The (Iran) deal that shall not be named - with Rich Goldberg
Is the US on the cusp of reaching a new deal with Iran? Or has a deal already been hatched that nobody is talking about? To help us understand what is going on, Rich Goldberg returns to the podcast.
Rich is a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. From 2019-2020, he served as a Director for Countering Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction for the White House National Security Council. He previously served as a national security staffer in the US Senate and US House. He was a founding staff director of the House U.S.-China Working Group and was among the first Americans ever to visit China’s human space launch center. A leader in efforts to expand U.S. missile defense cooperation with Israel, Rich played a key role in U.S. funding for the Iron Dome. Rich is an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve with military experience on the Joint Staff and in Afghanistan.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] What are we getting, by the way, for this understanding with Iran, this mini deal? Right? So if there's 24 billion dollars of cash potentially on the table, we are reportedly getting an understanding that Iran will simply not enrich 90 percent weapons grade uranium. That's it. That's it. There's some other reporting of maybe they won't kill Americans in Syria.
So it's like a protection racket, right? Like, we won't hurt you more than we're already hurting you if you give us the money.
Is the U. S. on the cusp of reaching a new deal with Iran? or a mini deal, or a deal that has no name because nobody in Tehran or Washington can talk about it. What is actually going on? There's a lot of noise around the U. S. Iran negotiating track. It's not clear exactly what's happening. To help us [00:01:00] understand what is actually going on, we asked Rich Goldberg to come back on the podcast.
Rich is a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defensive Democracies. From 2019 through 2020, he served as a director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction for the White House National Security Council. Rich previously served as a National Security Advisor in the U. S. House and the U. S.
Senate. That's where I first got to know him. And he was a founding staff director for the U. S. House of Representatives, U. S. China Working Group. And he was among the first Americans ever to visit China's Human Space Launch Center. Rich is a leader in efforts to expand U. S. missile defense cooperation with Israel, and he played a key role in U.
S. funding for the Iron Dome, back when he was working in Congress. He's an officer in the U. S. Navy Reserve, with military experience on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and in Afghanistan. Rich Goldberg, on the deal. Or the non deal or the deal that has no name. This is Call Me Back.[00:02:00]
And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast my friend Rich Goldberg, who is a senior advisor to the Foundation for Defensive Democracies. He is a former senior official in the National Security Council working on Issues related to Iran and missile and nuclear proliferation and a longtime, uh, senior foreign policy aide on Capitol Hill where he worked on a number of, uh, issues, uh, around Iran and Iran's nuclear program and the co host of the critically acclaimed Jewish insider podcast.
I highly recommend you subscribe to the Jewish insider and listen to their podcast. Rich, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Critically acclaimed now. You've decided, you've now decided it is critically acclaimed, so now it is. I've, now it is. Well, I'm, I'm, you could call me a critic. There you go.
I'm a critic and if I say I'm a regular consumer of the Jewish insider podcast, That is an expression of critical attention. By the way, I've been calling you back every episode, so I, [00:03:00] you know. There we go. See? Right on message. It's like, uh, right back at you. So, so, the only other podcast I've ever referred to, we recorded Christine Rosen the other day, and she's, uh, and I also refer to the commentary podcast as critically acclaimed.
So you've now, it's the commentary, you're in good company. What do you call goodfellas? Do you even comment on goodfellas? I love Goodfellas. You've had guests from Goodfellas. I've had Neil, Neil, Neil and McMaster, regulars on, on the Coming Back podcast, but um, hmm. Just acclaimed. It's just acclaimed. Just the acclaimed.
The, the, the acclaimed. Listened to by acclamation. Right, exactly, because there aren't many other choices, right, versus, versus, uh, critically acclaimed. But I'm actually seeing Neil, uh, in the next couple days, so I will, um, I hope he doesn't hear this before then, uh, because he may take great offense. Okay, Rich, I want to, uh, as I said in the introduction, there's a lot of noise, uh, around, uh, [00:04:00] a possible U.
S. Iran nuclear deal, um, after a period of a lot of quiet. When we all thought that the prospects for an Iran U. S. nuclear deal were, were dead and now it seems to be alive again, or maybe not, it's, it's not clear what's happening, there's a deal, there's no deal, there's a mini deal, there's a, there's a hostage deal, there's, and South Korea's involved, and there's Iraq involved, and we're hearing about all these different pieces, and I just, there's, And I know none of us actually know what is really going on, but I think you more than most have a sense for what's going on.
