MOU 404

Jeffrey Lewis 0:06

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, a podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I am Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, a distinguished research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a distinguished scholar of global security at Middlebury College.

Aaron Stein 0:22

And I'm Aaron Stein, president of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Jeffrey, how are things going?

Jeffrey 0:28

Things are great, Aaron. I just, I want to, I want to, I want to this podcast out like they out that MOU, you know, just rough. Not really ready, rough, rough, not ready, you know. But the important thing is the friends we made along the way. Well, of course. That's going to be my approach.

Aaron 0:47

Of course, Iran and the United States have to sign this MOU while I am happily on vacation in the Dominican Republic. Not the Islamic Republic of Iran. It's a catastrophe. Is that the right word? Did we obliterate diplomacy or the JCPOA? What's the type of word we should be using here?

Jeffrey 1:06

Oh, you know, I go back and forth on this because it is a humiliation. Yeah. It, at the same time, continuing to bomb Iran was not going to produce a better document. Nope. And so, you know, like, and I mean this sincerely, like the Trump people will not be, they will not enjoy this praise I am about to give them, but they quit when they were behind.

That is hard.

Aaron 1:43

I have the same read in that the war had reached this place where I think we had basically run out of targets, and the only ostensible ways to do this was to go to a ground campaign, which would have been catastrophic, and so taking the L and going home. Was the right play here, if not politically hard.

And I think we saw how hard this was politically by how weird the rollout of the MOU was. It was a very weird rollout.

Jeffrey 2:14

I mean, I did think it was a nice touch to sign it at Versailles. I mean, it was kind of a bummer they didn't do it in a rail car.

Aaron 2:23

It seemed like he signed it on Adobe Acrobat, Adobe DocuSign, before on June 14th, but then officially signed it in Versailles. And quite clearly, nobody had done their history reading on that one.

Jeffrey 2:38

By the way, I have to say, one of the things that drives me nuts is that Republicans make a big deal about how the JCPOA wasn't signed, as though... Don't know, they have some childish imagination of like what, what it, what it means to reach an international agreement, and it's so stupid, like it's just dumb, and they make a big deal about how this one is signed, but then they can't decide when they signed it. He signed it? Well, then he signed it for Psy, like, like, I just, the just the level of We say these stupid things and then we don't even bother to apply them to ourselves because none of these words mean anything.

Like it just, I like, God, what idiots.

Aaron 3:30

Okay. Let's talk about the document itself. And I don't think we need to talk about the opening or closing of the Strait of Hormuz. That's not our lane, pun intended.

Jeffrey 3:42

Okay, well, let me say this though. Mostly, I think this MOU is a payment to open Hormuz. Oh, it most certainly is. And so we're going to focus on the later promise of additional payment to resolve the nuclear issue. But fundamentally, this is we pay you to keep the Strait open and we never speak of this issue again.

Aaron 4:06

Yeah, and even that is not going too well. But again, not our lane, Jim.

Jeffrey 4:13

Did you see the Duffel blog had a very funny headline about how the US military was unable to successfully prosecute two ceasefires? Two simultaneous ceasefires. Yeah, it's a lot of firing in this ceasefire. More fire than cease.

Aaron 4:32

All right, well, let's talk about the non-pro sections here. I mean, to the extent that we can call them that. Well, one, we still have an official document, at least the best that I can tell. They read the document on a call with reporters, and I think that's why.

Jeffrey 4:52

Does anybody know why you would do that? I mean, I do think they're embarrassed by the contents. Yes. And I think they— Yeah. I think they were hoping to not release it. Yes. And then a lot of things they do are just churlish. It's embarrassing. They don't want to see it on the website, and so they read it out.

Aaron 5:18

Yeah. So it's not actually officially on a US government website, unless I'm wrong.

