ensure the deal is being enforced from the heritage foundation, this is an hour and a half. >> good afternoon. welcome to the heritage foundation and our douglas and sarah allen auditorium. we welcome those who join us on our heritage.org on this occasion. for those in house, we ask the courtesy check that mobile devices have been silenced or turned off as we prepare to begin and for those watching online, you're welcome to send questions or comments simply e-mailing heritagespeaker.org. leading our discussion, phillips the fellow for middle eastern affairs and douglas sand sarah allen for foreign studies and written widely on the middle east and issues of international terrorism since coming to the hr taj fo heritage foundation in 1979. dozee authored dozens of articles on other middle east security issues. please join me in welcoming jim phillips. [ applause ] >> thank you, john. the iran nuclear agreement has been enforced now for more than a year but yet, it faces a very uncertain future. as presidential candidate donald trump indicated that he would overturn the deal or also indicated that he may enforce it so tightly that the iranians may walk away from it. but as president, he's been in no hurry to rip up the deal and it appears the administration is still reviewing options. critics charge that the nuclear deal only slowed iran's uranium enrichment program. it did not halt it. and the administration's promises that the deal would help to moderate iran's behavior have not come to pass. iran still does very provocative missile tests, still supports terrorism, still expanding a military intervention in syria and harass international navy ships in the persian gulf. supporters of the deal indicate that almost all of those things were not included in the deal and that the deal did reduce iran's stockpiles of uranium enrichment for a few years in order to bide time for possibly diffusing this crisis. how does it work? the joint comprehensive program of action or jcpoa. so how well is the jcpo worked? what are its strengths and weaknesses? what position should the trump administration take on the deal going forward? to answer these and other questions, we have a very knowledgeable panel of experts and i'll be introducing them as they speak. first speaker is fred flights. senior at center for security policy. fred served in the national security positions for 25 years at the cia, dia, department of state and the house intelligence committee staff. during the administration of president george w. bush, he was chief of staff to john bolton and then the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. during his tenure, he was a staff expert on the iranian and north korean nuclear programs and briefed key national intelligence on the issues to committee members. after he left government in 2011, he founded and served as director of the langley intelligence group network. the news max media's global intelligence and forecasting services. he has published numerous articles in various journals and newspapers and last year, published the eye opening book, obama bomb, a dangerous and growing national security fraud. so let me turn it over to fred. >> thanks, jim. it's a pleasure to be back at heritage to discuss this urgent national security issue and very humbling to be on the panel with some of america's leading experts on this issue. jim, you've written extensively on this issue. a former iae official for a number of years and really knows exactly what's going on with iran's nuclear program and david albright with his center has produced information that i couldn't, i don't think i know which end was up without the report to his organizations producing. i might add reports he has been producing despite pressure from the foreign policy establishment to pull his punches. maybe he's not going to talk about that but i really respect him for the hard hitting reports his organization has put out and for not pulling his punches. donald trump said repeatedly during the campaign that the nuclear deal with iran was one of the worst deals the united states has ever negotiated. he has implied that he would tear up the deal, renegotiate the deal and some other options being discussed right now. mr. trump is right. this really is a terrible agreement that is in danger to u.s. and international security, but the question is what will mr. trump do about it? i'm going to discuss three options that are on the table for mr. trump to deal with the deal. but first, i want to talk about why this is a bad deal and there's two principled reasons for this. first of all, the the j krrks normalizes nuclear program and allows nuclear activities while the agreement in place. why is that a problem? iran built its nuclear infrastructure in defiance of its treaty obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. it cheated. it's a state sponsor of terror and had been the position until early in the obama administration that there are certain technologies although they have peaceful applications, iran should not be allowed to pursue because they're too easy to use to make weapons. however, the obama administration was so desperate for an agreement, it made concession after concession to give away these dangerous technologies because they want to get a legacy nuclear agreement for president obama. now, the main technology that is of grave concern is uranium enrichment until 2010 or 2011 and stuck with the prior u.s. position that iran cannot be allowed to rich uranium. iran can operate 5,000 uranium centers, slightly over 5,000 uranium center refufuges. iran should not be allowed to enrich uranium. it should be our position too as well as the israeli government. proponents of the deal have praised the fact under the agreement, iran filled this reactor with cement and it will be rebuilt so does not produce weapons grade plutonium. it will be rebuilt by the chinese according to the association, it will be the source of a quarter of a weapon's worth of plutonium per year but even if it's not usable as weapons which some experts have said, this agreement will allow iran to require expertise and the construction and operation of a heavy water reactor. this was an outrageous concession by the united states and something i think is going to make us considerably less safe down the road when this reactor is completed and in addition, this reactor has been exempted from an oversight process to safeguard the technology being provided for the construction of this reactor is not being diverted for weapons purposes. so i mean, this is a real problem. for verification under the agreement is very weak. supposedly, this has the strongest verification measures of any nuclear agreement in history and in fact, the verification mostly applies ottato the supply chain and sites. there is a procedure to get access to non-declared sites but has to be a vote of treaty parties to get that inspection and if iran refused in theory sanctions would be snapped back, that had been suspended under the agreement. if the trump administration attempts to get authorization from the various parties to get an inspection like this, the answer is almost certain to be no because the europeans wouldn't agree to vote with him and threat to withdraw from him and more snapback sanctions so i don't think that's an option. in addition, iran is refusing to allow inspections of military facilities. if there are weapons-related activities