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Iran’s nuclear strategy is unlikely to be dismantled despite U.S. military pressure, as Tehran’s security concerns, distrust of Washington and regional threats continue to shape its calculations, Iranian-American political analyst Sina Azodi said.
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00:01your book traces Iran nuclear program back to the 1950s when the US was
00:06actually Iran's nuclear patron under the Atoms for Peace program what is the one
00:12moment or episode from the early US Iran nuclear partnership that you think
00:16Washington has most forgotten when it talks about Iran's nuclear threat today
00:26I think what is critical I mean yes Atoms for Peace profile was provided to
00:35Iranians by the Eisenhower administration but one thing that most people forget is
00:42that back then the United States was encouraging Iran to diversify its energy
00:50sources and recommended Iran that it would invest in nuclear energy there is
01:01a report from Stanford University that I cite in the book and that report
01:07suggested to the Iranian government that it needs some 20,000 megawatts of
01:15electricity by the year in 1994 and that nuclear energy was the best viable option
01:25I say I say this is the moment that this is something that the American side has
01:31forgotten and it's because of the fact that the very same people who are
01:36encouraging that later came to question the very reasoning of the Iranian nuclear
01:44program including people like Henry Kissinger who said many times that the
01:52Shah is visionary he is investing for Iran's future in like you know buying
01:57nuclear reactors then later he switched sides he questioned the Iranian nuclear
02:02program by suggesting that Iran has oil and gas thank you in your recent article you
02:10argued that US nuclear superiority provided a little leverage over Iran during the
02:1640-day war and what does that tell us about the nuclear question that has
02:21dominated US Iran relations for decades it means what I was trying to explain in
02:30that article was that I looked at the historical episodes where a middle power had
02:37fought the war with a great power armed with nuclear weapons and I highlighted the
02:44fact that nuclear weapons played no role in those conflicts and the conflicts that I
02:50looked at where the fought and wars between Argentina and the United Kingdom and the
02:57Ukraine Russia Ukrainian conflict and the recent Iran and United States war where nuclear
03:07weapons played no role whatsoever and what it means is that nuclear weapons are an
03:15effective tool of deterrent but provide no coercive leverage meaning that you cannot use nuclear weapons to
03:26force another state to back down it is an effective tool of deterrent with the threat of punishment but
03:37I showcased that in these conflicts nuclear weapons played no role and they were not
03:45even considered in the political discussions of those countries that had them
03:52thank you in your book you mentioned that the strategic logic of Iran's nuclear program survived the 1979 revolution
04:02what exactly survived the technology the security rational or both of them
04:11what I was trying to explain was that the logic of the program survived because the threat perceptions have not
04:19fundamentally changed
04:20what I mean by that is that the regardless of the ruling regime in Iran political leadership who sits in
04:30Tehran looks
04:32uh uh when when they look at their neighborhood uh they see the threats coming from all over
04:40um from the Persian Gulf it's a place where Iran was historically invaded the first time that the
04:48Iranians had to deal with a naval power was in 1600s when the portuguese navy shows up occupies the
04:55Hormuz island and Iranians did not have the naval power to uh uh counter that threat again in world war
05:03ii Iran was invaded from the Persian Gulf this is why the Shah insisted that he needs to be the
05:09dominant
05:10power in the Persian Gulf he said that Strait of Hormoz is our jugular way and you hear the almost
05:17similar
05:17remarks from the leaders of the Islamic Republic who think that the security of Persian Gulf is paramount to
05:25Iran's security uh this is where Iran lives this is Iran cannot go anywhere else um also Iranians look
05:34at the neighborhood with the threats that are coming mostly from the west the Shah was extremely concerned
05:40with the threat of the Ba'athis regimes in Iraq and in Syria he wanted to be ready in case
05:51uh Iraq develops nuclear weapons and we saw what happened in 1980 when Iraq finally decided that it
05:58needs to counter what in Saddam's view the Iranian threat so my argument is that these threat perceptions
06:06have survived the 1979 revolution um and I think they will continue to do so um it doesn't matter from
06:15my perspective it doesn't matter which ruling regime will be in Tehran they see threats coming from
