On the Iran deal the self-styled deal maker is a deal breaker when it comes to the historic agreement limiting Iranian uranium enrichment in return for the lifting of sanctions Trump refused to certify Iranian compliance and pass the ball to Congress which now must decide but the u.n. Monitoring agency has determined that terrine on is a hearing to the conditions agreed to does the United States have evidence indicating otherwise why is Trump now abrogating the deal and insulting Iran as a rogue state Iran once in Washington's hip pocket under the Shah broke away with its 1979 Islamic revolution the u.s. Has been hostile Ever since if the deal collapses Why would any country say North Korea enter into an agreement with Washington it changes what has been negotiated post facto in this case the old saw applies if it ain't broke don't fix it our guest today is Trita Parsi he's president of the National Iranian American Council and is the author of several books on u.s. Iranian relations including losing an enemy Obama Iran and the triumph of diplomacy I talked with him in Denver Welcome to the program thank you so much. J c p o a a awkward acronym for the joint comprehensive plan of action the nucular deal 5 permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany signed it after long negotiations in Vienna on Bastille Day actually July 14th 2015 the i.a.e.a. The International Atomic Energy agency conducts inspections of Iranian sites u.s. Ambassador to the u.n. Nikki Haley former governor of South Carolina was in Vienna apparently pushing or interrogating the staff there as to what's happening with these inspections and the big question is Iran in compliance so you're putting your finger on something that is really important 1st of all the Iranians are in compliance they are 8 reports by the i.a.e.a. Their Tomic Energy Agency in Vienna who's been tasked to oversee the implementation of this deal they are to referee on matters of violation and they have 8 times in a row now certify that the Iranians are living up to the deal and in some cases they're actually living up to beyond the deal the trumpet in a stray ssion has been seeking ways to kill the deal and while the president himself seems to have preferred just walking out. Even though it would be very costly to the United States he doesn't seem to care because he doesn't seem to understand other people in his administration is reporting a different approach same goal killed the but a different approach and one of those approaches was to use a mechanism within the deal in which one can request access for the inspectors to visit non nuclear sites inside of Iraq this is a mechanism that is in place in order to make sure that if the Iranians secretly are doing something elsewhere the I should be able to go there and look what is required however is that you present the i.a.e.a. Where the credible evidence if the i.a.e.a. Doesn't have credible evidence but but is pushed into doing this the result will be that they won't find anything and after a 3rd time of doing this and not finding anything it's the credibility of the I that gets killed. So the i.a.e.a. Has a reason to resist but the Trump instructions calculation was if we strong armed I and pushed them to request access to sites where we don't have any evidence that something fishy is going on the Iranians will see no and once the Iranians say no we can say aha the Iranians are in violation and that way you can get out of the deal while passing the blame and the cost on to Tehran Nikki Haley went to I She got a very firm response by the i.a.e.a. Saying that they have no reason to do this she had no new evidence that she presented to them she was only trying to strong arm them into doing something and it failed it failed quite miserably and ever since we have not heard the trumpet instruction seeking that path towards killing that they will instead they're seeking other paths the Defense Secretary Mabus says the deal is quoting in our best interests and apparently the secretary of state to loosen national security advisor McMaster and other government officials as well as scores of disown meant experts have said that this is a good deal. Without a doubt I just published my book on Dio I was in a unique position throughout these negotiations because I was on the one hand advising the Obama administration ministration and on the other hand I also had access to the Iranians so it wasn't unusual I could be at the White House and early in the week and at the end of the week during the talks I would have a 2 hour private session with the Iranian foreign minister and gave me a chance to see things up front very close and get both sides perspectives their calculations their fears terror tactics and strategies I also interacted a lot with the scientific community as part of the research for the deal and within the scientific community the value of this deal is as established as climate changes questioning the deal on scientific basis is as silly. As is to question whether climate change exist this is not a scientific question this is a political question dissonance of this is absolutely solid the Iranians essentially have no chance of being able to find the path to a nuclear bomb but as long as this deal survives if Trump kills the deal of course then that's a completely different matter but this is the toughest inspections regime that ever has been put into place and there's no alternative to this that in any way shape or form would measure up to the science that is the foundation of this deal and incidentally part of the reason why the science was so much part of this is because Ernest money's the Secretary of Energy was the lead negotiator he is a nuclear physicist from mit his counterpart on the Iranian side was another mit ph d. Or saw that he they were actually at mit at the same time both of them nuclear physicists whenever he noted States tested a model or made a proposal to the Iranians and the Iran has made some revisions to it the u.s. Signed would take that revised version back to the scientific community they actually modeled it they tested it is there a way for the Iranians to cheat if we do it this way and once everything was solidly on scientific grounds that's when it was okayed. It's kind of ironic that the 3 states that have nuclear weapons and the ballistic missile delivery systems capabilities are Israel India and Pakistan none is a signatory to the nonproliferation treaty I've been to Iran several times and people bring this up in terms of there's a double standard for Israel India and Pakistan and another special standard for Iran is