Transcript
Transcribed automatically: it certainly contains errors. It’s pretty good, just not perfect. We provide it here because, for accessibility, it’s better than nothing.
Other voice
0:02
Also, you'll find a pair of safety glasses and some ear plugs underneath your seats. Please feel free to use them.
Jeffrey Lewis
0:14
You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk Media Empire. And since that doesn't pay, I'm also a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California.
Aaron Stein
0:30
And I'm Aaron Stein. I'm an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London and a doctoral fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Policy. And they contributed to the Arms Control Wonk Empire that also does not pay me any money.
Jeffrey
0:41
Hey, Aaron, we have a deal. Kind of. We have a framework. That's right. On April 2nd, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini and Italian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif read the same joint statement in English and Farsi. Most experts have been pleasantly surprised at the terms of the deal reached between Iran and... Everybody makes me say P5 plus 1, but I know that it's the E3 plus 3.
As I wrote in Foreign Policy, I thought it would suck. But actually, it's not bad.
Aaron
1:14
It's pretty good. It's more than not bad. Hot damn. How did we get this? I have no idea. I mean, as I told Max Fisher, who will be coming on the show in a little bit, I was astonished at the terms in the agreement because they listened to us.
Jeffrey
1:30
Yeah, I was in an off-the-record meeting that I am not going to say anything about other than one of my colleagues. Who I expected to be very critical of the details of any agreement, said, it's a miracle.
Aaron
1:45
It's miraculous is a good way to describe it. But we don't have it yet. Right. That's what I was going to say. It's not an agreement. It's a framework agreement.
Jeffrey
1:55
Which is like a promise to have an agreement.
Aaron
1:58
Right. Which means we still have a lot of heavy lifting to go. Yeah. Well, let's just start up right there. Yeah, you got to write it down, and there's a reason people write things down, right? Yeah, not just on a whiteboard.
Jeffrey
2:08
Yeah, not just on a whiteboard. So some of my colleagues I've noticed are a little bit confused about this fact, so I've had to explain it. There was the extension at the end of last year, which I thought was a death knell for the agreement.
Aaron
2:22
Yeah, we have it on record. Both of us did.
Jeffrey
2:25
We really didn't think that they would have this much time, but then – There was BB's talk and there was the letter and the administration seems to have bought itself enough time. And they agreed they would do that in two parts. They would have this framework agreement where they would announce the – I guess they're calling it the parameters of the deal.
And then now we have, what, until the end of June for them to get it down on paper. Because even though if you're a foreign policy type, you may look at the – Agreed statement and think, wow, that's pretty detailed. That's nowhere near detailed enough to be an actual international agreement.
Aaron
3:02
No, no. I mean, if you look at other arms control agreements that this would have to look like, there's a very long way to go. But the framework is quite good.
Jeffrey
3:12
Well, as far as we can tell. And so I guess what we have are, we have the joint statement in English and Farsi and And we have some fact sheets. And I think there's some interesting question about whether the fact sheets are things that the parties have really agreed to or whether they're summaries. So the U.S. released a much more detailed fact sheet.
And U.S. officials are privately saying that it's more than just a fact sheet, that the Iranians have agreed to it. And the Iranians aren't really Aren't really denying anything in the U.S. fact sheet, but they are kind of grousing about the fact that it's out in the public domain.
Aaron
3:52
Yeah. I mean, one thing I found really interesting is that Javad Zarif went home and then he gave his interview to frame this, sort of the way that our officials are doing. And he didn't actually contradict anything in the U.S. fact sheet. He just put his spin on it, basically, that we're going to keep some semblance of our enrichment infrastructure, and they couldn't take that away from us.
Jeffrey
4:10
Yeah, it really is interesting to me I was having an exchange on Twitter with someone. One of the things that the U.S. fact sheet says is that there's an R&D schedule, but it doesn't describe that schedule. And so it's unclear how much of that schedule has already been agreed. But on the one hand, we say there's an R&D schedule.
And on the other hand, the Iranians say we can continue R&D. And both of those things can be true. But there are some details that I think are at least for the moment offstage and we're going to have to wait I think until June 30th for them to write them down. So – but I worry. Do you remember the Leap Day deal or is North Korea too far away for your area of expertise?
Aaron
4:55
That's out of my area of expertise. That's your expertise. Fill me in.
Aaron
4:59
Well, so this is the problem is I always run home to mama. I make everything about China. I make everything about Turkey. So it's just what we do. Yeah.
Jeffrey
5:06
Leap day 2012, the Obama administration tried to reach a deal with the North Koreans and they settled on parallel unilateral statements. Yeah, I know where this is going. Yeah, only to discover there's a reason you write these things down. So while I actually think that they probably have a fair amount written down and they're just being careful about what they disclose because of I think especially the Iranian political situation – And I know that the supreme leader had said he only wants it written down once.
