Speaker 1: 0:04

Shalom and welcome to the Israel Policy Pod. I'm Nery Zilber, a journalist based in Tel Aviv and a policy advisor to Israel Policy Forum. I hope the Passover and Easter holidays were enjoyable for all of you, but now we're back to regular programming, and back with us this week is Dr Nisan Rafati, the senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group. Is Dr Nassan Rafati, the senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, talk about one of the big issues in the news right now and which promises to maybe get even bigger in the coming weeks and months Iran's nuclear program and the Trump administration's efforts to negotiate a new deal with the Islamic Republic. Or else Nassan, of course, was previously a postdoc fellow at the Iran Corporation, the US Institute of Peace and the IFRI think tank in Paris. He also holds a doctorate from Oxford University and is, more importantly, a old and dear friend of mine. Let's not hold that against him. Before we get to Nisan and Iran, a few thoughts from me on the other big issue obviously still in the news the Gaza War.

Speaker 1: 1:07

So at the very end of Passover, on Saturday night, israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a pre-recorded video statement. What else? Answering the question on everyone's minds and one. I get asked a lot these days when will this war end? Conveniently, benjamin Netanyahu gave us an answer which was not anytime soon. I don't want to say that he said it'll never end, but that was the general vibe. It's not going to end anytime soon. But Netanyahu was very clear in the statement. He's not ending the war in Gaza. Not for all the hostages coming back, not for any long-term ceasefire or some other post-war arrangement. He said yet again that the goal is the complete destruction of Hamas and that he wouldn't stop until that total victory was achieved or else, in his words, the next and future October 7th was only a matter of time. His words, not mine. Nenya also said that he hadn't given up on the hostages and that he was still working to get them all back.

Speaker 1: 2:06

Fine, but it should be clear to everyone and frankly, it was clear to many people watching his video that none of this really made any sense. Think about it. What was Bibi actually telling the Hamas? That even if you, ie Hamas, returned some or even all of the hostages, it wouldn't be of any use or make any difference to Israel. Israel would still go and strive to completely destroy Hamas and Hamas would be finished, no matter what it did vis-a-vis the hostages. So what incentive does Hamas actually have to release any of the hostages if the end result was going to be just the same Same thing, by the way, with the argument that, if the end result was going to be just the same Same thing, by the way, with the argument that if Hamas wasn't completely wiped out as a military force, that the next October 7th massacre and mass kidnappings were going to for sure repeat themselves.

Speaker 1: 2:57

I've said this before on this podcast, but really, in what world will Israel be caught off guard again with another mass cross-border raid from Gaza or, frankly, anywhere else?

Speaker 1: 3:08

In what world will Hamas be able to pull off something like that again, like October 7th, given its current state after 18 months getting hammered by the IDF? And in what world will the IDF not keep striking terror targets inside the Gaza Strip, even after a ceasefire is concluded? By the way, exactly what Israel is doing as we speak inside Lebanon against Hezbollah after a ceasefire was agreed up there on the northern front. But you see, netanyahu told us on Saturday the international community, quote unquote won't let us go back to fighting if we agree to end the war. There won't be any legitimacy for that move to go back to fighting. Our hands will be tied. This isn't the way the international community works. Bibi really said that. This isn't the way the international community works. This kind of deception, bibi added, won't fly internationally. Added won't fly internationally, as one person quipped this week, by the way, nahum Barnea, the legendary columnist for Yediot Ahonot, and he was quoting, I believe, opposition leader Yair Lapid. This was the first time ever that the entire world is pleading with Bibi Netanyahu to lie and Bibi Netanyahu is refusing to tell a lie. Incredible stuff.

Speaker 1: 4:26

But the bottom line is this, and I'm on a more somber note, let's be clear 59 hostages are still in captivity. This Israeli government is clearly saying they're not the most important priority for it and, barring any unforeseen collapse by Hamas, either on the battlefield or the negotiating table, this war will not only go on, but likely escalate and escalate, likely in the coming weeks. We have to be ready for that and all that that kind of escalation entails for the remaining hostages inside the Gaza Strip being held captive by Hamas. What it entails for these early soldiers who are going to be tasked with fighting and likely retaking the Gaza Stripas. What it entails for the Israeli soldiers who are going to be tasked with fighting and likely retaking the Gaza Strip and what it entails for the people of Gaza. Let's be clear about that.

Speaker 1: 5:12

All right, without further ado, let's get to Naysan Rafati Hi Naysan, welcome back to the Israel Policy. Pod Hi Nery, it's great to be back. Thanks for having me. It's really my pleasure, nisan. And last time you were on I don't know if you recall, but it was August of 2022. So time flies, especially when there's a lot going on in the Middle East.

Speaker 1: 5:35

Back then, way back then, the Biden administration was engaged in negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, trying to put, as it were, the nuclear program back in a box. That never happened, and we can get into the reasons why. But here we are again in April of 2025 with the new Trump administration, once again in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, and we'll get to that in just a second. But I wanted to start here and we should be clear by way of context for our listeners. The original Iran nuclear agreement, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the JCPOA, was first negotiated by Barack Obama back in 2015, and then Donald Trump subsequently, after he became president, withdrew the United States from that agreement in 2018. At the urging, it has to be said, of one Benjamin Netanyahu. But seven years later, right after Trump withdrew from the agreement, give us a lay of the land, a state of play. Where do we find Iran's nuclear program right now, in the spring of 2025?

Speaker 2: 6:40

Well where we find Iran's nuclear program in the spring of 2025,. I think the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency kind of summed it up well a few days ago they have a waste to go before they get to a weapon, but they're not very far. So what that means in practice is that Iran's nuclear program is operating under somewhat restricted international access. The IAEA has inspectors on the ground, but some of their ability to verify, monitor Iranian activity has been curtailed over the past few years. And 60%, which is close to nuclear weapons grade. It has about a quarter ton of 60% enriched uranium and that stockpile obviously continues to grow. And what that means is that the breakout time for a weapon is theoretically under a week. Now I should clarify what we mean by that. That doesn't mean Iran can have a nuclear weapon in a week. It means that it can have the fissile material. Iran can have a nuclear weapon in a week. It means that it can have the fissile material nuclear material that would be needed for a bomb in under a week from the point where it made a decision to do that.

