The Iran Nuclear Deal and The View from Tehran

For George Bush, it was once part of the Axis of Evil. For Donald Trump, Iran seems only to be part of an axis of firing up his base, placating Israel, and being supine to the Saudis. The Iran Nuclear Deal was far better and more enforceable than anything we will ever see with North Korea. Iran, according to those on the ground, the IAEA inspectors and other parties to the deal often referred to as the JCPOA, was a deal that Iran more or less was abiding by.

Now with the US having pulled out of the deal and imposing new sanctions, the Europeans, the Chinese, and the Russians, the other parties to the deal, are trying along with Iran to hold all the pieces together. The problem and complexity is that it’s about both proliferation and economics. And while the administration is filled with Iran hawks, many of whom still seek regime change in Iran, there’s no telling where all of this will wind up. In a global neighborhood it remains a tinderbox: what’s next for Iran, for Syria, and for the region.

To try and bring all of this together and provide an Iranian perspective, I’m joined by Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian, one of the foremost authorities on the subject of Iran.

My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Seyed Hossein Mousavian:

Is there any hope for the US / Iranian relationship?

Few nations have as long a history of uninterrupted conflict and misunderstanding as the United States and Iran. The markers along that road are tall. The US coup that installed the Shah, the hostage crisis, Khobar towers, Lebanon, holocaust denial and the continually failed US efforts to seize opportunities when presented by Iran, have all contributed.

The issue of US/Iranian relations have run through the center of American foreign policy for the past 60 years, through ten successive administrations, Republican and Democrat alike.

Yet with each successive effort or treatment, the disease always threatens to burst out and become full blown. This is where we are once again, in the nuclear talks in Vienna, and in an effort to stabilize Iraq and Syria.

Are we at a new critical point in this relationship or is it all just another failed effort at rapprochement? Long time Iranian diplomat and now a Professor at Princeton, Seyed Hossein Mousavian thinks there is reason for optimism. He makes his case in Iran and The United States: An Insider's View on the Failed Past and the Road to Peace.

My conversation with Seyed Hossein Mousavian:

Three Young Americans Imprisoned in Iran

Ever since the Iranian hostage crisis in November of 1979, political and diplomatic relations between the US and Iran have been irreparably ruptured. Thirty years later, three young Americans would be hiking near the Iraq / Iran border. They would be captured, accused of espionage, transferred to Iran's most notorious prison and held, sometimes for long periods in solitary confinement.

Their story is a cautionary reminder of the complexities of politics in the Middle East and most importantly of the human face of news stories from the region that have, after 30+ years, and all that has transpired during that time, had an almost numbing effect. But there is nothing numbing about the story of Shane Bauer, Joshua Fattal & Sarah Shourd. They tell their full story, for the first time in A Sliver of Light: Three Americans Imprisoned in Iran

My conversation with Shane Bauer, Joshua Fattal & Sarah Shourd:

An American Family in Iran

Thirty-four years ago the Iran hostage crisis forever transformed our view of that nation. For many of us, our memories of and attitude towards Iran and the Middle East, were frozen in place at that moment in time. Until recently very little has happened to change those views. In fact, the hard line views of the former Iranian President Ahmadinejad, only further reinforced them.

Today as change seems to be in the air, as a new regime takes over in Iran, as new overtures are made, Iran is still, as Winston Churchill once described the former Soviet Union, " a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

Few understand this dynamic better than Hooman Majd. Born in Iran, educated in the US, he was an American music executive before becoming a journalist. In 2008 he was the formal translator at the UN, for a speech given by former Iranian president Ahmadinejad.

Hooman Majd has now written about taking his family for a year of living differently,  in The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay: An American Family in Iran

My conversation with Hooman Majd:

The Twilight War

If there is any one problem that has run through the center of American foreign policy over the past 30 years, through five successive administrations, Republican and Democrat alike, it is the poisoned relationship with Iran

As students yelled “death to the Shah” in 1979, it set in motion a chain of events, an anti Americanism, that has become a part to the DNA of the country itself. Trying to understand it, and treat it has been one of the central pillars of our foreign policy. Yet with each successive treatment, the disease always threatens to burst out and become full blown. This is where we are once again, and why we need take a look as new book by the senior historian for the federal government, David Crist.

My conversation with David Crist about The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran:

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Events in Iran are moving quickly, and any attempt by Westerners to fully understand the complexity and the dizzying array of actors and institutions is often met with frustration. One who does understand however, is Middle East and South Asia Expert Juan Cole. The author of the blog INFORMED COMMENT Professor of History at the University of Michigan and author of Engaging the Muslim World, provides some keen insights into what twitter, the blogs and a little of the MSM is bringing us.

My conversation this morning with Juan Cole.

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