Transcripts For ALJAZ Inside Story 20240711

Months of fruit in november exports were up 21 percent on last year rising at their fastest pace in nearly 3 years its being driven by demand for medical equipment and Electronics Due in part to Remote Working in other news voters in ghana are heading to the polls to pick their president and members of parliament the main president ial contenders are not cool for i do and the man he replaced 4 years ago John Dramani Mahama both have signed a pact saying that i accept the officially declared winner. As more from the largest polling station in ghana. What is happening right now is a security is tight in many pulling stations especially in trouble sports identified by the Election Commission and security agencies here in guyana in particular the volta region as well as other trouble spots thousands of them that have been identified right now the situation is such that if a water comes he or she will queue up and the security are here to maintain peace law and order the of servants of churchill distancing and government in protocols are very impressive here. Venezuelas president Nicolas Maduro is claiming victory in Congressional Elections that have been boycotted by the opposition rival one by doses he is still the leader of the National Assembly regardless of the election results. Irans top Nuclear Scientists was killed by a satellite controlled machine gun according to state media will say in fact resigned he died in hospital last month after he was ambushed near tehran irans president has blamed the assassination on israel youre upset with the headlines our knowledge is theres always this more news on our web site at aljazeera dot com coming up next inside story to stay with us. The World Food Program will receive the Nobel Peace Prize for fighting against hunger and the use of starvation as a weapon of war we ask executive director David Beasley how the challenge of combating Global Hunger will be met in the age of the coronavirus pandemic the nobel interview on aljazeera. Iran takes more steps away from the 2015 u. K. Deal with world powers and calls are growing louder for a new agreement so how will the incoming u. S. President deal with a challenge this is a story. Teller welcomes a program iran current u. S. President elect joe biden has promised to reverse the Donald Trumps decision to pull out of the Iran Nuclear Deal it will be one of his Biggest Challenges when he takes office in 6 weeks time iran is already taking more action to reduce its commitments parliament has passed a bill to stop unannounced nuclear site inspections and boost uranium enrichment has the backing of the powerful guardian and Supreme National Security Councils president hasnt rouhani objects to the proposal but he is under pressure to sign it into law and irans arch rival saudi arabia says it must be consulted if the u. S. Revives the Nuclear Agreement known as the j c p o a i think weve seen as a result of the aftereffects of the g. T. A. That not involving the regional countries results in a buildup of mistrust. And neglect of the issues of real concern of real effect on Regional Security so we are confident that both an Incoming Biden Administration but also our other partners including the europeans fully have fully signed on to the need to have all the regional parties involved in a resolution one of the signatories of the Iran Nuclear Deal has also suggested a broader agreement germanys foreign minister told the spiegel magazine. A return to the previous agreement will not suffice anyway there will have to be a kind of Nuclear Agreement plus which is also in our interest we have clear expectations of iran no Nuclear Weapons but also no Ballistic Missile program that threatens the entire region iran also needs to play a different role in the region. Lets bring in our guests in tehran we have Hamad Mousavi professor of Political Science at Tehran University and joining us from washington d. C. Is jamal abdi president of the National Iranian American Council and in london so sharp policy fellow at the European Leadership Network welcome to each of you id like to begin in teheran if this bill passes it stops unannounced nuclear site inspections it boosts iranian enrichment is this a direct response from the iranians to the killing of an Iranian Nuclear scientist in iran. It absolutely is in our nevertheless i would like to point out that i dont think it will fundamentally change the equation once by then it ministration comes into power iran has officially said and publicly said this that if the by going it ministration comes back to a nuclear deal then youre on is willing to roll back its Nuclear Activities according to the Iran Nuclear Deal so if the Biden Administration actually does go down that path then i think it will be ok but is this an overreaction i mean surely what youre doing is not just about the Incoming Biden Administration but you have European Partners as well who are very skeptical that may well be this new deal that iran Nuclear Agreement plus certainly is going to be a very difficult journey to get to that is this iran basically saying you know well were at the j. C. Paoli now and theres nothing else you can do about it. Well i think the assassination of more sent factories or did the iranian Nuclear Scientists was a major red line did these gray be crossed when the nuclear deal was being signed by the rowhani