Jeffrey 5:23

No, it's not. So a beautiful thing is if you take the phrase, the Islamic Republican of Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons. If you put that phrase in quotes in Google and you restrict it to site.gov, you get the JCPOA. You do not get the MOU because it is not anywhere there. And stark contrast to the claim that Iran has never, ever, ever, ever made such a promise.

Indeed, that's the first thing that bounces back. Oh, Lord. Okay. I mean, maybe my Google is the algos know me. No, dude. It's what comes back first.

Aaron 6:14

I will fully admit to being ensconced somewhere at a bottle of rosé on a beach in Dominican Republic as this was coming out. But I have since looked, because it is my job, and I cannot find an official US copy. I cannot find what was read. This is incredible. What was read. On a telephone call with reporters.

And so I'm assuming that's accurate. And we have the Iranian version, which does match what was read. OK, let's talk about this. All right, so there is a portion in here where basically in exchange for all sanctions relief, which I think is incredible. I mean, it's a good deal for the Iranians. They should take it. It's incredible.

This gives away far more than the JCPOA did, like far more.

Jeffrey 7:08

It's actually shocking. If I worked for the Iranian foreign ministry, I wouldn't have had the balls to ask for this. They did, and they got it.

Aaron 7:16

If you go back and look at early Iranian leaks about what they wanted, it's all there. It starts with number eight, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Jeffrey 7:25

Thoughts and prayers with FDD at this difficult time.

Aaron 7:29

All right. But I think there's an expectation that IAEA inspectors will return to the country. It's not spelled out.

Jeffrey 7:44

Well, it does say, according to the version that was read, The minimum methodology for the disposition of the stockpile of enriched material is down blending on site under the supervision of the IAEA. Right.

Aaron 8:02

And so that basically means that the nuclear dust.

Jeffrey 8:07

By the way, it's not clear they told the IAEA this, but this is what they do. So they're into it, but yeah.

Aaron 8:15

I think the key here is that the nuclear material that was part of the rationale for going to war and which, according to leaks, the US was thinking about seizing in ways that were never really explained to me.

Jeffrey 8:31

And in ways which I do not believe were feasible, but okay.

Aaron 8:35

And that at some point was a condition for the U.S. signing this agreement, which was its export out of the country to the U.S. The ultimate MOU, as it was read to us, says that it will not leave the country and it will be downblended in the country under IAEA supervision.

Jeffrey 8:55

Right. And I know I have seen a few other kind of back and forths And so I think JD Vance has indicated that you know, there's gonna be this wide return of the IAEA, and it looks like the Iranians have said, well, that's not really what it, what, what we've agreed and I think really crucially, there was some reporting that the, that little Hominy had said that the material couldn't leave Iran, but then this is later had been denied So, like, yeah, like, maybe it goes out later, but I, like, if I had to guess, I would guess that, like, what's agreed is agreed, and that says down-blended in the country.

Aaron 9:47

Yeah, which, I gotta be honest, that's fine with me. Is that a problem with you? No.

Jeffrey 9:56

No, yeah, I didn't think so, but this is, I mean, like, conversational podcast, what is the alternative? What is the, what, what, what was the theory? You know, like, you know, and I, like, obviously, if the Iranians were like, yeah, that's fine, we can always make more, you can have it, then, yeah, sure, fly it out, but you know, one thing I'm really mindful of, Aaron, and, and, I, I think we, we, one of the kind of weird things is Constantly, we are asking ourselves the question of like, what is this like in the past?

Yeah. You know, like what stage of North Korea or what previous stage of Iran? And so there are ways in which this is like the period in which we have like a framework agreement with the Iranians, but not actually a deal.

Aaron 10:43

The interim JCPOA, I forgot what we called it.

Jeffrey 10:45

Yeah.

Aaron 10:46

Right. Well, we had the joint plan of action before the joint comprehensive plan.

Jeffrey 10:50

And then at another point, there was a framework deal, which was more detailed than this. And then you actually got the plan, because these things take a long time. You can't do them in 60 days, especially when you waste 12 days now shooting at one another. But I think it's also like the six-party agreement with North Korea, where you've walked away from the successful agreement.

