July 09, 2026
We speak with political analyst Trita
Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for
Responsible Statecraft, about the latest events in the
Middle East. The United States has bombed Iran for multiple
days after President Donald Trump declared the ceasefire
between the countries to be “over.” Iran says it has
retaliated by attacking U.S. military bases and other
strategic sites in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar.
Parsi
says the renewal of fighting is “a disastrous
development” for chances of a long-term peace and a reset
in the U.S.-Iran relationship. “Both countries are in dire
need of an end to this
war.”
Transcript
This is a rush
transcript. Copy may not be in its final
form.
AMY GOODMAN: The United
States bombed Iran for a second consecutive night after
President Trump declared the ceasefire over. Blasts were
reported in multiple cities, with the U.S. saying it had
struck 90 targets across Iran, including sites along the
Strait of Hormuz. Blasts were also reported near the Bushehr
nuclear power plant. According to the Iranian Health
Ministry, at least 14 people have been killed since the U.S.
resumed its attacks; another 78 people were
wounded.
Meanwhile, Iran says it’s retaliated by
attacking U.S. bases in strategic centers in Bahrain, Kuwait
and Qatar. In addition, Jordan’s military said it
intercepted eight missiles in its airspace. Iran’s chief
negotiator, Mohammad Bhager Ghalibaf, says the United
States, quote, “still hasn’t learned that bullying and
breaking promises are no longer cost-free,”
unquote.
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On Wednesday, President Trump spoke at the
NATO summit in Turkey and threatened to strike Iran’s
civilian infrastructure, saying, quote, “They really
deserve it,” unquote. On the flight back to the United
States, Trump spoke more about the U.S.
attacks.
PRESIDENT DONALD
TRUMP: We just hit them very hard. And I say we hit
them 20 to one. Every time they hit us, we’re going to hit
them 20. And we did it last night. They did a little
something today, but it was really retribution for last
night. They hit, actually, three boats, not two. And when
they hit, we hit back much harder.
…
We have many ways we can
win, but we’ve already won militarily. They have very
little. They have very little left. And they want to make a
deal so badly. They called a little while ago. They want to
make a deal so badly. I just don’t know if they’re
worthy of making a deal. I know that they’re going to
honor the deal. That’s the
problem.
AMY GOODMAN:
Meanwhile, during a press conference on Wednesday at the
NATO summit, Trump mistakenly confused Iran and
Japan.
PRESIDENT DONALD
TRUMP: I told this story yesterday. We had 111
missiles shot by the Islamic Republic of
Japan.
AMY GOODMAN:
President Trump was sitting next to the Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky as he confused Iran and Japan, and then
referred to Zelensky as “President Putin.”
We’re
joined now by Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the
Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, his latest piece
on Substack headlined “How the US-Iran fight in the Strait
of Hormuz can be resolved before it blows up the MOU.”
That’s the memo of understanding.
Trita, talk about
what’s happened and President Trump saying the ceasefire
is over. What does this mean?
TRITA
PARSI: Well, this is obviously a disastrous
development and a huge risk to the survival of the MOU and
the entire diplomatic track that could put an end to this
war, and also give birth to a completely different
relationship between the United States and Iran if it was
successful. I’m not entirely sure as to whether this is
completely over or not, because at the end of the day, both
countries are in dire need of an end to this war. We have
seen an exchange of fire before, after which they did return
to talks. But this time, obviously, it is worse, because the
United States is now escalating beyond just striking
southern Iran, has also started striking civilian targets in
other parts of Iran. And there’s a significant risk, of
course, that there will be massive further Iranian
retaliation against this.
What is really frustrating
with all of this is that prior to all of this, after the
first round of exchange of fire, the two sides were
converging towards an understanding on how to handle the
strait. The Iranians did not want to see any ships travel
through any corridor of the strait without coordinating with
them. That’s their interpretation of the MOU. The U.S. has
a different interpretation. But they were converging towards
an understanding in which, essentially, all ships would have
to notify both the Iranians as well as one party in the GCC.
