Pod Save the World - What happened to Peng Shuai?

Episode Date: November 24, 2021

Tommy and Ben talk about the allegations by and disappearance of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, calls to boycott the Beijing winter Olympics, British PM Boris Johnson’s rough couple of weeks, economic woes in Turkey, democratic backsliding, asteroid killing satellites, what human rights advocates are demanding from Justin Bieber, how Popeyes is taking Britain storm and much more. Then Ben talks with President Biden’s Special Envoy to Iran Rob Malley about next week's nuclear talks with Iran, and where U.S.-Iranian relations stand going into them.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsavetheworld. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Potsave the World on Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, does the Macy's Day parade go by your parents' apartment? I should say you're in New York for the holiday. So, yeah, it doesn't go by my parents' apartment, but one of the reasons I'm here and one of the reasons I'm a few minutes late, is just picking up my tickets. Oh, you're going.

To take my kids to the Macy's Day parade. No way. Yeah, this is going to be epic. Although I did notice sit there, encourage you to get there at like 5.30 in the morning. I'm like, oh, my God, give my kids up. But yeah, that seems a little early. Yeah, they said you can get there as late as 7.30. I was like, I'll be closer to 7.30 than 5.30.

Yeah, that seems. I mean, come on. And also, how long are you going to stay? My dad was, I grew up in New York. And I remember going to, I think I must have been in high school or college, a party at, like, his friend's house before Thanksgiving, where it was like an apartment that was near where the floats were parked the night before. Yeah. So you could snee like Snoopy under some sort of, like, webbing that was just pinned down.

I don't know. It was kind of cool. Yeah. It's pretty, I mean, it's pretty. weirdly distinct to have these massive balloons of like, of Snoopy. Weird tradition. I like it. I like it too. I like it. It's fun. I'm excited for Thanksgiving. We have a great show to take you all into the holiday. We are going to talk about

the frightening disappearance of a tennis star in China, renewed calls to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics. Why people are a little worried about Boris Johnson, his state of mind. Some financial woes in Turkey, democracies backsliding successful protests in India, food crisis in Afghanistan, asteroid killing satellites, a message to Justin Bieber and some quick updates about Haiti, Europe's vaccination efforts, Israel's security, and Popeyes. And then, Ben, you just did an interview with Biden's special envoy for Iran, Rob Malley. How are you feeling about efforts to get back into the Iran nuclear deal after that conversation? I got to say, Rob was told it pretty straight and, you know, there's not a lot of optimism out there

on the horizon. And I think what people need to recognize is the Iranians are like really advancing their nuclear program, you know. So this decision of Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo and company to trash the Iran deal is going to go down as one of the dumbest fucking things in the history of foreign policy. It actually doesn't get the derision it deserves because, as I said to Rob, like, he shouldn't even be in that job because there should be an Iran deal that has Iran's nuclear program taken care of. so that we can deal with all the other problems in the world. But Rob gets a great laydown of like where the negotiations are, what the hangups are, what the other countries are thinking, and what his job is like.

So people should check it out. Cool. He's a very thoughtful guy. I'm excited to hear that. Ben, if you are looking for gifts for all your loved ones, maybe Rob included, Cricket Media is having a Black Friday sale that will go from Friday through Monday, November 29th. Everything is 15% off site-wide, free shipping.

It includes all the fun, new holiday stuff. And if you're in the market for something that is great and free, listen to hysteria every week with hosts Aaron Ryan and Alyssa Master Monaco. They've had amazing guests lately, Monica Lewinsky, Primala Jaya Paul, many more. Also, Ben, our stupid Snapchat show is apparently getting hundreds of thousands of views, which is very funny to me because every week we kind of pick the dumbest story we cover, cut it down, put hilarious graphics on it and put it up on Snapchat. Our editors do an unbelievable job. It's actually, it's so, so funny. So check it out, subscribe if you're into that kind of stuff. Yeah, I've reached some new demos in my life, Tommy, with that Snapchat.

I love it, though. And the Australian invasion did well. I'm going to plug one thing. It's Black Friday, right? So I might as well. After the fall, my book, I haven't talked about it in a little while, but it's a great holiday gift. Yeah. If you haven't bought the book, pick it up.

If you have a world o in your life who might want the book, makes a great gift. So I'm just going to leave that there for the world. those to do what they will with it. I think that's a good point. I think after the fall is a great companion to some of the topics we are going to talk about today. Unfortunately, all of them, yeah. All the, uh, all the democratic backsliving that's happening. Okay, so let's start in China because three weeks ago, a woman named Peng Shui, who was once one of the best tennis players in the world, she's one of the most famous athletes in all of China, accused a top Chinese Communist Party official of sexual assault. She made the accusation on Weibo, China's version of

Twitter. Pung wrote that former vice premier and member of the Politburo standing committee, Zhang Gowli, invited her to his house to play tennis and then coerced her into sex. Chinese censors almost immediately started a massive censorship campaign. They deleted her post within 30 minutes. They deleted any mentions of it online, like including in screenshots, including in comments and reviews on a film on the Chinese equivalent of IMD. That's how freaked out they were. The situation got even more frightening when Pung didn't appear in public for several weeks.

the Women's Tennis Association, or WTA, and a bunch of famous players like Serena Williams, Jokovic, a lot of folks started raising awareness, tweeting about her disappearance. Chinese state media seemed to react, then, by publishing an email that they claimed was sent by Pung, disputing all these allegations that she herself had just made and basically telling everyone who read this alleged email to relax because she's just resting and fine. It was so obviously fake, Ben, that the message that the Chinese state media tweeted a screenshot of what they said was an email, and it was addressed to, hello everyone, as opposed to, like, dear Steve Simon, the CEO of the W2A, who it was allegedly addressed to.

To its great credit, Steve Simon and the WTA said the organization was not satisfied and that they're prepared to pull out of China entirely if Pung's case wasn't resolved. That puts tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars on the line. Over the weekend, Chinese state media made another run at spinning this thing. They released new images of Pung at a tennis match in Beijing. She did a video call with Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee. Afterwards, the IOC put out a press release with a photo from the video call and a statement from an IOC official who said Pong was, quote, doing fine, appeared relax and told her to

stay in touch at any time of her convenience. So, you know, congrats to the IOC on becoming part of Chinese propaganda and working to cover this up. So Ben, very disturbing situation here. Can you help listeners understand how big a deal it is to make an allegation like this against such a senior member of the Chinese Communist Party and leadership? And then maybe if you want to put the WTA's response in context as opposed to the way other leagues have dealt with China or authoritarian regimes in the past. So first of all, what she did was incredibly courageous in the post, which was deleted, you know, within minutes by the Chinese authorities. she said in the post, like, I know what I'm doing is self-destructive.

Like, she acknowledged that she knew that she was going to be attacked for this. But, you know, to come forward with this kind of allegation, but to do it against one of the most powerful people in the country. It's just unheard of. Right. I mean, this is a standing committee member. Yeah. This is a, like, guy at the center of power.

Like, this is a country where, like, you don't express political opinions, period. And to level an accusation like this against someone. of that kind of power is just a phenomenal act of courage by this young woman. And so she deserves, first and foremost, a tremendous admiration for her courage. And don't believe for a second these bullshit emails and videos, if they would just let her, if she's so secure and she can do whatever she wants, why not let her just fly in a plane wherever she wants? Why not let her just talk to whatever she wants? Why not not pull down her content. Like, you know, if she's okay, then why do they have to censor everything she says?

So this is clearly not on the level. And it's of a piece of what we've seen of them intimidating everybody in Chinese society. This is completely out of control, you know? I mean, there's always been authoritarian country. But we've had disappearances, not just of dissidents, but, you know, we had Jack Ma, the most, you know, prominent entrepreneur in the country, just disappear for a very long period of time. Like anybody who speaks out against the government just miraculously seems to disappear. And when they reappear, they literally sound like they're reading from a script in a forced confession.

