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Did I talk too much? Can't I just let it go? Thank you so much.
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Take a breath. You're not alone. Let's talk about what's going on. Counseling helps you sort through the noise with qualified professionals, and online therapy makes it convenient. See if it's for you. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of online therapy and let life feel better. I'm Marissa Wong, intern at Lawfair with an episode from the Lawfare archive from January 17, 2026. For the past two weeks, protests in Iran have raged on, posing new challenges to the country's authoritarian rule. The Iranian government has responded in a brutal crackdown, reportedly killing between 2,400 to 12,000 protesters and shutting down the country's cell service and Internet access. These protests have thrown fuel on the fire of U S. Iran relations as President Trump says he's considering military strikes in response to the crackdown. For today's archive, I chose an episode from June 8, 2020, in which Margaret Taylor sat down with Peter Harrell, an adjunct senior fellow at the center for New American Security, and Richard Nephew, a senior research scholar at the center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, to discuss Trump's decision to withdraw sanction waivers during during his first term that had allowed Russian, Chinese and European companies to work with Iran on sensitive nuclear sites, as well as the effects of the administration's withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement in 2018.
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I'm Margaret Taylor and this. This is The Lawfare Podcast. June 8, 2020. On May 27, the Trump administration announced that it was withdrawing sanctions waivers that had allowed Russian, Chinese and European companies to work with Iran on sensitive Iranian nuclear sites in support of the goals of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement. In this podcast, I talked about what it really means with two Peter Harrell, an attorney and adjunct senior fellow at the center for a New American Security, and Richard Nephew, senior research Scholar at the center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. I met Peter and Richard nearly a decade ago when we all worked on Iran's sanctions issues while we were in government. We talked about what has happened since the Trump administration decided to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement in 2018 and what difficulties a new presidential administration may encounter in rejoining the agreement. It's The Lawfare Podcast, June 8, the Trump administration's latest Moves to Dismantle the Iran Nuclear Agreement, with Peter Harrell and Richard Nephew. So, Richard and Peter, when I saw on May 27 a headline that the Trump administration was ending sanctions waivers that had allowed Russia, China, and European companies to work with Iran on sensitive Iranian nuclear sites that were in support of of the Iran nuclear agreement, it occurred to me that I had basically lost the thread of where we are exactly on the Iran agreement, which startled me because I worked on this issue day and night for years, both at the State Department and from my Senate staffer perch as well. And I suspect that may be the case for some of our listeners as well. So, Richard, I want to start with you. Can you take us through sort of the two minute history of what has happened with the Iran nuclear agreement since the Trump administration decided to leave the agreement in May of 2018?
E
Sure. And it is a good place to start because I think it highlights how we got to a decision that seems pretty incongruous on its face. So, you know, May 2018, the President announces that we are withdrawing from the JCPOA, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which is the term for the nuclear agreement we had with Iran. He then announced that we were going to reimpose all of the sanctions that we had suspended or terminated pursuant to the jcpoa. And we did that in two waves, first starting with a few smaller sorts of things in August of 2018, and then the rest of the sanctions really coming back in November of 2018. The best way I can think of describing it is that In November of 2018, we returned to the situation we had in November of 2013. It's as if five years had simply not happened. So we started imposing sanctions on Iranian nuclear reactors, on shipment companies, their banks, people trying to buy oil from Iran, so on and so forth. And the intent from the Trump administration, at least they said, was that we were going to use this additional pressure to get a better nuclear agreement out of Iran. So they set about trying to increase the pressure and the leverage on Iran. By May of 2019, it was pretty evident that the pressure hadn't been enough. Iran hadn't agreed to come back to any kind of new deal or better deal. And so the Trump administration decided that we were going to take things a step further. And so they decided that as of that point, we were no longer going to allow Iran to sell any oil whatsoever. And since that time, they've also added additional sanctions on Iran's main economic sectors. But really you can say From May of 2019 until today, we've put as much economic pressure as we possibly can on the Iranians. The Iranians in turn, didn't do much in response. They, for the first year or so, didn't even retaliate with regard to their nuclear steps and restricting access to IAEA inspectors or so forth. And they did start doing that as of May of 2019. And so they just like we reset the clock five years, they've started resetting the clock on the nuclear program. As it is right now, Iran's nuclear program is not quite where it was when we did the original agreements, but they now have an expanded stockpile of enriched uranium. They have more uranium centrifuges available. And as a consequence of all that, the time that they would require to produce nuclear weapons has gone from a year when we had the nuclear agreement in full operation now, down to maybe only a few months at this point.
