The Iran Deal

President Obama
Today after two years of negotiations, the United States international partners has achieved something that decades of animosity has not a comprehensive long term deal with Iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Lisa Perry
This is Lisa Perry, and you're listening to At the Brink, a podcast about the dangers we face from nuclear weapons and the stories of those who are fighting to protect us
Lisa Perry
Is it ever in our interest to compromise with an enemy when nuclear weapons are on the line? The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, better known as the Iran Deal, was signed into effect by President Obama in 2015. This agreement put limits on Iran's capabilities to build a nuclear arsenal, in exchange for lifting economic sanctions. Despite this impressive achievement, the effort was beset by controversy from the beginning. In this episode, we'll explore how we got to this deal, why it was controversial and what the future holds, now that the US has backed out.
The JCPOA was the culmination of more than a decade of tensions, threats and diplomacy. Dr. Jeffrey Lewis is the creator of the Arms Control Wonk podcast and is on the faculty at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. He details the complicated origins of the Iran nuclear crisis.
Jeffrey Lewis
It's a little murky when Iran actually begins a nuclear weapons program, but we know that that program was in its early stages in 2002, when the first facilities associated with it were revealed to the public, which set in motion the Iran nuclear crisis.
Lisa Perry
Iran's desire for the bomb was influenced by many complicated factors, not excluding their delicate geopolitical situation in the Middle East, and their longstanding tensions with the United States.
Jeffrey Lewis
Iran lives in a really tough neighborhood. A country like Iran is extremely worried about what the United States or Israel might do to it. It's also the case that Iran has a pretty aggressive foreign policy and finds itself often in conflict in proxy wars. And so you can imagine that in a Middle East that is nuclearized both because of the presence of Israel and the United States, if you imagine that you're an Iranian leader, you don't have to be a super hawk to look at your security situation, look at nuclear weapons, and then, you know, get a little bit tempted.
Lisa Perry
After Iran's nuclear program was uncovered in the early two thousands, the major world powers quickly came together to condemn the program and attempted to discourage the efforts.
Jeffrey Lewis
Iran immediately came under heavy international pressure. And over the coming years, there would be a series of increasingly harsh sanctions put on Iran that would really begin to damage the economy. At the same time, there were a series of diplomatic efforts in order to try to resolve this issue. The first of those efforts was an effort by the Europeans.
Lisa Perry
While Europe pursued negotiations, the Bush administration labeled Iran part of an axis of evil, and refused any formal talks with the Islamic nation until they ceased all enrichment activities. Tensions grew worse after the election of Iranian hardliner, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005.  The new Iranian president proceeded to halt all negotiations with Europe, and charged the Iranian negotiators with treason. With both the U.S. and Iran now unwilling to compromise, many were beginning to worry that events might come to a head.
Jeffrey Lewis
The two sides had very hard red lines, and for the United States in particular, that red line was that the only acceptable number of centrifuges in Iran was zero. Our choices, if a country is going to build a nuclear weapon, are diplomacy, invasion or acceptance. And so when people say that they're not for this diplomatic solution, and that they're not for accepting an Iran with nuclear weapons, then there is only one option left. I think there was every chance that that crisis could have ended in a military conflict.
Lisa Perry
This dangerous stalemate was finally broken in 2013 when a series of leadership changes opened the door to new diplomatic possibilities.
Jeffrey Lewis
The fundamental change happens in the Obama administration. You have a new U.S. Secretary of State in the form of John Kerry. You have a new Iranian foreign minister in the form of Javad Zarif. And by this point, the president of Iran has changed. It's now Hassan Rouhani, who has actually campaigned on getting sanctions relief. And in the context of that change, the United States for the first time, cautiously explores the idea of a diplomatic solution that isn't zero centrifuges. So you have a willing leadership and a key U.S. concession that unlocks the possibility of agreement.
Lisa Perry
With both the United States and Iran now open to a diplomatic solution, serious negotiations began in earnest between Iran and a coalition of nations called the P5+1, which consisted of the five permanent members of the U.N. security council, United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom and France, with the addition of Germany. Wendy Sherman was the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in 2013, when then Secretary of State John Kerry appointed her to head the U.S. Iranian negotiating team. Although negotiating alongside the P5+1 helped to bring pressure on Iran, it also made Wendy's work rather complicated.