This should be chilling to everybody. That's the first point I make. The second point is, wow, the WTA and its players deserve more credit than all of corporate America. Like, yeah, there's sports leagues and there's the contrast with like the NBA, which took a while to get to a position of expressing support for free speech for its players. But, you know, we've talked about movies that censor any criticism of China. We talked about how hard it is to find anything in the U.S. entertainment industry that is critical

of China. We've talked about how many media companies have made compromises to stay in China. Tech companies made compromises, never mind all the venture capital flowing into China. And finally, a prominent business says no. We don't care if we lose money. This is wrong. And there's been no equivocation in their statement. It's been forceful from Steve Simon, and you had people like Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka,

Jokovic, who I'm not, I'm an adult guy, but this is a guy who I'm sure has tons of money and endorsements in China saying, speaking out against this, I have such respect for what we are seeing. And I hope that it is a sea change, right, that others will follow their example. Because the Chinese count on fear factor, the Chinese Communist Party wants everybody to be so afraid of losing market share in China that no one ever speaks out. And tragically, that's worked. But finally, we have people that are putting something above profit. They're putting this young woman above profit.

She's more important than the money they're going to lose. That is hopefully going to, now the one bad part of this story, though, is the fucking IOC is just disgusting. Horrible. Like, first of all, this woman is not even, you know, it's not like a winter Olympian. They're just so worried that they might lose a little bit of money on their genocide. Olympics that they're having in China this coming year, that they're willing to throw this woman under the bus and go along with basically like a videotaped confession type situation where she's got to sit there and talk to some sports bureaucrat who then puts out a press release

saying everything's fine here. Don't worry about the Olympics. Everything's fine. I have to tell you, the IOC and FIFA, the body that governs the World Cup, these are so corrupt. They're beyond redemption at this point. So, I mean, that's my initial take, right? Like, kudos to her, like, chilling that the Chinese Communist Party is doing this. Kudos to the WTA and its players. And shame on the IOC in particular. For the IOC to tell Pung to stay in touch at any time of her convenience is such an unbelievably ignorant, stupid, humiliating for them thing to say. I saw a CNN interview with an author named Dr. Lita Hong Fincher, who was talking about the Me Too movement in China and the treatment of feminist activists. And she said that often you'll

see, you know, lesser known feminist activists or women who have spoken out about sexual assault. They have been jailed. They've been harassed, censored, brought in for police questioning. Sometimes the authorities will pressure their landlords to evict them. And these are women who are not accusing, you know, one of the top 10 most powerful people in all of China. So, you know, it really does speak to the bravery that Punk showed by coming forward and tweeting, you know, a 1600 word statement that left, there was nothing confusing about the story she told in that post. And then there's a reason it was deleted, just because it's incredibly damning. And it moved around China. Like people screenshot it knowing that it'd be deleted, right? And

you could tell it struck a chord. And because this is also, it's not, sometimes this gets so framed around the U.S. versus China or something. This isn't about the U.S. versus China. This isn't even about what China's political system is, right? It's not like she was like calling for multi-party democracy. This is about a young woman coming forward with a very serious allegation of assault by a man in power, right? That sounded like it could have been a Me Too allegation tragically from anywhere, you know? And for them to respond like this reminds you that it's, this is not about politics. This is about what kind of government is so afraid of its own people that they won't even let a young woman speak.

and no matter how famous she is. Yeah, it's human decency. You mentioned the genocide Olympics. I mean, we've talked before about calls for the U.S. to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics over Chinese human rights abuses. It's really disorienting that the winter games in Beijing are in just a couple of months.

Last week, the Washington Post reported that President Biden is expected to announce a diplomatic boycott of the winter games, which means that there won't be an official U.S. delegation, but that U.S. athletes will still get to participate. This kind of approach has been floated by Nancy Pelosi, Mitt Romney, I think, at an op-ed in the New York Times suggesting this path forward as a way to just send a message about human rights without punishing athletes or handing China a propaganda win

if they go on to pick up some like historically massive number of medals. What's your take on that approach? Do you think that's sufficient? Is that the right answer? Does Pung's case, you know, up the ante to do more? I mean, as a general matter, you know, I've thought about this a lot. And I kind of came down myself that a diplomatic boycott makes sense because if we boycott, our athletes just kind of miss out on the Olympics experience. And I actually think that given the accumulation of attention, that having the Olympics, but having the Olympics not just go off as some great show of Chinese flexing, you know, like in 2008, but, you know, that the coverage.

I mean, and this kind of falls on the people covering the Olympics and the corporate sponsors and the media, like to not sugarcoat this stuff, but to be raising the issues that in a way, just spotlighting, using the Olympics to spotlight a lot of these issues might be better than boycotting. That's so I generally think that the diplomatic boycott makes sense because it kind of withdraws, it registers that this is an unusual Olympics, that you're not going to have, you know, like in 2008, we had George W. Bush there, right? we're not going to have senior officials there. The one thing I swear that concerns me, Tommy, is the IOC is supposed to be, you know, to some extent responsible for the safety of athletes. And they've just completely discredited themselves with this kind of Potemkin call with Pong. So I come down for the diplomatic boycott, except I honestly think people have to be raising questions about like, is the IOC literally capable of being responsible for the same? safety of athletes. They need to do something to, just telling us to not worry about it because we

had a FaceTime with a screenshot that we released and a Chinese Communist Party drafted press release put out by this hack, you know, like that's not going to cut it, you know? No, no, a thoroughly corrupt, terrible organization. Well, I'm sure this is not the last time we'll talk about Pung's case or the Olympics, so something we'll keep following. Ben, here is a headline that no politician wants to read. From the Guardian, quote, Boris Johnson is not unwell and has not lost his grip. That's number 10. The concern expressed in that piece followed a rambling speech by Boris Johnson to an industry group where he lost his place for 20 seconds and later extolled the virtues of Peppa Pig. Let's listen to a quick segment on the speech from the BBC news. Frankly,

is everything okay? You lost your notes, you lost your place, you went off on a tangent about pepper pig. Forgive me, forgive me. And if you've been to Pepper Pig World, who's been to Panzi? I've been to Pepper Pig World? Not enough. I was a bit hazy what I would find at Pepper Pig World, but I loved it. And Pepper Pig World is very much my kind of place.

I just want to be clear that we cut that off about halfway through because it gets more brutal. Is Peppa Pig popular in your home? And can you confirm that Peppa Pig world has safe streets and modern mass transit systems like Johnson later claimed in his remarks? I mean, Peppa Pig is very prominent in my home. And this is a wonderful example of the kind of values that Boyce Johnson doesn't always represent. I don't know about the mass transit systems. I mean, Daddy Pig is usually driving in some kind of beaten-down-looking station wagon-type car. Not an EV stuff.

Yeah, not an EV. But I mean, I always wonder what it was like for people in other countries to watch Trump, right? And think, well, this must be the thing that is going to make the Americans realize that their president is completely insane and it's kind of a lunatic. And, you know, whether it's buying Greenland or whatever weird thing you did. And I feel like we're at that place with Boris Johnson. I don't know what is going on over there. Like I know. I'm watching this from across the pond, as they say.

And this guy is like, he's passing out at summits. He's got like the mask hanging off next to David Attenborough. He's got the corruption scandals. He's got the renovations of number 10. He says crazy stuff all the time. And then this happens. And I'm like, is it? I mean, I don't know, man.

Like that was just weird. That was some weird stuff. This is weird stuff. Yeah. I want to dig into this corrupt. and scandal at one second. I mean, it's weird. It's funny, right? Because Boris Johnson does sort of this, like, performative, dofist routine that often works for him and often lands his charming. This seemed like something else. I mean, also, as a speechwriter, I mean, this feels like your worst nightmare,

because maybe the pages weren't numbered, maybe they got mixed up or something. Ben, it reminded me of a clip. I wonder if you remember this. When Judge Janine Perel, now the bibulous Fox News personality, and she got lost during her announcement speech in a, failed Senate campaign against Hillary Clinton. Here's a quick clip of that. Hillary Clinton, don't page 10. I can't count the number of times Robert Gibbs said to me, have you seen page 10? You know, page 10 is? I mean, like, is that your worst nightmare as a speechwriter? Yeah, but it happened. I've had times that it happened. But guess what? Like when Barack Obama

came to the page and it wasn't in the right place in the binder, he didn't stop talking for 45 seconds. and then just start rambling about some animated pig. You know, like, there's other ways of handling it, right? So I remember watching it and knowing like, yeah, shit, he's going to be pissed. Did I screw that up or did some advanced guy screw that up? But, you know, there are other ways of recovering other than saying, is this page 10 or talking about an animated pig? Yeah, the Peppa Pig approach didn't quite work here.

