The NPR Politics Podcast - President Trump Says The U.S. "Will Withdraw" From The Iran Nuclear Deal

Episode Date: May 9, 2018

President Trump announced that he has decided to exit a multinational agreement in which Iran agreed to limit its production of nuclear weapons material. The decision raises questions about stability in the Middle East and questions abroad about whether or not the U.S. can stick to its promises. This episode: Congressional correspondent Susan Davis, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, and chief international editor Will Dobson. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Kerry. I'm just headed out to knock on doors in my neighborhood to remind voters to turn in their ballots for our May 15th primary out here in Oregon. This podcast was recorded at 5.32 p.m. on Tuesday, May 8th. Things may change by the time you hear it. Keep up with all of NPR's political coverage at npr.org, on the NPR One app, and on your local public radio station, like myOPB. Okay, here's the show. Hey everybody, it's the NPR Politics Podcast, and that timestamp was a good reminder that today is in fact a big primary day in four states, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, and North Carolina. We covered those key races in the podcast yesterday. We'll be back tomorrow with the results of those elections. But right now, we need to talk about President

Trump's decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. It is clear to me that we cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement. The Iran deal is defective at its core. President Trump's decision makes good on a campaign promise that may isolate some U.S. allies. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And I'm Will Dobson, NPR's chief international editor. So today, surprise or no surprise? No surprise.

Why not? Because the president has been talking about how this deal was the most horrible thing ever since he was a candidate. And he reluctantly waived the sanctions before, but warned pretty clearly he wasn't going to keep on doing it. And today he pulled out. Wasn't a surprise to anyone. Even Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, who had come and tried mightily to convince him otherwise, said he was pretty sure this was going to happen. So before we get into the politics of the deal and what happened today,

Will, can you take us back to 2015, to the Iran deal that was cut under the Obama administration? What was it and what was it intended to do? Right. Well, it was a massive undertaking. Really, an incredible number of hours, years went into this diplomatic framework, which was reached, as you said, in 2015 by the Obama administration between Iran and then on the other side, the United States, the UK, Russia, France, China, and Germany. So effectively, the UN Security Council plus Germany. And the basic bargain or gamble was this, that Iran agreed to reduce its nuclear facilities, to limit its nuclear capabilities. And in exchange for that,

it would be the beneficiary of lifted nuclear-related economic sanctions. So take the sanctions off that had really crippled the Iranian economy, and at the same time, free up tens of billions in assets to begin to allow for the economy to work again. So that was a premise. And essentially, what it was supposed to do was put the Iranian program in a bottle. It didn't end the program necessarily, but it was going to delay the day that Iran could have a fully functioning nuclear weapon. And this deal was very politically charged from the start. I mean, under the Obama era, covered the implementation of it, firmly divided the two parties. Democrats were behind the

president, although some key Democrats did not support it. And Republicans were almost unanimously against it. And that's why it wasn't a treaty, which would have made it lasting and would have prevented Donald Trump from doing this today. But President Obama could not have gotten this through the Senate. So it became an agreement. So we go to the White House today. President Trump has announced that he's going to withdraw. And we have a little bit of sound from him on that. We will be instituting the highest level of economic sanction. Any nation that helps Iran in its quest for nuclear weapons could also be strongly sanctioned by the United States. America will not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail.

But Mara, the deal had been certified by independent nuclear observers that Iran has been complying with the deal. So what were the reasons the president laid out today for why he could withdraw? What he said is from the get-go, this was a bad deal. It never should have been entered into in the first place because it didn't deal with all these other bad things that Iran is doing. Their ballistic missile program, the fact that they are a bad actor in the Middle East, the fact that this sunsets after 10 years. There are a lot of things that weren't in the deal. The president thinks that's why the deal was bad. Can you talk a little bit about the timing of it? We knew he wasn't happy with it, but why now? Why today? I think

that one of the things that changed was he has a new foreign policy team. And Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, who replaced H.R. McMaster and Rex Tillerson, are Iran hawks. They don't like the deal. They think that there's some benefit to pulling out. Maybe they think this could hasten the end of the Iranian regime. What is the timeline for impact, Will? We say we're withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal. In real time, what happens next?

