The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - An Iran Deal We Can Live With || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: August 15, 2023

There's finally a deal on the table between the US and Iran that everyone can live with...it even looks like Israel has given it the green light. So what does this deal actually look like? Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/an-iran-deal-we-can-live-with

Hey, everybody. Peter Zine here coming to you from Rocky Top in the Colorado Front Range Foothills. Today we're going to talk about that sexiest of topics Iran and what everybody is all up in arms about. The news that came out over the last several days is that a number of American prisoners in Iran, all of them unjustly detained, have been released from prison, are now under a house arrest pending their transfer back to the United States. In exchange, the Biden administration seems to be promising to free about $6 billion that are held in accounts abroad primarily in South Korea that were frozen under the Trump administration in order to lubricate the deal. People who don't like Biden are saying, you know, why would you give so much money to basically some people who are dumb enough to not drop their dime bag before

traveling to Iran? You know, catchy argument. Now, all of you who think that Joe Biden is the second coming and he's got to just fix all this with a wave of his hands, you need to grow up a little but two. This deal could fall up at any second. It's not done until it's all done. And this has all been done without a single face-to-face conversation between any American and Iranian diplomats. The Qatar, the Swiss, the Brits, the Omanis,

and there might be someone else in there, have all been playing middlemen, and American and Iranian diplomats have been within sight of each other, but not talking to each other directly. Hell, some of this is even through indirect text chains with these interlocutors in the middle of the text chain so that the Iranians and the Americans never have to talk about it directly.

There's obviously congressional opposition within the Republican Party. There is obviously opposition within the more conservative elements of Iran. And remember that the equivalent of MAGA in the United States has existed in Iran for a very long time. And so this is not done until it's done

until the people are home, until the money is transferred, until the IAE is in there, and on and on and on and on. But there is a lot. But there is a lot more going on here. So first of all, let's start with the contours of the deal. And the key word is contours because this is very much in motion.

The Americans are fickle. The Iranians have long memories. And this could all still fall apart. But this is not simply about a bunch of minor drug offenders in a theocracy. This is about the broader relationship. So the deal provisionally requires the Iranians. to stop transferring funds to a lot of their militias that are attacking Saudi Arabia in particular. That includes in Yemen, that includes in Syria, that includes forces that are attacking American

forces and contractors in Syria and Iraq. Another part is they have to spin down some of their enriched uranium. So the Iranians have a couple hundred kilograms of highly enriched uranium around 90%, not quite enough to make a mom, but getting pretty close. And they've had to spin that down to at least 60% and they have provisionally done that for about a third to half of their stockpile already. They have to come back under IAEA inspections and in exchange the United States basically freeze up their ability to sell crude abroad. So there's a lot more going on here. The people who are being freed from prison are something that is a personal priority for Biden because one of these guys has been held since the Biden administration. And that's where we get

into the personal connection with U.S. politics. Now, in the past, I've spoken a little bit about Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan. Sullivan of the two is clearly the smarter one. Not that Blinken's an idiot or anything like that. Anyway, there were a capable pair, and they were the people who originally came up with the idea of cutting a deal with Iran back during the Obama administration. Back then, they were still working for Joe Biden when he was.

was vice president. They came up with the idea. They presented it to Uncle Joe. Uncle Joe brought it to his boss, Barack Obama, and then Barack Obama's team ran with it, and they are the ones who came up with the deal that at the end of the day was pretty crappy. So Blinking and especially Sullivan generated the idea. Obama's team is the one who wrecked it and basically gave away the store, which is one of the many, many, many reasons why Congress ultimately rejected the deal and it fell part. When these guys came back into the White House as servants of the president, they kind of dusted off the old plan. Let's start with the rationale. If you want to leave the Middle East, you have to do one of two things. Number one, you have to be willing to let the chips

fall where they may and admit to yourselves that you just can't shape this region, certainly not without forces there. Option two, you set up one of the players to be your successor. And when the Obama administration was looking around, they were like, oh. Turkey relations were not good enough and their ability to project power into the Persian Gulf was limited. Israel, relatively hostile to all the powers, could never be the leader, much less the dominant force. Iran, that seemed to be kind of thrown out from the get-go. And then Saudi Arabia has, on paper, great military, but it doesn't operate outside of air conditioning. So there really was no candidate to anoint.