Iran being held to special unique criteria I think Benny ways yes obviously all of this is happening in a political context and in this specific case is happening in a geo political context in which the main driving sort of force behind pushing this onto the top of the international agenda was Israel who itself has weapons and is not as signatory but there was also a risk incidentally that instead of a double standard this could have led to a quadruple standard that may explain why during the negotiations it was critical for the Iranians to make sure that there would be a deal that yes it would punish them for what they have done in the past but it would give a path so that the Iranians would end up being able to once again be a full n.p.t. Partner signatory which means that within the n.p.t. There are countries that have weapons and there are countries that don't have weapons and then there's a 3rd category there are countries that are not within the n.p.t. And have weapons Israel Pakistan India now of course North Korea since they walked out of them Beaty. This was essential because some on the western side wanted the punishment to be permanent which meant that Iran would have become a 4th category a country that would be part of the n.p.t. Would live up to the n.p.t. Requirements eventually but would permanently be treated differently this was absolutely unacceptable to the Iranians that's why you have a scenario in which certain aspects of the restrictions on the Iranians are going to be lifted on a year or 10 on year 15 granted that the Iranians have lived up to the deal by that meaning that they have restored international confidence that Iran's program is sorely peaceful once that confidence is there Iran should be able to be no different from Sweden Belgium Japan but there are some who are pushing to make sure that that's not the case and there are some right now there are pushing that Benyamin Netanyahu when he was giving his reasons talk on this was insisting that Iran that. This should be no sunset as he called that this really is no sunset but what he's referring to is that some restrictions would be lifted once Steven years have lived up to the test that is to turn Iran into a 4th category nation the only country that would be part of the n.p.t. But not enjoy the rights of the n.p.t. . Netanyahu the Israeli prime minister who incidentally is under investigation for various or transgressions he says it's $938.00 and Iran is Germany so that's and you know who has more than any Israeli leader in the last 20 years pushed to make Iran an existential threat or define it as a nexus to ensure through. It's funny because by doing this of course his calculation was that he would eliminate the status quo option meaning the idea that the United States could just contain the Iranian nuclear program and kick the can down the road or let it be the headache of the next administration he did so because he thought that by eliminating the status quo option he would force the United States to take action military action because if you have an existential threat that is growing ever ensure the United States would have to take military action in particular since the Israelis were constantly pushing to make sure that there could not be any compromise on this issue but in a bizarre way this deal may have come about not in spite of methane you know but because of Netanya because you see by eliminating the status quo option he forced in as he is to take action he thought that he could force in our cities to take military action and he underestimated Obama and he misread America in the sense that the public was so adamantly against another war they were so tired of war that actually pushed Obama into the diplomatic that action had that on Yahoo not done this had he not eliminated the status quo option I'm personally convinced the chances are that President Obama would not have made that immense and very costly and very risky investment in going down that 2 year long deployment more than 2 year long diplomatic path with the Iranians so. In some ways Bizarrely we may have to have Netanyahu to thank for getting this to. APAC is universally acknowledged as one of the most influential and most powerful and well funded a lobby what kind of influence does the Israeli lobby have a policy the influence of the right wing Israeli lobby meaning the groups that tend to be very close to the Likud view a pack of course is the leading one are quite powerful but I would say that over the course of the last 10 years while still powerful there's strong position of dominance has really reduced and and shrunk significantly You see they spent between $20.00 and $40000000.00 the summer of 2015 and they lost they had been on advertisements denouncing the deals and everything else trying to kill the deal not only did they lose they end up getting less Democrats on their side at the end of the process than they had in the beginning of the process I think what we saw here as well as what we saw in August 2013 when there was a vote on whether to authorize military force against Syria was that these groups that have earned the reputation of being a hedge a monic and dominant on their issues are dominant as long as the American public is absent but once you have mass mobilization by the American public which only can happen on very very few issues in very very specific moments when the constellation is such that they can. You know to now at Paris Hilton and the Kurdish as for a quick moment and focus on something more important and they massively mobilize then we see that these groups as powerful as they are are no longer dominant and they oftentimes lose that's exactly what happened in 2013 rightly or wrongly there was mass mobilization to push back against Congress authorizing military force in Syria APAC lobbied in favor of military action the defense industry lobby in favor of military action President Obama lobbied in favor of military action yet most members of Congress that we've spoken to said that they got 97 phone calls against military action 23 in favor. Same thing happened during the summer of 2015 the calls in favor or to cause against a deal were larger in number but the cause in favor of war still so numerous so strong quite unprecedented that it was sufficient to be able to win the case. Now the conventional wisdom about the deal and how it evolved is that the sanctions were really hurting Iran they were desperate to get out of them and the that's what brought them to the table you say that Obama made a diplomatic move that was quite a dramatic explain what happened this