Okay, so stepping back, like, as you mentioned, it's been a top couple weeks for Boris Johnson. Most recently, a member of Johnson's party named Owen Patterson was busted brazenly breaking Parliament's rules against paid lobbying. Over the course of several years, Patterson was paid at least half a million pounds by two companies. Parliament's Standards Committee, it's like the Senator of Congressional Ethics Committee, recommended that he be suspended for 30 days. In response, Boris Johnson and the Tory Party said, no, actually, let's get rid of the Standards Committee and replace it with a new body that we, the Tories control, that went over horribly. There was an explosive response from both sides. And just hours after defending Patterson and this corruption, Johnson reversed course and Patterson got the boot from parliament. So I don't know, maybe he'll get a job at Peppa Peggworld.

I like future bright for this guy. I mean, and this guy was kind of brazen about it too. And I think what you're seeing there, right? And it reminds you, again, it's not as bad as a Republican party in this country? Like the Tories, like, haven't fallen into those depths yet. But like, they, this kind of stuff has been hanging around for a few years and they kept getting rewarded by voters. And I think the basic message in these democracies is, you know, unless people start losing elections for this kind of stuff, these politicians don't think this stuff sticks to them, you know? Exactly. And they may have had to course correct a little bit on this one. But I'm sure Boris is of the mind of like, hey, you know, I keep wondering.

elections so I can be corrupt and I can kind of sweep things under the rug or, you know, it can, you know, always like fall back on Peppa Pig world or whatever that is. And the bottom line is like, you know what? Like the guy's been on a winning streak. Not unlike here. Like if until Republicans learn that they're going to start losing elections for this kind of stuff, they'll keep doing what they're doing. And that's certainly the case over there too. Now that he sort of exhausted the Peppa Pig world, is there another animated character that you recommend for Boris and the next time he sort of loses his place? That's a good question. I mean, you know, Peppa's got like, such a distinct British

icon these days. Here's what I'd recommend. Like Adele. I'm going to, no, I'm going to turn to our Australian friends, right? Bluey. Okay. This show became like kind of my favorite show. Never mind. It was like above succession, I think, in the pandemic. Wow. Australian dude who's a great dad. He's like a dog. He's got a couple daughters who are dogs, and the daughters just kind of like persecute the dad, but he's fun, great. So maybe Boris can shift over to another Commonwealth country that we talked about invading last week and go to Bluey World. Okay. That's good advice. Blue World it is. Well, we exhaust of that one. Okay, so sticking with our holiday theme here, let's turn to Turkey, pun intended. So if folks think inflation is bad in the United States,

I highly recommend that you do not move to Turkey, where inflation is now near 20%. On top of that, the value of the Turkish lira crashed to a record low of 13.44 lira to the U.S. dollar on Tuesday. This was after Erdogan defended a decision by Turkey Central Bank to continue to cut interest rates. A CNBC article on all of this noted that in 2019, the Turkish lira was trading at 5.6 to the dollar, and in 2017, it was 3.5 to the dollar. So that is pretty wild. Erdogan has fired three central bank heads in about two years. Ben, my brain kind of basically doesn't

compute monetary policy. I need a smart person like Austin Gouldsby to explain it to me. But this seems quite bad and like the kind of thing that can get a leader like Erdogan in some trouble if there's, you know, people just can't afford basic goods anymore. I think so. I think there's real trouble for Erdogan for the first time, really, in a long time. You have a number of things happening. You know, first of all, the opposition is united. As we've seen in other places, they've all kind of thrown in together. So there's a unified block instead of a divided opposition, which Erdogan used to count upon. The polls show him slipping significantly. But then you see in these decisions, the stubbornness around rate cuts and the central bank, you see what happens to a guy who's basically, you know, been unchecked in power for a couple

decades and doesn't listen to someone who's telling him no or doesn't listen to someone who's telling him, hey, this isn't a good idea. Stop doing this bad thing that you're doing that's crashing the economy and impacting everybody in this country. And I think part of the other situation here is that Erdogan is one of these leaders who benefited a bit from a rising, growing economy. And there was this kind of support he had from like the public, the kind of populist, more Islamist, inclined voters in Turkey and some of the business community that did did okay, right under Erdogan, right? They're making a lot of money. Well, suddenly, they're losing a lot of money, you know? And I think he risks being in a place where there's public dissatisfaction with him,

but there's also some elite dissatisfaction of like, this is getting kind of crazy. This guy, yeah, it's gone to his head, you know, and I do think that, you know, as with Boris, we won't know until they actually throw the bums out. But this one feels like, you know, a harbinger of, you know, a of a guy who's just not going to, you know, is running out of tricks to pull out of a bag. No peppa pig in Turkey, you know. No peppa pig in Turkey, yeah. The creeping authoritarianism in Turkey has been disconcerting. Also disconcerting then.

Here's a not so fun headline to read in the basket of bad headlines today. For the first time, the United States was added to a list of backsliding democracies in a report by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. More broadly, this report found that more than a quarter of the world's popular lives in countries where the quality of the democracy is declining, speeches being restricted, the rule of laws being weakened, things like that. The report said some of the most troubling backsliding is happening in Brazil and India. And it also highlighted changes in the U.S., Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia as concerning. All of this really in the U.S. is the result of Trump lying about

the election results. But the report noted that his tactics had spillover effects into Brazil, Mexico, Myanmar, and Peru. So really disconcerting trend. something we all need to worry a little bit about. What took these guys that long? Like, how did we hang on for the last five years without making the backsliding list? I don't know. What were these guys looking at like three years ago when they were looking over here in like 2019 giving us a clean bill of health on democracy, you know? But yeah, I mean, I think, look, this is a central point of this podcast, unfortunately. It's not, we didn't set out for it to be, but and it's a central theme of my book, which is that this is all connected. There's a, there's one trend happening in the world in terms

Democratic backsliding, and we see different manifestations of it in different places. The extreme version of what the future model could be is China, where you can't even say anything without getting smacked down or worse disappeared by the government. But then what you see across the, what used to be the democratic world, is this backsliding where countries are at various stages of being on the authoritarian spectrum. Victor Orban and Hungary, Erdogan and Turkey. You know, Boris Johnson's kind on that spectrum, but more just kind of a populist nationalist. So I don't want to suggest he's anywhere near even to Trump. But what all these leaders have in common, though, is that they seek legitimacy in the absence of democracy. They seek legitimacy through a combination of

nationalism and kind of cult of personality politics and kind of relentless information and disinformation machinery, right? And that's what we feel all around us everywhere. And that's That's where we have to push back against everywhere, you know. Yeah. So speaking to that pushback, I mean, staying in India for a minute, there's a little bit of good news because for over a year, farmers in India have been protesting efforts to deregulate the agricultural sector. And, you know, their concern was basically that it would leave them at the mercy of big corporations.

The protesters literally camped out in New Delhi for over a year. The Times reported that an estimated 750 protesters died in the process because of, you know, extreme heat, cold, COVID. You know, they were just out there for so long. But last week, Narendra Modi completely caved and apologized for these attempted changes. Some people hope that, you know, this successful campaign will push India back in a more democratic direction. It will empower the opposition.

They point out that Modi's standing has been really hurt by some dumb economic decisions like this one, some dumb policy changes like this one, and then just a disastrous COVID response. So this at least is a little bit, you know, it's exciting. Yeah, I mean, I think there's the negative and positive. The negative in terms of these leaders is if you look at Modi, Bolsonaro, Erdogan, Trump, all these guys, you were like these nationalists trying to take democracies in authoritarian directions, they tend to kind of become incompetent after a while because they get disconnected from reality. Maybe they believe their own disinformation. They are accountable to nobody. They don't listen to people. And so you've seen them all overreach in their own way. And that's certainly what happened in India. I think what's hopeful, though, is you can look at the Democratic backsliding, and obviously there's plenty to be concerned about. But there's also been a groundswell of opposition. And so in India, this was like the largest protest movement in the history of the world. Massive. You know, like in terms of the scale of people protesting, the numbers of people protesting, the duration was impressive. And so you have people, they did win a battle here.

