 The United States and Iran are on the verge of a deal on releasing prisoners and releasing frozen funds. But is this an exception or a movement towards better ties? Workers at Chevron's LNG projects in Australia went on strike towards the end of last week. What are their demands? And activists in Atlanta in the United States are facing persecution for resisting an urban warfare police training facility. What is the charge against these activists and how are they fighting back? This is the Daily Debrief. These are our stories for the day. And before you go any further, if you're watching this on YouTube, please hit that subscribe button. Our first story is from the convoluted world of US-Iran ties. The United States took a step further in implementing a deal whereby the two countries will exchange five prisoners each and Iran will be able to access six billion dollars of its own money. Now this money was frozen in South Korea and the US government last week signed a waiver that allowed banks in various countries to process this money. Now once this money is processed, it will go to Qatar Central Bank. From there, Iran will be able to use this money to buy humanitarian goods. We go to Abdul to understand the contours of this deal and what it implies. Abdul, thanks for joining us. So we know the details of the deal, so to speak. Five prisoners from each side being exchanged, six billion dollars likely to be released. But could you maybe take us through a bit of the context for this deal to take place? What is the six billion dollars in the first place? Why is South Korea involved of all countries? South Korea is one of the countries which used to import a lot of Iranian energy products like natural oil and gas before the sanctions were imposed in 2018. Primarily these six billion dollars are the payments which were due to the Iranians for the supply of energy products. So that's how the six billion dollars were there in the South Korean banks. But before South Korea could make the payment, the sanctions were imposed and because of the sanctions, South Korea was the South Korean government. One of course being a lie, a closer lie to the US also being scared about being impacted by the sanctions, secondary sanctions which could have affected there if they have carried out the payment to Iranian banks. So that basically led to these six billion dollars being stuck in South Korean banks for all these years. This has been more than almost five years since this has happened. And all these years by the way Iranians were in talk with South Koreans to basically release this, kind of find some ways to basically use that money for at least non-sanctioned products to basically import some things from South Korea. But as I said before, South Korea being a very close ally to US basically became very difficult for Iranians to kind of convince South Koreans to do what is required to do. So that is the basic reason behind this. Also the third party is being involved. Now they are being involved in the deal. For example, Switzerland and other European countries, Ireland and Germany also have become part of it. Given the fact that earlier, even after the US imposed sanctions, the European countries had the possibility of doing the same thing because they were not part of the sanctions imposed by the US. But again, the geopolitics became much more important. The closeness of Europeans to the US became much more important than the deal which they will still very recently were very vocal, vocal in support of. They were not, they were always saying that the European Union, the three members which originally signed the deal, Iran-Nikhland deal in 2016 have not abandoned the deal. Despite their proclamations of not abandoning the deal, they did not move to do the similar things before because of the pressure. Now that the US has agreed, all those difficulties have been resolved. I guess the threat of secondary sanctions on the banks in various European countries which would have enabled this transfer was maybe another major factor that also inhibited many of these countries from taking part as well. Interesting that money which was owed to Iran for a business deal was not, they could not, Korea could not pay it because of all these issues. But another key question I wanted to ask was also that in the context of this tension you described, we know that Donald Trump withdrew in 2018 from the deal, Biden said he would come back, various rounds of talks took place, nothing would happen. Do you see this as a kind of, a major positive step forward, like is it part of a trend or is it more of a one-off deal which may not necessarily affect the JCPOA process or the restoration of the deal? Well, given the approach which Biden administration has adopted ever since it's coming to power, after the initial few months, very enthusiastically participating in the Vienna Dialogues and in Dialogues in other places, it became very clear that Biden administration does not want to revive the deal as it had promised earlier. And there are no reasons to believe at this moment that that particular approach of Biden administration has basically has changed. It seems that US has no interest at this moment to revive the deal. So in that context, we can safely conclude that this deal is basically one-off deal, which is limited to the basically this releasing the $6 billion, all only because the US was pressurized enough by the Iranians and by the things which are happening all across the world at this moment to basically find out a way to get somehow Iranians to agree that to basically release the US prisoners. So they were