Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: On Monday night, President Trump announced on Truth Social that
Speaker 2: he'd help negotiate a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. Then
Speaker 2: on Tuesday, the President criticized both countries for threatening that
Speaker 2: fragile pause.
Speaker 1: It just feels like there are so many ways in
Speaker 1: which this thing could unwind.
Speaker 2: Nick Wadhams covers national security for.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg, and it feels like we're very far from a
Speaker 1: situation where we'd be able to enter into diplomacy to
Speaker 1: come to some sort of longer term resolution.
Speaker 2: But even if a diplomatic solution seems out of reach,
Speaker 2: it has happened before. About a decade ago, months of
Speaker 2: negotiations led to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action the JCPOA.
Speaker 3: In February of twenty fifteen, when the negotiations were at
Speaker 3: a bit of a standstill, President Obama decided that I
Speaker 3: would join Secretary Kerry, the Secretary of State, in the talks.
Speaker 2: Ernest Monese played a big role in those talks as
Speaker 2: President Obama's Energy secretary. He's also a nuclear physicist. Today
Speaker 2: he's the head of a nonprofit that advocates for nuclear disarmament.
Speaker 2: He's been watching the latest out of Iran closely, and
Speaker 2: he argues it's time for a new agreement.
Speaker 3: I think there are many many ways to go about this,
Speaker 3: but it's time to go about it.
Speaker 2: But with a shaky ceasefire in place, Just what would
Speaker 2: it take to get back to negotiations and what's at
Speaker 2: stake if that doesn't happen. I'm David Gerret and this
Speaker 2: is the Big Take from Bloomberg News Today. On the show,
Speaker 2: I speak with former US Energy Secretary Ernest Moneese and
Speaker 2: with Bloomberg's Nick Wadhams about President Trump's approach to Iran,
Speaker 2: the state of the country's nuclear program, and what previous
Speaker 2: negotiations can tell us about the moment we're in now.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg's Nick Watams has been tracking the fast moving developments
Speaker 2: between the US, Israel, and Iran, and he and I
Speaker 2: smoke on Tuesday morning. I want to ask you first
Speaker 2: about the ceasefire President Trump announced last night on Truth
Speaker 2: Social help us make sense of it? What is President
Speaker 2: Trump trying to accomplish here?
Speaker 1: I think the President chiefly is trying to get himself
Speaker 1: a foreign policy win and to make it look like
Speaker 1: he has a greater deal of influence than he actually has.
Speaker 1: But you have this fascinating situation where the President is
Speaker 1: essentially conducting foreign policy by tweet and announced this ceasefire
Speaker 1: that seemed to catch even some members of his own
Speaker 1: administration off guard. He basically, via JD. Vance and Steve Witcoff,
Speaker 1: back channeled with Israel and then got the Kataris to
Speaker 1: pull Iran on board. And I think the bigger signal
Speaker 1: there is that, in a lot of ways, everybody kind
Speaker 1: of wants this thing to end. So he found a
Speaker 1: fortuitous moment to essentially claim victory.
Speaker 2: We heard his frustration on Tuesday morning as he talked
Speaker 2: to reporters before he left Washington for for a NATO summit.
Speaker 4: We basically have two countries that have been fighting so
Speaker 4: long and so hard that they don't know what they're doing.
Speaker 2: Do you understand how fragile is this sees fire?
Speaker 3: Nick?
Speaker 1: I would say, this is a very very fragile ceasefire.
Speaker 1: The President essentially said, you know, there's going to be
Speaker 1: peace in the region, but I have a lot of
Speaker 1: questions about that. What if investigators or US intelligence find
Speaker 1: there's another site, as Iran has intimated, where it's continuing enrichment,
Speaker 1: or what if the US finds those nine hundred pounds
Speaker 1: of enriched uranium which they've lost track of, and they decide, okay,
Speaker 1: another bunker buster bomb is needed to take out that uranium.
Speaker 1: So there are all sorts of those elements. But then
Speaker 1: there's the Israel component. What if Israel finds a target
Speaker 1: of opportunity or a moment of opportunity where it can
Speaker 1: take out another Iranian science who's involved with the nuclear program,
Speaker 1: or another military general. I mean, it just feels like
Speaker 1: there are so many ways in which this thing could unwind,
Speaker 1: and it feels like we're very far from a situation
Speaker 1: where we'd be able to enter into diplomacy to come
Speaker 1: to some sort of longer term resolution.
