Evidence receipt / belief
Published · transcript-backedSpeaker unverified: belief
26 Jun 2025 Lex Fridman Podcast #473 – Iran War Debate: Nuclear Weapons, Trump, Peace, Power & the Middle East
“Now, to steelman Scott’s argument, I think there’s a legitimate argument because I actually didn’t support the withdrawal from the agreement President Trump withdrew in 2018.”
— Speaker unverified
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Speaker unverified
- Attribution
- Not verified from this transcript
- Claim type
- belief
- Recorded
- 26 Jun 2025
- Publisher
- Lex Fridman Podcast
Transcript context
…All right. I want to just, again, just put it out there for your listeners. They should just Google AMAD, A-M-A-D, program, and they should learn about the AMAD program because it’s detailed in US government documents, experts in Iran’s nuclear program, including David Albright who actually saw the archive, went in there, wrote a whole book on it, and there’s a lot of detail about how Iran had an active nuclear weapons program called AMAD to build five nuclear weapons. But I want to get to the JCPOA because I actually think that’s an interesting discussion for Scott and I to have because I think there’s things that we agree on there and things that we disagree on. This is the 2015 nuclear deal that Obama reaches. It’s negotiated painstakingly over two years between 2013 and 2015, and it follows the interim agreement that the United States negotiated with Iran. And it’s in that interim agreement in 2013 where the United States for the first time actually gives Iran the right to enrich uranium. There were five UN Security Council resolutions passed with the support of Russia and China that said Iran should have no enrichment capability and no plutonium reprocessing capability because of the fears that Iran would turn that into a nuclear weapons program. But in 2013, they give that up. 2015, we reached the JCPOA. And under the JCPOA, Iran is allowed to retain enrichment capability and reprocessing capability but over time. Scott mentioned the sunsets, and just want your listeners to understand what these sunsets are. Essentially, the restrictions that are placed on Iran’s nuclear program. And there’s some really serious restrictions placed on it, especially in the short term. Scott’s right. The enriched material. It has to be shipped out not to the French but to the Russians. And there’s restrictions on Iran’s ability to operate these facilities, Natanz and Fordo. They’re not closed. They still remain open, but there are restrictions on what they can do with it. There’s also restrictions on Iran’s ability to test and install advanced centrifuges. Now, the reason you’d want an advanced centrifuge rather than the first-generation centrifuge that AQ Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, gave to the Iranians is you need a smaller number of these centrifuges to produce weapons-grade uranium. If it’s smaller, Lex, it’s easier to hide, right? You can put it in clandestine facilities without this large enrichment centrifuge footprint. There’s restrictions on these advanced centrifuge R&D. And Iran gets significant sanctions relief as part of this. put it in clandestine facilities without this large enrichment centrifuge footprint. There’s restrictions on these advanced centrifuge R&D. And Iran gets significant sanctions relief as part of this. But the whole assumption here, from both an Iranian and American perspective, is these restrictions are going to sunset. They’re going to disappear over time. In fact, 2025 is the year where some of the significant restrictions on Iran’s capabilities begin to sunset, and all of them are effectively gone by 2031. In 2031, Iran can emerge with an industrial size enrichment capability. They can emerge with advanced centrifuges that they can install in as many enrichment facilities as they want to build, and Iran can enrich to higher and higher levels. They can go from 3.67 to 20%. They can go to 60%. There’s nothing in the JCPOA that actually prohibits them from going to 90% enriched uranium. And I think at the time, the Obama administration’s theory of the case was, sure, in 15 years time, but in 15 years time, we’ll be gone. Hopefully, there’ll be a different government in Iran, and maybe we can renegotiate a different agreement with that government that will extend the sunsets. That’s the JCPOA. The reason that critics of the JCPOA, and I was one of them … We objected to the deal is not because it didn’t have some short-term temporary restrictions that were useful, but that if you got it wrong, and there was the same regime and power in 15 years, that regime could emerge with this huge nuclear program with the capabilities to develop nuclear weapons in these multiple hardened sites. Iran, we estimated, would have $1 trillion in sanctions relief over that 15- year period. And if you got it wrong that it was the same regime in power as had been in power in 2015, then you had some difficulties. I just wanted to lay out the case against the JCPOA. Now, to steelman Scott’s argument, I think there’s a legitimate argument because I actually didn’t support the withdrawal from the agreement President Trump withdrew in 2018. I did a similar version of what Scott was suggesting, was I thought that the United States should negotiate with the Europeans, the French, the Germans, and the UK who are part of the original deal, extend the sunsets as an agreement between the United States and Europe, and then collectively go to the Iranians and say, “Let’s renegotiate this agreement to extend the sunsets. If you don’t want a nuclear weapons program, then you should agree that you don’t need these capabilities, and let’s extend the sunsets for another 15, 20, 30 years.” President Trump- Somebody give me a screenshot of this. Give me a pound, dude.…
Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.