The Trump administration has made it clear that it does not believe the nuclear deal with Iran goes far enough. One of the individuals that played a role in the negotiations of the deal, Trita Parsi, is in Louisville to talk about the deal and what might happen next.
Parsi is president of the Iran-American Council and advised the Obama White House as the nuclear deal was negotiated. He’ll speak at a World Affairs Council event Wednesday evening. I spoke to him about the nuclear deal and the future. You can hear our conversation in the player above.
Interview Highlights
On the stakes in the negotiations:“The most important thing, again, was to see that there was such a strong desire on both sides to resolve this that they really went the extra miles. Because they all knew that if they did not succeed in reaching a deal, the likelihood of war between the two countries — between the U.S. and Iran — would dramatically increase.”
On Trump and the future of the deal:
“Now, I think the Trump administration’s opposition to this is far less to do with not trusting Iran, than the fact that President Trump himself seems to be inclined to oppose almost anything that has Obama’s name on it without much regard for what the national security implications of that would be.
“And that is, I think, a very tricky situation right now because their approach to this does make sense if you are very adamantly opposed to what Obama was doing and if you don’t trust the Obama administration. But from a national security perspective, if they even up undermining this deal to the point that it collapses, it does present a tremendously dangerous national security crisis for the U.S. because we would seriously have had an international crisis that was on the verge of a military confrontation, which was avoided by through this diplomacy. But if you kill the deal, the U.S. and Iran will be back on a track towards war with each other.”
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