Wendy Sherman
I joke with a lot of people in terms of what it was like to do these negotiations. And I say, I negotiated inside of the Obama administration on what our policy parameters would be. I negotiated with the U.S. Congress. I negotiated with think tanks and opinion leaders. I negotiated with each of my negotiating partners, bilaterally and as a group. I negotiated with countries who had interests, like Israel, the Gulf States, countries like Japan and South Korea that imported a lot of oil with Iran. And oh yes, occasionally I negotiated with Iran.
Lisa Perry
Negotiating arms deals is no walk in the park. Ambassador Wendy Sherman would spend endless hours in the trenches of diplomacy fighting for common ground with Iranians. Ben Rhodes, who was Deputy National Security Advisor under President Obama, remembers the importance of her role.
Ben Rhodes
What Wendy did is, to use a sports metaphor, she was like the quarterback of a team that she put together, because her team had scientists and sanctions experts and lawyers and Iran experts. And so any kind of expertise that you would need in the room, Wendy marshaled that and brought it into the negotiation. And that allowed her to solve incredibly complicated challenges and was just kind of dogged and relentless.
Lisa Perry
The negotiations dominated Wendy's life. Not only did she suffer exhaustion and frustration one time, she actually sacrificed her body for the cause.
Wendy Sherman
And I was rushing to get to that phone at about 11 o'clock at night to have a conference call with Secretary of State John Kerry. And I didn't notice that the glass doors were closed. And so I went smack dab into them with blood gushing all over the place. My colleagues said, Oh my goodness, we have to get you to the emergency room. I said, no, no, clearly none of you are mothers. You've never had a child with a bloody nose, noses bleed easily ,get me an ice pack. So they got me an ice pack. I went to a doctor next day in Vienna. I had a CT scan. It was broken in several places. The doctor walked out and said in English, shit happens, and proceeded to pack my nose up and sent me on my way. And this was a time when being a woman was very helpful because heavy slabs of makeup made sure that most of my colleagues did not know that anything had happened. One breaks one's nose for one's country by necessity,
Lisa Perry
But being a woman was not always so helpful for this work, given the complicated gender politics of the Islamic government of Iran.
Wendy Sherman
I could not shake hands with the Iranians because they are a conservative Islamic culture, and won't shake hands with someone that's not their sister or mother or daughter. And this doesn't change in diplomatic negotiations. So we women have a workaround. We place our hands across our chest and give a little nod. But when we're in a room full of people and we keep doing that, we sort of look like a Marx brothers routine after a couple of minutes. So it's a little bizarre
Lisa Perry
By the summer of 2015, Wendy felt the team was on the brink of success, but with international negotiations, there's always something.
Wendy Sherman
And I put a scrap of paper in the middle of the table with a couple of formulas that would work for the United States. And I thought would work for Iran and Abbas Araqchi, who was the lead, leaned forward and said, I think this will work. And I thought, Oh my gosh, we're actually going to get to the end of this nightmare. And then Abbas leaned forward, in true Iranian negotiation fashion and said, but there's one more thing. And I just lost it. I was so furious. They'd never really seen me yell at them, but I yelled at them. I said, you know, you’re putting this entire deal at risk. These are games that you're playing. And somewhere along the line, I think I learned as a woman, it wasn't okay to get angry, but it was okay to cry. And so, as I was yelling at them, tears started to pour down my face and I truly couldn't do anything about it. I've tried over the years to grind my fingernails into my hand, nothing works. Abbas and Majeed were dumbfounded. So there was silence for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably just a minute. And then Abbas leaned forward again and said, okay, we're done.
Lisa Perry
Finally, Wendy's work had reached a conclusion. Soon after that meeting, Secretary Kerry joined the foreign ministers of the other six nations to sign a historic agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. So what exactly had we negotiated and how strong was it, really? The deal itself is very complicated, as you might imagine something that took two years to negotiate would be. But Ben Rhodes summarizes the key points you need to know.
Ben Rhodes
Here's what the deal does. It eliminates their capacity to make plutonium for weapons. It dramatically rolls back their enrichment capacity in research and development capacity. It has this incredibly intrusive inspections regime that deals with their entire nuclear supply chain from where they mine uranium to obviously whether they spend centrifuges. And it was a good agreement, you know, and frankly, among many of the things that we had to advocate for in the Obama administration, if you took politics out of it, it was one of the clearest cut deals that we had.
