Top Iran analyst Dr. Hassan Ahmadian tells Drop Site that Donald Trump was forced to seek a deal on Iran's terms after meeting the “hard rock” of Iranian resistance.Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill spoke to Ahmadian, Associate Professor of Middle East Studies at Tehran University on Friday, following President Trump’s announcement that a deal with Iran was imminent.
“The United States has hit the hard rock of a formidable force that stopped its aggression and they have to deal with it,” said Ahmadian. “President Trump realized that he cannot change the failure, the military failure of the war into a diplomatic win.”
Throughout the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, Trump has constantly flailed in his campaign to portray it as a historic success. The blunt reality is that what Trump announced as a quick and easy war of regime change rapidly transformed into a quagmire. For the past two months, Trump has struggled to find a way to declare victory, alternating between claims that Iran is begging him for a deal and threats to destroy Iranian civilization.
On Thursday morning, Trump threatened to hit Iran “very hard.” Later in the day, Trump claimed a deal was now at hand, suggesting it could be signed as early as this weekend. “Based on the fact that discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved, I have, as President of the United States of America, cancelled the scheduled strikes and bombings against Iran this evening,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Discussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail, approved by all parties involved.”
Trump has made such claims more than three dozen times since the initial two-week ceasefire was signed on April 7, and behind the scenes, Iranian officials maintain they have stood firm in protecting their own red lines in any deal framework.
This time, however, the initial response from Tehran indicates that a deal may well take shape. Scahill and Ahmadian discuss the events leading up to Trump’s announcement on Thursday, Iran’s red lines—including the unfreezing of assets and an end to the war on Lebanon—and how Israel will seek to sabotage a deal while continuing its overt and covert actions targeting Iran. They also discuss the economic impact on Iran and the domestic political situation.
00:00-05:25 — Opening and Context from Jeremy Scahill05:26-13:45 — Iran’s Posture and Core Demands13:46-24:31 — Israel’s Efforts to Shape or Derail the Deal24:32-32:18 — Lebanon & Decoupling Israel From the U.S.32:19-39:05 — Gaza and the Limits of Iran’s Leverage39:06-51:57 — Iran’s Domestic Situation: Covert Ops & Economic Pressures51:57-53:51 — The UAE, Gulf States, and Closing Remarks
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Jeremy Scahill is an American activist, author, and investigative journalist. He is a founding editor of the online news publication The Intercept and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (2007), which won the George Polk Book Award. His book Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield (2013) was adapted into a documentary film which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for the 2014 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. In July 2024, he left The Intercept and, together with Ryan Grim and Nausicaa Renner, founded Drop Site News.
Scahill is a Fellow at the Type Media Center. Scahill learned journalism and started his career on the independently syndicated daily news show Democracy Now!. He publishes a podcast titled Intercepted. (Wikipedia)
Dr. Hassan Ahmadian (https://x.com/hasanahmadian) is an Assistant Professor of Middle East and North Africa studies at the University of Tehran and a Senior Research Fellow at the Middle East Scientific and Strategic Studies Center in Tehran. He previously was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center as well as an Associate with the Project on Shiism and Global Affairs at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. His research and teaching work is mainly focused on Iran’s foreign/regional policy and relations, political change in the Middle East, civil-military relations and Islamist movements in the Middle East.
He has appeared on CNN, Al Jazeera and the Doha Forum