Speaker 2: 7:54

Once you get there, then weaponization is a different thing and I hope this doesn't come off as a glib analogy, but you can think of it as if you're making a cake.

Speaker 2: 8:04

You have to have the right amount of batter, but then you still need to put it in the oven and actually, you know, bake the cake. So weaponization the cake baking period depends on you know what kind of device you're after. If you're after just a simple, crude nuclear device without a delivery mechanism and everything else, but something that allows the Islamic Republic to say, oh, by the way, we have a nuclear weapon, that could be a matter of months from the point where they make a decision to move towards weaponization. A more sophisticated device where you have a miniaturized warhead delivery system could take longer, anywhere from a year to maybe a year and a half. So the breakout time window is short. It's been short for some time, but according to US intelligence and I think allied intelligence services as well, there is no detected move towards weaponization. They are humming along at the threshold at 60%, with accumulating stockpiles under limited international oversight.

Speaker 1: 9:04

At 60% with accumulating stockpiles under limited international oversight but have not put their toe over the threshold yet. Got you? And yes, once again, the world's worst cake is the Iran nuclear program. But it is handy for me and other lay people to visualize the batter, the enriched uranium, as the batter for this cake. So that's where we are right now. Where were we, say, in 2018, when Trump withdrew from the original nuclear agreement?

Speaker 2: 9:34

So it's water under the bridge at this point. But when the US withdrew from the agreement, iran's uranium enrichment in particular was capped and would have continued to be capped through 2031 at a very low level of enrichment 3.67, and with a very small stockpile, allowed 300 kilograms. So again, if you imagine the batter analogy not enough batter to worry about the cake but beginning in 2019, the Iranians began to breach those nuclear restrictions. They also started kind of a counter pressure campaign to the those nuclear restrictions. They also started kind of a counter pressure campaign to the US maximum pressure campaign that also involved regional provocation. So we had nuclear escalation and regional provocation. By January of 2021, they increased enrichment to 60% and then from April of 2021, they went up to 60% and then from April of 2021, they went up to 60%. So again, it's kind of you know, one of the questions that I get asked right now is you know, as these negotiations are going on and I'm sure we'll get into it with the Trump administration one of the nuclear program you have, not the nuclear program you had 10 years ago, or the nuclear program you wish you had. Right, when the JCPOA was reached, iran's breakout was again worryingly short, but it was still measured in a couple of months and the high end of its enrichment was 20%, right. So that's a far cry from where we are today, where breakout time, according to US Strategic Command, is under a week and the high end of enrichment is 60%. They've also brought online more advanced centrifuges that can enrich more efficiently.

Speaker 2: 11:21

So from my perspective, it's the JCPO that the JCPOA model and you mentioned at the top that the last time we spoke was August of 2022.

Speaker 2: 11:30

Late August 2022, early September 22 is also kind of the tombstone end date of the JCPOA. That's where I think the process for the Biden administration and the other members of the nuclear deal you know, the P5 plus one members, the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany, which were at that point, even after the invasion of Ukraine, still sitting around the same table working on putting Iran's nuclear program back in a box, as you said, and Secretary Blinken back in a box you know that. I think even at that point, the technical advances that Iran had made between 2019 and 2021, 22, made it an increasingly complicated proposition to go back to the terms of the JCPOA, and I think that that, in terms of what a potential deal might look like now is something to bear in mind that Iran's nuclear program in 2025 is not what it was in 2015. And we'll have to see the extent to which the current negotiations, if they get far enough to engage in this kind of substantive technical discussion, are able to account for that.

Speaker 1: 12:37

I'll say it because you're being very diplomatic. Iran's nuclear program has never been this advanced. Hence the urgency on the part of the Trump administration, hence the, shall we say, urgency here in Israel, where I am, and also the urgency, by the way, by the Biden administration. Even right after it took office in was it early 2021, it was a major priority for them to at least try to renegotiate with the Iranians. Why did that effort fail in terms of the Biden folks and Iran?

Speaker 2: 13:07

just by way of context, to bring us up to speed today, Well, I think the Biden administration kind of had three or four stages over their four years. They came in and said you know, we're going to negotiate a re-entry into the JCPOA and use it as a framework to build what Secretary Blinken used to say is stronger and longer agreements. Right, and on a couple of occasions you know. So they began the negotiations around this time, around mid-April of 2021. And then they made some progress. Then there was a bit of a gap of several months because there was a transition of government in Iran where you had the Rouhani team that originally negotiated the JCPOA with the Obama administration and the P5 plus one leaving office and having a more hardline administration come in. So that kind of delayed negotiations through the summer and autumn of 2021. And at a couple of points, in 2022, no-transcript, a treaty. So there is no guarantee.

Speaker 2: 15:13

And the second issue which I think again will come up and has been an ongoing concern is this investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency into activities that Iran had undertaken before 2003 at undeclared facilities. And so the IAEA's mandate is nuclear accountancy, right. They're saying we now know that you were undertaking activities at sites you hadn't declared and we need to know what was going on there. Where is that fissile material? And the Iranians have dragged on this investigation over several years, in part, I think, because they say we have never sought nuclear weapons and this is likely to show that they were conducting, at the very least, proliferation-relevant or proliferation-sensitive research and development. So those two things kind of meant that by August of 2022, there was a text more or less done, but also a couple of hurdles that were looming large.

