The Iran Deal - What Trump Got, What Iran Got, and What Comes Next (feat. Richard Goldberg)

[Music] They're working on the delivery system not just to hit Israel or Europe. They want to hit continental United States. Can't allow that to happen. He's on a republic means what it says when it says they have to Israel. Eventually we will attack Iran's nuclear facility because there's no other choice. Israel cannot allow Iran to go nuclear. Israel is committed to defend ourselves by ourselves and we will do whatever it takes with whatever we have so that Iran does not become a nuclear power. This is the Iran breakdown. So let's break it down. [Music] Welcome back to the Iran Breakdown. I'm your host, Mark Dubowitz. Over the weekend, Washington and Tehran began moving towards a deal. It comes after nearly two and a half years of Israeli and US military action against Iran so-called "access of resistance" and almost a year after the June 12th day war, followed by the most recent 40-day war in which the combined forces of the United States and Israel fundamentally reshape the regional balance of power through direct military confrontation with the regime in Iran. After these military operations, combined with the naval blockade in the state of Hormuz and what may be the most severe strategic blow the Islamic Republic has suffered in its 47-year history, Iran appears prepared to reopen Hormuz. In return, the regime could gain access, perhaps to frozen funds, sanctions relief and the pathway back to oil markets and maybe economical recovery. The Trump administration is framing this as a major diplomatic breakthrough. Tehran is portraying it as proof the regime survived maximum pressure yet again. But behind the headlines, the reality is far more clear. This is not the end of the conflict. It's a pause. A week in Iran is still a dangerous Iran. The regime has suffered massive economic and strategic damage from sanctions, maritime pressure, strikes on military infrastructure and disruption to oil exports. But Tehran still retains escalation tools, proxy networks, remaining missile capabilities, and the ability to threaten the global economy through Hormuz. That's why there is enormous skepticism this arrangement will hold. Israel had already been preparing follow-on operations targeting Iranian energy infrastructure and leadership targets before diplomacy intervened. At the same time, there is a view in both Washington and Jerusalem that President Trump wants to give diplomacy one more opportunity before potentially returning to force. There's also a hard economic reality behind the pause. The United States and its allies were imposing severe costs on the Iranian economy through the blockade. Iran, meanwhile, was imposing serious costs on the global economy through its own disruption of energy flows and shipping lanes. And President Trump appears to have decided, at least for now, not to follow Israeli recommendations from major military strikes against Iran's energy infrastructure. Meanwhile the administration insists this is not a giveaway to Tehran. The deal is reportedly still being finalized with key language on resolve, and the structure on just discussion could require Iran to surrender and risk uranium and make many other nuclear concessions before receiving meaningful sanctions relief. But enormous questions remain. What exactly is Iran committing to unenrichment, unverification, on missiles, on its teleproxy networks, and if Tehran violates the agreement, will there be any consequences, especially once President Trump is no longer in the White House? Because history matters here. Islamic Republic has spent four decades negotiating agreements while preserving leverage to laying compliance and maintaining nuclear optionality. The 2015 nuclear deal is the clearest example. It may not be the last. And there is a strategic question hanging over all of this. After years of Israeli operations systematically degrading Iran's Tehran Proxy network, and after American and Israeli operations severely degrading Iran's nuclear missile and broader military infrastructure, is the United States now merely trying to manage Iranian coercion temporarily, or is it prepared to help dismantle Tehran's ability to threaten the region and the global economy for good? That debate is now at the center of American strategy. Today we're going to break it down on what exactly this deal may actually mean. Why so many officials doubt its durability? What Iran has really lost over the last two and a half years? And what happens if the plane diplomacy collapses once again? To do that, I'm joined by my friend Rich Goldberg, Rich's FDD senior advisor. We also serve as Senior Director for FDD's Energy Economics and Security Program. He's a former Director on the National Security Council responsible for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction and built the National Energy Dominance Council at the White House. Rich is also a former U.S. Navy Intel officer and he's time in the White House in Congress and at FDD. He led the architecting of the maximum pressure campaign on Iran and has been sanctioned by the regime for his work. I share that badge of honor with Rich and we've been working together on Iran for more than two decades. So Rich, welcome back to the Iran Breakdown. Thank you, Mark. Great to be back. No, it's great to see you, Rich. So Rich, let's dive right into it. It is exactly in this deal. What do we know about it? What do we not know about it? Let's actually get the core elements out first before we jump into an assessment. Well, let's start with the caveat, which is nobody has seen a deal and therefore we are working off of background briefings and readouts of background briefings provided by senior administration officials that cannot be identified based on the background nature of the briefings. At least two briefings taking place, one for media, one for what's called influencers and obviously ongoing dialogue behind the scenes with various stakeholders. There's been a lot of leaked media reports. Sometimes the administration has rushed to deny them, sometimes not. But let's go off of sort of what we have seen from the background briefings and I think from Sunday forward, I would say, when the communications became more proactive from the White House to stop relying on framing by various media and instead sort of take the ball themselves and frame it what they are describing. And that is this. The president apparently has a structure proposed of two phases. The first phase is simply to get the street of Hormuz open. Now there are some question marks that I have and exactly how we are proposing to do that and I think that there are still push back from the Iranian side of what they want in order for that to happen. Our conditions, our red lines are that there's no military threat being imposed on the street of Hormuz. There's obviously no attacks going on. Any minds that have been laid are removed over the days and weeks ahead. Obviously we know from project freedom the United States has mapped the straight and the Persian Gulf to a certain extent and has provided guidance to ships in the past. We will probably