Former US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz called the US-Iran war a “big mistake.” He said President Donald Trump had led Washington into a difficult strategic dead end.
The Financial Times interviewed Moniz in Washington, the US capital in North America. He discussed the conflict with Tehran, the capital of Iran in West Asia.
Moniz said Iran held a “home-court advantage” in the conflict. He compared Washington’s position with previous US experiences in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
“We’ll see how all this turns out,” Moniz told the newspaper. However, he said the odds currently favoured Iran.
Moniz also questioned Trump’s repeated declarations of victory. He joked that Trump had claimed several times to have ended the conflict.
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A nuclear physicist, Moniz served as energy secretary under President Barack Obama from 2013 to 2017.
The US Department of Energy says he previously led physics and energy programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Moniz helped negotiate the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between Iran and six world powers. The agreement restricted Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief.
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Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement in 2018. Moniz argued that the withdrawal helped create the conditions for the current conflict.
Meanwhile, he said rebuilding trust would complicate any return to the agreement’s verification provisions. He offered no immediate route for ending the war in the published interview.