It doesn't mean that, you know, India is going to revert back to being the kind of more competitive democracy without the backsliding overnight. But it does mean that there's a civil society that should be emboldened. And I think we've seen in all the countries we've talked about, right? In Turkey, you have a unifying opposition. In Hungary that I mentioned, you have a unifying opposition. In India, you've seen this kind of bottom-up groundswell, not from like the opposition Congress party that has lost a lot of legitimacy with people because of corruption and other things over the years, but just from civil society and farmers and people standing up. And so I think the hopeful trend in the world is that people,

are aware of this democratic backsliding, and they are doing something about it everywhere. And there's this kind of race between how much can authoritarian consolidate control or here in this country can Republicans, you know, kind of get the levers of power so that they can govern with a minority over a majority versus how much can, how fast can people organize and mobilize and try to get victories, get wins like this, and ultimately wins at the ballot box. And that's the competition we're going to be living in for the next five, ten years. Unfortunately, one place where the news is almost entirely bad right now is Afghanistan. The UN World Food Program said that more than half of the population of Afghanistan will face crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity before the spring.

That's nearly 23 million people at the highest rate ever recorded. This is the result of conflict, COVID, droughts, you know, Afghanistan losing a bunch of foreign aid when the Taliban took over. The Guardian had a good editorial about the complexity of the problem because the question for the international community is not just, do you resume humanitarian relief? But more importantly, I mean, should countries start to provide development funding so that Afghanistan can build back some key infrastructure and have, for example, a functioning banking system again, which would allow them to do basic things like pay government employees, pay teachers, things you really need to have a society. So, you know, Ben, it's a really tough call for a number of moral and political reasons. I mean, no one wants to help the Taliban, but no one should be okay with millions of people literally starving to death, especially when it's the most vulnerable people. it's women and children first. So this editorial rightly notes that, you know, it could be that the most effective argument to get Western countries to do more, to help out more is a selfish one.

It's to argue that rebuilding Afghanistan will prevent more refugee migration and it can prevent the Taliban from fully collapsing and potentially handing ISIS the country. Do you have thoughts on what should happen now or maybe like the best way to sell it to Western countries? I mean, this is maybe one of the tougher challenges I think the Biden team faces at the moment. I bottom line is I'd be giving Afghanis and assistance and a lot of it, you know, millions of people are going to die if we don't. I mean, that's just those are the facts based on everything I've read, you know, and it's a confluence of factors, right? It's not just to withdraw foreign aid. It's the Taliban. It's incompetent. It's COVID, like you said, there's weather

involved. But the bottom line is, what are we accomplishing with these sanctions? Like, if we don't give them humanitarian aid and have all these sanctions on the Taliban, do we think the Taliban, do we think is going to come out with their hands up next year and say, you know, we're going to give the government back to what, Ashraf Ghani or something? Like, that's not going to happen. The only thing that's going to happen is people are going to die. And so, at a minimum, I'd be giving humanitarian assistance and trying to deal with the acute food shortages. That's job one to focus on. I think, and more broadly, it's connected to this point. It ties into what I talked to Rob about. Sanctions, it's not working. You know, it's not. It's not.

working in Afghanistan. It's not working in Iran. It's not working Cuba. This idea that we just decimate a country with sanctions and expect that they'll then do what we want. That model is broken, you know? And so I can't stand the Taliban. They're terrible. They're awful. They do awful things. I don't think we, I think in any way, shape, or form that we can, we should try to work directly with partners on the ground, try to work through some civil society or the UN system. But at the end of the day, I wouldn't let the fact that the Taliban is there be a barrier to doing the basic humanitarian assistance that's necessary to give Afghans a livelihood. And we have a moral responsibility. In terms of selling it or explaining it, I mean, I'd like to think that Americans wouldn't want to starve millions of people to death in a country that we just fought a war for 20 years. I also think that the Guardian makes unfortunately like a good point about the refugee point

in terms of European governments. So for European governments, the argument that will work, I think, is, hey, look, if you don't want millions of Afghan refugees, like, we got to make it so that they can live where they are. I think for Americans, that's a little harder given the distance, but still potentially relevant. And that, but I don't know, like here I'd just make a moral argument, you know, like, we can't let millions of people die in this country.

Yeah. Yeah. The need is acute and it's immediate. Although one other interesting story I saw in Afghanistan that didn't really have time to add to the show today was that there was a recent ISIS-K terrorist attack and the bomber was a weaker. And in his message as to why he did it for the first time, they mentioned the Taliban's cooperation with China. China and China's treatment of the Uekers in Xinjiang. So it's interesting that China may now be in the crosshairs of, you know, transnational extremist groups, terrorist groups like ISIS-K.

That is not good news for them. Yeah, I've always wondered this, just a quick point on this time. He's like, I used to wonder about the Russians, given their support for Assad and bombardment of civilians in Syria. And I always thought like, obviously America's been the target. But over, it's going to take time, but inevitably, you know, attention shifts. I'm not saying it's good or bad, it's just a fact. Like, that given what the Russians have done, given what the Chinese are doing,

that you're going to see terrorism manifests itself in different ways in just the U.S. and our proxies. Yeah, yeah. Let's start to space, because we really like space news on the show. So today, Wednesday, NASA launched a mission where the plan is to ultimately deliberately slam a spacecraft into an asteroid to study the impact on its orbit and see if we can build a system to deflect a civilization-killing asteroid away from Earth, Paging Bruce Willis, Paging Ben-Athelic. The mission is called the double asteroid redirection test or dart. The dart satellite is going to slam into this football field-sized asteroid called dimorphus,

it's a cool name for an asteroid sometime in September, October of next year, while going 15,000 miles per hour. And then NASA is going to measure the change in dimorphus's orbit around a neighboring but much bigger asteroid called Didemos. I don't know. I'm getting these names on probably. Whatever. They're asteroids. They won't get offended. The details don't totally matter. I just got to say, I feel like this is a good use of money.

Hopefully the world can rally around this mission and hope for its success because I don't want to go out like the dinosaurs, man. It sounds terrible. Can we do more of this kind of stuff? I mean, you know, this is cool. And we could all do this together. We could work with everybody else on. It's not blown up satellites, Russia.

Let's blow up asteroids. Yeah, let's blow up asteroids. You know, let's like deal with. climate change, let's stop pandemics. There's some stuff to do out there. Like, we had some work to do here. I mean, Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, you know, gave us a bit of a template for this. And now we just have to follow through.

Great movie. Great movie. No one ever talks about the fact that that year, there was Armageddon and Deep Impact, which was like the same movie at the same time. It's always weird when that happens with Hollywood. The weirdest one is when there were two movies at the same time about Steve Prefontein, the runner. Do you remember that? Yeah. And there were two movies that were basically like about like being friends with benefits that came out at the same time. I just don't get how that happens.