And so I wanted to, um, I want to touch base with you, but before we get into where we are now, I want to start with how we got here, just as a little bit of a primer for our listeners. So, walk me back to 2015. Which was at the peak of the negotiations between the U. S. and Iran and the, you know, the rest of the P5 on a, [00:05:00] on what became the JCPOA.
So can you just, again, I know there's so much history and you've been involved in all of the history, but I just, I just want to, I want to get to the here and now as quickly as we can. So in order to do that, I just want to do a little bit of background, and the background should begin with what the JCPOA in 2015 was trying to accomplish.
Yep. So the real quick and dirty is, Iran represents several different kinds of threats to the United States and the international community. World's leading state sponsor of terrorism, proliferator of missiles, building larger and longer range missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons, fomenting conflicts around the Middle East, and, uh, one of the largest threats that we continue to talk about and face is Their robust nuclear program and for many years they were building two different pathways in a nuclear program that had the potential applications to develop nuclear weapons and we know Starting in 2003 the discovery of a secret enrichment site and in 2009 a second secret enrichment site that Iran [00:06:00] Had in the past a crash nuclear weapons program Various details of which we've learned about over the years and we could talk about that but basically This is a regime that does a lot of bad things and was building the capabilities to develop nuclear weapons both along and enrichment Pathway, uh, and a reprocessing plutonium pathway, uh, so uranium and plutonium pathways and, and that, uh, capacity was increasing, the capability was increasing, all the way up until the point at which a, a nuclear deal was envisioned, outreach by the Obama administration happened, sanctions had not been working, yet, military action, and, and, and to, and to give the Obama administration it's due, their argument was, We've had all these sanctions in place, we've tried to isolate Iran, and they are moving full steam ahead despite sanctions.
They are gonna get darn close to nuclear weapons capability, even with all this isolation we're orchestrating around with them. It's not working, so [00:07:00] let's get them to negotiating table and try to get them boxed in to some kind of agreement. that may be more robust in terms of its constraints than what we've tried so far.
Again, I'm not saying I agree with this, but just, just, just to give them their And just so everybody remembers, 2011, 2012, 2013, major sanctions had just come online that Congress had passed over their objections at the time in the Obama administration, and the administration saw a little bit of instability inside the regime and an opportunity to take those sanctions out for a ride and say, Hey, you know what?
We have big sanctions now on your central bank, on your oil exports, on sectors of your economy. Would you like to make a deal? We can lift all these sanctions. We just care about the threat of your nuclear program. We get that you sponsor terror and the missile program and proliferation and bad things in the region.
We're willing to do a deal with you where we find some parameters that you're going to govern yourselves by of the limits on your nuclear activity. Limits inside your [00:08:00] various nuclear facilities and in exchange we will lift all of these sanctions That are starting to do real damage to your economy And that is the that is the crux of the jcpoa and and the deal itself limited iran Uh, at a low level of enrichment, up to a certain amount of stockpile of that low enriched uranium that they could produce.
3. 67 percent low enriched uranium, up to 300 kilograms of a stockpile. They poured concrete, uh, down, uh, a, uh, reactor core. Of a potential plutonium pathway to a bomb at the iraq reactor Uh, and they just they were forced to remove their centrifuges That were used to produce uranium out of that underground facility at fordow and replace it with some research and development scientific Work with the russians there and in exchange for that all of our sanctions were lifted.
Okay, so so that was 2015 And I guess congress [00:09:00] Approved it quote unquote meaning Congress didn't disapprove it. Just it wasn't a treaty so it didn't require Congress failed to disapprove it Yeah, yeah, that's the right that's better way to put it Congress So because it wasn't a treaty they didn't need two thirds of the Senate to to ratify it So all Congress could do was to disapprove of it and they didn't have the votes to do that and and there was something very deliberate about why the administration the Obama administration went with the This, this legislative path versus a regular conventional treaty.
Okay, so then, so then the deals announced, uh, and just can you go through, because there are the sunset provisions. So, so here we are, that was 2015. Here we are now, 2020, halfway through 2023. I think it's important, because I don't think people fully appreciate, at the time, in 2015, where we are today seems so far away, and all these provisions that the U.
S. government and our allies negotiated were like, Oh, it's so far away [00:10:00] when they expire, we'll deal with that another day. Well, let's live in a world where The U. S. didn't pull out of the JCPOA, so we're getting up against where the sunsets would have kicked in, so can you just go through some of those sunsets?
