Glenn Diesen interviews Ambassador Chas Freeman on the Israel-Iran war, US strategic decline, and the emerging world order
Glenn Diesen interviews former US Ambassador Chas Freeman on his YouTube channel.
Summary
Former US Assistant Secretary of Defense and Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman joins Glenn Diesen to assess the state of the Middle East following the US-Iran war. He argues that Netanyahu effectively drew Trump into a war that has gone badly, leaving the US with no good options — resuming hostilities, pursuing a deal, or simply waiting all carry serious costs. He contends that Iran has emerged from the conflict with strengthened strategic leverage, including effective control of the Strait of Hormuz, a likely nascent nuclear weapons program, and reconstituted military forces, while the US has depleted its weapons stocks (forcing cancellation or deferral of arms contracts to Taiwan, Baltic states, Japan, and South Korea), weakened its alliances, and damaged its credibility as a negotiating partner. Freeman also addresses Israel's deepening domestic crisis, its accelerating loss of international support, and the broader geopolitical transformation underway — including the fracturing of NATO, the realignment of Gulf states, and the emergence of a new regional order backed by China and Russia rather than the United States. Freeman further notes that Iran's resilience was underpinned by pre-war preparation: layered succession plans for government officials and decentralised military command to provincial level, which blunted the impact of US strikes.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Glenn Diesen: Welcome back. We are joined today by Ambassador Chas Freeman, the former US Assistant Secretary of Defense, to discuss primarily what's going on in the Middle East. It's good to see you again, Ambassador.
Chas Freeman: Great to see you, Glenn. I hope you're going to explain what's going on in the Middle East.
Glenn Diesen: Well, that's why I have you here. You are the former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, so this is your part of the world. I wanted to ask you: what do you make of this — we hear some splits now between Trump and Netanyahu. I'm not sure what's real anymore. That's one of the disadvantages of the Trump administration, I guess. But Israel is undergoing a lot of change as it's pursuing this very aggressive foreign policy. What do you see happening with Israel and its relationship with the United States?
Trump, Netanyahu, and the Iran War Endgame
Chas Freeman: I think there is a great deal of tension between Netanyahu and Trump. Netanyahu basically talked Trump into this war. It's gone very badly. It now looks as though it will end in a number of possible ways, none of which is good for Netanyahu, none of which achieve the objectives he has.
The ways in which the war could end — in many ways the politically cleverest way for Trump to get out of this would be to allow Congress to vote an end to the war, and to say, "Well, I was on the road to victory, but they stabbed me in the back. I was betrayed by the Democrats and apostate Republicans, RINOs — Republicans in name only." I could see him doing that. That is one way of getting out of this. It leaves Israel high and dry. And indeed any exit from the war invalidates the US partnership with Israel against Iran. That is to say, no future president is going to do what Donald Trump did.
But at the moment what we have is a memorandum of understanding — apparently a one-page document, which is not an agreement but an agreement to negotiate — and we have the ironic statement from Donald Trump, who went to war with no negotiations and used diplomacy as a cover for a surprise attack, that we have to exhaust diplomatic means before we resort to force. I guess he learned something from the first round, where he didn't apply diplomacy at all.
It looks like Witkoff and Kushner have been removed from the process, which is now being run by professional diplomats and leaders from Pakistan and Qatar who are attempting to mediate. The immediate reaction to Donald Trump's statement that we're close to an agreement — which seems to be a characteristic overstatement on his part; there's been some progress evidently made in some areas — the immediate reaction from Israel was, "Oh no," with great headlines about Trump selling out Israel and so forth. The Israelis are in an election mode, so they're a bit subdued in their criticism of Trump, because of course he could turn around and do to them what he's done to everyone who's crossed him in the United States, in Europe, or elsewhere — namely try to trash their reputation. People who are running for office don't like that. So they've held their fire a bit.
Netanyahu has been quite forceful in private on telephone conversations with Donald Trump, but he's not publicly debased him. On the other hand, Israel's faithful stooges in the United States — people like Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, and others — have pulled out all the stops. "This is a sellout. We need to go back to war, finish the job," and so forth.