basically compelled because of the constraints in the domestic politics and the larger geopolitical events which are happening all across the world to basically agree to this particular deal. And that's why this is one-off deal most probably and this is not going to and this does not indicate that there is going to be a revival of the JCPOA. One should also remember that the US does not want to revive the JCPOA at this moment primarily because it thinks that any revival of that deal will lead to lifting of the sanctions and all the constraints which Iranians are feeling at this moment, whatever constraints they are, despite the fact that these sanctions are imposed, Iranians have increased their oil production, gas production, their exports have increased recently and because of the deals with China and Russia, they have been able to kind of overcome the limitations which sanctions had imposed. Nevertheless, there is some kind of constraints which sanction imposed on Iran and also we should not minus the factor of Israel in this entire game. Given all these possibilities and all these geopolitical calculations, there is no reason for the US at this moment to revive the JCPOA. So this can safely be considered as one-off deal. Thank you so much for joining us. Of course, also the looming prospect of the US presidential elections next year, giving even less incentive for Biden to strike a deal because he'll be accused of what the Republicans say is enabling terrorism and I think they've said exactly the same thing now as well. But thank you so much for that analysis. We now take a look at strikes at Chevron plants in Australia. Since Friday, September 8th, around 500 workers at two of the largest LNG projects of Chevron initiated a series of short strikes. The offshore Chevron plants in Western Australia account for over 5% of the global LNG production. Meanwhile, the oil and gas conglomerate has responded with hostility. Over the weekend, Chevron petitioned Australia's Labour Regulator, the Fair Work Commission, to intervene and break the strikes. He claimed that no reasonable prospective agreement existed. We now talk to Anish, who has been tracking the story. Anish, thank you so much for joining us. So, could you first start with maybe what are the demands presented by the workers working in the Chevron projects? Well, the primary demand is a fair wage contract and that is something that we are not seeing. That is not a new or specific to this industry at the moment in Australia or even for that matter even in the first of the world. This is something that is part of a larger trend of labour movement, organisation and mobilisation that we are seeing in the past few years and this is just part of that. The fact that these 500 and we have to also consider that we are talking about oil and gas, offshore oil and gas and that requires a certain kind of different safety standards and workplace environment that should be different for them as well. So, workers having talking about being overworked, not having enough rest, they are also talking about how their safety standards are getting relaxed by the years and there are certain things that they want to add which is not even considered by the company at the moment. The primary issue right now is the fact that Chevron doesn't want to talk, it doesn't want to bargain and that is primarily the reason why the strike is happening right now and so even because we do not have a great deal of details, demands are perfectly available because bargaining for union is ongoing. The fact that they haven't pushed to a strike, a short, a very progressive set of short strikes which they plan to move on to 24 hours strike from beginning from September 14th requires a certain kind of complete interactivity from the company and it is quite interesting how Chevron is now the one trying to complain to the farewells commission saying that there is no negotiation that is possible right now and it clearly shows they are trying to turn the tables and trying to even stretch the definition or within the farewells act on a whole host of issues especially with the fact that whether or not a contract or even a negotiated contract is possible at the moment. So, they are trying to push the laws in this moment and this clearly shows that they do not want to talk. Can I show any expected impact on global production especially because I think there is at least every 5% of total production comes from Australia's projects. Yes, definitely. So, these two projects itself are not quite personally functioned up and that has already created a major impact. We have seen about a sudden one day increase of over 13-14% in Europe of LNG products and that itself shows the massive impact that it will have and we must remember that Australia is one of the biggest producer, in fact the biggest producer for a country of LNG and they account for about 20% and Western Australia alone accounts for about 20% of the global share. Even domestically speaking these two plans pretty much account for about half of Western Australia's domestic consumption and that itself shows how significant the strike is. We might be looking at a smaller, relatively small scale strike with close to 500 workers, striking workers at the moment but the impact that they're making is massive and it is creating ripples across the not just the industry but the global supply chain right now. But they are also in a way the victims of the recent crisis in the global supply chain. They are the ones who have been impacted by the rising cost of living crisis and that is something that is yet to be very sustainably resolved