Right, the way I described the JCPOA, uh, up until now, it sounds like it's this permanent deal, right? Where, so long as you keep your nuclear program under wraps and don't do anything else, we'll keep our sanctions lifted. But in fact, Iran said, no, that's not good enough. We need con more concessions from the West to build into this deal, in addition to all of your money.
Uh, on a continuous basis. We want certain dates whereby all of our illicit activity, quote unquote, today, in other words, the activity that we consider illicit in the international community, becomes licit, becomes legitimized. So we want the arms embargo, the conventional arms embargo on Iran lifted. Right now, there's a Security Council resolution, this is back in JCPOA 2015, there's a Security Council resolution that prohibits the international community from providing any weapons to Iran.[00:11:00]
We want that lifted by 2020. That did lift in 2020. Uh, we want a missile embargo that's been put upon us to be lifted by 2023. That's going to expire this October. So, uh, missiles in or out of Iran, missile components, armed drones, the kind that you see used by the Russians against the Ukrainians, all becomes legitimized under the UN Security Council resolution.
That endorsed the J-C-P-O-A come this October, but then they also wanted nuclear sunsets. W we wanna be able to use advanced centrifuges. We want be able to enrich higher levels of uranium. And so 2024 or 20 25, 26 and beyond, all the way to 2031. When you get to 2031, Iran under the deal is allowed to enrich uranium to any level and any stockpile.
The only constant prohibition on Iran is they can't build a nuclear weapon. And in exchange the US and other Western powers are [00:12:00] required to continue delivering sanctions relief. And one of the arguments that Prime Minister Netanyahu had made at the time, and Ambassador Dermer and others, uh, who were, uh, arguing against this deal in, uh, in Israel, was that when people would say, you know.
You're, you're concerned that Iran's going to violate the deal, but we're going to have all these enforcement capabilities to make sure they don't, um, violate the deal. They would say, the Israeli leadership at the time would say, we're not worried about Iran violating the deal. Actually, if they just comply with the deal, then at some point, for the reasons you're saying, the deal's effectively going to expire.
And when that happens, there, there's nothing constraining them. From rushing to a nuclear weapons capability and still have been in full compliance of the deal that we agreed to. And not just that, because the U. S. has given up all of its sanctions in exchange for that deal under those parameters, [00:13:00] you can't redeploy those sanctions for Iranian missile use.
You can't redeploy those sanctions for sponsorship of terrorism, for supporting Assad in Syria, or the Houthis in Yemen, or other nefarious activities. And so you've handcuffed non military coercive power of the United States in exchange for an expiring nuclear deal in a few years time. In the meantime, Iran cashes those checks.
You know, let's say 100 billion a year they get under the old JCPOA. So a decade in, they've made a trillion dollars. They've dug in throughout the Middle East, they've tested and perfected their missile force, they're proliferating everywhere, and they're now allowed to have the kind of nuclear capabilities and production you see today, uh, all with a lot more money in their pocket.
So that is the main driver of what the Trump administration saw and the decision that was made for the United States to leave the JCPOA in 2018 and to reimpose [00:14:00] sanctions. The idea, the premise from the Trump administration being We're on a cruise control path to an Iranian nuclear capability anyways, only we're not able to stop, curb, any of the other illicit activities.
If we're going to have a crisis with the regime, let's have it sooner than later, when they're poorer and weaker instead of wealthier, uh, and more capable and more spread out through the region, when their missiles are shorter range, not longer range. Uh, and, and let's try to drive a better deal. You know, there was still this goal of a better deal that you heard from President Trump.
Similar to what you heard, by the way, from President Biden when he took office. He came in saying, I want a longer and stronger deal. I don't want the JCPOA. So which is, which was, sorry, which was an implicit, uh, acknowledgement that the deal Had limits and had weaknesses. Correct. That longer and stronger was Biden's way of saying We get that the that the JCPOA the Obama JCPOA had a limited time Literally had a limited time [00:15:00] exactly and and really President Biden had had articulated That he wanted this longer and stronger deal.
He wanted to negotiate extensions to the sunsets He wanted to cover things that were not covered by the old JCPOA including missiles and terrorism Very similar, rhetorically, to what Donald Trump said he was trying to negotiate. Uh, and they would simply blame the Trump administration. You know, we could have negotiated this.
On the, on the course we were on under JCPOA, the first JCPOA bought us goodwill and was going to bring Iran into the, you know, community of nations. And when we could build on that, we could do a JCPOA 2. 0 to cover missiles and terrorism and extend the sunsets, where we would just give them more money, I suppose, in order for that to happen.