The problem for Donald Trump is that he's basically cornered. On the one hand he has Netanyahu putting pressure on him. His Jewish donors — Israeli donors — Miriam Adelson is an Israeli, and a $250 million donation is not trivial. They're both ganging up on him. Part of his own Republican base is in rebellion. And his military are telling him there's no real military option, we can't hope to succeed. They may even have asked him to give them an order in writing, which is what the military does when they're being asked to do something they know is infeasible and want to be able to levy blame on whoever issued the order. "I want that order in writing" is the characteristic response in those circumstances.
The other possibility of course is that this thing just sort of peters out and goes on and so on. But the elements of the alleged deal — which is not a deal but a framework for negotiating deals on the key issues — the essence of it is essentially that the Strait of Hormuz will be open. Of course it is open if you do a deal with Iran. So I'm not quite sure what that means. It's claimed that there would be no tolls levied. I don't believe for a minute that Iran has agreed to that. It's very clear that Iran is demanding sanctions relief and release of the frozen funds, numbering in the tens of billions of dollars, that it has been deprived of. It's also very clear that Iran is not going to do anything unless it gets something first. Iran has no confidence at all in the United States, having walked away from the JCPOA — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal — in Trump's first term, having watched the United States renege on various commitments in negotiations with Witkoff and Kushner, having seen the United States repudiate treaties with others.
So I think Iran will demand payment upfront before it does anything, and that's going to be very hard. As I said once before on your program, this is immobilization. Anything Trump does causes him defeat and the United States defeat. This is a ridiculous situation to have gotten into.
Basically, Iran is not going to release the enriched uranium to any third party — certainly not the United States — by order of the new Supreme Leader. It is not going to give up control of the Strait of Hormuz. It is not going to make compromises to appease the United States. It has achieved escalation dominance in effect with the Israelis. And it's demanding that any deal include a real, as opposed to a phony, ceasefire in Lebanon.
Which brings me to the final point: if there actually is a deal, Israel is in a perfect position to sabotage it and will do so. As usual, Glenn, when we talk about these subjects, it's all gloom and doom that comes to mind. There's no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow that I can see.
Glenn Diesen: Yeah. As you said, there are no good options left, and I think this is the problem for Trump. If he goes back to fighting Iran, there are limits to how long he can fight — it's unclear if he will be able to get a ceasefire once he's out of ammunition, and he can't win on the battlefield. But if he pursues peace, the Iranians do not want to go back to the old status quo, so they will make sure they hold on to the Strait of Hormuz to create incentives for countries not to host bases or put sanctions on them. You can't do one, can't do the other, but also just waiting is not ideal because the global economy is tanking.
US Weapons Depletion and the Domestic Political Cost
Chas Freeman: Let me make a point here, and that is that Trump and his administration are paying a price in domestic politics for having misdescribed reality. They have been claiming levels of victory over Iran which are utterly implausible and which don't hold up to scrutiny.
On the question of going back to war, the United States is busily deferring or cancelling contracts to supply all sorts of equipment to allies and protected states. The $14 billion deal with Taiwan, which Trump has yet formally to decide on, can't happen because there's no equipment to be provided. Some of the Baltic states have been informed that they will not get the weapons they paid for on the schedule they imagined. The same is true obviously of others. Equipment has been moved out of Japan and South Korea. So the administration has been bravely putting on a show claiming that there was no depletion of weaponry or defensive capability as a result of this war. But the facts — they're behaving entirely in conformity with the fact that it did happen. You can listen to them or you can watch what they're doing, and I think it's more instructive to watch what they're doing. They're in a box.
The summer driving season is upon us in the United States. This is the time when people take vacations and move around, and the price of gasoline is around $4.55 or so nationally now. The price of oil just went down again — oil traders, it turns out, are terminally stupid and keep falling for the same absurd tricks of market manipulation. Brent went down substantially, but that won't hold, and it certainly won't be a benefit if kinetic action against Iran is stepped up.
