After weeks of airstrikes, depleted munitions, and a global energy shock, the United States may find itself sitting across from Iran discussing the very same issues that were on the table before the first bomb fell. That is the bitter assessment of Richard Haass, who served as director of policy planning at the State Department and spent 20 years leading the Council on Foreign Relations.
"Hvylya" quotes Haass from his appearance on the Conversations with Coleman podcast alongside historian Niall Ferguson.
"The great irony of this is that one way or another we may have to tacitly, implicitly, explicitly return to some of the very issues that Kushner and Witkoff were talking to the Iranians about before this started," Haass said. The agenda would be painfully familiar: what Iran is allowed in the nuclear realm, what the US is prepared to tolerate on drones, missiles, and proxies, and whether any sanctions relief is on the table.
The difference, Haass argued, is that both sides have now absorbed significant costs. "The good news is their military capabilities are for now much diminished. The bad news is we have had some of the costs of this conflict - strategic costs, economic costs, and human costs." The net balance, in his view, does not clearly favor Washington.
Ferguson sharpened the point. The war cannot be extended because the American economy cannot absorb a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz. "This is a much bigger supply shock to the global energy market than the Russian invasion of Ukraine," he said. If the disruption continues even two more weeks, "that is going to have a cascading effect through the global economy that will be felt quite swiftly by American consumers when they pull up at a gas station."
Haass said the path to ending the war requires either regime alteration - new Iranian leadership willing to negotiate - or a mutual de-escalation where both sides signal a willingness to stand down. He acknowledged that pushing too hard for a deal risks showing Tehran that "these Americans want the war to end more than we do," further strengthening Iran's hand.
Also read: "Death to America" for 47 Years: Expert Explained What Ended the Iranian Regime's Free Passes