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--:-- John Bickley: The Trump administration is aggressively pursuing the full dismantling of Iran's nuclear program, starting the first direct talks with the regime since 2018, with one sit-down already on the books and another on the docket. In this episode, we talk with an expert on the goals of the negotiations and why President Trump believes this is the right time to force Iran's hand on a deal.
--:-- John Bickley: I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Saturday, April 19th, and this is a weekend edition of Morning Wire. Joining us to discuss the closely watched Iran talks is Ellie Kohanim, Independent Women's Forum senior fellow and former deputy envoy to combat anti-Semitism under President Trump.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: Thank you for having me, John.
--:-- John Bickley: So let's talk about this first direct contact we've had with the Trump administration and Iran. They had their first preliminary negotiation on Saturday. What do we know about that meeting?
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: Well, the meeting was a bit of a historic first because it's the first direct talks between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran in many, many years. And what we do know from the reporting that has come out is, first of all, both sides have said it was a positive meeting. They've both used very positive language to describe what took place.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: And there was some reporting indicating that Steve Witkoff, the United States special envoy, and the Iranian foreign minister had a handshake together at the end. But interestingly, Axios is reporting that, in fact, there was a 45-minute face-to-face conversation that took place.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: So that's an interesting development. Certainly face-to-face in a complex negotiation like this is better. I think it helps to make sure that there is less room to cause confusion and also to drag out negotiations, which is what the Iranians are famous for doing.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: And I believe it's one of the reasons that President Trump has been pushing very hard for direct negotiations. So that's some of the takeaways. We also know that now they have scheduled follow-up talks for one week. That'll be on Saturday next week.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: And we understand that the location for talks will no longer be in Oman, but a European capital. I'm hearing reports of Rome. However, the Omanis will still be the interlocutors and participants in the talks.
--:-- John Bickley: Is there significance to the location, this idea of moving more west for the second round of talks? Or is this how this often goes, a kind of back and forth or trade-off in terms of territory?
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: Well, it's interesting that the first round was held in Oman, which was apparently the Iranians' request. The United States had preferred the United Arab Emirates.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: And so it would seem that perhaps the Trump administration wanted to give the Iranians some sort of a win. Let's remember that the very fact that the Iranians came to the table is considered an embarrassment in the Iranian culture, because this is the regime that from 1979 from its very inception of coming into power is born of the original sin of taking our American embassy staff hostage.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: And this is the regime that daily chants death to America in their parliamentary meetings. This is the regime that calls the United States big Satan. And some of the reporting that came out of Iran was that the Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he apparently had to be convinced to even participate in talks with the United States.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: His advisors apparently let him know that they were advising him to participate in these talks because otherwise it looked like there was a very high likelihood that Israel and the United States would strike Iran, that there might be a war launched against Iran.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: And so this is all evidence of how difficult it is for the Iranians to come to the table, how much they probably perceive this as an embarrassment for them. And so having it in Oman might have been a small concession to make to the Iranians for the very first round of meetings.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: But certainly having the next round and perhaps future talks, if it's successful, take place in Europe is far more convenient for Special Envoy Whitcoff, for him to travel to the Middle East each time.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, as you mentioned, Iran finds itself in a very difficult situation, particularly with the more aggressive actions from Israel and America, and clearly a sense of solidarity between the two of them. Trump has been very supportive of Israel so far.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: What are things looking like for Iran now in terms of their influence over the region?
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: I think for many of us Iran observers, and I will admit to being guilty of this myself, there have been times in the history of this regime where we have said the regime is very weak right now. They're vulnerable. But right now, as you and I are speaking, John, there is a consensus that the Islamic Republic of Iran's regime is finding itself at its most vulnerable probably since its inception in 1979.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: And the reason why is because if you understand that right now the Iranian proxies have more or less been taken off the table, right, they've been eliminated. So you're talking about Israel having pretty much decimated Hamas in Gaza.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: They've decimated Hezbollah in Lebanon. They've taken down Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The Trump administration has now for three weeks put the Iran-backed Houthis under aerial assault in Yemen.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: And so much so that the Iranian proxies in Iraq, Khatai and Hezbollah, there have been reports that they are now talking about willingly disarming themselves. So that's the proxies have been basically neutralized.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: And then at the same time, the Israelis have taken out Iran's air defenses. And so Iran is really sitting there kind of vulnerable to any attack. And at the same time that this is happening, the Trump administration has launched again, the maximum pressure sanctions campaign.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: So the economy is teetering, you know, nearly on the verge of collapse. Their currency is just practically valueless right now. And so all of these factors combined with the ongoing unhappiness of an unrest among the Iranian people, you put all of those factors combined, and the regime is incredibly weak and vulnerable right now.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, you were born in Iran before your family moved here as refugees at the outbreak of the Islamic Revolution. What can you tell us about the mood on the ground there from what you know about public perception of the regime?
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: Is there really growing unrest? Could that blow up into something bigger?
