Chas Freeman discusses the collapse of Iran-US diplomacy and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz
Glenn Diesen interviews former US Assistant Secretary of Defense Chas Freeman on the state of diplomacy in West Asia.
Summary
Glenn Diesen interviews Chas Freeman — former US Assistant Secretary of Defense, former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and one of the interpreters alongside Henry Kissinger during Nixon's 1972 China visit — on the rapidly deteriorating situation in West Asia. Freeman argues that Iran offered the United States a clear diplomatic off-ramp by partially opening the Strait of Hormuz, only for the Trump administration to reject it and double down on the blockade, forcing Iran to reimpose closure. He contends that American diplomacy has been replaced by performative media manipulation, with no genuine negotiation taking place despite public claims of agreement. Freeman also addresses Israel's strategy in southern Lebanon, which he characterises as a repetition of the Gaza model, and argues that Trump's proclamation of a Lebanon ceasefire reflects desperation to exit a war fought entirely on Israeli terms rather than American ones. Throughout, Freeman assesses China's position as strengthening, Russia's as benefiting, and the United States' as increasingly isolated and self-defeating.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction and Overview of the Crisis
Glenn Diesen: Welcome back. Today is the 18th of April, 2026, and we are joined by Chas Freeman, the former US Assistant Secretary of Defense. Thank you for coming back. It's always good to see you, my friend.
Chas Freeman: Good to see you, Glenn, and good to be here.
Glenn Diesen: You have a lot of diplomatic and political experience from what appears to be all the major flash points in the world. You were with Kissinger in China as interpreter in the 1970s. You were the US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. You also had a key role in designing the post-Cold War security architecture in Europe. I was hoping to get your perspective on understanding the times we live in, because at the moment we don't have too much diplomacy. We're fighting Russia, we're fighting China, we're fighting Iran, and in every instance it's always the assumption that we have to defeat our opponents. Our political class no longer talks about peace. If there are any suggestions about diplomacy, they usually come from the military, never from the diplomats. It appears we're only pursuing peace through strength, which means fighting wars. So if we take a step back, how are you assessing the unraveling of all of these regions all at the same time?
Chas Freeman: Well, that's quite a question. In West Asia, which is the topic of the day, the unraveling has been going on for quite some time. There's a great deal of confusion now about the state of play. Essentially, perhaps the United States does not understand diplomacy anymore. There's no evidence that we do. We certainly don't field experienced diplomats to do important things. We send cronies or the son-in-law of the president — to no avail. The Vice President — to no avail.
The Iranians clearly understand diplomacy, and they just gave Donald Trump an opportunity to declare victory and leave by opening the Strait of Hormuz — under their control, of course — but opening it, which would have set the stage for a meeting, perhaps a conference, to discuss the long-term management system for the strait. It is clear that Iranian equities there have to be taken into account. They can't be ignored, much as we would prefer the previous regime established by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. That is increasingly ignored — certainly by the United States, and now by Iran.
When the response to the opening of the strait under these controlled conditions was not an exit strategy but a doubling down on the American blockade, Iran retracted its opening and we're now back to essential closure.
There are several strange things about this. If you think of the strait as a sort of door, Iran left the door slightly open, peeking around it. If it saw a friend coming, it would open the door in return for payment. If it saw someone who wasn't a friend coming, it would shut the door. The response to this by Donald Trump was essentially completely irrational — to close the door and padlock it. That maximises the pressure on every economy in the world. It will tip the global economy into recession. It ensures higher gasoline prices for American consumers, which is the primary concern of the president as he faces the midterm elections.
He has characteristically dealt with this whole issue with public bombast and statements that appear to be totally disconnected from reality. For example, he now claims that Iran has agreed to everything. Well, if Iran has agreed to anything, why are we doing what we're doing? Why aren't we talking? Iran says it hasn't agreed to anything. The credibility of Iran in this regard is — I'm sorry to say, as an American — much greater than that of the United States.
What will happen now, we don't know. But one possible explanation for the continuation of the blockade is that the Trump administration planned to go out with some kind of military action this weekend. Many people have reported that there were plans to do that, and Iran upset those plans by basically offering an opening of the strait.
