Transcript of She’s Been to Gaza. She Met With the Iranians. Now She Has a Warning. New

I refuse to believe that the core human essence is bad. Our motivation is not to live in rubble. Never. How could it be?

I'm Lulu Garcia-Navarro, and today I'm interviewing Mirjana Špojarić, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The ICRC works all around the globe and often in secret, remaining neutral to operate in the world's most dangerous environments. But with wars getting more complex due to new technology and world leaders increasingly ignoring the rules of war, Špojarić felt compelled to sit down with me to issue a warning about where we all could be headed.

We have to understand the significance and importance of the rules of war and why they need to be respected.

But first, a quick message. If you're not a subscriber, we have some news for you. You can now explore The Times for free without paywalls during your first month in The New York Times app. Just download the app, And we hope you enjoy it. Okay, on to the interview. Thank you so much for coming in today. I really appreciate it. This, I know, has been very hectic. We are meeting just at the end of the UN General Assembly. I want to start, if you could just briefly tell me, what is the ICRC and what does it do?

We are a global organization Founded 163 years ago in Geneva. Today, working in roughly 90 different places across the world, mainly in conflict, because this is what we were created for, to bring help and protection in situations of armed conflict, but then also promote respect for the rules of war. Because with the creation of the ICRC came the founding of the Geneva Convention. And then that led to the 4 Geneva Conventions adopted after the Second World War in 1949. And still today, this agreement has been ratified by all states because all states agreed that there are red lines in war. There are simply certain things that should never be allowed to happen.

You know, I covered wars for a big part of my career as a journalist. And the world feels more dangerous and more volatile volatile than I can ever remember. How do you see things?

I see it the same way because the statistics prove it. We now count twice as many conflicts as 15 years ago. We are at 130 international and non-international armed conflicts that we classify in our system. That's the highest number since the Second World War.

So I think it's time we stop admiring the problem and In my own newspaper, there was a recent headline asking if World War III had already begun. And I want to speak more deeply about why those fears about a global conflict are taking root. But first, you rarely give interviews. The ICRC is quite a secretive organization because it has to be, because of the sensitivity of what you do. Why are you sitting down now?

Because I want more and more people to understand that we live in a decade of war. And because we live in a decade of war, we have to understand the significance and importance of the rules of war and why they need to be respected. These treaties were created precisely for times like the ones we live in. I need to reach out to people. They need to understand the importance of this.

Why do you think they don't?

We hear more and more leaders say that the rules of war don't apply anymore because of the pursuit for total victory. But that is not possible. In history, there has never been total victory. There has only been death and destruction over and above what was necessary. Because at the end of the day, whether there is peace always remains a political decision.

Is there such a thing as a necessary war?

As far as I'm concerned, no. But, you know, philosophers and politicians have argued for thousands of years that war is necessary. But the point is, war has always been considered as something in the pursuit of a political objective. You know, it's a means to an end. Today, you get the feeling that You know, the wars become the means to an end itself. And they continue because people want to stay in power, because they have created an environment where, you know, the war becomes the condition under which they can continue ruling. And that's very dangerous. And you asked me whether we are approaching a Third World War. Honestly, history will judge that. History books will tell us whether today we already were in the beginning or maybe already in the middle of such a situation. We didn't know as the ICRC that we were in the Second World War when that was happening. The awareness of this being one of the most brutal wars in human history, that awareness wasn't there at that time.

You are one of the few people in the world who regularly travels to both sides of armed conflicts. Can you tell me where you've been since you took over as the head of the ICRC in 2022?

I've been to Gaza more than once during military operations. My organization facilitated the release and the return of the hostages from Gaza and the Palestinians, the Palestinian detainees back to Gaza. I was in Ukraine. I was in Myanmar. I was recently in Iran, in Iraq. I travel to the Middle East often, but I also travel to Africa. I was in Sudan. I was in Mali. I have to go and see for myself what it looks like. I need to understand what civilians endure in conflict, because I'm speaking to the holders of power. I wouldn't be credible if I didn't know what it is, what it means to be subject to this level of violence.

I want to start with Gaza. Your organization is one of the few organizations that has been allowed inside and continues to work in Gaza. You know, international journalists, most other international organizations haven't been given access by The Israeli government. Can you describe what you have seen?

I never go to any place of conflict without people telling me that they want to stop, without people telling me that they don't understand why this is happening. I see children without parents. I see children without arms and legs. I mean, How senseless does the world feel to you when you're confronting these things? And when you then go to the power holders and they tell you that there's nothing that they can do, you just don't understand. How is it that I see these children without parents, without limbs, and people who have power and influence still tell me there's nothing we can do? I don't understand it. I often don't understand what I see in connection to what I hear.