going on, it's happening at weapons facilities. iran will not allow inspections of the facilities. that alone i think the agreement is a big problem and then issues that were left out of the and these concerned promises by the obama administration that not only will this reduce but bring iran into the community of nations and make iran, improve iran's relations with the united states. i think we know the last two conditions have not happened. fired at least a dozen missiles since the nuclear agreement announced. the missiles have been fired by the iranian proxy into the red sea at saudi ships and continued to support terrorism probably financed by the enormous amount of money it received in sanctions relief under the agreement. but missiles is something worth talking about at a little bit of length. we were told earlier in the nuclear talks that missiles would be included in the agreement but the iranians refused to include it so there's a provision with missiles test in the security council resolution that endorsed the agreement but wasn't known at the time that this language barring iranian missile test for i think 8 years weakened previous security council resolutions and only applies to missile tests designed to carry nuclear warheads. now, let's be real here. they are not built to fire monkeys into space or pay loads full of dynamite. they're nuclear weapons delivery system to carry nuclear bombs against israel, the united states and europe. that's the purpose. iran is the only nation in history to have a missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers or more without having a nuclear weapons system so let's not pretend this is not part of the nuclear weapons program. it was another irresponsible concession by the obama administration to get this deal that allowed the agreement to go go without this as part of it. this is why every time iran tests the mistsile. not in compliance with the muk leer nuclear and the irani prime minister actually worked on this language so is they could get it part of the program. i think it gets iran closer to a nuclear weapon and i think iran will, is able to cheat on the agreement and not be taugcaught. what should president trump do? tear up the agreement, renegotiate the agreement or pursue a policy of strictly enforcing the agreement. in my view, tearing up the agreement is the best option. this is a fraud. it was so fraudulent to the american people, there are numerous not disclosed to congress when voted in december of 2015. it was negotiated not only over the objections of israel, one of our closest allies but behind its back and behind the backs of allies min the middle east. i think when we conduct negotiations with north korea, we included regional states and this agreement was initiated with no input from regional states. they were surprised. j. solomon writes about what iran was allowed to keep under an agreement to reduce the threat from its nuclear program. it was a betrayal and i think this is the best reason why this program has to be stopped. also, this agreement undermines important non-proliferation efforts that the united states was pursuing to stop uranium enrichment and fuel reprocessing. this is something the bush administration worked hard on and negotiated an agreement to share peaceful nuclear technology with the united arab emirates called the gold standard which provided the nation was sharing to agree not to enrich and not process for plutonium. the obama administration backed away from that standard. i think this was a serious mistake because more allowed to enrich and reprocess fuel means more have covert nuclear programs. this was a mistake. we have to return to the gold standard. we have to return to a process of not permitting the proliferation of reprocessing and uranium enrichment. i think that of the options that the president is looking at, renegotiation is more confident that a trump team ultimately will either push for a deal that actually addresses the threats from iran's nuclear program, brings in other crucial issues such as ballistic missiles and sponsorship of terrorism, or iran will back out of the agreement. but there's two objections we hear about. first of all, it is a multilateral agreement the u.s. can't renegotiate on its own and what general matz said, the tis have to keep our commitments, just can't tear up, back out of this agreement. these are both false arguments. this is not really a multilateral agreement. between the united states and iran. mostly in secret, mostly before the multilateral attacks began. read jay sullivan's books. western states had their arms twisted to go along, all the concessions john kerry worked out with the iranians. these other nations are just along for the ride. that can't be the reason. concerning why the u.s. should keep its commitments, the u.s. does not have to keep its commitment to an agreement that is a fraud. this is a fraud. this agreement was fraudulently pushed forward. it dangers national security. the american people have learned about one unfair concession after another. can you imagine what congress would have done when it voted on this in september of 2015 if they knew there was a secret deal to pay ransom to get american hostages out of iran? i know the obama administration said the release of the american prisoners was not related to the nuclear deal. give me a break. of course it was related. of course there was an agreement with the iranians that they would not release those prisoners until they got sanctions relief. it is no accident that our prisoners were released on the same day that iran got its sanctions relief and the same day that we flew a plane load of cash secretly to iran. this was not disclosed by the administration while they were doing celebrations in january of 2015 about the success of the deal. january 2016, about the success of the deal. it was revealed in the "wall street journal" a few months later. there were many other secret concessions like this. which is why i say this agreement is a fraud. the u.s. does not have to stand behind a fraud. strictly enforcing. that seems to be the objective of the day right now. the reason people are pushing this is because the argument is well, it's a multilateral agreement. our european allies will be upset with us if we back out. let's force iran to back out. well, there's several problems with this. first of all, this approach legitimizes a fraudulent agreement. we know this is a fraudulent agreement and working within this process is a mistake, but second of all and this is a very important point. iran can advance its nuclear program. its nuclear weapons program and be in full compliance with the agreement because it is learning how to enrich uranium, build advanced centrifuges. it will gain access on building heavy water reactors. it doesn't make sense to use the strictly enforced approach. i think this is a serious mistake. now, there seems to be a hybrid approach i'm hearing right now. this was mentioned in the recent discussions in europe. we'll push for dropping the sunset provisions where important aspects of the agreement are suspended in 10 to 15 years. we'll ask for better reporting, the iaea and tighten the procurement channels. these are things being talked about. we'll sort of strictly enforce, renegotiate. i'm sorry, but if we stick with an agreement that lets iran to enrich, we are endangering national security, we are perpetuating a