06:21pretty much all over the place and the book discusses the internal debates over uranium enrichment what made
06:30enrichment so important to Iran rather than simply obtaining nuclear fuel from abroad
06:37so um many reasons I mean two main reasons first of all after the revolution when the leadership in Tehran
06:49decided to restart the program uh and the late president Kashmir Rafsanjani was really the main driver
06:57of restarting the program they quickly realized that the very same countries who were encouraging Iran to buy
07:03nuclear reactors from them not only they didn't sell nuclear reactors but they refused to uh uh deliver
07:11the fuel that Iran had bought uh the case of you there for example that they refused the fuel they
07:17told
07:18Iranians that they don't you don't have a nuclear reactor and Iranians asked for the uh ask the Europeans
07:24that they sell nuclear reactors to Iran and they said you uh you have oil and gas you don't need
07:30nuclear
07:30nuclear technology and this was really under the the pressure of the Reagan administration that by 1983
07:36had started a campaign to limit Iran's access to nuclear technology uh and and Iranians thought that
07:43they had made a lot of investment uh investments in the nuclear program they either had the option of
07:50abandoning everything or trying to somehow uh resurrect the program and this is why they decided
07:58by 1987 to pursue enrichment um um which could give the Iranian Iranians the option of providing nuclear fuel
08:10and and this leads me to my second point which is the threat that Iraq the uh the acute security
08:18threat
08:18that Iraq its chemical weapons and its nuclear program posed to Iran the Iranian leadership back then thought
08:26that Iraq has uh chemical weapons they're using it um nobody says anything to them um and if they get
08:33their hands on nuclear weapons um they might use one and nobody will say anything to them so um based
08:40on
08:40the public interviews that i've seen from Iranian officials they wanted to be ready for the day
08:47that if uh Iraq uses or develops nuclear arsenal which would oppose a serious threat to Iran's security
08:57uh days before u.s attack on Iran uh on February you argued that air power alone cannot force Iran
09:07uh to
09:08capitulate after the actual war uh did that argument still hold up um absolutely and we've seen what happens
09:17and again this is a uh historical case study that i did um um i showed that in in previous
09:24air campaigns
09:25uh uh the the the the party that used air power was unable to force the other side to uh
09:33capitulate
09:34i used many examples i had to cut down some of them uh but uh going back to 1945 when
09:42the allied uh countries
09:43were uh using firebombs on dresden and and japanese cities they were unable to force them to surrender
09:52until germany was defeated uh on the ground and japan was facing was uh bombed uh twice by nuclear weapons
10:01and by the way it was facing the imminent threat of soviet invasion so that's one case that i did
10:07in 1990s yugoslavia did not back down despite the nato air campaign until there was a threat of ground
10:16using ground troops um and then they uh uh surrender uh so in all of these cases uh you see
10:26that air power
10:26is a very effective tool of destruction but it is unable to deliver the political victory uh that
10:35the other side uh is seeking uh you need ground troops uh to force uh surrender and this is why
10:43again
10:43we see that after 40 days of intense air campaigns um iranians did not surrender so uh what do you
10:52think
10:52that uh washington uh ultimately achieved uh just coercion and degradation of iran's capabilities or
11:01something else what degrading of of the military capability was an achievement but um the the fact
11:11remains that victory in war is not defined by the amount of destruction that you bring it is defined
11:19by whether one side can achieve its political objective of the war and this is the classic definition
11:26of victory um so if diplomacy and war are the two sides of the same coin if diplomacy failed to
11:37achieve
11:37political objective the question is whether war was able to achieve the same political objective
11:44and when we look at the uh the political demands uh of the trump administration which was first of all
11:52uh an unconditional surrender this is in donald trump's truth uh true social um was unconditional surrender
12:00achieve the answer is clearly a no was regime change issue the answer is clearly a no
12:05uh you know uh was the united states able the trump himself uh he had demanded that he would play
12:13a role
12:14in choosing the next supreme leader of iran did he play a role in that so all of these uh
12:19the answer
12:20to all of these questions uh is a no um so you cannot say that the u.s won the
12:27war now on the iranian side
12:29um iran's political objective of the war was just was simple survive um and it was able to serve to
12:38achieve
