Escalation with Iran – with Dan Shapiro

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Just when it seemed the conflict between the United States and Iran might be settling into an uneasy stalemate, the region lurched back toward escalation.

In this episode, host Aviva Klompas is joined by Ambassador Dan Shapiro, former U.S. ambassador to Israel and a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council, to make sense of a fast-moving and often contradictory situation.

They discuss the latest military exchanges between the United States and Iran, the uncertain future of the MOU, the status of Iran's nuclear program, and whether diplomacy is gaining ground—or simply delaying another round of conflict.

Guest Bio:

Ambassador Daniel Shapiro is a distinguished fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative. He previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East from 2024 to 2025, Senior Adviser on Regional Integration in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, and US Ambassador to Israel from 2011 to 2017.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

They had all the leverage, and we were the ones looking for a way out. And so we took a way out. Again, I'm glad we took a way out, but we took a way out that was really quite weak.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Today is Wednesday, July 8th. This is Boundless Insights, and I'm Aviva Klumpus. The past 24 hours have seen dramatic developments between the United States and Iran. It began when Iran attacked three commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz. The United States responded last night with strikes on Iranian targets. Tehran then retaliated by attacking Bahrain and Kuwait. Speaking to reporters earlier today, President Trump suggested the MOU with Iran may be dead, calling the regime, quote, scum and sick people. Not long after, however, he appeared to leave the door open, saying negotiators could keep talking if they want. So if you've been trying to follow the developments with Iran, you've probably found them confusing, from the status of Iran's nuclear program to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, to whether we're headed toward another round of fighting. To help us separate what's happening from all the chatter, I'm joined today by Ambassador Dan Shapiro. Dan is a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council. He previously served as U.S. Ambassador to Israel and held senior national security positions at both the Pentagon and State Department. Let's get into it. Dan Shapiro, welcome back to Boundless Insights.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Thanks, Aviva. Good to be with you.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

I appreciate you coming back. I so enjoyed having you on last time. There's a lot going on between the United States and Iran. There are reports that talks between the two countries may or may not be over. There may or may not be another round of fighting. There may or may not be inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities. There may or may not be commercial ships moving through the Strait of Hormuz. So can we start with just level setting? What do we know and what is unclear?

SPEAKER_01 1:51

What we know is that by the end of the war that was uh sort of reached when this 14-point memorandum of understanding was announced, the most pressing priority was for the United States to ensure the Strait of Hormuz was open, to get oil markets stabilized, to deal with the global economic crisis that had resulted from that, cutoff of oil, gas, other supplies that flowed through the Strait of Hormouths. And so there's a 14-point MOU, but for the first condition that it's intended to establish is that there's a ceasefire that's extended out for 60 more days and uh normal straight uh of Hormuz traffic uh resumes. That was what was essentially agreed, and everything else in the 14 points is essentially still to be negotiated. Even though straight of Hormuz traffic is supposed to resume as before the war, Iran wants to establish an essential degree of control over that strait traffic so it can derive revenue from it. So that is still sort of a work in progress. So what's been happening in the last uh week or so is that struggle for whether ships go through the Iranian waters and therefore Iran has some control and uh can try to uh impose some fees on them, whether they go through Omani waters, uh escorted by the U.S. Navy and are able to do so freely. And uh when Iran doesn't feel it's getting sufficient satisfaction out of that, it shoots at some of the commercial vessels. Correct. It shot drones at some of these commercial vessels and caused damage. The United States has responded, Central Command uh announced yesterday that they had struck in response Iranian targets, and this is sort of within the context of a ceasefire, that there's still some shooting. But until that is sort of settled, uh, what's the exact regularity of uh straight traffic? In light of that shooting, the United States withdrew the license or the waiver on the oil sanctions. None of the frozen assets have been transferred. Until those things are settled, Iran's position is we're not even talking about uh the nuclear issues.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Unclear. You spoke at the beginning of your answer calling it an end of the war. And I want to ask you about that because from my perspective, I think that President Trump was like, listen, I need to hit pause until after the midterms. I'm celebrating a big birthday in America. We're turning 250 years old, there was the World Cup, which is still underway. So he just wanted a quiet period and of course stabilize the markets ahead of the midterms. And so my expectation was he says, all right, well, I'll sign this piece of paper and I'll take it as seriously as the Iranians when they sign a piece of paper, which is to say, not seriously at all. And we can extend that ceasefire another 60 days and another 60 days, and we're just really, as we say in Canada, ragging the puck until after the midterms. Is that your sense of what's happening?