Speaker 2: 16:14

But then a few things happened that get us into the kind of the second stage of Iran-US diplomacy under the Biden administration, which is that in a matter of maybe two weeks, in September of 2022, a couple of things happened. First, the Iranians put these conditions that the US and its allies basically think or maybe the Iranians are just putting poison pills on the table, they're not actually interested in this deal that the guarantees and the IAEA stuff is a ruse. At the very minimum, they know it can't be entertained. Then, around this time August, september 2022, you have the first evidence emerging of Iranian drones being used by Russia and Ukraine. And, bearing in mind that three of the negotiating parties are Europeans the Brits, the French and the Germans and you have the Americans obviously siding with Ukraine against the Russian invasion. That really adds to the detriment of the negotiations and that how can you negotiate sanctions, relief or a nuclear deal when Iranian weapons are literally being used in Europe's core step? And the third thing, starting from mid-September, is the nationwide protests in Iran, the anti-government protests that erupted on the death of Massamini in September of 2022. So those three things combined meant that for the next several months there was virtually no diplomatic engagement through spring of 2023.

Speaker 2: 17:40

And at that point the Iranians and the Americans were both kind of cognizant that. You know, this problem hasn't gone away. The Iranians, you know the economy was, you know, still undergoing a lot of difficulties because of sanctions that were still in force. The nuclear program is still growing of 2023, we have these reports of kind of quiet de-escalatory understandings between the Americans and the Iranians, where the Iranians, you know, talk to the IAEA and say, okay, we'll try to work with you on these probes. There are no attacks on US forces in the regions, or at least in Iraq and Syria, for several months, and it kind of culminates in September of 2023 with the US moving some assets that Iran had frozen in South Korea over to Qatar so that they could be used for humanitarian trade and the Iranians released several US nationals that had been held in Iran for several years, several years, and so that again seemed like okay, maybe now this can can be a segue to go back into some sort of more structured nuclear diplomacy.

Speaker 2: 18:51

Than october 7th happened and obviously the as you know better than better than most, the the regional context shifted entirely and the focus essentially from from that point went from kind of quiet, de-escalatory understandings to management of a very significant regional conflict that at various points again that you've covered in April and October of last year included unprecedented direct military exchanges between Israel and the Iranians. And so the Biden administration wasn't at that point really thinking how do we negotiate a deal that restricts its nuclear program? It's how do we prevent this conflict that has started with Hamas's attack against Israel and that led to an Israeli campaign in Gaza and then increasing volatility on the northern border and then attacks by Iran back to loops in Iraq and in Yemen into Israel and then the exchanges directly between Iran and Israel. So at that point it was how do we avoid this conflict from turning into a truly regional conflict? And that basically took us through the end of the Biden administration took us through the end of the Biden administration.

Speaker 1: 20:05

Yeah, everything changed regionally, if not globally, but definitely regionally, and that's a good recap which takes us up to the present moment. The Trump administration. So correct me if I'm wrong Trump's envoy for many, many things, or at least the big things, steve Woodcuff, has already met twice with the Iranian foreign minister and they're due to meet again this weekend, I believe. And so you already see well, direct negotiations, but I guess, depending on who you ask, direct negotiations between the US and Iran via Omani mediation. But why? I mean the big picture right now, before we get into the details is why does Trump think he can do better on this file than Biden? Is it just strictly a matter of them thinking that they have more leverage over Iran, that Iran is weaker and that they can actually push Iran to accept things now that it wasn't willing to accept previously? Or is there more going on here?

Speaker 2: 21:00

Well, I mean, trump himself wanted to deal with the Iranians in his first term as well, right? So there is an element of continuity, both in terms of objective and in terms of tools. So to back up a tiny bit, what happened before we started to get these meetings with Oman, through Oman, the Trump administration came in and flexed two strong elements of coercive power over the past, you know from february in particular. So in february they they issued a national security memorandum reinstating maximum pressure is the policy of the united states and we've seen that implemented it through two particular means. One is, you know, a ramping up us sanctions so we've seen several allowance of oil related sanctions etc. That have come in over the past eight, ten weeks and significant, you know, military presence in the region, where you've got two carrier groups, obviously against the backdrop of an ongoing military campaign over the past month against the Houthis in Yemen, one of Iran's non-state allies in the region. So you have those two diplomatic and those two coercive tools the economic coercive tool and the military posture and then you have those being leveraged towards some sort of negotiation, right, and President Trump himself wrote to Iran's leadership in Mar, and again, we don't know the exact details of what the contents of the message were, but the Iranians responded to this message and that kind of led to the somewhat unexpected announcement by the president in the Oval Office, I think when he was sitting next to Prime Minister Netanyahu, that, by the way, we're now getting into talks with the Iranians.

Speaker 2: 22:49

So for the Iranians, the incentive is pretty clear. Their position is weakened in the region, both as a result of the setbacks to its non-state allies and to coming off considerably worse for wear from two exchanges with israel, especially in october. And the economic, uh incentive, you know is, is significant. They, they've, they've now, uh, their the economy is already, you know, in in in a rough patch, let me know, let alone with the prospect of increasing, you know, enforcement of of? U of US sanctions and their expansion. So the incentive on their side is, you know, how do we get out of this and avoid both? Potential renewal of military confrontation, certainly, you know, increased economic pressure that could lead to more domestic turmoil with a government that's faced three major rounds of anti-government protests in the past decade.

Speaker 2: 23:43

And for the Trump administration, those exchanges of letters, you know, led to the dispatch of special envoy Witkoff and the Iranian foreign minister in Oman, you know, within a few days of Trump's announcement I think it was on the 7th of April, if I'm not mistaken and then the first round was on the 12th of April, and very quick, very quick, and those, and so we've had two rounds. And those two rounds, you know, interestingly, you know, the fact that they were, at least in part, direct is interesting because I think the last time there was engagement at this level was, you know, when secretary Tillerson and Iran's foreign minister met prior to the US withdrawal in 2017. There have been exchanges since at lower levels, but not anything at the level of ministerial or ministerial equivalent to the US. And so I think those two rounds were essentially a scoping exercise of, you know, if we have a Venn diagram of our demands and you have a Venn diagram of your demands, do they meet at some point? And if they meet, do we then see how far this goes? And so this weekend, we're expected to have both another round of high level direct or indirect engagement between Special Envoy Witkoff and former Minister Araf G, but also having technical teams, which we didn't have in the first two rounds, but that could pass this precedent. That means that the US and the Iranian sides will have people who are specialists both on the technicalities of nonproliferation and nuclear enrichment and safeguards and all of the stuff that's on that side of the coin. And then presumably you know sanctions relief discussions where you know the Iranians bring in their sanctions experts. And then from the US side you have people from Treasury or Commerce or things like that that start to again say that okay, if we have the spend diagram with enough overlap now we can actually dig into it.