12:39that political objective thank you uh after uh the 12 day uh the 40 day uh war uh in may
12:49you argued that
12:50zero enrichment was never a realistic uh outcome even after the extensive damage caused uh by the u.s uh
12:58iran
12:59has continued to defend uh enrichment capability uh what is so important about uh enriching uh the iranian
13:08for tehran um there are many factors uh one is what i mentioned earlier the fact that iranians
13:16know that uh nuclear fuel will never arrive um the guarantees of delivering nuclear fuel
13:24are meaningless from the perspective of the iranian leadership in fact as i explained in the book the
13:30reason that iran decided to start enriching the 20 percent was that iranian leadership in 2011 believed
13:37that um the the west will not provide the 20 percent nuclear fuel for the tehran research reactor
13:45this is why iran and this would cause an embarrassment for the country this is their words not mine
13:51and that's why they need to start enriching so one is the historical precedent which i think plays a
13:56critical role lack of trust um which comes with that and second i think it's the prestige um that comes
14:05with it and this you know nationalistic sentiments that come with it uh because iran along with israel
14:12is the only country in the middle east that has the capacity to provide uh to produce uh this own
14:19material
14:19um so this is why i don't i i i think uh that uh they'll not give up on the
14:26principle of enrichment
14:28um and now that we're seeing an agreement between a nuclear agreement between the u.s and saudi
14:35iradia which includes the option of enrichment i think that that this agreement only um um makes irani
14:45it makes the iranian position uh uh more stiffened uh thank you uh after the u.s withdrawal from the
14:54jcpoa
14:55and then uh the 2026 war and then the failure of uh islam islamabad mou uh do you think iran
15:05realistically
15:06can trust another nuclear agreement with washington there was never a trust and there's never trust in
15:16international politics because your friend today can be your enemy tomorrow um i mean several times
15:23it has happened but it's really international agreements um are about credibility um now does
15:30uh i mean does washington have any credibility in tehran the answer is really no i mean we've had the
15:37experience of uh the jcpoa we had the experience of twice um iranians and americans negotiating and as
15:46foreign minister at all she likes to call it the negotiation table was bombed and so lack of
15:52trust um credibility is there um um there are forces in both tehran and washington who try to undermine
16:02any uh diplomatic path um so i think all of these factors play um a role thank you uh in
16:13your analysis
16:15uh in august you argued that iran's conventional capabilities uh particularly its missiles and drones
16:24and the ability to disrupt uh shipping through the strait of hormones may provide more practical leverage
16:30than a nuclear weapon uh after uh all happened during the 40 days war and then all of the developments
16:39uh after that uh do you still uh believe that uh iran's uh most uh effective deterrent lies in these
16:49conventional capabilities i think so yes uh first of all the the bar for uh the deployment of nuclear weapons
17:01is very high this is why you've seen uh president trump said recently when he was asked about you know
17:08using nuclear weapons in iran he called it a stupid question um that you know he said you know i'm
17:14not
17:14even thinking about it um and on a side note there's a lot of discussion that you know you know
17:20a tactical
17:21weapon might be used you know there's no such discussion um and it will it is extremely unlikely uh but
17:29we saw
17:29what happened iranians were able to uh um deliver um a severe punishment um on international shipping uh disrupt
17:40uh international uh uh and global markets uh fertilizers um inflation across the world um in the united
17:51states states energy markets have been disrupted so um and plus um uh the the amount of damage that iran
18:01has been able to deliver with his conventional weapon i think uh has been enough that uh or we're
18:10punishing enough in my opinion than uh just merely having uh nuclear weapons thank you uh your book was
18:20largely uh research before uh this war if you rewrote the final chapter today uh what is the one thing
18:28you would change and what is the one thing you would keep exactly as it is i think i'll keep
18:35everything
18:37the way it is um i mean of course i will add the reset more uh but my conclusions have
18:45not changed
18:45uh because in the conclusion uh because in the conclusion um i make the point that iranian nuclear
18:52program is extremely unlikely uh to be dismantled um i still stand by that argument i still think that the
19:02option of iran going uh for the bomb is uh less likely uh but the option the other scenario which
19:11is iran