Lisa Perry
But of course you can never take politics out of it. After two arduous years, the JCPOA was signed by Iran and the P5+1 in August, 2015. The fight now moved to the United States, where the deal was seen as politically controversial. No one wanted Iran to develop their own nuclear program, so why was there such intense opposition to negotiating a deal that could potentially prevent that outcome? To understand, it helps to know a little bit about U.S.-Iranian history.

President Obama
And we're dealing with a country, Iran, that has been a sworn adversary of the United States for over 35 years.

Lisa Perry
The events that have shaped modern dynamics between U.S. and Iran could fill up their own podcast series. But there are a few key points to understand. In 1953, in a bid to reassert control over Iranian oil reserves, the CIA orchestrated a coup of the democratically elected Iranian prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, and restored the Shah of Iran to power. This brazen act cause years of bitterness among the Iranian people, culminating in the 1979 Iranian revolution, which replaced the pro-Western authoritarian monarchy with an anti-Western theocracy. After the revolution, the Shah fled to the United States, triggering a downward spiral of events.

Newsclip
Good evening. The U.S. embassy in Tehran has been invaded and occupied by Iranian students. The Americans inside have been taken prisoner. And according to a student spokesman, they’ll be held as hostages until the deposed Shah is returned from the United States where he is receiving medical treatment for cancer.

Lisa Perry
The infamous Iranian hostage crisis lasted for 444 days, and it has affected U.S.-Iranian relations ever since. Because of this toxic history, many in the United States on both sides of the aisle were opposed to any talks with Iran, even for arms control purposes. To American politicians, Iran was political poison. Ben Rhodes, who was Deputy National Security Advisor under President Obama, remembers how, when it came to Iran, diplomacy was treated by many as a dirty word.
Ben Rhodes
Obama took this position that he would engage in diplomacy with the leaders of Iran. And he was attacked as being naïve and irresponsible. Like, you know, if you talk to a country, that's weak, if you don't, that's tough. Well, why? Not talking to a country only allows them to just continue doing whatever they're doing. In Iran's case, it was advancing their nuclear program. It isolates the U.S. internationally and prevents us from building diplomatic pressure because other countries are wondering why you are not talking to this country.

President Obama
I will remind Congress that you don't make deals like this with your friends. Tough talk from Washington does not solve problems. Hard-nosed diplomacy offers a more effective way to verify that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon.

Lisa Perry
Because there was so much congressional opposition to the negotiations, the Obama administration knew that it would not be able to get two thirds majority in the Senate needed to pass a formal treaty. Instead, the JCPOA was structured as a political commitment. But Congress was determined to have their say on the deal and planned a resolution of disapproval, which if passed would block Obama from lifting the sanctions. Because this was the quid pro quo for Iran agreeing to the limits set out in the JCPOA, if the sanctions were not lifted, the deal would be dead in the water. The administration needed to ensure they had enough votes to block such a resolution.
Ben Rhodes
It was interesting being in the White House and yet still feeling a bit like the underdogs. And we essentially had to find a coalition of groups that supported the Iran deal, in some cases for different reasons. And those stakeholders run the spectrum from arms control experts, to nonproliferation experts, to peace activists, to progressive activists, to frankly, even Iranian human rights activists, who thought that the nuclear agreement was a better way to try to open up Iran to a more constructive engagement with the rest of the world.
Lisa Perry
The central player in organizing outside support was Ploughshares Fund, a nonprofit organization dedicated to nuclear nonproliferation efforts. Joe Cirincione was president of Ploughshares at the time. He shares the difficult challenges they faced rallying support for the deal in Congress.
Joe Cirincione
What you had in the domestic political space was groups, mainly those supported by AIPAC, those who were supporting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu who was opposed to the deal, pushing really hard against that deal. Saudi money coming in to try to kill the deal, supporting their network of institutes and experts in America. And that is a formidable, organized, well-funded political force. So if you're going to counter that, you have to have a program to unite all the experts and advocates who are in favor of the deal. And that's where Ploughshares came in.
Lisa Perry
As Joe noted, congressional opponents of the deal had a strong ally in Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu. The prime minister mounted an intense pressure campaign against the deal led by the powerful lobbying group, AIPAC or American Israel Public Affairs Committee. It's easy to understand Israel's distrust of Iran. Since the founding of their Islamic Republic, they have refused to recognize Israel's right to exist and have long supported militias, such as Hezbollah, which have repeatedly attacked Israel and Israelis. But this distrust led to a difficult political landscape for Obama, given America's strong relationship with the nation of Israel and the immense political influence that AIPAC wields in Congress
Ben Rhodes
Because the Israeli government opposed it, because Prime Minister Netanyahu opposed it, AIPAC and most of the other conservative or even mainstream organized Jewish community in the U.S., tried to marshall opposition to the deal. They, I think, ended up spending $40 million against the deal.