B
So, Peter, talk to me specifically about what the action that was announced on May 27 is, the specific sanction withdrawal of sanctions waivers and what consequences it has. And also S.L. pompeo, Secretary of State Pompeo, tweeted, quote, further attempts at nuclear extortion will only bring greater pressure on the regime, unquote. I don't know what that means. And so maybe I'm hoping you can can help us understand that. And then also practically speaking, what does this withdrawal of these waivers, this sort of most recent action, really mean?
F
So, so as Richard laid out very clearly, the Trump administration had effectively both fully reimposed all the sanctions that were imposed prior to, prior to the jcpoa, as well as piling some new sanctions on really since May of last year, since May 2019. But there were a couple of exceptions where the US had not kind of fully reimposed sanctions, and those had to do with a series of waivers that were in place allowing non Iranian companies and technical experts to work very specifically at a couple of Iranian nuclear sites. Now as part of the jcpoa, the Obama administration and many nuclear experts thought it would actually be useful to have, you know, international experts involved in Iran's limited nuclear program as a way of containing that program and ensuring there was a degree of international oversight. And you know, as I say, since May of last year, even with the bulk of sanctions, the overwhelming majority of economic sanctions reimposed, the US Was continuing, the Trump administration was continuing to issue waivers allowing a couple of Russian companies as well as a few others to continue working at specific Iranian nuclear sites. As you say, Margaret, at the end of Last month, on May 27, the Trump administration announced it would terminate the waivers that allow those international companies to work at these very specific Iranian nuclear sites after a 60 day wind down period so basically running through the end, through late July, and essentially threaten to impose sanctions on the companies that, that are engaged in those nuclear sites if they do not in fact wind down their activities there by the end of July.
B
Okay, so just pressing on it a little bit, like what does it really mean? I mean, what will happen going forward? Will those companies that were working with those Iranian facilities now pull out to avoid sanctions? Will they continue that work and be sanctioned by the U.S. how do you think it really plays out from here?
E
Yeah, I mean, look, I think the differences will really be pronounced amongst the companies that are involved. So basically for the projects that we're talking about, we're talking about changing the Iraq reactor that was going to be able to produce weapons grade plutonium on a regular basis in its original design to something that can't do that. And you have there a Chinese and a British set of contractors that were working on the changes. They probably will not work on that reactor anymore. Certainly the British company won't and I suspect the Chinese nuclear company won't either. And in no small part because the projects were already stalled. The bigger problem comes with respect to the Russians who are engaged in some of the other nuclear projects, such as the provision of nuclear fuel for a Tehran research reactor as well as the construction of new reactors in the country. At Bushir, the place where Iran's existing nuclear power plant is. The Russians have made pretty clear they have no intention of complying with U.S. sanctions in this regard. They ignored U.S. threats to impose sanctions on the original Bushir nuclear reactor going as far back as the mid-1990s. And so I suspect that they are going to continue with the projects and certainly the Iranians want them to. And this is where treasury has introduced a little bit of ambiguity as to what happens because in a normal circumstance, you'd expect the US Government to impose sanctions on the companies that are still doing this work and to move on. But those Russian companies are also involved in the US Nuclear industry. And the US Nuclear industry has been in sharp opposition to the entire idea of cutting off the waivers because they fear what happens to US And Russian nuclear cooperation in that circumstance. And so treasury has said, well, we'll potentially waive the application of sanctions, such as to allow US Companies to keep doing business with those Russian companies in that circumstance. The practical effect, at least for Iran and for the United States might be negligible. But then the real question comes into what happens to those Russian companies and whether or not they face the possibility of not being able to do business and outside of the United States and ironically outside of Iran. So with the wind down periods that Peter was mentioning, we now have some interesting calculations that are going to have to start being made in Russia, start having to be made in the United States about how far the US Intends to actually press this forward, especially because it's not as if these waivers were going to be instrumental to Iran getting nuclear weapons or not. And so it really is more of a prestige and a propaganda issue for the United States than it is for an actual concern of nuclear proliferation.