Speaker 2: 25:41

But again, at every stage of this you know joking the other day that you know, if you'd said three weeks ago that the U? S would have had two rounds of talks with the Iranians that both sides said were constructive and positive and had a third round and a technical round scheduled, you'd have gotten incredible odds if you were betting on that because it did not seem like a likely proposition. But here we are now that. But you know I I compare this to running a marathon through a minefield. You know you've done your training and maybe off the you know off off the the opening gates or the opening line rather.

Speaker 2: 26:17

But you know these things are complicated and and now that we know it's it's, it's not, not nothing that they've gotten this far, but once you get into the weeds of the nuclear requirements and the sanctions, relief expectations and what other issues, for example, the US may want to have on the table. The national security memorandum I referred to earlier, like, also talks about ballistic missiles, also talks about, you know, regional proxies and regional publications, the Iranian state we don't discuss non-nuclear things. So they've gotten this far and it may be because there's a convergence and it may be because there's enough ambiguity that both sides are reading into it that, yes, now we can move forward with it. But once you get in, the further along the process you go, the more areas there are for technical granularities that are difficult to overcome. Certainly on the Iranian side, certainly on President Trump's side, diplomacy is the option of first resort, with pressure and potential military options also available.

Speaker 1: 27:21

So we're going to get into the details of what they may be negotiating and how that may go and likely gaps. We'll also talk about the military option, don't worry, but I wanted to get your sense before we do that. How weak is Iran right now really? And I ask this as someone who you and I have conversations all the time, not with microphones and you called it quite early in the well, after October 7th, in the early stages of the war, where you said this is a major mistake by Iran to actively get involved in this thing which started off, obviously, between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. This is not going to go well for Iran. And, lo and behold, you were correct.

Speaker 1: 28:02

I was rather more skeptical back in those early days of the war because I was sitting here on the receiving end of the Iranian proxies and from my perspective, in the early days of the war, because I was sitting here on the receiving end of the Iranian proxies and from my perspective in the early days of the war, things were not great for Israel, leaving aside the US and its equities in the region but at least for Israel, it seemed to me that Iran was winning. But obviously now, 18 months after October 7th, iran and its proxies, hamas, hezbollah, even now the Houthis that are getting hammered on a daily basis by the Israeli Air Force and Navy, and let alone Iran directly, are not in great shape militarily, regionally, economically. So give us a sense of how bad it perhaps is for Tehran.

Speaker 2: 28:45

Well, first, I appreciate the shout out to my early kind of against the grain take, because it seemed to me that you know, from fairly early on, the Iranians were doing something that went against their usual MO, and their usual MO has been don't get involved and use the proxies to have, you know, one layer of separation from anything that happens.

Speaker 2: 29:10

But you know, from kind of October, november of 2023, when you had indirect, you know, italian-iranian operations, if you want to call it that, via the paramilitary units in Iraq, via Hezbollah, via the FIS, it seemed to me like that at some point that was going to backfire. And you know the, the Iranians first preference in all of these things is, you know, the entire, you know uh, network that they've built up over the course of decades the, the, the, the ring of fire, you know as, as strategists in Israel call it, the Israeli, the Iranians refer to this as a forward defense strategy. Right, so you defend, but forward, not, not not on home soil. You push the, the contours of of the battlefield to your enemy's doorstep instead of bringing it on your doorstep. And right.

Speaker 1: 30:02

They want to fight to the very last drop of arab blood, not persian blood.

Speaker 2: 30:07

Well, but interestingly, starting kind of with again in like kind of the autumn of 2023, you increasingly did start to see direct Iranian fatalities right. So even and I think we've discussed this in the past you know, over the course of the war, between the wars campaign that Israel has had in Syria, when Bashar was still in power, kind of from 2015-16 on, the Israelis would target, you know, convoys, they'd hit facilities, but they'd rarely go after IRGC guys directly, because the point was to curtail the pipeline of arms, not to- Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC.

Speaker 1: 30:46

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 30:47

That's exactly right. But starting in kind of November, december of 2023, we saw that the targeting did include increasingly direct IRGC personnel on the ground. Obviously, that culminated in April of 2024, when there was a strike against what the Israelis, what the Iranians say was a consular facilities, killed several more senior IRGC personnel. But that was that was capping several months of direct IRGC losses. And that's the point where the Iranians said, okay, like, if we respond, we, you know, run a certain risk of getting hit back, but if we don't respond, you know we'll just keep losing, you know, personnel and make it seem like we're, we're entirely deterred. So you know, to them that was like between two bad decisions, they went for the worst military response. And then again, you know, over the course of several months, you know, while Hezbollah and Israel were having, you know, their engagements on the northern border, you know hezbollah and israel were having, you know, their engagements on on the northern border. You know you, you also had the killing of haniya in in tehran itself, you know so, in the summer of last year. And then you had, in september of last year, in, in course of several days, the uh, the pager attack, the walkie-talkie attack, and then the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, again with another IRGC guy in the mix in Beirut. And that's when the Iranians said, okay, we didn't do anything after Haniyeh. And now again, if we don't do something, it shows that we are deterred by the Israelis and even if it comes massive risks of retaliation. Something has to be done, basically, and so that's when they launch Operation True Promise 2, and the Israelis retaliate.

Speaker 2: 32:40

And this comes in a very circuitous way to your question about how weak is Iran. Look, relative to before Octoberober 2023, relative to this time last year, it is weaker. Right, several nodes in its axis of resistance are significantly degraded. Well, hamas is one. His brother is another, the the houthis, you know asterix, depending on how, how much this ongoing, you know military campaign against them is able to damage their capabilities going forward. I mean, they're clearly still able to mount some kind of offensive threat, whether it's through missiles or drones, against Israel and this morning in Haifa North, yeah, so Bashar al-Assad is gone was toppled in a matter of days.