Millions of Palestinians who live in Gaza are now forced to live on only around 30% of the territory. Over 80% of the buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged. And in a 2025 interview with the BBC during the active conflict, you called Gaza worse than hell on earth, and you described a people stripped of their Have the rules of war been followed there?

What I said about Gaza is still valid today. What happened to Gaza and in Gaza, to Palestinians and Israelis, supersedes every legal, moral, and humane standard. You know, there's so many people complicit. In what happened there and continues to happen. The worst now is the fact that people are deprived of human dignity. The perception created that if there's enough food, that's good enough. For some people, it's good enough to just barely survive in rubble. And for other people, it's only good enough if they can return to normalcy and bring their children back to a normal school. It's applying two standards, and this will backfire. We cannot assume that for certain people, certain things are sufficient for a situation when it doesn't apply to everybody else. You can see that by how we measure humanitarian needs in Europe in comparison to South Sudan or Somalia. Intuitively, and because we can't prevent it, we continue applying 2 standards.

That some human lives are more valuable than others.

Yeah. And I always fear that if you allow double standards, it can happen to you. You never know when you find yourself all of a sudden on the other side of the line. And it happened in the Second World War to the Jewish people, but it happened to A lot more people than we nowadays keep in mind.

I want to stay with Gaza for one more moment before we broaden out. Did the ICRC have access to the hostages while they were in captivity? Because they were— there were horrific stories of, of their conditions in captivity. And obviously, that is one of your main roles, is to make sure that you know, detainees, prisoners are treated well.

Visiting hostages is much more complicated than bringing them back. And in my opinion, they should have come back unconditionally as of day one. But that's not the reality in which we operate. And so we have to work with the tools that we have. You know, there's nothing more complicated, more complex, and to a certain extent, also more brutal than hostage-taking.

Mm-hmm.

We know that also because our own colleagues find themselves more often than they should in such situations. And we know how important it is to negotiate them out as quickly as possible. So the objective always has to be to bring the hostages back. The longer it takes, the more complicated it becomes. I personally think that, you know, pressure should have come earlier on the negotiations. We could have saved more lives, many more lives. And this was the subject of our conversations. I traveled twice to Qatar to meet with the leadership of Hamas, to sit with Ismail Haniyeh at the time. I sat with Prime Minister Netanyahu myself. These were tough discussions. And trust me, we are very frank in these meetings. And this is why these meetings have to always remain confidential.

You know, I'm also thinking of Israel and how it has not allowed you access to the detainees inside. I mean, how have they explained that to you? And how do you then have to respond?

It's true that prior to October 7th, the ICRC has had access for decades to detainees held by Israel. And we, you know, organized tens of thousands, if not more, family visits. And that's important. Access to prisons in situations of war is extremely challenging and complicated to achieve. And at a certain point in the conflict, parties decide that for security reasons, they don't want to give us access. It's the most common argument. There may be others, but that's the most common one. But it doesn't matter what the reason is. It's a sovereign decision by the state to prevent us.

Hmm.

However, according to the Geneva Conventions, which all these states have ratified, they have a legal obligation to give us access. And in my opinion, also a moral obligation. Because we need to inform the families about the whereabouts of, or the fate of their relatives. You know, you capture a soldier in This person is detained, but a soldier is not per se a criminal. And no matter how you classify these situations, torture is never allowed. Never. For any party to the Geneva Conventions. That is clear. And this is what we discuss with those who don't give us access.

Mm-hmm.

But detention has a different reason for me to be able to go, irrespective of my legal mandate. Detention is the place where you lose your identity.

Hmm.

Detention is when there's no possibility to notify the families and to receive information about them. Detention becomes the place of— Utmost deprivation of yourself. And we've seen more often than not that people detained under horrible conditions over extended periods of time forget who they are. And when I visited recently a detention facility in Iraq, the detainees told me, Our biggest challenge is information. You know, they're very content if the food situation improves, if they have more access to sanitary facilities. All these things are important to them. But what is most important for everyone always is to have information about what month it is, what day it is, where the family are— families are, where the children are, whether the children are safe. You're talking to human beings.

This is a bit of a basic question. Why does it matter how you treat your enemy?

Of course it matters. Because you're dehumanizing yourself if you torture. If you tell your soldiers, go and kill women and children, go rape them, looting is allowed, it's our strategy in warfare, these people dehumanize themselves. They will never be able to return to a normal life. I listened to so many interviews of former soldiers because I need to understand them as well.

Hmm.

