The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: The hidden cost of a deal with Iran — and the Pope sounds the alarm on AI

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

We may be on the cusp of a deal between Iran and the U.S., as both sides appear to be losing interest in keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed. But is this merely a ceasefire extension, with Iran’s nuclear program deferred to future negotiations?If Iran ultimately gives up its enriched uranium, it will be seen as a win for Trump — but at a steep cost: Iran will have demonstrated that control over the Strait of Hormuz can effectively deter the world’s superpower. Rudyard argues that maintaining great-power status requires sacrifice to restore deterrence, something the current U.S. administration seems unwilling to do. Can America remain a great power without paying that price?In the second half of the show, Rudyard and Janice discuss the Pope’s encyclical letter released this week — with one of Anthropic’s co-founders in attendance — in which he warned about AI’s threat to humanity. The Pope emphasized the dignity of work and cautioned that using AI to eliminate human labor is deeply misguided and anti-human. Are governments around the world prepared for the disruption that’s coming?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.

So we can bemoan this regime. 80% of Iranians do bemoan this regime and are, frankly, many of them really disappointed to see what has come out of this. But you can't change it from the outside. Welcome to the Friday Focus podcast for the 29th of May, 2026. I'm Rudyard Griffiths, Chair of the Monk Debates, joined remotely by Janice Gross Stein, my co-host. Hey, Janice, how's it going? It's going well. The sun is shining after what it seems like day after day after day after rain.

So it is all good. It is all good. Let's talk about this, again, ping pong week of negotiation between Iran and the United States. We can start to unpack some of the details as we go. But just to begin at a kind of 30,000 foot level, Janice. It seems as if we could be on the cusp of a deal, which at the end of the day looks really more like an extension of the ceasefire for a period of time, where both Iran and the United States clearly have interests in letting the stopper out of the pressure valve that has become the Straits of Hermodes. For Iran, that means they're not getting imports into the country, into their ports, causing a lot of inflation.

They're also not getting their oil out, which in a matter of weeks could start damaging permanently their oil fields. Here, Trump's interests and the Ayatollahs are aligned so far as he's facing higher gas prices at home, going into the summer driving season. It all seems Janus like a big can-kicking exercise on the part of both of these protagonists with the big difficult issues, most notably Iran's nuclear program and the future of this. Straits of Fremuz delayed and deferred until later. Do I have that right? You have it right, but let me just put a slightly more optimistic spin on this. And I'm going to start where you started. Both of them are running out of time. And that's why I think we are closer to what we would call a framework agreement. But that framework is a little more. And they're fighting about that.

the details of how you open the Straits of Hormuz, but there's an agreement that they're going to open the Straits of Hormuz, right? So that's progress. Secondly, they're arguing fiercely about Iran's nuclear program, but what they've, there's a consensus now. This is one last written down that Iran will reiterate its ritual statement. We will not, we will not, okay, I don't have to finish a sentence on that one. But beyond that, that they are going,

to turn over to turn over or reduce the enriched nuclear uranium so that it cannot be used to break out for a bomb. They're going to do it one way or another. Iran is insisting that it would be done at home inside Iran with inspectors. The United States wants it shipped out. But buried in all that noise is that one ton of. enriched uranium is going to be no longer available as enriched uranium to allow for a breakout to the bomb. So there's not nothing there. It's a pretty thing, girl, though, Janice. Is it not for the President of the United States? I mean, he started this war with the lofty

objective of regime change. That was then downshifted to ending Iran's support for proxies, permanently crippling, disabling its ballistic missile program, forever precluding it for the development of a nuclear weapon, regardless of what pledges, it was to actually remove the structural capacity beyond stocks of enriched uranium to the actual enrichment itself. So much of that, Janus now seems to be out the window. And on top of it, it looks like Iran will receive, if rumors of this MOU are correct. $12 billion or more of funds released, sanction relief, you know, feathered in, I guess, as the straight reopens and if and when discussions on the nuclear program, you know,

proceed according to, you know, mutual perceptions of where and when and how they should happen in the 30 to 60 days. I mean, Janice, this is, you have to get a particle accelerators. out to try to find the kind of traces of the initial ambition that this administration had for this war versus where this settlement seems to be landing. Yeah. You know, Redyard, I never thought regime change was very likely. So I guess I just applied a discount factor to it. The second big one, limiting the ballistic missile program, never on Redyard. You could ask for it. But But it was never going to happen because that is Iran's, as we've seen, principal measure of defense. And why would they give that up?