administration there was a lot of critics in iran saying that it would not improve the conditions of the country in today iran is part of the deal but it is being sanctioned even worse than before the deal and its Nuclear Scientists are getting killed by the israelis so either iran has to respond militarily in that can get out of hand and it can be escalate into an actual war or the other path would be to sign this new bill in expand your arms Nuclear Activities and mind you this is being done by the conservative parliament which is very critical of the j. C. B. Away youve also got elections coming up in 7 months time in iran thats going to have an impact as well i want to bring in washington d. C. Here and jim all the easiest thing that joe biden could do is basically go back to the j. C. Pioli would seemingly the iranians have said well actually if he does that well sign back in as long as nothing changes is that something that you think he might do. Well joe biden committed to returning to the deal and has been pretty unapologetic about that commitment even during the heights of the Political Campaign and the challenge against trumpy maintain that that was going to be the u. S. Position i think that the devil is in the details and so there is a question of sequencing who moves 1st is one side going to need to see something from the other side in order to begin reestablishing its commitments. Is there going to be a process as is the u. S. Going to work attempts to work through the joint commission so there are these issues and then i think the other big factors here are going to be the political pressures on both sides so they ronny and theyve maintained that they will return to their obligations so long as the United States does the same but there is certainly pressure such as through bills like the one you just discussed as well as the iranian president ial elections and so there i think there will be an interest on the iranian side really to demonstrate that the maximum Pressure Campaign and the United States pulling out of the deal. Of consequence is an attempt to try to prevent a precedent from being established where iran will just accept actions like that without responding and i think theres a fear in iran of just the Power Dynamics and if they run allows the United States to kind of push it around like that then i think they fear that its a very slippery slope and then in washington there is already this campaign by those who oppose entering the deal in the 1st place to try to undermine diplomacy under obama who are i think trying to adjust to what biden has said and acknowledging that this is the path of United States policy and theyre trying to say look dont go into the deal yet lets try to use some of those sanctions to get more out of iran lets you know that lets them. And that there are further constraints not just on Irans Nuclear program but i believe that missiles and potentially irans activities to the region and really are you know from my Vantage Point attempting to put the cart ahead of the horse so that that return to the j. P. Way which i think is a necessary 1st step for negotiations to potentially address some of those other things but if we try to make those preconditions to negotiations here in washington and that i think the whole thing gets much more complicated and were looking at a much different scenario where both sides potentially move in opposite directions pretty quickly so its going to be a matter of the sequencing the devils in the details and were going to need to see the by the Administration Come out pretty quickly and aggressively. With ways to reenter that deal so that those potential talks can to there is a time them a heads of all the day there is a time limit because there are iranian president ial elections coming up maybe the Biden Administration waits to see whos in charge after old the iranians have been waiting to see who won the u. S. Election before they decided on what they were going to do so maybe the biden mr mason has to wait as well. Well i dont think thats the inclination of the by the ministration i think that they do understand that there is a rare window of opportunity here with any ronny and that administration that has really you know over the past few years weve relied on the iranians to show restraint in the face of major provocations from the United States and israel and so that is not necessarily the formula of the United States going to be able to enjoy under a future iranian in the street that gets elected this summer and so i think that the buying team understands they need to build some credibility now they need to claw back some of that credibility for diplomacy within the iranian political system where the you know iranian leaders are able to actually move forward with diplomacy rather than. You know iran returning to hardline rule embracing this notion that was championed by the likes of. Which said that you cant negotiate with the west you need to respond to pressure with pressure and there needs the a much more aggressive approach so i think for the by 900 anderson they need to build that capital now they need to go back to the deal under this current Iranian Administration demonstrate that the deal still can work and hope that the next Administration Inside of iran sees this deal as a political winner as something that is benefiting the iranian people and benefiting the iranian