do that rather quickly again to have at least what we believe is a safe path without minds. But for where they we may not know where minds are or the Iranians might to have that be a mission to clear any minds. And then also no tolls being charged to any tankers, other commercial vessels that are going back and forth through the straight of Hormuz. This has been this tolling authority idea of two million dollars plus for every ship. That Secretary Rubio has continued to say is simply unacceptable and nobody will allow. But the question then is okay, that's what the regime is supposedly giving. What are they getting for that? Well, it would seem the blockade at that point sort of doesn't go away. The navy remains in place. The blockade is there to be affirmed at any point. But certain vessels, whether it is sort of willy nilly, if you say you're an oil tanker, you just get out or if it's specific tankers authorized in certain ways, we don't know yet. Whether there's some sort of broad waiver being issued to allow all Iranian oil exports to be illicit rather than illicit or if it's simply, hey, if you got a tanker and you get out, the blockade won't stop you. You'll end up delivering illicit cargo to China like you used to. And that of course pre-epic fury levels were 1.5 million to 2 million barrels per day. And that that is somehow the payment, so to speak. The quid pro quo for the regime allowing the rest of the Middle East oil and gas and petrochemicals on the byproducts to flow out of the straight of our mousse without charging the fee and without being harassed. So the regime stands to make, I would imagine several billion dollars on their end of being able to get all of the oil that's been stored up and is ready to go out to market out the door. Empty tankers coming back in to refill and have that be a continued ongoing cycle. I have questions here as to how this is administered. I mean, the blockade supposedly remains in place from what we're being told. And the quarantine there will still be there. Will the blockade still, you know, stop incoming traffic? If it's not an empty oil tanker, how will you know what's on the tanker? Will gasoline come into the country again as being denied right now? Well, will they be able to just get other exports out to market as well? Simply on containerships or on or hidden on some other sort of commercial vessel? Are we really going to shoot at a vessel that's not an oil tanker and risk the whole deal collapsing? I think these are obvious questions you have to have in mind. The most stringent way of doing this by the way, which I doubt the Iranians would go for but but we're. would be, might you the sort of let's call it safest way to do this without maximizing the benefit to the regime would actually be to say, you know, specific tankers with specific destinations and legitimate buyers on some end, then operate with a specific waiver or a license so long as money is deposited into an escrow account that the regime actually can't access but it's hanging here building up funds once again, which could be released if the regime commits to all the follow on concessions that we'll talk about that are supposed to happen in phase two. My fear obviously is if you just get Willie Nilly, you know, the blockade sort of goes away, you don't know what ship is which, stuff comes out, stuff comes in, you know, the balloon has exploded, right? You put a little pin in it, all the air has gone out, they're getting billions of dollars, there's no incentive at that point to go further than that to a phase two and furthermore, why would you ever collapse that arrangement thereafter if the whole purpose of this arrangement was to get the straight of form, it was open without going back to a project freedom or a military action of some other kind for whatever reason you didn't want to do that or believe in it at that point. Obviously the construct here, I don't want to say, if it's just sort of the blockade for straight of hormones, not exactly an extortion payment, but it's certainly a quid pro quo that can be permanent in nature that if you take one side of the arrangement away, then the Iranians would simply close down the straight again and then you're back to where you started and it would seem obvious that you won't take away that side of the equation because you don't want that side to come back in that construct. Those are a lot of the worries and unknowns and gaps in our understanding of this phase one, but in this construct is this will get oil out to market, this will bring stability to the global energy market and other downstream effects thereof that we've seen, whether it's in agriculture, food, etc. This will obviously bring prices way down. That will definitely happen as far as gas prices are concerned in the United States and oil prices globally. The global stocks that have been tapped and continued to be tapped and released will start getting refilled as more and more oil comes out and obviously you'll have gas coming out and other buy products. So that is a benefit to the United States, it's a benefit to the world, to the global economy. Certainly if there is a determination or an assessment in the White House that our timeline, our clock on economic effects is going faster or runway is shorter than the regimes runway on the impacts of the blockade and on a further military action, then you might make that assessment. At that point by the way, let me just pause there and say, while you're supposed to then move from there to a phase two, which is then Iran gives up all of its enriched uranium, the president has just issued a true social post that sort of goes beyond what the initial background briefing was on this last piece where you're supposed to get all the nuclear concessions that the president has been demanding because of the nuclear dust to come out of the country and be destroyed. This is the enriched uranium stockpiles that exist at multiple levels of purity, not just the 60% high-enriched uranium that's most in the news, but 20% high-enriched uranium and low enriched uranium that have further enriched obviously still provide you pathways to a nuclear weapon, at least the fissile material thereof. We now have a true social post that maybe it doesn't have to come to the United States, maybe it can go to a third party, maybe it can stay in Iran. President's still using the language destroyed. He wants the material destroyed, even if it's in Iran with inspectors watching the destruction. That's not dilution, which is what happened in the JCPOA where we had some portion of their stockpile shipped out to Russia and their remaining stockpile diluted to a lower purie level and then continued enrichment going on at a certain stockpile cap. This still sounds like no enriched uranium allowed in Iran from the president, but the question would be if you've already released so much pressure from the blockade upfront, why would the regime ever follow through on that? Of course, they're asking for more money. By the way, they're asking for more money upfront than just the blockade being lifted or the oil sanctuary. I want to ask you about that because there's a lot of