fraud. that's not good enough. it has to be an approach that stops iran from enriching, stops them from having access to technology to produce plutonium and makes them answer questions about its past nuclear weapons record. i think in the end, the best approach would be to try to renegotiate. i don't expect the iranian will cooperate and may back out of the deal. next, we put tough sanctions on iran to stop transfers of all nuclear and missile technology as well as any interaction with financial institutions that would aid these technologies. in addition, there should be sanctions in the sponsorship of the terror in destabilization of the region. any company that produces advanced nuclear technology should not be allowed to sell to iran until they answer for the nuclear program and agrees to an arrangement where we can be sure it is not pursuing nuclear weapons. so that's my approach to this thing. and i believe that president trump meant it when he said this is a terrible agreement and i expect him to keep his promise that he will either renegotiate this agreement or rip it up. i don't think there are any other options. thank you. >> thank you. our next speaker is david albright. he's written numerous assessments on secret nuclear weapons programs throughout the world, he's published articles on numerous technical and policy journals, and has authored four books, including peddling pearl, how the secret nuclear trade arms america's enemies. he's testified numerous times on nuclear issues before the u.s. congress. he's briefed government decision makers and trained many government officials in nonproliferation policymaking and he's often been cited in the media and appeared frequently on television and radio. david cooperated actively with the international atomic energy agency or iaea action team from 1992 until 1997. focusing on analysis of the iraqi documents and past procurement activities. in june 1996, he was the first nongovernmental inspector of the iraqi nuclear program. prior to founding the institute, he worked as senior staff scientist at the federation of american scientists and as a member of the research staff of princeton university's center for energy and environmental studies. take it away, dave. >> thank you very much. thanks for holding this event, chairman. it's an honor to be with fred and olli. what i'd like to do is maybe boor a little bit into the weeds, for lack of a better word. discussions of the administration, i don't know how those will end up, but what i'd like to do is focus on the issues of today. the deal is in place, meetings are happening, decisions need to be made and the united states needs to be actively involved in those discussions and i'd like to talk a little bit at the end on some of the what i would call the long-term deficiencies in this deal. fred alluded to some of them. the duration is probably the most concerning. it's limitations are sun setting of conditions on the nuclear deal. and to any ballistic missile sanctions by u.n. and then that happens at eight years and at five year, there's an end on conventional arms embargoes to iran, so one of the concerns is that iran would emerge in later years after ten years, particularly after year 15, it could end up with very robust nuclear weapons capability, where it could produce the material for a bomb within day, no more than weeks. it would have intercontinental long rage ballistic missiles fully ready to hold nuclear warheads and it would have a tremendous conventional arms force that would make any kind of military response moot point and would be a conventional force and allow iran to be quite aggressive in the region. so i think the future looks bleak from that point of view. and again, i think the obama administration hoped that the future would look great, but events haven't been going in that way. and so i think we have to think about this deal as an attempt to kick a can down the road, but it's turning into a very dangerous road in the future and remediation needs to happen now. i would emphasize or kind of confirm that fred said. from a technical point of view, a nuclear weapon is a warhead and a delivery system. if you're going to talk about a nuclear test, it could be just the device itself. but as a military useful weapon, it's a warhead and a delivery system and to think of banning one or limiting one and not limiting the other, only works so far. and if nuclear program can come back full blown and greatly expand at the time when you could have a very robust missile delivery system, you haven't accomplished what you set out to do of keeping iran from building nuclear weapons. now, i would like to add a few things on the implementation and a lot of my comments really are on what to do today. it is a living agreement, decisions need to be made. there's been too much secrecy on this deal. one of the things that got us started on just trying to uncover what's going on is a person at my organization met someone in the administration who said literally, i won't go into the details, but boy, if you knew what we were doing, you'd be really shocked. and of course to a group like my own, that's like waving a red flag in front of a bull, so we decided to start digging into some of these things going on. mostly, it was decisions by the joint commission. and what were they deciding in secret and we eventually found out they were things we saw as giving too much to the iranian. and i, after i would say much pressure and after donald trump was elected, a joint commission decided to release many of these decisions and i think they show that that too many concessions were made. there were precedents created that aren't helpful for the u.s. point of view. that's among people who may be neutral or support the deal. there were, fred mentioned ia hasn't been able to go to military sites. there is concern that if you can't go to military sites, one, you can't settle the questions of the past nuclear weapons work. but, two, you can't verify conditions in the agreement that ban certain nuclear weapons development activities that were seen as a breakthrough in this kind of deal. if you can't verify them, are you really able to say this deal is adequately verified. the concern is that you're creating no go zones or iran is within its country. and that could become particularly problematic in later years as we worry more and more about its efforts to revive the nuclear weapons program. olli, are you going to talk about par cheen? >> no. >> let me just say that, an arrangement between the ia and iran that limited the types of inspections the agency could do, in this case, at the par cheen site. a military site that iran didn't want to allow access, to it limit what had the ia could do. they none the less found traces of uranium that pointed to or confirmed a clandestine nuclear weapons program at that site, but they can't go back. if it were japan, japan would have screamed bloody murder. if japan wouldn't have allowed them to go back in to resample and clarify this issue. so you have an inspection arrangement that was just left hanging. you also have one that is very concerning, a lot of work on the enforcement. first detecti inin ining procur then u.s. enforcing it. we learned that the negotiations and for some amount of time afterward, u.s., because of fear on the iran deal. what does that mean? iranian agents or iranians break u.s. laws to try to acquire equipment that is