The problem, of course, is the record of that time period where the U. S. is in the JCPOA. Sees Iran's bad behavior get worse outside of the nuclear activity. Okay, so can you talk a little bit about that? What [00:16:00] was happening? You see Iran doubling down in support for Assad and their infrastructure, their military infrastructure, expanding inside Syria, having capabilities to produce UAVs and missiles, their support to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon increasing, Hamas in Gaza, Islamic Jihad.
You see them taking the Houthis Uh, from a band of rebels into a real military fighting force with the missile and UAV capabilities, uh, that are provided by the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard, to attack Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and, and try to take over Yemen. Meanwhile, they tested more ballistic missiles during JCPOA than they did before JCPOA.
So they're working overnight to try to take the money they've gotten from sanctions relief, putting it into developing longer and longer. Uh range nuclear capable missiles building out their cruise missile capabilities as well, which we saw on display Back in 2019 against the saudi aramco facility. [00:17:00] So across the board here, you know addition to obviously ongoing terrorism, sponsorship, etc.
All of these are bad behaviors underwritten in ways by the deal. And people forget, you know, I remember Lindsey Graham having a CODEL visit to Israel during JCPOA, standing on the northern border of Israel saying, we're about to have a regional war. The flood of missiles coming in here to Lebanon.
There's going to be a northern war between Israel and Lebanon and Hezbollah. And it's all because of JCPOA, and we have no tools to respond and put pressure on the Iranians. So, you know, when we looked at the option set, it was apparent to those in the Trump administration to unshackle ourselves, bring back tools of coercion, and put them on our Now, Iran responded.
in 2019, uh, when Trump, Donald Trump tried to, uh, bring Iran's oil exports to zero by restarting its nuclear [00:18:00] activities in breach of their original commitments under that JCPOA. And that sort of brings us into full picture of what's going on today. But critics of Trump's withdrawal from the JCPOA would argue, well, what did you expect?
Trump pulled, he broke the, I mean, I'm not, again, I was supportive of the administration's pulling out of the JCPOA, but I just want to give. adhering to the other side. They say, look, you guys broke the deal, you know, so what do you expect? Of course they're going to start escalating. Uh, we absolutely should have expected and did expect the Iranians to respond in some way, to escalate in some way.
Uh, and in fact, we saw for 2019 into 2020, Uh, low levels of enrichment restarting, with stockpiles increasing, uh, in excess of their limits. Both of the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility and that underground Fordow facility. But interestingly, from the time that Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran's Quds Force, the IRGC [00:19:00] Quds Force, who was taken out by a Trump ordered strike of the U.
S. military in January 2020, And he was one of the most ruthlessly effective architects of bloodshed and terror throughout the top terrorists in the world. On behalf of Iran. I mean, responsible, had lots of American soldiers, blood on their hands, Israelis, um, you know, various, um, you know, innocents throughout the Arab world, the Sunni Arab world.
I mean, he really was, um, sadly an extremely effective and, like I said, ruthless mastermind of a lot of things. Horrors in the Middle East quite so, uh, he meets, uh, his maker in January of 2020, uh, with a, uh, precision missile strike from the United States. And from that point on for a year. You don't see any further escalation by the Iranians.
It's very interesting. Uh, the idea that the U. [00:20:00] S. might use military force against Iran is finally put on the table in a very significant way. And they continue their low level of enrichment and stockpile accumulation, but they never move to high enriched uranium. They never do anything else that's very provocative on this potential escalation curve for a year.
Only in early 2021, in January 2021, Iran starts saying, Okay, we have a new president coming in. Let's start testing to see what we're going to do here. And so they announced they're moving to 20 percent high enriched uranium production. Then they start doing that at the underground facility as well.
First they did it in Natanz, then they go to Fordo. Then they announced they're going to move to 60 percent high enriched uranium, which is 99 percent of the technical way. To weapons grade uranium production and throughout this last two and a half year period the policy remained We're trying to achieve a return to that JCPOA a longer and stronger deal Don't [00:21:00] provoke the Iranians Try to incentivize some return to the nuclear deal and at every turn the Iranians responded to the Biden administration by saying Go pound sand.
We're not interested. We'll happily trade messages with you wherever you want to convene. But we're going to continue to escalate our nuclear program and escalate in other arenas as well. And that is the quandary now that the administration finds itself in two and a half years later of Every deal that's put on, been put on the table to the Iranians has been rejected.
