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Hello, everyone. I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us. Hey, everyone. I'm Rima Grace. It is Tuesday, June 24th. Today, we're talking about what's been going on between Iran, Israel and the U.S. The United States entanglement in this conflict has a long history and a lot of it hinges on Iran's nuclear capabilities. So we're going to be talking about that today.
Yeah, we wanted to have a look back, a little bit of history here about what led up to the United States launching strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend. Because if many of you will recall, there was a nuclear deal with Iran at one point.
It fell apart. There have been economic sanctions that have been at play through the whole thing. So Rose Kalanick is here to make us smart about this. She's director of the Middle East program at Defense Priorities, a foreign policy think tank. Welcome to the show, Rose. Hi, thank you so much for having me on.
So first off, the ceasefire that President Trump announced yesterday looks pretty shaky after Israel accused Iran of breaking it. The president, in some colorful language, accused Israel of also breaking it. How meaningful do you think this actual ceasefire is going to turn out to be, if it even is a ceasefire?
So, I mean, the obvious answer is nobody really knows. But it could be meaningful. It could be meaningful. It could be a time when hostilities really pause and all the parties involved go back to the negotiating table. It could just as easily fall apart in a day or two or in an hour or two. It seems extremely tenuous. One thing that suggests that it could last a little longer is that there are reports on both sides of
that both Israel and Iran have been running low on some of their munitions, especially for Israel, their interceptors. So they're kind of at a natural pause for restocking moment, which suggests that this could last more than just a few hours or a few days, hopefully. Of course, I hope it lasts longer than that. Right, right.
Well, I want us to go back in time for a minute to help people better understand what's unfolding today. So U.S.-Iran tensions really trace back to the 1950s. That's when the CIA helped the U.K. overthrow Iran's elected prime minister over fears about oil. Tell us more about that moment. And I'm also curious how much you think we're still living in that shadow.
Oh, gosh. Yeah. I mean, it goes way back. Yeah, before 1950s, too. Yeah. Right, before 1950s. But yeah, I mean, that was certainly a watershed moment. You know, it's quite clear to me that the Iranians have never forgotten that the United States teamed up with the British to enact this coup to overthrow Mossadegh, who was the leader of Iran at the time, and strengthen the Shah and go back to a regime that was run primarily by the Shah, which
And it was done because of concerns about, I mean, there's a huge historical debate over it, of course, like there are with most things. But the U.S. was worried that Mossadegh was too close to the Soviets. He had also nationalized the Iranian oil industry, which was something that was controversial.
not okay with Britain because they had an oil company in Iran that was subject to that nationalization. So I do think it put into the minds of many in Iran and elsewhere that the U.S. was really interested in having access to Iran's oil at all costs, even if it meant getting directly involved in regime change
action, right, covertly in Iran at the time. And then subsequent to that, the U.S. then supported the Shah of Iran up through the 1979 Iranian revolution. And, you know, we supported the Shah, I mean,
Nixon was BFF with the Shah, practically. I mean, he had a very close rapport with the Shah. He armed the Shah to the teeth. He instructed his own advisors to give the Shah any U.S. weapons he wanted short of the atomic bomb. So the U.S. leaned very heavily on the Shah during that time to keep the Soviets out of the Middle East. But unfortunately, the Shah was also a strong man who had a much-feared secret police apparatus that
And the fact that the United States helped bolster that apparatus did not endear us to the Iranian people and certainly not to the regime that came after the Shah fell. Right. You're talking about the Iranian revolution there, which is probably where the memory of a lot of folks picks up. Where did we start shifting the narrative from sort of the oil discussion to the nuclear discussion? Yeah.
Yeah, so there have been nuclear worries about Iran for a long time. The United States actually helped Iran build a nuclear reactor in Iran when it was run by the Shah. That wasn't something that could be weaponized into some kind of nuclear program. But going back to the early 1980s, there were concerns raised in the United States and in Israel that perhaps one day the Iranians would try to get a nuclear weapon.
And then the Iranian regime pursued that in various capacities, not necessarily a weapon per se, but they pursued a nuclear enrichment program and civilian nuclear energy that they have always claimed was peaceful only in intent, but many have worried that it's a precursor to a weapons program.
And so those fears go back to the 80s, and they increased significantly in the early 2000s when Iran was sort of forced to come clean about the fact that it had nuclear sites that it had not reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA. And so that's sort of when things really changed.