And if that were to happen, both sides would essentially
walk away, and the strait would be open without any
problems. But before they managed to get to that agreement,
the Iranian funeral of the former supreme leader took place,
and talks were suspended.
In the meantime, additional
ships, with their transporters off, traveled through the
southern corridor without coordinating with the Iranians.
The Iranians gave them several warnings, eventually shot at
them. And that’s what then precipitated this exchange of
fire that we see right now, in which the U.S. first struck
Iran two nights ago, and then again last night. But this has
now gone to such a high level that it is much worse than the
previous exchange and may very well be the end of the MOU
altogether.
AMY GOODMAN: The front
page of The New York Times says “U.S. Bombs Iran
Again As Truce Breaks Down; Trump Mulls Blockade.” Talk
about exactly what that would mean, and that clip we just
played of him saying he’s going after the civilian
infrastructure. We don’t know how many people have died in
Iran, but there are a number in these latest attacks. And
then, of course, you have Bahrain, Kuwait, perhaps Jordan,
is saying that they intercepted Iranian
missiles.
TRITA PARSI: Yes, we have
seen a pattern in which the Iranians do strike back at
American bases in the region. I believe that last night they
also struck at the base outside of Doha in Qatar, creeping a
process back to if the U.S. were to reimpose the blockade of
the Persian Gulf, then we will see the Iranians probably not
only closing the strait, but also pushing the Houthis to
close the Red Sea, as well. And that would not only be a
return to war, but that would be a worse situation than what
we saw before.
Moreover, if Trump follows through on
his threats of targeting energy infrastructure in Iran,
that’s when the Iranians are likely to start striking, not
just at bases in the GCC countries, but at their energy
infrastructure, as well. And that would again make the
situation worse than what it was during the war
itself.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me go to a
clip of President Trump describing to reporters the kind of
airstrikes and damage he’s considering in Iran, what I was
talking about earlier.
PRESIDENT
DONALD TRUMP: Look, we’re not attacking at the
highest level. The highest level are bridges, their —
which we can knock down. I would say in one day we knock
down every single bridge in Iran. There’s not a thing they
can do about it. Their electric manufacturing facilities,
right? Their electric plants, where they make their
electricity, and their — we will — if we have to,
we’ll take them out. I don’t want to do that, but if we
have to, we’ll take them out. They have desalinization
plants. We’ll take them out if we have to. I hate to do
that. That’s probably the one I would like not to do
least. We attacked Kharg Island last night. We knocked out a
piece. I said, “Don’t touch the oil,” because maybe
we’ll take over Kharg Island. You know, we may take over
Kharg Island. There’s not a thing they can do about
it.
AMY GOODMAN: So,
Trita Parsi, President Trump also referred to the people
that are negotiating as “scum.” He was asked by
reporters why he is saying that now, given he didn’t say
that before. And he boasted about taking out the first level
of Iranian negotiators, then the second level of Iranian
negotiators, and now he’s on the third level, I think he
said.
TRITA PARSI: Yeah. First of
all, I think it’s important to recognize that a lot of
these different things that Trump is threatening are war
crimes. Taking out the civilian infrastructure, desalination
plants, etc., all of this would constitute war crimes. And,
of course, we already have seen plenty of war crimes in this
war already.
Again, if the United States were to go in
that direction, it’s important to note Trump made similar
threats during the war and stopped short of doing it and
executing it. And the key reason for that is, if the United
States were to do this, the Iranians likely will retaliate
against similar targets in the GCC countries. And if you go
after the energy infrastructure in the GCC countries, then
we’re not just talking about an oil crisis as a result of
a bottleneck in the Persian Gulf and in the strait, but a
production problem, which would take much longer to recover
from and most likely would throw the entire global economy
into a recession. And this is the key reason as to why he
didn’t do it last time, probably the reason why he won’t
do it this time, either.