You know, I guess like cross-pollinating pitch meetings in L.A. I get you. I know what else. Steve Prefontein is not that compelling to me. That is, that is a weird one. Let's speak in Hollywood, Ben. So let's talk about Justin Bieber. Because on December 5th, Saudi Arabia is hosting the Formula 1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in 2021. That's a long name. The event includes this F1 race along with the concert featuring performances by Aesab Rocky, Jason DeRolo, DJ Snake, Tiesto, David Guetta, and Justin Bieber. This is understandably not sitting well with the human rights groups that are concerned about Saudi Arabia's human rights record. Jamal Khashoggi's fiance wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post calling on Bieber to cancel and imploring him to please not play for the men who ordered her fiancée's murder and dismemberment three years ago in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. But it does sort of seem like we're at an interesting crossroads here in terms of how the Saudi government will be treated going forward. President Biden, to his great credit, is still keeping

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at arm's length, even though there's reports that in response MBS is keeping oil places artificially high and, you know, causing all kinds of political headaches for Biden. But instead of caving and giving MBS love in any way, Biden's team has instead coordinated the release of strategic oil reserves from our strategic reserve, China, India, South Korea, Japan, and Britain, they're all doing at the same time. So it's a big middle finger to OPEC. What do you make of that move by Biden? And what do you think the impact would be if Bieber actually pulled out of this event? I love this move by Biden. And I really want to give them props on this, because we've been, you know, obviously hard on them sometimes about some of these MBS or MBS-adjacent

issues. But this is a great move. This is getting a whole bunch of non-OPEC members to say, hey, we're going to deal with this shortage that is causing price pressures ourselves, because we're not going to go grovel to you until you decide to, like, produce a little bit more oil for us. So the fact that the U.S. is doing it, the fact that we're doing it in some coordinated fashion with other countries, you know, I think is a great signal of resisting the kind of leverage that might have resulted in like some Biden MBS phone call or some whatever interaction the Saudis were seeking. I think on Bieber, look, you know, these guys, look, it doesn't, you know, ASEP Rocky, I mean, he's, you know, I guess after Trump's heroic interventions to get

him out of a European prison, you know, like maybe he felt like he needed to pay Trump back by hanging out with his buddy. But this, this matters. because one of the things that, you know, I'd noticed over the years is, first of all, there's like a weird sub-economy of American, you know, cultural figures like performing for autocrats, you know? Oh, yeah. Like, I remember when, you know, we went, uh, we had the Gaddafi, you know, uh, intervention, you know, you started to hear about all these, like people had performed at like Gaddafi's

parties or his son had, you know, I don't even want to name, I don't want to, I don't want to, malign the wrong American pop singer, but let's just say they're a bunch, you know. And these, you know, I'm sure they pay like just ungodly amounts of money for you to come over and sing like 10 songs or something. But you know what? Again, it ties all the way back to, you know, what we're talking about with tennis. At what point is it not worth it? At what point do you have enough money that you don't need the extra few million to go perform? for MBS. Even if he's not there,

as his fiance says in the post, nothing happens in that kingdom without him knowing about it and sanctioning it. And I think this is something we have to think about across the board. This point I make it after the fall, but like of all these different dimensions

of what's going wrong with democracy, I think an underappreciated one is the extent to which profit has become more important than anything else. It's more important to Facebook than what's on their platform. It's more important, you know, potentially to Justin Bieber if he goes and performs than the message he's sending by performing. And when you start to have cracks in that, as with the WTA, and hopefully if Justin Bieber does the right thing, it pulls out, you start to empower other people to say, yeah, wait a second.

Like, we can live a great life. We can be rich and famous and not have to play ball with the worst kind of autocracy in this world. And that's a sea change that we need in our culture if we're going to save democracy. both here and around the world. Yeah, I did a quick Google here. There's a 2011 foreign policy.com piece that mentions that Mariah Carey and Beyonce showed up to entertain the Gaddafi family. It also mentions that Sharon Stone, Goldie Hawn, and Gerard de Pardue did some event

with Vladimir Putin. You can always find really weird Russian events where like Stephen Segal sings, you know, I lost my thrill on Strawberry Hill or something with Putin. What the fuck do you think the set list is for Muhammad bin Salman? What is Bieber playing for that guy? And before we get the beehive on us here, you know, I think things have changed, right? Because, you know, Beyonce, like, my point is things should change, right? Is it like 10 years ago, 15 years ago, this is kind of just part of like the business model, right? You know, now I think things have to have changed so that these stars are like, wait a second, I got to do some vetting, some due diligence on this $10 million offer that my agent said, you know, fly in a private jet, stay at a lavish play. and do a 5-10 song set list. I don't know, man.

Like, what is A-Sap Rocky performing? It's certainly not in line with the cultural moors of Saudi Arabia, right? I mean... It's a weird, weird deal. That's the other thing that's kind of weird about this, right? You have these kind of F1, Formula One concert-type events with, like, you know, all Western culture descending. And then you have this kind of very, let's just say, illiberal society, you know,

that's always made me uncomfortable. The Gulf Autocrats want to have it both ways. They want to have the most repressive societies they could possibly have, but then celebrate and do all the fun things that like, you know, F1 races or Western, you know, culture has to offer them. It's very, it's very strange and discordant. A couple quicker headlines as we, before we get to your interview here. So just so folks know, two of the 17 American hostages who were taken by gangs in Haiti

over a month ago were released on Sunday. So hopefully the rest of them are released soon. And I hope that means that there's some sort of negotiation happening. In Europe, several countries, yeah, have experienced violent protests against COVID vaccine mandates and lockdowns. Protests have happened in Austria, Croatia, Belgium, Italy, Northern Ireland and the Netherlands. They seem to be particularly bad in Austria and the Netherlands. Ben, I know you join me in dabbling in listening to Steve Bannon's podcast from time to time. He had Naomi Wolf on the other day, who was this pretty famous feminist writer and former advisor to Clinton and Gore campaigns,

who just completely lost her mind in the last few years. And she said that European vaccine mandates are a crime against humanity, and she compared it to Kristallnacht. So that's the kind of message that the MAGA types are hearing about vaccines and vaccine mandates. So that's stuff there. I mean, I went down some Twitter rabbit hole because I didn't realize that she'd become kind of MAGA-ish.

Nuts. That's nuts. I mean, yeah, there's a very real and concerning illiberal. we talked about in the Australia context, but this stuff is spreading around. And Bannon's kind of like at the hub of it, right? You're your guy. And it's so instructive, Greg, because Bannon's not going to come out and just say, like, I don't think you should take the vaccine. I'm sure he's taking it and gotten boosted and done everything else. But he's, the one liberal he's going to welcome on his show is someone who's going to say, oh, actually what's happening here is the vaccine mandates are cover so that there's no

control group of people who didn't take the vaccine because the vaccine is actually deadly and killing people. Like, that's how completely nuts she is. It's why they love like RFK Jr. too. They love nothing more than like a big left-wing name or democratic name that they can slap on their right-wing conspiracy theory to make it seem like it's about, you know, it's not about a political agenda. It's about people, you know, it's their version of woke, right? Exactly. It's as cynical as it gets. One other story out of Israel, so Israeli defense minister, Benny Gantz's housekeeper was charged with spying.

This is a guy named Omri Gorin. Apparently, he saw news reports about a hacker group called Black Shadow. So Goren found them on telegram and tried to contact one of the members to say, hey, I can get you secrets. He demonstrated access by sending photos of items in Benny Gantz's home, like his computer, like really sensitive stuff. Israeli officials say they quickly caught him that he didn't access anything classified. But a lot of Israelis are wondering how on earth a guy who had gone to jail four times,

including for armed robbery, was able to get a position working in the defense minister's home, then I don't know, I found this pretty shocking. Say what you want about, you know, sort of Israeli policies, but their intelligence services are usually seen as some of the best in the business. And the fact that this guy wasn't vetted before getting to the defense minister's house is genuinely shocking to me. Yeah. I mean, what's going on over there? I mean, sometimes there's just these holes and nobody's quite as competent as you think. And you build up, you know, whether it's the CIA or the Mossad or anybody, like, but this is pretty basic. This also feels like a plot of the Americans, you know, like this is the kind of thing that they were doing.

Like Matthew Reese is like, you know, suddenly he's got a job, you know, like on a construction site building the home of somebody or, you know. But yeah, like maybe do a little vetting the people that you're letting in the defense minister's home. I don't know. This is a suggestion, unselfisholid suggestion. Maybe Google them. Yeah, no, it's a good point, actually, you know, because a lot of security is sort of the appearance of security, right? Like if you think you can't get a bomb through the airport security, you probably won't bring. one. But it is kind of funny to think that like guys like you and I are, you know, peeing in cups in

the EEOB building to see if we've smoked marijuana in the past month. And then there's a, you know, you have a person cleaning the home of the equivalent of the Secretary of Defense committed armed robbery and went to jail four times. And that seems like a shocking oversight. Well, yeah, they do go to extraordinary lengths, you know. It does just show you that oftentimes if you think from a common sense perspective about security, like we're putting a lot of resources is in the wrong direction. So billions of people are still taking their shoes off. But like nobody's...

