STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Karim Sadjadpour has been listening with us. He is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and has covered Iran for many years. Karim, welcome back.
KARIM SADJADPOUR: Thank you, Steve. Great to be with you.
INSKEEP: Based on what you know so far, is the United States getting anything out of this agreement that it did not already have before the war?
SADJADPOUR: Steve, I think it's important to judge the success of this war against President Trump's own words. When he launched the war on February 28, he claimed he was going to further obliterate Iran's nuclear program, raze its missile production to the ground, defang its regional proxies and potentially even unseat the Iranian regime. He called for Iran's unconditional surrender. And unfortunately, none of that has happened. What we have achieved with this Phase 1 agreement is essentially reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before the war. So the short answer to your question is that nothing has been achieved in the last four months that wasn't already there.
INSKEEP: Well, we heard Carrie Kahn say the Iranians claim they're getting a $24 billion payment here, $24 billion of their own frozen assets come back to them. A U.S. official is telling Axios in the last few hours that that is wrong. But then the U.S. official says this is pay for performance, which sounds like the United States is, in fact, paying. Do you expect money for Iran just needs to be part of this deal?
SADJADPOUR: So one of the sources of contention between the United States and Iran is whether Iran will be paid upfront in any deal or whether it will be performance for relief, as U.S. officials put it. I think that there is going to be money exchanging hands, even for Phase 1 of this deal. It seems more likely that the United States has asked some of its Gulf partners to unfreeze Iranian assets and those countries to provide Iran some economic relief. But as I said, Steve, this is only Phase 1. Phase 2 is meant to be negotiating the nuclear issue. And we've given ourselves 60 days to resolve that issue. It's highly unlikely that that's going to be resolved in 60 days.
INSKEEP: I think I hear you saying that the money is going to flow to Iran. The question really is just the timing, what happens in what order. This is a sensitive topic. Earlier this month, we heard from the Trump administration on MORNING EDITION. State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott took some questions. And let's listen to one exchange.
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INSKEEP: Under what circumstances would the United States be willing to send money to Iran, if any?
TOMMY PIGOTT: Well, the president being clear on Truth Social that there is going to be no exchange of money over the short term here, no imminent exchange of money.
INSKEEP: No imminent exchange of money - again, leaving open that there's going to be money at some point. What makes this politically sensitive, the idea of allowing billions of dollars to go to this particular government in Iran?
SADJADPOUR: Well, it's because President Trump called Obama's nuclear deal, the 2015 JCPOA, the worst deal in history because it provided Iran about $1.5 billion in economic relief in order to make a nuclear compromise. And this time around, President Trump has launched a war that has perhaps cost American taxpayers north of $100 billion. And not only did he not attain, you know, his demand for total surrender, but it appears that we'll also be needing to pay Iran perhaps significantly more money in order to get it for nuclear compromise. So this is obviously a very sensitive point for President Trump.
INSKEEP: Wait a minute. Instead of $1.5 billion, the United States is talking about tens of billions of dollars initially?
SADJADPOUR: So in the context of a potential nuclear deal, the money that is on the table being talked about is indeed in the tens of billions of dollars. Now, what the United States is hoping for is something broader than just a nuclear deal - a deal in which Iran will really change its revolutionary identity, stop opposing America and Israel, stop supporting its regional proxies. But I think it's clear that Iran has no intention of doing that.
INSKEEP: Is this money that the Iranian government can use to support itself?
SADJADPOUR: This is money that Iran will use to double down and fortify its regime, most likely to rebuild its proxy network, rebuild its missile network. There's zero indication that this is a regime which is rethinking its revolutionary identity. If anything, they're doubling down on it.
INSKEEP: It also sounds like President Trump, based on his interview with The New York Times, accepts that Iran is going to have some nuclear activity in the end of the nuclear agreement that has yet to be negotiated, accepting that Iran will demand something, which was also true of that agreement he rejected when he ended it in 2018. Do you have a sense of what would make this potential agreement any better than what the president considered unacceptable in the past?
SADJADPOUR: So the only metric in which it could be a slight improvement on Obama's nuclear deal is that Obama's nuclear deal allowed Iran to enrich uranium at very low levels. What President Trump is hoping for is that Iran will agree to a suspension of enrichment for perhaps 10 years, 15 years before it's allowed again, low-level enrichment. It remains to be seen whether that is achievable. And in my view, even if it is achievable, it won't vindicate the enormous cost of this war.
INSKEEP: Karim, I know that you've spent a lot of time with Iranians. You've lived in Iran in the past. What does this agreement mean for the people of Iran?
SADJADPOUR: Well, I think for the people in Iran, this war has been the worst of both worlds, in that it has seemingly further entrenched a very brutal regime that killed potentially tens of thousands of Iranians last January. And it's clear to people in Iran there's no external saviors here. You know, President Trump said help is on the way. He was going to help the Iranian people. And if anything, he's done the opposite.
I think this war has revived a regime which I described as a zombie regime, one with a dying ideology, dying legitimacy. And President Trump also shifted the global conversation on Iran. Whereas in January the world was talking about the Iranian regime's brutal massacre of its own people, now Iran has been made to look like more of a victim, and in case - in some places, even a hero in withstanding this war by America and Israel.
INSKEEP: Are there people who oppose the government in Iran who feel betrayed now?
SADJADPOUR: Hundred percent. I think that's probably a widespread sentiment, that President Trump threw the Iranian people under the bus.
INSKEEP: Karim, thanks for your insights. Really appreciate it.
SADJADPOUR: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: Karim Sadjadpour is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace speaking on this morning that we are learning more gradually about a peace agreement, a tentative one, between the United States and Iran. We'll continue to bring you more information as we learn it.
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