That is actually asking Iran to disarm itself. I never thought that was very likely and ask it to stop supporting his proxies. Well, that is, you know, the prerogative of any state that it can, in fact, support his proxies and do what it wants. The key issue here was always the nuclear program, the U.Mish uranium. What hasn't been dealt with, Rogen, we'll have to see how this goes. The vast number of highly efficient centrifuges that Iran has, some of them accounted for, and some of them, I think, very likely in underground facilities that inspectors have never seen. And at the end of all this, Iran's nuclear program, its capacity to make a nuclear bomb is effectively dismantled.

Either because inspectors will really be there on the ground, have a capacity for surprise inspection. And a stockpile of highlymer's uranium is no longer operative. To me, that's a big game. Could they have gotten it at the negotiating table, I think, is a really tough. question because the United States and the Arizona made a decision to go to war. And that decision, if you could make a convincing case that if they let those negotiations go forward, they would have achieved that objective, then this war is not only a war of choice, but it's an unnecessary war. It's a counterfactual. How will we ever know? But Janis, I think by any measurement,

you could argue despite, you know, the 5,000 or more strikes and a range. during the actual war itself, this regime is now emerging stronger. It has consolidated, unfortunately, the theocracy, both the religious elements in the succession to the new Ayatollah and the Revolutionary Guard emerged more politically powerful than ever. The intimidation of the population continues unabated. to be little or no sign of some kind of popular uprising on the streets of Tehran or elsewhere. And we now have Iran doing what it, I think, is shocking to many observers, which is reestablishing strategic deterrence over the United States, the world's superpower by effectively during

this period of time closing the Straits of Hermos, indicating that in any future scenario, attack of Israel on Iran, a subsequent, let's say, breakdown in these negotiations over the 30 to 60 days, that they retain the option to close that straight and throw the world's economy and prices and inflation into the very spiral that, you know, Western governments around the world are just trying to dig themselves out of post-COVID. So from a, again, from a 30,000-foot perspective, this this you know 1,000 kilos or less of enriched uranium is starting to come

with a pretty big strategic price tag in terms of where we end this war if we do over in the next 30 to 60 days and Iran's relative position now versus three months ago. You know, let me let me just make a slightly different argument already than

Let me know what you think of it. Yesterday I read the allegedly state, you know, an alleged statement by Moshebakhamani, which he released inside Iran to celebrate an anniversary. And, you know, from a supreme leader, if in fact it's from him, because he is not a period, he is still in hiding, and nobody has seen him. But if he is still alive, and he wrote that state, It was in many ways a very odd statement from the Supreme Leader. And it was all about the economy, the Iranian economy.

And what the government owed the Iranian people. It was about productivity. It was about growth. It was about restoring Iranians opportunity to have a decent livelihood. It was the most consumer-oriented statement you could imagine from a Supreme Leader. Let me just put it to you that way. So whether Most of Khomey wrote that or not, it doesn't matter. What it really tells you is this government is acutely aware of how fragile its relationship is with the Iranian public,

that it's got to do something about addressing really. deep sources of grievance, which have been hugely exaggerated as a result of this war. There are millions of Iranians who are unemployed at this point. That's why the $12 billion is crucial, because we don't have a good date on where their foreign exchange reserves are now, but we do know that everything they exported, leave aside oil, but everything else they exported, that's been destroyed, and it will take years to recover. So yes, they're stronger because they exercise their right to and the capacity to control the straits. But this is a very weak regime now. Roger. Yes, also murdered 35,000 of their

own citizens in the pace of 48 hours. So, you know, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, it's that. It's that. It's that. It's a horrific, horrible regime, a pariah state. It has engaged, the president is right. It's engaged, its critics are right. It's engaged in decades of international terrorism abroad. It's destabilized the region through its proxies. It was pursuing a nuclear weapon. And, you know, it's repeatedly over decades sporadically decided, in this case, most recently, the worst, the worst, the worst case scenario to kill tens of thousands of citizens indiscriminately by its security forces, by rushing into crowds and shooting them dead with silenced pistols and automatic rifles. And yet here we are with a regime that, yes, has been damaged.

