This episode is from September 2020. Facts and links may have changed since. See more from that month
The Deal: The story of the Iran nuclear deal; how it came together, how it fell apart, and what that means for the rest of us.
Hosted by Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
You can find The Deal on Apple Podcasts or your preferred podcast platform.
Transcribed automatically: it certainly contains errors. It’s pretty good, just not perfect. We provide it here because, for accessibility, it’s better than nothing.
Jeffrey Lewis 0:00
In the 1980s, there was this popular way of explaining just how much destructive potential exists in the world's nuclear arsenals. It goes like this. I have a bucket and a BB. This BB is the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. This is the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki. Here's a typical American nuclear weapon today. And here is the explosive power of every nuclear weapon in the world.
It is totally bizarre to live amidst enough firepower to kill every person on Earth and not even think twice about it. We spend billions of dollars a year in the United States planning and preparing to fight a nuclear war on a few moments' notice. So do eight other countries. Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and even North Korea.
We ought to be doing everything we can to empty the bucket. And we certainly shouldn't allow anyone to fill it back up. That's where Iran comes in. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, and I'm the host of The Deal, a podcast series about the Iran nuclear deal. You'll hear from the people who made the Iran nuclear deal happen, people who neglected their families, examined stolen documents, and even used a novelty baby onesie as a negotiating tactic.
We'll talk about how the deal was undermined and ultimately left in tatters, and what that means for the rest of us. Subscribe to The Deal now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Coming soon.