Uh, we're now at a point, as you raised, the sunsets are so far advanced in the JCPOA, the value of going back to the JCPOA is nil. So what do you do now? What are the options now? Okay, and at the same time, just the surround sound of everything you're describing, there's a war between Russia and Ukraine, uh, that is really the number one American foreign policy priority.
Right now for the Biden [00:22:00] administration and Iran is on the wrong side, correct? There's a massive crackdown on a reform movement On the streets of Iran that involves imprisoning torturing killing a number of innocent civilians and there's a growing sense in places I never thought I would see in parts of Europe where there's like a you know, a sense of disillusionment with with Iran so on the one hand There's just like momentum moving towards Uh, a renewed isolation of Iran and by the way, in fairness to, I think with Obama, there was something that's somewhat messianic about his pursuit of normalization of relations with Iran, which I don't see in Biden.
I don't agree with that. a lot of the Biden policy, but he doesn't seem the same level of intensity and commitment to it that his, his, um, President Obama had. And then at the same time, and you and I talked about this last time you were on this podcast, at the same time there's, so there's all this pressure [00:23:00] on Iran, but there's also this, these kind of, these tracks of rapprochement between Iran and various players in the Arab world and the, specifically the Gulf states.
Correct. And we've, we've seen sort of a delay in diplomacy, I would say, for the West because primarily, interestingly, the Iranian support to the Russians didn't seem to really dissuade negotiations last fall. We knew it was going on, we knew it was deepening, and yet we still stayed in Vienna, uh, alongside European partners and tried to get Iran to a deal.
And then it fell apart. The politics of the uprising in Iran, Massa, Amini, the women of Iran being the face of a potential revolution, really collapsed the ability for the West to deliver and announce any sort of real agreement that lifted sanctions on the regime. You've seen And that's where you see people like Macron in France meeting with Yeah.
I mean, it was pretty extraordinary. [00:24:00] Completely. And if you follow as closely as I do in press reports, what some of the sort of sympathizers, empathizers with the Iran deal, with JCPOA say, as they've been pushing for some sort of nuclear diplomacy throughout this time, is the dust has settled. on the uprising, and now is a moment to seize with diplomacy.
Well, that's quite, uh, a statement to make by some I've seen quoted that the dust has settled. You know, we, FDD, we track the protests pretty closely every week, and there's dozens of protests still going on around the country. The crackdown on women continues. But, but somehow, it's not on the front page of news.
Maybe it's because of Russia. Maybe it's China. We've sort of moved on from, from the face of Iranian women. Politically speaking, so there's a window there, there's a window there on the Russia front. You know, it's very difficult We're in a political environment where we have plenty of Republicans and certainly the Republican base questioning u.
s. Support for [00:25:00] support to Ukraine and We have debates over whether or not the Biden administration has done enough to support Ukraine to victory for those who support Ukraine And the White House itself declassifies information and goes out to the podium at the White House and say hey look Here's what Iran's doing with, with the Russians.
They're deepening their relationship. They're not just providing drones now. They've helped Russia build its own drone factory that's producing drones being used against the Ukrainians. They may see ballistic missiles being transferred, short range ballistic missiles being transferred from Iran to Russia at some point after the sunset in October on the missile embargo.
And yet, somehow, that has not stopped the possibility of nuclear diplomacy. Um, so, in Europe, you're seeing the Europeans really sort of conflicted with themselves. We're supporting Ukraine, but we love the idea of the Iran deal. We don't like human rights violations. The JCPOA is falling apart. There's a sunset in October.
What do we do? And all of these questions [00:26:00] Alongside Iran continuing to drive forward in its enrichment, continue to expand its program in a very threatening way, is what is driving what you're seeing in the news right now of whether there is this mini deal arrangement understanding, uh, that you talked about up front.
Okay, so now let's, let's go right to that. So what, based on what you understand and your sources, what is in the cards here for some kind of mini deal? I am 50 50 today of whether the United States is negotiating a mini deal with Iran, um, Or is already in a mini deal with Iran. Meaning in a mini deal that they haven't announced.
Correct, and that they won't. Uh, I say that because, like anything else, it's follow the money. Follow the money. If there is an arrangement, or an understanding, or a mini deal, whatever you want to call it with Iran, that comes with money being delivered. or made accessible to the Iranians. If you read all the press reports, and you look at all the translator [00:27:00] reports out of every country in the region, Iranian statements, Omani statements, Oman, by the way, where we understand the U.
