Today, Explained - No deal!

Episode Date: May 9, 2018

President Donald Trump has pulled the United States out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Everyone else - including France, Russia, China, even Iran - has insisted on staying in. Vox’s Yochi Dreazen explains the implications of Trump’s move, from a spike in your summer gas prices to nuclear war in the Middle East. **************************************** When Trump quit the Iran deal, he ended years of diplomacy in a few moments. Vox Video explains how we got here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-mwFoev3OQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alright, Sean. Looks like by the time we got here there's only one scooter. Well we could always ride tandem, you and I. I'm up for it. I'm up for it too. I mean I don't think it violates any sort of like company policies. Here we go, scanning a barcode. Seems like the previous rider has not locked the bike. No! Please lock the bike first to end the previous ride

and unlock to start your ride. I think we might be out of luck again. Maybe there's instructions at mattressfirm.com slash podcast. I doubt it, but I'll bet you get a mattress there. A deal's a deal, right? I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. Wrong. President Trump tipped over a very big domino yesterday. And lying in the balance is everything from gas prices to nuclear war.

In a few moments, I will sign a presidential memorandum to begin reinstating U.S. nuclear sanctions on the Iranian regime. Up until yesterday, the Iran nuclear deal was an agreement between Russia, China, the U.K., France, Germany, the rest of the European Union, and the United States. After two years of negotiations, the United States, together were our international partners, has achieved something that decades of animosity has not. A comprehensive long-term deal with Iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The deal severely limited how much nuclear stuff Iran could make and keep and included all sorts of monitoring, just to be sure. And back in 2015, President Obama didn't act like he had solved our decades-long beef

with Iran, but he was hoping this deal would open a door, that the United States and Iran could get along somewhere down the road. This nuclear deal was the Obama administration's biggest move by far. Yochi Drizin hosts the Worldly podcast. Arguably his biggest accomplishment, period, but for sure his biggest accomplishment in terms of foreign policy. This was a deal where Iran basically gave up its nuclear program and the West, including

the U.S., pulled off all the economic sanctions that had battered its economy. The whole world thought it was working. The U.N. thought it was working. Every ally we have thought it was working. Donald Trump basically said, I don't care. America will not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail. And blew up the deal. Does blowing up the deal go into effect immediately?

Is this something that's already happened or is it scheduled for a certain day or what? So the sanctions start to go back into place between 90, 120 and 180 days from now. But in terms of the deal, the U.S. broke it. Are these other countries still in it and how does that work? Yeah, the other countries that signed on to the deal have all said they're going to stay in. Yeah. Interestingly, the Iranian government has said that for now it will stay in as well. President Rouhani, who staked his reputation on the benefits of the deal, told the world last night it is not dead.

And he will continue to work with the other five countries still committed to saving the deal. Why was this deal so important? For the White House in the Obama years, they thought this deal would do two things. One is avert war. They felt, as George W. Bush felt, that Iran simply could not have a nuclear weapon. That was just a red line that would threaten Israel, threaten Saudi Arabia. And they had two ways of trying to stop that. One was go to war and to have some kind of deal where there are inspections and kind of very strict benchmarks and a lot that Iran had to do

to give up its program. The second is that they thought gradually this might be a way for the U.S. and Iran to move closer. Trump's argument against the deal in part is, hey, none of that happened. Iran is still our enemy. They're still doing terrible things. And so the Obama guys, they thought it would avert war, which it's done temporarily, and move us closer to Iran, which it has not done at all. So if you're President Donald Trump, why do you finally blow up this deal, this thing you've been promising to do for a while? So Donald Trump has been blasting this deal even before he ran for president. When it was signed in 2015, he was already tweeting how it was terrible and embarrassment. And then during the campaign, terrible embarrassment, catastrophe.

I'll pull us out of it. I'll tear it up. It is a total and complete catastrophe. Then taking office said, I'm going to tear it up because It is a total and complete catastrophe. Then taking office said, I'm going to tear it up because it's awful. Yeah. And now he's finally done so. And I think there were kind of three things happening. One, think of this like the foreign policy version of Obamacare. He didn't like that there was something called Obamacare, tried to blow it up. It failed. Here, he didn't want there to be this thing called the Obama nuclear deal that a lot of people liked. So bye bye nuclear deal. The second is he feels, not incorrectly, that the U.S. allies who to him matter most in the world, which are in some

ways the Saudi Arabians, the Israelis, they want out of this deal. They hate this deal and they'll love him for doing it. So this is like his gift to those two countries. And he says, and this part is accurate, Iran is doing terrible things all across the region, all across the Middle East, and this deal hasn't stopped it. It may have made it easier. Could you give us the quick rundown of what Iran's doing in the Middle East? Iran is keeping Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria, very literally. They've sent money, they've sent weapons, they've sent fighters. So they have people fighting for Bashar al-Assad in Syria,

helping him basically by this point win the civil war. In Yemen, Iran has funded a group that's now fighting Saudi Arabia. In Iraq, Iran is very close to the government of Iraq and trying to pull it away from the United States. So when Republicans say Iran, since the deal has just gotten more aggressive, that's true. None of that was covered by the deal. And so what he's basically doing is saying something not covered by the deal that's happening is going to blow up a deal, even though the deal itself was doing what it was supposed to. Does the president think he can do better? He said that to the degree that he has a plan B here, it's we'll put sanctions back. Iran will come groveling back to the table. We'll hit them with harder terms and they'll have to take it.

