 We're live. We're on History Lands on Think Tech, Hawaii. My name is John David Ann, Professor of History at HPU, and I've got Dr. Brian Gibson with me today, once again, to talk about U.S.-Iranian relations. And we've had two of these conversations which have been well received and very interesting and really kind of sketching out the history of the relationship, you know, the reasons why the United States and Iran are at loggerheads today. But then you have this very interesting moment a few years back when the United States and Iran were actually working together and actually signed a nuclear treaty. It was unpopular among Republicans in the United States. But Brian, welcome to the show. Well, thanks for having me back, John. I really appreciate it. Yeah, great. Great to have you on. So we kind of ended the last show talking about the Obama administration and its kind of hard line approach at the beginning of its relationship with Iran, and then a softening approach. Let's start there, and can you tell us how and why this happened? Well, I mean, this is a very complicated issue with a lot of history. And we've gotten into a lot of it so far. But where we kind of last left off was the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. And how at this particular juncture in history, you started to see a little bit of cooperation between the Iranians and the Americans. I believe I talked about Afghanistan and how the Americans and the Iranians work together to overthrow the Afghan or the Taliban regime and then implement a democratic institution there. So when we're looking at this particular situation, when the U.S. invaded Iraq and handed the country over to the Shia, which are co-religionists with Iranians who are Shia, you get this really curious situation where the Iranians become quite spooked. Now, the Iranians have had a nuclear program that goes back to the 1970s in which the Nixon administration, actually it even goes back in the 1950s with the Adams for Peace program under Eisenhower. But it really starts to amplify in the 1970s under the Shah, which was of course an American ally. And so an American ally is you know, quietly pursuing weapons. The United States doesn't care. But like in the case of Israel, for example, which is an unofficial but definitely nuclear state. Clearly they have nuclear weapons, yeah. They definitely have nuclear weapons. So what's really interesting about this situation with Iran is the United States kind of turns a blind eye until the revolution happens. The revolution changes everything because now this very radical regime is potentially in possession of nuclear materials in possession of at least the foundation for what could be a nuclear weapons program. Now one thing that I should really distinguish off the bat, which most people don't quite do, is that a nuclear weapons program is one thing. A nuclear enrichment program is a different thing. Under the NPT, the nonproliferation treaty, which deals very specifically with nuclear technology, countries are allowed to have nuclear programs. For example, I grew up in Canada and just down the street from my house is a nuclear reactor that creates medical isotopes. You need medical isotopes in order to treat cancer. It's essential. That's what chemotherapy is. So countries have a right to do this type of enrichment. But when you start getting into the much bigger picture of enrichment where you're trying to seek nuclear weapons, that's a different story. So in the case of Iran during the 1980s, it didn't really deal with its nuclear program very much. And even into the 1990s, it was kind of nascent. It wasn't a major part of its strategy as it has since become. So then when you're looking at the early 2000s, when you start to see the invasion of Iraq and the Iranians see how easily the Iraqis are destroyed by the American military, the Iranians are quite concerned because at this point, the U.S. has taken out the Taliban and is occupying Afghanistan and to its one corner. And then on the other side, Iraq. Right. Has a big role now in the Middle East as occupation forces. It's not just Saudi Arabia anymore. It's not just bases in the Middle East. It's actually occupying forces. Yeah, I can see that. Well, and it's flanked Iran on both sides. So the U.S. could ostensibly invade Iran from Afghanistan and from Iraq with ground forces. And so this really concerned the regime. Now, what's important at this particular juncture is that the Iranians then turned to the American government and said, let's let's cut a deal. It's known as the grand bargain. And essentially, they said, we are willing to sit down and negotiate anything with you, including our nuclear program. And the Bush administration at this point was very confident in itself. They had just taken out the Iraqis very easily. And they were, you know, very, very excited and very full of hubris. And hardliners in the administration like Dick Cheney said, we don't talk to terrorists. Now, remember the U.S. is the CIA and the State Department are actively engaged in diplomacy with Iranians at this point over Afghanistan. And of course, the Iranians were happy to see Saddam Hussein go and the implementation of democracy in Iraq, because democracy is the tyranny of the majority, and the majority happened to be the same religion as Iranians, at least the same sect. So the U.S. handed Iraq to Iran on a platter, and Iran didn't have to do anything about it. Right, right. We were talking about this last time where it's actually would have been in the U.S. interests to actually align itself more closely with Iran at this point, but it really did Iran's bidding by taking on Saddam. And it's politics here, right? You're talking about politics trumping a good kind of strategic diplomacy. Exactly. Nothing new with that, I