S. government has been conducting indirect talks with the Iranians for, for several weeks now, uh, uh, To try to come up with this arrangement, uh, senior official at the NSC, Brett McGurk, having gone to Oman, passed messages through the Sultan. The Sultan travels to Iran last month, delivers these messages to the Supreme Leader.
We get messages back. This is all being leaked out by Western sources. There's negotiations going on in Qatar, and you see statements and Iranian officials going back and forth from Iran to, to Doha, uh, with respect to how money would be transferred into, uh, Qatari banks that, that the Iranians could use.
There's all these press reports out of Iraq of money. Uh, that's being freed up potentially for the Iranians. So, so it's all about follow the money. And there's several pots of money that the Iranians want access to. If you can't do a big [00:28:00] deal, which would involve oil sanctions relief, lifting our oil sanctions in some way.
Uh, lifting sector based sanctions, you know, we have sanctions on the entirety of their energy sector, petrochemicals, not just, not just crude oil. Uh, we have sanctions on their metals industry and, and all kinds of, if you can't do all those big kind of sanctions relief, then what's the easiest way of giving Iran sanctions relief in exchange for a very limited concession?
It's just freeing up cash that's frozen. Where, where do they have frozen cash? Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you. A couple of big places. Baghdad? Mm hmm. So explain why. Why is, why is Iranian money sitting in Iraq, in Iraqi banks? So, Iraq depends largely on Iran for the import of electricity. Mm hmm.
And if the United States did not allow Iraq to import Iranian electricity the [00:29:00] lights would go off in Baghdad. It's a big problem. We've been addressing this for years So in the US has a national security interest in making sure the electrical infrastructure is functioning in Iraq And so what the US government does is effectively Turns a blind eye, despite all these sanctions, to allowing Iraq to do business with Iran when it comes to Iraqi electricity.
So, so we, we issue a formal waiver under our sanctions law to allow that import to happen, free of US sanctions, because the import itself would be sanctionable, uh, and the US Treasury Department goes to Baghdad, And has some serious conversations and says, Listen, we're gonna take a political hit in Washington for issuing this waiver.
Nobody gets it. Nobody understands why on earth you guys are still dependent on Iran for electricity. But we do, and we, we're not gonna have the lights go off in Baghdad. We can't afford that to happen, but we need you to do something for us. Don't allow the Iranians to access the cash. Put it into an escrow account.[00:30:00]
In Baghdad, keep depositing money there, in Iraqi currency, and that's it. It's gonna get locked up. And one day, if we ever have a deal, we'll work out how, what happens to that money. But for now, it's technically on Iran's balance sheet, they just can't access the money. But you're saying that day is now.
That day is now. So the money is flowing. So we have already seen a report. Dinar is traveling from Baghdad to Tehran. Not to Tehran. Here's the interesting thing. What's what's happening is it appears from press reports the Biden administration told the Iranians come forward with your invoices And get them paid out of Baghdad.
So they came forward and they got a bunch of different debts paid up front a few weeks ago. 2. 76 billion dollars of different invoices paid. Money to Turkmenistan that was owed by Iran. Money to various international organizations of dues and other things. And imagine other imports as well. And then, [00:31:00] just on Monday of this week, an Iranian official says to Iranian press, Oh, by the way, we now have access to all 10 billion that has been trapped in Iraq.
Now, that hasn't been confirmed yet, but there's clearly money being made accessible and available for the Iranians to clear debts. It's sort of, think of it as an extra territorial banking structure that we are allowing them to access. They can't repatriate the money, but they can use the money to subsidize.
And, and sort of move their, move the cash around inside the country and pay off debts with money left outside the country. Where does, where does South Korea fit into all of this, because that's another South Korea has another one of these escrow accounts. Mm hmm. It's a little different. Um, it's not for electricity.
It's not sort of an ad hoc arrangement negotiated by the Treasury Department. This stems from South Korea's import of Iranian crude oil during the time for which that was allowed under U. S. sanctions waivers. Uh, and so [00:32:00] we know that obviously during JCPOA and even That first six month period, or first year, I should say, after getting out of JCPOA, the U.
S. continued to allow some countries to import oil from Iran, uh, so long as they were starting to reduce it. The requirement of our law that we passed in Congress over a decade ago is that if you are one of those countries lucky enough to import Iranian oil with a U. S. exception, then you can only do so if you deposit all of your payments for that oil into an escrow account and don't let the Iranians have access to it.