confusion on exactly that. I'm just sort of stick with phase one here. Yeah, discussion about releasing oil. Maybe it's 12 billion, maybe it's 15 billion, whatever that is, that's going to be allowed to be sold. But there's this question of frozen oil assets held in Qatar, Oman Iraq, and there's also a question of whether if there's no release of the frozen assets, whether the Qataris are going to pay the Iranians billions of dollars in humanitarian aid, which the regime is already admitted, they're going to be using part of that money to actually rebuild their missile capability. What do you know about this question of upfront payments, either from frozen assets or through some kind of quote, humanitarian payment or loan? Yeah, I mean, my expectation at the moment, based on what the president has said, what the background briefing said as far as no dust, no dollars, which I think is a little disingenuous if you're providing upfront oil sanctions relief. You've already sort of not done no dust, no dollars. But if they're sort of saying actual cash as opposed to theoretical cash from revenue to trade, there are pockets of money that the Biden administration was actually preparing to tap, or in some cases did allow Iran to tap, that mostly exists now in Qatar and Oman. Though there are other pockets, there are other accounts I would imagine that still exist maybe in other former importers of Iranian oil during the time period that the Trump administration had sort of started locking down accounts, getting out of the JCPOA back in 2018, allowing certain importers of Iranian oil during the JCPOA to start winding down, but slowly getting exceptions so they could keep importing every six months and get these waivers. We called them significant reduction exceptions. That money had to be put into escrow, so it couldn't go back to the regime. This is by the way why I suggest having an escrow model now upfront. If you're going to do this instead of just letting the regime just go to market and get as much money as it can, having it be more controlled. The escrow account model, pre-JCPOA, was credited with bringing the regime to the table for JCPOA. It's very effective in sort of not attacking the barrels, but attacking the revenue instead, which is what we want to do right now. That money existed in South Korea, in Japan, in China, in India, a couple other countries. The Iranians knew the money was sitting there, billions of dollars that had built up. Then of course, in 2019, when the Trump administration cut off this idea of giving these waivers out of GUNI's significant reduction exceptions out to these countries and said, "You got to get off now. I'm driving Iranian exports to zero biosanctions," and he did for a period of time. That money just got trapped there. It never moved. It's a violation of U.S. sanctions for that bank in Seoul or in Tokyo or in Beijing to move the money somewhere else, whether to Iran or anywhere else. The Iranians during the Biden administration started knocking on doors saying, "Hey, we want our money. We want our money." Rob Malley, who was the special envoy for Iran at that point, 2021-22, started understanding that they're asking about these money pots. They're in nuclear negotiations. I want to go back to JCPOA. Where can they find money? Oh, there's money in South Korea. There's money. Oh, well, then also there was this idea of money that had been building up in Iraq because it wasn't the same situation as oil imports. But similarly, Iraq was purchasing, and still today, unfortunately, still purchases and imports electricity from Iran and relies heavily on Iran for electricity, gas and all that. And it's never gotten into true energy independence, even though it's an energy abundant country. We're working on it, but not fast enough. What we said to the Iraqis back in the first Trump administration was, "We understand your dependence on Iran, unfortunately, for electricity." You can import physically the electricity into your country, but you can't make payment to the Iranians. We're going to set up the same escrow account model in exchange for history in this waiver. You've got to put the money into the trade bank of Iraq. And so that ended up being $10 billion, just building up over years. And then Tehran, again, under Biden, started knocking on everybody's door saying, "We're going to turn off the lights and Baghdad. We're going to come for you." The Iraqis were saying to the Biden folks, "Help us. Help us." "To do here, we can't lose the electricity. You have to do something. We don't want this money. We don't want to be held hostage here." So there was this whole array. arrangement, right? Because by 2023, they were working on a whole bunch of things with the Iranians in the Biden administration. They were working on hostage deals. They're working on nuclear diplomacy. They couldn't get back to JCPOA, but maybe they could offer some cash to keep the Iranians from going to 90 percent weapons grade uranium from where they were at 60 percent. And so pots of money started appearing. They allowed the South Koreans to move $6 billion of that oil money into Qatar. That was ostensibly viewed as the payment for five American hostages being released from Iran. But we understood that money was going to be made available, obviously, to Iran for the purposes. $10 billion was moved out of Iraq into Oman and converted into euros where it sits today. And then suddenly, the scheme that was worked out was that the Iranians could come to the Treasury Department, work with the Omanis or the Qataris, depending where the money was, to say we'd like to pay this bill now. We'd like to fund this import now. We'd like to pay off this debt now. And so it was budget support. Now, the slide of hand here, which I'm seeing some indications of from some of the people who may or may not be in the know of what's going on here. But the language is very similar where you'd say, oh, we're not giving cash to the regime. We're not going to give sanctions relief. You know, it's their money. It's sitting in these accounts and it won't come into Iran. It will stay in Oman. It will stay in Qatar. And maybe they'll be able to access it for humanitarian purposes or for non-sanctionable purposes. But let's be clear. That sanctions relief. That's money. Whether it's sitting in a bank account in Oman or Qatar in Tehran, if they say, here's the balance sheet, here's what we owe. Here's what we're running out of money. We need $6 billion. We need $10 billion. And they're able to then reallocate money somewhere else. Money is fungible. That's budget support. That's all that is. And by the way, over the weekend, Mark, I think you tweeted this out and you posted this on X. The foreign ministry of Iran spokesperson was asked about this money and he said, point blank. Yeah, we're going to spend it on missiles and drones. I mean, it's like they're not even hiding it. It's not even like a humanitarian cover story. This is just going to be money that's handed over to the regime for bad things to hurt us and the region in the future. So obviously, I would have great concerns about unlocking those funds. This seems to be a demand from the