All of them always say that what haunts them is this child that was left in the street because they weren't allowed to turn around and collect it, that they saw bleeding to death. It remains with you. You debase yourself. This is why soldiers, normally, when they return, also have all these problems. I refuse to believe that the core human essence is bad. We are good people. We want to live with people we love. We want to have children that thrive. We want to be able to build a house and know that our grandchildren will be better off than us. This is a very normal human—

Desire.

motivation to continue living. Our motivation is not to live in rubble. Never. How could it be?

I want to just take a pause here because I want to learn a little bit more about you. You are Swiss-Croatian. You studied philosophy. You worked primarily in international development and peacemaking for most of your career, including for the Swiss Foreign Service, the United Nations. I'm curious why you wanted to take on a job about war. I mean, do you have memories of the war in Croatia?

My first memory of war was what my great-grandmother, her brothers, my father, everybody told me at the time about the Second World War and how they endured it. You know, my father was born in the middle. And my father said he had to— when he was 5 years old, he had to work in the field for 12 hours in the sun for a glass of milk at the time. He said his whole childhood was marked by the memory of being hungry. And my mother, she was equally, you know, traumatized to the point where she said every time a child died of a disease in her neighborhood, she thought that the parents were lucky and happy, probably because there was one one less child to feed.

Hmm.

And so they felt relieved. Can you imagine thinking as a little girl that somebody's happy about losing a child because you don't have enough food for everyone? This is— these are the stories that marked me probably more profoundly than anything else. And then came the Yugoslavia War, you know, my direct exposure to to the impact of conflict. But I cannot imagine how anybody could say we need this war, because you always forget that there are people in this war that suffer. And if you keep the people in mind, you will always favor a political solution. I'm not naive. You know, I'm surrounded by, you know, by harsh interlocutors in a harsh environment. But still, I think if you keep the people in mind, if you at all times remember that it could happen to you, it could happen to your children, you will think twice before you start a war.

You are the first woman to be president of the ICRC. I mean, do you think gender matters in how you're dealing with conflict?

You know, I often say this. When I came into office, everybody was asking about how is it being the first woman president of the ICRC after 160 years of male dominance. And it's not only at the top. I mean, it's across the institution because it's an organization that was created in War, 4 wars. And then I went to Mali, to northern Mali, and I sat with the women. And for the first time, an ICRC president could sit with the women in the tent because, you know, social norms prevented my predecessors from doing the same. And I felt so shaken throughout the night when I realized what is happening to women. In conflict, and how brutal it is, you know, because you have an overlap of many things affecting women and, you know, just depriving them of even the minimum protection that any human being should have at all times. But that night I realized it is a difference when it's a woman, you know, because if there would never be a woman at the head of these organizations, we wouldn't be as conscious of what it means for 50% of the world's population.

You've seen many horrible things as part of your job. You deal, as you said, in a very harsh environment, probably the harshest. How do you protect yourself from the relentlessness, awfulness? I mean, I've seen you get, if I may say, a little emotional thinking about it.

Look, in German, we say I was built close to water. Can you say that? I'm very emotional. I try to be hard, but it doesn't work. And maybe it's good that I'm emotional. Maybe it's good that I get angry when I see bad things or unjust things. Because it keeps me going. It keeps that feeling alive that you have to do something. You can't just admire the problem. There's something that you have to be able to do. And I've always had that feeling. I remember when I was a child, I wanted to save all the sea turtles, because I watched this documentary about how they're being tortured. When they're being caught and how they are being killed, you know, getting to the meat, and how much suffering that entails. I said to my parents, I want to become a veterinarian. I need to save the turtles. And I think I would have. I probably would have started a global movement for the sea turtles. But then so many other things happened in between, and I now do it— I try, at least, to save human lives.

You know, as, as I was thinking about the ICRC and the difficulty in this era of staying neutral, right, this idea of neutrality and this idea of coming in and having to speak to both sides and not taking sides, um, it really made me wonder about the challenges of that in this environment. There have been many accusations that the ICRC hides behind its neutrality, you know, to mask inaction. You know, the Holocaust is a moment where the ICRC failed catastrophically to prevent, or at least to even acknowledge, the extermination of the Jews. I know your background is in philosophy, and I know you feel all this very deeply. And I'm wondering, What does it mean to be neutral in the face of extreme suffering? I mean, is there an inherent tension in that?

