The Duran Podcast - Iran nuclear deal and sanctions relief

Episode Date: May 17, 2025

Iran nuclear deal and sanctions reliefThe Duran: Episode 2229

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the situation in Iran with the talks between the United States and Iran. It does look like we have a type of offer from Iran. If you believe the reports coming from NBC News, where they spoke to an advisor to the Supreme Leader of Iran, who did say that Iran is ready to ditch its uranium enrichment. It's high level. It's high level uranium enrichment. And it will just deal with nuclear energy civilian purposes. Yes.

And this will be indefinite, from what I understand, if the U.S. decides to drop all their sanctions. I mean, it's an offer that has been made now to the United States. We're waiting for a response. What are your thoughts on what Iran appears to have put on the table? It's not an official offer, but it does look like this is what Iran is willing to to do in order to get to some sort of a piece. It's a good offer and the United States should seize it. It's a better deal than the one Obama negotiated back in 2015.

I think this is a point to say because Obama's deal was for just 10 years. And that was a genuine problem with it because after 10 years, Iran could do whatever it wanted. This deal is indefinite, and that means if it's honored, and there's every reason to think that it will be, and I explain why in a moment, that the whole issue of Iran's nuclear ability to develop nuclear, nuclear capabilities taken permanently and fully off the table. Now, the United States once, one would assume, Trump certainly one suspects, he would have wants to see some kind of long-term peace or this stability return to the Middle East. He presumably does not want to, well, he definitely doesn't want to get himself involved in a conflict with Iran.

He's had a sort of trial run of what that would involve with this operation against the Houthis that Mike Wals and Pete Higgsath talked him into. That didn't turn out well, as we now know. The Houthi air defense system turned out to be more effective than they imagined that it would be, and the targets turned out to be even more elusive than they expected, and that's the Houthis, who are simply a militia. Taking on Iran would be a completely different set of problems. So one assumes that the United States, that Trump would want to resolve this, Trump can legitimately say that as a result of this deal, the whole issue of Iran's nuclear enrichment program has finally and conclusively been brought to an end.

Iran will not acquire nuclear weapons. So this is the moment to move forward and to normalize relations with Iran. he will have done better, significantly better than Obama did. And he's got something else because even as this deal, even as this proposal has been made by the Americans, the Iranians are now in the final stages of preparing for the visit to Iran of Vladimir Putin. He's apparently going to go to Iran at some point over the next few weeks. he's going to meet not just Pez Ashken, but also Hamané, and that is unusual because the supreme leader doesn't usually meet foreign leaders. So the Russians, as I've discussed many times, we've discussed many times in these programs, have now a strong relationship with Iran,

and they are in a strong position to act as guarantors for this deal. They can take the nuclear the nuclear material out of Iran. They can transfer it to Russia. They will be there on the spot. They can tell the United States, we stand guarantors. You can rest easy. We will make sure that this never happens because we don't want to see Iran become a nuclear power any more than you. Is Trump going to take it?

Why would he not take it? Why would he actually, you put it really well. Why would be the only reason he would not take it, right? Why would he not take it? I mean, it gives him fundamentally what he wants. The difficulty with this deal is, again, political. The Israelis won't like it. The neocons in Washington won't like it.

They have been coming to him, apparently, at regular intervals, trying to get him to green light military strikes by Israel and ultimately the United States against Iran. He found out apparently that Mike Wals was working closely with the Israelis to get him to do that. And he seems to have been furious about it, which explains why Mike Wals is no longer his national security advisor. So he's nonetheless. still has all that to worry about. And there's also all the other people in Washington, Lindsay Graham, well, we can all name who they are, Tom Cotton,

all of these people who basically still yearn and want an attack on Iran. And they're coming along and they're telling Trump, go ahead, attack Iran. It's a house of cards. All we need to do is, dear one, single blow and this whole thing was come tumbling down and you'll be the great victor and you'll have liberated the Middle East from this ever-present danger of Iran and Israel itself will then become safe. Well, I hope Trump resists this bad advice and as I said, he may have seen from the way in which

the operation against the Houthis went that it actually is bad. bad advice, and it isn't quite as simple as he was being led, as these people are making out. But anyway, there is that pressure. Those people in Washington are very, very powerful. And I think Trump doesn't want to be seen as being soft on Iran. And though this is not a deal, which in any conceivable sense is being soft on Iran, nonetheless, it could be construed. Some people will spin it that way. Is the issue of sanctions, full sanctions relief for Iran?

Is that an issue as well for the neo-cons for, yeah. Absolutely. The Iranians want full sanctions relief. Is that something the U.S. can put back on, actually, as well? Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, it can. So if they remove them, can they put that? Yeah, so how do you get a guarantee from Iran's side of the?