The other party feels like it now has a lot more leverage and you can't, you're trying to like preserve the, oh, but we are going back and we're getting the same or a better deal, but you patently aren't. And so you're trying to do like the PR pieces. And so I could see a PR piece. I mean, I literally could see a PR piece where they do something meaningless, like they fly out some downblended HEU, which I guess at that point would not be HEU.

Without fundamentally changing the situation on the ground. And the classic example of this is North Korea. We got them to knock down the cooling tower at Yongbyon.

Aaron 11:51

Yeah. And brought the newspaper in.

Jeffrey 11:52

Because the Bush people, yeah, they literally, the Bush people literally wanted a striking visual that was going to be good for PR and that was going to cover up the fact that they had left the agreed framework and that they were coming back with less. You know, and I feel bad because I think Chris Hill was trying to do the best he could with like really not a great hand.

And like way more competent than these clowns. But that was symbolic. And then when the North Koreans wanted to restart the reactor, they didn't even bother to rebuild the cooling tower. They just, you know, threw some pipes in.

Aaron 12:23

Yeah.

Jeffrey 12:25

And I think this is where we are, right? Like you might get something symbolic like the HEU comes out if we pay enough for it. Sure. But it's not going to make a difference.

Aaron 12:35

No, it's fundamentally irrelevant, which is why hanging our hat on this as sort of one of the sort of metrics of success was always a bit strange to me because, as I said, it was a bad metric of success.

Jeffrey 12:52

Here's a thought experiment. One of the things Witkoff said was that Iran still had the ability to manufacture centrifuges.

Aaron 13:00

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 13:02

And... We know that there are underground facilities that were not struck. Yes. One of which was Pickaxe Mountain, which is next to Natanz. Yep. Which is where Iran said it was going to do centrifuge manufacturing. Yes. So just to be clear, there is a large underground facility that probably makes centrifuges that we did not strike.

Aaron 13:27

Yes.

Jeffrey 13:29

Okay. We also know that Iran announced prior to the first war a year ago that it had completed construction and was ready to begin installing centrifuges in an underground facility near Natanz, but did not disclose the location.

Aaron 13:44

Right. This was part of their own malfeasance with the IAEA, but yes, going back to sort of old practice.

Jeffrey 13:53

I don't know where that facility is, but I don't believe I have ever seen any evidence that that place has been struck.

Aaron 13:59

If it's in that tunnel complex, as you're alluding to, it probably wasn't struck.

Jeffrey 14:04

And I think it probably is a deeper, different tunnel.

Aaron 14:09

What you're suggesting is that there are tunnel complexes in Pickaxe Mountain that were too deep for us to strike.

Jeffrey 14:13

Yes, and there are also tunnel complexes around Natanz that are too deep for us to strike. I don't know what's in them. Yes. So just to be clear, Iran is making centrifuges and has an empty facility that they announced they were going to be installing them in? If I were them, I would ship out the HEU because I could just make more.

Aaron 14:34

Exactly. So this is, you could just make more, and this will not be part of even a robot.

Jeffrey 14:40

Placate the angry old man, get the sanctions off, and just make more HEU.

Aaron 14:46

And this would not be part of an IAE inspection as part of this. It could, but it probably wouldn't.

Jeffrey 14:53

I mean, I would simply say to the IAEA that, you know, all of the ability to make centrifuges had been destroyed and I would let them look at the things that were destroyed. And I would say, see, here are all our machines. They are destroyed. You may look at the destroyed machines. And if, you know, Grossi's like, I want to go into the mountains.

We'd be like, oh, it's very unsafe. It's unsafe. It's very unsafe.

Aaron 15:15

The Americans hit us and we have a ton of collapse.

Jeffrey 15:19

First of all, those facilities have all been made secure. Against attack. So we can't even get in there. So, you know, you can't, you can't go look.