Iranian side. And it seems to be a question of when do these funds become available, not if these funds become available, how much would if any would become available during phase one or the outset of phase one as a sweetener to get the straight of our moves open? Or would it all be sort of backended to when they turn over and reach uranium where we say, no, you don't get any of this cash, you only get the quote unquote limited temporary oil sanctions relief, which is really just permanent oil sanctions relief to get the straight of our moves open, but you don't get additional cash or anything else unless we get the enriched uranium out of your country in phase two. That seems to be the setup of what's going on here. Right. So Rich, if I were tied together the threads of this conversation and I would put the most negative spin on it from our perspective, what I'd be most concerned about based on your assessment is that we are not maintaining a quarantine on imports into Iran. So Iran can import whatever it wants. Iran is going to get $15 billion by selling its oil. Okay. It's going to go out there mostly to the Chinese so that the Iranians can use that money to spend on Chinese goods. The Chinese goods that they spend it on are precursor chemicals to help them rebuild their ballistic missile program that has been so devastated by Israeli and American strikes. And we are moving then with less leverage and Iran reconstituting its deadly capabilities into a phase two where we're now going to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran where we're going to require them to give up all of their enriched material, thousands of pounds of enriched material and dismantle nuclear sites and ensure that we have any time anywhere inspections and we're going to get to some kind of deal where there's zero enrichment forever. But we're going to be walking into that trying to get those nuclear concessions with far less leverage than we had a week ago after all the devastating damage that we've done. And on the horror moves, what we've effectively done is we've gotten temporary relief for the global economy and for the US economy. But we've essentially established the precedent that Iran can close the straits at any time. And indeed what the Iranians are saying is we don't agree to going back to pre-war status quo on sovereignty. We maintain the sovereignty. We and the Omani's own that straight. But we will temporarily allow numbers of ships. So if there are 140-50 ships a day moving through the straits, they can move through the strait with our permission. So worst case assessment of this is President Trump blinked at the last minute. He stopped Israeli military strikes against energy infrastructure and further leadership strikes. He got temporary relief by getting some oil to global markets. But the price that we've paid has been 15 billion in oil exports, maybe another 8 billion in the release of frozen funds or some pottery fiction about a humanitarian transfer. We move into a phase two. Then the Iranians are like absolutely not willing to make further concessions on anything that when meet President Trump's minimum nuclear demands. And then we are stuck with the decision of either to concede that there'll be no nuclear agreement. And we've given all this relief to the Iranians. Or we're going to return back to major military operations. But the return back to them is in September or October and it's getting much closer to the midterms. And President Trump's not willing to return to major military operations that close to the midterms and risk losing the house and the Senate. Is that a fair pessimistic assessment? I think it's unfair in certain respects. There's fairness here. And so what I would say is let's put all the different cards on the table to have an honest assessment of the situation. It is absolutely true that the situation we are talking about right now is nothing like 2015 or 2013 before that when the Obama administration was negotiating the first interim nuclear deal, the joint plan of action, the JPOA that people forget about. We always skipped to the JCPOA, but you and me, Mark, we remember the JPOA, which was sort of it. That was it. The minute we let up on sanctions relief and there was sort of a framework to it, that was done. We were cooked. The JCPOA was inevitable and it obviously didn't have legitimacy in the Congress by the end of the debate. But the president had the prerogatives all need to do its way of sanctions. And he never got anything better. Well, Rich, I want to say that I'm going to take a shot at my old friend Jake Sullivan here because everybody said that the worst deal ever negotiated was the 2015 deal. I mean, this is what Trump said when Kerry and Sherman went to negotiate the 2015 deal. Actually, the worst deal ever negotiated on the Iran side was the 2013 deal when Jake Sullivan and Bill Burns flew to a man and effectively gave the Iranians for the first time despite multiple security council resolutions, effectively the right to enrich and paid them billions of dollars in sanctions relief while giving up our most valuable concession. After that was done, it was essentially the table was set for a deeply flawed 2015 deal. But it was actually that temporary deal JCPOA that was actually the worst deal that we've ever negotiated. So you you're saying this is not that deal. Well, no, no, I'm not saying, well, first of all, nothing can be this deal because the state of Iran's nuclear and missile programs today is completely different. That's that's my starting point for all of the strategic conversation here. Like we can't make these JCPOA, JPUA conversations, you know, comparisons on a strategic level. I can make it on a tactical level and on a strategic communications level. Like for instance, I saw our good friend Mike Durand has a very good piece today. People I commend it in the free press sort of summarizes one of these background briefings that a senior administration official had conducted walks you through the two phases. If you want to get more detail, you know, there's this idea that the upfront oil sanctions relief is limited and reversible. And I was like, wow, these these terms, they they they like resonate in my mind. I have to have seen this. And I just did a quick Google. I was like, you know, did the Obama administration ever say limited temporary reversible sanctions? Yeah, Google get it. November 24th, 2013, it was the senior administration official background briefing announcing the JPUA that's exactly how they describe the interim nuclear deal sanctions relief. And of course, it was not temporary. It was not reversible because if you reversed it, you'll lost your negotiation. You lost the deal. You lost everything on the other side. And so if you are invested that much in the deal, you're never going to take it away. Okay, so and that was my point on the straight-up hormone. It's piece. However, enrichment, they can't enrich today, right? Multiple aspects of the nuclear supply chain destroyed or degraded conversion capable does not seem to be there at this point, in addition to enrichment capability. The years of rebuilding have to take place. Yes, they