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Well, I never try to put myself inside President Trump's head because I don't think anybody really knows. It's a little scary in there. I don't think anybody really knows what his motivations are. I suspect he doesn't really know if that's his plan or not. A lot of this uh decision to go to war and decisions within the war and decision to end the war have been done very improvisationally, have been done without any serious consultation uh with many in his own government, with the Congress, with the American people, with allies. He's made many, many uh decisions that I think uh were not the product of thoughtful and and deliberate uh discussion, debate, and and really weighing all the factors. So this is one theory that uh people have uh posited that yes, he saw the pressure of uh the oil prices uh on the Republican Party ahead of the midterms. He's very worried about losing one or both houses. Uh you mentioned some of the other factors, events happening this summer that you know could have been drowned out by uh the noise of a continued fighting. And uh he wanted to buy some time and that therefore once we get to the other side of the midterms, uh he'll feel free to uh resume fighting. Well, I suppose that's possible, uh, but you know, uh there's no reason to think that uh resuming fighting after uh the midterms is necessarily going to produce an appreciably different result uh than the very frustrating sort of stalemate uh that we had arrived at uh in March and April of this year during the war.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Aaron Powell And I want to remind people something that you said on the last podcast, which I thought was so insightful, because you told us that when this war was being planned, that the administration should have recognized that the first and biggest move that Iran would make would be to take the Strait of Hormuz, and that should never have been permissible.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

That is something that uh has been considered, war games studied uh for decades, uh, and so it was fairly obvious that Iran uh would seek to do that, but also that it has new tools to do that than the way this has often been thought about over many decades. Uh, you know, the main threat to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz for a long time was mines, uh, these uh explosives in the water or even attached to ships themselves by small boats that could threaten the ships. That's hard enough to clear and to escort ships to avoid those kinds of things. But the advancement of Iran's drone technology, particularly Shahid drones, that it has, of course, used uh in its own wars, but also used uh provided to Russia to use uh in Ukraine. This is uh gives them a very cheap and uh easily replenishable uh resource that it can use from various points along the shore and even quite uh significant uh distance inland. And so to really keep the strait uh free and safe for shipping uh militarily, the United States would have to not just escort ships and clear mines, it would have to put troops on the ground, on islands in the Gulf or on the shoreline or even further inland in order to prevent these drone attacks. And that's a very high cost and very high risk proposition. Quite understandably, the president didn't want to go through that midterms or no midterms.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

I do know that this administration is different from other administrations, particularly the one that you worked in. But it's easy to assume that nobody knows what's happening. But sometimes ambiguity is a diplomatic tool. It creates the opportunity for leverage or saving face in the case of what's important to the Iranians, creating room for diplomacy. And we do look back and see that this administration has had some major coups. The Abraham Accords. They brought home every single hostage, living and dead. President Trump was able to capture the dictator of Venezuela. Sometimes it seems that there is a method to the madness. What's your assessment?

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Well, I've given credit where credit is due for achievements that the administration has had. This and the first Trump administration, obviously the Abraham Accords is won. As I think I probably said on the previous podcast, I supported the strikes against Iran in June of 2025, the midnight hammer strikes, a part of the 12-day war. I thought that was an ultimately inevitable and necessary uh set of strikes in order to really set back an Iranian nuclear program, advanced too close for comfort to the ability to produce a weapon. But it was done in a very careful, contained, precise way, and it didn't draw us into something uh with sort of an open-ended set of objectives. And it achieved a very meaningful objective. It really did set back that program. By the way, nothing really had changed in the Iranian nuclear program from June of 2025 to February of 2026 that would justify uh going to a full-scale military conflict as we did at the end of February. So uh, yes, there are things that that have been done, and you know, again, credit where due. But this was an example of a very significant failure of planning, of preparation, of considering diverse contingencies, of building support, both in the United States and uh internationally, for a military conflict that was inevitably going to get very messy and very complicated. And then we were stuck. We were literally stuck, stuck in a way that also had put all the leverage in the hands of the Iranians. Because the Iranians were willing to endure a significant amount of pain. Yes, there were very significant military achievements by the Israeli and the U.S. strikes against various Iranian capabilities. But uh, once Iran had established essential control of the strait, they had all the leverage, and we were the ones looking for a way out. And so we took a way out. Again, I'm glad we took a way out, but we took a way out that was uh really quite weak. It provided a significant amount of upfront sanctions relief benefits to Iran. It's not that we've delivered on all of that, so the Iranians are now feeling a little bit screwed. That was sort of the weak deal that was required to get out of the bad war. And it was maybe weaker than I think it should have been, but uh that's the situation that we found ourselves. So I don't think this could possibly be measured as a success against uh some of the other uh legitimate successes President Trump has had.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

So let me ask it the opposite way. How did Iran manage to outmaneuver the United States diplomatically? Because we're talking about a superpower against a paper tiger. Iran suffered these major military losses. It has the head of its regime decapitated. The goals that the United States set out at the outset about no nuclear program, no support for proxies, no ballistic missile program, we're not even talking about that anymore. It's become almost exclusively about the Strait of Hormuz. So, how did Iran manage this?

