Juan Cole for Informed Comment
Here is the interview I gave to Asieh Namdar of CGTN on the Iran deal.
U.S. Officials Say Lebanon Is Not A Part Of Iran Deal
Here is the YouTube computer-generated transcript, slightly cleaned up via Claude.
Asieh Namdar: For more, let’s turn to Juan Cole. He’s a Middle East expert and professor of history at the University of Michigan.
Professor, welcome to the program. How unusual is it that we still have not seen the terms and conditions of this memorandum of understanding and what we’re getting right now is what the Iranians say and what the Americans say. Do you get the sense we’re going to get a final document of what’s in this and what’s not before the signing ceremony on Friday?
Juan Cole: No, I think that anyway, the memorandum of understanding is probably fairly vague. What what it is, is an agreement to keep talking for the next 60 days to nail down details. So, the details have yet to be specified.
Asieh Namdar: So, are we essentially back where we were before this war?
Juan Cole: Oh, I think Iran is in a much better position now than before the war. The government at least has demonstrated that it can implement its threats, which it’s been making for years, to close the Strait of Hormuz if it were attacked. It moreover attacked its neighbors Kuwait and Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, even countries that it had had relatively good relations with, to demonstrate that if the United States and Israel push it too far, it can cripple the world’s energy resources. So it took the world’s energy hostage and in a way this memorandum of understanding and subsequent negotiations are a hostage rescue operation.
Asieh Namdar: So from the Israeli-American perspective, professor, what exactly did this war achieve? What was the point?
Juan Cole: I don’t think it achieved anything. It it was a huge failure. And with regard to their main objectives, the United States and Israel went into the war hoping that they could do a decapitation strike, I think Venezuela was much in their minds, the way that Trump kidnapped the strong man Maduro. They thought they could do that. They could simply kill Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and that the regime would would fall of its own accord or or would suddenly become docile. And they thought they could make Iran give up its nuclear enrichment activities and impose their will on on the country in these various ways. And it didn’t happen. It was not likely to happen from the very beginning. It was not a well-thought-out plan. It it didn’t show understanding of the government that existed in Iran, however unpopular it might be. It exists. It it has a certain amount of power and social roots. And so they failed.
Asieh Namdar: And of course, Donald Trump says the next phase of negotiations with Iran that would address some of the most complicated issues, the country’s nuclear program, sanctions relief, the release of Iran’s frozen assets. He claims that’s going to be easy. What is your assessment and what is he talking about?
Juan Cole: Actually, you know, I disagree with President Trump on a lot of things, but I I think this particular statement is not incorrect. That is to say, there is serious talk in Washington DC of removing sanctions from Iran and letting it sell its petroleum, which every other country in the world does. I mean, the United States have been in has been interfering in the ordinary trade of a country, which is quite peculiar. If the United States doesn’t do that then, it’s easy to stop.
Asieh Namdar: But professor if this was so easy the two sides would have reached a nuclear agreement long time ago. These are some very complex delicate discussions and the Iranians have a red line here.
Juan Cole: Asieh, I agree with you that in some ways these are difficult, but the Iranians already reached a deal with with the Obama administration and the United Nations in 2015 on the the nuclear file,
Asieh Namdar: Which took years, by the way.
Juan Cole: All of the assessments were that they were abiding by that deal until Trump tore it up in 2018. So, in a way, since 2018, we’ve been trying to get back to 2015.
And if we wanted to, if we wanted to to put in the kind of safeguards that Obama did on the number of centrifuges Iran can have, the degree of enrichment that it can pursue, and if Iran would accept, as it did in the past, the recasting of its high-enriched uranium in other forms so that it can never be used for weapons, if it would accept limits on its on its centrifuges and enrichment levels — if we could just get back to that 2015 agreement, which the Iranians already once have have acquiesced in, then the nuclear file would, I think, subside in importance.
I don’t personally think that the Iranians ever were going full bore for a weapon. They denied it and and there were fatwas against it. I think they wanted to use it as a deterrence. They wanted to say if you push us too far we’ll we’ll develop a bomb.
Asieh Namdar: And I finally I have to ask you about Lebanon. The Iranians are saying that end of hostilities in in Lebanon, Israel ending its attacks, its occupation, it has to be part of any agreement with the United States. How challenging is that going to be? And what can we expect in the next few days? I mean, it’s Tuesday. A lot can happen between now and Friday and Netanyahu, Prime Minister Netanyahu has already said they’re not going to stop their fight in Lebanon.
Juan Cole: Yes, you put your finger on the the weakest part of this entire negotiation, which is that Iran is starting to speak as though they expect the United States to police Israel’s actions in Lebanon. It’s not the way American politics works. It’s not the way Israeli politics works. It’s an unrealistic expectation. To the degree that Iran ties the future of these negotiations to Israeli and Hezbollah fighting back and forth, they really could sabotage the entire deal.
Asieh Namdar: All right, we’re going to leave it there. We appreciate it. Professor Juan Cole, thank you.
Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Distinguished University Professor in the History Department at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page
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