nation about let me just play something im going to put something in points to how many there is says jamal and opportunity head however there is a massive trust deficit right now between tehran and washington d. C. Tehran it seems to be saying and quite rightly possibly in their opinion that this is a country that doesnt honor its deals now is that a problem that simply wont be able to be resolved. Im so i think if if the by going it ministration decides to come back to deal that already exists without changing the details. Cause then it can actually exploit the window of opportunity that dr abdi pointed out never thats if they decide to actually change the details and there has been some indications that they are actually interested in changing the details especially the sunset clauses which actually put time restrictions on the limits of Irans Nuclear program and some of them of are coming up in 5 years and another one in 10 years and they want to postpone that if they actually do decide to go down that road then what thats going to do is that will require further negotiations and the current deal is the result of several years of diplomacy and theres no way you can actually reach a deal in 6 months time with changing the details so if they do actually decide to go down that path then they will have to wait and see who the next president is and any on usually parliamentary elections give you a taste of whats to come in when it comes with conservatives winning the last parliamentary election there is a very good chance that they are also going to win the presidency and thats going to complicate the situation furthermore if they also want to talk about the regional issues in the Missile Program and theres also been talk of that i mean by then pointed to these issues in the article he wrote for c. N. N. On iran and if they actually want to talk about that then thats going to make it very difficult and complicated because essentially thats the approach of the trumpet ministration which is let us know where and i dont think youre on will actually backed down on those 2 issues lets bring in london. This is your other guest of tehran basically saying yes iran Nuclear Agreement plus thats the ground up. Absolutely i think that both of the speakers are absolutely correct both hammett and jim all the focus right now has to be on a mutual restoration of the j. C. P. O. A. s the Iran Nuclear Deal and the peripheral issues that many people are talking about in washington in european capitals such as missiles and irans regional behavior that has to be dealt with later and perhaps in a completely different format because it involves the entire region iran for example is one of the 11 countries in the region with long range Missile Systems so unless you are having negotiations or dialogue in a format that includes other players and takes into account irans deterrence needs you can expect iran to begin to negotiate on its missiles the president elect joe biden knows that the nuclear file is the top priority and thats why he reiterated the points that he made in his c. N. N. Op ed that was just referred to interviews and interview with the New York Times i think its going to be very important that europeans take that as a very clear signal that biden hasnt changed his opinion on what the priority is which again is resolving the issues related to restoring the j. C. P. O. Way as has been said already there is an issue with sequencing who goes 1st though that we cant ignore that the last 4 years have happened and that there is a massive trust deficit and you know proposals on the how we move forward how to recognize this imbalance of responsibility to stand any chance of success the u. S. Is who abrogated the deal the u. S. Is who unfairly imposed sanctions that have been killing ordinary iranians and the u. S. Has put its allies and partners not only in the region but also in europe further risk due to the high end risk of conflict so overall i think that its very clear in the president elects team what the priorities should be but its inevitable that we have everybody. Now in the current moment trying to take advantage of or have a fear that theyre going to lose out on the leverage that and gamed against iran economically over the prosecutor years due to sanctions if you look at the Economic Data iran is likely to actually return to a period of Economic Growth even while under continued u. S. Sanctions so i think that Everybody Needs to focus on getting in line especially ahead of the joint commission coming up in 10 days and the further ministerial meeting that will include the Foreign Ministers of all the remaining g. C. P. O. A participant. I just want to put to you one of the things that seems to be a misunderstanding or at least a difference of opinion is the fact that in iran this is seen as a defensive action this is the iranians protecting iranians everything that they do is in this over in National Interest but yet and we havent really heard this before but we are increasingly hearing now that what iran is doing is increasingly more aggressive that its actually making more problems than the European Union for example would like why is that misunderstanding coming to the floor now. Well you know i think that iran is under extreme pressure and has been now for a number of years and there are a few areas in which they can increase the pressure on the europeans the United States and also regional adversaries to say that were not going to put up with this kind of pressure and you know its very interesting to see some of the reporting and commentary for example on the recent iranian bill which will in fact and expand irans Nuclear Activities some reporting has said that its going to halt all of the and i. A. E. A. Inspections on iran in fact a lot hasnt been ratified yet but it likely will be done very soon within the next week or 10 days after that there is a 2 month period before the initial steps are taken so again like we saw 32020. 