The actual task of getting a joint statement and putting it into an agreement, that's not trivial. So that's going to be tough.
Aaron
5:48
Yeah. Well, I mean let's just put that aside because I think that is the thing that everybody needs to keep in mind as we push forward in this conversation. But – I think we should talk about why we think it's a strong deal. I mean what is it in the U.S. fact sheet that was put out that sort of made our heads spin and go, wow, that was really good.
Jeffrey
6:06
Can we dispense with the one thing I don't actually care about at all? What's that?
Aaron
6:10
Which is the breakout stuff. Yeah, I don't care about that either, but let's talk about it first because that's sort of the centerpiece of what everybody is looking at.
Jeffrey
6:16
Because we lost that argument that it wasn't important.
Aaron
6:18
No, yes. I don't think it's important. You don't think it's important, but other people think it's important, so let's talk about it.
Jeffrey
6:24
So the agreement limits the Iranians to – I don't have it in front of me and it's not an even number, but it's approximately 5,000 centrifuges at Natanz, confines all enrichment to Natanz. Limits them to enriching no more than 3.67%, and requires that they reduce their stockpile of already enriched material to less than 300 kilograms of 3.67% stuff.
So if you add all that up, you get a breakout timeline, right? Like how quickly could they take their existing stockpile of LEU and Plus any additional LEU they would need to produce and then change over the cascades and run it through and then have enough material for one bomb. And the administration says it's about a year.
Aaron
7:16
Yeah, that's what it says in the fact sheet. It says now it's two to three months.
Jeffrey
7:19
It will be about a year. And I don't see any reason to disagree with him. I know that Scott Kemp, who is a friend of mine, expressed some concern that in a breakout scenario, the Iranians might be able to use some centrifuges at Fordow to shorten that timeline. Yeah. But he made a very cryptic comment on Twitter that listeners – he said he had – that he had been contacted and had it on very good authority that that problem was resolved.
Aaron
7:50
Yeah. I think he got a phone call from somebody telling him to –
Jeffrey
8:00
And you look at some of the people who are involved in the negotiation.
Aaron
8:03
You could put two and two together.
Jeffrey
8:05
Yeah, you could be good intelligence analysts. I'm just going to keep my mouth shut.
Aaron
8:09
Yeah, same here. But one thing that I liked is moving away from that is all the other stuff that was in there, stuff that we've actually been trying to get the Iranians to do for a very long time, the digital protocol, modified code 3.1, and the issue of sneak out, which we both think is a much bigger deal than breakout.
Jeffrey
8:30
Yeah. So, I mean, I am – well, I will say this. We talk about this deal as though it has a particular lifetime. But many of the provisions in it have different lifetimes. So there are some things that are 10-year commitments, some things that are 15-year commitments, some things that are 20- or 25-year commitments, and then some things that are forever commitments.
And one of the – well, two of the forever things, assuming they can actually get it down on paper, are that Iran will have an additional protocol, which is an elaboration of the existing safeguards agreement. And they're going to go back to modified code 3.1, which is in the subsidiary arrangements. Podcasters' ears are bleeding now, aren't they?
Aaron
9:18
No, no. Tell us what it is because it's important because the Iranians have a unique interpretation now.
Jeffrey
9:23
Yeah. So the – Safeguards arrangements, which look really, really complicated, aren't nearly complicated enough. And so states have these subsidiary arrangements, which really spell things out. And Code 3.1 has been modified over the years so that states are required to announce – well, tell the IAEA if they're building a facility that will handle – If they're going to build an enrichment facility, they have to tell the IAEA as soon as a decision is taken to construct it, which means that they can't sort of dig and build and then tell the IAEA at the very last minute.
Right. Yeah, super huge. Super huge. It's very important to deal with sneak out.
Aaron
10:11
Yeah, I know. And then the sneak out thing, I mean so in addition to the additional protocol and modified code 3.1, the sneak out thing has really been actually dealt with with what Obama is referring to as the most – what is he calling it? Like the most intrusive inspection regime in history, and that's what he's referring to the – Us watching the centrifuge manufacturing facilities, the uranium mines, and the conversion facility.
And I think that's what made my head spin, Exorcist style.
Jeffrey
10:38
Yeah, yeah. Well, first of all, I mean I hate political rhetoric. I mean the most intrusive – maybe. I don't know.
Aaron
10:45
Yeah, I mean look. I'm scum.
Jeffrey
10:47
Well, and I just – the thing I hate about that is it doesn't have to be the most intrusive to be good enough. True. Right? I mean – and so rather than make a sort of general political assessment of it, I'd rather just talk about like what it is and that politicians seem to be like constitutionally unable to do that.
Yeah, so I was struck by the continuous presence at the facilities where they build the centrifuge rotors and the bellows. Yes. Which is a huge solution to the problem of if the – Normally those facilities are not safeguarded, and so if they make a centrifuge and they put it on a truck and it shows up at Natanz, it's safeguarded.