The problem, of course, that there's no sign whatsoever Iran is willing to do that, nor that Europe, Russia, China, who had also sanctioned Iran, would do so again. His core belief about everything is that everything in the world is a transaction. And so here, he feels like this deal was badly negotiated. He is 100% sure he could do better. And we are on the outside 100% sure that there is no sign now at all that Iran or Europe wants to talk to Donald Trump at all about a newer deal. Trump has also not really been clear about what a newer deal would be. He's talked about making the limits on Iran's program permanent. There's no way Iran would accept that. The question during the Obama years that I would always have for people who opposed it was,

okay, let's say the deal isn't perfect. What's the better option? Nobody really had a good answer short of, well, eventually their government will fall and things will be fine. And Donald Trump yesterday had no plan B. And what's the other half of this? Nobody really had a good answer short of, well, eventually their government will fall and things will be fine. And Donald Trump yesterday had no plan B. And what's the other half of this? How does Iran feel about what happened over the past 24 hours?

So we often as a country think that Iran is just this blob where it has no politics. It's just a crazy theocracy run by these radical mullahs. And that's false. It has a political system with really deep divisions. It has moderates. It has hardliners. And to look at Iran and just think it's monolithic is a mistake. So the debate that we had here about, is the deal in our best interest? Is it giving up too much to our enemy Iran? They had the same debate, just substitute the word enemy United States for enemy Iran. And there the conservatives said the same thing as what conservatives like Donald Trump

are saying here. It was too much of a giveaway to the US. It's an insult to Iranian national pride. Why should we give in anything to the United States and its allies? And Rouhani, his foreign minister, they were the ones who said all along, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is good for Iran. We get sanctions relief. Our economy will grow. Unemployment will fall.

And so now he's been undercut because now clerics and conservatives can say to him accurately, you told us to do this. You told us you could trust the United States and look, we can't. How does Iran feel about President Trump versus say the country's relationship with President Obama? That he can't be trusted, that he's irrational, that he's biased in favor of the Israelis, that he's biased in favor of the Saudi Arabians. I don't think this surprised anybody there, but all the same, it's infuriating. Their economy is terrible. Right now, their currency is at the lowest point ever. Unemployment among young people is extraordinarily high. They were banking on this, helping their economy, and now it won't. I guess we shouldn't forget about the European Union, which also signed this deal. Yeah, I mean, the European Union, they've been feisty. And

they've been basically saying the US isn't the only force in the world. Do not let anyone dismantle this agreement. It is one of the biggest achievements diplomacy has ever delivered. And we have built this together. One of the phrases that we used was they're not an economic policeman for the world. They've said we're going to stay in the deal. I mean, they just feel like this was something that the European Union invested in a lot of time, a lot of money. The governments were part of the European Union, thought this deal was working. And now America has said, we don't care. We're pulling out of it anyway. Why did this benefit the European Union? Why were they involved? This helped their economies. Iran is a big country, a potentially wealthy country. It

has huge amounts of oil and natural gas. And this was a way for Europe to get some of that. And in fairness, they also thought this was a way of averting war. I mean, it is binary, right? Like, if you think Iran can't have a nuclear weapon, and you know they have lied in the past and have wanted to get a nuclear weapon before, you really do have two ways to try to stop it. One is some type of negotiation. One is war.

That's it. There's no other choice. What's next? That's next. Okay, I went to mattressfirm.com slash podcast. I didn't find any instructions on how to lock a motorized scooter in D.C., but I did find that you could use the coupon code podcast10 to get 10% off a mattress. So now I'm looking at this scooter trying to figure out how the heck to unlock it. I got a bell.

I got a speedometer that I can't see because it's so sunny in D.C. today. You know, Sean, could it be that it's maybe just already unlocked? That's interesting. The speedometer's on on which I think means that it's on do you want to just give it a shot you get a shot I guess I think you just was like take a couple of kicks and then hit this speed thing and see Okay, so tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, is that a win for anybody? Yeah, this was a win for Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, who in the clearest sign when you're trying to lobby Donald Trump,

he appeared on Fox & Friends. Wow. Which was bizarre and surreal to go from them joking around to like, You know, the clearest sign when you're trying to lobby Donald Trump, he appeared on Fox and Friends. Wow. Which was bizarre and surreal to go from like them joking around to like, and now let's welcome the prime minister of Israel. Working without notes, the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, live in Jerusalem. It was remarkably strange. They hate America. They hate America's guts. So I'm very glad I have to tell you that President Trump has stood so firmly and so clearly on this issue. because this is an example of be careful what you wish for. He now owns whatever happens. It's only him. He can't blame Obama anymore.