Well, you can't. Yeah. And you won't. Iran's real benefit from this is not going to be the sanctions relief, though maybe they will get some sanctions relief. But if they can get at least a slackening of the economic pressure, remember, I mean, there's sanctions and then there's enforcing sanctions, which is not the same thing at all. So if the United States steps back from enforcing its sanctions and perhaps relaxes or

lift some of them, then that's actually not bad for Iran, because for the moment at least, Iran can't realistically expect, but it's going to establish a good friendly commercial relationship with the United States. Iran has joined the bricks, its economic destiny is integration with the bricks, provided it can be left alone to do that unhindered, then I think it's a good deal for Iran to be said to say it straightforwardly. So as sanctions, some degree of sanctions relief, yes, it's a good thing. It will please some people in Iran. But I think that it shouldn't be a deal breaker for Iran.

That's my own view anyway. It would be more of, okay, it would be some sanctions relief may actually be permanent. Most of it will probably be paused when you get a new administration and administration after that. Exactly. But at least it gives Iran time. Time and space. Time and space.

Bear in mind that until a few months ago, Iran's economy was growing quite strongly. I mean, they were doing well on the higher oil prices. Of course, that's all reversed now. But they were doing quite well on the higher oil prices. They'd got into bricks. They were doing all kinds of things. So what they should be aiming for is not full sanctions relief, but to get back to that position where, as I said, the economy can stabilize and start to grow.

Chinese and Russian investment can come in. And, well, it's not trading with every part of the world. There'd still be problems trading with the United States. That'd still be problems trading with Europe. But at least it gives Iran the opportunity to move forward. And then, who knows, maybe in time, you know, the world continues to change, either the sanctions will melt away or there could be more sanctions relief. Who knows? How much of a role did Saudi Arabia play in all, is playing in all of this?

Trump was recently in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has given, it's, I don't say it's blessing, I guess you could say, to the Trump administration in the form of we want stability. We want you to get a deal with Iran. I mean, how much of a role are they playing in what could possibly be a landmark deal between the United States and Iran? I think they're playing an absolutely critical role. I think Saudi Arabia, one of the things that underpins this whole situation is that there's been this diplomatic revolution that the Saudis carried out two years ago with Iran, which

was that previously Iran and Saudi Arabia had been mortal enemies and had been waging a kind of proxy war against each other in all sorts of places across the Middle East, in Yemen, in Syria, in all sorts, in Iraq, in Lebanon. And I think that the Saudis eventually came to the conclusion that it really wasn't working. It wasn't solving. Saudi Arabia's ownish problems with its Shia community, which is, I think, the ultimate core of the problem. It wasn't solving that. The Shia in Saudi Arabia was still, you know, there was still unrest there. And it had involved Saudi Arabia in a long conflict in Yemen, which, to be frank, didn't go very well. So I think that the Saudis were also very aware of future trends. They can

see the rise of the bricks. They are probably aware that the days when they can rely on oil to fund everything within Saudi Arabia are receding. I read, I don't know how far this is true, by the way and it may be completely wrong. But I read that if you actually unpack the figures, Saudi Arabia has actually been running a budget deficit for about 10 years, even with higher oil prices, because the costs that Saudi Arabia is running are so high, keeping the welfare system in Saudi Arabia running, maintaining the peg against the dollar, subsidizing all of these allies that Saudi Arabia has across the Middle East, spending colossal sums on arms.

I mean, Saudi Arabia has an enormous arms budget. So if that is true, Saudi Arabia would probably want any way to reduce the fiscal pressures on itself. It's got enormous reserves, capital reserves. but they're not indefinite. And if you start running down your reserves, you can find yourself in a position of near bankruptcy fairly quickly. So you can see why the Saudis would want a stabilization of their relations with Iran. And they know also that a stabilization of relations with Iran can only really work if there's a general stabilization of the situation in the Middle East. And the one thing the Saudis absolutely do not want is, is it's a general stabilization,

prolonged war between the United States and Israel on the one hand, and Iran, which creates chaos and strife across the Middle East, potentially closes the Gulf of Hormuz, disrupts the oil industry, exposes the Saudi oil industry to potential Iranian attacks, and the Houthi War showed how vulnerable parts of it are. So I think the Saudis probably have been urging the Americans to move forward and to do this deal with Iran. Whereas, of course, ten years ago in Obama's time, when Saudi Arabia was very hostile to Iran and saw Iran as a mortal enemy, at that time, on the contrary, they were very unhappy that Obama did that deal with Iran, because at that time, they did want the United States to attack Iran and

and to defeat Iran militarily, which, as I said, I think the Saudis now realize or understand is not a good idea at all. All right. We will end the video there. The durand.orgals.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, but shoot, Telegram, Rockfin, X. Go to the Duran Shop, pick up some merch like what we are wearing in this video. Update. The link is in the description box down below. Take care.