Lisa Perry
However, Ben Rhodes is quick to note that the position of Israel as a whole was not as clear cut as Netanyahu made it seem
Ben Rhodes
Well, I always try to say that the Israeli government opposed the deal, not Israel, because frankly, privately, and even sometimes publicly, a lot of people who worked in the Israeli security establishment, former military, former intelligence people, kind of leading voices, like Amos Yadlin, were supportive of the deal. And again, sometimes they would express that publicly. Sometimes they just tell you that privately. As my mom would say, this is not your mom's Israeli government. You know, this is not Golda Meier, or Yitzhak Rabin, you know, this is a far right guy
Lisa Perry
As a Jewish American himself, Ben Rhodes was intimately familiar with the complex feelings tangled up in this debate.
Ben Rhodes
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was, you know, obviously the head of the DNC at the time, became kind of the bellwether, you know, because she was very associated with AIPAC and support for Israel. There were symbolic votes that mattered a lot. And if Debbie had voted against the Iran deal, I think that would have been a feather in the cap of the opponents. And so I'll never forget that she finally called me to tell me her decision at, it was like midnight. And I was in my parents' house and my mom is in the back. And at first we thought she was going to oppose the deal because that's what a reporter had told me. And my mom was like yelling in Yiddish, you know, I don't even remember the words off hand. And then Debbie said she supported the deal. And then Debbie started to cry. And then I started to cry, and my mother starts saying, she'll go down to Florida and speak to every Jewish person in Debbie's district. And it's a funny little story, but what it did highlight is like the emotions of this.
Lisa Perry
The battle to secure the JCPOA was bitterly fought. And some supporters had to deal with brutal political pushback.
Ben Rhodes
And it was hard for those of us who are advocating for the deal because we're just being attacked, like ferociously and constantly. And by the way, we were also being charged with anti-Semitism, which was hugely offensive. And at the same time, you know, this is the right thing to do and you know, you're going to be a pay price, right? So Debbie knows she's now going to get attacked right, for years, just for taking this vote. I mean, it's kind of appalling. The great irony of this is the Jewish Americans supported the Iran deal and greater numbers than non Jewish Americans and the polling
Lisa Perry
In the face of this fierce opposition, those who supported the Iran deal continued to advance the argument that this was in fact, an exceptional deal. Joe Cirincione, who has worked in the nonproliferation field for decades says that there has never been a better nonproliferation agreement.
Joe Cirincione
It was a really good deal. This was the strongest non-proliferation agreement I've ever seen. It shrank the Iranian program down to a fraction of its original size, froze it for a good 20 to 25 years and locked it in an iron box of inspections so that we could see everything the Iranians were doing, practically eliminating the chance of any breakout potential. That's why it was supported by so many countries, by so many military officers, by so many experts. It was a really good deal.
Lisa Perry
It wasn't just American experts who believed that this was a strong agreement. Former Iranian diplomat Dr. Seyed Mousavian knows firsthand how challenging this endeavor is, as he led an unsuccessful attempt at nuclear negotiations in the early two thousands. After the election of the hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, Dr. Mousavian was removed from his post, charged with espionage, and even briefly jailed. He is now a scholar in residence at Princeton University. Dr. Mousavian compares this deal favorably to previous non-proliferation treaties.
Seyed Mousavian
The U.S., Europe, Russia, China, the International Atomic Energy Agency, they all confirm, and there is a clear consensus internationally, that the Iranian nuclear deal, is the most comprehensive agreement during the history of non-proliferation. Because about 200 nuclear scientists, worldwide negotiated, curating 170 pages of the most detailed agreement on inspections, transparency measures, limits, non diversion towards weaponization. This is beyond the Iranian American issue. The world has never been able to create such a document, which ultimately can guarantee zero nuclear bomb, not only in the Persian Gulf, not only in the middle East, but worldwide
Lisa Perry
Now that we had an agreement in hand, the critics who had originally opposed any deal with Iran now shifted to arguing that the deal we had wasn't good enough. The Obama team was frustrated. Many complaints were made in bad faith or showed a basic misunderstanding of negotiations. One such bad faith criticism, a favorite talking point of Donald Trump, is that the U.S. paid large sums of money to Iran to achieve this deal. But that is completely false. In reality, the money in question belonged to Iran. It had been confiscated as part of the nuclear sanctions, and now was being returned as part of lifting sanctions. A more understandable complaint is that the restrictions on nuclear enrichment were only for a limited period of time, 10 to 15 years. Theoretically, after those restrictions expired, Iran could start up their weapons program again, but that argument doesn't take into account how arms control is done in real life.
