09/08/15 – Reza Marashi – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Reza Mirashi, that is, from the National Iranian American Council, that's NIACouncil.org.
Thanks for coming back on, Reza, today, Reza.
How are you?
I'm doing well.
Thanks for having me.
Good, good.
Very happy to have you here.
So, first of all, let me just say there's an Iran deal, and the Republicans are trying to pass a resolution in both houses against it, and the question was, will they be able to override the President's veto once he vetoes it?
And now the question is no longer that.
Now the question is, will the Democrats be able to actually filibuster the negative resolution in the Senate and prevent it from even going to Obama's desk to get vetoed in the first place?
And there have been some recent announcements as of this morning.
Can you please let us know what's the count and what's the deal?
Yeah, I mean, the President needed 41 Democratic senators in an effort to try and prevent him having to even use his veto.
But he won that fight today, but the game isn't over, because now we have a situation where...
Well, wait, stop right there.
On that fight, I had heard, actually it was from Jim Loeb, and I'm sorry, I don't know the names of the senators, so I don't make a very compelling case.
But Jim Loeb's a very smart guy, and he's paying very close attention, as I'm sure you're well aware.
And he was saying that there are two senators who had said that they will not vote for the anti-resolution and will vote against it, but they would not support a filibuster against it.
So that raises the question of whether, in fact, we're back down to 40 or even 39, rather than 41.
Can you speak to that?
Yeah, I mean, therein lies the issue, and therein lies the challenge.
I think the President is, and the White House and folks who are in the pro-deal camp are understanding that the fight isn't over precisely because you need to ensure that you have enough members of Congress, more generally, but also in the Senate, more specifically, to ensure that the filibuster process can move forward.
And this is the open question, because on the one hand, you know, you've had Mitch McConnell, who's on the Republican side in the Senate, saying consistently that, you know, you have to pass the 60-vote threshold, you have to pass the 60-vote threshold.
And to change the rules that he's been trying to put forward now, I think, would be, you know, overtly political and, frankly, quite silly, but there's no guarantee as of yet, because it's still fluid.
So we're going to find out, in relatively short order, how this thing is going to move forward.
I mean, Democratic senators can't have it both ways.
Voting for closure on the resolution of disapproval is essentially a vote to undermine diplomacy.
And waffling on the closure vote puts overwhelming pressure on other senators to declare that they support the deal and vote against the closure.
So, you know, the filibuster process is still fluid.
You know, even Susan Collins from down in Maine, I think, hasn't declared her position yet.
So we've got a ways to go before the whole process is over, and not just because of the filibuster process, but also because there is a longstanding effort not just about whether the president can win the battle to protect the deal, but how he wins it.
I think it's the how he wins it that is particularly important, not just because this is an issue of legacy for the president, but also its ability to survive past his time in office.
I mean, if this deal limps across the finish line and is only protected by President Obama's veto pen, then the question of sustaining the deal becomes a question of who's holding that pen.
Will the next president continue issuing the sanctions waivers that are necessary to implement the deal, the kinds of waivers that the United States has agreed to?
Or will they hold lawmakers back and hold interest groups back from calling for new sanctions or other provocative moves that could, you know, violate the terms that America has agreed to?
So I think what we're, last thing I'll say, I'll stop rambling, this is shaving up to be exactly the same kind of fight that we saw under Obamacare, where rather than, you know, death by a shotgun, they're going to try to kill it, death by a million paper cut.
You know, their playbook is small, the people that are fighting against this, but it's a well-funded playbook.
So the fight continues.
All right, now, I think we've beat the details of the nuclear deal, what it really means to death on this show.
But I have a couple of questions here in the email that I thought were pretty good questions that I'd like to put to you.
And I know you're formerly at the State Department working on the Iran desk there.
So I'm sure you're able to speak to some of these questions pretty easily.
Other than with North Korea, how many, if any, joint committee-type agreements like this have there been with other nations along the lines of the Iran deal?
Anything else you could compare it to?
I think it's incomparable, because, again, the North Korea deal did not go into nearly as much detail as the Iran deal goes into.
The North Korea deal was just a couple of pages long.
The Iran deal is, if I'm not mistaken, 159, 158 pages long.
So they've really gone into the weeds, frankly, in an unprecedented kind of way.
And I think that speaks to a larger point that kind of engulfs the question that was asked, which is, this is the most robust, intrusive, wide-ranging nonproliferation agreement ever negotiated.
And it's going to be used as a model for future nonproliferation agreements going forward, precisely because the Iranian government, in an effort to try and show the world that it's not building a nuclear weapon and doesn't speak to, has agreed to measures that no other country has ever agreed to before.
Right.
Now, when it comes to the permanent kind of 24-hour inspection of all the declared nuclear facilities, how different is that to the regular safeguards agreement that every other nonnuclear weapons state but nuclear state is a party to?
They all have safeguards agreements of one level or another, right?
That's right.
But I mean, that's for countries that have signed the nonproliferation treaty.
Right.
They all have safeguards agreements.
But for all intents and purposes, you have the additional protocol, which goes above and beyond your typical safeguards agreement.