Because of Richard Reed or somebody in 2006. Yeah, because some guy tried to light his shoes on fire like 15 years ago or whatever was 20 years ago. And how much money and aggravation that's cost the whole world when, you know, that's probably not the most likely venue for attack going forward. But at the same time, like, we won't like do vetting on like the people like cleaning the defense minister's house, you know. Yeah, not good.

Lock it up, Massad or whatever. Ben, last story, before we get to your interview, the London residents just got a new dining option. People waited in line for hours to get biscuits at Popeyes, only to learn that a buttermilk biscuit in the U.S. is very different from a biscuit in the UK, which we would call a cookie. I only know that because of the Great British Baking Show.

It actually confused me for several seasons. But I think a lot of customers in Britain who went to Popeyes were wondering why they got something that more closely resembled a scone for them. Apparently there's more than 3,400 Popeyes globally. So we're exporting shit out of some delicious Cajun fried chicken. So hand up here. I can't lie.

I don't know that I've ever eaten at a Popeyes. There just wasn't a location near me growing up in Boston. Are you a fan? And if so, do you have a pitch for our British listeners about why they should go check it out? I mean, I'm going to say that I've never eaten at a Popeyes when I was sober. I do remember, I used to spend all the time in New Orleans in college. And there was like a Popeye's around like that. Oh, could you guys just drive over?

Yeah, I could drive over from Wright. I went to Rice in Houston. And so I was up there like a bunch of weekends a year. And there's like a Popeye's at like the mouth of Bourbon Street. And so when like the lowest form of, of human existence is how you felt when you needed to go to that Popeyes. I will say the chicken is excellent. particularly in that scenario, right? I mean, it does the trick.

A little Cajun spice. Yeah, a little Cajun spice. I mean, I think the Brits have like a cuisine from many parts of the world, like Popeyes is in its own way exotic. And yeah, like a big, greasy, fluffy, buttery American biscuit. You know, it's worth a shot. I mean, I'm not going to say it's going to go in my rotation or anything. Well, I learned about it from like Ted Lasso. So isn't that what he was, was that a biscuit?

What was he making for the, the boss? Oh, yeah, he was making the biscuits that were actually cookies. Yeah, exactly. That's right. Yeah, you know what? I think there's nothing better in the world than an American buttermilk biscuit, especially sort of in a breakfast sandwich. It's a place called Bojangles down in North Carolina,

which I would take over any of your stupid, boogey, you know, burger places, the shake shacks, even the in and outs of the world, the things that everyone celebrates and talks about and, you know, travels to Los Angeles to try. Give me a bojangles, sweet tea. Give me a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit all day, every day of the week. And I love it. Yeah, I mean, I have to say, like, that is, and it's like, that is an American food.

It's not like an American adapted. That's not Tex-Mex or, you know, like, that is like something that, like, somehow, like, arose out of whatever alchemy of America. Yeah, our DNA, our ethos. Well, now I'm very hungry. We are going to take a quick break, and when we come back, you will hear Ben's interview with President Biden's special envoy for Iran, Rob Malley. So stick around for that.

It is far more important than Popeyes, but maybe less delicious. We are very pleased to welcome to POTS of the World, the special envoy for Iran, Rob Malley, who is responsible for the very difficult and complex Iran negotiations. Rob, really good to see you. Great to see you, Ben. So look, we're really excited to have you, Rob. We obviously talk and periodically check in on the Iran talks in the future of the JCPOA, such as it is or could be. And given the fact that there's some discussions coming up and you've been a busy man and everybody else in the world has an opinion on this, I thought, let's go to Rob and get the ground truth. So I'm just going to start with the very basic question. How would you describe in basic terms for people where things stand right now? now in terms of potential negotiation and the potential for re-endering something like the JCPOA. So maybe just a little bit of context for people.

I'm sure people know this, but, you know, we inherited a situation which is about as bad, I'd say, probably even worse than we expected in terms of the U.S. decision to withdraw, under the Trump administration, to withdraw from the deal at a time when Iran was abiding by its terms. and the purpose of the withdrawal, according to the administration officials at the time, was to pressure Iran to curb its regional activities and to come back and negotiate a better, longer, stronger nuclear deal. The end result, and we're still living it, is that Iran has both intensified its regional

destabilizing activity and blown through all of the nuclear constraints. And so we found ourselves trying to negotiate a way back at a time. obviously when Iran was pursuing a different path. We had six rounds of talks. We made, you know, I'd say we made real progress, trying to get back to the point where we would lift all of the sanctions that were imposed in contravention of the JCPOA and Iran would come back in compliance with its nuclear restrictions. We hadn't reached an agreement by any means,

but we thought that we were getting there and that a few more rounds than we might be able to close. By the way, that was also the assessment of the Iranian negotiators at the time, part of the old administration of President Rouhani. There are elections that are on a new team led by President Raezy. We're about to start to have the seventh round of talks after a five-month hiatus next Monday on November 29th. And what I could say is everything we're hearing, we haven't seen anything concrete, but everything we're hearing from this new team leads me to be rather pessimistic. They are opening things that we thought had been more or less settled.

they're raising issues that are outside the boundaries of the JCPOA. They're making requests that are just unrealistic. Let's see whether this is pre-negotiation bombast or whether this is really the line that they're taking, in which case we're in for some choppy waters. Yeah. No, and that context can't be repeated enough because your job, as it is, shouldn't exist. If we just stayed in the nuclear deal, we would be negotiating a longer and stronger deal from the basis of a JCPOA and restrictions.

instead of an Iran that is blowing through the commitments that it was keeping. But before we get to the upcoming round, I also wanted to just kind of set the table. I've noticed some of the other consultations you've been doing, clearly trying to align the U.S. and negotiating partners and other partners. So you recently had a meeting with the three European parties to the deal and the GCC, that's the Gulf organization, that includes the Saudis, the Emirates, who've been skeptics of the Iran deal over the years. And I noted that you got a statement that a joint statement in which the parties

underlined that enhanced regional dialogue and a return to mutual compliance of the JCPOA would benefit the entire Middle East. What was the importance of that? And why do you think you were able to get the Gulf countries to essentially endorse a return to a deal that they had had a lot of misgivings about? So I'll add to that puzzle. I mean, that picture of the Europeans, the Gulf Corporation Council, but also I had a three-way call just a few days ago with the Russian and Chinese deputy foreign ministers, all of which is, as you said, to try to line our positions and make sure that we're sending a clear message to Iran. And the message to Iran, and I'll come back to why it was so important to get this together with our Gulf partners, the message to Iran is, they are two paths ahead. There's one path. You go back into the JCPOA and you're going to see greater diplomatic engagement, more economic ties, in particular. with Gulf countries, which is one of the priorities of this Iranian government and the lifting

of sanctions, which would allow those economic ties to expand. The second path, if they're not prepared to come back realistically into the JCPOA, is a path of inevitably crisis confrontation, the end of the JCPOA, and everything that you could imagine because you yourself went through it prior to entering into the nuclear deal, more pressure, et cetera. I think getting the Gulf Corporation Council on board was important. As you say, they've been very skeptical of the deal. They were very skeptical of the deal back in 2015-16. And I think they have lived through a period with no deal.

And they've seen just as we have what it means. It means greater, more belligerent Iran. And without much that the Gulf Conjures could do in response and a nuclear program, again, that is sort of unrestricted, unconstrained. So I think they all believe, and a number of them, and this is a big difference from when You and I were in the White House five years ago, a number of them have now started bilateral channels of communication with Iran, something that President Obama had pushed for, but hadn't been able to convince them to do.

