 Great. Thanks for coming in on a miserably rainy Friday. And we have, as you know the topic, and I'm sure you know our panelists as well, who are now all here at Carnegie. I'm going to jump right into the conversation, but we will have some Q&A at the back end. So we'll be running a microphone around the room. So when we get to that portion, if you just say your name and your affiliation before you ask the questions, that would help us out a little bit. Thank you all. My first question, Jake, how much did you drink when the announcement came out? You know, one of the funny things about the growing chorus of voices attacking the deal, first through the Republican primary, then Trump on the campaign trail, and then in the weeks leading up to the announcement was, it started to get my family members calling me and saying, are they right? Is this a really horrible deal? Is this the worst deal ever negotiated in human history? So, you know, I was pretty disturbed. Not just because Trump ripped up the deal or ripped up America's commitment to the deal, but the way that he did it was so vehement. It went over the top, way beyond, I think, what many of our partners were expecting. I think they thought he wouldn't renew the waivers, but we continued talking about where this might end up. And instead, it was a full-on blast, screed, saying, we are out, we're done, and all of you people are falling in line, and we're going back to a maximum pressure campaign. That caught most people, by surprise, even me to a certain extent. And I think it's put us in a very difficult position at this point. Well, I will say, up to the last minute, our European partners thought that the other scenario might be the case, that there still was a window for opportunities to negotiate something by that Friday, the side deal. And it was a surprise to have the President announce what he did. Of course, it's not a surprise in some ways, because the President was pretty transparent when he campaigned. He thought it was the worst deal ever and promised to do what he just did. The execution and how it went down. Did that surprise you? Do you consider this the hard exit, as described? I'll tell you, the thing that surprised me most about the speech wasn't the nine minutes and 30 seconds in which he was trashing the Iranian regime and trashing the deal. It was the final 10, 15 seconds in which he said to the leadership in Iran, you are ready to renegotiate this deal. I am ready, willing and able. And one thing I think about Trump is that in contrast to some of his cabinet members or some of his advisers like John Bolton, I don't think the President is particularly ideological or dogmatic when it comes to Iran or other issues. He's a groucho Marxist, some might say, these are my principles and if you don't like them, I've got some other ones for you. But he, as in the past, showed actually a willingness to engage directly with Iran's leadership. It wasn't widely reported in the press, but in September, last September during the UN General Assembly, he had actually invited President Rouhani for dinner. I was told, actually this news was first broken by the Iranian press to say that the Iranians refused. Trump's overtures, Washington Post briefly reported it as well. And I was told by an aide to President Rouhani that Rouhani actually wanted to take the meeting, but he was prohibited to do so by the Supreme Leader. So my sense is that to the extent there is a strategy, it's to exact as much pressure as possible to kind of force through possible outcomes. One is a renegotiation of the deal and the second is a potential implosion of the Iranian regime. And again, my sense is that to quote Richard Nephew, if this was called the TCPUA, the Trump Conference of Plan of Action, he'd probably be far more amenable to the current deal. And he would perhaps renegotiate an even less favorable deal to the United States if it had his imprimatur on it. I don't have confidence that we'll be able to renegotiate a better deal with a far smaller coalition. But I think that that potentially is one of his goals. Can you talk about where we are with the deal that remains right now? Because there's a lot of noise in Europe, a lot of diplomatic entreaties to put something in place to try to keep the architecture still functioning, keep the Iranians still in it, but then privately even the Europeans say this is a flawed way to preserve what was a really, if not fatal, very damaging blow from the United States. Sure. For the record, I would like to say that there was actually an article in the F.P. on Friday about how much some of us drank the night after. So if anyone's interested. It was a serious question. I know how hard you guys worked on this. So my view is that the JCPOA, as we negotiated it, as we implemented it, is dead. It was an agreement fundamentally between the United States and Iran. 90% of the benefits Iran anticipated receiving from the JCPOA are dependent upon U.S. compliance with our commitments. So the idea that Europe can preserve the JCPOA, I think, deserves the skepticism that it's receiving. I don't actually think that that's the conversation going on between the E3, Iran, Russia, and China at this stage. I think that that conversation is about the possibility of a rumped JCPOA, where some of the benefits Iran anticipated are preserved by aggressive anti-sanction action, whether it's from the E3 or China, and some of the benefits that cannot be preserved are replaced. And finally, Iran accepts some diminution of their expected profit from the deal, which frankly they've already, they're already dealing with it, they've never got quite what they wanted out of it. And I think that that prospect deserves much less skepticism, and that the fact is the U.S. has never really tested our secondary sanctions tool against resolute opposition from our European allies. And should there be the shape of a deal that sort of satisfies Europe and satisfies Iran, and is sufficient to prompt the Europeans to look at the whole space, the re-imposition of secondary sanctions on Iran, the steel and aluminum tariffs, the Russia sanctions, and say Washington is behaving as a haphazard manner that is not in line with our interests, and we are going to confront on this point? I think that that is not likely but plausible. So when you talk, though, to the Europeans, they are still trying to keep some of this together. When you say it rumped JCPOA, like what enforcement mechanisms will there still be? Well, so I think that the idea would be