B
Okay, so then going, going to that actual concern about nuclear proliferation. I was reading an article in foreign policy from May 8 that basically said, you know, as of now, two years after Trump has withdrawn from the Iran nuclear deal, Iran has cut in half the time it would need to produce enough weapons grade fuel for a nuclear bomb. I mean, is that consistent with sort of your assessment? And, you know, how, how is that an okay outcome for an administration that has wanted to seem hawkish on Iran? Just help me, help me reconcile all those things.
E
I'm not entirely sure I can reconcile all those things, but I'll give it a go. Look, I think a couple of points, I mean, one, you know, technical experts will debate what the actual impact on breakout time has been, you know, simply because they've got different assumptions about various different elements of the Iranian nuclear program and its capacities. I think that saying that it's been cut in half is reasonable. I don't see any reason to object to that characterization. Most of the, of the time we bought was the JCPOA in terms of delaying Iran's nuclear weapons capability comes in the limits on its enriched uranium stockpile, and they've grown that considerably over the last year. So it makes sense. So from that standpoint, I think it's reasonable to say breakout time has definitely collapsed and we have much less time than we had at the start. I think for the Trump administration, they are less concerned about that for the same reasons why previous administrations have not been concerned about that, namely that the US still retains the physical capacity to destroy Iran's nuclear program if we need to, and that six months worth of breakout time from that perspective is arguably the same as 12 months time of breakout. I think the other reason why they are less concerned about that is from their perspective, it plays to their argument. Their argument has been that Iran's nuclear program is a latent crisis that the Obama administration merely delayed by a decade or so. And so, as they've said, we brought forward the crisis to today when a decisive president can try and deal with the problem as opposed to his predecessor. And I think from that perspective, they feel that they're in the best position they can be to try and push back on Iran and that it's no small loss if breakout time collapses. The real problem, and what they haven't yet answered is, okay, but then what? What if you're not able to achieve a diplomatic success success and to get a new negotiation started? What if other countries in the region get very spooked as to what they're seeing from Iran? What if the Iranians decide that their security would be much better with nuclear weapons than without? Especially having seen negotiations fail with the United States in the past and looking to see how North Korea is treated versus how Libya and Syria have been treated. Those what if questions are the ones they haven't answered. And part of the reason why a lot of us are a little concerned about the amount of hubris we're seeing coming out of the Trump administration as to where they've gotten this policy and where they intend to take it?
B
So, picking up on that point, Peter, it seems like the goal, as you both have said, of maximum pressure of reimposing all these sanctions, in particular in the oil sector, the financial sector. Has that been working? Have the imposition of sanctions been robust since those waivers were withdrawn? And those larger sanctions on Iranian oil and on the finance sector. What's, what's going on with, with those sanctions?
