Status quo ante

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NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 16th of June. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. 

Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Up first: A path to peace.

President Trump electronically signed an agreement with Iran’s lead negotiator, the Speaker of Parliament. The president saying the details will not be made public until after Friday, the day he said the Strait of Hormuz will reopen safely.

EICHER: So, then with that comes a 60-day process toward a broader settlement. But many of the main disputes seem a long way from resolution: the nuclear program, sanctions relief, and whether Lebanon is included.

Joining us now is retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Mike Nelson, he’s now Chief of Staff for the University of Pennsylvania’s Washington office. He previously served in the Middle East with U.S. Special Forces.

Mike, good morning.

MIKE NELSON: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

EICHER: And thanks for being here. Mike, I'll note just a few hours after news of the deal came out, Brent Crude fell from almost a hundred and ten a barrel to below eighty, so there must be something, but we just don’t have the precise details. 

So what is your best read here and how would you characterize what’s been accomplished, if anything?

NELSON: Well, there's a split between what we know and what we don't yet know that apparently we'll find out sometime on or after Friday when the deal is beyond electronically signed, but physically signed, I guess, by the participants who are going to be there in Europe. 

What we know and what we heard the vice president say on Good Morning America on Monday are the accomplishments of this agreement are, number one, a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. And then the second thing is a promise that Iran will never pursue a nuclear weapon. 

That second part it seems, at least right now, what we have no, different from the language that was in the JCPOA agreed to in 2015. We also don't know what the final agreement on that nuclear program is going to be, which likely will be something less than the maximalist terms that we expressed at the beginning of the conflict. 

So all said and done, this seems very much like a advantageous agreement to the Iranian regime, and one that at best puts certain conditions to the same way they were on the 27th of February before we started the conflict, and at worst rewards the Iranians for some of their behavior.

EICHER: What do you think a verifiable agreement would actually require? Because I know that is a sticking point there, at least politically in the U.S., that this is no better than the JCPOA, but we don't really know that, do we?

NELSON: We don't yet. But part of the problem is what's unspoken. 

What we do know is at the end of the sixty day period, the president claims that he will either return to military action or snap back some of the sanctions. 

So whatever gets negotiated at the end is probably going to be something that looks like maybe promises of dilution of the the high endly enriched uranium on Iranian territory. Maybe that's verifiable, maybe it's not, but it's gonna be something that is probably a rhetorical win for the president or something he's gonna claim is, but in in reality it does nothing to to deal with the final problem of of Iranian nuclear ambitions.

BROWN: Mike, one of the biggest points of disagreement appears to be Lebanon. Iran insisting on an end to fighting there, but Israel doesn't seem on board with that. 

So what's Israel's role here? I mean, you know, is there a rift with the U.S. here?

NELSON: Well, I think there clearly is a rift in that the Israelis seem somewhat surprised and taken aback by: number one, that there was a settlement for the the memorandum of understanding, and number two, what's in it. They weren't a party to the negotiations, the President has expressed his frustration with Netanyahu over some of the recent Israeli strikes. And this represents kind of a disconnect between what the White House has said we were trying to achieve with the conflict and what we are allowing, at least in terms of Iranian demands.

At the outset, the president said one of the goals was severing the links between Iran and their regional proxies, including Hezbollah. 

Hezbollah continues to represent a threat to Israel from the ground and the air in the terms of rocket and and drone attacks. Israel has responded and has the right to respond to threats to their their territorial integrity. And the president seems to be extending a blanket of protection over Hezbollah as part of this final ceasefire agreement that not only does not sever the links between Iran and their proxies, it codifies it. 

So from that perspective of what we're trying to accomplish, it's not only not accomplishing what we set out to, it's having the reverse effect.

EICHER: So before the war, the Iranian regime was facing internal pressure and protests. We saw that after the war many of Iran's leaders were killed, but even with the the new faces at the top, it it doesn't seem that much has changed in terms of the radical nature of the regime. I mean, I remember the idea advanced that this operation may mean freedom for the Iranian people. 

Do you think that's closer today than when the war started or or is it just kind of status quo?

NELSON: Oh, I think it is further away for the Iranian people. I think the Iranian people are in a worse position now than they were at the beginning of the year. 

Despite what the White House might claim now about what the goals were and whether regime change was in the cards when when we started the conflict, the president spoke pretty bombastically about help being on the way, or in his statement on the twentieth of February when he announced Epic Fury, saying specifically, "the hour of your liberation is at hand" to the Iranian people. It's not a far stretch to say that Iranians who did hear that took hope that the United States was gonna sponsor and and facilitate their goals of of democracy and freedom. 

Now, not only have we not done that, not only have we turned a blind eye to up to thirty thousand Iranians who were killed for protesting at the beginning of the year, there is some reporting that the language in this document may contain clauses that say that the United States will not interfere with Iranian domestic issues. 

So it seems to be giving permission to the Iranians to continue to repress, crack down, execute, and oppress their people. 

So if I were the Iranian people I would be, you know, I would consider this a pretty large betrayal in the difference between the president's rhetoric and what we delivered.

BROWN: Lieutenant Colonel Mike Nelson is a retired Army Special Forces officer who served in the Middle East. 

Mike, thank you so much.

NELSON: Thank you.

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