have a stockpile of an rich uranium, the state of which is not actually fully known since the IAEA hasn't been down there into the tunnels. We don't have full fidelity on the state of all this material, but we go off press reports, we go off leaks, and assessments, apparently, on what we think might be down there at higher rich uranium and other locations on low and rich uranium that need to be accounted for. We know that nuclear scientists, more of them were killed during his really portion of epic theory, roaring lion. We know that research and development and deweaponization was targeted, a lot of the universities and SP and D locations during the war. And of course, the missile side of the house has also been heavily degraded. The actual industrial base, the ability to make a ballistic missile, particularly long range missiles, has been heavily set back. Essentially, for a long time, I understand there's reports of like they're trying to reconstitute. Yeah, they're going to try to reconstitute. But right now, I mean, it's just a completely different world that we're living in. So your space, time analysis, and strategy have to account for, yeah, in ourselves, pressures on the world, and where they actually sit strategically as a threat to the United States. Okay, let me summarize this, 'cause I sent that a post, I think you would agree with this, but I think it's important that President Trump is negotiating with Iran from a position of leverage that no American president has ever held. The US and Israel have shattered the regime's enrichment capabilities, destroyed key nuclear weapons facilities, decimated defense industrial base, killed an experienced generation of senior military commanders, intelligence, chiefs, and nuclear weapons scientists, and severely degraded its medium-range and intercontinental ballistic missile programs and capabilities that were on a deadly trajectory. The regime's terra proxy network has been mauled across the region. It's economies collapsing under the weight of war sanctions, corruption, and isolation. Okay, I think you would agree with that assessment. Totally. And just one more piece here, with that kind of leverage, Trump has a real opportunity to secure a strong deal, one that dismantles Iran's pathways to the bomb, rather than temporarily managing them, and constrains the regime's ability to reconstitute its defense and missile programs. And I would just add a final point, which we can talk about, then he needs to pivot to maximum support for the Iranian people to help them reclaim their country from a failed bankrupt and brutal regime. So you're particularly now with news at the internet is coming back on today. I mean, that's a huge opportunity for us. Right. So I think to your point, I mean, people forget this, but we are nowhere close to where we were ever. You know, trying to destroy their deadly capabilities. But to your point, they retain capabilities, right? They have these underground missile cities that perhaps we were not able to penetrate for whatever reason. They have command and control bunkers alike the missile cities deep underground that potentially we did not penetrate for whatever reason. They have short range capabilities to hold the world hostage in the Gulf, straight apart moose that they have demonstrated. And that's obviously from an inventory perspective, probably their largest stockpile of weapons is the capability in their nearest short term neighborhood to inflict damage and harm. You talk about the potential to wreak havoc on their energy infrastructure, just start targeting their oil, starting their refineries, Israeli recommendations you mentioned. They still retain the retaliatory capability and command and control to then rain down hell on the rest of the Gulf and their energy infrastructure as well. And so you wouldn't be talking about $100 of Brent oil at that point. By the way, they would still be able to stop anything else, potentially for pulling out a straight-up arm, if anything is even left to come out of this rate of parmoose after this sort of apocalyptic, everybody below each other up on their regional energy infrastructure. I would imagine that's why the president doesn't want to go down that road. And frankly, I wouldn't advise at this point that road. I would love to see refineries stop working in Iran right now for whatever reason. Feel like the United States and Israel should be able to do that. I would like to see other groups. The Iraqi militias haven't stopped launching drones into the Gulf throughout the ceasefire. Wouldn't it be something if a drone just comes out of nowhere from somewhere else and hits a refinery or something? I mean, that could happen because I do think if you exacerbate the gasoline crisis even more with taking down their domestic refineries, without hitting the oil, you would do a enormous amount of damage. Disalination plans, by the way, as another concern, obviously, in the Gulf of water and water crisis being sparked with the regime was able to take out all the desalination plans throughout the Gulf. So these are the concerns you have of getting into an infrastructure back and forth war without knowing that the enemy will actually not be able to respond. If you could decapitate more leaders, if you can penetrate the missile cities now, we've learned things about them. If we've improved our ideas of how to get to things we didn't accomplish during Epic Fury that we would still like to, that sounds good to me. It hasn't become apparent to me that that is the case yet. But if it has, then maybe we will see that. That's why I've always fallen back to the blockade, economic fury, compounding that which was already done during Epic Fury and making life really, really hard for the regime internally and keeping the fracture, focus getting worse and worse. But then moving forward with a military operation that totally focused on the straight of Hormuz, which is a different target set, which is a different mindset, a different strategic objective. Something like project freedom, but project freedom plus. The biggest question in my mind that I think has thrown a wrench into all of this and perhaps moved us into this trajectory of controversy and deal-making is why did project freedom shut down after 24 hours? That was exactly the right move. If you can reopen the straight on your terms, defend against whatever they want to do to you, destroy or degrade the capabilities that they're using to respond inside the Gulf or in the straits, take out all the bases on the islands like La Rock Island and Kesha, myelin to Nell Swear, all the coastal areas where they're launching missiles, have airplanes in the sky to take out small boat swarms and drones, et cetera. And you can move tankers through. You will have neutered their ability to hold you hostage while also keeping the blockade in place. That's game over. That's a shit. I have some, perhaps some insight, maybe some speculation, but I think it's well informed why project freedom lasted for such a short period of time because the Saudis-- Yes. You know this. The Saudis came out and said, we're not going to provide the United States with overflight