There's another point here, and that is militarily it's not just that we've depleted our capabilities and we're causing a great deal of operational wear and tear on our forces. Iran has used the six weeks of the effective truce to reconstitute its armed forces, and the intelligence community has totally contradicted the administration's claims of the levels of damage done to Iran's inventory of missiles. Iran is back producing drones in high volume. It may even be getting some drones from the Russians, although the Russians are using their own drones against Ukraine pretty forcefully. So there's just nothing here that justifies any optimism really.
Israel's Domestic Crisis and Collapsing International Support
Glenn Diesen: Sadly, I wish there was some more reason for optimism. You mentioned before that Israel would likely seek to sabotage if Trump goes down the path of peace — finding an agreement with Iran. But how far can the Israelis themselves take this? Because there seems to be a growing crisis of the ethos of Israel. What is the country? What does it stand for? This is usually a problem one sees with empires as well — violence abroad tends to change the society at home. You see power always replacing principles, citizens becoming too disconnected from the world, freedoms at home declining. How sustainable is this for Israel? They have not just the economic problem and an overstretched military, but you hear also about very deep divisions at home, to the point where even some journalists in Israel are talking about the prospect of a civil war.
Chas Freeman: The key to everything is the American logistical support for Israel and political backing of Israel, which allows Israel to behave not just with impunity but with wild abandon. It creates moral hazard for Israel, and Israel has fallen into that trap.
The Israeli aim in Lebanon remains an effective annexation. They're talking about a buffer zone, but really what they're talking about is turning southern Lebanon into the equivalent of a Gaza. They can do that as long as the United States continues to supply them with weapons, and Trump has apparently assured them that we will. How that fits into the proposed understanding with Iran is most unclear. Iran is not going to abandon Lebanon. It also has a sense of honor which is at stake.
And as if this weren't enough, Israel is being badly hurt in Lebanon. Hezbollah apparently has optical fiber-guided drones which are very effective, and it's actually losing a fair number of soldiers and a lot of equipment. It's been beaten by Hezbollah before. The talks with the Lebanese government are a sideshow — the Lebanese government has no authority to end the war for Hezbollah. Hezbollah has denounced the negotiations. This is a sideshow of farce staged for performative effect.
As if this weren't enough — the declining economy, reservists who are fatigued and affected with post-traumatic stress disorder, a military that is not doing well in Lebanon, a chief of the armed forces who says the Israeli Defense Forces are in danger of falling apart, the imminence of elections in a context where Netanyahu is very unpopular among many Israelis — as if this weren't enough, you have Ben-Gvir dramatizing the sadism of the Israeli populace, his own sadism and Israel's sadism, with the flotilla and the people seized from the flotilla. That has cost Israel a huge amount — not just in the United States, where only 6% of Democrats now have a positive view of Israel, and nobody below the age of 50 has a positive view of Israel now in the United States. The only people who do are so-called boomer Republicans — Republicans born right after World War II in the baby boom. And they're dying. I'm actually not a boomer — I'm older than they are. I'm not dead yet, but it's coming. So 15 years from now, maybe even shorter, they're not going to be around to support Israel.
Europeans are finally beginning to react to the rape and humiliation, the beating of their own citizens in this flotilla. Some of the accounts are really quite hair-raising. Ben-Gvir is not an aberration — he is a representation of Israeli behavior today, however much Israelis may choose to ignore it or deny it. Israel is rapidly losing its support base abroad. It is essentially a pariah internationally.
The United States still backs it — we've just seen the United States force Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian representative at the United Nations, to withdraw from his campaign to become the deputy leader of the General Assembly, and he's withdrawn under our pressure on behalf of Israel. But diminishing returns are setting in for Israel.
In the end, Israel has to make a strategic choice. Is it prepared to have everyone in the region and the world against it? Does it think it can survive when it's ostracized in the region it inhabits and not welcome elsewhere? Or is it prepared to try diplomacy for a change? The fact is that in 78 years, Israel has never put forward a single peace proposal — a proposal for peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians or anyone else. This is a record of belligerence that is unmatched in human history.
