00:00Let's bring in Victoria Coates, vice president of national security and foreign policy at the Heritage Foundation.
00:06You probably heard Senator Jack Reed talking to Shannon Bream a little bit earlier in the hour.
00:12He said this this potential deal with Iran that the Trump administration is appears ready to sign is not giving
00:20us anything that we didn't have under Barack Obama.
00:23Your reaction?
00:25Oh, good afternoon, John. Good to be with you.
00:27Yeah, I think Senator Reed is in a rather difficult position as a card carrying supporter of the Obama era
00:34joint comprehensive plan of action, the JCPOA, which failed miserably.
00:39You know, he's trying to cover cover his back here and say, oh, this deal isn't going to be any
00:44good because it's you know, it's we already had all this with the JCPOA.
00:48That is just categorically false. For starters, we don't know what's in this deal.
00:52And I think everybody on X should take a deep breath and stop freaking out about a deal we haven't
00:57seen yet and being in a race to be wrong.
01:01But let's look at what we do know. We do know President Trump was the only president willing to take
01:06major military action against Iran in advance of any negotiations and to take also major economic action against them to
01:15decimate their economy.
01:16This gives him leverage. President Obama never had in those. And what's more, we're hearing very clearly out of the
01:23White House, no cash up front like the Obama people did and dismantle the nuclear program.
01:29Don't enshrine it in some deal so they can restart it again later. That's what Senator Reed is trying to
01:35defend.
01:35But apparently there's going to be some kind of a 60 day negotiating period after the agreement is signed.
01:42You know, what's to say what's to prevent Iran from dragging its feet and at the end of 60 days
01:47saying, oh, we didn't really mean it.
01:49We don't want to do this deal.
01:52I think what happened last week is what prevents that from happening.
01:55The additional strikes from the United States where, as Secretary Hegseth was saying, we can strike whatever we want, whenever
02:02we want in Iran.
02:03And they know that now. They might not have fully taken that on board before Operation Epic Fury and before
02:09the U.S.
02:11went back in last week to take out some more missile launchers, some more radar systems.
02:15And we can keep doing that.
02:17So it's entirely up to them if they would like to do the sensible thing and actually come to this
02:23good deal for the Iranian people.
02:25Or do they want to just keep on being obstreperous?
02:28And I'm hearing a lot of reports about political fracturing inside Iran.
02:32It may be we don't have to do that much to push the situation over the edge.
02:37Yeah, so much of their leadership has been decimated.
02:39It's kind of hard to know who is in charge right now, but I guess it's the guy who is
02:44basically in command of the Revolutionary Guard there.
02:48Yeah, that would be Vahini.
02:50And so he controls the guns, and that's a pretty good place to start if you want to be in
02:54power in Iran right now.
02:56But we also have the new supreme leader who's showing potentially signs of life, Mashtaba Khamenei, the son of the
03:03old one.
03:04And, you know, the president has been saying that he's somebody we might be able to come to an arrangement
03:09with.
03:09But my big question tonight, John, is does it even matter what's in this deal?
03:14Is Iran too damaged, both in terms of their infrastructure and their economy, to be able to recover, regardless of
03:21what's in this deal?
03:22I think that's a very real possibility.
03:24So let's see what comes out.
03:26But they have a just world of problems, regardless of what's on this piece of paper.
03:31U.N. Ambassador Michael Waltz, as you might expect, is defending the Trump administration's position here.
03:36He says this is way better than any negotiating the Obama administration did.
03:41Listen.
03:43Under the JCPOA, under Obama's deal, there was not any time, anywhere verification.
03:50They could determine or even delay the inspectors.
03:54And most importantly, they could just call a site, a military site, and then it was off limits.
03:59And number two, you're not going to see, you know, these pallets of cash moving up front.
04:05It is going to be pay for performance.
04:08So it seems that after 47 years, the Iranians maybe are realizing there's a new sheriff in town.
04:16I think so.
04:17And I would add to Ambassador Waltz's list, you know, number three, which is I haven't seen any sunsets on
04:24this deal.
04:25And if there were any, they would be a whole lot longer than 10 years.
04:28Say we had Senator Reid's dream.
04:31We'd stayed in the JCPOA.
04:32Well, guess what?
04:33It expired last year.
04:34So that wouldn't even be in effect at this point.
04:38That's a non-deal.
04:39And so that is not a permanent solution.
04:41As Ambassador Waltz was also saying, it didn't get rid of all of this infrastructure.
04:46They kept it.
04:47And then after President Biden came in in 2021, they activated all of the sophisticated centrifuges, and that's when they
04:54spun up their highly enriched uranium.
04:56So I think what President Trump has done, which is demonstrating overwhelming, devastating military and economic superiority, has given him
05:06the leverage to negotiate something meaningful, but also to damage the regime so badly.
05:11As I said before, I don't know that they can recover.
05:13We'll see.
05:15Victoria Coates from the Heritage Foundation.
Comments