F
Well, the first thing I think we need to talk about here is what actually the Trump administration's goals in withdrawing from the JCPOA and reimposing sanctions on Iran are. Because although they have certainly talked about and continue to talk about seeking a, a better nuclear agreement, as Richard says, I actually think there are fairly significant divisions within the administration about what the actual goals are. I mean, we've seen Secretary of State Pompeo, for example, say that what the US Actually wants is a frankly pretty sweeping comprehensive agreement with Iran that would address not only nuclear issues, but also Iran's actions throughout the Middle east, its domestic human rights situation within Iran, and a whole range of. A whole range of other issues. And I think that actually reflects a. A major shift in perspective on Iran compared to the Obama administration. The Obama administration, of course, recognized that the US had many, many issues with Iran, including its activities in the region and domestic human rights situation, but really chose to prioritize first and foremost the nuclear issue. And I think the Trump administration just has a much more conflicted view on the prioritization of the nuclear issue versus all of these other issues in the relationship. And of course, there's some officials in the administration who seem to want and believe that the only realistic way of achieving a better agreement with Iran is to see a change in government in Iran. And I think even Pompeo at times has come pretty close to saying that directly. And I think that, you know, for many folks in the administration, this economic pressure really is intended to generate sufficient unrest in Iran as to see a change in government, you know, in terms of what they're achieving, kind of in concrete terms, I always break the impacts of sanctions into two different buckets. One is what are their economic impacts, and the other is what are the kind of political or diplomatic or policy impacts. And economically, it's undeniable that the reimposition of sanctions on Iran has had significant economic impacts, frankly, even more than I was expecting. I did think that it would have real economic impacts, but they've exceeded what I was expecting. Taking Iranian oil exports from maybe 2 million barrels a day after the JCPOA to, you know, at most a couple hundred thousand barrels a day. You know, according to IMF statistics, we saw a pretty sharp economic recession in Iran last year. The fiscal budget is obviously under. Under stress, so we're definitely seeing economic impacts. You know, we are not seeing positive policy impacts out of Iran. You know, withdrawal from the JCPOA has certainly changed Iran's behavior, but to date, it's. It's basically only changed Iran's behavior for the worse, as Richard says, you know, Iran, after a year of kind of cautious moves, has been resuming its nuclear program and moving towards a shorter breakout time. It has also, if anything, stepped up its aggression against U.S. interests throughout the Middle east. In the last year. So I think to date, although we've seen significant economic impacts, you have to say, at a policy level, the strategy has been pretty much a failure.
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E
Stand clear of the closing doors, please.
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B
Yeah, I think that's where I am as well on this. And it's also hard to see, you know, any kind of agreement being reached or hammered out in the very short time before the November election. So. But I want to talk a little bit about our allies, in particular France, Germany and the uk in early January, as you guys know, Iran, I guess, announced it was ending its commitment to limit enrichment of uranium. That was part of the deal, which I think was part of the fallout from the US strike that killed General Qassem Soleimani. And then in January, France, Germany, UK triggered a dispute mechanism that is part of the Iran agreement. What is the impact of that, if any? How does it sort of relate to sanctions? And where are our European allies on this agreement?
E
Yeah, I mean, look, I'll say I think our European allies remain where they've been for a long time. They're very upset with the US policy decision to withdraw from the jcpoa, and they think it undermines their security. But they also recognize they're not in much of a position to do anything about it. And that's because of a decision that was made very early on in Europe in May of 2018, that they weren't going to fight the US reimposition of sanctions. There were some opportunities, if Europe had wanted to, they could have triggered and actually used a blocking statute they've had in place since the late 1990s. They could have taken us to the WTO and sued us over our sanctions policies. They could have taken other retaliatory mechanisms. But they instead decided to, to try and keep working with the US and to try and persuade us to not engage in any more provocative activities and to basically appeal for calm on all sides. And I think the reality is that this approach has left them with no leverage on anyone. They don't have the ability to convince the Iranians to do much of anything at this point. Even their attempt to make a humanitarian channel has been pretty much a failure, with one transaction processed and nearly two years of work. And the Europeans also have no leverage on the Trump administration. Now, they may not have had much to start the way that the Trump administration has perceived Europe from the beginning of the term, but I think that had they chosen to take a more adversarial approach, they potentially would have had some space there. And so the result of all this is that the United States is still dictating European companies what they can and cannot do. And European governments don't really have much of a means of pushing back on that. Their decision to trigger the dispute resolution mechanism was, I think, intended to preserve some measure of European credibility by saying that Iran is now acting in violation of the jcpoa. But even then, they've decided to then shelve any movement on it in order to try and again appeal for common lack of provocation. And I think ultimately their policy is one of wait and see, wait and see. If Donald Trump is re elected in November, and if he is, then they may have to make some changes. If he's not, then I think they're going to hope that an incoming Biden administration will change course and go back to where the Obama administration was. And so I think ultimately, from that standpoint, unfortunately, I think our European allies have become largely spectators in this.