Israelis have to make a choice, and they don't seem to be inclined to do so. And I think as long as the United States continues to write blank checks to Israel and back it without any conditions, Israelis will not make a choice. And the state of Israel will not survive the conditions it's creating for itself. Like the two Christian crusader kingdoms in the late Middle Ages, it will lose its foreign support and it will collapse. I find it very difficult to understand how anyone who cares about Israel could support the course of action that Israel and the United States have adopted, because I think it's ultimately fatal to the state of Israel.
Glenn Diesen: I think you're right. I can understand the Israeli approach — their lack of willingness to make any compromise — because when for so long you have the United States standing behind you, why would you have to make any compromises if you're essentially allowed to do what you want? But on the other hand, you would think that Israel would begin to readjust to new realities, because as you said the mood in the US towards Israel is changing. The intentions are no longer there to support Israel to the same extent, and also the capabilities — the US will always be a powerful state, but the era of global dominance appears to be over, with other powers like China, Russia, India, and soon probably Iran as well emerging. So if you see the US having less capability and probably less positive view towards you, then you would think this would be the time to begin to change, instead of doing this maximalist approach, and instead start seeking some settlement with the neighbors.
China's Strategy and the Trump-Xi Meeting
I wanted to ask you about China as well, because you have plenty of experience there — you're a Chinese speaker. Trump recently met with Xi Jinping in Beijing. Apparently he wanted to pressure the Chinese to put pressure on Iran. What do you see as the Chinese strategy in all of this?
Chas Freeman: Basically, it's masterly inactivity. The Taoist philosophy that if you do nothing, everything will happen for the good. A little bit more than that, but not much.
The Chinese have backed Pakistan's mediation efforts. They do want peace and stability in the Persian Gulf for very concrete reasons — they depend on it in part for energy supplies, and it's an important market for them. But also they are the defenders of the former world order that the United States and Israel have pulled down, and they want to reestablish the principles of the UN Charter and international law, because that creates an environment favorable to them as well as to others.
They have not modified their lack of export controls to Iran. They are exporting at least dual-use equipment. I saw an article the other day that the Russians had supplied the HQ-9 to Iran — but the HQ-9 is a Chinese air defense system, so I'm not quite sure whether that has been supplied by Russia or China. Donald Trump's military has told him that the Iranians have greatly upgraded their air defenses and that a renewed aerial assault would produce a lot of casualties on the part of the attacking forces. That may reflect Chinese technical assistance to the Iranians. They'd be fully justified in doing that — they're non-belligerent, and Iran is defending itself. It didn't attack anybody until it was attacked.
The idea that you could somehow get the Chinese to endorse the American aggression against Iran by putting pressure on Iran is ridiculous. It was never going to go anywhere.
We have this sharp contrast between the Trump visit — which was a feast for the eyes, very lavish pageantry, personal attention from Xi Jinping, walking around Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound in the Forbidden City, and so on — and the contrast with Vladimir Putin, who comes and signs 40 agreements, has 40 different programs for cooperation including military cooperation but many others. They apparently didn't quite complete the Power of Siberia gas supply agreement, although they brought it closer to closure — probably still an issue of pricing. But basically the Chinese and the Russians demonstrated a model relationship of cooperation, while the Trump visit demonstrated a sort of cordial hostility, I guess is the way I would put it.
The China relationship is not stabilized. Both sides basically agreed they would like to stabilize it. We'll see what happens.
In talking to Chinese friends about this, I've cautioned them that the Trump administration has essentially trashed the ability of the United States to implement agreements. The civil service and the foreign service have been made basically irrelevant or incompetent, and there's no policy process that coordinates government action effectively in this administration. I've said to my Chinese friends: I know you've spent the last 4,000 years perfecting passivity, but it's time for you to actually take the initiative. If you want anything to happen, you're going to have to come up with the ideas and the proposals, because you're probably not going to get them from the American side.
And here again we come back to the discussions with Iran. What I'm hearing from a lot of commentators is that the United States has demonstrated that it is, quote, agreement-incapable — it cannot reach agreements, let alone implement them, because it lacks the mechanisms and the professional staff to do that.