19:12um um regaining um regaining its nuclear capacity while uh staying below the finish line um is the most
19:22likely scenario and the evidence that we've seen that iran is trying to rebuild its nuclear program points
19:29to this uh scenario uh thank you uh according uh to trump's speech uh at uh un uh general
19:42assembly um uh i want uh to know your uh analysis about uh what's going on right now today uh
19:50between
19:52u.s and iran and uh of course uh israel uh because the netanyahu's speech we haven't uh heard it
20:01yet
20:02uh trump and netanyahu uh have continued to emphasize that uh iran's nuclear program
20:13was the reason that they had to uh attack attack on iran and given your recent analysis of the limits
20:22of
20:22military coercion do you think u.s and israel are still seeking a nuclear agreement or
20:29uh uh considering uh what trump said uh they're now uh looking for regime change uh more than uh
20:39the nuclear program um i think uh they are using the threat of regime change to get an agreement with
20:49iranians um i don't think the trump administration um doesn't care who is in power in tehran um one day
20:58once when he's happy he starts you know praising the iranian leadership uh the other day when he's not
21:04happy uh that you know the deal uh the you know the mou didn't go through he started blasting them
21:12so you know he uh fluctuates his movie uh he starts you know uh um blasting on his true social
21:21at
21:212am uh 2am uh dc time uh in a way i think that he likes to use this unpredictability um
21:31and and
21:34outlandish remarks to threaten um other states uh it works for him but it doesn't work for the united
21:45states and its uh credibility uh around the globe uh and we've seen how europeans and canadians are now
21:52seeing and using the word threat the narrative of threat in reference to the united states i think
21:58this is key now um um so i guess the point i'm trying to make is that all of his
22:05remarks uh when he
22:07went on at the uh union general assembly he said you know i'm gonna annihilate iran all of those things
22:14i'm gonna send iran back to the stone age i think these are just um um uh threats uh to
22:22force iranians
22:24to blink and agree to an agreement uh that he wants to he really likes to sign quickly
22:32uh trump made threats uh but yet the two sides um had a meeting and uh uh discussed about uh
22:42three
22:42hours according uh to the news uh do you think this um new meeting will lead uh to any result
22:50or the
22:51circle of uh negotiation and then escalation uh will continue
22:58it's hard to say um i think the objective of the the negotiations were to first on the iranian side
23:07to lift the blockade and get sanctions relief uh and end the conflict and all fronts the u.s side
23:15also
23:16wants the state of hormones to be open um an agreement uh somehow uh but i think we've entered a
23:25phase
23:25of this conflict where a fragile ceasefire holds uh the iranian side uh likes to drag donald trump
23:36uh into midterm elections uh keep the pressure uh the political pressure on him um i mean gas prices
23:46again are very high in the u.s uh i saw a tweet from donald trump in from 2012 uh
23:54that he said fire
23:55obama because gas prices are up um so this is what iranians i think they're trying to do but and
24:04he
24:04wants to end everything very quickly and say i won the conflict is over but i don't and just because
24:12of
24:12this i think the conflict or this fragile ceasefire is gonna hold on um for a few months at least
24:21until
24:22elections thank you midterm elections in november uh you mentioned uh about your unpublished uh article
24:30if there are any points you would like to add uh uh to um explain about uh all the developments
24:38that's happening um and we would like to hear it well uh in this article uh what i try to
24:48explain was to
24:50lay out three scenarios for the iranian nuclear program which i briefly mentioned the first
24:55scenario is the so-called libya model where ron agrees um uh to dismantle the program nuclear program
25:02in return for sweeping sanctions relief the promise of nuclear fuel so on and so forth and because of
25:10this lack of trust that i mentioned and the historical precedent i don't think it's going to happen
25:15the second scenario is iran uh trying to cross the finish line and and and uh develop a small nuclear
25:23arsenal i think that this scenario is possible but less likely um because it uh if iran develops nuclear
25:33weapons the saudis are going to do it for sure and then you know iran is going to get stuck
25:38in a nuclear
25:39arms race with saudi arabia and in israel both of them with better financial resources and better
25:46conventional military so that's the second scenario and the third scenario i think is that going back to
25:53the threshold status when iran uh restructures not restructured uh reconstructs its uh enrichment capacity
26:03but does not uh uh develop nuclear weapons thank you thank you so much