00 iran is actually continuing this tempo of leaving 2 month windows for diplomacy before they take further steps they want to see quick action and they dont want to see the hawks in europe or washington trying to take advantage of this transition period and try to claim that more can be leveraged out of iran so i think yes enron inevitably has been under a lot of pressure and therefore has been perhaps acting out in the region more or expanding its Nuclear Activities but we have to take into context that they have to respond and overall if you look at the picture on a holistic basis theyve actually shown immense trust should change it restraint and patience because all of the Nuclear Activities that they have done apart from quite Minimal Research and development all those steps are reversible and a lot of the times theyve actually announced them proactively so nobodys caught off guard so i think its important that iran continues to show transparency and clarity on the steps that they may potentially take and all of us also make sure that we. Think about her core on those steps correctly. We began this year with the killing of a key military leader in iraq a keep Iranian Military leader in iran ordered by the president of the ton President Donald Trump and then told the end of the year theres been a killing of iranian Nuclear Scientists the language used in washington d. C. Often is not your on your Nuclear Program is yarn in a Nuclear Weapons program there seems to be a concerted effort by america to actually go off to iran. And thats not going to be helpful for the trump for the biden and administration when they come in chile yeah the by the administration will i think need to demonstrate that there has been and a reset that there has been a change in position. And thats why this talk of leverage there are some who have argued that well the talk ministration has built up this leverage against iran that biden shouldnt just trade you know trade back to return to this this deal that supposedly is no longer as worthwhile because some of its. Some items of it are are expiring and thats just such a misreading of things and i think that the biden team understands this you know if i were to take office and to double down on the sanctions and to greenlight some of these provocative you know whether there are assassinations by israel or other provocative actions by the United States i think wed be doomed to this failed path that trump has put him on and its really its an albatross the sanctions its not leverage the key weakness is trust just as the everybody has laid out and so there has to be this demonstration just as happened i think from bush to obama back in 2009 there was this effort by the new administration to try to demonstrate this is a this is a new opportunity the United States is since. Really interested in the gauche ations and understanding that on the iranian side its politically going to be very difficult after having. Seen the United States were neg on its commitments punishing the iranian people really draining the Political Capital out of any moderate or protocol mostly forces inside of iran and so its going to be very difficult to convince iran to come back to the table in good faith and so that reset is in the very important in the very early days of the biden search how many missile we often have that iran is showing restraint you touched upon it yourself. When you said look this new bill if it gets passed into law is restrained its a restrained response the killing of the scientists is restrained response to the killing of a senior Iranian Military leader however there are conservatives are all hard line is that want iran to actually push further push back for that and harder and those people may be in power in 7 months time if that happens what happens the a the j c p o i and any hope of lifting the sanctions a new nuclear deal does that will go out the window im so so the factions youre talking about who are actually against the deal from the very beginning in they were saying to the americans cannot be trusted the problem is that the memory of the 4 years of the trumpet ministration is very difficult to forget i mean when that j. C. Peel way was being signed in 2015 you had right wing senators such as tom cotton saying on twitter that you know were going to shut down this deal with the sign of a pen and people like sorry youre on foreign minister were saying that thats not true but in fact when donald trump came into power he was able to withdraw from the nuclear deal through an executive order and you have people in iran politicians as well as even circles in Academic Circles in universities. Saying that what is the guarantee that if youre on comes back to deal there is a chance that donald trump would get reelected in 2024 or maybe someone like him and there is always