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You are listening to an art media podcast.
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It's Tuesday, june 16th. This episode was recorded at 6pm new york time on Monday. I'm deborah pardes and this is arc news daily.
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It's a very powerful document. It's not like the Obama document, which was just a terrible document. This is a very powerful document.
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The Iran deal has been signed, but the full text hasn't been released yet. And until it is, there is one question hanging over it. Will it be any better than the one Barack Obama signed in 2015, known as the JCPOA, the one Trump himself tore up? US officials claim it is. In an interview with ABC, Vice President J.D. vance pointed to the Gulf states as one of the main differences.
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Our Arab partners in the region, they hated the JCPOA because they felt that it emboldened Iran to be a bad actor. They love this deal because they feel that it's going to create a totally new dynamic in the Middle east.
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In the 2015 deal, Iran agreed to reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium, cap the number of centrifuges it can run, and allow international inspectors. In return, it got access to billions in frozen funds and relief from economic pressure. There were many critics of that deal. They argued that the restrictions were only temporary. At the time, Netanyahu told Congress that rather than block Iran's path to the bomb, it paved it. Analysts say what could separate this deal from the JCPOA are the details around uranium enrichment. The JCPOA didn't ban it outright. Iran could still enrich at low levels. At the beginning of the war, Trump said Iran would not be able to enrich at all forever. But now he's saying he wants Iran to suspend uranium enrichment for 20 years. Iran is reportedly countering with five, and Trump has hinted he might settle for 15. Channel 14's diplomatic correspondent Tamir Morag wrote that a 15 year pause is, quote, more or less the last substantive detail distinguishing Trump's deal from Obama's deal. There's also a question about releasing Iran's frozen funds and sanctions relief. Iran's Revolutionary Guard claimed yesterday that under the deal, Iran will receive 24 billion in frozen funds, half of it before final negotiations even begin. Vance pushed back on that. He told CBS that figure just doesn't appear anywhere in any of the texts. What he did say is that the administration is open to discussing unfreezing assets, but only if Iran meets its long term commitments, commitments on the nuclear program. The full text is expected within days ahead of a formal signing ceremony in Switzerland on Friday. That's when the details about the enrichment timeline, the money and inspection will be revealed. But even that may not settle the debate fully. Critics say that each side will continue to claim victory and tell the story they need to tell. A new rail line is being planned across the Middle East. It would run from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia through Jordan, Syria and into Turkey, then onward to Europe. And notably, it would skip right past Israel. Turkey's transport minister gave a detailed public description of the route over the weekend. The plan is to get the main part of the line up and running in about four years. The total estimated investment is around $5.5 billion. The pitch is partly about the war. Turkey says the route would protect the region from the kind of disruption caused at the Strait of Hormuz. It would be a cargo line carrying oil, gas and freight from the Gulf to Europe. And some in Turkey have said the quiet part out loud. Turkey's trade minister said the project would bring prosperity to the region along with the reduction of Israel's influence. An analysis in YNET noted that this plan is a direct jab to a similar one designed around Israel. In 2023, the United States announced a corridor to carry goods from India, through the Gulf and Saudi Arabia to Israeli ports and onto Europe. According to Wynet, that plan was an implicit wager that the Abraham Accords were turning Israel into an indispensable commercial center of Middle Eastern trade. But then October 7th happened. Normalization with Saudi Arabia never came and the corridor died along with it. The plans with Turkey are taking over instead. Turkey's president was reportedly furious when the 2023 plan bypassed his country. Turkey even framed the new corridor as a revival of the Ottoman era. Hejaz Railway. That's the line that once ran from Damascus to Medina, providing a connection to Islam's holy cities. For years, Erdogan has been restore Turkey's standing as the dominant power of the Islamic world, and this appears to be the latest effort. The project is still in preliminary stages, financing is only partially secured, and there's a 250 mile gap between Syria and Jordan that needs to be built from scratch. The New York Times is reviewing the work of one of its most well known columnists, the same one who recently wrote an explosive article about Israeli sexual abuse. The writer is Nicholas Kristof, and his piece generated widespread condemnation among Israeli officials. The article cited an organization with ties to Hamas and repeated claims that Israel uses dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners. The New York Times investigation into Christof's work, however, is not about that piece. It came after questions from the outlet semaphore in 2021, Christoph ran for governor of Oregon. He didn't win and later returned to write for the the Times promised Christophe wouldn't write about anyone who supported him during his campaign, or would at least disclose those connections in his writing. But according to Semafor, in at least a dozen instances since then, Christoph failed to make those disclosures. Semaphore notes that Christoph wrote favorably about Bill Gates and his nonprofits several times in the last few years, but Christoph made no mention of the fact that Gates and his wife had donated a combined $100,000 to his campaign for govern. Semaphore doesn't explicitly say the failure to disclose the connections calls all of Christophe's work into question, but it does point to how journalism and politics have become increasingly intertwined in the digital age. It said Christof's path from journalism to politics and back is an increasingly common one as news media continues to polarize into political and ideological camps. In that environment, a journalist's past, associations, their undisclosed connections, their political history, all of it becomes more scrutinized. That may be uncomfortable for journalists, but for readers trying to figure out who to trust, those may be important things to know. I'm Deborah Pardes and this is ARC News Daily. See you tomorrow.
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Hi, I'm Dan Senor, host of the Call Me Back podcast. These past few years have asked a lot of the Jewish world. We've been wrestling with pain, disagreement and dilemmas. The war in Gaza, the war with Iran, the pressure on Jewish communities in diaspora societies, and the upcoming Israeli elections, which may bring many of these tensions to a head. These are not simple stories, and in a moment filled with bad information and overly simplistic answers, it can be hard to know who to trust. At Call Me Back, we know that trust has to be earned, and we know your time is valuable, so when you spend it with us, we take that seriously. We don't claim to have all the answers, but we do try to ask better questions with honesty and humility. Maybe that is where hope begins. Not in pretending this moment is simple, but but in believing. At a minimum, we must face it together. You can find Call Me Back on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you there.