Speaker 2: I want to dig into one part of that, and
Speaker 2: it is sort of what it's going to take to
Speaker 2: figure out how successful those strikes were. How difficult is
Speaker 2: it going to be to assess how much material was
Speaker 2: at those sites, how much might have been moved.
Speaker 1: Well, there are a couple of things. One is, in
Speaker 1: terms of eliminating the material that Iran needs to make
Speaker 1: a bomb, there is no assessment that currently exists to
Speaker 1: suggest that that material has been taken off the table,
Speaker 1: so the US has basically lost track of where that
Speaker 1: enriched uranium is. The question is can Iran produce more?
Speaker 1: And then could it produce a bomb, a weapon that
Speaker 1: could deliver a nuclear warhead? And Iran is still seen
Speaker 1: as being some ways away from that. So you have
Speaker 1: assessments now saying that Iran has essentially been pushed back.
Speaker 1: But the challenge when you look at enrichment, of course,
Speaker 1: is that Fordoh is a facility that's buried underneath a mountain.
Speaker 1: That's why they needed those bunker buster bombs. At the moment,
Speaker 1: we're still waiting for a lot of that information to
Speaker 1: come in.
Speaker 2: On Tuesday, the New York Times reported the US strikes
Speaker 2: didn't collapse Iran's underground nuclear facilities and quote set back
Speaker 2: Iran's nuclear program by only a few months. Former Energy
Speaker 2: Secretary Ernest Mones spent a lot of time when he
Speaker 2: was negotiating the Iran deal on verification how the international
Speaker 2: community could assess what Iran was doing and what it wasn't.
Speaker 2: I asked him how far away he thinks Iran is
Speaker 2: from developing a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 3: When you hear these different timeframes often what you're hearing
Speaker 3: is apples and oranges being compared. For example, when one
Speaker 3: talks about weeks pre attack, that was correct in terms
Speaker 3: of the time would take from where they were starting
Speaker 3: with highly enriched uranium to reach weapons grade. For a
Speaker 3: substantial number of weapons, that would have been weeks. That's
Speaker 3: not the same as you often hear as building a
Speaker 3: nuclear weapon, So then you hear some say, well, it's
Speaker 3: three years away. I think that's a little bit on
Speaker 3: the high side in the sense that there are many
Speaker 3: intermediate places you can go in building much cruder weapons,
Speaker 3: which are nevertheless would make for a very very bad
Speaker 3: day if one were to explode.
Speaker 2: I saw that Anthony Blincoln, who was President Biden's Secretary
Speaker 2: of State and someone with whom you worked in the
Speaker 2: Obama administration, had a piece in The Times on Tuesday,
Speaker 2: and he called the strikes on Iran by the US
Speaker 2: and Israel unwise and unnecessary. But he added that now
Speaker 2: that it's done, I very much hope it succeeded. Do
Speaker 2: you feel similarly about what's transpired here over the last
Speaker 2: few days.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, I think there's no question that
Speaker 3: militarily it was a success. Whether success means FODOH was
Speaker 3: badly damaged or obliterated, I think remains to be seen,
Speaker 3: but clearly lots of damage to that facility and also
Speaker 3: to the Matan's enrichment facility. However, I would distinguish damage
Speaker 3: of facilities with curtailment of a possible nuclear weapons.
Speaker 2: Program, looking at how much damage has been done, how
Speaker 2: much time and effort is that going to take.
Speaker 3: It's likely that we'll never really quite know the exact
Speaker 3: level of damage, but I don't think it matters that
Speaker 3: much to me. It's going to be much more now
Speaker 3: what they elect to do or not do in covert sites.
Speaker 3: Before the US bombing, Iran made the statement that they
Speaker 3: had a third undisclosed location. I'd have no idea if
Speaker 3: that's true or not, but I wouldn't rule it out.
Speaker 3: And when you combine that with the enriched geranium that
Speaker 3: was probably moved and hidden, and you combine that with
Speaker 3: their extensive work on other elements of a nuclear weapon
Speaker 3: up until two thousand and three, I don't think we
Speaker 3: should doubt that they had the capability of building a
Speaker 3: nuclear weapons, certainly a crude one, in a reasonably prompt time.
Speaker 2: How difficult is it to move nuclear materials around. So
Speaker 2: if an advance of these attacks, Aroon wanted to move
Speaker 2: some of that uranium, how hard an undertaking is that?