So, 7 billion, according to public reports, have built up in Seoul, and the Iranians have had no access to that money since Donald Trump removed all the oil waivers in 2019. And so, this is a primary target of, hey, if you can get Iran access to this 7 billion, in some creative way, that's another 7 billion to [00:33:00] add.
to your potential sanctions relief. Now, the South Koreans are infamous for leaking anything very quickly. And they have leaked at every step of negotiations that we've seen where the Iranians have tied, even outside of this mini deal, that 7 billion to potentially the release of U. S. hostages in Iran.
It's all sort of jumbled up now inside of a nuclear arrangement and hostages being a 7 billion, but The U. S. position is that the 7 billion can only be, uh, used by Iran, potentially, for quote unquote humanitarian purposes. And so that's why the Iranians have sort of tied in the, you know, a humanitarian gesture of the release, mutual release of hostages, prisoners, uh, by the United States and by Iran, uh, in exchange for the release of that 7 billion dollars.
Um, that, how that money moves is, is complicated. And I'll [00:34:00] try to explain this very, very quickly. You would need either a waiver issued by the president to allow money to just open up and the South Koreans to Transact and allow the Iranians to take the money back to Tehran or pay for it, you know in South Korea Mm hmm or a legal sleight of hand where the Treasury Department Issues what's called a general license don't have to get into what that is But it's another technical legal term for sanctions where they would allow a Qatari bank This is getting innovative to be an interlocutor Where money in South Korea can be transacted.
with a bank in, uh, in Doha, and that bank then will pay off some sort of debt on behalf of the Iranians and or purchases that the Iranians have asked for in the quote unquote humanitarian space, whatever that means, very broadly defined. That's where Qatar suddenly shows up in the news here. So you [00:35:00] got Oman doing shuttle diplomacy, you got the Qataris getting into the act to somehow be part of the 7 billion dollar transaction For the South Korean funds for Iran and you have Baghdad that's just saying, you know, here's 10 billion dollars potentially What would you like to buy you put all that money together?
There's one other tranche of cash we know about Again, getting very creative here. How do you get quick cash to the Iranians? The IMF, the International Monetary Fund. There's a new innovation at the IMF, relatively new now, called Special Drawing Rights, SDRs, which is this bizarre basket of currencies, you know, monopoly money for the IMF, where a country can say, hey, we need some quick cash, um, give us some sort of SDR draw, and we'll then be able to cash it into some sort of fiat currency, And our, you know, capital commitment to the bank will simply go up by the amount of SDRs we've drawn.
And so it's sort [00:36:00] of like they're technically borrowing their own money from the bank, but it's actually a bailout from the imf And so reportedly on the table is a seven billion dollar imf sdr draw for the iranians Okay, so before we let you go, I do want to hit two other issues quickly folks in the administration I speak to say look you don't understand there's this whole hostage negotiation going on and you critics of what we're doing need to give us some space because There's going to be no JCPOA, so calm down, and apparently the Israelis sense that there's going to be no JCPOA, which is why this Netanyahu government is not as hot in opposition publicly to what the administration is doing relative to what Netanyahu did in 2015 against the Obama administration, but there is quietly this hostage deal going on.
So what's your reaction? Yeah, I'll touch on that in a second, but I do want just to finish this point and that is What are we getting by the way [00:37:00] for this understanding with Iran, this mini deal, right? So if there's 24 billion dollars of cash potentially on the table, and by the way Iraq's a revolving fund because they keep importing electricity, so there will be additional cash still constantly there.
We are reportedly getting an understanding that Iran will simply not enrich 90 percent weapons grade uranium. That's it. That's it. There's some other reporting of maybe they won't kill Americans in Syria. They won't shoot at oil tankers, or they're not shooting at oil tankers. Yeah, they, you know, they just tried to seize another couple this week.
Uh, so, some of these things they just won't do. So it's like, it's like a protection racket, right? Like, we won't hurt you more than we're already hurting you if you give us the money. Um. There is a con there's a site that is deep underground under construction right now that we believe is likely to be used for enrichment.
It's deeper underground, more fortified potentially than the Fordow underground facility. It's not included in this understanding. If that facility is completed and nuclear material is [00:38:00] introduced there, it's game over by the way on the weaponization front potentially. But, be that as it may, so you have this money out there, if that's what the understanding is, and why are they calling it an understanding?
Why won't they acknowledge there's an interim deal? So, if they said there's a deal, and they're giving sanctions relief as part of the deal in exchange Has to go to Congress? Has to go to Congress. They don't want to do that. Okay. Just, just, just 30 seconds of that. I know you've got to go in a couple minutes.