either by the government or by the industry and that is something that the workers who want to shine attention on and that is the reason why this strike is something takes up significantly more impact right now in the global trend of things. Well, I thank you so much for that analysis. Keep tracking that story because you might come back for further developments as well. And our final story is from the United States where a petition for a vote on the controversial Cops City project in Atlanta has gained over 115,000 signatures. Now Cops City is an urban warfare training facility for the police that is proposed to be built on forest land. Now this project has been opposed by a cross section of activists and citizens groups although the administration has refused to hear their concerns. In fact, some days ago nearly 60 activists who were resisting this project were hit with racketeering charges. We go to people's dispatches Natalia Marcus-Homor. Natalia, thank you so much for joining us. Could you maybe begin by first talking about what is the latest step of the protest by those who are resisting Cops City, their stock of a petition, what is this petition for and what is the idea of taking it forward? You know the latest iteration of the struggle in the popular movement against the proposed training center for police in the city of Atlanta. Organizers with the Cops City Vote Coalition have successfully raised and submitted over 116,000 signatures to the city clerk in support of a popular referendum on the training center being built where the people of Atlanta will be able to actually vote and decide if they want you know tens of millions of dollars allocated to a police training center that will allow Atlanta police and police from around the country to come and train in repression tactics for you know urban movements, urban popular uprisings, you know marginalized communities, etc. Of course you know if the referendum does indeed happen it's widely expected that the people of Atlanta will vote against Cops City because it's extraordinarily unpopular but as of now the Cops City Vote Coalition is still trying to actually get these signatures to the city of Atlanta which is as they claim stonewalling democracy and actually not you know not validating all of these signatures to begin the process of having a referendum right. You know they have been the city of Atlanta as these organizers claim have been slow in their responses to the organizers have you know not been not expressed total clarity and are trying to bypass this democratic process that these organizers have been able to organize and this is not new. There have been many such claims that the city of Atlanta and Georgia the state have been acting extremely undemocratically in the way that they have been trying to push through this Cops City this police training ground by any means necessary. Right Natalia but we've seen that over the past many months there's been continuous repression against those who have been resisting this Cops City project. We know that their voices have not been heard but they've also been charges filed against them the racketeering charges being the most recent. So could you also maybe take us to the kind of repression the administration of Atlanta has been meeting out against these protesters. So you know most recently before this 61 activists in the Stop Cops City movement were hit with racketeering charges which are you know nonsensical quite frankly. A lot of the defendants have been previously charged with very trumped up charges like money laundering as a result of running a bail fund being put in jail for monitoring protests being arrested for handing out flyers and even domestic terrorism which is by far you know the most egregious charge. But now the sheer number of defendants that are being charged by the state of Georgia with racketeering really shows how the mass movement to stop Cops City is being put down in every sort of way using all legal means. You know the petition signatures getting ignored the repression tactics against protesters a protester being murdered by police you know through this struggle in you know in the height of the struggle even from the very beginning in 2021 when Cops City was first proposed and residents you know flocked to provide you know hours of public comment that were ignored by the city of Atlanta and you know in favor of simply pushing through this training ground for repression for police. And notably in the in the charges of racketeering for the 61 activists it traces the start of of this criminal conspiracy so-called criminal conspiracy to May 25th 2020 which was when George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin igniting the largest anti-police brutality protest in US history which was you know far before the movement to stop Cops City even began. So even the state is linking movements against police repression and brutality and militarization across different time periods you know to sort of imply that the movement against police brutality is some sort of criminal conspiracy in itself which sort of inadvertently shows how all of these different movements in the United States are heavily linked and you know are actually have similar goals and similar aspirations and you know are in this broader historical continuum of the people rising up against brutality. And that's all we have time for in today's episode. Do come back and watch tomorrow's episode of Daily Debrief as well. Also visit our website peoplesdispatch.org. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for videos and stories of struggles from across the world.