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Well, this is a good description of the mismanagement of a misguided war.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

But it's not just true of this administration. I'd say that all previous administrations have been big talk on Iran without delivery.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

You know, where we have been over many years, of course, has been a form of containment, right? All sorts of different kinds of sanctions, agreements that required limitations on the nuclear program inspections to verify those, then of course the withdrawal from that agreement, an attempt to find new agreements, all happening while there were various sanctions, and then occasional military encounters, uh most prominently uh last June's. It should have been clear from the beginning that the very expansive goals that were described inconsistently at the beginning of the war in February and March, rendering the nuclear program completely dismantling the ballistic missile program, ending the support for terrorist proxies, helping free the Iranian people. What was being envisioned as the outcome of this war essentially required regime change. And that we didn't learn the lesson of some of our past uh misadventures in the Middle East, that we are not really capable of, at any acceptable cost, to achieve regime change through military means. That was the fundamental mistake. And so you create these very broad and ambitious uh targets and goals. You do achieve some meaningful military objectives within those. That's the successful strikes on all sorts of different facilities. But for the reasons you kind of stated, you have a regime, paper tiger or not, that is able to withstand and absorb a very significant amount of pain and then impose a significant amount of pain in return. And over time, we were running out of sort of significant targets to hit. To actually go on to achieve the rest of those objectives would have required some kind of ground operation, whether it's special operations to seize the nuclear materials, whether it's uh to prevent uh shooting at ships in the strait, all of those would have required a kind of military investment way, way beyond what we could afford and still sustain all our other requirements globally, the amount of casualties we would have been willing to endure the time and everything else. And Iran had the leverage because every day that the strait remained closed, uh the price to the global economy, and of course, even in our politics with gas prices, just went up and up and up.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Right. So really it comes down to a battle of wills, an understanding that the United States would have to go all in, and not just the cost militarily, but there would be human cost to it. And that seems, even now, it seems intolerable to many Americans. And Iran knows that and can play us.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

And that's not going to change after the midterms. The exact same dynamics that led to that very frustrating point would be very likely to return after the midterms. And so unless we are prepared to commit to something like an invasion of Iran to bring down the regime or an invasion of parts of Iran to remove nuclear materials or to secure the strait, I don't see any change. And if we are prepared to do those things, we're going to be stuck in that war at high cost for a very, very long time. I really don't think President Trump wants that either, even after the midterms.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Let me switch directions a bit. I want to ask you about the coordination that we have seen, which has been quite extraordinary between Washington and Jerusalem in terms of the military action against Iran, but also there have been these very public and sometimes angry disagreements. What's your take on the relationship, both between Washington and Jerusalem, but also personally between Trump and Netanyahu?

SPEAKER_01 14:26

They've obviously shown an ability to work together in various points in their presidency and prime ministership. Where I think they lost the thread was in December, January, and February last year and this year, when the prime minister came and explained, I think, legitimately in a meeting in Mar-a-Lago in December, that left unaddressed by last summer's war was the Iran's ballistic missile program. They were trying to build out a very significant ballistic missile capability to try to overwhelm Israel's uh air defenses. And that was something that was going to have to be dealt with at some point, and maybe some point in 2026. Not necessarily with a full-scale war, but that was a problem still requiring addressing. And then the protest started, and then the president made forward-leaning statements about how we would come to the aid of the Iranian people if they were attacked by the regime. They were attacked by the regime, and then we were sort of stuck in this middle, having made various commitments, having looked at a problem, and then the two leaders in February sort of came together and said, Yeah, let's go for the whole line yards. You can certainly understand how going into a war like that with a seeming overlap of objectives and a lot of very close and frankly effective military cooperation between the two militaries looked good at the beginning, but fairly quickly our interests diverged. And to reach that point where the president is really looking for an off-ramp and looking for a way out. Israel wants to be able to continue to press the damage that can be done to the regime, maybe even to try to fight until the regime falls. That created a lot of tension between them. And so when it came time to ultimately negotiate this 14-point MOU, it was very clear that Israel was being completely left out of those discussions. Not really even consulted, not even really informed about the different points of the MOU. Of course, the very first point of the MOU says that the ceasefire extends also to Lebanon, speaking basically on Israel's behalf, because Israel is the one fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon, and giving Iran an essential role and even a veto over what happens uh inside Lebanon. The Israelis were very unhappy about that. There was obviously some discussion between the leaders, but it didn't reach to their satisfaction. Then, of course, separately, Secretary Rubio led a, I think, actually fairly positive and sophisticated diplomatic effort between Israel and Lebanon to try to reach a separate agreement that would call for Hezbollah's disarmament, call for Lebanese armed forces to take over for uh locations currently under Hezbollah's control, and that doesn't actually require Israel to complete its withdrawal from southern Lebanon until that process sort of completes itself. Those two MOUs are now uh really inconsistent with each other and in competition with each other during the implementation phase. And you can see that the president and the prime minister are occasionally exchanging kind of messages through public means. The president uh has said he might meet with the prime minister, but the prime minister knows who the boss is and they're the junior partner and we're the senior partner. And, you know, uh it doesn't mean they can't work together, but it does betray a significant amount of tension and disagreement and really divergence of interest, both national and security interests, but also the political interests of each of the two leaders as the president heads toward the midterms, the prime minister heads towards his election. And of course, it's also in the backdrop against a very serious decline in Israel's overall standing uh in the United States.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about the status of Israel in American public opinion, particularly in the Democratic Party. You spent your career as a Democrat. You seem to be optimistic about the party's future, and we are seeing that the topic of Israel has become the litmus test for belonging in the Democratic Party. What do you say to American Jews who are feeling politically homeless and feeling like the party has turned on them?