Ben Rhodes
I mean, obviously anyone would prefer permanent restrictions. The reality is in arms control, this is quite common. You do deals that have different timeframes and elements of the agreement were permanent, like some of the inspections, obviously the prohibition on nuclear weapons. I felt like those were fair arguments, but again, the very easy counter was, well, in 10 years, we have all the same options that we have now. We don't like what Iran is doing in 10 years, and they're allowed to restart elements of their nuclear program, we could sanction them then.
Lisa Perry
Another common objection is that the deal didn't go far enough, that it was fundamentally flawed because it didn't address other major problems with Iran, such as their aggressive support of proxy militias like Hezbollah, their human rights violations, or the Iranian missile program. As Wendy Sherman sees it, this misses the fundamental point of the deal.
Wendy Sherman
I've heard the criticisms that we didn't take care of everything. So just taking care of Iran not having a nuclear
weapon wasn't good enough. I think President Barack Obama made a very, very conscious and the right decision to have this negotiation focus only on ensuring that Iran couldn't obtain a nuclear weapon, because he understood that if Iran had a nuclear weapon, their ability to project power into the region and to deter our, and our partners and allies actions would be profound. He also understood that if we tried to do everything, if Iran would even agree to do everything, at the time they wouldn't, but even if they did, A, we'd probably still be negotiating, and B, we might end up with the mediocre middle on everything. Iran might say, okay, we'll give Hezbollah less money, but we want to keep more advanced centrifuges. And so we wouldn't keep them from obtaining a nuclear weapon, nor would we really deal with their malign behavior.
Lisa Perry
Sherman makes the critical point that we have actually continued to place pressure on Iran about these issues.
Wendy Sherman
Importantly, all of the sanctions that were lifted regarded their nuclear program, sanctions regarding counter-terrorism, human rights, arms trafficking, missiles, all remained in place. So the U.S. had plenty of tools, working with our allies and partners ,to deal with all of these other issues, if we could get the nuclear weapons off the table.
Lisa Perry
Ben Rhodes holds that those who believe negotiations should have been expanded to include a runs missile program are naïve; such an attempt would have probably backfired.
Ben Rhodes
You know, there was another component of, that the deal didn't deal with ballistic missile programs. Yes, in an ideal world, it would, but Iran wasn't going to agree to that. And by the way, importantly, Russia and China, who were a part of the P5+1 negotiating this, did not support any restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program as part of this deal. And so we would have lost the international unity that was essential to pressuring Iran if we had insisted on the inclusion of that.
Lisa Perry
Beyond the specific objections to what was negotiated, there was understandable concern that Iran couldn't be trusted to stick to any agreed upon restrictions to their nuclear program. They had violated agreements in the past, so what was stopped them from doing so now? The thing is, the JCPOA is not simply some handshake agreement. It includes an incredibly robust verification program specifically intended to prevent and detect any violations, as Joe Cirincione points out.
Joe Cirincione
These are the most intrusive inspections ever negotiated in the nuclear area since the beginning of the nuclear age. These are very good, solid inspections. We have cameras and inspectors and inventories and seals on everything. And I don't mean Game of Thrones wax seals, I mean state of the art, fiber optic, radio-frequency seals. If somebody in Iran opens a barrel, they're not supposed to, open inspectors in Vienna will know about it immediately
Lisa Perry
Dr. Thomas Shea is a nuclear scientist and former inspector for the IAEA. He explains that it would be incredibly unlikely that Iran would be able to hide any nuclear activity from inspectors.
Thomas Shea
As far as detecting diversion of declared nuclear materials, there isn't that much nuclear material, uranium or plutonium, in the country at all. And so noticing that going missing is relatively simple. Inspections are carried out daily in these facilities, and you're looking for changes in how the equipment is situated, how it's run, whether there are any undeclared additions to the equipment or not. There are forensic methods that involve the collection of very tiny particles. Uranium processing leaves traces behind that you could never really get rid of.