Aaron 15:29

Yeah. And by the way, there's nothing up there. We don't grant you access because the thing that's up there is Mojama, how many is medical records. And that's, that's patient doctor confidentiality.

Jeffrey 15:39

That's where we buried the Supreme leader and you're not allowed to go.

Aaron 15:42

Yeah. It's a sarcophagus chief. That's why they're so deeply buried. We had to take care of him and he likes to be underground. And so, you know, no, it, it, It's absolutely, it's not flabbergasting, but it's sort of a horrible end to this back and forth about the JCPOA. There was never any really good faith efforts to go against the JCPOA.

It was entirely, we don't like the JCPOA because it takes bombing off the table, right?

Jeffrey 16:14

That's right. They wanted to do this. They wanted to take their swipe at regime change. Now they took it and they missed.

Aaron 16:20

And so exactly, and then we ended at the place that I do think people thought we could sort of get around because smarter actors would try and not get engrossed in the Middle Eastern conflict, and yet we still did it, and we then had to throw together a MOU that they're embarrassed to put up on the internet Which they can only read to us because they're embarrassed and because the Iranians released their text.

If the Iranians released their text, they never would have released it to us. They just would have given us sound bites coming out, framing it in the way that they wanted it to. And the outcome is terrible. I'm normally the more rational one on this podcast. This is an awful outcome. And I will accept that it can change over the next 60 days.

I don't think it's going to change a lot.

Jeffrey 17:10

Did you say normally you are the more rational one on this podcast?

Aaron 17:13

I'm usually the one who sort of tries to steer the podcast in sort of a direction of a bit of sort of like... This thing was... This is a catastrophe. Everything about it is bad. There's not a single thing in this thing that's good.

Jeffrey 17:27

Again, however, it was not going to get better a year from now.

Aaron 17:33

No, I agree with that.

Jeffrey 17:35

Okay, so yes, we were behind. Okay.

Aaron 17:39

What annoys me is the false debates that our community was having for the past, was it eight years? It's not really our community.

Jeffrey 17:48

It's a few people whose funding situation caused them to say some things that they know are false.

Aaron 17:58

This is really bad. And then if you assume, as I do, that Iran will be able to reconstitute or never really totally lost the capability to enrich, which is what you were talking about before I went on my rant here.

Jeffrey 18:14

This is a very, very, very bad outcome.

Aaron 18:17

We have less access. We have a worse agreement. We just lost a war. All predictable, by the way. And they have every incentive to build a nuclear weapon now. Or get right up to the edge again.

Jeffrey 18:29

Well, except if all sanctions come off. That's right. And they're charging a fee for access to the Strait, which I know we're not really talking about. Yeah, different. No, but it's true. You know, like, I mean, they'd be crazy to, you know.

Aaron 18:49

Yeah, so what keeps them in the agreement and away from a nuclear weapon is the positive inducements by our surrender.

Jeffrey 18:58

That's correct. The payments, basically this is like what if we had lost to the Barbary pirates? It's crazy. The whole thing is insane. Tom Jefferson just has to like load ships up with bullion and like send them to Libya every six months.

Aaron 19:16

This makes the pallet of cash nonsense from the original JCPOA. Oh, I know.

Jeffrey 19:21

I know. Oh, it's just unbelievable the amount of money. Hey, but we won on points.

Aaron 19:27

We won. The whole thing is flabbergasted.

Jeffrey 19:31

I agree with you. It was not going to get better by bombing. It was not going to get better the longer we went.

Aaron 19:38

Taking the L was probably the appropriate thing, but the hubris, the sort of self-indulgence to assume that we couldn't lose. Was, is ultimately the kicker. It's the fallacy of hubris getting in the way that we could do this ourselves.

Jeffrey 20:00

I do think, and here I will be a little bit kinder, I did not think that bombing would produce regime change because that's never worked before.