Well, I mean, and I just go back to saying that, you know, I think that it's not a surprise. I agree with Mara, but there was a surprise in that he, you know, and in the tape you just rolled, that it was the highest level of economic sanctions because that affects the timeline. What matters here is that these sanctions that will go into place now, they don't just target Iran or Iranian interests. They also target European companies. And over the next, and these are the two big sort of periods of time, 90 days and 180 days, during that period of time, these sanctions will come into effect, which is going to make it really difficult for this deal to exist or go forward without the United States involved. So there was a scenario here where the United States

could pull out of the deal, but really not maybe try to completely hamstring it. And that's not the option the president took. And that wasn't immediately obvious that he was going to do that. And in the tape you just played, he said any nation that helps Iran's nuclear program will be punished. So it sounded like he wasn't talking about European companies. But later, in briefings that we got from the administration, it was clear they're saying we're going to give them a certain number of days to wind down their investments in Iran. But after that, they're going to be subject to sanctions. European companies that do business under the deal with Iran. And basically any European company that's big enough to be having dealings with Iran or purchasing oil from Iran, imagine how that company could possibly not have some connection to the United States, that it wouldn't be using the U.S. banking system, that it wouldn't have offices here, that it wouldn't do some business with the U.S.

All of those would run afoul of secondary sanctions that the administration is putting forward. Which means this is a bigger break than some people thought he would make. And it's a bigger rift with our allies. It's probably the biggest rift he could make with the Europeans who have been begging him and begging him to try to find some way of staying in the deal, but building on it with side agreements that addresses other concerns. This is, I mean, I think it's safe to say that this is the singularly greatest unilateral action of this administration to date, which is saying something in this administration. Yeah, because he's gotten out of many multilateral agreements, the Paris Climate Accord, TPP. He's threatened tariffs. This is the most significant thing that Donald Trump has done because he took it to the limit. A lot of times he threatens something

extreme and walks it back. On this one, he didn't do that. Is that because John Bolton is there, you know, pushing him to his core instincts? We don't know. So is there a nice sense of what they replace it with? So they announced that they're going to withdraw from the Saran nuclear deal. He wants to negotiate a better deal. But what credibility does the administration have to negotiate a deal if the other partners in the deal didn't want it to be over? That's a great question. I think a lot of people are asking that right now. And I mean, you know, the president, as Maura said at the outset, the president really didn't indicate what a plan B was here. And so he's effectively said, we're doing this, the rest of you clean it

up. And so that's what we're going to engage in now. What we'll see now is how the Europeans try to find some way and maybe the most difficult playing field possible to sort of take the sting out of these steps for Iran. And at the same time, I would suspect also still not give up hope to see if there isn't a way that there can be some walk back there. And when Will says the rest of you clean it up, don't forget there's Iran, Russia and China. Those are the parties to this deal. It's not just the Europeans. And it's possible that especially for Russia, this is a great opportunity to drive a wedge between the U.S. and its European allies. I mean, what is the interest that Russia,

China and Iran have in trying to come up with something that's going to satisfy Donald Trump? I would suspect very little. I mean, one of the and one of the biggest losers here is President Rouhani himself of Iran, who staked a tremendous amount. He was on the other end of this deal. He was he was, you know, in charge of Iran at the time in 2015. he staked a tremendous amount of political capital. And effectively now in Iran, hardliners can say, you know what, we were right all along. You can't trust the United States to hold its end of the bargain. You overpromised on this deal in the first place. Our economy hasn't really taken off as a result. And now they've walked away and we're left with what the Europeans can put back together for us. And if one of the huge meta themes of the Trump era is that the center doesn't hold, this is a pretty good example of how the center doesn't hold and the extremes win. All across the board, whether it's in the United States administration or the hardliners in Iran. OK, we've got a lot to say about the reactions to the deals, but we're going to take a quick break and we'll talk about the fallout when we get back. to provide support and pressure relief to every body type and sleep style for a deeper night's sleep. Lisa plants a tree for every order and donates a mattress for every 10 sold. Get $125

