The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: the U.S. and Iran inch closer to war

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

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. Rudyard and Janice focus today's episode on the escalating conflict between the U.S. and Iran. Trump's negotiating team has dropped their demands on ballistic missile production and support for militia groups in the region, but the Islamist regime will not give up their nuclear program. Why is Iran unwilling to negotiate when it is so weak politically and militarily? Why would it risk getting into a fight with an opponent with whom they are so unevenly matched? And how much of their position is tied to the religious fundamentalism of its revolutionary movement? In the back half of the show Rudyard and Janice try to make sense of what is motivating Trump to pursue this strike without significant support from his base. What does Iran have to agree to so that Trump is able to back down from this fight and claim a win?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 these days are absolutely fraught inside Iran. I wouldn't be surprised wholly, Rudyard, to wake up a few mornings from now and hear that there was either a coup or an attempted coup inside of Iraq. Welcome to Friday Focus for the 27th of February, 26. I'm Rudyard Griffiths, chair of the monk debates, joined by Jan Skor Stein. my co-creator of this podcast and the creator of the Monk School of Global Affairs. Hey, Janice, how are you? I'm good. Thank you, Redyard.

And not sure to say goodbye to February. We will be in March. How many weeks away are we from springing forward on the clock? I can never remember. It's soon that I know. I agree. Not a moment too soon. Talking about not a moment too soon, Janice, we've got to kick off the show with a recap of where we're at on these kind of increasingly, seemingly futile negotiations between the Iranian foreign minister and the president's representatives in the form of Steve Witkoff, his real estate developer, friend from New York and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. How would you characterize how the week has wrapped up?

They have agreed to meet again, Rudyard, but frankly, that does not mean what. That happened in the past, and Donald Trump gave them two weeks, and three days into that two weeks, American aircraft were in the skies, bombing Iranian nuclear sites. Where we are on the negotiating side, is the United States has dropped the issue of both ballistic missiles and Iran's support

of militia forces through the region. That's off the table now. That's for later. And they are going out at hot and heavy over the nuclear program. What are the obstacles that remain, whether Iran goes to zero on nuclear enrichment or something like three, point six seven, whether enrichment occurs, whatever enrichment occurs is inspected. And what happens to that stockpile of enriched uranium, which is enriched to a very high level, buried somewhere in those three nuclear sites. Does it move out of Iran to where the United States last proposed that would go to the United States. That's a clear non-starter, but where does it go?

So these negotiations now have a narrow field. If both sides actually wanted a deal on this narrow issue, there is one to be had, but literally, before the negotiations broke up, the Iranians came out with quite a belligerent statement. What else are we watching in the region? This weekend, the United States evacuated its dependence from its embassy in Tel Aviv. That is close to the end before military action generally starts. Its assets that are based in the region, naval assets are out to sea, and aircraft are not on base.

So you get the sense when you're looking at movements on the ground. We are getting close now, I think, to some sort of military action. Yeah, so we have a U.S. carrier, I think, as of today, off the coast of Israel. Yeah. Not insignificant. There are pictures of U.S. tankers. These are the planes, the fuel planes that are used to refuel American fighter planes at Ben-Gurian Airport. I think latest accounts, fully 10 of these tankers.

And there's also some satellite image reporting, some open-source intel that shows the deployment of U.S. F-22 stealth fighters at an Israel Air Force base. Janice, this looks like we are close here. I mean, we've talked about this before, the concentration of force. It's now kind of forward deployment. I mean,

what are the chances that something happens this weekend? Just finally, we have the China's foreign ministry saying that, you know, all Chinese citizens need to get out of Iran and should not be traveling into Iran. This looks close, doesn't it?

Yes, it does. And, you know, the last points that you just made about these F-22 stealth aircraft, who they're stealthy, what that means is they can deceive radars. This is the first time the United States has ever deployed these outside of the United States. So when I look at this, I think we're close. We're close. Either somebody pulls a rabbit out of a hat, which given the tone, I don't think is likely, or we're very close now to some sort of military strike.

That's for sure. And what do you think about the Iranians, you know, this latest round of meetings coming out and saying, look, we will retain the right to enrichments. I mean, it just, it seems that they have been unwilling or unable internally because of their own politics and different regime players to, to come up with, you know, in a sense, what sounds probably like the minimum, uh, demand of the Trump administration and the president to, to allow them to claim some success and, in a sense to, well, back down is probably the wrong word, but, but, uh, preclude. a military strike. I mean, why do you think the Iranians aren't giving them this? If you're in their position, how do you think this through? It just, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I mean, I understand that they've invested hundreds of billions of dollars. They've basically

impoverished their country for this capacity. But at the same point, the regime is weak. It has been subject of its own internal domestic turmoil. Why not give the president? president, this one thing. It seems like the Americans are willing for now. I mean, they're not saying it, but it sounds like they're willing to set aside the ballistic missile program of Iran, the proxy debate. Why not give them this one thing and live to fight another day? You know, Roger, the Iranis have a way out if they want. And it's not a hard way out. You claim the ongoing right to enrichment, but you say we're going to enrich to three percent and then we're going to allow inspectors to supervise. We're going to have a regional board that looks in enrichment.