Where do we go from here? Sooner or later there has to be some kind of negotiation. I should say that one thing has been apparently at least partially resolved, and that is the dispute over whether Lebanon is part of the make-believe ceasefire that was announced a while ago. The answer is yes, it is. Donald Trump has now prohibited Israel from conducting further aggressive operations there. That isn't stopping the Israelis from violating the new so-called ceasefire in Lebanon. But it does answer the Iranian condition that there be a discussion and arrangement for a region-wide peace — not just one between the United States and Iran, or Israel and Iran.
What will happen? I don't know. My sense is that both sides are playing for time, and my sense is that Iran is more likely to win that contest than the United States. It has a great amount of oil afloat beyond the Strait of Hormuz which it can sell. It won't be deprived of revenue anytime soon. Incidentally, the oil market has changed. India just paid for Iranian oil in Chinese yuan. So we're looking at the unraveling of the petrodollar arrangement as a consequence of this.
The main thing is that a substantial part of the United States Navy is now in the Arabian Sea or the Gulf of Oman conducting a blockade. We're hearing reports that conditions aboard the ships are deteriorating rapidly — that the crews do not have access to basic necessities, that food is running out, that systems are breaking down. This is not a formula for long-term sustainment of a blockade. I think at the moment it looks as though Iran is better placed than the United States in this war of attrition.
The Gulf States and Saudi Arabia's Position
Glenn Diesen: In terms of the Gulf States, how likely is it, and how would you see the likely strategy of them moving forward? Do they have much faith in the blockade, or will they take a more active participation? How do you see the likelihood of Saudi Arabia, for example, joining in the fight?
Chas Freeman: The Saudis have been quite clear that they do not approve of the blockade. They've asked that it be ended. They are in touch with Tehran. The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Iran have conferred at least once recently. Saudi Arabia is actually in the best position of any country in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Kuwait and Qatar are basically isolated in the Persian Gulf. The Emirates is caught between the American and the Iranian blockades. Oman is basically exempt from both but is not a major player. Saudi Arabia is now the major conduit for the exports and imports of both Kuwait and Qatar because it has access to the Red Sea.
The Iranians have declared that if necessary they will call on Ansar Allah — the Houthis — to once again close the Bab-el-Mandeb and blockade the Red Sea. So the Saudis are under considerable pressure, as are their neighbours. But so far Saudi Arabia is still exporting about six or seven million barrels of oil a day through the port of Yanbu. Iran had struck a pumping station on the east-west pipeline in Saudi Arabia, but that seems to have been repaired. I take that as a warning shot that if necessary Iran can shut down Saudi exports as well.
Meanwhile, even if the strait were in fact opened and ships were sailing through without difficulty, the global oil market is in for a major shock because it takes three weeks to a month for these ships to arrive at their destination. Around the world there is a desperate search for alternative sources of energy. This is working out very well for Russia, which is once again exempted from sanctions and therefore able to increase its oil exports. It may be a boon to American control of Venezuela as well, but we have yet to see any significant increase in Venezuelan production and exports.
Donald Trump, by opting to padlock the door to the Persian Gulf, is taking a huge risk both domestically in terms of politics and internationally. If you were pursuing purely American interests — if it really was America First in West Asia — you would have accepted the opening of the strait and used that as an excuse to start something like the fictitious peace process that existed between the Israelis and Palestinians only in the minds of Westerners. There were no effective negotiations, but the peace process became an excuse for not resorting to violence. The same thing could happen in the Persian Gulf with the Strait of Hormuz.
When and if there is a serious meeting about that issue, I think there's going to have to be some kind of international regime agreed with Iran — something like the Dardanelles Treaty — that recognises an Iranian role in the management of the strait but establishes agreed rules of engagement and a regulatory mechanism of some sort that prevents an abuse of Iranian power of the sort we have now seen.
In any event, the bottom line is that of the many different shifting objectives the United States and Israel have put forward, none have been achieved. Iran has been pushed into a nuclear weapons program, I believe, rather than removed from one. There has been no regime change — there has been regime consolidation. Its missiles are not exhausted. It has an ample supply with which to restart the bombardment of Israel and its neighbours if required. The Strait of Hormuz, which was open, is now closed and under Iranian control. Israel has failed to annex southern Lebanon, and interestingly, with the opposition of Donald Trump being the key factor there.