that as much as possible of Iran's commitments are preserved as they are in exchange for different concessions from mainly the E3 and China. Such as? Well, so you've seen today, actually, there was an announcement out of Sofia about the EU summit. A lot of focus has been on the first part of that announcement, which is that they're going to relaunch the blocking statute. In some ways, I think that's actually the least important thing. The most important thing was the fourth part of the announcement, which is that all member states of the EU are encouraged to find ways to make one-off banking transactions with the central bank of Iran, principally for the support of oil purchases. And I believe that there are technical ways that you could do that that would make U.S. sanctions essentially impossible. And that sustaining oil purchases from Iran, China, India, EU would be so important for Iran's economy. Because remember that without those oil purchases, Iran is in depression. With those oil purchases, Iran's not rolling in money, but they're not in depression. I think that some kind of deal that has elements like that and then more political elements like another part of the announcement, a partnership between Iran and the European Investment Bank, I think that's the shape of what a rumped JCPOA required. Jake, when you were involved in the early diplomacy, and I know you stayed very much in contact in the final bits of it, but weren't directly involved in the final round of negotiations, was there ever any thought of one of the partners exiting or was it always the possibility of Iran being the one to break the terms? Well, the Iranians themselves were quite concerned about the upcoming presidential election in 2016, even when we started the conversation. And frankly, at that point they weren't thinking about Donald Trump, but they were thinking about a Republican Party that had state early vigorous opposition to anything resembling the Iran deal. And they were worried about Hillary Clinton, who they regarded as someone much more hawkish on Iran than President Obama. And so they consistently raised the question through 2013, 2014, and into 2015 about what happens if we get an American president who decides to walk away from this thing. What did you say? And frankly, we had to say, you know, this is a risk you're going to have to take. If you make a good deal and you comply with the deal and the deal is delivering, then, you know, we think in the end it will endure, but we can't make a promise to you long term because fundamentally the JCPOA is called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for a reason. It's not a treaty. It's not an agreement. It's a plan of action. And the commitments on both sides were fundamentally politically binding but not legally binding commitments. So this was always in contemplation. I think what has been so surprising about what the United States has done, though, is that they've decided to exit in a way where just think about what Jared just laid out. That sounds sort of technical and technocratic, but what it fundamentally means is the United States and Europe right now are in a real crisis. And the EU leaders gathering to basically say, how do we screw the US and their stated policy in order to help Iran? That's where we are today. I think nobody quite contemplated that we would arrive at this place, that the US would be so much at odds with its closest allies and negotiating partners over the future of the JCPOA because from our negotiating partner's perspective, Iran's complying and doing everything it said. And the US departure is, while technically allowed, a fundamentally bad, big move from their perspective. From the Trump administration's perspective, what they would argue, and it's something that you could really argue too, is it doesn't matter because America, what we do is really what's going to set the terms for everyone else. You know, the dollar is still prime currency, no one's going to choose to do business with Iran over doing business with us. You've got to fall in line. And the Europeans protest, but not so much as to truly damage relations. They complain, but they basically think the Trump administration, they can walk it off. Look, having been part of the effort to build this global coalition of sanctions in the first place, and around all of the major capitals to help bring them on board, not just the Europeans and the Chinese, but the Indians and the South Africans, the Japanese and the South Koreans, every significant purchaser of Iran and the North. What became apparent is that sanctions work best if they're a combination of coercion. The US says, we've got a strong tool here. And cooperation. Other countries say, okay, we'll work with you in a way that is most effective to achieve the goal, but also not so disruptive to us. If you drop the cooperative aspect and sanctions become a purely coercive tool, they will be leakier, there will be more cheating, there will be less aggressive compliance. So for example, on the letter of the law, Europe wasn't obliged back in 2011, 2012 to go to zero oil purchases. They chose to do so because we were working together. Now, maybe they'll comply with the letter of the law, maybe not, as Jared said, they may find ways around it, but they're going to do the minimum and they're going to do it slowly and they're going to drag their feet and they're going to find some ways to kind of test the US willingness to actually bring the hammer down. And the Chinese even more so. And so the idea that we are going to be able to reconstruct sanctions at the same level, even with this aggressive chest beating, it's us or them, I think it's a flawed concept that the administration is pursuing. And, you know, it will be interesting to see if there's a bit of a sanctions arms race here because the more aggressive the US is in telling the Europeans, basically we have you under our thumb, the more the Europeans are going to say, we're fine, any means we possibly can to not let you do that to us. And then the Americans will say, well, now we got to make our thumb bigger to cover you. And so on. And I think we could be headed for a very difficult period ahead as the rhetoric ratchets up on both sides and positions harden. And meanwhile, all anyone is thinking about is sort of what's going on in Washington. They're not thinking about what's going on in Tehran or in Damascus or in Beirut or all the places that the Trump administration says they're really worried about. I just think that the one