But now the UAE has, you know, regular contacts with Iran. Saudi Arabia has started it as well. So I think they all are of the view. It's better to engage Iran. And they all understand that that engagement is going to only be able to proceed positively if Iran is back into the JCPOA. Again, A, because our sanctions, some of our sanctions will be lifted, so they'll be able to engage in economic ties, but also because they all know that if Iran starts, you know, blasting through more nuclear thresholds and gets closer to sort of the alarming

state that people want to avoid, their relationship diplomatic ties with Iran will be dominated by the non-proliferation crisis. So to get all of them to say in one voice with us, here are the two paths forward. We all prefer the path where you're back into the JCPOA because that will allow so much. The other path is one that we hope you don't take. I think that was an important message to send to run a positive message because they now see that everyone is aligned in support of diplomacy, engagement and a return to the JCPOA, but also a message that says there's a ceiling to what you're going to get done if you don't get back into the deal, which is important because, as I said, I think the RACC government seems to believe that they can both stay out of the JCPOA and

improve their economic and diplomatic ties with the region. I think they need to be dissuaded of that of that illusion because that's the fastest way to get them back into the deal. And shifting to the upcoming talks and the Iranian attitudes here, because it seems like you've aligned as best you can, not just our P5 plus one partners, Russia, China, the Europeans, but also now this endorsement from the GCC. You have an Israeli government that is at least less hostile than the Nanyahu government was. So it's really your question of the Iranian intention. I'm just curious what the shift was for you,

like your experience of the shift from the Rahani government and the people you're negotiating with to the Raisi government. Is it all new people on their side of the table? Is there any experts or kind of institutional knowledge that transferred over to the new team? Or were you kind of starting over from scratch

with the new administration? So I think it's a little bit of both. A lot of new old names, people that I hadn't met before, but some of my colleagues who worked in the first term of the Obama administration were familiar with. And their experiences were not always very happy ones, but sort of the hardline crew that some of them were of the Ahmadinejad's period. Listen, it was not easy to negotiate with the old team. It took us a long time to get to the JCPOA, and we had not managed to get back into the JCPOA, despite six. rounds of talks. But the sense was that for the most part, they understood the economic benefits of coming back into the deal. They understood the economics of what they faced. Even then, you know, it's not as if it's a clean break one administration to another. There's continuity because the Supreme Leader sort of is the bridge between the two. So that explains in part while we weren't able to get back into the deal by June. But I think with this team, there's a greater conviction

that they don't need a lifting of U.S. sanctions that they could survive through their own resistance economy and that they could expand their ties looking east, whether it's Russia-China or their immediate neighbors, and that they don't need. They're not as dependent on the lifting of sanctions. So we understand they have a different mindset. I think deep down it does still come down to can they really do what they want to do economically? Can they provide what they want to provide for their people, or they say they want to provide for their people if they're not back in time?

into Zealand if the JCPOA sanctions are not lifted again. I mean, every day that goes by is a day that they are depriving their country of the benefits of the ability to sell oil to get the proceeds from the sale of oil. So there's a lot that they can get. But of course, they're going to have to accept the constraints that the prior team did. So as I'm looking at this from the outside, you know, having one spin on the inside but never dealt with this cast of Iranians, there's kind of three things that jump out to me, and you can respond to any of them in terms of what the holdup might be. Because some people might just say, what's so hard about just going back into a deal that was already negotiated? One is just whether

they are interested in a deal at all, right? Threshold question. Two, the question of what sanctions have to be relieved on the U.S. side to get back into a deal because the Trump administration, after it pulled out, kind of reimposed sanctions on a lot of things that were, you know, relaxed under the nuclear deal, but they labeled them terrorism-related sanctions or human rights-related sanctions. So there was a world in which even if the U.S. returned to compliance, they didn't get all the sanctions relief that they were getting under the JCPUA. So how much of this is a complicated sanctions discussion? And then three, this issue they keep hitting about needing some kind of assurance that the U.S. will never leave the deal, which is obviously hard when it's not a binding treaty.

How do you assess that landscape? Is that the correct landscape of concerns you hear from the Iranians? And what do you think the key sticking points are? Yeah, I think you pointed to what we think are the main things. I mean, they also have some other issues, but I think the two big ones are the scope of sanctions relief and the question of assurances of guarantees. Of course, we have concerns about how much they're prepared to roll back

the nuclear advances that they've made since they started to violate their own obligations under the JCPOA. But leaving that aside, that has to do with what they do with their advanced centrifuges, et cetera. But on the two issues you raised, so on the question of this scope of sanctions relief, the JCPO, as you all recall, we said we would lift all nuclear-related sanctions because it was a nuclear deal, but that we not only would retain existing, but would retain the right to impose new sanctions for terrorism, cyber attacks, human rights violations, ballistic missiles.

made that clear. They didn't like it, but we made clear that we would retain those sanctions that existed, and we could impose new ones. Of course, the Trump administration came in and imposed the order of 1,500 sanctions designations in a very short period. I mean, it really went all out. And we have told the Iranians, and we made very clear, all of the ones that were lifted under the JCPOA, even if they were relabeled, we would lift. But we did say that there's a number that were imposed for reasons that were legitimate and legitimately understood at the time of the JCPOA. Iran's position, I mean, it varies every now and then, but what it seems to be saying is they want all of them gone. Our answer is if you want sanctions related to terrorism, ballistic missiles, whatever, gone, then let's negotiate those issues.

And we're happy to remove those sanctions if we could address our concerns that are non-nuclear in nature. Of course, that's not what they want to do. So then we need to understand we're not going to renegotiate the JCPOA. about nuclear sanctions, it wasn't about the other ones. So that's that issue. I think it's a big issue for them because they believe that the Trump administration went sort of on a frenzy of sanctions and positions and they want all of them removed,

which is simply have said that's not consistent with the deal that was negotiated. They also say, as you pointed out, you know, President Trump withdrew from the agreement and just did it for no arbitrarily for no reason. How do we know that you won't do it or the next president won't do it? And our answer has been, we can't commit the next president.

I think those who understand our system understand that. And we also said there's no such thing as a legal guarantee because this is a political understanding. It's not even a treaty. Even a treaty people could renege on, but it's not even that. But we said, A, President Biden would not be expending the political capital. And again, you know well what political capital is in. It's entail for anything related to Iran.

If his intent was to go back in and then leave again, and that would make no sense. he wouldn't be going as far as he's going. He said publicly now in a meeting he held two weeks ago, three weeks ago, with his E3 counterparts, French, German, and British. He has said he's made clear that he would stick with the deal as long as Iran did. That's political commitment, but it's still something. And finally, and I know this may not be so persuasive to the Iranians,

but it is what the deal was built on. It was built on what I'd call sort of mutual assured damage, not destruction. We knew, and Secretary Kerry negotiated this with Foreign Minister Zarif at the time, if they, if we violated the deal, they would resume their nuclear program in ways that were not allowed by the JCPOA. And if they reneged, we would reimpose our sanctions. That was the way we would each try to deter the other's violations. In some ways, what we're seeing now is that the system worked. Yeah. Not in a pretty way, but we withdrew from the deal. Iran rebuilt its nuclear program at warp speed.

And we're now saying we want to get back in because we don't want to live with it, with an Iranian program that's unconstrained. And again, you and I, a number of us knew this would happen, but it's clear that the maximum pressure campaign failed. It failed to curb Iran's nuclear program. So we're saying, let's get back in because it's in our interest, and we assume it's in your interest. So that's the best way to assure that it will last.

That final thing, you know, when President Obama negotiated the JCPOA, there was a year left implemented, basically. the last year of his administration. Not much time to build on it. What we've told the Iranians is the sooner we get this deal, the more we could build on it, the more we could try to even address other issues in our bilateral relationship that would solidify it

and make it more sustainable. If we wait until the 30 of the Biden administration, then we could replicate what we faced back in 2016. So is this going to convince them? It depends how realistic they are, because if they're expecting an ironclad guarantee that can't be violated, it simply won't happen.

any more than we have any guarantee that the Supreme Leader someday won't say, you know what, just still doesn't do it for me anymore. Yeah. I mean, that just doesn't exist. As you said, even treaties, which had to be ratified through the United States Senate, have been abrogated. So what happens, both first on the logistics and then on the substance, what are the logistics of these talks?