Speaker 3: That would be simple. It's just cylinders filled with a
Speaker 3: gaseous form uranium hexafluoride to be precise, in basically metal tanks,
Speaker 3: and you can just load them onto a truck and
Speaker 3: move them. We may not ever know how much of
Speaker 3: that highly enriched uranium escaped the bombing. If I were
Speaker 3: a military planner, I would be assuming all of it
Speaker 3: was moved.
Speaker 2: After the break? What could bring Iran back to the
Speaker 2: negotiating table after a blistering few weeks of fighting in
Speaker 2: the Middle East? On Tuesday, after President Trump announced a
Speaker 2: ceasefire between Israel and Iran, I sat down separately with
Speaker 2: former Energy Secretary Ernest Monees and with Nick Wadhams, who
Speaker 2: oversees Bloomberg's coverage of national security. We've heard from the President,
Speaker 2: we have read his post on social media. What don't
Speaker 2: we know about what he wants to happen next? Is
Speaker 2: it direct talks? It seems like it is a return
Speaker 2: to diplomacy in some form.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is the great question that we have
Speaker 1: all been trying to answer because it has felt for
Speaker 1: a long time like the President is not actually interested
Speaker 1: in the sort of diplomacy that would lead to an
Speaker 1: ironclad agreement. I mean, people think of the Joint Comprehensive
Speaker 1: Plan of Action, the previous nuclear deal that was done
Speaker 1: under the Obama administration that took more than two years.
Speaker 1: The President this time essentially said a month to go, Hey, Roan,
Speaker 1: you've got sixty days. Come to a deal in sixty days.
Speaker 1: And they had these periodic conversations between Steve Whitcoff, his envoy,
Speaker 1: and Iranian officials, but there's never been a sense that
Speaker 1: they were actually sitting in a room and hammering out
Speaker 1: the concrete and difficult details that would produce a lasting agreement.
Speaker 2: Ernest Monies was one of the lead negotiators the JCPOA,
Speaker 2: working in parallel with President Obama's Secretary of State John Carey.
Speaker 3: My job was to make sure that the way President
Speaker 3: Obama expressed it was that if they were to go
Speaker 3: all out with what they had to produce the material
Speaker 3: for one nuclear weapon, it would credibly take a year
Speaker 3: or longer. So that was one requirement. The second requirement
Speaker 3: was to come back with very stringent verification and transparency approaches,
Speaker 3: and we did. We came back with unparalleled verification measures.
Speaker 2: But the deal Monies and his colleagues worked on didn't
Speaker 2: survive Trump's first term. He withdrew the US from the
Speaker 2: agreement in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 4: As I have said many times, the Iran deal was
Speaker 4: one of the worst and most one sided transactions the
Speaker 4: United States has ever entered into.
Speaker 2: Nick has he said anything in the intervening years intervening
Speaker 2: period to give us an indication of what he wants
Speaker 2: in an agreement with Iran That wasn't there in that
Speaker 2: first one.
Speaker 1: Right, So, the whole premise of the JCPOA was you
Speaker 1: put these limits on Iranian enrichment. You don't completely remove
Speaker 1: their ability to enrich uranium. You just put it so
Speaker 1: that they can't enrich to weapons grade. And then you
Speaker 1: essentially put in a time limit, you say about fifteen years,
Speaker 1: and then after that they would reassess. And the deal
Speaker 1: was very explicit in not putting limits on Iran's ballistic
Speaker 1: missile program, on its funding for proxy groups in the region,
Speaker 1: on all the concerns that US and European officials had.
Speaker 1: But the idea was Okay, let's sort of fold Iran
Speaker 1: back into the international community. Let's build goodwill, let's get
Speaker 1: its economy humming, give it an incentive to essentially stay
Speaker 1: on the path, on the straight and narrow, and then
Speaker 1: in fifteen years we'll all come back and reassess and
Speaker 1: put new limits on and there will be this unified
Speaker 1: front with Russia and China and all the other signatories
Speaker 1: to the deal. So the President in twenty eighteen basically
Speaker 1: looked the deal and said, well, this only puts very
Speaker 1: time constrained limits on Iranian ye Richmond, but doesn't require
Speaker 1: anything else, any other limits that are the reason why
Speaker 1: Iran is also such a threat to the region. So
Speaker 1: he blew it up. And then subsequently the Trump administration
Speaker 1: had an envoy, Brian Hook who went in and tried
Speaker 1: to come to a new deal to impose more strict sunsets,
Speaker 1: to put more limits on the Iranian program, and he
Speaker 1: was unable to do that, in part because Trump wouldn't
Speaker 1: sign off on it.