Speaker 1: 33:28

Bashar al-Assad is gone, bashar al-Assad is gone.

Speaker 2: 33:30

So is the network what it was a year ago? Clearly not. Is Iran's domestic capacity what it was a year ago? Again, clearly not. And in the Israeli retaliation for Iran's second ballistic missile attack in October, it was interesting what the Israelis reportedly chose to target. It was air defenses and ballistic missile production sites. Right, and to me that was interesting because it's almost laying down the gauntlet for what happens in the next set of exchanges that we are not targeting your critical infrastructure, we're not targeting your nuclear sites. We're not targeting your nuclear sites. We're targeting the air defenses that protect those things and we're not hitting your missile stockpiles. We are making those stockpiles a very finite thing because your missile production is now going to be slowed down.

Speaker 2: 34:25

So you take all of that there is. You know the regional network is not what it was and the vulnerability is more than it was Now. Is that to say that they do not have a retaliatory capacity on the nuclear or regional fronts? And maybe the nuclear part we can, we can come back to in a second in terms of options, you aside from diplomacy. But you know they, they still do wield ballistic missile capabilities, they still still do maintain drone capabilities, they still have naval capabilities, they still have some proxies that are able to threaten the us and or israeli and allied interests in in the region. So you know, weaker is relative, Weak is not, and I don't know if I'd Certainly weaker but still able to pose a concern for US and allied interests in the region in the event that there's an escalation.

Speaker 1: 35:24

Okay, we'll be right back after this brief message.

Speaker 3: 35:28

As we mark Yom HaShoah, we remember the lives of the six million Jews who were killed in the Holocaust and renew our commitment to ensuring that our people never again stand on the brink of annihilation. The collective strength and resilience of the Jewish people remain essential in this moment of heightened tragedy and uncertainty. As Israel's multi-front war presses on and the country grapples with rising domestic turmoil, Israel Policy Forum experts are producing timely, substantive analysis. Dr Shira Efron, our Director of Research and the Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation Senior Fellow, wrote in Foreign Affairs about why Israel's overreach in Syria could backfire.

Speaker 3: 36:05

In this week's Koplow column, Chief Policy Officer Michael Koplow explains how questions surrounding Trump's Iran talks and US domestic anti-Semitism both highlight the need for Israelis and American Jews to acknowledge how their country's actions impact. The other Links to these articles can be found in the show notes of this podcast. If you rely on Israel Policy Forum for credible, nuanced analysis, please make a tax-deductible gift today so that our work can continue to have an impact. Donate now at ipfli slash supportthepod or at the support the show link in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 36:39

On this issue, just economically, how bad is it right now inside Iran?

Speaker 2: 36:43

Well, it's a question of relative to what Since Pezeshkian took office. That's President Massoud Pezeshkian who took over middle of last year after President Raisi died in a helicopter crash in May of last year. You know the real the Iranian national currency basically lost half its value just in that period of several months. Now it's regained a good bit of ground just based on, in part, optimism over the prospect of talks. Right, it's a bit of a bellwether of how the market in Iran sees you. Apollo. Now some of these.

Speaker 2: 37:22

So if you just look at the numbers, growth does not look particularly rosy, Inflation is fairly high, Currency has volatility and part of that aren't sanctions related.

Speaker 2: 37:35

It's just an inefficient, bureaucratized economy with a heavy state hand, a lot of shadow economy run by shadowy business interests that in Iran they use the phrase like sanctions merchants of people who actually benefit from sanctions because they become the middlemen or the black marketeers or the profiteers, naturally, yeah, so again, it's. It's undoubtedly one of the key, you know, incentive for them going into these talks is to get get a degree of rhythm, get some trade, get some investment going, get their oil customers back. Right now it's almost entirely going to China. It's unclear how much of that revenue they're actually able to repatriate and in which ways. And now, obviously you've had a bit of a drop in the price of oil relative to where it was a couple of months ago. So the economic incentive was their primary incentive, arguably, to get into JCPOA in the first place. It's certainly one of the main incentives for them to come into the talks now, along with the prospect of military action in circumstances that, at the very minimum, are unfavorable to them.

Speaker 1: 39:07

Okay, so let's get into the brass tacks of, let's say, the diplomatic path, which is the more optimistic path and, like you said, even the preferred path of Donald J Trump. What, to your mind, would a deal actually look like? Potential deal as you mentioned, iran presumably wants to keep its nuclear program and it wants sanctions relief. I mean Israel, which isn't a party to the talks but obviously has influence and is a player in all of this. Israel has been demanding no less than the Libya model, ie complete disarmament, complete dismantlement of the nuclear program. Ie like Muammar Gaddafi back in Libya, who just gave up his entire nuclear program, although that didn't work out quite. Muammar Gaddafi back in Libya, who just gave up his entire nuclear program, although that didn't work out quite so well for Gaddafi. And then the Trump administration, depending on the day, depending on the official, what is their position on what a deal could look like? May look like? What do you think?

Speaker 2: 40:05

Well. So in a certain way, this is a question you know you could have asked five years ago, 10 years ago or 20 years ago, when this whole kind of Iran nuclear crisis kind of started in 2002, 2003. That you have a country that has conducted undeclared nuclear activities that are concerning it is an adversary of the United States and key US allies in the region. So you start with a proposition that has been shared by every US administration, which is that Iran should have a nuclear one. It should not have a nuclear one. Right, you should not have a nuclear one. So that you start with that. So then the question becomes okay, how do you go about it? And you have three options. Basically, one is that you get them to dismantle it. Now you can call it the Libya model, or you know, iran should not enrich. The demand should be zero enrichment on Iranian soil. Dismantling all of the existing facilities, full accountancy to the UN, etc. Now, the track record for that isn't great. It's something that the Iranians rejected under the George W Bush administration. It's something that they rejected under the early Obama administration. I mean, one of the things that made it possible to reach a deal in 2015 is that the P5 plus one. The US and its allies at the table said okay, you're enriching at 20%. Breakout time is three or four months.