Lisa Perry
Having studied at the monitoring agreement extensively, Dr. Shea was confident that we had Iran cornered with this deal.
Thomas Shea
There were some additional considerations that were included in the JCPOA, which go beyond the safeguards in any other country, anywhere, at any time. As long as Iran sees no possible mechanism through which it could evade detection and actually proceed to successfully acquire a nuclear arsenal, I was confident that the agreement would hold and that the Iranians would continue to honor their obligations that they've entered into.
Lisa Perry
On January 16, 2016, all nuclear sanctions were lifted after the IAEA confirmed Iranian compliance with the requirements set out under the JCPOA. For the first time, the world had succeeded in preventing a country from going nuclear. Since the agreement was enacted, inspectors have confirmed that Iran has adhered to the letter of the deal, but unfortunately that has done nothing to dissuade continued opposition. Joe Cirincione has a notion that this opposition goes beyond just objecting to its specific provisions.
Joe Cirincione
I believe the vast majority of the criticism is completely disingenuous, that they never wanted any deal at all. And what they do is they just use this argument of the flaws in the deal in order to oppose a deal they don't want. You have to understand for a large number of people, and I would include the leader of Israel, the leader of Saudi Arabia in this, they don't want to make any deal with Iran because they don't want to legitimize the government. Their goal is regime change. And then the whole thing is just a farce of complaining about the deal.
Lisa Perry
From the beginning, the domestic opposition to the JCPOA has had a highly partisan component. Dr. Jeffrey Lewis worries that this partisanship is blinding politicians from seeing the vital security benefits this deal provides.
Jeffrey Lewis
Our society is so politically polarized that we cannot agree to set aside those differences, even when it's in the interest of the United States. You literally had a situation where Donald Trump called it the worst deal ever. And that became, I think, a partisan viewpoint among all Republicans.
Lisa Perry
Just over one year after the sanctions were lifted, a sea change swept in when Donald Trump was elected president. His position against the Iran deal was one of his signature rallying cries.

President Trump
One of the worst, worst, terrible, bad deal, a horrible and laughable disastrous deal with Iran.

Lisa Perry
Trump maintained this stance after entering office, despite U.S. intelligence agencies and even his own Secretary of Defense testifying that Iran was in compliance with all provisions of the agreement. On May 8th, 2018, the Trump administration officially withdrew the United States from the JCPOA when Trump signed a presidential memorandum, ordering the reinstatement of sanctions. Now that Trump has made good on his threat to abandon the deal, Joe Cirincione laments what we have lost and worries that we seem to have no plan for what to do now.
Joe Cirincione
This was the compromise. This was good enough to solve a basic strategic concern, to stop Iran from getting a bomb. That was the problem this deal was supposed to solve. It wasn't going to change the regime. It wasn't to stop their behavior in other areas of the middle East. It wasn't going to cure cancer. It wasn't going to let you shed those unwanted pounds. It had only one job, stop Iran's path to a bomb, and it did that brilliantly and now we've thrown it away, and Iran is back on that path. And we have no plan about how to stop that.
Lisa Perry
Without this deal, both Ben Rhodes and Joe Cirincione see few paths that don't lead to conflict.
Ben Rhodes
Essentially, there are three options here. The Iranians get a nuclear weapon, we have a deal like this, or we go to war to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon.
Joe Cirincione
The alternative to this deal is war, is a military conflict, and that could quickly escalate to the kind of cataclysm in the Middle East that would make the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan looked like warm up acts.
Lisa Perry
Beyond the threat of direct conflict, if Iran restarts its nuclear weapons program, there could potentially be an even more ominous outcome. Other Middle East nations would likely go nuclear themselves. It's hard to believe that would result in anything other than catastrophe for an already unstable region. President Trump and Republicans have long maintained they could get a better deal, but there has essentially been no action in that direction beyond reinstating and expanding punitive sanctions in the hopes that Iran will fold. This has not worked in the past with Iran. and Ben Rhodes is convinced that it never will.
Ben Rhodes
You just pressure them more, put more sanctions on, do essentially what Trump has done, and that fundamentally, totally misunderstands the nature of Iran. They're not going to capitulate under sanctions and give up every bolt and screw of their nuclear program. They're too proud. And you see now with Trump trying to do that exactly what happens, not only are they restarting their nuclear program, they're lashing out and engaging in provocation. That's the nature of this regime.