And the U.S. has leaned heavily on sanctions to try to limit Iran's nuclear program. In your view, how effective have those sanctions actually been?
The sanctions aren't perfect. Iran has ways to try to get around them. But certainly since the 2010s, the early 2010s, the U.S. started really tightening the sanctions regime on Iran by using things called secondary sanctions. So the U.S. has had sanctions on Iran since 1979. They expanded them over the years. But ultimately, progressives
primary sanctions, as they're called, are geared at U.S. companies. So they're basically saying, hey, U.S. company, you can't trade with Iran, you can't invest in Iran, etc., etc.,
In the early 2010s, we saw a big shift to secondary sanctions where the U.S. government wasn't just saying, okay, U.S. companies can't deal with Iranian companies. Even third-party companies and third-party countries that deal with Iran are subject to sanctions by the United States. And those sanctions were much more effective in actually reducing sanctions.
investment in Iran, reducing economic growth in Iran, and choking off its ability to export oil. Not perfectly, but much more than in the past. Now, are those sanctions effective in their political objectives? It's not totally clear, but it does seem like the sanctions put on in 2010 and in 2012 have
helped to bring Iran to the table and agree to the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA, which I believe stands for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. And most people, even people who don't really believe that sanctions are very effective, look at that as an example where it does seem like it mattered to Iran and brought them to the table. And then under that deal, Iran got sanctions relief from the United States
from the UN and from some European countries party to the deal as a result of agreeing to certain limitations on how much uranium it enriched and to what degree of purity, how many centrifuges they had, et cetera, et cetera. So how well did Iran do at keeping up its end of the deal? Because obviously President Trump pulled out of that deal in 2018. What was the reasoning behind that?
Yeah. So the record is quite clear that Iran did live up to the deal. And, you know, part of the deal was required for people in the United States, members of the administration, to review reports from the IAEA, from the inspectors, and certify and recertify that Iran was in compliance with the deal. And they, in fact, did do that.
up through the first, I don't know, six months to a year of the Trump presidency. So Rex Tillerson, as the Secretary of State, recertified that Iran was meeting its obligations under the deal. So there was no evidence that Iran was cheating before Trump pulled us out of the deal. And in fact, the IAEA has been pretty clear that Iran continued to abide by the limits imposed by the deal for a full year after Trump pulled the U.S. out. It was only after...
The United States did some kind of threatening things towards Iran, like we sailed an aircraft carrier nearby and said that this should be a message to the regime, blah, blah, blah. Kind of like some militaristic sorts of things that Iran then came forward and said, okay, we're going to break these limits because this deal has been void for a whole year. And they did. But even as they did, they did it in a way that allowed the IAEA to see what they were doing.
Right. Like Iran could have just kicked out all the inspectors. They didn't do that. They inspect they they enriched beyond the limits, but they also gave access so that the international community could see what they were doing. What's prevented another nuclear deal from coming together? You know, I think that Trump was not particularly interested in a nuclear deal. He was pursuing this maximum pressure campaign after he left office.
my understanding is that Biden was interested in a new deal and sort of made, uh, you know, appeals to the Iranians to agree to this, to a new deal. And Iran was not particularly interested in doing so. Um, which, you know, if I were Iran, I would be pretty mad if I had, you know, um,
adhered to the requirements of a deal, and then the deal was blown up in my face. So I think that I think the U.S. lost a lot of credibility with Iran and lost a lot of trust. Absolutely. 100%. So I think that was a big stumbling block. And Biden just eventually gave up. So that brings us to where we are now with the strikes over the weekend. President Trump has said that
The strike's completely destroyed Iran's nuclear facilities and he's pretty harshly chastising anyone who says differently. How can we actually know the answer and what the status of these, not just the nuclear facilities, but Iran's nuclear material, like how can we actually know where we stand there now?
Yeah. I mean, there's really no way to know with certainty unless you have boots on the ground. And those boots could be two forms of boots, right? One, the preferred form, is IAEA inspectors. So there are inspectors in Iran right now. They don't have...
perfect access to the sites that have just been blown up. I'm sure there are safety reasons. But Iran also just may not want to let them back in. It's not clear yet whether they will. But the IAEA needs to go and verify what the extent of the damage is. That's the only way we really know for sure, unless...
The U.S. or Israel tries to put boots on the ground to actually verify what the damage is to the sites that were targeted. There's also reports that, you know, Iran had a stockpile of about 400 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium, which is not weapons-grade uranium, right?