But the threats themselves,
nevertheless, are further undermining the atmosphere that is
necessary to be able to make diplomacy work and ultimately
lead to a deal. Now, the Iranian attacks against the ship,
from the U.S. perspective, is also actions that are
undermining that atmosphere. But this is escalating at a
speed at this point in which it’s very different from the
last escalation, but also one that makes it much more
difficult to find an exit ramp from.
AMY
GOODMAN: I also wanted to ask you about a CNN exposé,
more about the Minab girls’ school, where over 175 people
were killed, overwhelmingly little girls going to school,
CNN reporting that military officials knew within days that,
quote, “Senior US military commanders bypassed warnings in
critical databases that intelligence about potential targets
in Iran was severely out of date and approved some
strikes” anyway, including the strike on the school.
Unnamed sources also cited to CNN that Defense Secretary
Pete Hegseth’s previous decision to cut the civilian harm
mitigation and response staff at the Pentagon by over 90%,
only one full-time staffer was left to work with development
strike teams. Can you talk about the ongoing significance of
this? Because we’re talking about the U.S. continuing to
strike Iran now.
TRITA PARSI: Yeah,
this is one of the darkest moments of American military
history, I would say, in recent history, what happened to
the schools in Minab and these young schoolgirls who were
all killed. And we’ve seen how that had a profound impact
on the Iranians.
This is all part of a larger effort
by Secretary of War Hegseth in which he wants to undo the
norms around the use of force, what he calls no longer
fighting woke wars, essentially taking away most of the
guardrails that have been put into place by the United
States itself over the course of the last couple of decades
after the Second World War to protect civilians in war. Now,
there’s a systematic effort, both by the Israelis and by
the United States under Peter Hegseth, to undo these norms
and make it permissible to do things that, over the course
of the last couple of decades, have been considered unlawful
in war.
And this is one of the first examples, the
results of something like that, in which after cutting so
many people who would actually review these things, going
through all the type of mechanisms and protocols to make
sure that these targets were not going to be civilian, after
having undone that, we’ve seen the direct result of it.
And it’s important to also understand this happened on the
first day of the war. This was not after two weeks, not
after two months, in which statistically something atrocious
could happen. This happened on the very first day of the
war. And I think it is an indication of the direction we
will be going in if this is not reversed, if these efforts
to undo these norms around the use of force are not
undone.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, the
funeral of Khamenei, how massive it’s been, millions of
people going from Iran to Iraq. And if you can talk about
the significance, what this means for the future of
Iran?
TRITA PARSI: One thing I think
we saw through these funeral proceedings, particularly the
massive crowds that were also showing up in Iraq, is the
influence that Iran has in the region, particularly in the
Shia community, but not just limited to that. This is
something that I think is consistently underestimated in
Washington, in which it has not fully appreciated the degree
to which Iran is interconnected and has massive influence in
many of the neighboring countries, and as a result, any
effort to try to completely isolate Iran and cut it off from
the rest of the region is not going to work, and has not
worked so far. And I think the the funeral proceedings in
Iraq, in particular, showed what an impossible task that is
and one reason as to why that approach needs to be set
aside, because the end result of it has now become clear.
That type of an effort of isolating Iran only leads to a
war. And we’ve already seen what a disastrous outcome that
war would be.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to
thank you for being with us, Trita Parsi, executive vice
president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible
Statecraft. We’ll link to your piece
on Substack headlined “How the US-Iran fight in the Strait
of Hormuz can be resolved before it blows up the
MOU.”
Coming up, we go to Houston, Texas, where a
family and community are reeling after ICE agents shot and
killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father of three
U.S. citizens. He’s been in the United States for decades.
Stay with us.
[break]
AMY
GOODMAN: “Oleada,” performed by Julieta Venegas
in our Democracy Now! studio.
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