I'm not sure how the Pakistani-Qatari mediation is working, but it's significant that it's not being run by Americans. It's being run by Pakistan — a Chinese-protected state with a good relationship with China. China is not risking its own reputation; it's allowing the Pakistanis to do that. And Qatar of course has a huge incentive to restore peace with Iran.
I think Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar are all in intensive conversations with the Iranians about a post-war order which would not include an American military presence. This brings me back to Israel, because Israel has lost the deterrence capabilities provided by the United States against Iran. Iran is not intimidated. Iran is prepared to go to war again. Iran is prepared to take more damage and suffering in the interest of national honor, if you will.
The United States has demonstrated to the world the limits of its military capabilities. It turns out that there are lots of things that can't be accomplished through the use of force against a determined enemy that's well-prepared. And the Iranians were well-prepared. Not only did they have a succession process in place to guard against the consequences of the murder of the Supreme Leader — which they implemented; as I understand it, when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was assassinated, every Iranian official was then backstopped by three or four layers of successors — they also decentralized their military command so that each of the 30 provinces in Iran had autonomy of action.
And of course the result: before the war, the Strait of Hormuz was open, so there was no issue. Now there is an issue. Before the war, Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program. Now it probably does. The only thing holding it back from nuclear weapons production is the realization on the part of the Iranians — who are not stupid — that if they go nuclear, joining Israel in that, then the Saudis, the Turks, the Egyptians, and others will go nuclear, and the net result will be diminished security for Iran rather than enhanced security. So a rational calculation would be that nuclear latency is still the right position.
But nobody knows what's in the minds of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard. They are in charge. And we have reason to believe that the new Supreme Leader, unlike his father, sees the necessity for a nuclear deterrent. So this war may have produced nuclear proliferation. It has also done huge damage to energy production in the region, to Israel as well as to Iran, and any fondness that the Iranian people previously had for the United States is pretty much erased.
The American military presence in the Persian Gulf is now in jeopardy. I would like to echo Mao Zedong, who said there is great confusion under the heavens and the situation is excellent — meaning that confusion provides opportunities for maneuver. But I don't really see the maneuver here on our side or indeed on any side. Iran is also trapped — it can't forego the gains it's made in this war. You can never gain at the negotiating table what you lost on the battlefield. That's a basic principle of human behavior. And here we are.
Gulf State Realignment
Glenn Diesen: You mentioned that many of the Gulf states are probably looking to adjust — to take a new or different position towards Iran after this war is done. If you're sitting in the Gulf states, you think the US position will be weakened after this war and the Iranian position will be strengthened — for example by holding the Strait of Hormuz. You can be as angry or uncomfortable with these realities as you will, but to enhance your own security you do have to recognize and adjust to them. So if this is the direction things are going, and the US can't win this war, and in any outcome the Iranians will essentially sit on the Strait of Hormuz — meaning they can put a higher toll on countries who put sanctions on them or host US bases, and they can retaliate very effectively against any actions taken against them — how do you see the Gulf states adjusting?
Chas Freeman: This is an improvement in their position that is fundamental. And you're absolutely right — in the end, everybody in the region is going to have to adjust to new realities that have been created by this war, and they're very unfavorable to both Israel and the United States.
I note that the Gulf Cooperation Council, which has six members, has one of them — Oman — now as an apparent partner with Iran in the management of the Strait of Hormuz and sharing the revenues from the Strait. I should note that Oman, unlike the other five members of the GCC, is not terribly well-endowed with energy sources and its citizens actually have to work for a living. They do, and they are the backbone of many of the other countries in the Gulf's economies.
The UAE has held out officially. It participated in the attack on Iran. We now know it took independent action. It has stuck close to Israel — Israel actually came to its aid with the installation of the Iron Dome system and presumably with other assistance. So if you look at the Gulf Cooperation Council, you have two countries — the UAE and Bahrain — which are part of the Abraham Accords, and four that are not. Oman is cooperating with Iran apparently. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar want the United States to stand down. The UAE remains vengeful, but even it has apparently joined its fellow GCC members in asking Donald Trump to end the war.