And if it goes to a place under a mountain somewhere and we don't know about it, it's not.
Jeffrey
11:32
So you really reduce that problem because now they'd have to have totally separate standalone centrifuge facilities to manufacture them. Right. There are provisions for monitoring the mining and milling in Iran. Right, which is not normally covered. Right, so they'd have to have a wholly separate source of uranium, and they'd have to have a wholly separate infrastructure to build the centrifuges, and they'd have to dig a secret tunnel under a mountain, which in theory they could do all of those things, but they got to think they're going to get caught.
Aaron
12:09
Yeah, exactly. This becomes the deterrence.
Jeffrey
12:13
We already caught them at Lavizon and we caught them at Natanz and we caught them at Fordow. And now the problem is like 10 times – by the way, that's the biblical 40.
Aaron
12:24
It's a lot harder. Yeah, it's extremely difficult. I mean – and those are the provisions that are the longest. So people are looking – the criticism I've seen of the deal is like, well, in 10 years they'll have unrestrained enrichment capacity. Yeah. Okay, that's if you're worried about breakout if you put breakout aside you're not all that worried about it, and you're worried about well hey they might siphon off centrifuges and build them in a place we've never even seen before.
Those provisions are the longest.
Jeffrey
12:50
Yeah, and I want to say one thing about that because I think that maybe is a misreading of the agreement, you know, the way I read the agreement. There are – well, one thing the fact sheet says is there's a research and development schedule that the Iranians are going to agree to with the E3, EU plus three.
And so the idea – I think one of the reasons Scott's concern about a rapid breakout – Was misplaced is that my expectation is that the R&D schedule means that when we get to the end of 10 years, they're not going to have a completed IR8 cascade ready to start, you know, installing in very large numbers. So, you know, we'll have to see the R&D schedule and that hasn't been released yet, but it does seem like you could Work out an R&D schedule so that even after 10 years, when these restrictions come off, there's kind of a soft landing with the breakout problem.
Aaron
14:00
Well, you know, I mean, that would certainly help. I mean, but again, I mean, if the fixation is on breakout and again, not on how breakout is achieved, which is through centrifuges and if you can monitor the centrifuges and not just the centrifuges, all the things that you would need before gas gets put into the centrifuges. That's, again, why I think this is a very strong framework arrangement.
And I will say another thing that makes me think it's a very strong arrangement is that even the concession that we made, which is at Fordow, I mean, Sanger's piece in the New York Times, that was our concession. I think they handled that relatively well. I mean, what do you think about the Fordow issue? Yeah.
Jeffrey
14:41
I feel like Fordow is squared away. Before we say about Fordow, the last thing we didn't mention was the procurement channel.
Jeffrey
14:49
Yeah. Which is also hugely valuable because every time, and again, right, the devil, maybe even the great Satan will be in the details, but at least in principle, the Iranians have agreed to import Goods for their nuclear program through a dedicated procurement channel, which allows us to see what's going in and out. And again, the value of all of this stuff, the procurement channel and the limiting of enrichment to Natanz and the safeguarding of all the facilities is if you catch them doing stuff outside of those channels, you know, you don't have to listen to some like tendentious legal excuse.
Like you can tell that they're evading the agreement by going outside of it.
Aaron
15:27
Right, and if you're on the Iranian side, one of their biggest tropes that you always heard them say in private at all these meetings that you would have with them in Istanbul when I was there was that, well, we're happy to cooperate with the West, but you won't give us advanced technology. So now they could say you're giving us advanced technology.
Meanwhile, we're actually watching all of that advanced technology to make sure that there's no funny business going on. Okay, Fordo. I like it. I like the solution. Me too. I think it's a smart solution, but tell me why.
Jeffrey
15:55
Well, I mean, the first thing is there were all these press reports that there were going to be 6,000 centrifuges at Natanz, right? And the real number turned out to be 5,000. Yeah. And I infer that the centrifuges that they're going to be allowed to keep at Fordow came out of that 6,000 number. So that's great, right?
Because you take centrifuges out of enrichment. And you put them into Fordow, and those centrifuges can only be used for what's called stable isotope separation, which is like non-nuclear, right? Stable means not radioactive. So there's no fissile material, no enrichment allowed at Fordow. So there are some centrifuges there, and just – From looking at it, I think that the number actually spinning will probably not be that full thousand.
They basically get to keep the building, and they get to keep the building being owned by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, but it's not engaged in enrichment.
Aaron
17:02
Right, and there's no fissile material on site, which then gets you back to those safeguards that are built into the longest duration ones, which are monitoring – what I call basically monitoring the full front end of the fuel cycle.
Jeffrey
17:15
And the IAEA gets to stay in Fordow, right? I mean, I always think about like the worst possible scenario would be the Iranians say, hey, you know what, we give up. And so we're taking everything down. And by the way, since there's nothing here, you know, the IAEA doesn't need to come around.