If the Iranians truly want a deal on, there is a way out that saves their face, frankly. So the very fact that they made those statements, literally, you know, as that second round of negotiation was finishing, just to me that they have, they are. worried about their internal politics. We haven't said much, wretched, but there are again demonstrations inside Iran. Part of these started on the 40th day of morning for the thousands of protesters that were killed.

But then they spread to the universities because the universities reopen. And so the regime is struggling to manage domestic protest, and it's absolutely critical. It's critical for the Ayatollah and the other clerics to keep the revolutionary guards on side here. If there is any split inside, that is a mortal risk to him because that's a recipe right now, frankly, for a coup.

And I think it's those dynamics that are stiffening the Iranian negotiating position. And if that's correct, there's frankly no deal and no act. So what would be the internal argument in Iran that these regime hardliners would be making for not conceding on the uranium? Is it? And I guess I, you know, you always won't be careful here. But I guess you want to try to understand, are these rational agent actors who are, you know, correctly assimilated? and assessing risk or, you know, and again, I don't want to go down the road of rank speculation, but this is also a theocratic regime. This is a, this is a regime imbuted with a, at times,

extreme religious ideology. Is that the issue, Janice, that there are regime actors and elements who, who want this struggle with the United States for, for reasons that have nothing to do with any kind of rational calculation. It's the results of decades of hatred and animosity. It's views millinarian apocalyptic theologies that are pushing this. I'm just trying to understand, Janice, why Iran would risk, in a sense,

getting into a fight with an opponent when they're so unevenly matched. And that doesn't even factor in the possibility that, you know, Israel at some point right away or in the days to come joins these strikes. So let's come back to that last point about where Israel is and all this. But to answer your question, I think we separate out here the Ayatollah Khomeini and the close group of clerics around him. For him, this is all about the Islamic Revolution. And from everything I understand, from people who are close to that group within Iran, he's prepared to die as a martyr. He will not sacrifice the resolution.

And it's that revolutionary perspective. So that's rational from his perspective. It's just not rational from people who think about the survival of a regime. around them are their instruments which are the revolutionary guards and the besiege now some of those are deeply committed to the Islamic revolution and they are they will go to the end of the road with the Islamist leadership but not everybody and that's the real risk inside there's a group of more of younger you know two generations down Republican guards who are not part of the original revolutionary movement don't have the same

loyalty, more aggressive in some ways about Iran's role in the region, but they, as they watch this unfold, they are the ones that, you know, if I were, I'm sure the intelligence community is watching, frankly, because they're the ones most likely to mount a coup against the regime. they don't want to all that fight with the United States right now. They want to preserve their commanding position in the Iranian economy because do they benefit from sanctions, frankly. They make billions of dollars from a sanctioned economy. And are they willing to give all that up and watch the regime collapse

and who knows what happens once the regime breaks open? We all know that. So these days are absolutely fraught inside Iran. I wouldn't be surprised, holy, Rudyard, to wake up a few mornings from now and hear that there was either a coup or an attempted coup inside of Iran. So how much longer does this go on for? There is, you know, some promise, some loose promise of more meetings to come. But again, you know, today, Friday, we're seeing, you know, what could only be characterized as, you know, forward staging.

Yeah. You know, a posture on the part of the Americans of kind of imminent offense. Are we through this weekend without a U.S. strike on a record? You know, let me put one more issue on the table. Rudyard that's feeding into the calculus right now is apparently the Trump administration or some members of the Trump administration. or some members of the Trump administration are pressuring Israel to go first. Why would that work for the Trump administration? Because that would take the pressure off the president from the MAGA crowd, frankly.

He wouldn't be seen as getting entangled in a foreign conflict. Now, what are the incentives for Israel to go first here? I think, you know, I've talked about that, but just to make sure they've depleted their stocks of missile interceptors. And the United States has as well. And so as you get ready for this conflict, we are in a classic go first moment, which is the most dangerous kind of escalates. Why do you go first? Because you want to take out those missile launchers before they can be, if you're short of interceptors, the military logic is go first, take out those launchers before they can fire the missiles at cities and bases in the region.

That is the most unstable situation. You know, these go into the military textbooks as use it or lose it moments. And I can sense that kind of dynamic going on. If that's correct, I can't tell you whether it's this weekend or it's a few days from now. But boy, these are classic escalatory dynamics. in the middle of a very, very forward-looking deployment that is not sustainable. Okay, Janice, let's pause there.

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