Speaker 2: 41:39

We've spent like a decade trying to get to zero enrichment. If it's not going to happen, then we're going to move to the next best thing, which is restricting and monitoring that program as best we can. So that's where the JCPOA's limits on stockpiling and enrichment kind of come in, where it's. You know, we would have liked to get it to zero. We would like to see them dismantle all this, absent that being diplomatically feasible, then we move to ensuring that we have as much visibility on the smallest program possible and that addresses the nuclear concern for a period of years, you know, going into decades. So option and when the Trump administration withdrew in 2018, one of the demands at the time was going back to zero energy, and that was. I mean there were 12, 13 demands in total, but one of them was going back to the standard of zero enrichment.

Speaker 1: 42:38

Very ambitious demands back then under the first.

Speaker 2: 42:41

Trump administration, right. Well, I mean again, the tools were powerful, right. Maximum pressure in the first term did put significant economic pain on the Islamic Republic. What it wasn't able to do in part, I think, because, like you're saying, the demands were quite ambitious, like you know, sweeping even is that the Iranians were, you know, said you know, if this is what you're expecting, you're not going to get this.

Speaker 2: 43:09

And so again, now it seems that you still have those powerful tools. You have both a strengthened military presence in the region and this economic campaign that's kind of been dialed up, but also more of an attempt thus far than there was in the first term to actually see how you can leverage that leverage into a diplomatic outcome. Again, may or may not. So you have the dismantling option, right, and again, we could have had this discussion at any point in the last 20 years. You have the dismantling option, dismantling option. You have the restrictions and verification option, which was the JCPOA model. But it doesn't have to be a JCPOA model.

Speaker 2: 44:00

The JCPOA was 150 odd pages of very convoluted text that boiled down to a very simple bargain we don't trust your nuclear program, we're going to restrict it and verify it and in return you get sanctions. That's what the 150-odd pages boil down to. And so you have dismantling, you have restricting and then you have destroying, which is you know and again it's something that you hear now that you know, if Iran doesn't agree to dismantle, then you know we should take out the program or take care of it for, dismantle it for them, or whatever phrase you want to employ. Now, the issue with this is that it's a little more complicated. We're not talking about a one and done operation. We're not talking about an afternoon's aerial activity that then solves the problem. What we've seen over the past couple of weeks there was some reporting your listeners should take a look at if they're interested in this in the Washington Post and in the New York Times on US.

Speaker 1: 45:02

We don't read those newspapers on this podcast, sorry, Well, there are reports Kidding, kidding, kidding, there are.

Speaker 2: 45:09

There are report, kidding, kidding, kidding. There are reports of what US and allied intelligence, in Israel in particular, see as the scenarios in the event of a military operation. Right, and you know, the post a couple of weeks ago, you know, reported that that US estimates were, if I'm not mistaken, the quote is something like the setback would be months, potentially as little as weeks, before the Iranians rebuild or try to rebuild that capacity. The Israeli estimate for what a strike could achieve is a little more bullish. It's closer to a year. But it brings back this question of okay, so the destruction model is in and of itself a short-term setback defined. I mean short to medium-term setback. Let's say a few months. Let's take the average and say six months. So what do you do in six months? Do you do this every six months? Do you complement a strike on nuclear facilities with other measures? Do you think that if the Iranian sites are struck, the Iranian regime will suddenly come to the table and agree to more than it's willing to agree now? Those are the kind of questions that, if you're gaming this out, if you're a policymaker and you're sitting, if you're the president, presumably that's the kind of discussion that you're, if you're gaming this out, if you're a policymaker and you're sitting, you know, if you're the president, or presumably that's the kind of discussion that you're, that you're having. Can we get them to dismantle? Track record not looking great based on the past 20 years? Do we have a military option? Yes, we do have a military option, but it may have, you know, a different kind of. It's not necessarily a long-term solution, especially if they, for example, in one scenario, decide to rebuild, but in a clandestine facility and with the explicit intention of weaponization, right? So and that's one of the things that the US intelligence assessment was concerned about, of the things that the US intelligence assessment was concerned about so, if you're content with buying time with that option, what are you going to do with that time? Are you going to use it as part of a different strategy towards the Islamic Republic? That's not just a non-proliferation strategy? How do you contend and what do you assess would be the Iranian non-nuclear response right? Will they attack the US forces? Will they attack Israel again and so or the Gulf, or the Gulf, although the Gulf you know clearly.

Speaker 2: 47:37

It's interesting that you raised the Gulf. I probably should have mentioned it earlier. This is one of the differences with 2015 is that, you know, in 2015, some of the GCC states, the Gulf Cooperation Council states, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE in particular, felt that the Obama administration had somewhat kept them out of the loop. They weren't you know, and there are some concerns that I think will manifest again that if you do a nuclear only deal, then how does it impact Iran's regional posture? But relations between Iran and the UAE, especially Iran and Saudi Arabia, have been on the mend the last couple of years, not necessarily friendships, but much more cordial and workmanlike. And this week we had a visit by the Saudi defense minister, who's the highest ranking Saudi official to visit Iran since they resumed ties in in in 2023. So the the view from the gulf is that that they'd not the view from the view.

Speaker 1: 48:38

Yeah, the view from the gulf is that they don't want a war.

Speaker 2: 48:41

It's pretty much they're in favor of diplomacy which would put them potentially in the crossfire, which is what happened in 2019 and 2020. The last time we had maximum pressure, you know, kind of uh, and Iran's counter pressure campaign, is that you had Saudi Aramco facilities attacked, you had tankers blowing up off the coast of the UAE. And part of that experience, I think, is why the W and Riyadh both tried to, you know, maintain lines of contact with Tehran. Both tried to maintain lines of contact with Tehran. So, coming back to the original premise, is that you have a dismantling option that, through diplomacy, has a low probability, scenario, likelihood, the kind of Libya model that Iran would voluntarily accept.