rights. And without those overflight rights, it's very difficult to execute on what you're talking about. Yeah, the country that won't join the Abraham Accords, because it's too hard for them, I guess, would instead like to take away the best card that Donald Trump has to actually win and force him into a bad deal with Iran. Maybe that's why the president decided on a phone call to say, I expect you all to join the Abraham Accords as part of this deal to what was apparently a lot of silence. But in the end, if you are able to demonstrate to these Gulf countries that there is no other viable choice for them and us, then project freedom or project freedom plus, and you're able to get back to there, I obviously think that's a much better strategy. I've written that the president posted a link to my op-ed a few days ago on true social. I don't know if that to read anything to it or not. That was three steps there. And by the way, one of the steps, whether you go through project freedom or you cut a deal on the straight or whatever, I think we have to talk about as well. Because in mind, you, step one was keep the blockade, economic fury step two was something like Operation Freedom, project freedom. I called it epic passage in the op-ed. It came out the weekend before project freedom started. And then the third piece was on energy. And on rendering the straight of Hormuz moot over the long term. This is where I think it come back to because my one sort of caveat on, oh, this could look terrible. We're trading oil sanctions relief. We're lifting the blockade for the straight of Hormuz being open. We're not going to get to anything else. That's quite possible under that construct. Maybe not. President has other ideas. And maybe he has the political will to keep the blockade. Maybe he will fire on vessels that come out that aren't specific oil tankers that have been approved. I don't know. This is Donald Trump. It's not Barack Obama. It's not Joe Biden. However, the sooner we work with the Gulf to build pipelines in every possible direction to get all the material that we need out without relying on the straight of Hormuz, the sooner that happens, you will have taken this final extortion card off the table for the regime. And so long as you've actually destroyed and degraded their nuclear capability for several years and set them back on their ballistic missile program for several years. And you're able to, through covert action, as you say, continue to support the people on the ground. project freedom is a different kind of project freedom I'd have in mind. It's not for the straight-up or moose, it's for the Iran many people, while then completing pipelines like what the UAE has already announced, a second Fujiwara pipeline adding another two million barrels per day of export bypassing the trade of our moves. Where are the Saudis right now with a second East West pipeline? Where are the Qataris talking about a gas pipeline? Where are additional players coming and saying, "Hey, let's form a consortium and render for the future of the trade of our moves, Moots, we can play a part. The development finance corporation can be part of that. It could be a US-led consortium." I branded it in the op-ed and other interviews are given the Iran Express, like a ramco, the history of Saudi-Iramco, of course, is an Arabian-American joint venture. In that case, in oil, this can be a Gulf-American joint venture consortium in pipelines with off-take, just in Europe and Asia. I fear that until we get that done, if we get into this bargain of oil sanctions relief or for our moves for blockade relief, we'll just stay in that phase one until you get to all the pipelines being done. I think that's right. The pipelines are going to take years to build. I do think this part of Abraham Accords and I-Mac building pipelines that actually go through Israel to the Mediterranean would be smart because then you're not being held hostage by Iran in Hormuz or Iran in the Houthis in the Red Sea. You have now another set of pipelines that go into the Mediterranean, which will be well-defendied by Israeli air defenses and the IDF. But Rick, those pipelines are going to take a while to build. Absolutely. Great way to remove the threat of blackmail from the Islamic Republic. But I don't know if you agree with me. I don't think there's going to be a nuclear deal. I think this whole phase two negotiation, I think President Trump actually believes he can get a deal. He is a deal maker and I think he certainly wants to give it a try. But I just find it really difficult to believe that the Iranians are going to give any deal that meets the minimum demands that President Trump has on all of this, on nuclear material, zero enrichment, dismantlement, inspections. Never mind. I don't even think we're going to be negotiating over ballistic missiles or terror. Am I wrong? I think that is a high possibility that there is no deal and he has to then go to the Gulf Arabs who objected or pulled the rug out on project freedom and say, "Project freedom is the only way forward. I have literally done everything possible to get a deal with these people, but they are crazy." What has happened in the last 72 hours? They're mining the straight while we're supposedly closing in on dotting eyes and crossing teas. They release a new statement from the invisible supreme leader, reaffirming death to America will always be the ethos of this regime forever. They're trying to say, "We want all the money out from the Qatari bank accounts in Oman, what you're offering us isn't good enough, etc." By the way, we just had the New York Post, I think had the exclusive on a plot in a rest originally and then started moving of a plot to assassinate Ivanka Trump from the IRGC. This is the regime that the president is having his people negotiate with through all these intermediaries. He was pretty clear-eyed on all of that, by the way. What I hope is the case and what I believe is the case is that we are in, and this is the danger when you get into deal-making mode and diplomacy mode. All the news, all the focus, all the sort of rabbit hole minutia is just all about what's in a deal. Even if there's never going to be a deal, just all about the deal. You lose sight of the big picture. You lose sight of the blockade and the impacts going on and economic fury and what else could be done there. The conversation shifts. That's what's happening here. The strategic communications window is shifting to the onus on the United States and looking at our own pressures instead of looking at their pressures right now. If the president has confidence in the current policy of the blockade, which I believe he should, and if he has confidence in Admiral Cooper's plan for Project Freedom Plus, which I think he should, then fine, go along with this process. We're in Hodge Week right now. The Saudis, I'm sure, asked to make sure there's no military conflict during Hodge Week. That's certainly something that they would be valued from. That's going to end in a couple of days. At that point, there's still no deal. If there is none and they go to the Saudis and say, "We've given you more time. You had Hodge