WTH nuclear scientist? Behind the of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and the latest on the Iranian nuclear weapons program

Episode #81 | December 3, 2020 | Danielle Pletka, Marc Thiessen, and David Albright

Danielle Pletka: Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka.

Marc Thiessen: And I'm Marc Thiessen.

Danielle Pletka: going on?

Marc Thiessen: That was very dramatic.

Danielle Pletka: I know. I was really feeling it.

Marc Thiessen:

Marc Thiessen: Give it a little more spirit, Dany.

Danielle Pletka: I want our listeners to wonder what they're getting each time. Oh, and by the way, we are supposed to remind -- hey guys who are listening, please subscribe, review, send this to your friends, and do all of those good things that help our podcast get to more and more people so that Marc and I can be famous.

Marc Thiessen: Excellent. I support that sentiment. What the hell is going on is somebody assassinated the head of the Iranian nuclear program. Before we get into the implications of that and why this happened now, and all the rest of it, let's just take a moment to reflect on the James Bond-like details of this assassination. Of course, we don't know for sure how this happened or who did it, though we have our suspicions. But, the story is coming out that it was apparently allegedly the Israelis, that they used a remote controlled machine gun in a Nissan truck that was parked in a roundabout when the head of this Iranian nuclear program was coming out. It was packed with explosives and so they allegedly used a to guide the remote machine gun and then blew up the truck after the guy was assassinated.

Marc Thiessen: There are some people who speculate that doing it entirely remotely would've been unlikely, that they wouldn't have had anybody on the ground participating, and certainly there were people on the ground setting this up, getting the

2 weapons and all the into over a period of time. But, this is literally like a scene out of a Bond movie. When you see things happening that you say, "That couldn't really happen in real life." It apparently just did and Fakhrizadeh is no more.

Danielle Pletka: Yeah. I've got to say, I don't mourn any of these guys and I want to talk about the politics around who is actually mourning them. But, you are totally right. I mean, the fact that the Israelis have these capabilities. I mean, whoever did it, but maybe the Israelis, have these capabilities-

Marc Thiessen: We'll just assume for our sake of the podcast that the Israelis did it and leave it to them to deny.

Danielle Pletka: It's absolutely stunning. It really is. We've basically seen two major story lines. One, that there were at least a dozen operatives on the ground who were involved in pulling Fakhrizadeh out of the car and then shooting him or getting in a gun battle with his security guards. But then, another version of the story where there's absolutely nobody there except this satellite controlled machine gun. Can I just say, I need a satellite controlled machine gun?

Marc Thiessen: Doesn't everyone? The Biden administration is going to ban those too, Dany.

Danielle Pletka: Oh God.

Marc Thiessen: So, your second amendment rights are being taken away.

Danielle Pletka: Get yours while you can. But, the technology behind this, the knowledge, the planning. The fact that they knew where he was and when he was visiting his summer house, the Iranian version of his dacha outside . And that they could get him at a time and a place of their choosing is absolutely incredible. I mean, I would watch that movie-

Marc Thiessen: On the 10 year anniversary of the assassination of another Iranian nuclear scientist.

Danielle Pletka: Right.

Marc Thiessen: So, I mean, literally not just the time of their choosing, but like literally the time of their choosing. Not just, "We can get you any time we want," but they literally planned this to send a message to all Iranian nuclear scientists that, "We basically can pick you off at will."

Danielle Pletka: Yeah, and the reality is, I guess, that the Israelis, if it was indeed the Israelis, can. I was about to say, I would totally watch that movie if Daniel Craig was in it. But, let's talk a little bit about the fallout. We're going to talk with our guest about some of the technical issues and who Fakhrizadeh was, and what he did, and about the Iranian nuclear program. So, let's you and I talk politics for a second.

Marc Thiessen: Sure.

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3 Danielle Pletka: There has been a spate of what I can only label disgraceful stories, including my personal favorite from John Brennan. And here, you can assume that my epithet has been edited out, bleeped out.

Marc Thiessen: Oh, say it. We've got an explicit rating.

Danielle Pletka: No. No, because it's that bad. This is a former senior Obama administration official who was soft on-

Marc Thiessen: And the head of the CIA.

Danielle Pletka: And who was soft on Iran, who was soft on , who was soft on all of these guys, and he goes out and calls this an act of terrorism. I mean, W-T-F?

Marc Thiessen: Absolutely. And here's the thing also, first of all, he lead an agency that engages in all sorts of covert operations that are violations of international law. That's by definition what a covert operation is.

Danielle Pletka: Oh, but not to speak of extrajudicial killings with drones. I'm sorry.

Marc Thiessen: Yes. Now, what he says... What he says is that, he anticipated your line of attack and said that there's a difference because we were taking out people who were members of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, which are non-state actors and are terrorist organizations and unlawful combatants. However, Fakhrizadeh, the Iranian nuclear scientist was a general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp, which is a designated terrorist organization because the Trump administration so designated it.

Marc Thiessen: So, basically there is no legal difference between taking out the head of the Iranian nuclear program, or for that matter, Qassem Soleimani, the head of the IRGC Quds Force, who was killed by the Trump administration, and taking out the second in command of Al Qaeda who also happened to be in Tehran. Why was that? That's something that you and I are going to be exploring a lot in the next year, the Iran/Al Qaeda connection. Or taking out Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Marc Thiessen: So, the idea that the former head of the CIA would label this an act of terrorism when it's a lawful act carried out by covert action, similar to what the United States does all the time, carried out by the United States' closest ally in the region against our sworn enemy, the Islamic Terrorist Republic of Iran, just shows the depths of hatred for this administration. That it literally drives you to such distraction that you side with Iran against and the United States.

