We have a deal!

Jeffrey Lewis 0:05

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the extant podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, founder of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California.

Aaron Stein 0:21

And I'm Dr. Aaron Stein. I'm an associate fellow with the Royal United Services Institute in London, a doctoral fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Policy, and a non-resident fellow with the Murphy Career Center at the Atlanta Council in Washington, D.C.

Jeffrey 0:42

Yeah, and apparently a member of the Geneva Outlaws Harley Club.

Aaron 0:46

That's right. I wear leather and go riding my Harley each weekend, absolutely. It's hot there, right? It's very hot, so I have to keep my windows open so the street sounds come up, including the siren for podcast listeners and the occasional Harley Davidson. It goes roaring by.

Jeffrey 1:03

It's actually really hot here, too. I got a sunburn the other day.

Aaron 1:07

Yeah, well, I'm not used to it. I'm like a vampire ever since I left Los Angeles.

Jeffrey 1:11

Oh, I am exhausted. I got up at 3.30 a.m. to read this document.

Aaron 1:16

It was like Christmas for you. You couldn't stay asleep. So you had to get up at 3.30 to read the Iranian nuclear agreement?

Jeffrey 1:22

Well, you know, I don't sleep that much because with three kids, I'm responsible for two of them and they wake up. And I knew what was going to happen was I was going to wake up in the middle of the night and I would see that it was 3.30 or 4.00. And I would know the deal was probably online.

And sure enough, I couldn't resist. I picked up my little phone and I opened it up and there it was.

Aaron 1:46

There it was. Did you get the Russian leak?

Jeffrey 1:48

Yeah, I started. It was the only thing that was available at the moment was the lousy formatted version on the Russian MFA website, which totally confused me because in the real properly formatted version, There are basically bullet points, you know, the paragraphs are numbered and then there are these sub numbers. And so, you know, you might have paragraph 29, but then you'd have paragraph 29.1 and 29.2.

And so you could, you would understand that it was all part of the same sentence, but the Russian version just had 29, 29, 29. And so there were these sentences or, or paragraphs that, that made no sense because you couldn't figure out the context.

Aaron 2:30

We'll just blame it on the Russians that they can't form a deal correctly. Yeah.

Jeffrey 2:33

Yeah, well, I mean, right, any time, if you, yeah, you were just in Moscow, what, like a year ago, right? Yeah, a couple years ago. I mean, there is a glorious half-ass-edness to the Russian soul, which, you know, my family is half-Ukrainian, so I can't throw too many stones, because maybe it's a Slavic thing, but yeah. But when they...

Aaron 2:56

My circumstances for reading Wafari is – I read it over lunch outside at a cafe because I'm here on European time. So I did not have to get up at the crack of dawn to do the heavy lifting.

Jeffrey 3:05

Oh, man. I was – yeah, I had a three-year-old snuggled up next to me and I was reading it on a tiny phone. Yeah, so that's what I did this morning.

Aaron 3:16

So what did you think? I mean let's – I mean, let's just broadly frame out here. I mean, starting at the beginning, we had sort of the leading up to this.

Jeffrey 3:27

Yeah, yeah. Well, I was going to say, the way that I think about the deal – Is that it sanctions relief in exchange for constraints on the Iranian program, right? And what's the purpose of the constraints? To my mind, a good deal is one that puts a verifiable gap between Iran's bomb option, which just is a reasonably developed state, it will always have, and the actual bomb, right?

So that We know that if the Supreme Leader makes a decision to exercise that bomb option, to take that option and turn it into a real bomb, that we'll have some warning and some time to do something about it. It's an awfully good deal. I mean, it's as good of a deal as I think I've seen. You know, I mean, we can always, sure, people who are not in the administration can always say that if they were in the administration, they would have gotten a better deal.

I mean, it's like the easiest thing in the world to say. But I actually think relative to other deals that I've actually seen administrations come back with, given where the Iranians are, it's pretty good.

Aaron 4:39

Yeah, I think so. When I started the premise and I look at the deal, my starting point is when we started the negotiation. So we're starting on the back channel to when we first had the first JPOA in November 2013. Where was Iran then in terms of its limits and where is it now and what did we have to give to them in order to get them to that point?

And my understanding of sanctions was that they are coercive tools to force policy changes inside Iran. And those policy changes for us was access to their sites and limits to enrichment and sort of answers to our questions about some of their previous nuclear stuff. And I think the agreement gets that in a way that goes beyond my expectations.

And I think It builds on the excitement that we had before about the Lausanne Agreement. So it's almost like we saw this in Lausanne. We saw it in the U.S. fact sheet, and now we're sort of seeing it in 159 pages.

Jeffrey 5:43

Yeah, you know, at the time, I mean, I think one of the things that struck me is the agreement in its, yeah, 159-page glory isn't any different than the fact sheet that the U.S. put out after Lausanne. I mean, I think it – Largely matches those terms, or in some case, it either exceeds or elaborates on them.

Sometimes it's a little hard to tell. So in a weird way, I mean, it was kind of boring, right? Because I was reading through it like, uh-huh, uh-huh, oh, yeah, that's what they said. Yep, oh, yeah, I heard that three months ago. Oh, uh-huh, that's how they did that. You know, it wasn't really... It wasn't really terribly surprising at all.

And I, I mean, I remember saying at the, at the time, you know, like, wow, the fact sheet is great. It's amazing. But you know, now the question is, can you get the fact sheet, you know, into the form of an agreement? And I, I think they, I think they largely did that. I mean, you know, there were a few issues at the end that, that, that we can talk about, but you know, If you like the fact sheet, you're going to like – if you like Luzon, you're going to love Vienna.

Aaron 6:51

Right. One thing I liked is the fact sheet as the base and I agree. I mean it was – nothing in there was actually a surprise, which is a very good thing because we were talking a while ago about how great the fact sheet was. But what I really liked is the creative solutions that came up to some of the major problems like the snapback issue.

Yeah. Some of the technical issues, the conversion of Iraq, all these things. I really like the way that they came up with some of these solutions.

Jeffrey 7:21

Oh, Aaron, I nearly woke up said three-year-old laughing when I got to the section that outlines in just incredibly painful detail the conversion of Of the reactor.

Aaron 7:39

I love, that was my favorite section too.