thing that we know about the reimposition of these sanctions is that they will result in less leverage, less pressure than the original sanctions did because whether there is sort of a full scale defiance from allies and partners or not, there isn't going to be this broad coalition that says, no, we agree, there's a real national security problem here, an international security problem. And the US has got a plan to solve it and we're going to stick with them. So the scenario I laid out, I'm certainly not laying out, is the most likely scenario. I think a very, very likely scenario is that these Europe-Iran negotiations fail. Iran resumes something like industrial scale enrichment and we don't have the capacity to rebuild the leverage and the international architecture to really impose costs on that decision. Karim, pick up on that. Do you actually see the Iranian threat of restarting as real? But also, can you put into context, because what you hear to a certain degree from French officials, you hear different things, depending on who you're talking to, but you hear from Macron certain things about, well, President Trump is right. There is a certain sort of sensitive moment we're at within Iran. Look at the economic protests you saw a few months ago. You also hear from State Department officials that maybe the chemistry of the moment makes all of this add up in a different way, that really Iran is at some breaking point and what Jake sketched out as sort of leakier is actually coming at a point where it will be a blow to the regime. It's a good question, maybe a few points in return. So I think what was the benefit of President Obama's approach to Iran made these unprecedented but unreciprocated overtures to Iran. It kind of exposed in the eyes of Iranian people that what stood between them and a better future was not the United States, it was their own leadership. And I hear that this move is sending the opposite signal that what's standing between Iranians and a better future is not necessarily their own regime, but it's Donald Trump. And so this is happening, as you said, at a time of what I would call a convergence of crises within Iran. There's a currency crisis, there's an environmental crisis, there's social crisis, women taking to the streets, removing their headscarves. At a time when the regime is hemorrhaging a lot of money in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen, and again to just accentuate Jake's points, instead of focusing on all the bad things Iran is doing in the world or domestically, we've kind of put our finger on the one thing that Iran has perceived would be doing right, which is adhering to the nuclear program. And so I just would accentuate these points that, you know, it may be that the Chinese reduced some of their oil imports from Iran, and European companies are forced to make a choice between America and Iran, it's a no-brainer. But, and so you'll have greater economic frustration within Iran, which could simultaneously have two effects. One is that we will continue to see more tumult and uprisings as we are seeing right now in the city of Karzirin outside of Shiraz. So these economic protests continue, but as a result of that growing in security, it simultaneously kind of strengthens the security forces within Iran. And so you could have both at the same time, which is, you know, more tumult in Iran, but a regime security forces revolutionaries that are more deeply entrenched than before. Do you take the threat of restarting the nuclear program as real? Yeah, I would argue what they'll want to do is reconstitute the nuclear activities in a way that will continue to split the P5-plus-1. Instead of saying we're now going for a bomb, all the inspectors get out, they'll say, you know, continue to remain within the confines of a civilian energy program. Maybe that's installing more sophisticated centrifuges. Maybe that's announcing that they're exploring the possibility of nuclear submarines, one of a few civilian justifications for highly enriched uranium. But to do things which will get the United States and obviously Israel and Saudi Arabia will go on as in violation, but Federica Mulroney and the Chinese and the Russians to say no, they're actually still within the confines. So under that scenario, what happens next? I mean, you've had one of the biggest cheerleaders of this outcome we're now at has been Israel. You have seen Israel take a more muscular approach within Syria, but are you actually headed for conflict or is this just sort of playing out how much the pressure applied, what it results in? It seems to me Iran is perhaps the only country in the world that's simultaneously fighting three cold or proxy wars with the United States, with Israel, with Saudi Arabia. And all three of those have the potential for turning hot. I'd say the tinderbox that's most explosive at the moment is in Syria with Iran and Israel. And if Iran continues to launch attacks on Israel, from Syria using more sophisticated technologies like armed drones, Israelis have said, they're not only going to respond in Syria, but they're going to respond in Iran. If Houthis continue to launch missiles, if one actually hits the Riyadh airport, that's an opportunity. But in the nuclear context, I'd say that we're rewinding to where we were previously, which was Iran is kind of not racing towards nuclear weapons capability, but they're driving a car 15 miles an hour in that direction. And whereas the Obama administration exercised restraint over Israel, taking military action against Iran, it's not clear to me that the Trump administration will exercise that same restraint. And so I've always thought this is kind of the cognitive dissonance of President Trump's policies toward the Middle East, and that on one hand he wants to get out of the region and announces a withdrawal and he's criticized stupid wars, but his Iran policy is certainly hastening that possibility. Just to pick up on that. In the period Kermim was talking about before the JCPOA, as Iran was steadily moving its capability forward, the Israeli argument was you have to declare your red lines. This was before red line became a kind of four letter word in whatever it is, seven letter two words in Middle East policy. They wanted basically to lash the United States to the mask of military action if Iran exceeded certain thresholds. I anticipate that they will make the same pitch now to the Trump administration. They'll say, okay, if they do a little more R&D maybe, but if they go to 20%, or if