Because you hear a lot about the Iranians not wanting to get in the room with Americans. And when you show up on the November 29th, what are the logistics? of how that goes forward. I mean, as you described, we'll be in a hotel room awaiting the reports of the P5-4 plus one, sort of the Russians, Chinese, French, Germans, Brits, but also the European Union, their reports of their meetings with Iranians. So it's a very awkward, unsatisfying process where we wait to hear from them and then we respond, and then they obviously have to share our response with the Iranians.

it's you could imagine rife for right with potential for misunderstanding for miscommunication for delays and that's what happened I mean the number of times that we found ourselves

thinking that we had expressed something and then when it came back to us in sort of this game of telephone what we had said had been misunderstood or misrepresented or simply just wasn't conveyed as precise as we would have so that's inevitably going to happen and it's sort of the

the worst way to negotiate. It's a article of faith for this for Iran right now. We hope it will change, but we're not going to beg. We just, we think it would be in their interest to come face to face with us and so that we could talk about these issues more, you know, more clearly, but not not in their plans. And and you know, in terms of what would be progress, how do you look at that? I mean, I think very few people would think, you're going to, you know, come out of this with the JCPOA in any near-term time frame. How can we, what should we be looking for to indicate that there's some forward motion here? So, first, I want to disabuse people.

Nothing is, I don't expect that we're going to see anything really positive coming out of the next, the round that begins on Monday for a number of reasons. I think it's going to be more of a throat clearing may be going to, too far, but they're going to, the Iranians are going to put down their pretty hard-line position. we'll have to respond. I think we hope, I mean, maybe we'll be surprised. I don't want to be, I don't want to be categorical about that, but I think our expectation should be relatively low. The question is whether that sort of gets all sides to go back and think harder about what the choices are. And again, our effort over the past two weeks or more has been to try to clarify that choice for Ron,

indicating that there's a real positive way forward if they wanted, but there's also a very negative pathway if they'd, don't choose it. And I think that's sort of, we'll see. Maybe we'll be in for surprise. I'd be very surprised. I think the most likely outcome is this is a round where people are going to stake out their positions and then they're going to have people we, but I would say principally Iran will have to decide which path it wants to take. And one of the saying on this is, you know, obviously the JCPOA is the preferred outcome. Given the advance in the Iranian program and given, you know, those additional U.S. sanctions that Trump imposed. And at what point do you start having to consider that the baseline isn't the JCPOA itself,

but rather is there some interim agreement that halts the progress of the Iranian program for more modest relief for a whole new deal? Like, how do you see the life support system for the JCPOA? How long is that duration versus other? And I know you probably can't get into specifics here, but how should we think about that? And I can't get into the specifics because it's. specifics don't really exist at some level. It's like this is not a chronological clock by day X it's over.

It's a technical one. If they accelerate their advances to the point where they acquire irreversible knowledge of a type that even if we came back to the JCPOA, we wouldn't recapture the nonproliferation benefits that we're negotiated in 2015-16, then we're talking about a different deal. By the same token, if they advance so far in the enrichment program that they're too close to break out time for our comfort, we may also say at this point we're no longer willing to sit down and play their game, which I have to say at this point, we're pretty persuaded that their game for now is let's slow walk the nuclear talks and then let's accelerate our nuclear progress.

And we have to make clear of them, we can't accept that and that we're going to have to respond accordingly. So I think all I would say is we don't have that much time, partly because they've accelerated the pace of their advances, so we don't have that much time. And of course, we would have to, you know, if the JCPOA collapses, if we see that we're not going to get, that we'd have to think of alternatives, either an alternative deal or an interim deal, as you mentioned, but we also have to consider the prospect of a real crisis. If none of that works, Iran continues along its path, we would have to think of some steps that we would take, of the steps we would take to counter that, again, a playbook that you'd be familiar with

because we lived through it during the presidency of Ahmadinejad. Yeah, no, it's good memories. Last question, Rob, you've got, I mean, this audience is like Team Rob, a lot of people in the United States who are supportive of the deal. Yeah, exactly. And we have international audience. I mean, what can we do for you, Rob? Like, what can we do to be in your corner here? Any message to the folks out there who want to be supportive, but, you know, it becomes opaque, obviously, when you get in these hotel rooms.

I said earlier, and I'll repeat this because I think it's important. And a lot of our friends in the foreign policy community who can be critical of what we're doing. Why didn't we start sooner, go faster? And, you know, I'm sure if we're outside, I'd have my own share of criticism. We're not blameless. But I do want to stress that it's now been months that we've put on the table what I would consider a very credible pathway back to the JCPOA. Again, don't believe me. Believe Rohani and Zarif, if you want, not you, but if others want, who said publicly to their own parliament

if Iran wanted the lifting of sanctions, they could have attained it in May or in April, in May or in June. And elements of their system turned it down. So understand we are now, so I say that there's a real choice for Iran, and that's the message to Iran. If we get to the point where Iran responds positively, it's going to be, as you know, a tough domestic battle because there are many people who are very critical of the deal, including among not just Republicans, many Democrats. We understand it. It's not a perfect deal, but you always have to measure it against the alternative. And I think the mistake that too many of us, I'm going to say us make, is that we look at a negotiation and we play chess with ourselves.

And we think of the perfect game. We assume the moves of the other side, and it's a perfect outcome. Well, there is another side. We've seen how the other side reacts. We've seen what happens under the failed maximum pressure campaign. So if we are fortunate enough that Iran takes a realistic position and we could come back into the deal, it's going to be a tough decision for everyone, for Iran, but also for us. Let's think of what the alternative is, and do we really want to live with Iran that is accelerating

towards acquiring a nuclear bomb and with the very, very distasteful options that that presents us with? Yes. Well, it's a good note, Dan, we've seen the alternative to the JCPOA, and it is not a better deal. It is not Iranian capitulation. It is where we are now, which is a rapidly accelerating Iranian nuclear program. that under the terms of the JCPUA would currently be on lockdown and rolled back.

But I take your point, Rob, that I think message that you guys did hit the ball back into the Iranian side of the court here. And so we'll have to be watching them going forward. We wish you the best man. I hope you have got a good Thanksgiving before you have to get back on the road. It's great to hear you and see you. Great to see you. Thanks, Ben.

Thanks again, Rob Mallee for joining the show. Ben, do you have a certain float you are most excited to see at the parade? Is there a Snoopy? I assume there has to be. There is a Snoopy. And I'm actually pretty fired up about Snoopy. When I was a kid, there was a Spider-Man. Like, that's pretty cool.

And the reason Spider-Man, the one I'm excited about is it like, it looked, you know, it's like Spider-Man kind of careening through like the concrete jungle of Manhattan, right? So a little bigger than the Spider-Man we used to seeing. But it's kind of cool to see this Spider-Man with, like, you know, bumping into buildings and stuff. It's kind of in motion. Yeah, right. It looks like he's crawling. It looks like he's crawling, right?

There's this whole, like, you know, my kids are going to be into, like, you know, Paw Patrol. The question I have is, I don't know if there's a Peppa's float, you know. So much to tell Boris. The Brits could give us one, you know, to kind of cement the special relationship. Maybe Boris could send over a Peppa the Pig float. It would be tough for President Biden to store it somewhere that would create an international row, as they say, though. Yeah. It was a giant Peppa float.

very like civilizing to hear your children watching in the background some show and it's like mummy pig and daddy pig you like this for some reason like the children's content just feels elevated if they're speaking in British accents. Oh I didn't know they have accents. Oh yeah yeah. Yeah. Delightful accents. That's lovely. Well, excited to watch some Peppa Pig. I might have to check it out. The people used to live at our house. Their Amazon used to be logged in and it was we would use it by accident and it would just be Amazon Prime like Peppa the Pig. the only thing they were watching. Wall to Wall to Wall.

But maybe I'll have to go ring it back up and check it out. Clearly matters a lot to Boris. Yeah, it matters a lot to Boris. He's got a new baby, I believe. So that explains it all. Okay, that's it for us this week. Thanks for listening. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Happy Thanksgiving, guys. Talk to you next week. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Mewis. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn,

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