Jeffrey 7:41

I mean, I just, I loved it. I could not believe, you know, it's a 78 fuel rods in a hexagonal configuration. Like guys, you, you don't like, I mean, good on you, but did we really need to do that? I mean, did you notice there's the, on page 29, right. Of, of that I guess that's probably the whole document, you know, that's the preliminary characteristics So if you want to know the fluid velocity in the channels, it's about 3.8 meters per second.

Other voice 8:17

I saw that.

Aaron 8:19

I did see that. You want to know how nerdy I was? I went back and I started comparing it. I did too. So I pulled out Hipple's – Yeah, yeah. It wasn't the same. It wasn't quite the same. I was like, oh, okay. So that's how they did that. I actually went back and started comparing it to some of the side stuff that I was reading earlier.

Did you – That means – Anyway, go ahead.

Jeffrey 8:40

Oh, no, no. I was going to say, did you actually find – A paper that matched the proposal that they reached. I think I saw you tweet something out about it.

Aaron 8:48

There was an Iranian – sort of like this abstract Iranian scientist that put it out that matched – that talked about a theoretical 40 megawatt – 20 megawatt heavy water reactor and like what they could do to like decrease plutonium output. I started looking at it because it was obviously that they were talking about the Iraq heavy water reactor.

I see. And I was like, do the technical specifications match? Yeah. I started reading it. But, you know, and I like sort of the subtle references in there, you know, like the fabrication facility that goes in, which is a little wishy-washy in terms of how they're going to get around that issue. Some of the conversion bottleneck issue came out.

It also was included in there if you knew what to look for.

Jeffrey 9:37

Yeah, I suppose we should say, I mean, I kind of want to delve into those little things. We had made a very, well, I think it was a very nice chart. Not all of my colleagues agreed. But we made a chart showing how many centrifuges were at Natanz and Fordow that were enriching, that were installed, but not enriching, and how many could be installed.

And then what that would look like after a deal. And I was really pleased that the numbers didn't change. I mean, there were some clarifications on which particular cascades get knocked down or converted, which was really detailed.

Aaron 10:15

That was very detailed.

Jeffrey 10:16

But, you know, it's the same 5,040 at Natanz and... Oh, gosh, I'm going to misremember the numbers. And what is it? Six cascades at... Six Cascades at Fort Owens. That was an in-change, right?

Aaron 10:31

Right. But what's funny is, like, if I'm remembering correctly off the top of my head, of those Six Cascades, only two will actually be enriching.

Jeffrey 10:38

Yeah, so... Oh, not enriching.

Aaron 10:40

Sorry, not enriching. Spinning isotopes. Not enriching.

Jeffrey 10:44

Right, right. So I have to be careful about this, but... Listeners may notice that occasionally I was aware of the specific wording of things. This was the deal that they reached in Lausanne, and it's one of the reasons I was so frustrated when there was a story that said, in Lausanne, they said it would be 1,000 centrifuges, was an Iranian official was complaining that in Lausanne, the US had said 1,000 centrifuges, and now they were saying 300.

It was always the same. It was six cascades, which adds up to about 1,000, but only two could be involved in stable isotope separation.

Aaron 11:19

Yeah, I have it highlighted in my draft here. It's 1,044 IR1s and six cascades, only two of which will spin without uranium.

Jeffrey 11:28

Right. Only two of which will spin, period. No uranium is allowed in the facility. Exactly. Right, right.

Aaron 11:34

And I instantly caught that because –

Jeffrey 11:40

So that was the deal in Lausanne though. I mean it – like I tried to explain that to people and officials were privately saying that. And like I think Laura Rosen had heard the same thing and she got it. But like so many people couldn't get their heads around how the number could be both 300 and 1,000.

Aaron 11:58

Well, this speaks to something where their pride got in the way of sound negotiating strategy. To keep Fordo open, they had an overall cap, I think, of SWU, which corresponded to the 6,000 change number. And to keep Fordo open, we made them, it looks like, take the 1,000 away from the 5,000.

Jeffrey 12:21

That's exactly what happened. The U.S. side had a budget. And they said, we have this red line where we have to keep the centrifuges in Fordow. But, you know, we can modify them. And we're like, fine, that comes out of your budget.

Aaron 12:40

Right. So you take this, right, the 1,044 comes out from the 6,000 and change cap. But of the 1,044, I think it's only, you know, it's two out of six cascades. That's right. So it's something like 348 centrifuges.

Jeffrey 12:52

That's exactly right.

Aaron 12:54

That's exactly right. And so… And the Russians are going to come in there and tell them how to do it anyways. So we're going to have Rosatom along with the IAEA running around there. And that's a good thing.

Jeffrey 13:05

That's a good thing. I think this speaks to something, which – I mean I just – I can't even go on Twitter. I get so annoyed. I stopped reading it. One of the things you constantly hear is the supreme leader sets all these red lines and we back down. And it's like actually they released a chart – the supreme leader's office released a chart of his red lines and they backed down on most of them.

And one of those red lines was – That, and I should look up the language because it's, it's very flowery and, and, and, and a little hard to follow, but one of those red lines involved keeping Fordow. And so then the creative solution is to make it stable isotope separation, which requires modifying the centrifuges. And I think there's some question about whether running other You wouldn't want to reuse a centrifuge for uranium that had been used for a different isotope.

I guess there are some contamination issues.

Aaron 14:04

Because they wouldn't spin very well. Yeah.

Jeffrey 14:06

I mean, I don't know if it's, you know, if you were racing for a bomb, you might not care. But it would come at like some cost to you. And so if, if you, I don't know if it was bad negotiating on their part because I'm not sure that their goal was to maximize their breakout time. But it does seem to me that they gave up a lot of centrifuges that might've been involved in enrichment at Natanz so they could in the most minimal way possible Sort of honor this arbitrary red line, you know, which is great.

I mean, I'm happy with that outcome.

Aaron 14:45

If you read the agreement and you sort of have this in the back of your mind, you can actually sort of see that Fordow was a tack-on Like everything is geared towards keeping it in the tons. You know, centrifuges have to be stored in the tons. All the enrichment has to take place in the tons. All LEU stockpile has to be in the tons.

And that's pushing it towards the continuous monitoring. And this is the sneak out aspect to it. In addition to the stuff we're going to do in a little bit about, you know, it's pushing everything into the tons.