Aaron 20:16

Yeah.

Jeffrey 20:18

I was struck at how effective the tactical execution was in terms of decapitating the leadership. Yes. Intellectually, then that became a very interesting exercise because while we don't have good evidence for airstrikes resulting in regime change, we had never seen airstrikes quite like this. We were outside of our dataset.

Aaron 20:46

Well, I think the air campaign tactically is one worth studying, and it was executed very, very well.

Jeffrey 20:52

Yeah, yeah. But it turns out the extrapolation of this just never works turned out to be true. And so I think a lot of people really thought That this time would be different. Basically, they lit a bunch of stuff on fire. They cannibalized a bunch of solutions and situations in order to take this, what I think they probably thought was a once-in-a-generation shot at regime change, and then they missed.

It was a bad decision.

Aaron 21:28

Again, I will say this, coming off my rant, because people will be annoyed by that. Trump did face a clear line, right? It was about a week into the war, right? The air campaign had probably generated as much success as you would have reasonably assumed by that point, right? The only way to control the straight was to invade the country

Jeffrey 21:54

Yes, that's correct.

Aaron 21:56

You had to invade the country.

Jeffrey 21:58

By the way, John and Sam have been doing this in parallel to real time. And they did successfully open the strait in a war game they've been playing. Oh, yeah.

Aaron 22:10

Was very costly, you? That's what the Marine Corps exists for. The Marine Corps was built to operate in, in the littorals of adversary nations, particularly in choke points. You needed to invade the country. And speaking of political costs, I think the lesson here is like this: our government, and I think this would have been any government, right? Well, this government is always a little idiosyncratic, but like Were too afraid to release the text on the website, a text that they laud as revolutionary, by the way, right? But, yeah, obviously they don't believe it because they refuse to put it on the website. But a government afraid to take the political flack for a MOU? Do we ever suspect that they are actually willing to carry through on their threats? No, I mean, in fact, yeah, so

Jeffrey 23:05

Okay, you know I think domestic politics dominates all this stuff. Yeah, I do. Yeah. I think this is a really interesting case study in bargaining because the Trump people have two problems. One problem is they don't have a credible threat to overthrow the regime.

Aaron 23:27

After the first three days, I'd say they lost that threat.

Jeffrey 23:30

Right. They also – because they are – and their own domestic political coalition just limits what they're willing to pay. But their domestic political coalition also won't let them make a deal. So they also cannot do the other piece, which is they cannot credibly threaten to stop hitting the Iranians in exchange for a deal. So they are in this terrible position, which I think is a function of the nature of their domestic coalition, where they can't put enough pressure on the Iranians to make the Iranians buckle But also the inducements that they're offering aren't credible either, which I think is why, I think that's why the MOU is so lopsided.

Yes. And it's why I think, you know, there are a lot of people who are like, oh, well, they never intended to go through with that. And I think... I think that's a little too kind to the Trump people, but also fair in the sense that I don't think the Iranians believe that the Trump people will be able to deliver.

There's a great example of that.

Aaron 24:41

They're going to drag this out. The perfect example of that is the $300 billion number that's thrown around. That's exactly right. It's bullet point six. That is, one, a made-up number. Where did $300 billion come from? I'm sure that's Iran's number about what it costs for reconstruction based upon US bombing. But I'm going to read it. The United States of America undertakes with regional partners to develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least USD 300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

What does that mean? It means it is meaningless it is if you take it in its individual parts is that the u.s and regional gulf countries will propose a plan for iran to access 300 billion dollars of financing for reconstruction economic development i joked about this sitting on the beach in the dominican republic i just tossed it into chat gbt i copied and pasted i said come up with a plan And it did? Oh, that's amazing. You satisfied bullet point six. You have a plan. You have a plan But the point is that it's not credible because there's going to be no appropriation of $300 billion.