guess. Yeah. And then so in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad comes to power in because basically what the regime had concluded and what the people had concluded is that working with the United States just isn't ever going to go anywhere. Whatever efforts Iran has made in good faith towards the United States, as we talked about in previous classes, not classes, sorry, I'm so used to teaching, in previous episodes, the U.S. didn't really reciprocate. And this is one of those instances. Now, the Europeans continue to negotiate with Iranians throughout the background of all this. But when you get to the coming to power of Ahmadinejad, Ahmadinejad is a different cat. He is a much, much more belligerent, much more vocal. He did the whole thing about denying the Holocaust and held a bunch of conferences to that effect. And was just a very belligerent individual, which worked to Iran's advantage to a certain degree because it spooked everyone and it allowed Iran to essentially show that it's strong and that it won't be cowed by external powers, which is a very, very important part of Iran's psyche. The psychology of the state is a steadfast determination to not be dominated by anyone other than themselves. So, and this is part of the big push behind this nuclear program is that it doesn't want to be reliant on the Russians or the Americans or the British or the French. It wants to be reliant on the Iranians. And if it can maximize its sale of oil while diverting energy production, because most of its energy production has come from the burning of fossil fuels, if it can then develop a nuclear energy program, for example, then that's more that can be sold on the international market and less for domestic consumption. Right, of course. That's at least part of their strategy. It creates less reliance on other places. So, under Ahmadinejad, you start to see a lot more concern. And at this point, the Iranians really ramp up their nuclear enrichment program. Now, I should point out that the CIA in 2007 concluded that Iran had dismantled its nuclear weapons program, capital W weapons. They had dismantled it permanently. And they concluded this the Israeli Mossad has subsequently confirmed this conclusion. There's been no point since then that has there where there's been a suggestion by any official real true official intelligence channels that have suggested that Iranians have resumed a nuclear weapons program. Okay, you're talking about even as of today, you're talking about. Yes, okay. They have not gone for a bomb. Okay, we're going for one up until. Why are we here? Yeah, the development of Iran nuclear weapons and apparently they're not yet developing nuclear weapons in Iran. See, now, this is the key point is that you see constantly in the rhetoric of people who are opposed to Iran, like like Trump, where they just say weapons in place of enrichment. And those who are much more practical and who have studied the situation be like, no, it's enrichment. It's not weapons. Yeah, okay. And the CIA are like, no, they're not going for weapons. Keep coming to this conclusion. And you keep saying weapons, but it's enrichment. But it's interesting Iran today actually is using this idea that they might build a weapon to as negotiating leverage now to try to get the deal back, right? I mean, they're, you know, they're I doubt that they would go for a weapon. Because the thing is to build a weapon, you need a lot of uranium. Because it's a think of it this way. If you're here's an analogy that I often use with my students. If you're starting with like near beer, like the 0.1% alcohol beer, and you need to turn that into 100% alcohol, you need to distill out all of the water and you would need tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of this in order to create 1.5% beer. Sure. We're going nuclear weapons to near beer. An interesting show. But that's that's it's a good analogy because then if you want to get it from 5% to 10%, then you need a lot of 5% beer combined together. Yeah, again, distilled down to the point where you have 5%. They just have to enrich a lot more material than they have available right now. So yeah, understood that the Iranians got was 20% rich uranium to get a nuclear bomb. You need 90. Okay. Yeah. Now the distillation process essentially using that analogy is the same. So once you know how to distill that near beer into a 1% beer, you can just keep doing it but you have to do a lot of it in order to get that enough for one bomb. Right. But I guess my point was that the Iranians have actually so they've been accused of of you know, they're they're ready to make nuclear weapons, right? They're using that perception in the West, right? They're using that perception to try to create leverage nervousness in the West among those who want to you know, who who actually like the deal and want to get back the deal. They're trying to use this so they can get some leverage. So anyway, it's an interesting approach by Iran. I think it's a smart approach because they're actually using the negative rhetoric against the West. Yeah. So this is called strategic ambiguity. Now this is what Saddam did about his WMD program, right? Because you know, he had fought that war with Iran that was quite brutal. And if he had said to the West, you know, I'm I actually don't have any of these weapons that I use to keep my country safe from Iran. The Iranians could then be like, Oh, really? Yeah, you don't have those weapons anymore. Right. Right. Right. Right. Sure. They can attack. Okay. So yeah, we needed, sorry, we needed, we need to take a break right now and we'll come back and we'll talk about the treaty itself and and prospects for it. Okay. Great. Yeah. Aloha. I'm Kili Akina, the host of Hawaii Together on the ThinkTech Hawaii