Aaron
17:30
That's a good point.
Jeffrey
17:31
I actually hadn't thought about that. Anyway, so they can do that job. Like I, to me, that's a pretty decent compromise and it allows the Iranians to save face on the one thing, which is they didn't want to have to, they didn't want to have to you know, cave in in Fordow, which would have been, I think, pretty humiliating.
Aaron
18:08
Yeah. I mean, well, they did build it in secret but you know, no, no, no, they did.
Jeffrey
18:14
They've done like lots of stuff that's like really, really wrong. I just, I'm, I'm, I'm, I am prepared to accept that an agreement is, It cannot be a humiliating one.
Aaron
18:24
Oh, me too. I mean an agreement has to be a compromise on both sides and the compromises – look, the US fact sheet is obviously curtailed so that it appeals to the US domestic audience, primarily the hardliners in Congress, right? But I mean if this is what – the reading – and the Iranians – Yeah, they're not contradicting it.
They haven't contradicted it. They've put their spin on it. It definitely looks like they've basically capitulated on most issues, if you actually ask me. From where we started to where we are now, you have a big walk back. Again, the devil will be in the details, but it's certainly a very well-negotiated agreement on the US side.
Jeffrey
19:06
I was surprised at how much we got on the subject of the plutonium production reactor at Iraq.
Aaron
19:12
Yeah, yeah. Again, because the leaks up until that said it was a major sticking point.
Jeffrey
19:20
It sounds like they got everything at the end. So the Iranians have agreed that they're going to destroy the existing core and they're going to replace it with one that produces less plutonium.
Jeffrey
19:30
I guess the Nucor will also not be able to produce weapons-grade plutonium, although I am, you know, always very leery of that.
Aaron
19:41
Yeah, I'm skeptical. I read that and I'm like, how do you do that?
Jeffrey
19:44
I know you can. Well, and also, you know, weapons-grade plutonium is preferred for making a nuclear weapon, but it's not, you know, it's not strictly speaking necessary. Sure. But what I was really stunned by was There is an indefinite renunciation of reprocessing.
Aaron
20:05
We didn't even get that with the Shah between 74 and 79 when we were trying to do that.
Jeffrey
20:09
Well, the press leaks were that it was going to be 10 or 15 years.
Aaron
20:13
Yeah, I know. I mean I saw indefinite commitment to not reprocessing.
Jeffrey
20:18
Yeah, so I don't know if – I don't know what changed Leahy's mind. But, you know, I mean, because reprocessing is a terrible idea anyway, right? Yeah, it's a stupid idea. It's just not a smart idea. I'm pretty sure the U.S. could, you know, like what we said, we sent Ernie Moniz, right? I'm sure he could talk him out of it.
Like, look, I'm not saying you can't do this. I'm saying you don't want to do this.
Aaron
20:42
Yeah, I mean, it seems like they made their money on this.
Jeffrey
20:44
From one third to another, man, you don't want to do this.
Aaron
20:47
Well, I mean it looks like from their side, like their absolute red line says we have to keep all the facilities open. But we played with that a little bit. When we had our emergency podcast, we said, yeah, this isn't the deal that we would like because we want to watch the centrifuge facilities. We don't care about breakout.
If the fact sheet does both – and again, Debo will be in the details. But because the fact sheet does both – I am very impressed, just to say it over and over again.
Jeffrey
21:17
Although we are – we're worried about the same thing, right?
Aaron
21:20
Yeah, I was going to say. The heavy lifting is still coming, and that's the sequencing of sanctions relief, right?
Jeffrey
21:27
Yeah. I mean it sounds to me like there's still a little bit of daylight on this issue, and it's obvious to me that the Iranian negotiators need to come home with a lot of sanctions relief fast. And it's obvious to me that this administration can't be lifting sanctions without some evidence that the Iranians are actually implementing. I mean, it's an amazing deal, but they got to do it.
And so, I don't know. There have been some rumors I've seen online about a preparatory period of about six months. And so sort of what comes off immediately, what comes off at the end of six months, that's all... I think that might be the hardest part of this conversation. Yeah.
Aaron
22:15
I mean the way I read the US fact sheet is that it's linked – there is also a link there to the PMD issue in the IAEA track, the second track to this, which is also difficult. I can see that being a sticking point too because they've dragged their feet, dragged their feet, dragged their feet on weaponization experiments and – And I'm starting to come around to your argument that maybe we don't want to know about the full thing of the weaponization experiments because that will then slow down sanctions, really push what we'll need.
So I can see a couple of pitfalls coming.
Jeffrey
22:48
Do we want to say one word about this awful interview that the president did with Tom Friedman?
Jeffrey
22:54
Look, I mean – It's the regional piece, which is your piece, right?