Because again, Iran was following through from one IAEA report to the next.
The IAEA said, we can't confirm certain things.
But it didn't say that Iran was in violation of its IAEA commitment.
And I think that's an important distinction, because now Iran is going to sign on to the additional protocol.
And it's going to go above and beyond what most member states that have signed on to the NPT are going to be required to go forward with.
But also, they've agreed to inspections and verification mechanisms that go even beyond the additional protocol.
So again, this is the most intrusive and most rigorous inspections mechanism and verifications mechanism ever put into place.
The entire supply and production chain of Iran's nuclear program is under constant monitoring.
It's never happened before.
So again, people can talk about whether or not they trust Iran, they like Iran, whether or not they like diplomacy.
What they can't argue is that this is the most intrusive, well-negotiated nonproliferation agreement ever.
All right.
Now, we know that there's, you know, just all this robust inspection at all their declared nuclear facilities, etc.
And we know that when the war party complains about a potential 24-day delay on an inspection at their undeclared facilities, say a military facility, where Iran has up until that point never said that there is anything nuclear going on whatsoever.
But if that's a so-called suspicious site and the Americans or the safeguards inspectors want to check it out, they have 24 days.
And we know that, come on, they're totally BS.
And when they try to make it seem like in the headlines that Iran has 24 days notice on any inspection anywhere, or we can obviously put that aside because that's silly.
We're only talking about if they show up to a military base and say, we want to look here, there, the other place.
But I wonder how that compares to any other safeguards agreement on Earth.
Does the IAEA get to, have they ever had the ability to go to military bases in 24 days or any number of days?
I mean, the ability to go to military sites is predicated on the ability of the IAEA or IAEA member states to demonstrate that they have just cause to go to military sites.
It has to be, you can't say, we suspect that you have, you know, you're building a nuclear weapon at this military site.
And then they say, you're Iran or any other country, you're going to say, well, what grounds do you have to think that?
Show us the evidence.
And then you say, well, we're not going to show you the evidence because that will reveal how we collect intelligence on your nuclear program.
Then you're at a stalemate.
So there's going to be a demonstration of why a particular site may want to be inspected.
And if one happens to be a military site, then that's going to have to cross that bridge when they get to it.
So it's going to be predicated on the evidence that's put forward and it's going to be need based when it comes to military sites.
Because again...
And what about the Brazilians, the Canadians, the, I don't want to include France or any other nuclear weapons state, but what about, I don't know, Spain?
They have nuclear technology, but not a nuclear weapons program, right?
Does the IAEA have the right to inspect their military base, assuming that they provide some reason to believe there's something to find there in any other country other than Iran?
No, it's not a right.
You don't.
It doesn't matter if it's Iran or any other country.
The IAEA doesn't have the right.
Well, I mean, under this deal, they do now, right, is what we're talking about.
Yeah, and I don't think they feel they do now and it has to be substantiated by evidence.
Right, right, right.
But I'm just saying in any other, I mean, under this deal with Iran, they can get in departure and assuming they have a legitimate reason to believe so within the 24 days, whatever.
I just wonder if that is parallel to any other safeguards agreement on Earth where they could ever, you know, obviously America would never let them into American military bases, right?
No, of course not.
But the issue with Parchin is not what's happening there now, it's what's potentially happened in the past.
And the Iranians understand that they need to answer questions about what happened in the past with regards to the program, particularly from 2003 prior.
And they've set up a 12 step process with the IAEA with timelines attached to address all of those questions and resolve the issue once and for all.
And once the issue has been closed, it can't be reopened again.
And I think that was another thing that was potentially a cause for concern on the part of the Iranians, as it would for any other country, which is to say, you know, where does this process end?
Let's map it out.
So we know everything that needs to be done, it can't be open ended.
And now they've ironed that out.
So that for past activities, or present activities, all of Iran's facilities are known, and the entire production and supply chain is going to be monitored, most of it already is.
So for all intents and purposes, we're good on that front.
And in order to cheat, after this deal begins being implemented, Iran would have to set up an entire parallel nuclear industry and infrastructure, which has never been done in the history of the world.
So we're really looking at a deal that is going to ensure that Iran can't build a nuclear weapon without getting caught cheating.
Yeah.
Hey, just one last note here before I let you go.
Did you see where Dick Cheney said yesterday, that this deal, well, here, let me get the quote right.
If I have it here, Cheney, this deal gives Tehran the means to launch a nuclear attack on the US homeland.
And I just thought, that is so cool, that that's what they're reduced to now, is not just these complete inanities that have no basis in reality whatsoever, but go ahead and have Dick Cheney come out and do it.
It's almost like a false flag attack by Code Pink or some kind of peace activist group, mind control, and Dick Cheney.
Every time we need for him to completely and totally decimate and finish discrediting the war party's point of view.
They trot him on out with another one of these things.
Well, at least with Dick Cheney, you know where you stand.
All right.
Hey, thanks again, Rez.
Appreciate it, man.
Yeah.
My pleasure.
Thanks for having me.
See ya.
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