The French, British, Germans, European Union are all losers. People who are worried about war are losers. And more cynically, people who are worried about increasing gas prices are losers? People who don't want to see gas prices go to $4 a gallon, which it may do, or $4.50. Oil prices are already spiking. It's hard to find many winners. It really, genuinely is hard to find many people who will wake up and think, whew, the world's a better place thanks to Donald Trump. You say that two of the few winners are Israel and Saudi Arabia. And yet, if this deal

goes away, Iran is now capable of advancing all of its nuclear programs, and they are close neighbors. How are they winners? They're gambling that if war comes, the United States will get involved, even if the U.S. doesn't launch the war. And bear in mind, John Bolton, the new National Security Advisor, believes in regime change. I mean, his view of Iran is that they not only can't be trusted, but that the goal of the U.S. should be to topple their government. Our goal should be regime change in Iran. He's been Haley hating this deal even more than Donald Trump has since it was signed. He's not the national security advisor. Right. Mike Pompeo, the new secretary of state, hates this deal. So for the Israelis and the Saudis, they're thinking if we have to go to war

and they both feel like they may have to, that the U.S. will join that war and would not have joined that war if the deal was still in place. The United States is the only country that's pulled out of this deal. Does it still hold any value for all those who remain, which is everyone else to be clear, right? Yeah, everyone else remains. And I spent a lot of time on the phone yesterday with one of the people who actually very literally helped write the sanctions and helped craft the deal

and trying to go through the law of it. And it was baffling. Basically, by one party pulling out of it, in this case, the US, the deal itself is now null and void. That said, countries can still abide by the terms and act as if it's still in place, which is right now what's happening. So at least for the moment,

everyone else who's involved in this is still acting like the deal's in place and abiding by the terms. Legally speaking, by the US pulling out, the deal is now finished. But if you want to be the glass half full, it's that everyone else who's involved in it, at least so far, says they'll keep to it.

Donald Trump, he really loves to gamble. And he's gambling that the whole world says this is going to be a catastrophe. The whole world has been wrong before. He's been right before. And therefore, he's just going to do it and roll the dice. Help me with something. So we've got this president ending a nuclear deal with Iran. And at the very same time, people are saying, give him the Nobel Prize for maybe getting nuclear weapons out of North Korea. How do you square those things? North Korea is interesting because the timing here is Donald Trump is pulling out of this deal

right before he's supposed to sit down and negotiate with Kim Jong-un about a nuclear deal for North Korea. And part of what's so strange is if you're North Korea, why would you trust that if you make a deal with Donald Trump that the next president would stay in it? Because you've just now literally seen that not happen. So he is trying to say, this will show the North Koreans that we won't sign a crappy deal, that we're really going to go hardline to the table because here is this deal everyone else liked. We didn't like it. We pulled out, hey, North Korea, that's how serious we are. But it is worth noting that if you were able to go to North Korea and come back with a deal under which they opened their

nuclear sites to inspection, closed down some enrichment sites, stopped enriching uranium, people would say, give this man a Nobel Peace Prize, because that would have been unimaginable. Here's the thing, he had that exact deal with Iran. They have opened their sites to inspection, they have stopped enriching uranium, they have shut down an enrichment site. So the thing that would literally bring him, at least theoretically, a Nobel Peace Prize if he got it from North Korea, we had with Iran, and that's exactly what he just tore up. And this isn't the first thing he's torn up. The Paris Climate Accords come to mind.

The way he talks about NATO comes to mind. And a lot of these deals that we're reneging on or have already reneged on involve some of our closest allies. How does the United States look in the world right now, and how is that changing? I think, unfortunately, we could have added more things to that list. Trump has insulted the prime minister of Britain. He's insulted the chancellor of Germany.

He's insulted the Muslim mayor of London. He's made up attacks on other countries that didn't take place. So Europe sees him as somebody who is irrational, who can't be trusted, who's bigoted, who's racist, who's anti-Muslim, and who just makes shit up. When the Iran deal was being negotiated, you had people say, you can't really trust Iran because they're this religious country. They're run by leaders who may not know much about the outside world, who are enthralled to their own conservatives, who are enthralled to a religious group in their own country. Now you could say all of that about the United States because of Trump's decision to pull out of the Iran deal. And that means going forward,

if other countries are trying to decide, can they trust the U.S. on topic blank, blank, or blank, they might think no. If North Korea is trying to decide, can we make a nuclear deal with the United States and assume other presidents will abide by it, they might think no. If Europe is looking at the United States and thinking,

are they a friend or an enemy, they might say they are no longer a friend. These are not abstract, right? These are real and they are tangible and they have impact now and they've impact in the future. Joachim Driessen is the foreign editor at Vox, and he also rocks the mic for the worldly podcast of Vox. He and his very smart team will break down this news in even greater detail tomorrow. So subscribe, download, listen, rate, review, love. I'm Sean Ramos-F not just scoot away without me.

I am too. You have the recorder. Plus, you know, I just wanted to ride around the circle. It was a celebration. But now, what I think we should do, Luke Vanderplug, is go to Mattressfront. Yeah, that's the mission that we're on. You want to hop on this scooter? I'm game.

Okay. Tandem, here we go. Be careful. I think I have to kick off, hit the gas, and then you got to jump on. Run and jump on yes all right here we go okay i'm moving i'm moving jump on