that possibility that the u. S. Will withdraw again in. A lot of conservative factions believe that showing restraint is actually not restraint but showing weakness arent those are those factions are those factions right having mousavi they did they the americans werent trustworthy they did pull out the deal. Yes i personally believe that iran should have different approaches to the trumpet ministration 2 and a different path towards the democrats such as biden when when donald trump came into power i mean he essentially played hardball with iran when he assassinated quite sensible a minute january iran actually did chill restraint because it actually informed iraq east of the attack prior to actually firing the missiles allowing the americans to go into bunkers and having 0 casualties and i dont think any other country in the region would actually show that kind of restraint for a person such high up as a money and shoring those kinds of restraints actually did not help the situation it actually made the situation worse because the trumpet ministration actually kept pushing even further but at the end of the day to go back to your question the presidency will change in june nevertheless or we will have a new president elect in june nevertheless the supremes leader Ayatollah Khamenei is the same and i think the official position of the government and what im saying the government i mean the government as a whole including the supremes leader i think if the by that administration does come back to the nuclear the or youre on will also come back to the deal even if we have a different president. We are running out of time but i just want to see very quickly do you are you still after hearing everything that you just heard are you still confident that that the Biden Administration can pull this off. Yeah i am confident. I think that as long as the by mr asian sort of doesnt get distracted by some of the some of the i think bad faith calls for demanding more before returning to that deal i think that its a course until i think its very possible i think. As long as the by ministration does move forward d confidently the tricky part is then going to be what happens next and i think its positive that there is so much talk about further diplomacy that was always the point but 1st things 1st there has to be a clean return to the deal and if that happens that will mean that iranian restraint over the several years was worth while it did work in preserving this pathway to diplomacy and its going to be i think incumbent on the United States to both figure out a way to make this a deal that cannot be reversed by the next president and whether that means by putting it through congress which is probably very difficult or further to the diplomacy to actually provide some Political Capital for what comes out of its the these negotiations so thats going to be the tough part provided thats where the real work needs to happen for now this is simple this is clear go back to the deal lets start from that as the ground floor rather than this National Pressure debacle which puts i think any future president in a very bad position thats where they start out so its all up to buy that right now i want to thank all our guests how met miss of egypt all abdi and say hello and thank you too for watching you can see the program again any time by visiting a website aljazeera dot com and for further discussion goes off Facebook Page thats facebook dot com forward slash agent inside story and you can also join the conversation on twitter we are at a j inside story to me imran khan and the whole team here and i hope i find out. December on aljazeera its 10 years since the vet aleutian in tunisia ignited the arab spring aljazeera looks back at the uprising and asks what really changed across the middle east the stream is where al jazeera is global audience becomes a Global Community a year after the 1st coronavirus case in china will examine the devastation caused by the virus and the efforts made to eliminate covert 90 people in power is back with more investigative documentaries and indepth stories climate leaders will gather online to press ahead with a new stage of the paris climate agreement and examine the possible Global Solutions december on aljazeera. In 2008 raggy omar traveled across the United States discovering what it was like to be both a patriotic american and a devout muslim can he be muslim and american you have to be an american 1st i didnt have much appreciation for why it would be a big deal that i mustnt be elected to the United States congress more to has changed rewind islam in america on aljazeera. Thats soon as the sun goes down the salad bar laughter is a very challenging place to work from as you can live youre always pushing boundaries part of the fun stuff must always hunger love down we are the ones traveling the extra mile where are the media going to go we go there and we give them a chance to tell their story d. 2 deaths every minute a surgeon coronavirus cases in the u. S. Sends california and to get another long while of a soccer in president brings in the military to help step up costs in the mid warnings ospital. Could soon be over while. Youre watching al jazeera live from doha with me for you back to or also coming out ghanas incumbent leader and its predecessor facing off in a president ial election thats being called a battle of 2 giants iran releases