That's the last gamble that Donald Trump has taken. He's now caught between his Zionist donors in the United States who want the war to continue and who support Netanyahu's desire for the war to go on, and his Israeli blackmailers under the Epstein files. How long can he sustain a defiance of Netanyahu and the Israeli government? We shall see. That is another factor in terms of clocks ticking — not to the advantage of the United States.
The Collapse of Diplomatic Process
Glenn Diesen: How about the way diplomacy is done now? Is this how it used to be? When they announced the ceasefire, I know that it's not always the case that documents are released, but first we were told it would be based on Iran's ten-point plan, and then we never heard anything about that ten-point plan again. There were disputes about whether Lebanon was included in that ceasefire, even though the Pakistani Prime Minister insisted it was. And even after this, you would assume there would be some clarity around whether the US imposing a blockade on Iran would be a breach of the ceasefire, given that it's an act of war. But even after all of this, we see Trump taking the whole negotiation to social media, sending out messages saying the blockade is open and will not be put back in place, and that the Iranians will give up all their nuclear material — and soon thereafter the Iranians, also now communicating on social media, say none of this is actually true, and because the US didn't lift its blockade, Iran reimposed the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz. It's very confusing. Would it not be usual to have common documents — something that can be put out there? Because at this moment it's like teenagers quarrelling over Twitter. It doesn't make much sense.
Chas Freeman: This is yet another example of fantasy foreign policy — that is, foreign policy by media manipulation rather than by a serious effort to reach an understanding with the other side. We've seen this pattern again and again. We've seen it in Ukraine with the talks in Moscow. We've seen it in Gaza with the phony ceasefire there. We've seen it in Lebanon. We've seen it with Iran.
No, it is not usual. It is not usual to declare an agreement when there is none. There's been no meeting of the minds in any of these instances. This just underscores the amateur hour that American diplomacy has entered. Our envoys are totally inexperienced, not knowledgeable of the regions they're dealing with, novices in terms of their understanding of history, geography, and so forth, and not up to the technical specifications.
What we saw in Islamabad — in the meeting between JD Vance and Mr. Alibaf and Araghchi, the Foreign Minister of Iran — was not a negotiation. It was an American performative act intended to imply that there was a negotiation, which didn't exist. The Iranian side arrived with over seventy people in their delegation, with the full authority apparently of the authorities in Tehran, including the IRGC, to conduct a serious negotiation and reach agreement. They had technical staff with them who were prepared to discuss issues in detail. The American side was heavy on politically connected people and very low on experts. It was essentially there to present an ultimatum — but an ultimatum that had no really effective leverage behind it.
The American delegation had to bow to the preposterous claims of Donald Trump — the sole now-functioning authority in the United States on these matters — that somehow the United States had won the war. This confuses death and destruction of the Heraclitean variety with victory in the Clausewitzian or Sun Tzu sense — namely, that the purpose of war is to achieve adjustments in relations and policies, a political result, not simply to cut up the enemy and inflict suffering.
Iran has shown that it can take an enormous amount of punishment and continue to fight. Its full strategy, as I've mentioned before, was the same as Muhammad Ali's rope-a-dope strategy — that is, allow the enemy to punch you as hard as it could in the effort to exhaust it, weaken it, and wait for the moment to deliver your own countermeasures and counter-blow.
Iran has not changed in that regard. It can still — and it does not want more punishment — but it can take it. It is not clear that Israel and the United States have the capacity to do the same. The ability to intercept missiles by both has been greatly depleted. Iran has successfully kept American major capital ships — aircraft carriers — at a distance of five or six hundred miles, a thousand kilometres or so, because if they come any closer to Iran they are subject to attack, and they're avoiding it. The situation aboard the ships conducting the blockade is apparently deteriorating fairly rapidly.
Iran, on the other hand, is now digging out its troves of stored missiles from tunnels that were blocked by American and Israeli bombing, and is preparing to enable those to be fired. I think this is a war of attrition and we are very poorly suited to such a war. We don't have the industrial base to immediately replenish what we have expended. Iran may have such an industrial base underground. There's every indication that it does.