banned to them under u.s. laws. the investigations launched in the fbi or homeland security investigations or in the commerce department, and you find the people, you indict them, but they're overseas. so you can try to lure them to a can country where they could be extradited or u.s. territory where they could be arrested. but you need the approval of the state department. at the highest levels blocked those processes, either directly or did not process. the first in the series was only approved shortly before the administration left office and so, we feel it's just been too many concessions made and so i think what i'd like to do is just talk about what should be done now. this is independent of any discussion of the fate of this deal. things the administration has to do in the meetings even as we're speaking. there needs to be more transparency. they need to release more information so we can know what's going on. fred alluded to our reports, a lot are just reporting on what the ia reports on and trying to make sense out of them. fill in holes. they report almost nothing since the deal has been implemented. we'd like to see these agreements, the long-term enrichment program. about the finances. we'd like to make sure they have access to sites in iran. there has to be guaranteed timely access. that's a biggie. hard to see you you get that in the short-term, but you can see how you would start working on it in the short-term. they have tremendous influence at the ia. this is an ia issue ultimately. there needs to be several loopholes. i'll just mention one on heavy water, i'll mention two. one on heavy water, where the iranians were able to negotiate that despite a 130 ton cap of heavy water, they were able to in essence have a 70 ton violation by having a trick where it's put in oman. they hadn't sold it. that's really what the deal is about. you sell it. you can reduce the stock. through transfer overseas. we'd like to see that loophole fixed and we have ways to do it, which are fairly straightforward. another, it's ongoing, iran is pushing the envelope on centrifuge rnd, plays games with inspectors to try to do more. there is a need to really crack down on that and make iran abide by the conditions that is agreed to and interpret those conditions more consistent with what i would call just a strict reading of the deal or literal reading of the deal. iran wants to make low enriched uranium fuel. building up to that, it's trying to develop advanced centrifuges, also trying to lay the basis for making the fuel. i think one of the priorities of the administration is try to block that. try to block them from indigenous capability. that get to this 300 kilogram cap on low enriched uranium. the administration should say no more exemptions. we leave it at 300 kilograms and don't allow exemptions. if iran was going to develop ability to make fuel, it is going to have to learn how to enrich, take the enriched uranium, put it into fuel. these elements hold typically 500 kilograms. if you want to deploy the fuel, you go way over the cap. iran plans to do this. we also know they want to test the fuel. they did a probe into germany to try to get hot cells for the site that could have been in the agreement to investigate the fuel. we don't know fully what they were going to do, but it was a probe that has troubling implications and of course, germany said no. but it raised another, iran can ask for whatever it wants. you have on that side of things, iran can go out and ask for hot cells. so another loophole is to try, is this ability to ask anywhere, we know from experience when they start going to places like china, they're going to find suppliers willing to provide it, and so in german case, things were visible ultimately in the chinese case, they might not be visible at all. they could be acquiring goods and we won't even know about them. in the end, part of the deal is the supplier is responsible for getting the approvals for procurements that are in essence controlled or banned so i think the question on the being able to go out and seek what it wants, pushing to develop fuel capability, just principles of where they are pushing, pushing, pushing to get more and it's time that the pushback happened so they actually don't get it and actually we'd get less and it would be more consistent with the agreement. i think again, these are things that can happen right away. another one is we don't know how much or is in nuclear cooperation between iran and north korea. burning question. we know there's a lot of cooperation on missile and that's probably banned by north korean sanctions and iranian ones, but it's happening and there's a need to try to get a handle on that and to try to limit those activities. what it comes down to also is that there's a need for the administration to step up its interdiction efforts, intelligence collection efforts. i spent a lot of my year in europe. there is less effort put into some of these issues involving iran because they've been given a clean bill of health in a sense. why would we focus on interdiction, intelligence, nefarious activities. really the focus in much of the world is on building trade with iran. i think the trump administration is going to have to work with allies to build back up more capabilities to detect iranian activities and to stop it. then the u.s. needs to more aggressively enforce itself own laws. it's unacceptable that iran can feel that it can come here to get banned equipment then play a game where somehow if you prosecute our people, we'll walk away from the deal. and certainly we should listen to that. it's not our problem if rouhani wins the presidency. it's hard to believe that maybe someone else can add to that. it's hard to see how rouhani winning the presidency is going to make our lives safer based on what's been happening in the last 12 months or 18 months and certainly we need to make sure that we have the strongest enforcement of our laws that's possible. i've gone a little long, so let me try to wrap it up. i won't spend so much time on the long-term. maybe here, fred and i differ. this is a more technical point of view. we could, we don't like the, don't like the duration. it really, iran talks having an enrichment program, ten, 20 times larger than it had when the program was frozen under the joint plan of action in 2014 or so. to us, that's not an acceptable outcome. it's too dangerous a region. now, what we would settle for i think, it's very radical to iranian standards, but we would just say, you have a rule. iran should be 12 months from being able to break out and produce enough for a bomb. that led fred talked about the certain number of centrifuges are allowed. we would just say the first order, a renegotiation should be trying to get 12 months of breakout time as the criteria governing the size of their nuclear program essentially for ever. that would be the negotiating goal. it's fret pretty close to zero. i think we would say take what you've got now and extend it forever. the verification is not adequate and is the program, like anything, like a bank security. you tighten security at a bank because you have to figure that they're going to learn how to defeat the systems. so you always have to be improving it. i think in the jcpoa, the undeclared side of this is really inadequate and there has to be limits on iranian ballistic development. that has to be a condition. so let me end