they do X, or they do Y, or they install this number of centrifuges, and if they restart certain activities at Fordo, the bunker, the underground bunker, then we will tell them that is a trigger for military action. Because I think what BB's convinced on is that if you set a ceiling on Iran and declare that if you push through that ceiling, we will strike you that they won't. And we may very well find ourselves in a combined US Israeli threat to Iran over what will be tolerable and what will not be tolerable in terms of moving the present forward. And because you haven't really heard an alternative from the Trump administration articulated at this point, other than this idea of maybe we go back for the bigger, better deal that Europeans don't want, is that the most likely scenario that you're pulling out military action? Look, just a word on the deal. Because I've tried to ask, leave aside Trump for one second, who I think has basically done his Iran policy for the term, which is, rip up Obama's deal. For him now, it's kind of like he's more or less finished. If he got some chance to sit down with Rouhani and have a similar Nobel moment, I'm sure he'd love to take it. But fundamentally, he's now now waking up in the morning thinking about how we'd get them to the table. So in order to restart serious diplomacy with Iran, his team has to be invested in. Think about what his team has said is required to do a deal. Permanent restrictions on how much Iran can enrich even for peaceful purposes, no ballistic missiles, and also a resolution of all of the regional issues, too. And American prisoners. And American prisoners. So just imagine that actual agreement. It defies logic that that is even conceivably possible. And I would argue not just from the Iranian side, but from the American side. But the French also argue that. What the French argue is the U.S. and Europe should sit together and come up with a set of measures that they impose vis-à-vis ballistic missiles and regional activity that doesn't require some grand bargain with Iran. What they were negotiating and very close to arriving at a deal with them in the United States was essentially a U.S.-EU common policy towards Iran beyond nuclear. Matt Krohn has thrown out there, though. Ann Syria. Ann Yemen. Ann Syria and Yemen insofar as the U.S., France, and others would work together to impose pressure on Iran. I think Matt Krohn would probably not, if pressed, argue, you know what, actually the U.S. and Iran can sit down and together work out a disposition over Syria. Because we decide whether the Iranians are really up for that. The idea that John Bolton and Mike Pompeo are going to want to sit with Javad Zarif to work that out is kind of nonsensical. And so in a funny way, they've painted themselves into a corner on the possibility of a real deal here. Now, that doesn't undermine the point Karim was making about Trump himself. I mean, Trump would do a deal, and he'd be happy to say, oh yes, Iran and Russia should manage affairs in Syria as long as they stay 10 miles off the Golan or whatever. But in the real world of how you actually arrive at a negotiated settlement, it requires U.S. negotiators sitting across from Iran and negotiators and actually doing this, and I don't think that's going to happen. So to come back to your question about what's most likely, I think we're going to enter a phase where essentially the punishment is the strategy. Squeezing Iran and keeping them in the penalty box for as long as possible and as much as possible with the hope of regime change, but if not regime change, a weaker regime, that's where the U.S. is indefinitely. And I don't think right now the U.S. is spoiling for military action, but I think that this Israeli logic around the red lines could easily drag them there. I think the odds of that have gone up. I don't think it's inevitable that we end up striking Iran over their advancement of their nuclear program in the near term because Iran may stay below a certain threshold as they move their capability forward, but I think the odds of us either supporting the Israelis in doing it or joining the Israelis in doing it have gone up considerably just as you think it's happening. Do you regret not having this, not presenting this as a treaty, not having congressional buy-in and sign-off? I'll say a couple things about that. The first is I remember very distinctly Bob Dole on the floor of the U.S. Senate imploring Republican members to vote for the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, which imposed no obligations whatsoever on the United States. You brought the rest of the world up to the Americans with Disabilities Act standard and you couldn't get the votes for it. That convinced me that the idea that any treaty, let alone a treaty to do with Iran, was going to get ratified in the U.S. Senate was so far fetched as to be entirely implausible. So that's sort of point one. I don't think there was any world in which even a deal that did everything most of its critics wanted was going to get 67 votes in the Senate. The second thing is that Donald Trump has just as much prerogative to walk away from the beautifully ratified treaty as he does from this deal. In fact, George Bush did it with the Amphibalistic Missile Treaty and I don't think it would have stopped Trump because his lawyers went to him and said, hey, wait a second, this was a treaty. He'd say, I don't like it, it's a terrible deal. I'm out. So I don't find that to be a particularly persuasive argument. I think the question is when you have a politically contested deal like this that one president does that has significant advertised opposition from the other side. But this deal had opposition from Democrats. From your own side. Exactly. No, I'm saying like in a world in which you've got, you know, this was a deeply divisive proposition. You know, and so I find the most reasonable argument that my good friends who are critics of the deal make is, well, you know, we told you, leave aside Trump, leave all that aside. You know, we told you like elections have consequences, we hated this and if we came in we were going to do something about it. Tom Cotton wrote a letter. To the Ayatollah. Exactly. I guess my view is, and I actually think back to an earlier phase in the U.S.