So here we have a strange situation in which the most powerful military in the world and its cadet in Israel are unable to overcome what is basically an isolated and not very strong Iranian military.
China's Position and Strategic Interests
Glenn Diesen: You also have a fairly strong background from China, and I was wondering how you read the Chinese response here, because they're quite quiet and cautious — as they always are. This could be just a more peaceful nature, or they can simply see that time is on their side. But it seems like a lot of the things being done now target the Chinese — cutting off and blockading Iranian oil going to China, threats of sanctioning Chinese banks for trading with Iran because the Iranians are allegedly terrorists. You even have people like Scott Bessent going out warning the Chinese they're not going to get any more Iranian oil. The US Navy is stopping Chinese civilian vessels from picking up oil. This is a clear escalation. Do you see this reflecting weakness? Will China have to yield to US demands, or do you think they're going to be pressured into taking a harder stance?
Chas Freeman: Quite a few questions there. The Chinese have many interests at stake here. The major one you referred to is that they have emerged as the defender of the UN Charter, international law, and the international system, whereas the United States is the despoiler of that system. The Chinese have a big stake in the maintenance of the system which brought them to wealth and power — the system pioneered and sponsored by the United States, the Pax Americana. But without the United States, the Chinese want to root this in a global multilateral system.
The second thing is that the Chinese do have a stake in sustaining their access to the Persian Gulf — in that regard, they're not different from any other country on the planet. Essentially what the United States has done is declare economic war on every country on the planet. So why wouldn't the Chinese sit back and enjoy watching the United States isolate itself and make enemies where it had formerly had friends?
There's a lot of very silly armchair strategic reasoning going on in the United States — that somehow China's existence is at stake, or that what we're doing in the Middle East is a fatal blow to China or a strategic setback. That is not true on several grounds. First, the Chinese are in fact well positioned because of their leadership in renewable energy, their deposits of coal, and their very large strategic petroleum reserve to ride out any crisis quite well. It is costing China some relationships in the region because the world — and East and Southeast Asia in particular — has become dependent on Chinese exports of diesel and jet fuel, and these have now been suspended on the principle that charity begins at home. China will be hurt, of course, but it can manage the level of pain it will suffer.
The second element is that China is being pushed closer to Russia. The Power of Siberia gas pipeline, discussed for many years and not pursued in fact, is now being pursued. The Chinese and the Russians are conferring frequently on strategic matters and acting in concert in the UN and elsewhere.
There are other factors. China's close relationship — not an alliance, but a protected-state relationship — with Pakistan has been activated. Pakistan has emerged as the essential mediator, at least passing messages between Tehran and Washington and vice versa. To call this a negotiation is stretching things — it's message-passing. But it's very important. Pakistan also convened the Egyptians, Turks, and Saudis in a meeting which empowered it to go to Beijing to get Chinese backing for an effort at conciliation in the Gulf, and also to plan the development of a military-industrial complex in the region that would be independent of Western — specifically American — dependence.
Lots of things are going on, none of them really hurting Chinese influence. In fact, on the contrary, China is emerging globally, in image terms, as the defender of the international order as the United States destroys it. China is regarded by the countries in the region as a valuable interlocutor diplomatically. It has a major interest in opening the Strait of Hormuz and will play a role in arranging whatever is done eventually to regulate that strait.
I'll just end by making an obvious point that will not have escaped Chinese understanding — what Iran has done in the Strait of Hormuz, China could do in the Taiwan Strait. So they may have less interest in depriving Iran of its sovereignty in the strait than any other country does, because of that complication.
We have Donald Trump apparently going to Beijing. It's not clear what that will produce — he claims it will be a great moment in history, but then every moment is apparently a great moment in history for him. My sense is that the US-China relationship is in pursuit of minimal stability and nothing else. That is to say, each side wants to avoid making unnecessary trouble for the other or provoking the other into doing something potentially disastrous.
That brings me back to the question of Chinese shipping going through the Strait of Hormuz. It's not clear to me what the rules of engagement for the American blockaders are with regard to shipping of nuclear-armed superpowers. I hope we never find out how far they are prepared to go.