Jeffrey 15:11

I think that's really important and something that people don't talk about enough. And it comes up on this question of inspections as well. Where someone was like, well, can Iran refuse an inspection? And the answer is kind of like, well, sure, but then that blows up the deal. I mean, the whole point of agreements is Is to create these kinds of rules about how you behave so that you don't actually have to catch them doing the bad thing, right?

You just catch them breaking the rule. It's a little bit like, you know, nailing somebody with tax evasion, right? Or the coverup being worse than the crime. And so literally constraining all enrichment activities to Natanz is tremendously helpful because then if you do a swipe, right, at someplace else that hasn't been declared and So it can't be amnestied from the past, and you find that there's enriched uranium there.

Then even if you don't know what they're doing there, you know they're cheating.

Aaron 16:14

Exactly, and that's why the R&D issue gets pushed into tons as well. They were clear on that. All R&D is at the PFEP. Right. And it's exactly for the pilot fuel enrichment plant, which is sort of next door in the hall. But that's exactly why they did that. And it all starts to make sense. And it's like these guys had a good grasp.

And this is just something I sort of say flippantly, but like this is a really science-based approach to this. It's geared around the strengths of safeguards. And in the traditional ways where safeguards are maybe not as robust – It seeks to augment them with what before the deal they were calling the additional protocol plus. It's that plus aspect that addresses what I'm calling enrichment downstream.

The downstream aspects of enrichment.

Jeffrey 17:05

Is it downstream or is that upstream?

Aaron 17:07

I called it downstream, but maybe it is upstream.

Jeffrey 17:11

Because you flow from the mind to the centrifuge workshop to the – right? Yeah.

Aaron 17:17

Oh.

Jeffrey 17:18

I guess the uranium flows from the mine and the centrifuges flow from the workshop and then they...

Aaron 17:22

So it's downstream of...

Jeffrey 17:23

They meet at Natanz and then...

Aaron 17:26

Right. So in addition to pushing it all into Natanz, we're going to know where every flow forming machine is. And that's like really wonky.

Jeffrey 17:35

Yeah, it's pretty cool. I have this just hilarious image, you know, because Salehi, right, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, he... He was the he was he's an MIT grad. Yeah. Right. And Moniz was a professor. Moniz, I guess he's only on leave. So I guess he still is a professor at MIT. So I just love the idea, right, that like, I know you have all these people like haggling this stuff out, but it's like these two guys from MIT like, well, what if I do this?

It's like, oh, yeah, stable isotope separation. That's a really good idea. Yeah.

Aaron 18:09

By all accounts, they had a really good rapport and were able to overcome certain issues in these sort of science-y ways that are really cool if you know what you're looking for.

Jeffrey 18:17

Yeah. I mean it almost makes you forget that we hate each other.

Aaron 18:21

Yeah, that we're really not getting along. We're still not going to get along when this thing is over. No. But we also did something creative with the snapback, all of this talk.

Jeffrey 18:32

I hate that term by the way.

Aaron 18:34

Me too. And look, can I be honest with something? So you wouldn't look at Twitter. I have not read an article about this since April. It got to such a level of absurdity with – I call it the great LEU stockpile scare. I think that's your title. Great LEU panic of June 2015. Great LEU panic of June 2015.

The missile-related craziness over the past couple of days. Yeah. Even before the, even before the, the, the JPOA, the 6,000, we're going to give them 8,000 centrifuges. Like, like it's, it meets the point of absurdity.

Jeffrey 19:11

I mean, you literally could have dropped in after Luzon read the fact sheet, looked over the two statements, I guess the one statement really looked at whatever the president said Followed a little bit of what came after that, you know, some of the, as, as Moniz went on TV and officials did briefings, you know, and just kind of maybe took it in for a couple of weeks.

If you had then gone on a cruise or like climbed a mountain or just sat in your, you know, in your bedroom and downloaded porn and like checked back in now, you'd be like, oh, that's interesting. And then you'd have like three questions, you know? Yeah. Yeah, no, exactly. You'd be like, oh, so how'd they work out the snapback?

You know, and I'd be like, oh, like this. You'd be like, oh, okay. Anything else different? Like, nah.

Aaron 20:07

Well, so let's go into, because the snapback was like the major thing, you know, like how if Iran violates its terms of the agreement.

Jeffrey 20:13

God, we have to come up with a different term. I just hate snapbacks so much.

Aaron 20:17

How will the stoppage of sanctions relief be enacted again? If the mechanism goes through the UN Security Council with Russian and Chinese veto. So I read it, and it seemed too good to be true. I had to read it three times to understand it. I'll be honest with you.

Jeffrey 20:33

Yeah, and I made a phone call. Oh, you made a phone call. I had to read it three times. Well, no, I read it. But like, you know, you read it. It's like, wow, that's like my I actually briefly, although I don't think this way anymore. I actually was worried that maybe it was too strong. Maybe it was too good.

You know, I I have this thing. I call it Lewis's dictum that you will eventually that you'll live to regret the concessions you win.

Aaron 20:57

Oh, that's interesting.

Jeffrey 21:00

Yeah. And I was a little worried it was too strong, but it's not. So I as I understand it. So there is a dispute resolution procedure that involves a joint commission and can spare you the joint commission, but we should do pretty well on it.

Aaron 21:18

Yeah, I mean us and our allies will probably be the dominant players on it.

Jeffrey 21:24

Yeah. So – Any participant or party to the agreement – I think they call them participants, which is a little weird – can raise an issue in the Joint Commission, and there's a sort of procedure with time limits for dealing with it. But what's really interesting is – If – and this is really about the US, right?

And I think I can explain why the Iranians and the Russians and the Chinese agreed to this because it sounds too good to be true. But when you think about it from their perspective, it's pretty normal. If the United States is ultimately unsatisfied with the resolution of the problem, it can notify the Security Council. That it believes that Iran is in breach of its obligations.

And then a clock starts ticking and the Security Council has 30 days to do something, right? Either reimpose sanctions, work out a resolution to the problem, whatever. But if the Security Council does nothing – and again, I want to see what the actual Security Council resolution looks like.

Aaron 22:32

Yeah, there are some things – exactly.

Jeffrey 22:35

But as I read the paragraphs, and I'm told I am reading it correctly, if the Security Council does nothing, then the sanctions are reimposed automatically.

Aaron 22:47

I'm calling it the virtual U.S. veto. Yeah.

