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François Picard is pleased to welcome Barbara Slavin, Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center. She describes the US-Iran conflict as a dangerous combination of military escalation, diplomatic ambiguity and political calculation. Slavin sees an absence of true diplomacy: The recent indirect contacts between Washington and Tehran, mediated by Qatar, has been too limited and too fragile to produce any serious breakthrough.
For her, this amounts to “kabuki diplomacy”: they half engage while positioning themselves against any appearance of compromise. The consequences are already extending well beyond the US war on Iran. Saudi Arabia has been drawn deeper into the conflict, the Houthis continue to pose a threat to regional security and shipping, and the disruption around the Strait of Hormuz has been incredibly consequential for global energy markets.
All the while, both Washington and Tehran face domestic political incentives not to appear as though they are yielding to any pressure. For President Trump, the political cost of appearing weak would be too high; for Iran, sustained pressure on oil markets may create incentives to wait rather than compromise. Slavin sees the coming months as a period in which diplomacy will remain elusive.
The central question is whether either side can move away from brinkmanship without sacrificing their respective hardline political positions. Yet she believes that it is still significant that contacts have taken place at all. The challenge is turning those exchanges into a sustained process capable of ending the war rather than merely managing endless threats and escalations.
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