Aaron
22:58
Yeah. I mean I often find myself sort of nodding along with the president's logic. I mean I don't think anybody would say that the president doesn't get himself completely involved in the details and doesn't have his sort of – doesn't have a pretty good understanding of what it is that the regional capitals are concerned about. It's just a matter of when he communicates that.
Like to Tom Friedman, it came off as particularly tone deaf. I mean with the Israelis and with the Saudis. I mean the Saudis every – Interview I do with a Saudi or Gulfie official – and by the way, the Gulf is not united on this. But every interview I do with a Saudi official says, no, no, we're not all that concerned about breakout.
We're not all that concerned about nuclear. It's that these guys will have coercive tools to then foment a problem in the kingdom or like say next door like Yemen or in Syria and Iraq. And when the president basically said, well, we can't solve that issue for you. You're going to have to deal with that yourselves. And that just reinforces the imagery in the Middle East that's tied to the pivot Nonsense that the president put out there, that we're leaving them.
Jeffrey
23:59
David Rothkopf has been making this point on Twitter and in interviews, and I think he's exactly right. What this deal is is a partial deal that solves one problem in a relationship that is troubled for lots of reasons. And it seems to me that people get carried away with this kind of enthusiasm that we're going to have this totally different relationship with the Islamic Republic.
And not only do I think that that's a little unrealistic – I mean that's got to be terrifying if you're a neighboring state because you're looking at the stuff that they're doing in Lebanon and Syria and now Yemen and Iraq. And it's like, no. Like we still have problems. Like they still have a missile program. They still engage in regional conventional aggression.
Like it's great that we're keeping them from getting a bomb. But all that does is like free our diplomats to like go talk about like all the other reasons we might want to kill each other. So – Why the president can't articulate his awareness that we don't want Iran to be a regional power, or at the very least, we don't want them to be a disruptive one, I don't understand.
Aaron
25:08
Yeah, I mean look – and we'll just be quick about this. I mean it's important to like disaggregate like the Gulf. So like Oman and like Qatar have a very different policy than say Saudi Arabia whose policy is far different than Jordan's. There is not unanimity in the Gulf. And then this idea that you tie Saudis to the Israelis as if they have the same threat perceptions is also false.
But if you just look at the way the president – and we're talking about what Iran does in the Middle East – It would be smart policy if he made a declaratory statement that said, look, we are not re-engineering our security architecture in the region. We intend to abide by all of our commitments. And this removes one key threat from the picture, which is the threat of an unrestrained Iranian program in the near term.
That would be far better than what he said to Tom Friedman, in my opinion. And look, I mean, the Saudis have been forced to get along because that's what the Saudis do. But that doesn't mean that they're happy. And it's something that we're going to have to really pay attention and nurture. And this president may have lost it.
The next president will have to take over and do this as we move forward. That sounds like a great podcast to have Dina Esfandiary back on. Yeah, Dina can come back on. But that's not who we're calling today, Aaron. No, no, no. We're talking about something different. Let's call Max. Absolutely.
Jeffrey
26:28
We are talking to Max Fisher. Max Fisher is the content director at Vox. And, hey, according to your biography, you're the founder of the Rushmore Beekeepers. That's right. That's right. It was really my chief accomplishment in the Kite Flying Club. Dude.
Max
26:43
It took Aaron a second to get that joke.
Jeffrey
26:47
Do you find that you're frequently getting Rushmore jokes?
Max
26:50
Yes, yes. I cannot tell you how many people think that it is really funny to say, hey, you know that movie Rushmore? You have the same name as him. As if I've never heard this before. What? The movie Rushmore that came out 15 years ago? I don't believe you. That's a great film. It is a great film.
So at least it wasn't a movie about like, you know, a terrible mass murderer or something. At least he's a charming and funny character.
Jeffrey
27:18
Although there's a little darkness underneath there. You know, the bee thing, right? In the hotel room. Well, he had it coming. Come on. He stole the love of his life.
Max
27:29
That seemed proportional to me.
Jeffrey
27:35
Anyway, thanks for coming on. I think as I mentioned in the email, what we're really interested in is – well, I'll say it this way. From an expert perspective, Aaron and I are frequently baffled at how the stuff we love is presented in the press. And we're often – Deeply confused that some of our colleagues whose main affiliation is either, shall we say partisan or advocacy oriented.
Right. Get kind of the same airtime. And there was a thing in your competitor BuzzFeed did a profile of NIAC, the National Iranian American Council and the Israel Project and sort of their involvement in spinning talks out of Luzon. And I was really interested, like, as a reporter, how do you handle that, right? There's so much subtext and maybe you can't really say, you know, so-and-so from a group and, you know, he's a hack.
Max
28:36
Right, but at the same time they matter and they're part of the conversation. Well, so yeah, it's, it's kind of, I mean, what, there are a lot of reasons that we started Vox, but one was a kind of frustration with the conventions and limitations that we traditionally have in the media. And so like, if people in a foreign country, foreign heads of state, like Ali Khamenei are saying, you know, crazy sounding things are really provocative things.