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: John, as you mentioned, I was born in Iran and I still, you know, have contacts and ties back to the country and people reaching out to me all the time on social media.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: What's interesting is that when Iranians reach out to me, they are constantly asking that the United States and Western powers take a stronger stance against the regime.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: And this ties back to the conversation about sanctions. You will find a lot of times that there's this talking point that sanctions, American sanctions, don't hurt the government, they hurt the people. It's really quite the opposite.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: American sanctions really do target the Iranian government. The people of Iran are being robbed of their country's resources on a daily basis. So even though Iran should be a very wealthy country, given that it is one of the world's leading holders of oil and also natural gas, such a rich country in terms of natural resources, and yet the regime has basically siphoned off the resources of the country.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: Either to line their own pockets or to fund their terror proxies or to fund the nuclear program. You know, just the fact of the economic hardship that the average Iranian person is facing causes a lot of unrest in the country.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: And what we've seen in the past is that there have been multiple times where the Iranians have taken to the streets, most recently in the Massa Amini protests, if our audience might remember, when there was a young Kurdish Iranian who went to Tehran to visit her uncle.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: She was a pious Muslim young woman and her hijab had slipped a little bit. And the authorities had arrested her, eventually murdered her. And that was what caused nationwide outrage and protest movement across the country.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: So this is something that we see in Iran repeatedly. That is the pattern that eventually the people will, you know, they tend to rise up against the regime. Every few years, they hit a boiling point.
--:-- John Bickley: Now about what Trump is trying to accomplish with this deal, the Trump administration has set a red line in terms of Iran's nuclear capabilities. What are the implications of that in the future? What are they trying to attain and what's at stake here?
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: Well, what President Trump has enunciated clearly and over and over again is that he will not allow the Iranians to attain nuclear weapons. And so that is his red line.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: The question right now is how do you get the Iranians to the same place. The president is giving them a clear path to diplomacy, to negotiation, to do this peacefully in essence.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: At the same time that he has given them this clear path of diplomacy, he's also made, I think, the message also very clear to them by instituting the economic sanctions that we just spoke about, but also the credible military threat.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: And what we've seen again is three weeks of an unprecedented aerial assault on the Houthis in Yemen, the Iranian proxies. And so that is one very clear message.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: But also satellite imagery has picked up the fact that we have now have two United States aircraft carriers have been moved into the region along with bunker busters.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: And these are the kind of bombs that have the capability to impact beneath ground locations, including Iran nuclear program much of it which is beneath ground.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: So all of this together if you look at that picture you understand that while the path to negotiation has been offered to the Iranians at the same time, the credible military threat from the United States is right there, you know, kind of in the line of vision for the Iranians.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: And it's their choice to make right now.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, as you've highlighted, the dual forces of the American and Israeli militaries is what's really putting a lot of pressure on Iran. The sense from Israel and how they feel about the Trump administration's actions.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: Do they feel like there's alignment there in terms of their dual diplomatic aims?
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: Well, I think it's interesting to note that Prime Minister Netanyahu flew to the United States last week. It seemed ostensibly for conversations regarding tariffs. But even at that time, I had some media conversations where I was sure that Iran was a topic of conversation, as you would expect in Gaza.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: And there was in that press conference, essentially, between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu, when President Trump announced to the American people that there would be these talks, direct talks between the United States and Iran that coming Saturday.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: So certainly the Prime Minister, I believe, came here to have probably his face-to-face time with President Trump and present what Israel's beliefs are in terms of what a good Iran deal would look like.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: And we've heard this from the Israelis and from the prime minister. They are looking for a deal that would be following the Libya model, where you have a full dismantlement of the nuclear program and it's under U.S. auspices.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: Now, what's interesting to note is that we've also heard the same language from the U.S., right? We've heard this from President Trump, from Mike Walz, from Secretary of Defense, Pete Hexeth, just on Sunday on Maria Bartiromo's show, where he went on and he said that the president is, quote unquote, deadly serious that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapons program and that the president is deadly serious that this nuclear program must be fully dismantled.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: And so what I am seeing is very aligned understanding between the United States and Israel.
--:-- John Bickley: Final question. We have this follow-up meeting that's coming. What are you looking for? What kinds of signs are we looking for to get a sense of how things are going in this negotiation process?
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: Well, President Trump was asked by the media about these talks, and he said, I'm going to make a decision very quickly.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: And so I think what President Trump will consider successful enough talks to keep on talking is concessions from the Iranians. He's going to want to see that they are behaving like good faith actors, that this is not a negotiation just to spin wheels and waste time and drag out, but that the Iranians have a sense of urgency, that they are understanding the American mood right now.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: And really understanding, again, that credible military threat that's right there, you know, kind of in the line of vision for the Iranians. So that's what I would expect to come out of this next meeting is not just a handshake and positive words afterwards, but some real meat on the bones in terms of what are steps forward in dismantling that nuclear program.
--:-- John Bickley: We'll certainly be watching with interest. Ellie, thank you so much for talking with us.
--:-- Ellie Kohanim: Thank you, John. Thanks for having me.
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--:-- John Bickley: That was Ellie Kohanim of the Independent Women's Forum, and this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.