off, free shipping, and 100 nights to try the Lisa mattress. Go to leesa.com slash NPR. Planet money tip number 17. Sometimes the most important things need a hype squad. Corporate. Corporate. Income. Income. Tax. Corporate income tax. Planet Money, a podcast about the economy. A very enthusiastic podcast about the economy. Okay, we're back. And let's focus a little bit on the reaction here in the U.S. before we get to the reaction abroad. We can start on Capitol Hill. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other top Republicans have long been critics of the Iran deal. Here's what McConnell had to say today. Yeah, well, what he's going to be doing

is laying out where we go from here. And it obviously would involve our European allies as well. And maybe additional steps that we may need to take, some of which may require legislation. But clearly, there's a next step beyond this, and we'll look forward to seeing what he recommends. And to the extent that we need to be involved in implementing it, we will. Notable from the Republican leader saying Congress now eager to get engaged on the Iran issue. And asking the president, please tell us what the next step is. We would love to hear from you, sir.

And Democrats largely speaking out against the president's decision, although some interesting politics here, because now the top Democrat in the Senate, minority leader Chuck Schumer, was one of the votes against the Iran deal in 2015, although he criticized the president today for his withdrawal. By dividing our allies, and I've just heard the president said he would impose secondary sanctions on European and Asian allies. You're making it

harder to go after Hezbollah. You're making it harder to go after Iranian activities that are really dangerous. And you're probably making it harder to come to a North Korea deal. Will, let's talk about that point. Sure. This doesn't happen in a vacuum. The president makes this decision and there is discussion that it does have much bigger ramifications about how the U.S. is viewed as a dealmaker in the world. Right. So I think most foreign policy analysts would probably agree with Senator Schumer on that point.

They would say, how can North Korea or anyone else really take the United States at its word if precisely at the same event that President Trump is announcing that we're pulling out of one deal that Secretary of State Pompeo is en route to North Korea in order to begin the process of trying to get to another deal? How can the North Koreans take the administration at its word? Well, I think the answer to that is that President Trump may see it exactly the opposite way, which is that because he's put so much pressure on North Korea, because they pursued the strategy of maximum pressure, because he's antagonized Kim for months on end, he may argue that it's because of that that we find ourselves in this position with the North Koreans. And so, you know what? If it's the case that the world objects to the United States pulling out of the Iran deal, so what? You're right. It's going to bring in tension, the president could argue. But it's from that tension that we will get something better. And

he indicated that in his remarks today, that don't worry, they're going to come back. They're going to want a deal. They're going to want a better deal. The fact is, they are going to want to make a new and lasting deal, one that benefits all of Iran and the Iranian people. When they do, I am ready, willing, and able. Great things can happen for Iran. You know, he clearly, one, thinks there's truth to that, that tension, you know, leads to something. And two, that he can do a better job, that he can do a better job than anyone else. And he will negotiate a better deal than what we saw him rip up today. You know, what's so interesting about that is what if the president is wrong? What if the North Koreans are not coming to the table because he tweeted at them that he would destroy them, but because,

as they've said in the past, that they completed one of their goals, which was to, they say, finish a missile that could reach the continental United States. And now they were ready to negotiate from a position of strength as a nuclear power. And the other thing that's so interesting to me about Donald Trump is this idea they're going to want a better deal. We have heard him say that before. The Democrats are going to come crawling to me on their knees begging for an immigration deal. The Democrats want to do infrastructure. You know, he often says that and it doesn't happen. And I know there's this prevailing idea that somehow the Iran deal is going to affect the North Koreans. Maybe the story of North Korea is going to affect the Iranians. Maybe the story of North Korea is going to affect the