No, it's fine. Just, just so listeners understand, what, what Rich is referring to is that in the JCPOA, in the, in the Iraq legi sorry, the Iran legislation that went before Congress to Deal with it to to sort of sanctify, legislate the JCPOA, any changes to it would require congressional approval, right? I'm going through congressional review.
Any agreement related to Iran's nuclear program that implicates statutory sanctions relief Must come to Congress for a 30 day review [00:39:00] period prior to any sanctions relief being provided. That's what the law says. So if there is So your theory is that they're trying to avoid having to go through that process.
They're trying to avoid calling it a deal and they're trying to avoid any Implication that they are issuing waivers tied to Iran's nuclear program. Okay, you're gonna then The hostage situation, listen, Anybody whose heart doesn't break for an American citizen who's being held hostage in Iran You know, has, has some therapy to go through or something.
Obviously, it's horrific. And for those who have talked to former U. S. hostages, uh, held in Iran, it, it's a horrifying experience. Um, where it's clearly, these people have done nothing wrong. They're Americans who were there for various reasons, research, travel, whatever it is. Uh, put aside what, you know, whether it was smart for them to be there in the first place.
They went. How many of our friends go to crazy places where like, you went where? What? Do you ever even read the State Department website? [00:40:00] Uh, and and they get taken by Iran as part of their hostage diplomacy, which is to say they take hostages to be able to use To get money out of us later on. They've done this before.
There was a side deal to the JCPOA where the Obama administration paid billions of dollars to get US hostages out back then. This would be potentially a seven billion dollar deal for an unknown number of hostages. At least three. The Americans want all four that we know of that are being held. The Iranians right now reportedly will only deal on three of the four, which is holding up the deal.
According to some reports. The bottom line is this. And this, by the way, is not just an Iran issue. We just saw China just, uh, enacted a new law, right, where they're threatening U. S. businesses, uh, with, with potential espionage charges, uh, of what they're doing there. And the U. S. State Department just issued a travel warning to all Americans to avoid travel to China because you might get picked [00:41:00] up as a hostage in China under this new law.
Russia obviously has a Wall Street Journal reporter now behind bars, uh, with trumped up espionage charges. I would call him a U. S. hostage that's being held in Russia, and we've seen other U. S. hostages taken there. If we pay for hostages, if we treat the taking of Americans hostage as just a normal course of diplomacy, This is just what, you know, the cost of doing business to be Americans, we'll figure it out.
Maybe we'll get lucky and get a, get a big fish that we arrest some big criminals, some terrorists, and we can put them out, you know, as an exchange later on. Maybe we'll pay some cash here or there and get our Americans out. You're just going to get more and more Americans taken hostage. It's a horrible policy, and it won't be something that we think about in Iran.
It'll be something we think about in China soon. So, you know, yes, do all you can to get Americans out, but we need to [00:42:00] have a complete overhaul and updating of how we treat the taking of US hostages around the world, not just in Iran. It can't just be, okay, let's wait around. We'll see who they want in return for Evan or for somebody else.
No, we have capabilities. We have sanctions. We have cyber capabilities. We have active measures we can take. We can expand the networks of who the jailkeeper is and who the judges are and who their families are. If we don't go on offense for the taking of U. S. hostages around the world, we're going to always be playing defense.
And if we pay 7 billion as part of this deal for the release of U. S. hostages, whew, I wouldn't go anywhere for a while. Well, it's not just 7 plus basically a soft green light to The enhancement of the nuclear program. Correct. Yeah. Because remember, everything except for 90 percent enrichment would be allowed under the understanding.
Rich, um, we will leave it there. Thank you again for coming on and, [00:43:00] um, giving us a reality check on the, what should we call this? The Iran deal that shall not be named? Uh, the, what are you calling it? I mean, what do you call a deal that you believe is in existence that it isn't? Deal by any other name.
It's Shakespearean. Deal by any other name, that's Alon, that's what we're gonna call the episode. Deal by any other name. Alright, there we go. Uh, Rich, thank you for this. Uh, we will, um, look forward to having you back on. Thanks, Dan.
That's our show for today. To keep up with Rich Goldberg, you can follow him on Twitter at Rich underscore Goldberg. And also you can Track his work down at the foundation for defensive democracies. That's fdd. org On the web or on twitter at fdd and be sure to subscribe to his podcast the jewish insider podcast Which you can find wherever you get your podcast.
I highly recommend [00:44:00] it. Call me back is produced by Ilan Benetar until next time I'm your host dan Senor.