Jeffrey 22:50

I hate that almost as much as I hate Snapback. How could you hate that? That's good. Well, because I think the issue was – so there are a couple of issues here, and I can talk about why I don't – I was a little nervous that somebody could make trouble with it, get President Scott Walker or something.

He just blows up the deal. Oh, good point. But what I think – Makes sense about it is, and I think it helps to look at this if you're a Russian or Chinese, like, yeah, okay, the British and the Germans and even the French are nice. And I actually think the French have been really valuable expertise-wise. But this is really a deal between the United States and Iran.

Aaron 23:32

Yeah. The French were indirectly mentioned with the provision of the fuel routes. Did you see that?

Jeffrey 23:37

Oh, yeah. The French have been incredibly important. I don't mean to diminish their role. I just mean I think if you're the Russians or the Chinese, I mean the French aren't going to bomb the Iranians. No. Right? If this deal collapses and there's a bombing campaign, it's going to be the US. So I think from their perspective – Having the ability for the U.S. to blow it up and revert largely to the sanctions environment is fine.

Because if the U.S. doesn't want to be in this deal, it's not going to work. There's not any enforcement. It's not like if the U.S. doesn't like this deal, there's some coalition of powers that can compel them. Washington to accept it. So at some point, I realized after I thought about it for a while, it did make sense.

I mean, it's just like a treaty that has a withdrawal clause.

Aaron 24:40

Yeah. I mean, it's like a withdrawal clause. And I have to think that the assumption on, say, the Russian and Chinese side Hold on. Let me look at the motorcycle path. Outlaws! I have to think that the assumption on the Russian and Chinese side is that once you get down the road a little bit, you know, unless the Iranian violation is egregious – This can be dealt with in the UN security council or through the actual dispute resolution mechanism that's built into the tree that's built into the agreement.

And so that you find a way to resolve it.

Jeffrey 25:18

Well, yeah. And you know, I mean, it's not like the Russians and the Chinese are all officious when it comes to paperwork. And so, you know, while it is great that we have these sanctions in place I have always thought that those sanctions are They exist in the real world, not on the piece of paper. And so if the United States were to act really unreasonably, which actually I don't even think a president, Scott Walker, would do, although I hope he doesn't have the opportunity to convince me.

Aaron 25:52

Donald Trump may.

Jeffrey 25:53

Yeah, right. So in the Donald Trump scenario, right, where you've got just a bore and a fool and he's surrounded by, you know, yes men, sycophants, enablers, right? Even if you snapped back to sanctions, that sanctions regime would start to crumble, right? Right. Yeah, that's my point. So I think if you're the Iranians or the Russians or the Chinese, the US got a big win in the To the return to sanctions but i think that they're right to probably look at it and say like well if the united states is really abusive and again i really don't think the u.s will be but you know whatever you have to plan for that kind of thing then then i think you know the sanctions regime won't survive regardless of what the security council says so Which, by the way, is also the reason to strike a deal now, which is people act like you can just leave these sanctions on the books forever and they'll endure.

And I'm not sure. If the US had taken the blame for things collapsing, I'm not sure we could have sustained the sanctions regime. I mean, I don't know if you recall this. I certainly do. I recall a large number of the same people who are criticizing this deal insisting very seriously that we needed to invade Iran's neighbor Iraq because you could not expect to maintain the support for that sanctions regime indefinitely.

I don't know if you remember that, Aaron.

Aaron 27:30

I do remember that.

Jeffrey 27:32

I try not to bring it up too often.

Aaron 27:37

The argument now is that if we were just to increase sanctions, we would have gotten more favorable concessions from the Iranians. I think what they're aiming at is it's this sort of misdirection on the quote-unquote 10-year sunset clause, which doesn't exist. I mean, it exists, but it's sort of a misdirection, wouldn't you say?

Jeffrey 27:59

I do. I mean, I think some things sunset and other things don't sunset. And the additional protocols forever. Right. And if the agreement works fantastically for 10 years, my guess is when we get to this point where the Iranians are eager to deploy more advanced centrifuges, we'll have the opportunity to revisit this and see where things are.

Yeah, maybe we'll bomb them then, but maybe we won't. So yeah, I don't think it makes sense to think of it as 10 years. I think of it, you know, it makes sense to think of it as a set of tools that we have to manage the problem. And some of those tools are good for 10 years and some of those tools are good for longer.

But it's going to be an active process of dealing with this issue.

Aaron 28:50

This just may reflect my bias and my sort of total rejection of breakout times and accurate metric to measure anything. But I don't care about the breakout time. What I care about is – Yeah, I don't care about the breakout time either. I don't care. It's about the access to centrifuge machine shops down to the flow forming machine for 25 years, which I find incredible.

Jeffrey 29:13

I still do. I always – I find this – I don't know, maybe I should write a column about this someday. There's this discussion of math in policymaking where, you know, when we have these complex problems, we want to create these simplified models so we can understand them. But then once we have like a simple model, We start to like take that model too seriously.

We forget that it's an approximation of reality and we forget that it's meant to be a simple model. So we make it more complicated. I just feel like that's what's happened with the breakout. I mean, as a simple idea, it made sense at the beginning, right? We wanted to say like, look, if the supreme leader wanted a bomb, you know, would we have enough time to stop him or at least do something about it?

And it was understandable to say, well, one way to measure that is to look at the facilities they have and ask how long it would take, right? But like people have then gotten so focused on breakout and the agreement does deal with breakout, right? It limits the number of centrifuges and for a period of time.

Aaron 30:11

It's a major component.

Jeffrey 30:12

Yeah, yeah. But like the whole point of that was to sort of get inside the supreme leader's head and model his behavior. And I think – yeah, well, you and I agree. We've said this like a bazillion times and probably don't need to say it again. I can't help myself. All you can really achieve is persuading him that the decision to build a bomb will be detected and it will start a showdown.

And the details of that I think are like way less important. You know, he doesn't sit there and get a briefing that says, you know, well, sir, we have 232 days, you know, like you don't know that stuff.

Aaron 30:49

No, I mean, not at the top. And you know, I'll say it. I know you're hesitant to say it, but I'll say it. When you have an accurate picture of where everything is made, your targeting packages become very refined. The actual threat of military force becomes far more credible, if I ask you. But the consequences for failure obviously go up.