Who wouldn't be damaged if you had 5,000 Israeli and American bombs dropped on your economy? What would the Canadian economy look like in that scenario? But here they are. you know, inarguably, with greater geopolitical prominence and leverage, with a status and a standing in the region vis-a-vis the Gulf states and globally, vis-vis-vis China, their importance increasingly now to China as a new, you know, stick that it can poke and twist into the side of Europe and the Western democracies. and, you know, Vladimir Putin is selling oil with American permission, having, you know, this war basically forced the administration into allowing Russia's illegal trade in oil to flourish for the last 90 days. I mean, all the bad guys to me have won for the last three months. I'm getting a little tired here that the good guys don't seem to be notching any score. is up on the board?

Well, you know, you're absolutely right in your description of this regime. And I would go further, Roger, the number of executions inside Iran. You remember this started in January with Donald Trump warning him not to kill anybody. The number of executions is way up inside Iran as well. So there's no question. But the bigger question really is, how do you change this regime? you can't do it by military means from the outside. You simply cannot.

How long does the United States live with a myth that you can send your military forces into a country, inflict significant punishment, and that will be enough to overthrow a regime? It doesn't work except, you know, in a Venezuela, in a small country where they didn't overthrow the regime, even then, they just change the people at the top. So we can bemoan this regime.

80% of Iranians do bemoan this regime and are, frankly, many of them really disappointed to see what has come out of this, but you can't change it from the outside. And it was foolish ever to think you could. Yeah, I don't know. Mike Pompeo, our debater, was on our main stage last week, made some news over the weekend, a chorus of voices emerging to criticize this MOU. And again, I don't... But what's the option?

Well, I just... You and I have discussed this before. Normally, great powers don't lose and can't lose. And the second is as important as the first. And in some cases, it forces horrible situations like Vladimir Putin's, you know, criminal war on Ukraine. with thousands of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of soldiers dead on each side. But he's playing to the rules of great powers who need to sustain their power,

who need to recover, in a sense, from the loss. And I think America has experienced a loss of strategic deterrence in how Iran has now emerged from this war and how China will look at this vis-a-vis Taiwan or how Russia maybe is looking at NATO and other NATO countries. American power is less in the world today than it was 90 years ago. Normally, historically, you know this as an academic in these types of situations, great powers can't lose and don't lose. And yes, it involves, oh my God, the Dow Jones being down 10 percent, or my God, it involves some kind of sacrifice on the part of the power who, in many cases, makes a miscalculation, starts a war maybe that they shouldn't have, ends up in a

situation where they are losing deterrence, but they go on to reestablish that deterrence. I think there is a credible argument that this war should not end, that the Iranian regime should be pushed through another round of conflict to see whether, in fact, either better terms for a deal could emerge, one that would constrain this regime in bigger ways that might encourage political changes on its own, vis-a-vis its own leaders, to have a deal on the other side of another round of this conflict. No one likes conflict, Janice, but we are fooling ourselves if we think that this MOU doesn't contain within it a bigger butcher's bill related to geopolitical stability in the world today and, you know, America's inability now to

credibly project force deterrence and stability as a result of it all. Let me make a different argument, Rogers. Look, Russia thought it was going to get the job done in Ukraine in three days. Donald Trump thought he was going to get the job done in Iran in three days. They were both wrong. Russia dug in, as you said, it may still lose. In fact, you know, if anything, the momentum on the battlefield has shifted the other way. The very best that Russia is going to get out of this, at the very best, it's going to fight to a draw,

and it will have a million and a half Russians killed or wounded. Vietnam took how many years? over a decade, Afghanistan, even longer. Donald Trump, I don't think he knows he lost, but he knows he's not winning, and he's cutting his losses. And in fact, the United States recovered from Vietnam. It remained a great power.

It recovered from Afghanistan, and that humiliating withdrawal under Joe Biden had remained a great power. So this, I do not believe, fundamentally, under the United States is a three-month war. It will be yesterday's news, and the United States has demonstrated that it has military machine that is so precise and so fearsome that neither China nor Russia can approach it. There's an argument to be made for ending this war because you cannot change this regime

with yet another go at it. Janice, we'll leave the conversation there. Move on to the second half of the show where we convene with our monk donors. If you'd like to get all of our premium and audio and video content, you can do that by becoming a donor for as little as 50 cents a week, all kinds of different membership packages that meet your needs. If you're into podcasts, we've got something for you, live events. Well, that's what the monk debates is all about.

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