Speaker 2: 49:25

You have the military reset option, which has a lot of uncertainties in terms of both the immediate retaliation and the potential proliferation consequences. And then you have the restriction option which, again and you asked what the Trump administration wants out of these, wants out of these, you know we've the president himself, you know, says they cannot have a nuclear weapon. That is my right one, right. And then you have people in the administration, like national security advisor Waltz, you know, who've said very clearly the good the Iran needs to dismantle, right. And then you even had, I think, several special envoy Whitcoff last week. You know use similar language about.

Speaker 1: 50:06

You know, stopping suspending enrichment Right no, this was after he initially came out with a much softer position.

Speaker 2: 50:14

So he kind of corrected himself and hardened yeah, I mean I, I think the the comments suggested that iran didn't need enrichment beyond 3.67, which, if you're, you know, looking into the empty space of that, you could read as being that well, that means that they can have enriched to 3.67, after which, as you said, there was a clarification. But again, we wouldn't, I think, have reached this stage of an exchange of letters and two rounds of talks and the technical talk and the third round of high-level talks, without there necessarily being in the rooms and in the letters and in the exchanges, enough, like I said before, common ground for them to find an area of compromise. And you can find a lot of formulae that do address non-proliferation concerns significantly, without it necessarily being zero enrichment, right, and there are ways that you can improve on the deal that was in 2015. That, like I said, shouldn't be the basis for comparison, but you can, you know, figure out things that address non-proliferation concerns, that increase the transparency. And if you, if your bottom line concern is, how do I that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon, then again that basic bargain of restrictions and verification might be the one that finds a sweet spot, perhaps with better restrictions and stricter verification.

Speaker 2: 51:46

You know, or or you know a tweaking of various formulae, or you know there's there's one option that you know some officials have referred to here in washington, about iran bringing in, you know, fissile material so that it's not doing it domestically. Again, I think the iranians would probably have a difficult time with that because their counter argument would be well, but then you'll just stop that. So how do we know, like you know, we need it domestically because you know we can't rely on other people. So, again, if the concern is the cake to go back to the analogy that again I really hope isn't taken as far to minimize how concerning this is it's not a good cake.

Speaker 1: 52:32

But if you're worried about the cake, there are some bad cakes out there as well. The cake doesn't necessarily have to be have to be bad. I'm not a huge fan of you know lemon pie, but many people, so this could be my lemon pie.

Speaker 2: 52:45

Let's agree that a nuclear cake is is not a good idea, but in you know, if you are, are, have a degree of confidence that the batter and the oven are looked after in a way that you're in a cake-free or low cake probability environment for a significant period of time, or maybe even indefinitely, then that is one way to address that non-proliferation concern. Again, we have to see if the no enrichment, dismantling Libya model is a US bottom line. I don't think the Iranians would have made it this far into negotiations, but on the other hand, that could be that they have an interest in in, you know, going through the, the hoops and trying to keep some, keep president trump on side and in in thinking that you know he's getting somewhere. And it could also just be that there's enough ambiguity or both sides are reading enough wiggle room into what, the what the other side is saying that we've gone this far again, like once you get into the technical talks and things like that. That's where the granularities are actually going to be negotiated.

Speaker 2: 53:56

Is it 3.67%, is it 20%? Is it 0%? Is it limiting the centrifuges? Is it increasing the inspections? What does Iran do with IAEA cameras that have been turned off? All of these things.

Speaker 1: 54:10

The longevity of the deal, ie no sunset clauses.

Speaker 2: 54:27

I think that'll also be interesting sunset provisions it's not actually uncommon in arms control agreements to have sunset provisions, but the restrictions on some issues phase out over time. So, in the case of the nuclear deal in 2015, and the Security Council resolution that endorsed it in 2015, there were varying caps that over time, would be phased out and other measures that would be indefinite, but one of the main ones was this restriction on the enrichment levels right. So through 2031, under the original deal, iran's stockpile of enriched uranium would have been capped below 4% and below 300 kilograms. So that's an example that people could say well, why not 20 years? Why not 50 years? Why not 100 years? Why not make it, you know, in perpetuity? So that's only, you know, an area where you know that. Would you know if the Iranians agreed to no sunsets, for example? That would be a shift and again ensure that there's I was going to say a greater degree of confidence. That's not where none of this stuff is based on confidence or trust.

Speaker 1: 55:38

This is all based on monitoring and verification, which is one of the reasons why you know the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has played and will continue to play like an important role, and that's one of the reasons why Iran's lack of cooperation with them has been troubling over the past couple of years, some kind of reasonable bargain that, like you said, maybe they're making progress over the past two weeks, maybe in the coming weeks Do you think that they will be ready to accept some concessions on their own respective ends when it comes down to it? Oh, that's an easy question.

Speaker 2: 56:28

I don't know, look on the Iranian side. There were a lot of people in Iran who hated the original deal, will not like a new deal with the Americans. But thus far, from on high, from the Supreme Leader, ali Khamenei, he's kind of clearly gone. I mean, a few months ago he was saying that negotiations with the Americans were unwise and disarmable. Right, this is literally. You know, earlier this year. Now he's, you know, clearly given a green light for his negotiators to go trying to suss out what terms the Americans are willing to accept. And the fact that he's, you know, clearly green-lit it and hasn't gone so far as to to criticize it outright, means that you know the hawks on the iranian side. You know they will be tempered because the supreme leader has said let's see where this go right.

Speaker 2: 57:30

But when the original deal happened in 2015, I mean they were, they were going through every paragraph calling it a capitulation concession to the Americans. And when the US withdrew, they did a lap saying we told you so, we told you so, we told you so that the US is not reliable and we said don't trust them. And this is exactly what happened. Know, they blamed a lot of it on their own negotiators. They blamed it on the rohani team then and and said that these guys were, you know, naive and and got played. And you know it's, it's um, you know.