B
So you went to the place I was planning on going to next, which is. So let's imagine it's June, the November election's coming up. Let's just imagine that a Biden administration comes in in January of next year and they. Let's just say, theoretically, I don't actually know exactly what the policy position of the Biden campaign is, but say they want to essentially revive the Iran nuclear deal. Would that be possible? How would it happen technically and for both of you? Do you think Iran would actually do that? Do you think our allies would do that? Russia, China? What's the landscape look like for a B. Biden administration if what they want to do is come in and revive the deal?
F
So the Biden. The Biden campaign has stated publicly as a general matter that as President, Biden would work to reenter the jcpoa, I believe, while trying to renegotiate, you know, some of the timelines and, and specific, specific provisions, you know, in terms of whether that is, practically speaking, going to be viable, I think a lot will depend on what happens between now and, you know, at the end of the year. I do think there will be some challenges to going back in the first being, you know, pretty short timelines on both sides. I mean, I think Iran has scheduled elections in April of next year. And of course, any new president really only has a certain amount of time to make big moves before domestic political considerations and other factors come into play. So if there was going to be reentry, I think there would be a fairly tight timetable that would have to be kept to and a lot of challenges in getting there. The challenges in my mind are more are not really legal challenges from the perspective of US Law. It's more diplomatic, political and policy challenges. From a legal perspective, an incoming administration could re execute the kinds of waivers that were in place under the Obama administration. It's actually sort of a known playbook. I think the question is kind of what would you get from the Iranians? How would US domestic constituencies react? And also what would be the view not so much of US allies in Europe who I think would welcome a re entry, but what would be the dynamic elsewhere in the Middle east with the Saudis and the Israelis in particular? And I think there will be a, a complicated Middle Eastern regional dynamic around going back in. That's not to say I would disagree with the policy. I mean, I think that America should stand on what we did with the JCPOA was correct. And I think re entry is a sound policy decision. While pushing to extend some of the timelines in the jcpoa. I just think that an incoming administration would have to be realistic about the challenges in getting there.
B
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I've heard talked about for years now is sort of could one renegotiate the deal for it to be sort of even stricter or to get even more out of it? I mean, that seems unrealistic to me as I sit here, but I don't know, maybe I'm too pessimistic. Richard, is there any hope on that front?
E
I think there is, but it won't come from the US saying we demand the following and we will get the following. It'll come by negotiating, you know, imagine that. But I think it would have to come from a US administration that is prepared to come to the table to offer more in exchange to get more. And I think, you know, here Bob Einhorn and I wrote a paper last year that spelled out some ideas, but I think that the equations are fairly simple. You have to specify what additional nuclear things you might want to as Peter and you both said, longer timelines might be an element of that. Maybe additional international inspector access or a more timely international inspector access could be an element. But in exchange, you'd have to be willing to give up something which probably comes in the form of sanctions relief and expanding what the Iranians potentially could get. I think one of the misnomers of the JCPOA was that all the sanctions were going away under it, which is far from the case. We didn't even get rid of all the sanctions that govern foreign business activity with Iran, much less get rid of the comprehensive US Embargo that's in place and has been in place now for over 20 years. And so, you know, if you were prepared to potentially scale back that US Embargo, potentially by allowing some limited access to US Industry in non sensitive ways, imagine Iran having the ability to work with US Textile manufacturers, for instance, or receive investment in consumer goods, then you potentially could incentivize the Iranians to accept longer timelines with regard to nuclear pieces. And I think what this all of a sudden comes back to is a fairly simple discussion. Is it in Iran's national interest to get further sanctions relief from the United States and what are they prepared to pay for it for the US Is it in your national interest to get Iranian nuclear concessions and what are you prepared to pay for it? And I think that that kind of negotiation certainly could be had. The real problem, of course, is that, you know, we've had three years now of bad blood being built up. Everything from Gassam Soleimani's killing to sanctions pressure to rocket attacks on US Forces operating in Iraq and Syria, attacks on shipping and potential attacks on U.S. vessels operating the Persian Gulf. So there's a lot of bad blood to add to what we've already had building up. And so I think the real question is when we come to 2021, will there be political space to have those kinds of conversations that frankly we've not really been able to have more than once or twice in the last 40 years? That's going to be the real challenge. That's what's going to make a lot of this difficult.