The last thing: the Chinese response to the assaults on Iranian sovereignty, territorial integrity, and diplomacy apparently includes a direct Chinese response. We're told that China will supply greater air defence capabilities to Iran. That would be logical — it's China's right to do that as a non-belligerent, neutral country, very much resembling lend-lease and other things the United States did in the years approaching World War II when we declared neutrality but nonetheless took a side in defence of Great Britain and other countries in Europe against the Nazis.
The Chinese have a stake in the survival of Iran, but it's a complicated one because of the legal issues connected with control of straits. The Chinese are for the most part in observance of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, with one aberrant aspect — they apply straight baselines where they are not permitted by the treaty. That's a technical issue which probably nobody listening to this wants to learn about, so I won't explain it.
The Belt and Road Initiative as a Strategic Target
Glenn Diesen: A key interest of China in Iran isn't just the wider geopolitics — the oil supplies and all that — but a key project for Iran has also been the development of the Belt and Road Initiative, this vast trillion-dollar infrastructure project connecting the Eurasian continent. Iran seems to be a key node within this. I also noticed that the US and Israelis have attacked a lot of railroads and ports. Some of this seems to affect Russia's and Iran's and India's International North-South Transportation Corridor, but others are also connected to China's Belt and Road Initiative, as Iran is an important node. Do you think this is deliberate — to undermine these larger projects of integrating Eurasian powers — or is it simply because infrastructure is used to keep the economy going and to move militaries?
Chas Freeman: I think it's both — both a strike at the Belt and Road Initiative and an effort to destroy the underpinnings of Iran's economy. I note that among the strikes was one on a port on the Caspian, which is a central element in the east-west Belt and Road Initiative.
It is interesting that the Chinese have clearly responded to the increased danger to maritime traffic by doubling down on their focus in Central Asia. It's not just the Power of Siberia pipeline that is being emphasised, but other routes. There is a pipeline that extends from Turkmenistan, which is a major producer of gas, to China. That pipeline can be supplied with swapped gas from Iran. So Iran already has one outlet to its north for energy exports — it's not completely bottled up in the Persian Gulf.
Geopolitically, the influence of this war is quite obvious. First of all, every country is now more interested in electrifying its economy and getting away from dependence on imported oil and gas. That's happening even in the United States, despite our undying love for the internal combustion engine. We've created a huge market for Chinese technology — solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, and electric vehicles, in which China leads the world.
Nobody is going to trust freedom of navigation again after seeing the world's most powerful navy violate that principle. Iran has a point in terms of the United States conducting a blockade against the Strait of Hormuz. This is a violation of a ceasefire agreement. Clearly, as you said, it is an act of war. And it is illegal.
The United States finds itself in the odd position of confronting a China that stands for what we used to stand for — namely, the rule of law. Not terribly convincingly perhaps, because China lacks the rule of law effectively internally, and that's a real question: whether a country that does not respect the rule of law domestically can be trusted to respect it internationally. There's clearly a relationship between the two domains. The fact that the United States is violating international law has something to do with why unconstitutional and illegal practices are growing in our domestic context.
One other point: we see the beginning of the development of ad hoc conferences as a means of dealing with issues that the United Nations is clearly incapable of dealing with. We have a group of about forty countries meeting under French and British auspices to discuss what to do about the Strait of Hormuz, and they can't come up with a military solution — first because there is none, and second because they don't have the capacity to project power effectively anymore. Therefore they're going to have to come up with a diplomatic strategy, if they're capable of it. So far they've been incapable of doing that on other issues — the Ukraine war, European security architecture, Gaza, the Israeli campaign in Lebanon, the security of the state of Lebanon.
Domestic and International Rule of Law
Glenn Diesen: When you argue about the rule of law domestically and internationally, values don't necessarily have to transition from the domestic to the international. The American academic John Herz wrote in, I think, 1950 or 1952 that the more democratic countries are internally, the more they often resist democracy internationally — because they perceive themselves to have better values, so they want to protect those values from the rule of the majority.