Yeah, absolutely. The concern of the U.S. walking back on this and resorting to the military option and using intelligence gleaned from a nonproliferation agreement is inherently bad for the nonproliferation arrangement. And the way that Israelis assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists lead to Iranian concerns about allowing some of their scientists to be interviewed by the IAEA because they're afraid the information will get out there.

There are drawbacks to this. With that all said, Knowing where everything is makes precision strike all that more precise if it comes to that.

Jeffrey 31:51

It's true. It's true. I just don't like saying it because I obviously don't like highlighting that particular aspect.

Aaron 31:57

But it's totally true. But it's a way – and I think because it's coming up a lot now. It's a way to compare it to other deals. Yeah. Like the Libya deal, the DPRK deal, SALT, START, whatever you want to name it, about how this compares to other nonproliferation agreements and sort of like the level of inspections that are in place.

Jeffrey 32:19

Right. So you want to talk about ballistic missiles, conventional sanctions? Because it seems to me that ultimately at the end of the day, the numbers and the level of access and the R&D plan – we could talk a little about the R&D plan. All of that stuff was more or less squared away in Lausanne. Oh, yes. And really it seems like they spent most of their time working out a snapback mechanism – And figuring out how to deal with an arms embargo and sanctions on missile entities that have value apart from the nuclear deal, but which the U.S. was only able to achieve because of concerns about the nuclear weapons program.

Aaron 33:02

Yeah, let's just start right there, I think, because a lot of the concerns that were going on the past couple of days were about the missile-related stuff. Yeah, and that's the one I worry about.

Jeffrey 33:12

I mean, I worry less about the arms embargo, although I wouldn't say I worry nothing about it. I worry a little bit about it. But yeah, I was mostly worried about the missile program, although I'm fine with the deal that they struck with a tiny little asterisk. Yeah. Well, okay, so the deal, as I understand it, is the UN missile sanctions will stay on for eight years.

Yes. Which is reasonable. I understand the Iranian position is, look, we only have these missile sanctions because of concerns about our nuclear program. We've solved those concerns, so they should come off. I am more sympathetic to the Western argument that – The nuclear program included work on missiles, right? It included RV work, right? Reentry vehicle work. Yes.

Based on your own work, if you're not going to build nuclear weapons, why do you need the missiles? And I just think that that's a fundamental difference of opinion, and there's no way to square it. And so I think kicking the can eight years down the road is a good solution, particularly since U.S. sanctions will stay, and Iran's going to remain outside of the missile technology control regime.

Which basically means they can only import missiles from North Korea, and that's prohibited by other UN sanctions.

Aaron 34:41

Right. Exactly. So with the MTCR, My concern is not so much on the ballistic missile side. I have to give a shout out to Gormley here. It's like if we relax, it's the cruise missile side because the MTCR is a little wishy-washy on that. And cruise missiles I think are getting far more prevalence. And so when I was looking at the missile things, I always just dig through.

Is it just air breathing? Is it air breathing or are we also talking – sorry. Is it ballistic missiles or are we also talking air breathing missiles here? Yeah.

Jeffrey 35:15

Not that our friends, including our friends who are parties to this agreement, have scrupulously observed the MTCR when it comes to our regional allies and friends, but... Yeah, it's a Western country involved in the agreement, not named the US and Germany. Yeah, right. Well, both of them, right? The French sold the storm shadow to the UAE and the UK sold the...

Well, the French version is called Scout, but the UK sold their version, the Storm Shadow, to the Saudis.

Aaron 35:46

Right. So giving them long-range strike capabilities to hit at the Iranians.

Jeffrey 35:50

Although I think the Iranians, you know, they deserve it. You know, they're the ones who started the missile race. I don't blame their neighbors to watch.

Aaron 35:58

No, no. I mean, look, it just is what it is. I mean, I think there is a missile race coming in the region. So the eight years... Look, it's not ideal, but it is what it is. We talked about it last week. It's a classic stability-instability paradox. The nuclear agreement does little for the incentives to acquire more capabilities to strike each other below the nuclear threshold.

And that's going to continue. So I think we're actually touching off missile proliferation in the region.

Jeffrey 36:25

I mean, I think that horse is out of the barn.

Aaron 36:28

You're right. The ship has sailed. More missile proliferation.

Jeffrey 36:30

So I'm just pleased that we'll keep that embargo for another – Eight years. And again, maybe functionally, I think it'll be longer because the MTCR means that Iran should be subject to denials because it's outside of it. And even though the Chinese aren't in the MTCR, they abide by it, or at least they assert that they do to the point where we can go demarche them and complain about stuff and get things shut down.

Do you remember there was a couple of years ago, there was the graphite jet veins case?

Aaron 37:01

I do, actually. And I think that was pre... China's adherence informally to the MTCR.

Jeffrey 37:10

Yeah, I don't think we... I'd have to look up if we complain that the graphite jet vanes violated the... I think that sale may have been before some of the sanctions.

Aaron 37:22

Did I ever tell you the story about that? I should tell you the story about this.

Jeffrey 37:24

This is great.

Aaron 37:25

Whenever I see an Iranian missile model, I always look for jet vanes.

Jeffrey 37:28

Yeah, well, I've got to be careful about this. So Jeff Forden wrote a little piece. There was a video of an Iranian missile program Or a missile test, right? And you could see the vein pop off.

Aaron 37:41

I know the post on arms control.

Jeffrey 37:42

Right, and it spiraled out of control. So I was in Beijing, and I met, you know, let's call him, you know, shady embassy figure. Who said, no, an American, you know, I'm obscuring the person's idea. Like, tell Jeff that post was real helpful. Yeah. I was like, what do you mean? He was like, it's just real helpful to see that in an unclassified basis.

That was all he would tell me. He wouldn't tell me anything. And then when the WikiLeaks stuff broke, I saw that we had demarched the Chinese about a sale of graphite to the Iranians in that time period. Right. So it was like, oh, yes, of course. It was a way to show the Chinese what the graphite could be used for and the problem the Iranians were having without using classified information.

They could just take Jeff's post and be like, hey, look at this video. Do you see this thing pop off? That's the graphite jet vein. The super high-strength graphite you're about to sell them will solve that problem. Don't.

Aaron 38:47

So I think it needs more open source work for us watching what comes out of North Korea and what ends up in the Middle East. Yeah, something like that. Something like that.

