This comes on the heels of Trump's visit with Xi, where Xi supposedly painted a bold red line. line under Taiwan and specifically called out the United States on this $12 billion weapons package for Taiwan. How significant is this for the president then just mere days later to, I assume, have his officials conveniently communicate that because of all the interceptor and other

stockpile drawdowns related to the wars in the Middle East, this ship made. which was Greenlight Go as of last week is now suddenly indefinitely postponed. Yeah, that's clearly not the reason, Roger, why it's postponed. It's a direct consequence of that opening session in Beijing, where that was out of the gate what Gigi Ping talked about and laid down the red line. and there's no question that is going to be read everywhere as a weakening U.S. commitment. Let's distinguish again.

You know what? What's the United States done in the past? What are its obligations? It's really been clear Taiwan is part of China. That is long-standing U.S. policy. But right after that, in the next breath comes a sentence. Yeah, but they are opposed to the use of force to reunify Taiwan with China.

It's got to come through some sort of consent of the Taiwanese people, diplomatic process, but no use of force. And then there's the Taiwan Relations Act, in which the United States undertakes to supply military equipment to Taiwan to underline its commitment, why it matters that there should be no use of force. If Taiwan doesn't have the means to defend itself, it's really tough to prevent China from using force.

So this is not a small decision. The fact that it comes on the heels of that summit, people are going to see this as a weakening of the U.S. result, frankly, to stand up for Taiwan, should try to make a move. And it's not only going to matter to Taiwan. It's going to matter to Japan and South Korea and others in East Asia.

it's going to matter to people in Europe. It is, it is, again, you know, who's most important to Donald Trump at any given time right now? It looks like there are two countries in the world that are really critical to him, China and Russia. Yeah. Final question.

We now, in a sense, have, in a matter of few weeks, seemingly undone a decade or more of American policy, maybe a decade and a half, the so-called pivot to the Pacific away from the Middle East to either contain, you know, previous administrations have used that language or control in the case of the Trump administration, the rise of China and its ability to build, in a sense, a geographic kind of hegemonic order in Southeast Asia, in the Pacific Sea, threatening, as you've mentioned, Philippines, South Korea, Japan, pulling them into its orbit. It's amazing, Janice, to me, that this has all happened, and there's really been not a lot of debate just about how significant a change in U.S.

foreign policy this, in fact, is. And the extent to which the president either intentionally or instinctually is reordering American foreign policy clearly around a spheres of influence doctrine that, you know, Putin is Eastern Europe. He has North and South Central America. And presumably now, Xi has a freer, wider hand in Southeast Asia. Where's the debate? Where's the discussion? Where's the realization, Janus, of just how big these tectonic shifts are, again, either intentional or convenient for the president in the context of whatever set of calculations he's making about his own short-term political interest or personal financial gain. I'm just somewhat struck at the lack of recognition of how significant the undoing is of those last 15 years of supposedly

pivoting to the Pacific. And then the potential consequences of this, to just have American foreign policy, military security, technology, transfer, all these, you know, major planks that had been articulated by multiple administrations prior to the president's trip to China just last week, effectively torn off the floor and thrown out the front door. You're right. Where we normally expect a debate to be, right? we would expect it, first of all, to be in Congress. So the fact that the only debate we've had, and there has been, but it's been very low-key,

and you really have to look for it, and there's interesting reasons why you have to look for it, has been about, oh, the war in the Middle East has really been a problem for the stockpiles of U.S. weapons, and there has been a discussion of that. They've been drawn down, you know, Patriot missiles, stockpile Patriot missiles, THAAD missiles, THAAD missiles, they're just not there, and there has been discussion. If they were needed in the Pacific, the stockpiles are too small. So where's that debate

happening? Well, you're not going to get it in the Democratic Party now because the leaders of the Democratic Party are not those concerned, generally speaking, with toppiles, right? That's not in their sweet spot. that's not what AOC or others will talk about, frankly. It's just not on their agenda right now. So where are you going to get it? You're not getting it from the MAGA element in the Republican Party. I don't have to explain why that's not happening. So you get maybe a handful of senators and congresspeople who are putting that on the agenda.

Well, where else would we expect it in the press whenever there's a fill. to debate that the informed press takes over. But boy, it's a pretty partisan politicized press. And then you go to social media. And I don't have to say anything about the toxic environment on social media. So you're actually raising a bigger point here. Where do we get informed debate now in democracies that are as polarized as the United States is? Yeah.

It just seems like a strange paralysis that has set in. It's not just foreign policy. It's a lot of American domestic policy debates around the Supreme Court, you know, the division of powers, you know, the respective, you know, fundamental core principle conversations about what's happening to America at home and abroad. and it all just seems to kind of wash away and under, you know, the president and the administration's, you know, constant stream of, you know, outrage and agitation and, and, and. Flooding the zone, you and I would call it. Yeah. Flooding those.

Yeah. It's, it's, it's remarkable to see. Well, Janice, we're going to say goodbye to our complimentary listeners and viewers join our monk donors of all the great curators. supporters on the back half of today's episode for the bonus portion and addition of each and every Friday focus episode, which we again make available to our valued donors. So hop over there and become a donor now and you can get access through our podcast platform immediately to the back half of the show.

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