-Iran relationship when Jimmy Carter negotiated the Algiers Accords, which themselves were not a treaty or binding, and required the U.S. to make a series of concessions just to get our hostages out, Reagan upheld that, that there is, there still should be a space for bipartisan comedy in terms of how we deal with these things, even in a highly contested space like this. But I recognize we live in a world where that's just no longer that plausible, but I think it weakens the American hand globally for any president that we decide, well, my predecessor did it, but screw it. I don't need to comply with it. I think it's a problem. Can I just make a couple more points on that? Because it's, the, first of all, I have not heard anybody who's complaining about the JCPOA not being a treaty proposing an Inara-like mechanism for a North Korean deal. I've also not really heard a strong push to say, well, the president shouldn't have the unilateral ability to ratchet down tension, and neither should they have the unilateral ability to ratchet up tension. So this seems to me to be an entirely politically convenient argument, and not one really, really... Lindsey Graham has said he'd like to see it be a treaty. I asked him about it Sunday. Okay, but again, I mean, I haven't seen a move... The North Korea thing. A North Korea. I haven't seen a move in the Senate to even propose an Inara-like mechanism to involve the Congress in a, in a, in a designed way. And in fact, according to colleagues I spoke into this week, there haven't even yet been staffer member briefings from the administration about the decision to pull out of the JCPOA. Right. So the idea that somehow this is about the congressional prerogative and needing to have broad-based support for important foreign policy decisions, that is an argument imposed after President Trump's decision. And I would go farther and say that sure people can say, look, there's broad opposition, all the Republican candidates oppose this. Again, look across the members, the Republican members of the United States, you did not see people clamoring for the destruction of the JCPOA under President Trump. And in fact, on three occasions since last year, President Trump opened up a window for the Senate to be able to take a 50-vote majority to pull out of the JCPOA. It was never even put to the floor. It was never even discussed. Right. So I do think that there is something uniquely Trumpian in this, and not simply the broader breakdown of our politics, which I agree with as well, but it's not the whole story here. And I want to say one other thing about Jake's previous answer, which I fully agree with, he laid out the sort of comically expanded agenda concessions that we would need from Iran. It's even worse really than Jake has suggested because the Iran's ballistic missile program and their regional proxies are core to their national security thinking. And so whereas you can imagine on the nuclear file, and we were able to succeed on the nuclear file, in a deal that has them making security concession and us making an economic concession, that's not going to work on their ballistic missiles, where they really do, rightly or wrongly, perceive the existence of a threat. So it's not just that we would need to be at the table making this deal. It's that we would have to have a group of regional countries who don't even really talk to each other now making security concessions to Iran in order to get this universal right. And I'd add one more point on this because this argument which said one of the major flaws of the nuclear deal is it didn't deal with all the regional behavior. Emerged is one of the chief critiques in recent months and look they're unleashed upon the region and the like. It was discussed at the time of the deal too. It was, but I would argue that at the time there was much more willingness to see the nuclear issue for what it was then, which was the priority. The thing that BB Netanyahu went to the UN and held up the cartoon bomb, it's now that the nuclear issue has been resolved, there's a new big thing and it's the regional stuff. So I think it took on a much different level of importance. If you talk to critics of the deal and hawks on Iran, they will now say two things. One, no deal that doesn't involve Iran making major concessions on the regional front is a good deal. And two, this regime is not capable of making major concessions on the regional front because this regime has it just like deeply embedded in their psyche to have to be doing all of these things. It doesn't take a logical genius to see that that means no deal with this regime, period. And that's Bolton's view. And so they don't say it that way. They say, oh, we could do a deal with just the right deal. But fundamentally, I think this is the, frankly, the dishonesty of that strand of critique of the Iran nuclear deal. And that's why I think we're just headed for a period of more or less pressure for pressure's sake and we'll see what happens. I want to go to questions from the audience. But Karim, did you want to button that up? I mean, Zarif even said the foreign minister even says the US never gave up on regime change. John Bolton's entry into this administration isn't what makes that, you know, their assumption at this point. They always thought that's what the real motivation was. Is that the takeaway, you think, for the regime? Well, I think that that's disingenuous from Zeddy's because President Obama for eight years, I would argue, really did try to reassure the Iranians that he wasn't after regime change. He wrote several letters to the Supreme Leader trying to reassure him. In 2009 when Iran was, you know, several million people had taken to the streets if we wanted to try to push for regime change, there would have been a good opportunity. Secretary Clinton said that was the biggest regret as a ten year secretary of state not doing more than. So the Iranian government is always going to say the US has never changed its regime change plan. But the reality is I think that the Iranian government had a year and a half, two years after the JCPOA was signed if they wanted to try to improve relations with the United States. Secretary Kerry's speechwriter is here. I'm guessing if Secretary Kerry had been given an invite to visit Tehran, he would have taken it. I'm not sure President Obama would have taken that. But it was clear this was the administration since the 1979 revolution that was more favorably disposed than any administration to some type of rapprochement with Iran. But after the deal was signed, what did Iran do? It took my friend, Ciel Mac Namas, he put him in jail, it put his father in jail, put other US citizens in jail, it put dual national European Iranians in prison. I would argue it