Jeffrey 38:54

By the way, I have to say – so I'm fine with where they are on ballistic missiles. I mean I would love to see the Iranians give up their missile program. But I think that's something that will have to happen regionally.

Aaron 39:08

I'm not sure if I want to pressure our friends to give up theirs.

Jeffrey 39:10

Yeah.

Aaron 39:11

No. Look, our response mechanisms to this is to give them more missiles.

Jeffrey 39:15

Yeah, missiles and missile defenses, right? Yes.

Aaron 39:21

This is my thing here. We're touching off greater incentives for more missiles in the region. And we have to think this through.

Jeffrey 39:34

I want to talk about the arms embargo though because I found that to be the funniest aspect of this whole thing.

Aaron 39:40

As I told you, I was ignoring – I was muting all sorts of stories about it except for just the brief stuff on Twitter.

Jeffrey 39:45

Well, OK. So the deal on the arms embargo as I understand it is that stays for five years, right? But – and I love this. The Iranians wanted the conventional arms embargo off. But you know who really wanted it off? The Russians. Yeah, because they want to sell the irradiates, all this stuff. And so apparently the deal, as it's been reported, is that the arms embargo stays for five more years.

Which, all kidding aside, is very important. And we'll talk about the regional security situation in a second, which is very bad and a very serious problem. And if the administration doesn't deal with that problem, this deal is not going to survive. But shove that off for a second and laugh at the Russians. The Security Council can permit select arms sales to Iran.

Yeah.

Other voice 40:38

No. Is it really in there?

Jeffrey 40:40

I missed that. So apparently what has happened is that the Russians have arranged for themselves to be the sole authorized supplier of defensive arms to the Iranians.

Aaron 40:54

They're the silent winner of this. They're so dirty. Beyond the arms department, Rosatom is going to be all over Iran. They're going to be all over that. Taking back spent fuel, helping at Fordow, maybe building another reactor. I mean they're going to be all over this.

Jeffrey 41:14

And I just love that like basically the Russians are going to be haggling with the other members of the Security Council about like what they're allowed to sell to the Iranians. And the Iranians are like the poor – I shouldn't say the poor Iranians. I'm right. But like – Yeah, the Iranians, if they want something, they have to pay whatever the Russians ask.

You can't go anywhere else. We're going to veto it. It's like, oh, we found a much cheaper rifle supplier in Venezuela. It's like, no, you didn't.

Aaron 41:45

Lavrov is my favorite character through all this. He would just come and go. He's so horrible. I've had enough of this. I'm going home. Call me when it's done. He's just coming in like, oh, this looks great. What's in it for us again?

Jeffrey 41:59

Oh, gosh. I love that. But all seriousness, I think the reason I say I didn't care about the conventional arms embargo is I'm not sure that was sustainable. Do you remember a couple of years ago when the Iranians exported a shipment of conventional arms to Syria and it got interdicted in Cyprus?

Aaron 42:17

I do because it led to the explosion, didn't it?

Jeffrey 42:19

Right. So the Cypriots – Desperately tried to come up with every reason on earth not to interdict that shipment because they didn't want to be subject to proxy violence by the Syrians and the Iranians.

Aaron 42:34

The Russians are very big in their economy.

Jeffrey 42:36

Yeah. And we squeezed them and squeezed them and squeezed them and we made them take it. And then they begged for assistance to dispose of it. And we basically said that's your problem. And it blew up and it killed a bunch of people and it damaged the power plant on the island. And so I actually think that we handled that so badly that I seriously doubt that Cyprus, for example, would ever interdict such a shipment again.

And I really doubt whether other countries would either. I mean, we could really lean on them in the case of specific shipments, but you know, we could kind of do that now.

Aaron 43:20

Yeah. I mean, it just speaks to a larger thing. It's something that I'm actually, I think it's talked about enough is we can lean really heavy, heavily on allies and sort of like, like sort of tangential allies, like the Cypriots to do things, to make things life harder for the Iranians, but that's not cost free. It hurts us in terms of relationship management when we're constantly nagging people.

The deal, what it does do is it does create mechanisms to sort of back that off. Do you understand what I'm saying? So that we don't have to lean on them all the time to go after an issue that they're only tangentially concerned about. Proliferation in the abstract is of everybody's concern, but it matters to more countries' concerns.

Than it does to others, particularly when the Iranian nuclear issue becomes the top priority of the United States.

Jeffrey 44:11

It's also just a pet peeve of mine that we're going to be treated to an endless series of harangues and lectures about the sanctity of the conventional arms embargo by people who totally did not care when lots of us argued that the arms embargo would not be sustainable unless they did things like help countries like Cyprus dispose of those arms.

Aaron 44:31

It's a massive explosion.

Jeffrey 44:33

It was enormous, right? It was like – well, I actually don't – I've seen several estimates of its size, but it was sort of somewhere between half a kiloton and a kiloton, maybe more. It was really big.

Aaron 44:46

Yeah. I mean I remember this. It was just massive.

Other voice 44:49

Yeah.

Jeffrey 44:50

So like I like the arms embargo because I don't like the things that Iran is doing regionally. And I'm glad that we stopped the ships that tried to carry arms into Yemen. But, like, this is a regional security problem that we have to deal with. And just, you know, leaving in place the arms embargo and doing nothing about it is not as good as keeping the arms embargo for five years and getting to work on dealing with the problem.

Because honestly, you know, I... I don't know. People are very negative about how cautious our allies have been about this deal. But I don't blame them. Their regional security situation stinks. And I don't know that we do a great job of conveying that we're aware of how stressful that is for them.

Aaron 45:42

No, I mean Mogherini today in sort of her preface to announcing the deals talked about how this could be a prelude towards beginning with Iran's greater discussions about regional security. That's the absolute worst way to frame this deal. No kidding, right? When she was talking, I was like, stop, just be quiet. This deal is focused on one thing and one thing only.

Jeffrey 46:06

Yeah, because a nuclear-armed Iran will be an even worse-behaved country.

Aaron 46:11

Right. This is not a prelude to integrating Iran into the security structure. Iran is not our ally in Iran. Iran is not our ally in Syria. Any framing by this administration, if they dare do it, suggests that it may. Is so dumb. Yeah. Like, they have to stop. They have to stop.

Jeffrey 46:31

Yeah. I think they've been okay about it. I just, you know, my guess is that whenever they see, like, people, like, in Tehran in the streets celebrating, they just, you know, I don't know, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe Barry's eyes form back in, you know, his pupils make, you know, little Nobel Prizes again.