Lisa Perry
Now that the U.S. has walked away from our commitment to the JCPOA, Iran has predictably ramped up prohibited nuclear activity, but the deal itself is still in place, with the rest of the P5+1 continuing to uphold the agreement they signed on to. The U.S. in turn has also instituted secondary sanctions on countries that continue to trade with Iran, many of whom are our close allies. Wendy Sherman and Ben Rhodes argue that President Trump doesn't get the importance of working closely with other countries. He sees alliances as taking advantage of America, whereas they see them as contributing to our national security.
Ben Rhodes
Well, Trump has basically made the greatest case yet for the Iran agreement by pulling out, because all of the things that we warned about literally have happened. The international unity has collapsed, not just Russia and China, but Europe is furious at the United States. We're the ones isolated, not the Iranians. The idea that you have leverage by being out of the deal, I think is insane because we're the ones who pulled out of the deal and the rest of the world isn’t going to say, well, what good leverage you have here?
Wendy Sherman
President Trump prefers to go it alone. And when you go it alone, you almost certainly face failure.
Lisa Perry
Dr. Mousavian worries about how our withdrawal will impact the ability of the United States to obtain nuclear arms control agreements in the future.
Seyed Mousavian
The U.S. withdrawing from this deal, I believe the first and the most important consequences is harming the non-proliferation in the future, worldwide. The world powers the countries, even the U.S. allies, they really cannot count on the U.S. anymore. This is, I think, a big damage to credibility and prestige of the United States.
Lisa Perry
In addition to our global standing, pulling out of the deal has completely destroyed any diplomatic capital we built with Iran during this process. It's important to understand that the Iran deal was as controversial in Iran as it was in America. Those in Iran who pushed for the deal were taking a risk arguing that the U.S. was genuine in their desire for better relations.
Seyed Mousavian
President and the foreign minister, they believed President Obama is serious, John Kerry serious, and we can reach a deal and they would implement. And this could be a process of decreasing tension, animosity between Iran and the U.S. And if it's successful, then we can have negotiations on other issues. At the end, there is a chance to end that 40 years of animosity, hostility between Iran and the U.S. Therefore, those who were opposing negotiating with the U.S., or those who were defending, supporting negotiation with the U.S., this was the moment of truth, to see which one are correct, which one is wrong.
Lisa Perry
Trump pulling out of the deal became that moment of truth, confirming the hardliner narrative that the U.S. is not to be trusted, and that Iran should have never agreed to the negotiations in the first place.
Seyed Mousavian
And the U.S. deceived and cheated Iran and the international community. What the moderates can say from now on about negotiating with the U.S. or trusting the U.S.? Iran has two election coming up. I think these debates would be the core debate for the two election, and I'm afraid the moderates, they would lose.
Lisa Perry
Dr. Mousavian’s fears proved to be true. In the recent parliamentary elections, hardline factions won 221 out of the 290 seats, more than doubling their previous total. Particularly troubling is how many of these politicians have direct ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary force notorious for their anti-American views, and that many have condemned for supporting terrorist activities. So where does all this leave us now? While the Iran Deal is technically still intact, as no other country has followed president Trump's lead, the future of the deal is tenuous. After the Americans walked away, the Iranian government quickly threatened to resume the enrichment of uranium. But Joe Cirincione still has hope.
Joe Cirincione
If the U.S. were to join this deal, say, in January, 2021, you immediately, very quickly work out an agreement where the U.S. would again lift the sanctions that we had agreed to lift in the first place. And in return, Iran would come back into complete compliance with the deal. But you can't stop there, cause so much damage has been done, so much time has been lost that you are also going to have to have an agreement and a vision for how to build on the deal. And that was always the plan. Nobody thought that this solved all our problems, but this could be the foundation stone for other agreements. So you have to have a plan that says one, we're going to rejoin the deal, two, we're going to come back into compliance with it, and we want Iran to come back in compliance with it. And then three, let's start negotiations right away on how we improve upon this deal by extending the limitations, for example, by also addressing some of the other issues that we have differences with Iran on, such as their behavior in the region or their testing of ballistic missiles. The way to do it is to go back to the deal. That is the first essential step.
Lisa Perry
Like Joe, Dr. Mousavian believes that it is still possible for the U.S. to rejoin the deal, but he emphasizes that if we do, we must remember that treating your adversary with respect is critical for achieving any future progress.