there. apologize for going long. >> thank you, david and our last is dr. olli heinonen. dr. heinonen is currently a senior adviser on science and nonproliferation at the foundation for democracies in washington. he's also a senior fellow at the harvard kennedy school of government's center for science and international affairs. his research and teachings include nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. verification of treaty compliance enhancement of the verification work of international organizations and transfer and control of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. before joining the center in september of 2010, he served 27 years at the international atomic energy agency, iaea, in vienna. he was the deputy director general of the iaea and head of its department of safeguards. prior to that, he was director at the agency's various operational divisions and as an inspector including at the overseas office in tokyo, japan. prior to joining the iaea, he was a senior research officer at the technical research center of finland's reactor laboratory in charge of research and development related to nuclear waste solidification and disposal. he's the co-author of several patents on radioactive waste solidificati solidification. he's written many articles. his policy briefings had been published by many think tank, including foundation for defense of democracies, atlanta council. nautilus institute, institute for science and international security. which i notice you never say isis anymore. nonproliferation policy education center and the washington institute for northeast policy. olli also is a member of the nonpartisan iran task force, and i would just encourage you to take your full measure, because i was under the impression we had a hard stop at 1:00, but that's not the case, so you can do your full briefing. >> thank you very much. for having me here to share my views on the implementation. and the way forward. we have in europe, a saying -- in english, repetition is the mother of all studies. i'm not going to repeat that david said this morning. i agree many of the points. maybe i test at some additional remarks perhaps come more from my experience. i see it as a complex political agreement. which puts a lid, for a short period of time, to iran's activity, but more advanced centrifuges, and with the long-term, it doesn't ask iran to forgo reprocessing. this is the way i see the jcpoa. since it's a complex agreement, it has understand the parties have agreed. how to implement it. here i mean agreement with the five plus one and iran on one hand and on the other hand, also between iran and iaea. some of the agreements are public as david pointed out, but there are still quite a few of them. unless you have these agreements or compromises, when he described his -- he said that this was a compromise. where the parties gave up their requirements. once you have a compromise, there are a few things you can compromise, a few things you should not compromise. what you should not compromise is exactly what fred said. your long-term nonproliferation -- those should not be compromised. the other things are the well established nondiscriminatory verification practices. they have been shown that they work in a real work, so we should not compromise those. then when i look at implementation, in the first three, the lack of transparency. it makes it very difficult with readers. not only nonproliferation wonks like me or david, but also the government to understand where they are. because there are no facts available. so that they can do their own independent assessments, how these for iran alert verification activities work in the real life. you have perhaps statements of the member states and the secretary has provided technical briefings. that's fine. that's great. this is such to clarify some technical issues. they are not official. they were informal, so therefore, this briefings, there's no material, just no records yet. so the only official statement and a record from the iaea is board of governors meetings, what is recorded there, plus the quarterly report on the implementation of jcpoa, so these are the two documents that are available for the one hand. policymakers and political decision makers. we should keep this in mind. as david pointed out, the side agreements set up a number of, special arrangements, whether it's the uranium in iran and the deal with the inventer. so heavy water with in my view, are not exactly compatible with the long established verification standards. with the agreement which will limit. you have heard some of these hot cells have been exempt. i think it's important for the international community to do what's the -- and if they are exempted, a place to ensure or other activities, the undertaking we don't see anything. the types of inspections. then whatever we think about this agreement. one of the key documents which has have been agreed, the five plus one, which david mentioned. the long-term nuclear program. ten-year plan. submitted by iran to the aprofile and then -- of the joint commission and then subsequently to the iaea. this is one of those documents which has been kept confidential. in countries which have this is often not called white papers. to everyone, so we can see where the nuclear program is going on, what are the long-term plans and then to see the reason, where does it fit in this program? why does iran need this day, 300 plus. that's uranium. what's the use when it will be used? similarly is the why is it the fabricate, what's the reason behind when we know that iran's nuclear program is most likely limited in the next 15 years, those who have background, they know that if you build a nuclear fuel production capability, you need to have at least one dozen or 50 reactors to serve. iran is not going to have those anytime soon. why does iran need enriched uranium? there's a well established market which has been b operating for years. there is an overproduction. to my knowledge, there has never been a reactor because lack hue. so why this is needed. then, going back to the transparency and to this acquisition of uranium. those numbers are not in the iaea reports. so because iran and, the confidence in number. at the same time, there is a book called red book published together by oecd and iaea, different brands, the government of iran supplements numbers of uranium, so i find it difficult to understand why this confidence, other publications where this is not confidential. then the last point is the conclusion. this also deviated from the established practices. the jcpoa states that once the iaea has reached the clues, iran will seek to ratify the political. all the other states in the iaea, of course, the other way around. first, they have to ratify the -- and make it binding then study the program and provide the conclusion. here it goes the other way around and doesn't set any timeline for iran to comply with that. then fred mentioned the question of ballistic missiles and the missile testing. iran called not to do those tests. it's a little strange to me for two reasons, that the iran does this tests with ballistic missiles because if he negotiates, he must have negotiated in good faith and therefore, there shouldn't be no test. because he just agreed. that in the resolution or is there a side what constitutes these tests and i would also raise the question that why the cruise missiles are not on