Aaron 46:48

Well, Carrie and Zurich may be on the hook this year.

Jeffrey 46:53

Oh, God.

Aaron 46:54

You know, like, people, we just have to be careful with this. You know, Because Syria is a mess. Iraq is a total mess. Yemen is a mess. We sort of ticked off a little box that still needs to be implemented.

Jeffrey 47:09

Did you see Jeffrey Goldberg's piece on his cautious support for the deal? I thought it was very good.

Aaron 47:17

I have not. Explain it to me.

Jeffrey 47:20

Well, I mean he didn't – I mean I don't – I didn't agree with every single word. I mean he referred to the deal as being morally dubious and I just think diplomacy is inherently morally dubious. So it strikes me as weird to highlight that fact like, yeah, I signed deals with terrible people because there aren't enough bombs to go around.

Like yeah, it's not morally dubious. That's diplomacy. But I thought what he did a great job of was highlighting – The anxiety of regional states. And he made a point, which I think is important. You know, he talked about how Obama doesn't sort of seem to get the visceral response that many Israelis have to that, like, incredible anti-Semitism that sometimes pours out of Iran, you know.

Aaron 48:20

Yeah. And I just think that

Jeffrey 48:23

He just did a really nice job of outlining why so many states in the region think of Iran as a really problematic actor without going down the – There's like a balance you have to strike, right, between highlighting all the things they do that are destructive without just kind of slipping into crazy time. And I thought he did a really nice job of balancing that.

Aaron 48:57

Your mention of crazy time actually spurred a mental note to ask you about. You said when you were reading the text sort of offline before we started that there was a Tom Cotton paragraph?

Jeffrey 49:07

I think so. I think it is a subtle paragraph 26.

Other voice 49:13

And I miss this. Now I'm curious what it is.

Jeffrey 49:16

It says, the United States will make best efforts in good faith to sustain this joint comprehensive plan of action and to prevent interference with the realization of the full benefit by Iran of the sanctions lifting specified in Annex II. The U.S. administration acting consistent... With the respective roles of the President and the Congress, will refrain from reintroducing or reimposing the sanctions specified in Annex II that it has ceased applying under this Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action without prejudice to the dispute resolution process provided for under this Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

And it kind of goes on. And I think that I love the reference to the administration acting consistent with the roles of the President and Congress, Right. And making good faith efforts to sustain. I think that says, look, the Iranians know very well that Tom Cahotten and his friends may pull some really crazy stunt. And it's just like, really, you have to try to stop that, please.

Aaron 50:18

I read that.

Jeffrey 50:19

Like, yes, that's going to happen. And Zarif knows that. And, you know, they're prepared for that. And, you know, but you really have to try to stop that.

Aaron 50:28

Well, Tom Cotton did challenge Zarif to a fist fight. I mean it was a debate but it might as well have been like, come throw down, buddy. Meet me in DC.

Jeffrey 50:38

Was it a – it wasn't a duel? Well –

Aaron 50:44

It was like meet me at high noon at the OK Corral and we'll debate.

Jeffrey 50:50

Didn't Zell Miller challenge Kerry to a duel or something? Did he really? Or maybe he challenged Chris Matthews to a duel when he defended Kerry. I can't remember. These politicians are insane. Yeah, I think that's right.

Aaron 51:05

See, when I read that, I thought they were actually just talking about the congressional review, but – Sort of the insanity and sort of the fact that they have to build this stuff in there I think speaks to some of the noise that we should expect about this coming out in the next couple of days.

Jeffrey 51:20

Yeah, I got a funny note, and I have to – I want to read it because I'm never going to get it. I got a note when the NCRI, the National Council for Resistance in Iran, announced their – That they had a press conference, right? They were going to have a press conference a couple of weeks ago.

And the person emails it to me. I have to obscure the person's identity. And said, like clockwork. And I said, you can set your watch to them. And the response was, I tried that, but all it kept telling me was it's time for regime change.

Aaron 52:03

Yeah.

Jeffrey 52:08

Yeah, we're going to have a lot of leaks about this deal. People are going to try to kill this deal.

Aaron 52:14

Yeah, they will. I mean, they already have tried. And it's only going to get worse once people start to read it and sort of nitpick around some of the things in it.

Jeffrey 52:25

Yeah. Well, and, you know, so I always go back to North Korea because... The Clinton administration signed this deal with North Korea in 1994 and the leak started. And, you know, like the North Koreans, not surprisingly, you know, will occasionally cheat. But most of the leaks I think that we're going to get will not be... True. They're motivated by a desire to kill the deal, not a sincere desire to resolve issues that will naturally come up in a deal.

The big challenge is going to be, I think, sorting through all of the noise, the Washington noise machine, and being alert to if there is an actual instance of noncompliance, being able to pick that out of what's going to be just this din of crazy.

Aaron 53:19

I call it fundamental dishonesty.

Jeffrey 53:21

Yeah, well.

Aaron 53:22

The great LEU scare of 2015, that, the missile, all this stuff.

Jeffrey 53:28

I have to say I have to be careful about that because I think that article was written very carefully. So I – it's hard to know – When you say fundamental dishonesty, I have to be careful because there were a lot of people involved in that LEU scare and I'm not sure all of them were fundamentally dishonest.

But I think some of them were. I didn't actually mean to call anybody – Oh, OK. Yeah, it's hard to know who's guilty.

Aaron 54:00

Some of the leaks are fundamentally dishonest and not actually based on real facts because they're actually aimed at killing the deal. That is what I meant.

Jeffrey 54:07

Yeah. Well, I mean I have suspicions about what people are up to, but I just need to be careful about I guess – there's one thing to suspect someone's up to something and it's another thing to know. And I have to say, I mean just since people will probably be guessing who I'm talking about, I don't mean David Albright.

I mean I sometimes disagree with David. But I don't think David's scheming to kill the deal. I just think David focuses on details, and sometimes those things get blown up by other people.

Aaron 54:39

No, I'm just talking about what I was actually referring to is sort of the comparisons to other arms control agreements and how if we held out longer, we could have gotten, I think I've been seeing that Libya, we could have gotten Libya. And on the surface of it, if you know nothing about the Libya deal and you say, well, we forced them after the invasion of Iraq to have all of their centrifuge components removed, it's like, No – well, yes, we did, but there were no inspection prescriptions.