It's considered an important part of your job as a journalist to not just to evaluate, hey, is this true, but to really look into why are they saying this? You know, what's the kind of underlying motivation? Is there some kind of ideology or worldview that informs this? And that's all part of the journalism that you read about Iran, right?
Iranian nationalism, their view of the role in the world. But this kind of like criminology approach is considered completely out of bounds to apply to American politicians or interest groups in the United States. You're just not allowed to do it. So you're kind of restricted to – you can do – He said, she said, jot it down.
Mark Kirk says this, NIAC says this, the Israel Project says this, arms control experts say that, and then you kind of line them all up. And then readers are told, well, you have to puzzle it out now. Or at the most, you can go a step further and you can say, well, Mark Kirk says that this paves the way for an Iranian nuclear bomb, and that's not really true, and here's the evidence against his claim.
But what you're not allowed to do Is to interrogate, you know, why is Mark Kirk saying this stuff? Or like, why are the Republicans so angry about this? Or like, I have a British colleague, and she's been asking me all week, why are Americans so obsessed with Munich? And why are Americans so obsessed with Neville Chamberlain as my prime minister?
We never talk about him in the UK, but you Americans can't shut up about him. And it's an interesting question, right? And like, if it were a foreign country and people were... Making these weird arguments and parallels, we would kind of dig into why that is. But in the U S we just don't do it. And so like you get this weird, he said, she said, that's impossible to parse out.
And then you're also, you're not allowed to talk about, you know, what are the underlying ideologies among, for example, Republicans, it's kind of guiding how and why they're approaching things the way they are.
Aaron
31:05
Well, I mean this sort of played out when I – I did not go to the Lausanne talks even though I'm here in Geneva, but I went to the JPOA talks. And what you saw, and I'm curious to get your take on this as a journalist, is that – The journalists would get briefings, then they would all basically have to write the same exact story.
And that there was at that point, there was only one expert there. And it was, it was a good friend of mine, you know, and he was there and he was there because he was doing research for an ICG report, you know, and he just happened to be there. And then all the journalists were asking him questions and he was the first.
And then you had NIAC coming and then you had the Israel, the Israel project going. I'm curious, you know, What is it as a journalist, like when you're trying to cover the same story, is there a recognition that maybe you're talking to this, like everybody's talking to the same source and that we're in a feedback loop?
Max
31:54
Right. Well, I mean this is a problem that goes back to like the pre-internet days of wire services and newspapers where you could have 50 reporters writing the exact same story and it didn't matter because they were all serving different markets. But it also gets to this like kind of question that we've all had to answer for ourselves since the advent of the internet, which is what is my job as a journalist?
Is it to write down the things that people say or is it to try to like – Understand it more deeply. And like, I personally, I'm of the opinion that I can be a lot more effective if I'm in Washington and, you know, talking to like arms control experts, like you guys, rather than being in the song and, and kind of like being the 18th person to write down this strike quote From some official but I think there's also, and you can see it in the way that people write about these talks, there's also still a little bit of a hangover in journalism from 2002, 2003, in the run-up to the Iraq War when there was like, there was a lot of writing down what officials said and a lot of writing down what analysts would say, and then kind of presenting both to the readers and saying, well, I've done my job, so it's, it's time to go home now.
And I think people are now starting to understand that it actually is your job as a journalist to go a little bit further than that and to kind of think about what are the implications of this? What does all of it mean? And, you know, that that partly means cutting through the noise, but it also means thinking a little bit more about like consequences and what people's actual motivations are versus their stated motivations.
Jeffrey
33:31
Yeah, did you see Judith Miller's – I didn't.
Max
33:37
She just doesn't get it.
Jeffrey
33:38
Yeah, that's what really struck me about it. I am someone who thinks that the – I don't think the Bush administration lied. I think that people sincerely believed the false things that they said. But what really struck me about her essay was a total – Abdication of the responsibility of either senior government officials or herself as a reporter to be a critical thinker and be skeptical of the things she was being told.
And it was kind of like, well, there was an intelligence community report and it said this. So what on earth was I to do?
Max
34:15
Which just makes me crazy. Well, this gets to something that not just Judith Miller, but Judith Miller's critics Which is that, you know, we kind of think that like the journalist's responsibility begins and ends with fact checking the officials. And, you know, when Colin Powell said this, was he telling the truth? And what's interesting is that, you know, looking back.
Like years later now, it kind of becomes clear when you look at like the people who are in the Bush administration and what their views were and their overarching ideology and the things that they had been writing for years, it was very clear that they had this neoconservative Worldview that talked about reshaping the Middle East through democracy and in fact had a longstanding obsession with Iraq and this idea that if you depose Saddam Hussein, everything would kind of fall into place.