broadcast network. Hawaii Together deals with the problems we face in paradise and looks for solutions, whether it's with the economy, the government or society. We're streamed live on ThinkTech biweekly at 2pm on Mondays. I want to thank you so much for watching. We look forward to seeing you again on Kili Akina. Aloha. We're back. We're live. We're on history lens and we have Brian Gibson with us. Dr. Brian Gibson from Hawaii Pacific University. And we're talking about the Iran, the US Iran nuclear deal. And Brian has been talking about how this thing came to be. Brian, let's go back and let's talk a little bit more about actually how the deal came to be. Yeah. Okay. Just one point that I just want to tie off is that for the Iranians to produce a nuclear weapon, they can't just produce one because for to become a nuclear state, you need to test that to make sure it works. Right. Of course. So they would need a minimum two bombs, which means double the amount of enrichment in order to get to that point. Now, so turning just to this, how this deal came about, a lot of it was driven by Iranian belligerents initially, where they were really ramping up their enrichment process and learning how to master the fuel cycle. Now, this is important. This is learning how to distill beer, right? And in order to figure this out, they, you know, there's a lot of trial and error, and they're going from one point to the next. And some things might not work very well. And they're going through the learning process. Now, the problem with once you learn how to do it, you have that knowledge. Yeah. This is what's known as a breakout. Okay, sure. So yeah. So once the Iranians have figured out how to make, how to master enrichment and do it quite efficiently and become more and more efficient over time, that's how we determine the breakout period for a nuclear weapon. So at the height of Iran's enrichment, despite all the sanctions, despite the Israelis tried to assassinate a lot of its scientists using really kind of intense methods, very James Bond-ish, where they would take magnet bombs and stick them on the side of cars. Okay. While riding on a motorcycle, and then explode the bomb, some pretty badass stuff in fairness, the type of stuff that you see in espionage movies. While the United States was ramping up its sanctions, 2009 with the election right then was where Ahmadinejad came to power fraudulently for a second term. That was kind of a turning point because the Obama administration had come into office, and the Obama administration was much more interested in engaging in the Iranians diplomatic. Yeah, it makes sense. Now, the Bush administration was doing this to a certain degree. There was a channel that was opened up in Oman. This is a secret back channel where American officials went to Oman, Iranian officials went to Oman, and they met in secret. At first, the leader of Oman was kind of talking to the one and then going to the other and then telling them, so there wasn't like face to face meetings. But those did eventually emerge later on. And that set the basis for like early negotiations that would lead to this Iran nuclear deal. Okay. Now, meanwhile, the Obama administration was ratcheting up sanctions against the Iranians quite extensively. Okay. These essentially what the Obama administration strategy was, was to cut the Iranians off of the global banking system. And while simultaneously convincing allies like the South Koreans, or the Japanese, to no longer purchase Iranian oil. And these are major consumers of Iranian oil. And so the U.S. today, we will provide you with oil through Saudi Arabia or from ourselves or on stocks. And so they were basically trying to cut the Iranians off and hurt them economically. So just a question. So this is the Obama administration and they wanted engagement, but they were using, I guess, pressure tactics to bring the Iranians around. Is that what's going on? Okay. So they're doing both. They're quietly negotiating with them in Oman. Well, ratcheting up the pressure on them diplomatically and economically through these sanctions. Okay. And the thing is, is that the Americans were able to get the Russians and the Chinese and the British and the French all on board for these sanctions. Because, you know, if one of them doesn't agree to it, then their sanctions won't pass in the UN Security Council. So these groups were concerned enough about what Iran was doing to warrant the passage of these sanctions. And this is very significant. And the Obama administration did an excellent job at bringing this all together. Now, what you see in the aftermath of the 2009 election, where, you know, a bunch of pro-democracy protesters essentially challenged the legitimacy of the regime. But this reinvigorated America's interest in becoming involved in these negotiations on a much bigger level. And so what this led to was what was known as the P5 plus one, which is the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany. Now, I mentioned earlier that the Europeans had been engaged in talks with the Iranians all through the 2000s. Well, that's where the Germans come into this. They had been engaged in this quite considerably. Now, the election of Hassan Rouhani, who was actually a former nuclear negotiator and he's a reformist candidate in 2013, marked a really important shift in the dynamics inside Iran. Rouhani was a moderate, much like, very much unlike Ahmadinejad. And he was very much interested in improving relations with the West. So he reactivated the Yomani channel and he started seeing talks in about August 2013 about a nuclear deal. Now, right. And so this was immediately after his election. So let me ask a question there. Is it actually the Iranians who really push for this? Or is it the Obama administration? It was