Iranians. They see a country that got a nuclear weapon, didn't just have a program, they actually got a nuclear weapon. And look how nicely Donald Trump is treating them. He says Kim Jong-un is an honorable person. One thing I would just point out is one thing that's definitely the case now today, no matter what all these scenarios we're talking about, is that diplomacy on one of the single biggest alarming issues facing the world today is going to go forward. The Europeans and the Iranians are going to begin talking. Rouhani has already responded today by indicating that he's directed his foreign minister to begin talks with the Europeans, with those that are still in the deal. This is going to go forward and it's going to go forward without the United States. So I have a question. One of Donald Trump's objections to this deal is that after 10 years, the Iranians were free to rush for a breakthrough on the bomb. Now, when he pulls out, they're free to rush for it right now.

That's right. Why is that better? Why is that better? I mean, I think that's the biggest question that the allies were pointing to the president all along. That's been part of the lobbying effort as one European leader after another has tried to make that case to President Trump. So I think that is very much the question. Rouhani got to it immediately today saying in detailing that his foreign minister would talk to the Europeans. He's also indicated you have very little time. We could start enriching uranium soon. I do think that the American voter has understood in recent years that foreign policy decisions can have huge impacts back home, whether it's the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, whether it's the Paris Climate Accords.

Now we're talking about the Iran deal. Mara, this is the Politics Podcast. What are the politics here? This is, you know, my first instinct is to say this is a campaign promise kept by President Trump. Absolutely. To me, that's the first and foremost political importance of this. Donald Trump said today, today's action sends a critical message. The United States no longer makes empty threats. When I make promises, I keep them. The fact when they read the stage directions, you know, that's the point he wants to get across. This is the message, he says. So Donald Trump, first of all, his whole persona is about being tough and strong and doing what he says he was going to do. So promises kept, I think, is really important. I think his base will be happy about that. I think as an issue in the

upcoming midterm elections, Iran is not that important. Foreign policy in general isn't that important, unless for some reason Boeing and all sorts of other companies suffer because they no longer do business with Iran. But I think this is much more transactional about Donald Trump himself and his bond with his voters. This is something he said he would do, and he did it. Do you think there's no political repercussions, even though a number of polls show that a majority of Americans broadly like the Iran deal? Right. That's what the polls show. That doesn't mean it's a high-level voting issue for people. And I think it depends on what happens. If the Middle East is destabilized and we get into a

war over there, then yes, that could have some backlash. But I think in and of itself, the fact that we're pulling out of this deal, not a huge voting issue. I want to put the question to both of you just more broadly about what have we learned about President Trump and his America First doctrine and its effect? This is a president that does not build on the foreign policy accomplishments of those who came before him. He is effectively beginning what would almost seem like a blank page, and he will make his own policy. He will make his own determination. It's a totally iconoclastic approach to looking at the world. So if that means just pulling out of climate accords, so be it. If that means throwing

away something that was worked on by administration to counter or threaten Iran, so be it. If that means throwing away something that was worked on by administration to to counter a threat in Iran, so be it. It's a very personal style. It's very his when he discusses allies or enemies. It's always in very personal terms, his how he relates to this particular head of state or this particular leader. And so I think there's a growing body that you could look at and say it's transactional, it's personal, and it doesn't show much regard for what went before it. And as far as the results of all this, we have to quote Donald Trump. We'll see what happens. OK, that's a wrap for today. We'll be back tomorrow with the results from Tuesday's primaries taking place right now. And if you want to send us any comments, questions and your timestamps,

please do so at NPRPolitics at NPR.org. And as always, keep up with our coverage on NPR.org, NPR Politics on Facebook, and your local public radio station. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And I'm Will Dobson, NPR's chief international editor. And thank you for listening to, NPR's chief international editor. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.