And then sure enough, they all came into office and we deposed Saddam Hussein as part of this like – Weird ideological project. And that would have been really obvious if journalists at the time, rather than taking the perspective of, you know, let's look at the surface claims from the administration and see whether they're true or not, said, let's actually look at the ideology driving The administration and kind of what they're thinking and, you know, try to critically evaluate like what their goals are as an institution, which is, again, is something that you were told as a journalist is, is out of bounds, even though as we learned, it would have been pretty nice if we had done that.
Aaron
35:51
Are the goalposts shifting? I mean that seems like really cool stuff. I mean that's what I do as an analyst. I think that's what Jeffrey does as well. I mean is there more of a push for that in journalism now?
Max
36:01
I mean I think that people like you guys who do that are finding more of a voice and more of an audience, which is great, which is awesome. But there's still like all of the things that you have read about – Like Netanyahu and why he opposes an Iran deal. Like if you read anything that goes beyond just looking at his surface explanations, like if you read anything that actually talks about like his father or like the founding ideology of revisionist Zionism, like if you don't, if you don't read the phrase, the iron wall in an explanation of Netanyahu's Iran policy, then the journalist who wrote that is not doing their job.
But that's just like people don't think that it's important to look at that stuff. But if you look at it, everything makes so much more sense. Like if you study this stuff like an historian or an academic instead of just someone who writes down quotes, it becomes so much easier to understand. It all kind of clicks into place.
So I personally, I'm baffled by more people don't do that. I think it's incredibly effective. But in the meantime, we're happy to be the ones doing it.
Jeffrey
37:06
Well, I really want to ask about how this informs the way that you handle the Iran issue, but I can't resist putting in a plug for my class because one of the things that I've discovered is the most – and I learned this teaching the class, and now I do it in my own analysis – is I always, with my students, explain who people's parents and grandparents are.
And it's amazing to me how many students look at Shinzo Abe, the prime minister of Japan, and don't understand that his father was a foreign minister and his grandfather was a prime minister and his great uncle was a prime minister. And that there's this cohesive group of people who – they can change how they think about problems over time.
But he didn't just spring from nowhere, and understanding that I think is hugely important. So it's awesome that you're aware of these things. How does that inform your Iran coverage? Are there things that you do differently, you think, than your colleagues?
Max
38:18
Well, I mean we try – What we try to do is connect exactly the kinds of conversations that you're having with your students. There's a wonderful wealth of research out there, and we just try to connect that to our readers and try to translate that into new media journalism. For example... We're doing a piece right now on why Republicans keep comparing this to Munich and the two like traditional approaches to that would be, you know, you write down everything the Republicans say and you say this is their stated position.
Or the second would be you look at it and say, well, actually the Iran deal is not Munich and actually it does not pave the way for an Iranian nuclear warhead, and so they're wrong, and there you go. But neither of those is actually that edifying. So we actually tried to dig into – What historians have written about the Munich obsession and about the Neville Chamberlain obsession.
And it turns out there's actually some very interesting theories about like how America never had to exist in a multipolar world because of the way it kind of became a superpower after World War II. So like, Whereas in most countries, there is a tradition in the foreign policy of balancing and compromise and dealing with multipolarity that doesn't exist in the U.S. And then at the same time, you have the development of these political norms during the Cold War where whoever is more confrontational and tougher and more firmly rejects any kind of compromise wins.
And when you look at those two theories, you know, I'm sure there are other factors at play, but they help you explain why this huge political party is taking these views that would seem, you know, crazy, but actually start to make more sense when you bring that into it.
Aaron
40:08
Yeah, I mean, so when you're limited, I guess, by the traditional bounds, and then, like, let's say you're in Lausanne, and then the people who are giving the quotes, I mean, are Nayak or the Israel Project. I mean... Both fine organizations. I don't mean anything negative associated with my comments here. But they have an agenda. Both of them do.
How do you, I guess, balance that, especially with the need for speed? You have to get it out first.
Max
40:34
Well, I think one thing is that actually there's – There's this conventional wisdom in the web that the faster the better, but I actually think it's turned out that that's not true. And especially now that more and more traffic comes from Facebook, which is really slow as a medium. It can take like a full day for something to – Build momentum on Facebook, you're actually much better off if you write something that can stand for a couple of weeks and is deeper and more comprehensive and more authoritative.
So, you know, I'm grateful to my colleagues who are out there in the field and who's on and getting all the quotes for me. But I actually think that if you want to be successful in reaching large numbers of people, it actually pays quite often to kind of sit back and wait. And also to your question, like, You know, you can take these people seriously as players who have a role in the process.
And, you know, they do. They have a role in the process. They have a role to play. You can do that without... Ignoring their investment in the outcome of a deal by trying to kind of seriously and sympathetically understand where they're coming from, but in a way that also takes into account what their motivations and ideologies are.