resumed and probably increased its long-standing regional policies, whether that's support for Assad, Hezbollah, Shia militias. And so I do think there was an opportunity if the Iranian government wanted it, if the Supreme Leader wanted it, to build them on the JCPOA and it would have been much more difficult for the Trump administration to tear it up as they have. But the challenge is that this is a government divided in Tehran. You have one part of the government that doesn't have much power, that wants to see a better relationship with the United States and those who are a minority but who have power who fear that as an existential threat. Can we bring a microphone up to the front row here? Thank you. And then we'll come to you. Can you just say your name, your affiliation, please? Hi. Nelson Cunningham with the Poclarty Associates. Jake saw me nodding vigorously as he was talking about the prospect of a sanctions off between the U.S. and the E.U. and China where we try to up the level of sanctions. They try to up the level of counter sanctions. But I think it's even worse than what Jake mentioned because sanctions are not government-on-government actions. Sanctions involve essentially taking all of your companies and making them your soldiers and making them your weapons against the enemy. You say to Citibank, do not deal with them. You say to the Europeans, do not deal with the Iranians. What's going to happen is that, in effect, companies, banks, oil companies, manufacturers will become hostages waiting to be shot by either side because if Citibank does, in fact, stop dealing with Deutsche Bank, the Europeans will punish Citibank. So we could face not just a government-on-government effort, but one that actually damages companies and materially damages transatlantic trade at the same time that you have to steal an aluminum tariff. So there are broad economic consequences, I would argue, that flow from the sanctions off and not just the government-to-government tensions that we outlined. It's worse. I think this is actually a really important point that at the end of the day, it's ultimately going to be a series of commercial decisions about what risk many of these European companies want to take on, financial institutions, oil purchasers and the like. And I think part of the reason why there's some skepticism that the Europeans will ultimately be able to stand up to the United States on this is that the compliance departments of these companies are just going to say, you don't want to deal with OFAC right now. That's probably right, but that's what makes this... That's the Israeli argument. That's the Israeli argument and the Trump administration argument, which is if you have to choose between Iran and the U.S., you're going to choose the U.S. I think there are two basic challenges with that. One, that's far less true with respect to China than it is with respect to the European Union. And two, to the extent that the European Union begins designing special-purpose vehicles of one form or another to insulate certain transactions and certain companies from sanctions, as Nelson was saying, those companies then are going to be caught betwixt in between. You know, do they... They're going to... In a way, they're going to look at mommy and daddy fighting and think, like, please work it out because we feel we're going to be screwed one way or another. But isn't this what the Iranians were already complaining was happening? Because they're saying that the U.S. wasn't delivering the financial incentives that they had been promised. That's just the point, actually, of why this measure is unlikely to produce great leverage over Iran right now. Because it's true that Tertal and Siemens are not going to choose, you know, politically motivated Iran business over their profit centers in the United States. That can't be the element... That can't be the Rump JCPOA. The Rump JCPOA has to be things that are more directly under government's control. But the point is that Siemens... Sorry, Tertal hadn't put more than 40 million dollars in Iran anyway. Siemens had done nothing but sell to Iran. So these are political blows to Iranian supporters of the JCPOA. They're not really economic leverage over Iran. So the kinds of things that European governments could realistically do are not forced to tell to do business. But there are ways, for example, that they could make sure that the oil keeps flowing. Again, they would do that solely out of political concerns and not out of economic ones. One last thing, which is to say, Nelson's also pointed out the dirty little secret of our secondary sanctions policy, which is that we can't actually use it. We cannot designate Deutsche Bank for secondary sanctions. It would be the end of the global economy. It would be like saying, you know, remember Lehman, let's do that again. But entirely at our own discretion. So secondary sanctions work because all of the regulated community decides to follow along. If we create compelling reasons for our allied governments to find ways to work around that threat, it might not be today, and it might not be next year, but there will come a point where we want to use this tool and it's just not going to be nearly as strong. Promise to you here. We're bringing a microphone. I'm wondering, given the Turkish and Brazilian involvement with Iran and their nuclear program declaration in 2010, what if any kind of leadership could we expect from those countries moving forward after the fallout of the JCPOA or Trump's decision to pull out of the JCPOA or any other countries who are not P5 members? Well, that was a somewhat unique case where you had two ambitious leaders looking to leave a mark on the global stage on a major issue of international importance. You had Erdogan, you had Lula in Brazil, and what they wanted to do was rescue a deal that had been initially struck between the U.S. and Iran on the Tehran Research Reactor that they were going to figure out a way to do it, that the fuel rods would be... the material would be shipped out of Iran, the fuel rods would be fabricated, and then sent back in, and that this would be a way to address proliferation concerns. A, I don't think Brazil now is in a place where it's going to be doing much of anything on the Iran deal. It's sort of domestically focused and doesn't have a leadership that has the same ambitions as Lula. B, Erdogan now has more than enough to say grace over in terms of a lot of other considerations, both in the bilateral relationship with Iran and with the