Chas Freeman: It's a resonance between the two domains. You're quite right. The United States has been fiercely defensive about our own sovereignty even as we tread on others' sovereignty. We don't belong to major international institutions like the International Criminal Court, and we are serial violators of the principles we ourselves proposed for the international order. Why? Because we don't want foreigners telling us what to do. Well, we tell foreigners what to do. Foreigners increasingly pay no attention. And that is emphatically the case with Mr. Netanyahu and the Israeli government.
Glenn Diesen: I just had a talk with Ambassador Jack Matlock, and he was making the point that the reason the US was so fiercely opposed to the Soviets was not because they were communists themselves, but because they were trying to impose this on everyone else. He was making the point that today we are the ones who are ideological — we're the ones imposing our way of government on all other countries and pursuing this limited sovereignty. It is interesting that the ideology of a hegemon can come with these kinds of principles that seek to promote sovereign inequality among states.
I did want to get to the Lebanon issue, because you mentioned that Israel seemed to have a goal — if I interpret it correctly — of essentially putting a massive occupation on southern Lebanon, based on the villages they're destroying and their more or less open statements to that effect. How do you see the strategy playing out now that the ceasefire in Lebanon is tied up to the ceasefire with Iran?
Israel, Lebanon, and the Limits of Trump's Influence
Chas Freeman: The Israeli government is very frustrated, particularly by the intervention of Donald Trump and by the manner in which he announced that intervention — unilaterally on social media, without consulting the Israelis. One has to assume there was a private communication to Israel backing this up and threatening to cut off weapons for the invasion, but that is a matter of conjecture.
Before I get to Lebanon, let me make a comment about messianic foreign policy. I think Jack Matlock is correct. But it's equally true that during the Cold War we had a messianic approach, at least rhetorically. We tried to export both democracy and capitalism to areas of the world that had been liberated from colonialism, and there was quite a contest between us and the Soviets. We had the better model, as it turned out. Francis Fukuyama rather overstated things when he claimed that history had ended, but there was a turning point when the Soviet system collapsed of its own defects.
I would argue that the United States has consistently, from our very birth, been messianic in terms of trying to export our values. We began with a revolution and continued over the succeeding centuries to insist that others do things our way because it was superior. I won't get into the history of missionary activity in places like China, but this is very much part of the American character.
I thought one of the great moments in our diplomatic history was when, in the Shanghai Communiqué issued by Joe and I — and Richard Nixon — on February 28th, 1972, we declared that the United States and China had fundamentally different values, different socioeconomic systems and ideologies, but that that should not impede our cooperating on matters of common interest. That is a proper diplomatic approach, and I only wish it were being applied today.
With regard to Lebanon: first of all, this is a discussion between an essentially illegitimate Lebanese government and Israel. I say essentially illegitimate because that government is set up along the confessional lines that the French imposed on Lebanon during the colonial era. The president is always a Maronite Christian, the speaker of the parliament is always Shia, and so on. The demographics in Lebanon have changed fundamentally. Shiites are now a majority, and the major force in Lebanese politics. Hezbollah's representation in parliament is not just an army — it's a political movement, a political party with enormous authority. In many ways it's fascist; I'm not very fond of it. It is a state within a state and performs a lot of functions for those under its authority that the government can't perform. But one of those functions is the defence of Lebanon as a state against Israeli aggression, which the Lebanese army is incapable of doing.
So here we have talks in which Hezbollah is not part. It has repudiated them, claiming they're illegitimate, and says it won't be bound by them — though it will take advantage of anything that comes out of them if it can. Essentially we have a Lebanese government which is threatened by Hezbollah domestically, and it used to deal with this issue by cleaving to Iran, which was part of an Iranian-Hezbollah-operated sphere of influence. Now it's trying to replace Iran with Israel — basically to enlist Israel against Hezbollah. And Israel's purposes are very clear. They want to destroy Hezbollah and disarm it, and by doing so remove any obstacle to their military operations in Lebanon.