Jeffrey
41:54
So one of the questions I had, because it came through a little bit in the profile of NIAC and the Israel Project that I read, Is the person running the Israel Project went out of his way to refer to NIAC and pretty much anybody who disagreed with them as fellow travelers.
Max
42:18
Who was this who said that?
Jeffrey
42:20
Oh, I forget his name.
Max
42:20
I think it was Josh Blark.
Jeffrey
42:22
Yeah. Okay. But I mean I wonder as a reporter when you – like how often when you engage with folks do you get just straight spin? Yeah. And, and, and do the people involved, like, do you sense that they know that this has been like, like that this is going to be this deeply offensive thing that they're saying, you know, or, or is it just the mouth is talking and outcomes fellow travelers?
Like I've always been fascinated by that.
Max
42:55
I mean, I think that like sometimes the spin is what's really interesting. Right. I mean, I don't I'm not going to talk to the Israel Project to understand.
Jeffrey
43:04
No, no, I didn't know that. I just that was an example that.
Max
43:06
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think it's actually like, you know, you need you need to be able to talk to people who can give you an objective assessment and you need to talk to the people like Nayak and the Israel Project. Yeah. In order to get a sense from where they're coming from. But in those cases, when they're spinning you, that's actually helpful because you're seeing how they're spinning, what they're spinning.
You're kind of getting a sense for what's informing them and what they're going for. I mean, again, a lot of it is just bringing the things that journalists have been doing Informed reporting for years and then just applying them to Americans and kind of studying, you know, Americans and American political actors in the same way that, you know, when I go to like Myanmar and interview a bunch of Burmese nationalists, like I'm not interviewing them.
Because I think they're going to be objective observers of ethnic conflict in the country. I'm interviewing them because I want to hear what their spin is because I want to hear how they see the world and kind of what informs their thinking. And it's the same thing when you talk to people in Washington. It's just another political group.
Aaron
44:14
Yeah, it's the same reason I read the pro-government press in Turkey every day. It's nice to shed a little light on their worldview.
Max
44:21
Right, right, exactly. Like you're reading that to understand what they're thinking and how they're seeing the world. Right.
Jeffrey
44:27
Go ahead, Jeffrey. Well, I was going to say I actually have to go teach that class. But we do this horribly uncivil thing at the end of every podcast, which is we spring a surprise request for what you're reading. And it doesn't have to be related to what we're actually talking about. It can be anything. But it's also a chance, you know, if you want to plug something you've written, you can do that.
But if you've also just read something... Super interesting lately. I, I think that's a, that's a fun and it's a, it's a much better way to end the podcast given the kind of normal downer that Aaron and I were stuck with before.
Max
45:06
I have, I actually have an even bigger downer, which I just read Scott Anderson's piece in GQ on the 1999 Russia apartment bombings. That ran in GQ and for reasons that I don't know the answer to. I'm not sure if anybody does. Condé Nast, which is GQ's parent company, refused any reprints. They pulled it from the web.
And this huge 10,000-word investigation... Kind of one of the most comprehensive in American journalism, was just completely scrubbed. And the people at, I think it was at the Atavist, finally got GQ's permission to reprint it. So it's online now. I think it went up like a week ago. And it's a really, really good investigation into the apartment bombings and into kind of the silencing of people in Russia who've been talking out about it since then.
Jeffrey
45:59
Oh, that's a good one. Aaron, what's on your list?
Aaron
46:02
It's the same as last week. I'm still balancing my two books on ISIS, one by Michael Weiss and Hassan Nassan and the other by J.M. Berger and Jessica Stern. I haven't finished yet, so I'm still reading the same books.
Jeffrey
46:12
Yeah, I'm in the same spot, and this actually may have been my recommendation a week ago, but it's a thick book. I've been rereading Frances Fitzgerald's Way Out There in the Blue, which is actually perfect because she looks at – Reagan and how he thought about strategic defense and how he thought about the Cold War through precisely the lens that you, Max, were saying journalists normally don't have permission to do.
And it's really insightful. There's a long discussion of the historians Charles and Mary Beard and how they're – Schools of thought about American foreign policy that they wrote in the 1930s remains super relevant. So if you've ever wondered why Democrats are interested in land power in Europe and why Republicans are interested in air power and Asia, Francis Fitzgerald suggests rereading Charles and Mary Beard.
Max says, It's so great of you to come on the podcast. This was just perfect.
Max
47:18
I love the podcast, and I practically reappropriated it for Vox this week, so it's one good turn.
Jeffrey
47:24
No, we're so delighted that you've been both a fan of the podcast, but now that you've joined us. So thanks a lot for coming on. Thank you. It was a lot of fun. And as always, thank you for listening. If you don't hate the podcast, you can go ahead and leave us a review at iTunes. It helps get the word out that we exist.
Aaron
47:47
Absolutely. Go to iTunes, everybody. Thank you.