that. why we only talk about the ballistic missiles when we know that iran has a program for cruz missiles, which some people say already have been even tested. we don't know the jury is still out. several voices against renegotiating the agreement. this will undermine the authority of mr. rouhani and he may not be able to handle a situation, hard-liners will take. then we are back to square one and iran will go with the full speed of its nuclear program. the other claim is that there is no international support. that's true. there has been little statements they are not willing to negotiate the jcpoa or other agreement because they feel this kind of push back. there is some other people, yemen involvement in syria, rights, et cetera, that they are all actually counterproductive. from the point of the implementation of the agreement. so in argument, people say, if ain't broke, don't fix. that's simple. if you try to fix, there's no one to help you. you don't put the airplane to fly and find out there's an engine trouble. you don't want to drive a car that you do preventive in order to avoid the situation. i think this is where we are today. it needs maintenance to make sure iran is not as david mentioned, able to guess the -- in a few week's time. then when we look at the way i read the jcpoa, it doesn't mean a renegotiation. push some of the security council, also at the same time, jcpoa. particularly, testing of ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. it's a violation and should have consequences. there are several, the first transparency by the iaea. for the joint committee, you have to be more open to reporting. important items as david suggested, verification coverage. number of inspections, type of inspections, how often they are done, so we can see how well iran is complying with its undertakings and in terms can provide that iran complies with its requirements. there are questions raised by david. and i see it has another aspect because what is the next milestone? the conclusion. how should be reached not later than eight years from now. but it might come much earlier. it means that they confirm and state that iran's nuclear program is peaceful. that will be a game changer. game changer from iranian point of view because they can argue additional concessions based on the fact that there are nuclear program is peaceful. the sanctions get lifted, which is a little bit awkward and david had explained. many other things get lifted. conventional arms trade, no sanctions, travel ban, military officers, plus then also the frozen funds which are still there from the -- other than the nuclear program. so they all get lifted. so therefore, these provisions actually drivers for iran in early compliance with the conclusion. the most important at this point in time, two additional messages. the first one certainly that iran ratifies before it concludes. for that one, anything in the jcpoa. it's simple system from the side of iranian government, we can do it any day. you don't need to make a special agreement to miss it. but then there are more with the field and nuclear program and i mentioned uranium, but say nuclear power program. nuclear program for the fuse. what do we sort of agree at the time is the following. iran can maintain a small enrichment program, the way it is at that day when the conclusion is reached. which is a very limited concentrated on our deal small amount of more advanced centrifuges, but no grow up. and at the same time, the p5 plus 1 provide two things to iran. long-term fuel supply and so they don't need to give up their fuel replication capability is and don't need uranium enrichment, ten year plan and at the same time, provide iran with the -- to take spent fuel back which they have sold to iran. distance for example, maybe more comfortable with iran or the nuclear program has expanded. you may revise some of the parameters. and i think that i stop here with one more sentence, why i see this nuclear energy plan is important. it should have said it in the beginning. you have heard iran is talking about propulsion using nuclear energy to propel commercial ships. i would like to know from this secret plan which was done a year ago, is this something that has been done in recent months. thank you. >> thank you. >> and we'll go to a period of q&a now. i would ask you when you ask a question, identify yourself and your affiliation if you want to advertise it on cspan or just say private citizen. i'll ask one question and then go to the audience. when i talk about the nuclear deal, i often refer to a great quote by a noted philosopher who once said this thing is like an onion, the more you peel it, the more it stinks. part of that is because we're only finding out about what's inside this onion through the exposure of these secret side deals. i remember i think the first one was about the iranian's, the fact they were allowed to inspect that, acting remotely through iaea inspectors. i wonder if senator cotton and mike pompeo hadn't gone to vienna to talk to the iaea, that we would know that today, which is incredible that the u.s. congress is blind sided by this. do you think there's other secret agreements out there, and if so, should they be exposed to the trump administration and that would go to anyone who would like to take that. >> i would assume there are more and they would be made public. if there's classified information in them, i don't think there can be, if it's an agreement with iran or the iaea. but if there are things that need to be kept secret, they can be segregated off and there can a redaction, but to just wholesalely make these deals secret, i think it is a fool's errand. we found out about several of them. and so i think you can't keep a secret and full transparency is the way forward. >> i want to give a shameless plug to my book. which is available a free pdf on our website or you can buy from amazon.com. so my boss will be happy i put in a plug for the book. i think there are more secret side deals and it is essential that the trump administration release them right now. one wonders why is this information classified? why is it secret? it's not being kept from the parties to the agreement or iranian, it's being kept from the american people. from congress. that's whole reason these things are confidential. when you classify something, you're keeping it from someone. who? who's it being kept from? from the american people. so i called president obama. president trump. as soon as possible. maybe today. to order the state department to release every single document of the jcpoa. >> yes, maybe a couple of about this inspection to parts in my long-term experience. in an ordinary ware of conducting, we don't know the details. it's more somewhere nearby. the uranium, more samples, from uranium particles. that's what it is and i talk about the well established inspection practices. in order to do such an inspection, do what this caller assessment. you'll access the vulnerabilities, you'll have the result, then you will do field exercises for practice. i don't think this time frame -- i'll give you a couple of examples. to make sure that the purpose, it cannot be defeated. the it's importance the right. came goes for the samples. we ran the sample exercises, i think more than two years before they accepted as an inspection method and if we have this kind of remote inspection as this was, this creates a tremendous