You know what I mean?

Jeffrey 55:15

Oh, it was a – I mean it was a wonderful deal for a country like Libya that had no ability to reconstitute its program. It's like taking a loaded gun away from a child. Yes. Right? The child – Unclear how they got it in the first place. It was a special set of circumstances. I've taken it away.

You don't have the capacity to replace this. That's a good deal. But you're right. There's no verification associated with that. And so the problem is when you're dealing with a country like Iran, they could – like that would be a terrible deal because they would ship all the stuff out and then they would reconstitute everything in secret.

I have always said like that is the thing that scares me the most, and I'm glad they never did it. If I were the Iranians, I would just say, hey, you know what? You're right. We quit. We give up. We're going to – you can have it all. We're going to take it all down. And oh, by the way, we don't need the additional protocol and we don't need any inspections because we don't have anything.

Good luck.

Aaron 56:13

Right. Right? It's so true. Yeah. Yeah. And just going back to the DPRK stuff, I mean – I mean, you know this far better than I do. Did leaks kill that? I mean, look, a lot of things kill that deal, but the noise machine amplifies that. And now we're in the age where the noise machine is even louder because of Twitter and social media.

Jeffrey 56:35

Yep. Well, so – and my hope is that the open source – I hope our ability on open source will help. I mean, my nightmare scenario is what happened in the late 1990s with Kum Chang-ri in North Korea. And I wrote an article for 38 North about this. Arguing that, you know, I don't know if people know this story, but there was this big hole in the ground and the DIA saw the hole in the ground and said, ah, it's being dug by the same people who dug out Yongbyon's tunnels.

It must be a secret underground nuclear reactor. And everyone else went like, you can't know that. I don't know what it is. And DIA or somebody associated, it's actually, I shouldn't, I don't know that it's DIA, but somebody who agreed with DIA Gave it to the New York Times and they ran it on the front page as, you know, North Korea has underground A-bomb plant.

I should actually look up the exact title. It's about as bad as that. It's actually- It's very close. It's agencies say, right? Implying that it's a consensus. And so the United States negotiates and gets in. Oh yeah, North Korea site and A-bomb plant, U.S. agencies say. It's actually one agency and everybody else says not. The U.S. negotiates, gets in, and turns out it's not, right?

And and that ends up being really prejudicial because it gobbles up all of this time. It creates this sense that the North Koreans are cheating. I think the North Koreans were starting to cheat, and I think by the end of it, I think by the end of it, you know, they were, they were going whole hog.. And so the deal – ultimately, the Clinton administration tries to negotiate a series of things with the North Koreans to try to save the deal, but they run out of time.

And so it ends up being a very successful leak in terms of killing the agreed framework. And guess who published that little gem?

Aaron 58:38

Well, yes.

Other voice 58:40

No comment. No comment.

Aaron 58:44

So, you know, that's going to happen again, right? Yeah, some variation thereof. And it will be around the PMD issue, I think. I think that the first thing we're going to get is the PMD issue. Iran... Well, we've already seen it. Iran continues to import various illicit nuclear materials to support the nuclear program while negotiating, so they're already cheating.

I've already seen that.

Jeffrey 59:05

Yeah, well, that's why I'm hopeful about open source. We had the NCRI claim that the basement to the facility that makes the ID cards was actually secretly enriching uranium. That's a good one. We were able to find, I guess I can say, a European person who had worked there and whose company worked there and who was able to convey that that seemed very unlikely to all of the foreigners who were in and out of that facility all the time.

Aaron 59:34

Yeah. Yeah. There's going to be a lot of that, though. There's going to be a lot of that.

Jeffrey 59:39

In my column, I say this is going to make the battle over Obamacare look like a couple of preppies slap fighting over a cucumber sandwich. Yeah.

Other voice 59:50

Because we still have, this still has to go to congressional review. Oh, this is going to be a nightmare.

Aaron 59:54

Tom Cotton's coming back, I'm sure of this. Yep. I mean, you know, tangentially. But I mean, overall, I mean, viewing this solely for what it is, which is a non-proliferation arrangement to, you know, And using sanctions to incentivize or to coerce policy changes, I think we've got it. I definitely think we've got it. I will tell you some of my long-term concerns.

And it's – look, I think this Iranian negotiating team is far different than say somebody like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shows up again and so sort of like – Right. So that is a concern for me moving forward. And how would a Republican U.S. administration who inherits this deal look at it as well? Those things sort of freak me out.

Jeffrey 1:00:48

Yeah. Well, I mean it – I don't know. It mostly always ends badly in our field. Yeah.

Other voice 1:00:55

That's true.

Jeffrey 1:00:55

Otherwise, we'd be out of a job. Right. So I mean I can see all the ways that this can go wrong and I think it is going to be a street fight for the next 10 years. I mean I think it's just – it's going to be like the agreed framework but worse that the people – there are – there's a cottage industry of people who raise money around hating on this deal.

And hating Iran. And they will continue to raise money around hating this deal and hating Iran. And that money will fund them hating this deal and hating this Iran. And while some of them I think are very scrupulous and honest, many of them are going to just throw whatever they can at the wall and see what sticks.

So there's going to be a lot of noise. And it's just, I don't know. I mean, I should be happy about it. It will be fun to debunk a lot of this stuff. And while it would be bad if the Iranians cheated, it would be really amazing if we could use open source information to catch them. So I guess I just have to be positive.

Aaron 1:01:59

Yeah, well, is that the positive note to end this? I think so. Yeah, I mean, it's a good deal. I'm looking forward to see how this all plays out.

Jeffrey 1:02:07

It is a good deal. I was pleasantly surprised by Lausanne, and I am pleased to see that what looked like a good deal then is now written down on paper.

Aaron 1:02:21

Yeah, in very detailed fashion, right down to coolant-related issues in the Iraq reactor. Yeah.

Jeffrey 1:02:30

It's totally ridiculous.

Aaron 1:02:31

Yeah. Anyways. All right. So, yeah. Thanks for this, Jeffrey. This was fun.

Jeffrey 1:02:39

Yeah. Now I have to go finish my column.

Aaron 1:02:40

Yeah. And thanks, everybody, for listening. If you like the show, we always appreciate feedback. So go on iTunes and leave us a review. We like it.