Seyed Mousavian
President Obama was after engaging with Iran rather than war and fighting. Obama said I would accept enrichment under nonproliferation treaty regulations. And when Iran saw such a goodwill from the U.S., respecting international agreement, Iran was ready to give assurances, objective guarantees, within the nuclear deal, far, far, far beyond NPT. Therefore, if Democrats would win, if they would come back to nuclear deal, they would be able to open the door for a dialogue with Iran on other regional or disputed issues in a model like JCPOA.
Lisa Perry
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was the combination of the work of thousands of experts, over many years, doing the hard work of diplomacy, and diplomacy is hard. It requires struggle, and it requires compromise. If we believe that an Iranian nuclear weapon is unacceptable, we have two options. We either go to war or we must be willing to work with the opposing side to find a solution. But unlike in war, in a negotiation, you're dealing with a partner and the goal is not to defeat them, but to arrive at some common ground, as Jeffrey Lewis highlights.
Jeffrey Lewis
The Iran nuclear deal is as good of a non-proliferation agreement as I have ever seen. No agreement is perfect because it involves negotiating with another party. And that party has interests. And those interests don't perfectly align with yours, but it was as comprehensive and intrusive as any agreement could reasonably be expected to ever be. So I think we have to accept that the other country gets a vote. The other country has real interests and power and leverage. And you know, our goal is not to let the best be the enemy of the good.
 
Lisa Perry
In order to not let the best be the enemy of the good, sometimes we have to pick our battles. Nuclear weapons are the most devastating force in the world, and containing that power must be prioritized. Sitting down with a country at the negotiating table isn't an endorsement of that country. As President Obama reminded the nation as he announced this deal, we don't do deals like this with our friends. Ben Rhodes points out that that is exactly why we need it.
Ben Rhodes
So how can you make a deal with a country that supports terrorism, that meddles in other countries? Again, I, I guess understand that emotionally, but who else are you doing nuclear deals with? You know, we made arms control agreements with the Soviet Union when we had massive disagreements with them about their foreign policy. So I actually, frankly, didn't really understand that argument. I mean, I understood why it was good politically to say, how dare you do a deal with this terrible country. But our answer was always well, if this country is so terrible, don't you want them to not have nuclear weapon? Like, you know, if they support terrorism, let's make sure removing the greatest risk, which is that they'd have a nuclear weapon.
Lisa Perry
In recent months, the situation with Iran has grown even more complicated. In January, 2020, the U.S. assassinated one of the leaders of the Iranian revolutionary guard, Qasem Suleimani. The Iranians followed that with a missile strike on a U.S. military base in Iraq, injuring scores of soldiers. Many have speculated that the assassination would lead to an increase in hostilities with Iran, although so far, there have not been any further overt attacks by either side. However, one consequence is clear. Iran has announced that they will no longer be constrained by the limits of the JCPOA. They have begun to increase uranium enrichment activities and are now denying the IAEA access to three inspection sites. The remainder of the P 5+1 have activated the agreement’s dispute resolution mechanism, but this has so far been unsuccessful.
The American withdrawal has undermined the JCPOA, but the agreement we forged still remains a shining example of how to resolve nuclear disputes with other nations. Before the Iran Deal, we were headed down the path to war, but that is not the only direction open to us. There is still a path where Iran does not develop nuclear weapons. We just have to be willing to return to it.

President Obama
Time and again, I have made clear to the Iranian people that we will always be open to engagement on the basis of mutual interests and mutual respect. Our differences are real, and the difficult history between our nations cannot be ignored, but it is possible to change. This deal offers an opportunity to move in a new direction. We should seize it.

Lisa Perry
That's our show. If you'd like to learn more about the Iran Deal and keep up to date on the current developments, you can find additional resources on our website, AtTheBrink.org. If you liked our show and want to help raise awareness about these issues, please subscribe, review, and share our show with your friends. Thank you to our guests for taking the time to speak with us. If you're interested to hear more stories about her time as a negotiator, check out Wendy Sherman's book, Not For the Faint of Heart.
At the Brink is made possible by the generous support of the Carnegie Corporation and the Nuclear Threat Initiative. These organizations work tirelessly to combat the global threat of nuclear weapons. This podcast is a creation of the William J. Perry project. This episode was produced by Jeff Large and Maggie Fisher from Come Alive Creative, and Ryan Hobler is our composer and audio engineer. Thank you to our listeners. You're helping us to try and save the world one podcast at a time. I'm Lisa Perry. Thanks for listening.