You have the complication of the Hajj, which is going on — two million or so people in Mecca — that will end at the end of this week, and at that point one of the arguments against military action will be reduced. But it's pretty clear that the Gulf Cooperation Council is split, which is another result of this war — it's aggravated the tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Whatever happens, Iran is not going to be disarmed. It's likely going to be nuclear, or maybe it will be like the Israelis — not officially nuclear but actually nuclear, with some sort of plausible deniability kept in there. The new security architecture in the Gulf will have the backing of China and Russia, not the United States. This is a geopolitical earthquake that has been unleashed. It's not just the damage to the international economy — geopolitically this is very profound in its effects.
Finally, I would note that Israel is obviously squirming, which is why Donald Trump has now demanded that Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and others sign the Abraham Accords. But why should they? This is an Israeli effort obviously to snatch some sort of victory from the jaws of defeat. I don't think it will work, because Israeli behavior does not endear Israel to anyone at present.
The Long-Term Consequences for the United States
Glenn Diesen: Just as a last question — given how significant this defeat is, if you go back to wars such as Vietnam, it had a profound impact on the US psychologically in terms of the willingness to engage in similar follies, and you know, give it a few decades at least. But what will the world look like for the United States after this? What are the possible futures depending on what paths they take?
Chas Freeman: Vietnam is a very different situation and outcome, for the simple reason that Vietnam occurred in the context of a bipolar world order, the Cold War. While the United States was humiliated by Vietnam and it had profound effects within the United States, other countries faced with a choice — the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc versus the West and the United States — didn't see that as a real choice. They stuck with the United States and the West. This is not the situation now.
It's pretty clear that this war, and foreign wars generally — forever wars in particular — are deeply unpopular in the United States. Donald Trump ran on a platform of ending them. Instead, he's initiated them. I don't think the American public in future is going to be willing to support any sort of further adventures of this kind.
One of the consequences of the Iran war has been the dissolution of NATO — not completely, not formally, but you have members of NATO now denying the United States the use of their airspace or their bases. You have publics that are very turned off by both the United States and by Israel. You have the revelation that the bases in Europe for the most part are there not to defend Europeans against a mythical Russian threat, but to provide so-called lily pads from which the United States can project power into West Asia — and it's projecting power into West Asia to do things that almost nobody in Europe approves. Some withhold criticism for various reasons: fears of being charged with anti-Semitism, maybe residual guilt from the European Holocaust and the collusion of not just the Germans but many others in rounding up minorities and killing them.
The United States will emerge from this with alliances that are greatly weakened if they continue to exist at all, and with hedging by the major allies — Germany and Japan being the most notable examples. The fabric of international law will be discredited, and since international law will no longer provide any inhibition against aggression, every country will be engaged in an arms race, trying to arm themselves for self-reliant defense. There will be countries that ask the United States — not just in the Gulf but elsewhere — to remove its physical presence from their territory. Poland, for example, seems to like having American forces on its territory, but Germans are becoming more skeptical about the value of that, as are Japanese.
The world is changing rapidly. The viability of the state of Israel is an open question that unfolds only with time — there's nothing instant about it. It will be like Hemingway's famous description of bankruptcy: gradually, then suddenly. We're in a transformational period, but we don't know what we're being transformed toward and we don't know what the pace of the transformation will be.
Glenn Diesen: Well, it should have been predictable that things wouldn't stay the same. If you have a hegemonic world order after the Cold War and this now comes to an end and is replaced by many centers of power, it would be naive to assume that the old alliance systems, the old loyalties and interests, would all somehow remain the same. It's been only 35 years since the Soviet Union collapsed — which was a very different world — so the idea that this was the end station of history...
Chas Freeman: History has not ended.
Glenn Diesen: No — even Fukuyama agrees with this now. Anyway, Ambassador, always such a great pleasure and always very educational to speak with you. Thank you.
Chas Freeman: Well, I enjoy speaking with you. I hope together we make a little bit of sense about a very confusing situation, but I confess to being perplexed.
Glenn Diesen: Yeah, like most of us. Thanks again.