B
I think that's right. Before we conclude, I want to telescope back or outward or upward a little bit. And hopefully I hope that you guys can put in context for us what this means for US Economic statecraft more generally. Where does the Iran sanctions restart take us and are we overusing sanctions?
E
So Look, I think there are a couple lessons that I've taken from this. I think the first one, and Peter alluded to this, is boy, US Sanctions pressure and economic statecraft can do a lot of when it's asked to. You know, I think I was definitely, along with many other former Obama folks and civil servants, of the view that if we snap back sanctions, it would have a powerful impact because the US Is still a central global economic player. And that was proven to be true. So from a kind of broader overview picture, even when we've got everyone in the world opposing us, we could still do an awful lot with the economic tools that we have, which frankly ought to give us confidence when we are pursuing future agreements that if we do offer sanctions relief and decide later on the agreements are not being held up by the other side, that we can always snap back sanctions and have pretty powerful effects. So I think that's a kind of major lesson I have. The second though is that along with that power comes responsibility. Not just responsibility in terms of being a careful shepherd of the global economy, because as we've seen recent months, that is a very fickle and potentially unstable thing upon which we all rely. But also because if we overuse our sanctions tools, we potentially damage our ability to use them in the future. And that comes from the fact that other people see what we're doing and they are not going to stand by while we are doing it. That's especially the case with regard to U.S. adversaries who are right now exploring options to have alternative means of processing payments and moving money around and conducting transactions. But even potentially applies to our partners and allies in Europe. They have had real conversations about not being so dependent on the United States, which on the one hand is not a bad thing. It'd be, in my view, a useful thing if Europe were a more effective actor internationally and prepared to defend its own interests. But on the other hand, that does potentially say something about the US ability to influence its friends and partners in the future and to affect policies around the world. And the last thing is I think it has a direct potential impact on the US Economy too. The fact of the matter is that we have gotten tremendous benefits over the last 70 odd years of being a global economic center. And while that's not gonna go away tomorrow, if we do take steps by using our economy for foreign policy purposes, that that lead people away from it, well, that's going to affect our bottom lines as well. And so I think that the risk of overuse both has a direct foreign policy impact but also a broader US economic interest impact that has to be guarded against.
B
I understand you adhere to the Spider man theory of international power. With great power comes great responsibility. I'm with you on that, Spider Man. He knew what he was talking about. Peter, you're going to get the last word here. What's your sort of broader or more longer term view of the US's use of sanctions and how this whole sort of episode with Iran has played out over the last several years?
F
So I think we may be in the US at the beginning of a renewed debate about whether sanctions are actually effective, not in an economic sense. We have proven that they are effective in an economic sense. And as Richard says, I think there's a very important lesson here that from an economic perspective, the threat of snapback is a very credible and real threat. But, you know, there have been previous bouts of debate in Washington and the broader kind of American policymaking circles about whether sanctions are effective. You know, they were used a certain amount in the 1990s, and then there was some debate coming out of the Iraq embargo context about whether they work. And then there was a shift to targeted sanctions and a lot of debate about whether targeted sanctions work. And then frankly, coming out of the JCPOA, there was a kind of consensus in the 2014-2015-2016-2017, 2018 period in Washington that sanctions are an effective tool here. Looking at the landscape today where we're not seeing policy success in Iran, we're not seeing policy success in the use of sanctions on Venezuela, we're not seeing policy success in the use of sanctions on North Korea, we're not seeing policy success in the use of sanctions on Russia. I think we're seeing the beginnings of some debate about whether this is actually serving US goals. We've seen a number of legislators call to reassess sanctions during the COVID 19 pandemic, at least in a limited way. And we've begun to see, particularly from the progressive community, a broader, or I should say return to a broader skepticism of many kinds of sanctions that we had seen, you know, 10 or 15, 15 years ago. And I think that is a debate it's important to have right now. I am certainly a believer in the potential efficacy of sanctions, but I think we need to have that debate, particularly given all the issues Richard laid out around the risks that overuse poses to the U.S. economy and U.S. preeminence over the long term.