Speaker 2: The US was talking with Iran again during President Trump's
Speaker 2: second term, but Iran called off those talks after the
Speaker 2: Israeli strikes. Nick, where do you see things going from here?
Speaker 2: I go back to the last time Iran in the
Speaker 2: United States were negotiating a deal, and it seemed like
Speaker 2: Iran had more optionality. And I look at the state
Speaker 2: of Iran, its economy under sanctions, the fact that it's
Speaker 2: been hit by these strikes from Israel and the US,
Speaker 2: its proxies in the Middle East have been diminished.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like a fascinating puzzle piece, because you're right,
Speaker 1: Iran has been severely weakened. It seems that it does
Speaker 1: not have the hand that it had back then to
Speaker 1: play anymore. And that's what President Trump is essentially counting.
Speaker 1: On the flip side, is that what you had in
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen when those conversations were going on was at
Speaker 1: least some element of trust that if you came to
Speaker 1: this deal, the two sides would adhere to it. And
Speaker 1: then once President Trump came in and blew up that deal,
Speaker 1: you essentially gave the hardliners in Iran all the evidence
Speaker 1: they needed to say, Hey, the Americans can never be trusted.
Speaker 1: Why would we ever get into a deal with them?
Speaker 3: And that was what.
Speaker 1: Actually hung up the negotiations from the Biden administration with Iran.
Speaker 1: So you have this situation where On the one hand,
Speaker 1: Iran is severely weakened and does have an incentive to
Speaker 1: get into a deal. But also the hardliners in Iran
Speaker 1: who oppose that idea have all the evidence they need
Speaker 1: to show that the US can't be trusted. And then
Speaker 1: you also have plenty of examples for Iran countries like Russia,
Speaker 1: North Korea, even Cuba where they've been under massive economic
Speaker 1: sanction for many, many years, and in some ways the
Speaker 1: regime is only more powerful than it ever was. So
Speaker 1: there is an incentive structure for the leadership in Iran
Speaker 1: to say, let's just hang on and keep up this
Speaker 1: opposition with the West.
Speaker 2: I asked ernest Monies, what would or could incentivize Iran
Speaker 2: to pursue a diplomatic solution Again.
Speaker 3: To come back to the table, I think we have
Speaker 3: to look at what are the strategic needs of all
Speaker 3: the players in this What does everybody need out of
Speaker 3: a negotiation. Well, what Iran says they need is the
Speaker 3: ability to use nuclear technology peacefully. They want nuclear electricity, fine,
Speaker 3: they like medical isotopes, cure cancer and the like. Fine,
Speaker 3: we have no problem with those peaceful uses. What the
Speaker 3: West will need and Israel will need is considerable confidence
Speaker 3: that Iran is not engaging, especially in a covert program
Speaker 3: to build a nuclear weapon. I for one, think that
Speaker 3: an interesting approach to a new negotiation, and I have
Speaker 3: reason to believe Iran would be interested in pursuing a
Speaker 3: regional development of nuclear energy and its supply chain that
Speaker 3: would include enrichment and fuel fabrication, potentially in various countries
Speaker 3: in the region, but not under any one country's control.
Speaker 3: So again, providing some assurance that there will not be
Speaker 3: a diversion of materials or technology to a weapons program.
Speaker 2: Lastly, I want to ask you about the key ingredient
Speaker 2: to any successful negotiation, and that, of course is trust.
Speaker 2: Is it possible, after all that's happened, for these two
Speaker 2: countries to get together in a room and for the
Speaker 2: US and Iran to trust one another enough to engage
Speaker 2: in vilent negotiations.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, in twenty fifteen, when we were negotiating
Speaker 3: the original Iran deal, my phrase was always don't trust
Speaker 3: and verify, and I think that's going to be the
Speaker 3: approach here on all sides. So again I go back
Speaker 3: to those strategic objectives Iran being able to use nuclear
Speaker 3: technology peacefully, the West and Israel and other countries being
Speaker 3: confident that if they were to try a covert program,
Speaker 3: at least the bar would be set very very high
Speaker 3: for detection, and that Iran and other countries in the
Speaker 3: region feel that they have security of supply to pursue
Speaker 3: peaceful uses. So I think those are the three objectives.
Speaker 3: They will not be based upon trust, They will have
Speaker 3: to be based upon verification and on processes in which
Speaker 3: Iran also feels confident that they will have access to
Speaker 3: what they need.
Speaker 2: This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gera.
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