precedent. anywhere in the world. just keep the operator to poke around of the fixers. the iaea has strength. access to sites, location, equipment, people and information. >> with that, i'd like to open it up to the audience. mr. harold rhode right here. >> i worked at the pentagon and iran studying basically iranian culture. my question, since i don't know anything about nuclear things, so all of you, is there really an agreement, we all talk about this agreement between iran and it is really iran and obama here. now, here's the reason i say that. the agreement in english that has been publicized is about a third of what is written in persian. the english, this country the responsible for that and all that. the persian version is the passive voice. it will be be done. it should be noted that. it isn't clear who is doing what to whom. the second point is that an iranian culture and in iran historically, written agreements don't mean anything. they're steps on a path to get to where you want to go. i know in the west, we consider them holy, so whatever this agreement, first of all, we don't know is it the persian version that matters, the english version and finally, jim, you used the metaphor of an onion. in iran, the way iranians understand iranian culture is there is a center core like the center of an onion and it is protected. it's like an onion. that's what they said. it's layer upon layer to protect the core in the center. they are clearly the most sophisticated and fascinated culture in the middle east. and everything you were talking about is so easy for them to hide. to simulate. they don't even call it lying. so, is is there an agreement? what version matters. it all seems to be a joke. sad political joke on the united states of america. >> george would agree with that. >> i'm not an expert on iranian culture or appeal to another way of looking at that. froms i would say this deal is is easy to renegotiate on many levels. part of my criticism in part of the last year is that's how iran's been approaching it. if you see something you want, go for it. and they've been able to exploit an administration that's been fairly weak and saying no and so that to me, says there's multiple ways, start toughening this up and putting out what we want and see what happens. and if iran doesn't want to do it, then we can make it decision then. this is an important question. john kerry as much as admitted it was not negotiated as a treaty because the obama administration knew it couldn't be ratified and indeed when it was voted on this congress, most members voted against it, although not the two-thirds to kill the agreement. the top democrats on the house foreign affairs committee and senate foreign relations committee voted against the agreement. it was a fraud. it is an unsigned, nonbinding agreement. you're right, there's another version in persian that the iranian think is binding and that makes renegotiation and strictly enforcing this agreement is extremely difficult. >> my father was a lawyer. and you know, he used to say to me that law is not how it is written. it is how it is read. and i think this is true also with this agreements. i negotiated few agreements with the iran 2003. agreement between eo 3 and iran. actually, implementation was left up to us to ia to define. together with the iran. not eu 3. i think that was a good decision. to create the extend, they get, which detected an activist. they left us to implement it to great extent. it came from the political domain, now, we can't cooperate anymore. and when you go to site, yes, you have a discussion. there's a lady from "the new york times" who wrote the post, revolution from iran. one chapter says iran has ruled, i think this is what you'll face and this has been where the iaea and organization has a trouble that when it -- implementation, it has the backing for example and its governors and in order to have that, you need to have a transparent reporting so people see where the troubles are. >> this man back here. >> hi. pat span, just myself. like you said about the likelihood of this working out, can you look in your crystal ball, what happens in five, ten 15 years from now when iran is nuclear and produces a nuclear weapon? is the end game? it's a matter of when. >> that's what the trump administration now has a chance to do. whether they can do it or not, i don't know. if it fails, then and say you don't want to have military options on the table. you have a very difficult situation and i find it hard to believe that a country like saudi arabia would maintain just a peaceful program. i would assume that, you know, they're looking at their options today out of an anticipate a future iranian nuclear weapons program. so i think you're going to have more proliferation. if the deal continues, i would even argue that as armed as iran could become, i'm not sure how military options would be feasible, short of a full scale war. there maybe we could win it. but it would be pretty bloody. and it's not even clear what would mean or what would follow. so i think again, i would just emphasize that i think there's an opportunity now to fix this. i don't see iran has particularly strong. i think they're a lot of talk and they often will make concessions. so i think that should be played out and we should try to get a deal. first get the implementation back on a reasonable track. and then try to renegotiate parts really aimed at getting our goals established, which i would say middle east if it's not completely free of nuclear weapons, it's not almost at that point. >> this is an important question because i think there are people on left who don't see a problem. that's why i call my book on the iranian nuclear deal. president obama and his officials, israel has a nuclear bomb. india has and pakistan. why can't iran? because iran is a state sponsor of terror. they want to wipe the nations off the face of the earth. my view is it may not be possible for stopping iran, but they have to do everything possible to slow the day that it happens and to deny all nuclear technology. this deal lets it get lots of nuclear technology and build lots of bombs. that's why it's a fraud that has to be stopped. i am very worried about the day where they test a weapon and i think that day is coming and we have to be pragmatic and kill or substantially i think we have an good opportunity here as long as we don't this end game before the conclusion. once you have agreed that this is a peaceful nuclear program stated it's a peaceful nuclear program, it's going b to be extremely difficult to role back anything of that. so, we have about much less than eight year's time to do it. but perhaps after the election in a couple of times. those two next years are right for that. >> this woman here. >> thank you. there's an element we've not discussed and it doesn't have to do with technology or engineering, butt rather the id yol ji of the regime. what is its character, its definition and we can look to its own constitution for that definition, which is a jihadist regime that seeks to impose sharia on the entire world. that's what its constitution says. so, with that in mind and understanding that the ukrainr nuclear weapons program has been clandestine since it was born in the 1980s, when are we doing now u to verify or investigate or at least to consider what iran is doing clandestinely in the sites that have nothing to do with the jcpoa, but