It would have to go through additional refining to be weapons grade. But the most recent sort of public knowledge that we have about that is that it was in these tunnels in Esfahan that were not targeted by the strikes. There's also some suggestion that, you know, the Iranians moved it from those tunnels anyway. So we don't really know where that is. We need cooperation from Iran, right?
to allow IAEA people in to find the stuff and make sure it's accounted for or to make sure that it's blown up. Right. But it's not something that we can just do from satellite imagery. Right.
One last thing, though. I mean, where do we actually stand given all of this, given the quasi ceasefire? Where do we actually stand in getting to the table for negotiations for another nuclear deal? Like the Israel-Iran stuff is its own thing. But for the United States and Iran, where are we right now? We're in a difficult position because we're
What has happened over the past two weeks has really undermined U.S. credibility in negotiations. And to be clear, our credibility wasn't great anyway after Trump pulled us out of the JCPOA, right? So our credibility wasn't great, but we were negotiating with Iran, and the reporting suggests that the Israelis wanted to attack Iran. Trump told them not to.
And they did it anyway. Right? So that suggests that Trump is not necessarily able to restrain the Israelis, which is something that he has to be able to say to the Iranians that he can do credibly in order to get them to agree. So like...
We're facing a massive, it's what you would call a credibility of assurances problem. So like Trump has gone out and made all these threats and has acted on some of the threats. He did these airstrikes, et cetera. So he's convinced Iran, I think, you know, that if they don't agree to his demands, bad things will happen to them, right? But he also has to convince Iran that if they do agree to his demands and they do give up their nuclear program, that bad things won't happen to them anyway, right?
And unfortunately, the things that Trump has been doing, like flirting with regime change with posts on social media, right, is not helpful to that. So if the Iranians think that the U.S. is just bent on attacking them anyway and doing regime change anyway, then it's going to be really hard to get them to agree to give up this nuclear program that they've invested so much in.
Oh, boy. We could spend all day talking about this. So much history, so much backstory. Thank you so much for making us smart. That was Rose Kalanick, who is director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities. Really appreciate your joining us to share your expertise. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
Yeah, the credibility thing. It's the overarching narrative over the course of so many years now. And it's hard to see how you come back from that, because if you do put yourself, like Rose was saying, in the position of Iran, why would they believe us now? Right. It completely undermines our credibility. I also wanted to take a minute. This has been on my mind because I was just on the phone actually last night with a friend who has family in Iran. Right.
And, you know, it's hard to find and confirm numbers right now, but there are estimates that hundreds of people in Iran have been killed by Israeli airstrikes. And, you know, she was telling me just how frightened her family feels. They're all on edge. They're not sleeping. Many of them have evacuated their homes. And her grandmother in particular has relocated about four times in the last 12 days. They barely have access to the Internet. So it's hard to know what's happening or just to be in touch with family members and
And, you know, I've talked with you, Kimberly, and on this show about my family in Gaza. I also have a Palestinian family in Israel. And the death toll there has been under about 30 people, but I've been talking with them. And I was just talking with my aunt this morning and my cousin and the Iranian strikes have been very close to them. And they fled their homes and have been staying in hotel for the last 10 days or so. And and then there's also Gaza with
With tens of thousands of people killed thus far and the humanitarian food situation just so awful and people dying just trying to get food on a regular basis. Yeah. Right. So while we've been talking about strategy and economics and history, I think it's just important to remember, again, that behind every headline, there are people just trying to survive. It's an interesting component also, you know, the U.S. strikes in particular. It's unclear, you know, whether or not
those strikes killed anyone because the Iranians did seem to have such a heads up. And then when Iran did its counter strikes on the U.S. air base, you know, we had enough notice where, as I understand it, no U.S.
personnel were killed in that interaction. But the Israeli strikes into Iran itself are obviously a very different story. So many components to these developing stories that we're following. We want to hear your questions about
How this conflict in the Middle East, you know, how you're feeling about it, how it impacts the economy, questions that you might have, comments that you might have. Leave us a voicemail. 508-827-6278, also known as 508-U-Be-Smart. And we will be right back.
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Granger, for the ones who get it done. Hi, Make Me Smart team. This is Rob from Detroit, Michigan. Rachel from Tempe, Arizona. Long-time podcast listener, first-time voice memo-er. I had a question I'd love your take on. Thank you for making me so much smarter. All right, hard pivot to the mailbag. So we spent all of last week breaking down the reconciliation bill and answering your questions. And we got this message from Beth in New York.