United States and with larger regional policy. But I do think we have to ask ourselves about countries like Turkey, what role did they end up playing in facilitating Iran's effort to reduce the number of American sanctions? Even when Turkey... we had the great coalition, Turkey was looking the other way at some pretty massive sanctions-busting activities, some of which are now the subject of American criminal prosecution. And I think that there will be a number of countries who look at the Trump administration and look at the JCPOA and say, you know, back to a kind of older anti-imperial view, B, S. And so to the extent we can play a role in helping the Iranians not just have to succumb to American domineering, you know, will help in some way. I wouldn't be surprised if that element is alive in Turkey and in some other countries that are kind of in that, you know, band of middle powers. I'll take one from the back there and then we'll come to you up front. Thank you. I think you all agreed that the threat of Iran restarting the nuclear program is real, right? But considering all challenges that Islamic Republic of Iran is facing, especially the economic issues and deep corruption, a lot of factories are shut down and a lot of workers are protesting in a lot of cities in Iran, why don't we consider Tehran starting negotiation with Trump as North Korea and Venezuela recently started? What's your name? Where are you from? Hossain. Are you with an organization? I'm from Freedom House. I didn't get the exact question. So why doesn't Trump talk to Tehran like he... No, why don't we consider that Tehran starts negotiation with Trump as North Korea started and Venezuela started to... They are ready to negotiate with Trump. So I think Trump would be amenable to that. As Jake said, I think that Trump would be happy to, and he's in fact, try to meet with President Rouhani. I think the distinction between Iran and just to stay with North Korea and Kim Jong-un is Ali Khamenei versus Kim Jong-un. I told Khamenei he's 78 years old. I don't think he is looking at a 20-year plan. He wants to die supreme leader. And for three decades, enmity towards the United States, mistrust of the United States has been one of the three pillars, I'd say, of the Islamic Republic, inextricable to the identity of the Islamic Republic from his point of view. Donald Trump has vindicated his worldview that America cannot be trusted. I think he feels that he's been proven right. And so this is, in fact, a question mark for me. Let's fast forward six months and let's say if the Israeli projections are correct that Iran's economic conditions continue to worsen. You continue to see not only economic protests, social protests, environmental protests, downward spiraling currency. And people go to Khamenei and say, listen, you have to exhibit the same heroic flexibility. That was the term he used before, heroic flexibility that you did regarding the JCPOA. I'm not sure whether he will be able to overcome his pride and bitterness and cynicism of the Trump administration. And who would be negotiating that deal or who would be taking part in the negotiations from our end as well as Jake said? Is it Mike Pompeo, John Bolton? So, you know, I don't, I always like to quote John Kenneth Galbraith. He said that economic forecasting exists to make astrology look respectable. And I think, you know, Middle East forecasting makes astrology even more respectable. So I don't think it's a 0% chance that he is forced to come back to the table and renegotiate. But I think it's going to, you know, it's really going to take enormous economic pain and real existential angst for him to come back and renegotiate when he feels that, you know, they were already wrong. I think you need two things to happen at once. One, you need the Iranians to overcome the various psychological and political obstacles that Karim described, which I also don't rule out. I think it's unlikely, but I don't rule it out. Then you also need the American side to react in a way to that overture that doesn't say, as I think the current logic would have them say, see, now we got them on the ropes. See, actually, this is proof our strategy is working. We just have to push a little harder. And that is what the Israelis will argue. I promise you, because when Rahanian Zarif came and said, let's do a deal, the Israeli reaction was not, okay, now we've set things up to get what we need. It was, oh, this is a signal that just squeezing a bit more will put it over the top. So you need both of those things to happen in order to produce the framework for a negotiation that could succeed in dealing with this diplomatically. I do not rule out the possibility. I find it unlikely. Karim, Rahani, as you said, was offered this chance to meet. Macron was the intermediary at the UN General Assembly, and the Iranians said no to Trump's request for a meeting. Zarif has also said and admitted that U.S. officials have approached them about talking simply about the Americans and starting a consular dialogue, and the Iranians have said no to that. So there have been some overtures made by the U.S. Is it simply that at this point, Rahani can't ever be that person if the Supreme Leader remains who he is? You're right. Those overtures have been made. And again, I think if we're up to Rahani, I think he recognizes that the death-to-America culture of 1979 doesn't make sense in 2018. I've always thought the distinction between Rahani and Khamenei is like distinguishing between Deng Xiaoping and Brezhnev. Rahani essentially wants to put economic interest before revolutionary ideology do what China did in the 1970s. And Khamenei is Brezhnev. He's committed to the status quo, committed to... He would argue that once you start to compromise on your pillars, on your principles, that's why they call themselves principles. Once you start to compromise on your principles, it's like what Gorbachev did to the Soviet Union, hastened the collapse. So I don't think he is going to give license to Zareev or Rahani to embark on some type of negotiations. Unless and until... I think Jake's two conditions are right. There's significant existential pressure on the regime and also the belief that the U.S. strategy isn't simply regime change. I think they did feel that in the case of the Obama administration, that you guys were... President Obama sent multiple letters, Jake and Bill going to Oman. I think they felt sufficiently reassured, despite what Zareev said, Obama administration's strategy was not regime change. I promised you up front, and then we'll go to the back. Thank you. My name is Sina Azadeh. I'm a Ph.D. student in political science. We all sort of touched on it. So where are we headed with regards to U.S.