where very likely, additional enrichment activities and nuclear warhead are indeed continued. what can we say about those things if any? if anything? >> you know, specific country, thousand kilometers this way and i think 400 that way. you cannot go into take every nook and korcranny there. you cannot look door in the country to find out whether there's enrichment going on. you have to have a good intelligence, you have to use all messes you have in place o find out if there is something clandestine going and then after that, you need to have the access and at this point in time, we don't know how much they're doing because we don't see anything about how many complimentary reactions are done. how many went to declare sites and how did they deal with the so-called undeclared sites, but you can't in our test try to pick them by random. every other mechanical work of significant country like that, and hope you would find it. no, you have to have information and after that access. >> i would just add that without anytime anywhere inspections, of military sites, we'd never be able to answer those questions. >> i want to clarify one thing. there is no exclusion under safe clause agreement for a military sites. iaea has access to every location in the territory of the state or other areas which are underits control, which might be outside of the territory of the state. so the question is is then how you exercise this right. and in order to exercise it, you need to have a -- >> i would add though that iran's strategy is to make it very hard for the ia to access military sites and it was one of their red lines in the gauche wragss. i think the administration gave far too much on that. so, i would say that the ia n d needs even in the absence of information, need to assert its right to visit military sites. i mean, it could start with par cheen, where it needs to finish its job. it could say look, the jcpoa has conditions in it, banning certain types of explosive work relating to nuclear weapons and tests of electronic work in order to verify, they need to visit military sites where those kinds of military ak btivities take place, so i would say trs important they assert its ability to go to these places in the short-term and that the u.s. support that. of course, it's going to be a confrontation. without that confrontation now, you're going to end up up with an on verified agreement and if you want to have a confrontation later, it will probably inevitably end up in some kind of military confrontation. >> this man right here. >> thank you. preston knoll. so, we're listening, i'm list listening to this and we hear it in a rarefied atmosphere. but i'd like to ask a question so it will be kind of out there. imagine that iran, great jihadi, state sponsor terrorism all over the world. finds a way to produce large numbers of small nuclear weapons and to get them in the hands of lot of terrorists around the world. what will the world look like if that were to happen? >> that would be a very ugly world. >> last week, i was briefing on terrorism and how the various states protect their critical infrastructure. you don't need a big number of devices, two, three. the right is the one that counts. threat is the one of the people plus the unpredictable. you don't know when they strike, how they strike. who they strike. that will be tremendous. >> what you p proposed is why we can't tolerate iran having weapons. these might be used to set off an electrical charge to knock out the electrical system, possibly of most of the united states if they could mount them in a rocket. as a state sponsor of terror, there should be special rules and frankly, i think the u.s. position should be if you violate your nonproliferation treaty, you're not entitled to peaceful technology. you've broken the deal, you're not getting anything, you're cut off. >> we have time for one more question. let me ptry this man right here. >> james from -- property. my question is along the line of the fact that the over the last eight years for many reasons, maybe political weakness, the order that has coerced bad actors has been unraveling, so we have north korea violating agreements. we have china and russia developing missiles that violate the treaty of '87 and other examples of that. we have the american government doing or allowing things, showing weakness to syrian red line and now this agreement and then we have secretary kerry for example, kind of perpetuated this idea of american weakness when he practically yelled at congressman and others accusing them of sabotaging the agreement because this is the only agreement that we could get out of it if we don't do this, we have this, he perpetuated this idea of weakness on the part of the united states and my question is are we really in a weak position and what steps can we do to really take back the pu initiative and to play hardball with iran to prevent them from coming up with with creating a nuclear weapon and further promoting terrorism and destabilizing the middle east? what can we do that will really, can we and what can we do to be effective in doing that? >> united states is the leader of the free world. there's a new sheriff in town. the united states is no longer to appease iran and agree to get some kind of agreement, we're going to get a good agreement or there's not going to be an agreement. that's what president trump and his staff can do. that's what the last administration was incapeable o doing because they were interested in doing nothing but leading from behind, b appeasing enemies and getting an agreement at all costs and frankly, i think obama decided to concede the bomb to iran because he didn't think it was a problem because other states had nuclear weapons. i think it can be done with the leadership we are seeing in this administration. >> i would sjust say that i thik within the jcpoa context, the various decision making bodies, a lot can be done very quickly. the procurement working group meeting every three weeks. and the joint commission every quarter. so a lot of things can be done just by showing up at meetings and charting a new course. >> we'll leave this now to go to live capitol hill and the leaders for the relacement of the nation's health care law. >> it's the budget reconciliation legislation that's part of the house republican's efforts to repeal and replace obama care. after years of broken promises, we're proud to put forth a plan that represents a better way for patients and american families and this morning, tom price sent us a letter. on behalf of the trump administration in sport of our legislation. that's a first step on the path to fulfilling our promising to the american peel. people. we welcome president trump and secretary price's support. we will continue working closely with them and our colleagues in the senate to get this bill passed in the law. let me be clear. our plan is the first step. under our plan, we are moving forward in a positive direction. to rescue the individual insurance market and to give flexibility to our states. we are protecting those patients living with preexisting conditions under our plan. we are not returning to the days of lifetime or annual limits. and we will continue to allow young adults to remain on their parent's policies until they reach the age of 26 and we will keep our promise to not pull the rug out from anyone including those on medicaid. we're also creating a new and