Week. You pulled the rug out last time. We're committed to your defense. There's no other path forward. We need to get the straight open. Will you support us in Project Freedom?" I hope that the Crown Prince would say yes. I hope that the altars would say yes. Then everybody else in the region would say yes. Yeah. The thing that worries me, Rich, and you know about American politics better than I do, I worry that as this thing gets protracted and we get closer and closer to the midterms, it becomes more difficult for President Trump to run Project Freedom, return to major military operations against Iran, unleash the Israelis. Do any of the other things that he may need to do if there is no possibility of a nuclear agreement that's going to satisfy President Trump with respect to all of the conditions that he's laid out? The American political clock, which the Iranians are very aware of, is taking away and as it gets closer to November, it gives leverage to Iran and takes leverage away from us. If the President were to prioritize the sort of politics of it, the domestic politics in the short term and the impact on ballot in the House and Senate over legacy outcomes of the strategy, then yes, I would imagine that as possible. If for some reason, Kevin Hassett or the Council on Economic Advisors is producing some sort of power point for the President that lays out some dire forecast of we're scraping bottom on stocks and Asia is about to go into a depression and that's going to roll into us and then we're going to have to raise interest rates and the whole of everything you've worked for will collapse over this. I would imagine that would have an impact on the President. Now by the way, I'm not agreeing with that. I talk to a lot of people in the energy world as you know on a daily basis and that is not the picture that they paint by the way. They actually think and are surprised that the President wouldn't perceive much more flexibility right now than he has than he is portraying because they believe the prices reflect the market. That is the point of a market and some of the incongruency that we've seen between present prices and future prices have started to relax. The market is no longer feeling like it is in a media crisis where supply is about to be gone. I know a lot of people say, "Oh well, the market is only reacting to the ebb and flow of the news cycle and President Trump's statements and betting on duration." But the people who actually are in this world are not seeing it. They're seeing the market adapting. They're seeing demand adapting to supply. They're seeing all kinds of structural changes that allow for the market to cope with what is happening here. Yes, there are additional SPR releases that we are making, that Europe is making, Asia is making. And at some point you could have that alarm bell set off, but it doesn't look like it's today. But still, Memorial Day is past. You're entering summer months, driving season, vacation season. The spike in jet fuel has come down back a little bit. Again, another indicator from the energy industry that they say, "Crisis may be a little overblown from some of the hype that you see, but still it's expensive. You don't want to go to the pump and pay what you're paying all summer long. That sets in a frame. It sets in a feeling of the economy and of the future and outlook for the United States." And so there are repercussions for that. And President probably wants to get on with Cuba and other big picture issues. And I come back to the beginning. He has already made amazing strategic gains in Operation Epic Fury on top of Midnight Hammer. That is absolutely true. I am very skeptical he can get further gained by relieving pressure too early just to get the straight up or moves open and not trying to pursue project freedom or some other sort of military action first. But if that is what he chooses to do, we better get those pipelines built as soon as possible. The Emirates by the way say they've already 50% completed on theirs and it'll be next year. That's unbelievable. And we think about pipelines in the United States. We're like, "Well, we'll never build a pipeline." Bless the United States. Okay. That's what the trial bar and the environmental regulations and NGOs suing and all the permitting problems that this administration has tried their best to clear out as much as possible. And you're in the Middle East and it's your entire economy and your addictatorship. It's amazing how fast you can build a pipeline. So I expect if the Saudis wanted to build a second East West pipeline, that'll happen pretty fast. And in fact, we couldn't completely restructure global markets excluding the straight up hormones. By the time President Trump leaves office, which would allow at least provide a new lever and leverage opportunity over the regime longterm. - Okay, so as a final scenario, I wanna run this by you based on everything you've said and just sort of thinking through maybe what President Trump has in mind. Let's say for example, President Trump decided, look, there's an economic game of chicken going on. I got the blockade, they've closed for moves, energy markets, it's not a crisis, but it's serious, particularly for Asia and Europe. That may start to kick in in the United States as we head to midterms. We've done severe damage to their nuclear missile, the fence, Navy, I mean serious strategic gains. I'm gonna, by the way, we haven't talked about it right now, but I'm not going to link these negotiations with his balla and if the Israelis keep whacking his balla. But I need a short term negotiation to open up for moves and get oil flowing. I'll pay a price for that, maybe it's 12 billion, 15 billion, maybe it's additional 8 billion, but even if I gave them $20 billion, maybe even if it was all in cash, okay? They have sustained probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 to $300 billion in damage during the 40-day war, not to mention the fact they came into the war already on their knees economically. And that is a rounding error compared to the amount of money they're gonna need to rebuild their economy and any kind of leverage. But I'll do a short term deal. When I negotiate for 60 days, I'm not delusional, I don't think I'm gonna get a deal in 60 days. I'll keep extending it. I'll extend it while Treasury Department is behind the scenes, imposing sanctions and going after polliferators and going after sanctions evaders. And I'm gonna basically extend this until November. I'm gonna focus on the election in the fall. I'm gonna hopefully keep the house and I for sure want me to keep the Senate. And once that's over, I now have about two years, maybe two years plus, to bring this to a successful conclusion. And it's at that point that I'm gonna instruct the US Navy to operationalize project freedom. We're gonna open up the strait. I'm gonna work with the Israelis and we're gonna come up with a comprehensive return to major military operations, right? I am going to work with the Saudis and the Emirates and others in order to do what you've suggested which is to mitigate the importance of hormones. So we established by the time I'm gone that their