When I started my studies, I had my thoughts. I could also get impatient with the stubborn insistence on neutrality and confidentiality. I very, very quickly changed my mind when I became president myself. Having accepted this unique opportunity, I had to learn quickly and then also had to acknowledge that we wouldn't be able to do what we do without this strict insistence on neutrality. Not in the context of prisoners of war in Russia and in Ukraine. But definitely, definitely, we wouldn't have been able to bring back the hostages from Gaza. I mean, you see the pictures. You see our colleagues unarmed amongst, you know, thousands, if not tens of thousands, of armed men. And in a situation surrounded by rubble you know, from which there was no escape. We had to negotiate the terms with everyone. Nobody would have trusted us to be able to do this highly complex operation if we hadn't defended our neutrality over 160 years, because we are predictable in it. You tweak it once, you become political, and that's it. I know it makes so many people angry, but that's the essence of our mission.

In that context, I want to also ask you about Iran, because you noted that you have also spoken with the Iranians about the negotiations and about the situation there. I understand your role as a neutral party. I understand that you cannot divulge the nature of those discussions. But I am wondering how much you can say about what you've seen there and how this conflict may or may not be resolved.

It became very clear to me, and I followed at the time the nuclear talks in 2013, between 2013 and '15, between former President Obama And the Iranian regime. Under President Obama. It became clear to me at the time how complex these negotiations were. It's much more complicated today in comparison. The first challenge to establish is the trust. We have, in the meantime, created a world where war is not A means of last resort. It happens at any moment in a process, which leads to a situation where parties always keep that possibility in mind and always keep a high readiness and preparedness to return to conflict. That in itself is not helpful, because you know that these negotiations will take a long time, will require a lot of compromise. But on top of this, we have created a situation that is much, much more complex because of the overlapping of conflicts and challenges. Today's conflicts are not limited to a given situation. They are turning into systems.

Explain what you mean exactly.

Look, you have countries aligning over continents as states. You have shifts in military cooperation. You have shifts in interests and economic goals.

So speaking of Iran, so Iran's relationship with Russia, Russia's relationship with China, the conflict spreading to Saudi Arabia and Yemen with the Houthis.

And then you have the non-state armed groups that are connected with other non-state armed groups in the Horn of Africa. And you can follow these streams through the Sahel. as far as Western African countries.

Hmm.

You know, certain groups, ideological groups or radicalized groups, however you want to name them, they share ideologies. They share common objectives. They align, they realign, they trade their arms. They ensure the availability of technology. And cheap weapons across many, many countries and thousands of kilometers. So you're never limited to one situation. And if now the situation escalates in Yemen, you can be sure that it won't remain contained to that territory for a long time. You already have 2 very important sea straits affected. It means that the number of actors that will need to get involved and exercise political pressure is increasing.

Hmm.

So you have a lack of trust. You have asymmetric warfare that allows these conflicts to continue for an extended period of time. And on top of this, and I haven't mentioned this yet, there's a total absence of economic growth. And, you know, a fast loss of development gains that have been essential for the welfare of the people in many countries of the world. Take Iraq, to begin with. You know, over the last 10 years, the country has been recovering from very large conflicts that have had a heavy impact on society and the economies. Right. These gains are being undone. Countries don't have the fiscal space anymore to cope with the fallout created by continued warfare. And at the same time, there's no prospect of economic growth that would allow us to feel capable of repaying the debts that are being created today. So the combination of these, or the convergence of these trends, is extremely dangerous. I still insist we will not be able to get out of it without negotiations. But these negotiations have to happen yesterday? They will last as long as it takes. They will require a lot of consensus and a lot of people involved.

This has to be understood. And now what do we need? We need political will. There's not much we can do if this continues to escalate. We need negotiations. We need powerful politicians. I personally, I want politicians to have power to negotiate.

President Trump, in his recent speech at the UN General Assembly, was threatening the annihilation of Iran by U.S.

forces, speaking of this idea of trust and using war as a Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before, maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world? Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic?

And he's used language like that quite a bit. But, you know, it was notable to me in that particular speech because he made that statement at a body explicitly created to stop wars, which is the United Nations. And I'm just wondering what you think that kind of language says about America's understanding and commitment right now to these very complex, in-depth negotiations that you say are needed?

You know, I started my career as a diplomat about 25 years ago in New York. And since, I've been observing eroding language. You know, certain things said back then would have triggered points of order. You know, people would have left the room. There would have been outrage. I remember when, at the time, Hugo Chávez spoke at the General Assembly and what reactions this triggered.

Yes, when he talked about President Bush and the smell of sulfur, implying that he was the devil.