So they decided to kind of cut the baby and aim for a resurrection of a regional balance of power that for the most part, did not involve the United States. So basically setting Turkey against Iran against Syria, against Iraq, against Saudi Arabia, against Iran, get them all in the mix so they're keeping each other busy. And to do that, a partial rehabilitation of Iran was required. That was the Sullivan Blinken idea. We're now getting back to that. In the interim with the Trump administration, obviously, anything that had the word Obama

attached to it, he like jettisoned on the first day. And he tried to have his cake and eat it to. So basically saying to everyone in the region, I want to dictate everything you do, but I want no forces and no money in the region, so obviously that didn't work. Anyway, Sullivan and Blinken are now giving it their best shot, and this provisional deal does quite a bit of what is necessary in order to restore that regional balance of power. For those of you who think that anything that rehabilitates Iran is awful, grow up.

A few things to keep in mind. Number one, Benjamin Netanyahu's the Prime Minister of Israel, who has been Prime Minister of Israel, like for my understanding. entire adult life, who has sabotaged many, many, many, many, many attempted deals by the Americans to kind of manage this region, and they specifically adhere to what he wants, has said that this is a deal that he can live with. In addition, one of the biggest sticking points in the negotiations is that the Iranians want the IAEA, that's the International Atomic Energy Agency, they're the ones who monitor weapons of mass destruction and uranium and plutonium enrichment.

they want the IAEA to certify that they're complying with inspections without allowing the IAEA to inspect anything. So, you know, it might be the UN, but this is a UN agency that really does their work. And the Blinken-Sullivan team, at least provisionally again, has gotten the Iranians to allow inspections, and that's how we know that they're highly enriched uranium isn't so highly enriched anymore.

Third, one of the fun things with negotiations is whether or not you really want it or not and what you're willing to give. And once the Ukraine invasion started, obviously American foreign policy got shifted very heavily to the former Soviet Union as opposed to looking at the Middle East, not just out of an interest issue, but out of a national security issue.

Something in the air today. Anywho, there was a happy explosion of circumstances that pushed this quasi-deal forward As part of the sanctions on Iran, Russian Ural's crude can only trade up to about a $60 price cap. And if you go above $60, then you can't use any up financing, any tanker registered in any G7 or European state, nor can you access financing and especially insurance for your shipping. So you basically have to use a shadow fleet of decrepit tankers that the Russians and the Chinese have managed to kind of sneak into the system. It's a much higher expense, and it means you can only sell to certain countries.

So Russian Euroles crude is traditionally, and it varies day by day, week by week by month, selling about a $30 discount to equivalent crude grades. Well, one of those equivalent crude grades is the crude that Iran exports. And between sanctions from every American administration for the last 30 years, the Iranians have had a hard time getting the technology that's necessary to keep their oil flowing, And so their exports, instead of being the 4 million that they should be, has really never topped 2 million in the last few years and has more traditionally been closer to one. Well, with all this Russian stuff being dumped on the market, especially on the far eastern market, that's the market Iran normally serves. So they have found themselves kind of caught in the Russian sanctions regime.

And so they are broke. And all of a sudden, the Lincoln Sullivan team comes on with dangling a $6 billion character. All you have to do is talk to the UN, get rid of some of your nuclear stuff, let our misdemeanor drug offenders go home. It's a reasonable deal. Now, this can all fall apart tomorrow. Hell, this might fall apart while I am recording this. But with that said, we are looking at, from the American point of view, the most productive stage in American-Iranian relations since the 1970s, and all it costs us is,

$6 billion of someone else's money. I'm going to call that a wink. All right, take care.