-Iranian relations? You said more pressure for the sake of pressure. Anything else from the panels? Thank you. One thing I'd say is that I don't believe Iran is going to be able to convince the world that they are indispensable to the global economy. 0.6% of total EU traders with Iran, I think 20% of total EU traders with the United States. And, you know, the Chinese can buy a little bit more from oil from Saudi Arabia from the UAE, reduce the purchases from Iran. So Iran hasn't done a good job of showing that they are indispensable to the global economy. So I think one of the arguments that we'll try to project explicitly or implicitly, and in fact Adolf Chey said this in an interview once, is to essentially try to make it clear to the Europeans that we are indispensable to your security. And if you pull out of the JCPOA, we can act in a way which will create far more refugees fleeing from the Middle East into Europe. And so I've thought that this can, you know, by continuing to escalate against Israel and Syria, it ticks that box, but it also ticks another box, which is that for the last several years, the conversation in the Middle East has been Iran's clients killing Sunni Arabs. And that's been terrible for Iran's brand name if they want to be the champion, not only of the Shia world, but the entire Islamic world. And so the best way to change that conversation is Israelis killing Palestinians. And so I think provoking something against Israel, whether it's from Syria, whether it's in Gaza, whether it's from Lebanon with Hezbollah rockets, I think suits Iran's interests well. And so then the question is, if there is an Iranian-Israeli conflagration in the region, how does the U.S. choose to respond to that when Pompeo has said that we'll come to the rescue of Israel? And Trump has said we want to pull out of the region. And I think this is the final question I had promised in back. There you go. Do you have a microphone coming? George Perkovich from Carnegie. It's actually picking up on Karim's answer but trying to elaborate a little bit more. And that is to say, given Iran's interests, its history, ideology, its power, if the U.S. or someone has broken an agreement with it with the idea that to get them to renegotiate worse terms from the standpoint of Iran, doesn't Iran have to make you pay? Even if ultimately they might come back to some kind of negotiate, first you have to pay for the reasons that Jake outlined. If you don't, it just invites more such punishment and reorder. Karim alluded to some of the ways in which they could make us or others pay. I'm just wondering if Jared or Jake have additional ideas of things Iran could do to kind of change the leverage and make it less unfavorable than it now appears. Well, I would say that in addition to the regional activities that Karim referenced, I think the lesson that they learned from the JCPOA context was that there's a certain kind of dual clock logic. There's the sanctions clock versus the nuclear capability clock. And that as the sanctions get tighter, they need to be adding capability so that they can negotiate both down. And so I have to think that they will be trying to figure out what can we do on the nuclear front that does what Karim said earlier, adds to our leverage vis-a-vis the United States because it puts them in a more difficult position without destroying the international sympathy that we built up with all of our friends and partners. I think that nuclear subs would probably go across that line the Europeans and the Chinese would say, hold on a second here, 60% for some nonsense claim. Announce plans for it, but you'll actually do it. Right, but I think even that, they may misjudge this, too, by the way. But my view is that they will be focused on R&D so that they continue the narrative of national scientific achievement but also can go around to people and say we can have centrifuges 20 times more powerful which in turn raises the possibility of the covert program to a more significant extent. I think that will be the main area where they focus as opposed to say going to 20% or adding a lot. And then I think Fordo will be the other place where they'll say, look, at this point, we have these explicit threats of military action coming from all sides, so it only makes sense for us to be exercising our nuclear rights both under the NPT and the JCPOA in a place that's protected, which will also raise the hackles of the Americans and the Israelis, but not so much the rest of the world. So I think that's going to be a big area of focus for them as we go forward here if they can't get some form of satisfaction from the Europeans, at least for a while, on the Rump JCPOA, as Jared put it. So if we play this out a few more weeks or a few more months and Rump JCPOA negotiations have collapsed, I think I agree with Jake where the focus of violations of the JCPOA is likely to be. I certainly think Fordo would make a lot of sense. I do think that they would probably need to do some more headline-grabbing things like, I don't know, restart the TRR fuel production line. So that would be getting up to 20% again. And that's my guess of their politics. There are just two other things I feel like we haven't mentioned that are worth bearing in mind. One is that Iran has got politics and there are powerful factions in Iran that profit from isolation. And so there's every reason for some of the economic actors who actually have lost control of industrial enterprises over the last year or 18 months to take a look at this as an opportunity and not to be rushing back to solve the problem. The second thing I would just leave with is we spent a lot of time sort of disparaging the idea that this could lead to a, quote-unquote, better deal. I think one thing that we haven't wrestled with is how would Iran react if Trump offered a worse deal? Because it seems to me that he doesn't actually know the content of the JCPOA. The rumors about what might be on the table for North Korea, I mean, it would be a real challenge for the regime if signals were to go back that what did you call it, the TCPOA would look different in a way that is substantially the mirror image of our rhetoric. I'm not recommending it. All right, well thank you very much. Karim, Jared, Jake, I'm Margaret Brennan from CBS. Thank you for all your time.