Exactly. This is a gradual erosion. Then all of a sudden makes you realize, but there are things being said that you know, give— in certain situations could even lead to war crimes. Because you, depending on who you are and what the situation looks like, could entice people to do things that would actually amount to war crimes. This is why hate speech and this brutal language is so dangerous. But, you know, I'm not accusing specific person today because this erosion has been happening for, for far too long. And I've been alert for many years now why nobody is standing up and saying this, this cannot happen, because this in itself is preparing for war. But most importantly, every politician that uses the term, any term that points that there are no rules and there are no red lines, sends this signal to any person in the world that bears a weapon, that holds a weapon. You have to be conscious that as a holder of power, you have a far bigger reach. So far many more people hear, oh, there are no red lines. I have weapons. I can use them.

One of the things that struck me about why we're in such a period of global conflict is that it's relatively easy to get into wars, as you've said, but increasingly hard to get out of them. So they drag on and accumulate. So a war that started 15 years ago doesn't get resolved, and then new wars are added to that. And so what we're seeing is just conflict upon conflict upon conflict. Are we losing our capacity to resolve conflicts?

Definitely. I mean, that's a fact. If you don't negotiate over 10 years, you lose the practice. You know, you cannot— it's like being a heart surgeon. You don't stop operating and then come back and they give you the instruments and you resume. You know, negotiation is something that you need to master. I spoke once with a senior representative of the ANC in South Africa who told me, Our adversaries never had to negotiate anything. They didn't know how to do it. So we had to train them first before we could sit at the negotiation table. You know, negotiations require so many things, and they require especially political weight, courage, and compromise.

Hmm.

But you need to know what your red lines in the negotiation are, how far you're prepared to go, and how you get the other party to agree.

When you look at Ukraine and Russia, Iran and the U.S., there have only been sort of sporadic attempts to negotiate these conflicts.

Because there's no— you know, this is not yet the expression of courage and will to come to an agreement.

I mean, sending the vice president, for example, to Iran for a day, that's not a negotiation strategy, I think, when you think about the context of the Iran nuclear deal, hundreds of people, years.

You know, you know when it's serious and you know when it's happening.

You know, undergirding this whole discussion and your call for leaders to pick up the phone is the breakdown of many democracies and the institutions that hold them together. You know, the weakness that we're seeing in upholding liberal democracy means that international organizations are also weak. You know, look at Germany, a country you know well. The far right, the far left surged in recent elections. Citizens are angry. They're looking for solutions. They have a lack of faith in politics to solve their problems in a way that feels beneficial to them. And governments seem to be increasingly afraid of their own populations. Are you worried about the complete breakdown of the post-World War II order?

Of course I am. Because that order made it possible for Europe to stay out of a Third World War, to stay out of the levels of destruction that we have seen, you know, coming from these wars. Europe is in a certain way also the leader of bad wars. You know, I feel very bad saying that. But we have to acknowledge that the European or the Western history is not one of peace and security. But coming out of that trouble, there were a few people who had the foresight and the courage to establish an international system that is in no ways perfect. but for a long time prevented the worst. And that system is there, including the Geneva Conventions. I mean, everything that is written in the Geneva Conventions today is still as valid, because if you had to rewrite them, you would come back with the same principles. Trust me, because they're so intuitive and logical. In any society, religion, culture. Nobody will tell you it's correct to torture a child. I mean, how unimaginable would that be for any society?

To come back to this idea of where we are in the world right now, that perhaps we might already be in this Third Global War without us knowing. What can we do? What should we be doing?

You know, let's go back to that time when we believed in peace. Why is it so wrong to start a global movement around the notion of peace and world peace? It's possible. I think when I talk to my children, for them, peace is not something completely away and absent. This is how they imagine their future. I think we have to listen to them. And we have to start retreating from an overfocus on weapons, weapons systems, defense technologies. We also have to recreate a positive narrative about humanity, about peace, about coming together and working together and living together. Because there is a minimum ground that nobody has left yet, and that is the ratification of the Geneva Conventions, the commitment to a set of rules that, you know, prevent the worst, that prevent the destruction of humanity. We have to come back to recognizing that humanity is what holds us together, and that this is something we need to protect as a priority today because we are debasing almost everything.

Mirjana Spolaric, thank you so much. I have really found our conversation very sobering.

I thank you.

That's Mirjana Spolaric. To watch this interview and many others, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/@theinterview. podcast. This conversation was produced by Seth Kelley. It was edited by John Wu, mixing by Sofia Landman, original music by Dan Powell and Marin Lozano, photography by Philip Montgomery. The rest of the team is Priya Matthew, Wyatt Orum, Paola Neudorff, Maya Tepler, Eddie Costas, Leland James, Gabby Contreras, Kathleen O'Brien, and Brooke Minters. Our executive producer is Alison Benedict. Next week, David talks with Bono and The Edge about U2's 50th birthday and the band's forthcoming album. I'm Lulu García-Navarro, and this is The Interview from The New York Times.