B
Peter Harrell and Richard Nephew, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
E
Thank you.
F
Thank you.
B
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E
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With Peter Harrell and Richard Nephew
Original Air Date (Archive): June 8, 2020
Re-broadcast: January 17, 2026
Host: Margaret Taylor
This episode examines the Trump administration’s final moves to dismantle the Iran nuclear agreement (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA), focusing particularly on the withdrawal of sanctions waivers for non-Iranian companies working at Iranian nuclear sites. Host Margaret Taylor is joined by Peter Harrell (Center for a New American Security) and Richard Nephew (Columbia University), both veterans of U.S. Iran sanctions policy, to discuss the sequence of U.S. policy changes since 2018, their impact on Iran’s nuclear program and regional security, and the prospects for reviving the agreement in a post-Trump administration.
“As part of the JCPOA ... it would actually be useful to have international experts involved in Iran's limited nuclear program as a way of containing that program and ensuring there was a degree of international oversight.”
(Peter Harrell, 08:52)
"It's not as if these waivers were going to be instrumental to Iran getting nuclear weapons or not. ... It really is more of a prestige and a propaganda issue for the United States than it is for an actual concern of nuclear proliferation."
(Richard Nephew, 12:53)
"The real problem, and what they haven't yet answered is, okay, but then what?"
(Richard Nephew, 16:40)
“We are not seeing positive policy impacts out of Iran. ... Withdrawal from the JCPOA has certainly changed Iran's behavior, but to date, it's basically only changed Iran's behavior for the worse.”
(Peter Harrell, 20:54)
“You have to specify what additional nuclear things you might want ... but in exchange, you'd have to be willing to give up something which probably comes in the form of sanctions relief ... expanding what the Iranians potentially could get.”
(Richard Nephew, 36:15)
“If we overuse our sanctions tools, we potentially damage our ability to use them in the future. ... That does potentially say something about the US ability to influence its friends and partners in the future and to affect policies around the world.”
(Richard Nephew, 40:47)
“We have proven that they are effective in an economic sense. ... But ... we're not seeing policy success in Iran ... or in the use of sanctions on Venezuela, ... North Korea, ... Russia. … I think we're seeing the beginnings of some debate about whether this is actually serving US goals.”
(Peter Harrell, 42:28)
| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | |-----------|-------------------| | 05:09–07:58 | JCPOA withdrawal history & consequences (Nephew) | | 07:58–13:56 | Specifics of waivers & international impacts (Harrell & Nephew) | | 13:56–17:20 | Impact on Iran's nuclear breakout time & admin logic (Nephew) | | 17:20–21:39 | Economic effects and failures of maximum pressure (Harrell) | | 28:30–31:55 | The European response, effectiveness, and positions (Nephew) | | 31:55–38:32 | Paths and challenges for reviving the deal (Harrell & Nephew) | | 38:32–44:32 | Sanctions overuse, broader statecraft reflection (Nephew & Harrell) |
The conversation is sober, analytical, and pragmatic, reflecting the Lawfare Podcast's seriousness. The guests blend technical expertise with plain English to explain complex topics, and the host occasionally injects light touches (e.g., Spider-Man reference) to keep the discussion accessible.
While U.S. sanctions are still highly effective in economic terms, the Trump administration’s strategy has not fostered improved policy outcomes—the opposite, with heightened nuclear risk and regional instability. Reviving the JCPOA will be a heavy diplomatic lift for any future administration, complicated not just by technicalities, but also years of accumulated mistrust, regional politics, and shifting global attitudes toward American economic levers. Both guests call for a renewed, clear-eyed debate in the U.S. about the limits and responsibilities of sanctions as foreign policy tools.