narrative in Washington that sanctions is what brought the Iranians to the table and they were so desperate so that they caved. Is really not true and it's very dangerous for us to lull ourselves into believing that drinking our own Kool-Aid because that will give us a false understanding of what actually made this deal work this deal that no one thought could be achieved and then we will apply the wrong model the false model on future cases such as North Korea today in order to understand what went right we have to be honest with ourselves what actually did go right here and when you see what happened in the secret negotiations in Oman that no one knew about at the time . You see a very different picture let me start here January 2012 Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta publicly says that Iran's breakout capability is 12 months meaning the moment they will decide to build the material for a bomb to them having the material would take 12 months January 2013 a new sense of urgency dawns on the White House because it turns out that Iran's breakout capability had shrunk to 8 to 12 weeks this is as a result of the u.s. Imposing sanctions on Iran and the Iranians responding deliberately by doubling down on their nuclear program and the question then was which clock ticks to fast us is it the sanctions clock or is it the nuclear clock with the u.s. Be able to cripple the Iranian economy 1st or will the Iranians be able to present the United States with a nuclear fetter complete 1st it was a race but generally 2013 the president understands that the nuclear clock was not ticking faster if nothing else changed the United States would be faced with only 2 options either accepting that Iran is becoming at the fact a nuclear power or go to war. The thing that could change is if the United States finally for the very 1st time made a diplomatic play that Obama had planned to do but he had planned to do it at the end of a negotiation not in the beginning of the negotiation and that is to go to the Iranians and say we accept your red line we accept that you can have and Richmond on your soil which was the absolute red line of the Iranians they would never compromise on this regardless of how much pressure and sanctions they were put on and you know I interviewed tons of the negotiators from all sides on this and I got their own quotes and their stories of what actually happened in the secret talks I also spoke to folks on the Omani side about this so March 2013 Ahmadinejad is still president we're not talking about the Rouhani years or Bamma allows a senior the Legation of diplomats to go to Amman this would be the 2nd meeting the 1st meeting was in July of 2012 it was a very bad meeting nothing good came out of it but this time around he sends a senior delegation including the number 2 at the State Department investor Bill Burns and for the very very 1st time he allows the American diplomats to happen instrument in their hands that they were not allowed to have $24.00 which was a carefully worded statement on how and when and on the what circumstances the United States would be willing to concede the issue of enrichment to the Iranians this happened during the Ahmadinejad years and thus the breakthrough that then led to the negotiations that eventually got this deal of everyone that I've interviewed in the White House Europeans Russians Iranians had this not been made has this concession not be made we would not be seeing. A deal right now and in reverse if this concession. Had been made 10 years earlier we could have had a deal 10 years earlier that would have been better than the deal the United States got now because during those 10 years when the u.s. Was pursuing sanctions the Iranians were advancing their program as the sanctions gave the United States more leverage in a negotiation so did the new number of centrifuges that the Iranians were constantly adding. And the knowledge that the amassed about the fuel cycle so we could have gotten a deal 10 years ago without the sanctions with the Iranians keeping much less centrifuges and having much less knowledge about the fuel cycle if we had adopted a more realistic position back then instead of waiting this long and then conceding this in 2013 and the story that is we could have gotten a better deal 10 years before we started imposing these sanctions but goes I think back to the whole context of u.s. Iranian relations which have been more than murky since the overthrow of the Shah in the $197879.00 and the introduction of the Islamic regime of Ayatollah Khomeini. That relationship once very close became quickly strange to to the point where when Iraq invaded Iran a clear violation of international law and treaties the United States not only did not impose sanctions on Iraq but in fact gave it billions of dollars of credits and the weapons absolutely the history of the United States in Iran is rather sad one in the last 37 years and there's been plenty of offenses committed by both sides the list is very very long and this is one of the main achievements of this deal. That the both sides recognize they will never be able to sort out the past but they can sort out the future and they were willing to be able to set aside some of the grievances of the past in order to make sure that there wouldn't be new grievances coming up that's why my book is called Losing an enemy I'm not making the argument that the United States lost an enemy I'm making the argument that there was an opportunity to lose an enemy an opportunity that had to be embraced and built upon an opportunity that now have been squandered by the trumpet ministration because instead of building on this deal he's looking for ways of killing this deal and this is quite sad because we have to ask ourselves when was the last time the United States lost an enemy in the Middle East. Well at the u.n. In late September trumped called the deal an embarrassment to the United States one of the worst and most one sided transactions the u.s. Has ever entered into and Interestingly he also said this on other occasions that under the deal we gave Iran $150000000000.00 And according to him we get nothing in return which is of course completely false there was no $150000000000.00 from the u.s. That went to the Iranians what existed was that as part of the sanctions the money Iran held in foreign banks primarily in Switzerland Japan else elsewhere which they used to pay for their imports from those countries were frozen and the vine is going to have access to the money as part of the deal that money was unfrozen and the Iranians regained access to it it wa