both. The Iranians pushed because just prior to his election, the Iranian economy collapsed where you saw the value of its currency, skyrocketed, sorry, not value, the inflation, like so the value on it in terms of exchange rates skyrocketed. And so people's life savings evaporated overnight. And there was a lot of pressure on the government to do something about this. And this convinced the government that negotiating with the Americans was the only way that we were going to get this, these sanctions lifted. And that was ostensibly the basis for the nuclear deal. Iran needed economic relief and wanted to be brought back into the international community, especially economically. And the Americans and the P5 plus one essentially wanted Iran to give up its nuclear enrichment capability or at least scale it back to a level that was considered reasonable. So you started the fall of 2013 seeing really intensive negotiations between the P5 plus Iran. Now this culminated between in a meeting between Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran's foreign minister Mohammed Tavad Zarif on April, sorry, on September 26, 2013. And this was further followed by a historical phone call between President Obama and President Rouhani. Now that was the first time that you had gotten direct high level talks between the leaders of those two countries, which since 1979. So very, very, very significant. Now on November 24 of that same year, the P5 plus one and Iran announced that they had reached an interim agreement on the nuclear program. Now this was originally called the JCPOA, sorry, the JPOA, the Joint Plan of Action. And this led to a further round of negotiations that really kind of tightened, they basically got into the nuts and bolts of the agreement to make sure. I remember when this happened. Yeah, it's very technical. I have a student who actually wrote a paper about culinary diplomacy and referenced these negotiations that they weren't going that well. And then they ate a meal together in Iranian meal. And actually negotiations took off at that point. So it's an interesting aside. Over time, Kerry and Zarif developed actually quite a good rapport with each other. Now, Zarif speaks fluent English. He's Western educated. He has a PhD. He's a very interesting character. And at one point, schooled an American congressman, no, an American senator on what the American Constitution actually says, which is quite fascinating. So essentially, the terms of the agreement, Iran ceased, sorry, agreed to cease enriching its uranium to reduce its stockpile of 20% enriched uranium to basically nothing they've gotten rid of it all. At least they had gotten rid of it all. To construct no new facilities capable of an enrichment and to allow extremely intrusive international atomic energy agency, the IAEA investigations, if they wanted to see something, they get to see it. There's none of the Saddam Hussein taking them to the desert and be like, oh, it's not here. None of that's going on. So in return, the P5 plus one agreed to pause its efforts to reduce Iran's oil sales, suspend, select US and EU sanctions on Iran's oil exports. But also its access to precious metals and those targeting the auto and aviation markets. So Iran was having a lot of problems with planes that had been purchased under the Shah crashing. So a lot of people were dying. And the US agreed that it would implement no new sanctions against Iran and release funds that had been held abroad from the sale of Iranian oil to say South Korea that had been allowed under the sanctions. But what all those funds were put into a separate bank account that was just holding it. Now that money turned out to be the like briefcases of cash that were delivered to Iran that President Trump likes to talk about. It was never American money. It was Iranian money. It was always held by American banks. Now over the next year, Iran continued to meet its obligations under the agreement. And in April 2014, the IEA confirmed that it had diluted 75% of its 20% enriched uranium stockpile, prompting the US to release $450 million. By July, Iran had complied with its obligations to neutralize its stockpile entirely and it kept its stockpile of 5% enriched uranium and it was not installing any new centrifuges or anything like that. Essentially it was following the exact terms of the agreement and it was complying completely. And this led to the Security Council, sorry, for the next 20 months there were these technical negotiations were going on. And then they announced in July 2015, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was the final nuclear deal between the two sides. Now again, the terms of the deal are pretty similar to the original plan. But again, much more technical in nature and it's a long agreement to read. But this immediately led to- You're not going to read the whole thing, are you? I have. It's okay. It took me a while though. So we only got a couple of seconds left here, Brian. So the deal is in place and then Trump, we know the rest of the story, right? Trump comes in and undoes the deal with the- The Republicans and some Democrats who are pro-Israel were deeply opposed to the agreement. And in May 2018, Trump walked away from the agreement, which was in my opinion a big mistake because the Iranians then initially, yes, but the Iranians initially said that they were going to still abide by the terms of the agreement, which was quite a positive announcement. So it's possible that we can recover this, right? It's possible that this could have a new life. But we'll see. I don't know. Okay. Well, we're going to have to wait with that for another show, Brian. We are done. So thanks very much for being on History Lens and we'll get to this another time. All right. Take care. Okay. All right. Take care, Brian.