It's very clear that in southern Lebanon they've blown up all the bridges over the Litani and other rivers, severing the Lebanese south from the rest of the country. They are applying the model of Gaza to that region — destroying physical infrastructure, murdering anyone they can strike, and driving people out. Unlike Gaza, people in Lebanon have somewhere to go. We've had some very frightening and objectionable statements from people like Jared Kushner about why not just bulldoze part of the Negev Desert and move all the Gazans there — but the fact is the Gazans have stayed put. The Lebanese have not — they have moved out. Now they're coming back, and Israel has actually established a parallel to the so-called yellow line in Gaza, an invisible border. It shoots people who cross that border because it declares them to be terrorists — because otherwise why would they be crossing the border? They must have something nefarious in mind. Maybe they're just trying to get home.
What we're seeing in southern Lebanon is a repeat of Gaza. That should be pretty sobering, because it suggests that Gaza was not an aberration — it's a pattern that Israel proposes to impose on other areas it chooses to annex. Israel is a state with no borders, no agreed frontiers whatsoever, constantly expanding. This falls short of the normal definition of a state.
Lebanon is a great caution in many ways. My guess is that we will see a repetition of the Gaza pattern — a phony ceasefire in which Israel insists that everyone else cease fire while it continues to fire at them and pursue its strategic objectives. This is probably going to lead to some kind of blow-up between the Trump administration and Israel, or more likely the capitulation of Donald Trump to his Israeli minders.
I do go back to the point, however, that the proclamation of a ceasefire and its apparent backing with some sort of threat to Israel do represent a victory for Iran in terms of insisting that there be a comprehensive, region-wide peace — not just a ceasefire or a truce between it and the countries that attacked it.
Glenn Diesen: I saw the message by Trump insisting that there would have to be a ceasefire in Lebanon and that Israel had better follow what he told them. I'm not sure if that is to shed some of the narrative that Israelis are controlling him — to assert some autonomy — or if it's an actual threat. Maybe it's a bit of both.
Chas Freeman: It's an indication of his desperation to get out of the mess that he's made in a war with Iran, where he basically enlisted to implement Israeli objectives. There have never been any clear American objectives in this war. It's been all over the place.
He wants out. As I've pointed out before, his training in New York real estate had two elements. One was that you made deals through coercion and bullying — you threatened to bankrupt or ruin your proposed partner in a deal, and that's how you got a deal. That was Roy Cohn's lesson to Donald Trump. You never accept defeat. You always punch back. You don't have any regard for the facts — you make up facts, because the court of public opinion is more important in the real estate context in New York than the underlying reality. Unfortunately for Donald Trump, that is not true internationally. The reality persists even if you misdescribe it or ignore it.
The second element in his training is that when you get in trouble, you declare bankruptcy and walk away with no obligations. And that's what he'd like to do with the Persian Gulf. That's why I'm so surprised that he didn't have the wit to accept the Iranian opening of the strait as a victory. It would have been a perfect excuse for him to say, "I intimidated them. I imposed my will on them. They had to open the strait. This is a major achievement. Give me the Nobel Peace Prize." He didn't do that, which suggests that his Israeli minders are still guiding the policy.
Glenn Diesen: So likely back to war then? A ceasefire will doubtfully lead to an actual peace agreement, I guess.
Chas Freeman: Not likely. But one of the amazing things about the roller coaster we've been on in this war is the gullibility of so many people. Look at Trump's ability to manipulate the market — quite extraordinary. People's wishful thinking that the best is about to occur because Donald Trump proclaimed it would is really remarkable. I've never seen anything quite like it.
I'm a minor investor. Having emerged from my government service penniless, I've been trying to rectify that condition with some success. I follow the market, and it is very much manipulated by this charismatic — slightly insane, maybe more than slightly insane — man in the White House. I still can't believe he was able to talk down the oil prices by fifteen dollars by simply claiming that Iran had more or less capitulated on the Strait of Hormuz. It's quite extraordinary that after all these years people still believe his words. The Iranians still had to come out and argue that reality isn't shaped by social media posts — it's on the ground. What Trump says isn't real. They kind of dismiss it, and yet the market seems overly optimistic, if not gullible.
Glenn Diesen: Any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Chas Freeman: No, I've said enough to hang myself, I think. I wish you all the best and urge you to keep up the good work of providing access to people who — myself excluded — know what they're talking about.
Glenn Diesen: Well, thank you again for taking the time out of your Saturday. Cheers.