It's not like it's just sitting around, right? And so not to just keep belaboring this point, it's not a real bullet point. It is just a sort of string of words thrown together that nobody actually expects to ever be executed, but it will allow Iran to drag this thing out. As we keep going. So I imagine after 60 days, we'll continue to have to have like renewals of 60 days going on and on and on.

And so this sort of thing sort of feels like the Twilight Zone to me and that these negotiations will never culminate and they'll actually never like really start either. And I think they can't, right?

Jeffrey 26:33

They can't because one huge swath of Trump's base is neo-isolationist and simply – Unwilling to make the kind of commitment of a, of blood and treasure that would be necessary, right? Like, they just, and you know, God, I'm glad like they don't want to do Iraq again, yeah. And so he, he can't do that, but, but then he's, he's, he's got the FDD wing, yes, and, and, and they won't allow any deal, and like he just, he, he has to pick his favorite child, and I don't I don't – I think he's dead if he does that.

I mean they're probably politically dead anyway but … Yes.

Aaron 27:23

I think we made our point here. All right. Because we got to wrap. But like what would we want the IAEA to do realistically?

Jeffrey 27:41

I don't really know at this point because I don't – I think what we've learned is we can't – I don't think verification – I guess I don't care because verification is not the problem here. The problem is structuring the incentives for the Iranians so that they don't want to build a nuclear weapon. If we get those incentives wrong, the IAEA is going to be like, wow, the Iranians are stonewalling us.

We think they're probably building a weapon. And then they throw the IAEA out, and it's North Korea. What you need to do is get the incentive structured right and then the IAEA is really great and they will fill in and they will do whatever one is asked. Obviously, in a perfect world, we'd like to get a comprehensive accounting of what existed prior to the war and what survived.

I just don't – I just can't imagine the Iranians are ever going to cough that up and so it's –

Aaron 28:43

I mean, that's a big known unknown because you can be pessimistic, like I think we are, in what survived. But there is also another flip side to this coin, which is that perhaps some of the assumptions we're making about the ability to reconstitute centrifuge fabrication is not as quick as we think it could go. Now, I don't think that's right.

Yeah, that's right. But it's true. Don't know? We just don't know.

Jeffrey 29:09

There's a bunch of stuff we don't know? Yeah. So I mean, I think... You know, I tend to be someone who thinks that verification is almost never the problem. It's that you have a political problem. And the harder the political problem, like the more verification you ask for, not because it's ever going to make you feel better, but it just makes it harder to get the deal you don't want.

So, you know, I don't... But again, in a perfect world, I would... One of the reasons I like the JCPOA so much is... I want to understand their ability to produce centrifuges. That was the thing the JCPOA did that was amazing. And we pissed it away.

Aaron 29:52

I mean, again, not to discontinue this. How many pages was the JCPOA?

Jeffrey 29:57

I looked it up the other day. It was well in excess of 100. It was very frustrating because Trump had said he was going to read. He didn't, I guess, end up reading it, but he was going to read the MOU out loud because it was so much better than the JCPOA. I was like, I guarantee you that man has never read the JCPOA.

Aaron 30:15

Oh, no way. I remember reading it. It's too long and has too many large words. I remember reading it. It took like an hour and a half.

Jeffrey 30:24

Yeah, he has. I mean, maybe if they like, you know, stapled in surprise Stormy Daniels. Images every now and again. That's a signal.

Aaron 30:37

That's a signal. Off the rails. Off the rails. Oh, God. All right. It's a surrender. Oh, my God. I can't believe it. Okay. Patreon.com slash ACW podcast where you can talk about the surrender and more and what it means for U.S. foreign policy in the coolest Slack channel on the planet. $3 if you're a student, $5 if you're not to support this show.

And I guess in six, well, now 48 days. 48 days, 47 days. We'll get to figure out what comes after this. The waters be stormy. With that, thank you, everybody, for listening. Bye.

Jeffrey 31:20

Bye. Bye.