Speaker 2: 58:05

So I expect you know a degree of of pushback from the hardliners in tehran on any engagement of the americans, let alone another nuclear deal that will restrict their nuclear program that they say is so essential to their national security, and all of that stuff. And here look it's again. I think you know a lot of it will come down to the president and how he feels that, whatever terms I mean, clearly Special Envoy Witkoff's position in the administration and being entrusted with a couple of these high importance portfolios means that the president has a high degree of trust in him. And Special Envoy Witkoff has made it through two rounds with the Iranians and is leading the delegation this weekend to do the technical talks, two rounds with the Iranians and is leading the delegation this weekend to do the technical talks. And my assumption is that he will come back with the president and say these are the parameters under which we think we might be able to get a deal.

Speaker 2: 59:01

These are the things that are probably not going to, that we would have liked to see but won't get a deal and, mr President, you know this is ultimately down to your call. Now again, if there are terms that come up, obviously you know the US administration, congress, dc, or a lot of people with you know their views on this particular issue will be focusing on every detail and every comma in a potential agreement, especially bringing the comparison, if there is a hypothetical deal, to the 2015 deal and how it relates to that. And I would just say again, coming back to the point I made earlier, you negotiate over the nuclear program you're facing, not the nuclear program you faced 10 years ago. And so I would just say that if we get that far which again, at this point is far from a certainty, the issue know how well does it address present concerns going forward as well.

Speaker 1: 59:57

You. What did Don Rumsfeld say back in the day? You go to the, you go to war with the army. That you, that you have, Not the army that you uh that you had.

Speaker 1: 1:00:05

Yeah, don Rumsfeld, we're old enough to remember Rumsfeld, nathan. Final question, actual final question Is there a timeline deadline for these talks to succeed or not? Ie, does it have to be done by the fall, because I know that in the UN Security Council there's something called snapback, that the Europeans, I believe, or the UN at large, will snap back sanctions on Iran. Explain that aspect to us and what the timeline may be for these talks working out, or what did Donald Trump say? We want diplomacy and not the other option.

Speaker 2: 1:00:45

That's right. Well, in a way we all have. We have maybe three timelines, all of which kind of converge in kind of late summer, early autumn. So the first one is that you know, according to some of the early reports about president Trump's letter and the start of engagement, that he had put a 60 day clock on this. To the extent that's true, it's ambitious, especially once you get into Donald Trump did that that was, that was some of the reporting that there was implicitly or explicitly in these communications a two-month time frame either from the time of his letter in early March to the start of negotiations, but clearly not to drag this out for very long. So that's one potential timeline.

Speaker 2: 1:01:28

Again, I think, if there's progress, iran-u, iran-us negotiations and nuclear negotiations in general, once you get over the hard part, you have another hard part. So if we've gone far enough for the two sides to come to some kind of agreement on scoping and format of talks, that's the hard part. But now you get into the granularities of sanctions, relief and nuclear restrictions, which is also a hard one. So that's in theory, theory, a 60-day window, another window again. You know, coming back to some of the reporting I alluded to earlier, that you know there is a an argument to be made that iran's air defense vulnerabilities, according to public reporting and the backheel position of, you know, hezbollah and some other members of the axis, make this a window of opportunity after which iran may have rebuilt some of its air defense capacities that were degraded, or that hezbollah might have regrouped, or that you know who knows what's happened in syria. You know, and we've seen, how much syria has changed in the course of four months. You know who knows where it is four months from now. You don't know where the Houthi campaign is, so that operationally speaking, it's not going to be easy, but it would be less difficult to do when Iran's retaliatory capacity and defensive capacity is more curtailed than it might have been or could be down the line. So that's timeline two. We'll do it sooner rather than later. Do it sooner rather than later. And again, you now have a surge in US air and naval capacity in the region. So again the question becomes if you're not going to do it now, you're never going to have a better time.

Speaker 2: 1:03:10

The third clock is the one that you rightly refer to. So in the UN Security Council resolution that endorsed the JCPOA, it's UN Security Council Resolution 2231. I encourage you to read it if you're having trouble getting to sleep. Under 2231, they basically designed and you know that in the Security Council, permanent members have a veto right. If something comes up and any one member doesn't want it, they can veto it.

Speaker 2: 1:03:38

Snapback basically inverts that proposition and it says that if any one of the members of the nuclear agreement feel that you know the deal is one of the other sides is in noncompliance, they can, on their own and without being vetoed by others, snap back hence the term snap back all of the UN sanctions that were in place before 2015.

Speaker 2: 1:04:02

Right, and so that mechanism, that snap back mechanism, expires in mid-October and, because of the procedures that go into it and everything, really you have to get that process started by June or July, because there's a back and forth of letters and procedural issues and the Russians holding the Security Council presidency, in the fall that the Western powers would want to avoid that, the three European powers the Germans, the French and the Brits could have until October to snap back, and that is a powerful card they can play to nudge the Iranians in the direction of a deal.

Speaker 2: 1:04:50

There's also a theoretical possibility that the whole thing could be extended, but let's not get into that for now. But yes to your question if there is not a great deal of progress, then that snapback issue starts to come up quickly on the horizon. The Iranians have said that if that happens, if those pre-2015 sanctions are restored, they could leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, they might kick out inspectors, and so again you kind of go into uncharted waters in terms of Iran's nuclear program. And again, if Iran withdraws from the NPT or kicks out inspectors, again that will probably increase the interest in a military option, because you may not know what's actually going on on the ground at that point or have curtailed the sense of what's going on at your own nuclear site. So by the summer, between President Trump's 60 or 60-ish days between the military window or the believed military window for a less risky military operation and then finally the snapback clock, it's pretty high-stakes stuff in a relatively curtailed time period.

Speaker 1: 1:06:04

Yeah, it very much is, which is why I wanted to have you on before whatever happens happens, to give me and our listeners a better sense of what has happened, what may happen in a lay of the land. Naysan, you didn't disappoint. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. It's been a pleasure, nery. Thank you, take care, okay. Thanks to the great Dr Naysan Rafati for his generous time and insights. Also, special thanks to our producer, jacob Gilman, and to all of you who support Israel Policy Forum's work. Do consider making a donation to Israel Policy Forum, sukhneet being a credible source of analysis and ideas on issues such as these that we all care deeply about, including this podcast. And, most importantly, thank you for listening.