alternative pipelines. And then I am gonna push forward with Operation Epic Fury, Economic Fury, and I'm actually gonna do something serious in providing support to the Iranian people and having a whole program of maximum pressure, maximum support, maximum fracturing. So we will severely weaken this regime and the next time the Iranians come to the streets, they're gonna be armed, they're gonna be able to communicate, they're gonna be financed, and we're gonna have a serious plan that we're gonna operationalize to January, 2029. So at the point that I leave office in January, 2029, 'cause I'm not confident that the next president is gonna be as focused on Iran or as tough on Iran as I am, we are going to run this comprehensive Iran strategy, but I'm gonna do it after midterms, not before. And right now I'm just buying myself some short term relief for the economy and short term relief on the political front. - Possible, you'd also add in having the European navies come into the Gulf as well in this interim period, set up a process of effectively getting used to a multinational convoy effort that's running in and out of the Gulf. So they can't have the excuse of we're not coming to help next time, which has been also a major disappointment of some of our closest NATO allies in this process, given it's their supply that's at stake at the moment. So that could also get operationalized in the meantime. So if you do return to the blockade and shutting down the street of Hormuz, you would be in a stronger position, potentially, to prepare for that operation. US military obviously would still be there. That's a long time, just maintain the supposed ongoing blockade presence by the way of phase one, for not moving all those naval vessels elsewhere in the world. Obviously at some point it will need some relief. But it's possible. I would say we're also releasing the SBR at top dollar and once phase one would happen, we'll obviously see a massive drop in oil prices, which would be the point at which you would buy back. Oil for RSPR, caveat to that, it takes a lot longer to refill RSPR than it does to release it. Unfortunately, and it's gotten worse because of the rapid drawdowns that happened under Biden for Russia and Ukraine that literally broke parts of the SBR. But still, I mean, to could page out of the Iranian playbook, I guess, let's find storage where we can and buy it up while it's cheaper and have ourselves, what China had during this conflict, which is a really important strategic reserve. But yeah, all those things are possible. But if we haven't had a covert campaign already with the Israelis since the start of this to armed people and organized people, desk malpractice, I hope that already exists and is ongoing and is expanded now at the internet up that should give additional opportunities there. So yeah, I think all those things are possible. But again, the president may see this and just say, I don't feel desperate in any way. I don't think I have a crisis in front of me. We can go another few weeks with higher gas prices than we'd like to. The Iranians might not have a few more weeks to deal with what we can still deal with them. He may be willing with the support of allies to restart project freedom. And if he does that, obviously, it's checkmate for the regime if we can sustain project freedom. So he has a lot of options in front of him. My ultimate point, if he were to be watching right now is this. Right now, he's at maximum leverage. That's just true. He's got a full blockade in place with the economic theory and all the damage that has been done from economic theory. The minute from Epic theory, the minute you come off of that maximum leverage, you obviously have less than maximum leverage. So if you give up some of that leverage or a lot of that leverage in exchange for less than all of what you wanted out of a deal is unlikely you will get the rest of it until you bring back that leverage. It's sort of common sense. So there's a lot on the table here. He's dealing with a lot of different moving pieces. He is not Barack Obama. He is not Joe Biden. He's done enormous damage to Iran along with the Israelis. We should celebrate that as a national security victory. And now we'll see what he chooses to do. And if the regime actually even wants to deal, that's reasonable that doesn't put us into a worse position for our national security. Yeah, I think that's right. And so, Rick, I try to remind people 'cause it's worth remembering. I think the Iranians played their hormones card at the wrong time and at the worst time because I think the trajectory we were on under JCPOA and the trajectory we could have been on under a different president was Iran would have nuclear weapons, ICBMs, 11,500 meeting range ballistic missiles, 500,000 drones, the Chinese Russian built military, hundreds of billions of dollars of sanctions relief. And at that point was so powerful that when they played the hormones card, we would have no card to play. And they would have not temporary control over her moves but permanent control over her moves. Instead, we're confronting Iranians now where they have been severely weakened across all lines of power projection. And this is the moment to finally take the card away from them through project freedom, open up or moves militarily and make it very clear not only to the Iranians but to the Gulf allies and to the Chinese that the United States of America will not allow any power to close down these vital shipping lanes and use that as blackmail against the global economy and against the United States of America. So we have an opportunity to win the battle of our moves. I hope the president will do so. And we also have an opportunity to end Iran's nuclear weapons program permanently at a time where severe damage has been done. And finally, and I would just say this, like as an American, I celebrate the fact that Iran's defense industrial base has been destroyed and that their ICBM program has been destroyed and that they're not going to be building intercontinental missiles anytime soon to threaten the American homeland. People gloss over that. Maybe people take that as a given. I don't because you and I know over many, many years of thinking about the ICBM program in Iran's missile program, it was always difficult to imagine how this could be solved diplomatically or through sanctions. And instead it was solved by these U.S. and Israeli air forces destroying that very dangerous capability. So much has been done. I'd love to have you back. We'll keep breaking it down all over again. And thank you for your service, Rich Goldberg. - Thank you. And my only final thought is, if the president actually holds firm to this last idea of if he does this deal, he only does it if the Saudis and the Qataris and others join the Abraham Accords. I mean, that would be a pretty amazing thing. I will say that. So he should stick to his guns on that. See if he can get that done because obviously, that changes the entire course of history and the region and the course of history for the regime in Iran. being completely encircled by a whole new kind of alliance. Amen to that. Thanks Rich. Keep it.