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Look, I think that it's quite clear in all polling that Israel's standing has declined very broadly in the United States. Yes, among Democrats. And also it's very clear that that same thing is happening in the Republican Party. It's not uh maybe at the same numbers, but the trend and the direction is very similar, and it's especially true among younger Republicans. Israel's standing has declined. And, you know, that's, I think, in a way quite unsurprising if you look at what has been happening over almost three years of war. Of course, a lot of sympathy for Israel after the terrible Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7th.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

For a few days.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

Well, okay. But for, you know, within weeks and months and now years beyond a war and all the suffering that is associated with war, obviously many civilian casualties as well. And you know, Hamas bears all the responsibility they bear for how they fight from within, take shelter behind civilians. But, you know, that's not surprising that over time that's going to produce a blow to Israel's reputation. And then, of course, compounded by this war, uh, very unpopular from the very beginning in the United States, and of course, the prime minister had advocated uh for a war. It doesn't mean he pulled the United States into it, but he certainly associated with a war that most Americans did not want to fight, felt stuck in, felt that it was imposing a burden on them as oil prices rose. Now, how is that playing out politically? Well, of course, we've seen in a few Democratic primaries in very specific locations, very progressive districts, that this has been a high-focus issue.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

Aaron Powell I wouldn't categorize it as, first of all, that the war is is unpopular, doesn't exactly align with what we have seen coming out of potential candidates. You have somebody like Gavin Newsom or other people stepping forward and saying, I have never and would never take APAC money. It's taken on a much more nefarious and darker tone.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

Aaron Powell Well, there's a, as I said, there's several years now worth of built-up concern and upset. And again, there are people, definitely, there are people within the party who and people really, it's true on both sides of the aisle, who are seeking to adopt a real distancing uh of the United States from Israel, in some cases, even almost an adversarial uh tone towards Israel. I think we're headed for very big change in this relationship. Even the prime minister has now talked about uh phasing out uh U.S. assistance as they negotiate a new military assistance MOU. So I think that's likely to become a consensus position, probably on both sides of the aisle, that that aid is going to end. That doesn't mean we can't still be partners, it doesn't mean we can't still uh be allies or that Israel can't purchase things, but it does mean that uh the relationship will shift. And it does mean that the truth is, even though as you pull, you find, you know, a significant percentage of Democrats uh who say they hold some sort of negative association with Israel, that doesn't mean that's the driving issue for the majority of Democrats. I think most people, as in most elections, are focused on the economy, jobs, healthcare, uh, their own domestic circumstances. There is maybe a hardcore that wants to make this a litmus test issue. I don't really think that is true of the vast majority of Democrats.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

Dan, thank you so much for coming back on the show. I love hearing from you.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Thanks, Aviva. Loot any time.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

That's a wrap on today's episode of Boundless Insights. Whether you've been with us from the start or are just discovering our show, we're so glad you're here. If today's conversation sparked a question, challenged your thinking, or made you shake your head, I want to hear from you. Email me at podcast at boundlessisrael.org. Your feedback gives us ideas for new topics and new guests. And if you believe these conversations matter, there are three ways to support the show. First, hit that follow button so you never miss an episode. Second, help us spread the word. Share an episode with friends and family, post about it, or mention it in a group chat. It really does make a difference. And third, consider supporting our work. Boundless is a nonprofit and we rely on donors to keep the show going. You can make a gift at boundlessisrael.org/slash donate. Until next time, stay curious, stay informed, and keep the conversation going.