I find the whole thing really confusing and overwhelming. So I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank you for taking the time to explain it to us and for cultivating a relationship with your audience where people can come up with clever, smart, in-depth questions and you answer them. So thanks for making me smart.
Beth, can I just say it's confusing and overwhelming for me, too. And I look at this stuff and cover it every day. And so I hope if that conversation last week did nothing else, it's let you know that it's not you. It's not that none of us are smart enough to keep track of it. No, this is intentionally hard. Confusing job. And even then. No.
It's multiple people's full time jobs. Like I listen to podcasts where it is entire crews of people that just cover what the Senate is doing or that just cover what the House is doing. The language is intentionally confusing. They bury things in legislation intentionally so people don't notice. There are not as many political reporters as there used to be to be able to track these things. So we're relying on nonprofits.
and advocacy groups to highlight things for us. So I'm glad that it was helpful for you. But please, I hope nobody looks at this stuff and is just like, oh, it's too much for me. No, it's too much for all of us. All right, one more. Yeah, one more. We recently talked about the value of a college degree. And we also touched a bit on how the Trump administration could weaken the Pell Grant program. Here's what Kathy in Virginia had to say about that.
As a university professor at a historically black college and university, I obviously believe that a higher education is worth every dime. Probably 75 to 80 percent of the students at my university are Pell Grant recipients. I am concerned that the ability for these great students to do well is going to be thwarted by the administration.
Wow. Seventy five to 80 percent of her students are on Pell Grants. That's a lot. Yeah. Our colleague Sam Fields had a story on The Morning Show this morning about the impact of.
on the Pell Grant program of some of the changes in the reconciliation bill. And it would cap the amount. I'm just going to read here from Sam's story. Both versions of the bill would cap the amount of money parents can borrow from the federal government to help their kids pay for college. Currently, the only limit is the cost of attendance. Under the House bill, parents would only be able to borrow $50,000 total, not per kid,
total, the Senate has proposed setting the maximum at $65,000 per child. It's big changes to that program. Sorry, I'm trying to get access to my dock, but my cat keeps jumping on my laptop. You know what? That's a part of the show. The cat action. Would it be a show without SimSim? SimSim, our tax, we got to get some of them in. All right, I'm back in the dock. So before we go, we're going to leave you with this week's answer to the Make Me Smart question, which is,
What is something you thought you knew but later found out you were wrong about? This week's answer comes from gardening blogger Michael Perry, a.k.a. Mr. Plant Geek. What I thought I knew but was then wrong about later was home remedies for making plants happy. I thought that it would be really fun to put rice water on my houseplants, to put little shards of banana skin on top of the soil surface in order to give the plants the nutrients they need.
But I was wrong because actually all this does is attracts lots of little flies and insects into your home that you don't want there. So these days I stay out of my store cupboard and I only use the proper remedies that are sold in the stores. It really isn't that much fun to put pieces of fruit on your houseplants. Wow. I appreciate that.
All those viral videos are not necessarily telling you the truth. Or maybe these are tips for outside plants. Everybody sees all the plants in my house and they're like, oh, you have such a green thumb. And I'm like, no, if something dies, I don't use it again. It's survival of the fittest in here.
I did I tell you I'm getting into gardening this year. It's been such an adventure. This is like my first year really committing to it. And I'm trying to not be so wedded to the outcome being very experimental about it. So I really appreciate this comment because I've learned so much and I'm still learning and still messing up. But it's so grounding just to be in the garden and put your hands in the soil. It's therapeutic. So I need to follow this guy. What's his name? Mr. Plant Geek.
Yes. And we have a Slack channel for all the gardeners. Oh, really? I'll send it to you after the show. Oh, nice. All right. But that is the end of the show. We do want to hear your answer to the Make Me Smart question. Leave us a voicemail at 508-UBSmart or email us at MakeMeSmart at Marketplace.org. Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergseger. Today's program was engineered by Juan Carlos Torado with mixing by Becca Weinman.
Ben Talladay and Daniel Ramirez composed our theme music. Our supervising senior producer is Daisy Palacios. Nancy Fargali is executive producer of Marketplace Shows. And Marketplace's vice president and general manager is Neil Scarborough. So what are you growing? Oh my gosh, what am I not growing? Ridiculous amount of things. That's every new gardener. That's what you do. Yeah, truly. I'm doing what they tell me not to do.
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