Danielle Pletka: Well, I mean, come on. That's the hallmark of pretty much all the Obama administration officials. They became Iran's lawyer, Iran's advocate, and everything else. And shame on them. But-

Marc Thiessen: And oh, by the way, can I just jump in?

Danielle Pletka: Yeah.

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4 Marc Thiessen: There were a number of Iranian nuclear scientists who met their mysterious end during the Obama years, right? There were several of them who were killed when President Obama was in office, presumably by the same actors who were involved in this and presumably with the same, at least if not coordination or cooperation, at least implicit approval of the United States. So-

Danielle Pletka: Well, that's where you're wrong.

Marc Thiessen: There's a level of hypocrisy here too.

Marc Thiessen: Oh, am I?

Danielle Pletka: That's where you're wrong. Yes. Because, in fact, it was the Obama administration that went to the Israeli government and leaned on them to stop getting rid of Iran's nuclear scientists because it was complicating Obama's efforts to help them continue their-

Marc Thiessen: Well, there you go.

Danielle Pletka: I mean, I'm sorry. To help them "end their nuclear weapons program." I mean, so there's that travesty. Then there's travesty number two. People who are supposedly journalists writing for outlets like , who suggest that this was all political. Basically in their unbelievable America-centrism, they believe that everything happens with a view to either helping or hurting . Because he is, after all, the reason why we all get up in the morning and why the sun rises.

Danielle Pletka: And they, theorizing that Israel or whoever did it conducted this unbelievably complex, unbelievably sophisticated operation in order to stymie the Biden administration as it goes forward to try to recapitulate to the Iranians in the Middle East. I mean, it is beyond ludicrous to suggest that the Israelis don't have an independent agenda and that they planned this when they knew already that Biden was going to win the election. I mean, it just beggars belief.

Marc Thiessen: Well, you're right in the sense that this could not have been planned starting on November of this year because just the complexity of getting the operatives into Iran, getting the equipment involved into Iran, storing it, hiding it, planning out the method, all the rest. That couldn't happen in a matter of weeks. This was an operation that had to take years in the planning. The decision to go could've been made after the election with those factors in mind, but also Israel is acting in its own interest. As I recall, they didn't really have much of a say in the Obama administration's diplomacy with Iran. And so, when they see those people coming back in and professing that they are going to bring back the Iranian nuclear deal and start us up where we were in 2016, despite all the developments that have taken place in the last four years. I know they want to close their eyes and pretend Trump never happened, but a lot did happen with regard to Tehran. A lot of leverage was built up, a lot of good things happened to put Iran in its box.

Marc Thiessen: They would be perfectly legitimate to be worried about that and to take this shot

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5 at a time when there was an administration that was willing to say, "Go ahead, we're fine with it." As opposed to someone that was going to punish them or give them trouble for doing so.

Danielle Pletka: We've become so unhinged in this country we can't have a normal conversation about anything. Nonetheless, there's a ton to understand here. There's a lot about this guy and about the Iranian nuclear program that I think people don't know or aren't paying close attention to. Because this really is an absolutely fascinating story, but one that also gives us a window into just how sophisticated and ongoing the Iranian nuclear weapons program is, notwithstanding sanctions, notwithstanding the warm efforts of the Europeans to reassure their Iranian friends that once a Democrat is back in the White House all will be well. There's been a ton of advances even under the Trump administration.

Danielle Pletka: We've got David Albright, who is the founder of this is my favorite name actually the acronym of which is ISIS, but--

Marc Thiessen: The good ISIS.

Danielle Pletka: But,

Marc Thiessen: Oh, that's awesome.

Danielle Pletka: Which is so terrific. He's got an unbelievable background, but he is actually a scientist. He has a masters of science in physics and in mathematics, and so he really comes at this from the technical, non-public relations side. For those of you who don't know-

Marc Thiessen: But, there will be no math in the podcast. In case you're worried. This is all-

Danielle Pletka: Oh my God.

Marc Thiessen: He is a really interesting guy and the world leading expert on this nuclear program.

Danielle Pletka: Yes. God, I should've said that. Whenever I say math, people en masse will probably hang up, as I would. But yeah, no, no, no. He knows the program backwards and forwards, has advised Democrats, Republicans, and pretty much everybody in between on this. You guys are going to love this conversation.

Marc Thiessen: Here's our talk with David Albright.

Marc Thiessen: David, welcome to the podcast.

David Albright: Oh, glad to be here. Thank you.

Marc Thiessen: Thank you. So, I mean, the world has been rocked by this news that the father of the Iranian bomb, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, has been assassinated in Tehran. Just tell our listeners first just the basics. Who is this

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6 guy and why is this such a significant event?

David Albright: Well, one is he's a bit of a mysterious person. I mean, he's had an extremely important role in Iran's nuclear program for decades and rarely been visible. He was the head of the Iranian crash nuclear weapons program called Plan AMAD, that ran from about 1999 to 2003. And he implemented this pretty massive project to build the infrastructure to make nuclear weapons, including making weapon grade uranium. So it was a very large nuclear program. His program was ended due to international pressure and the fact that the United States was sitting next door in Iraq in 2003 and Iran felt very threatened overall and shut down the Plan AMAD, something that made Fakhrizadeh extremely angry. And he was able to continue the program with the approval of the leadership. So it was a downsized nuclear weapons program without an order to build nuclear weapons, but to carry on, keep the people employed, continue projects that in some cases create a civilian cover for them. Some cases, keep them covert. And he's been doing that since 2003.

David Albright: And the organizational names change over time. The most recent version had the acronym of SPND. He grew his organization. It grew from just a nuclear weapons program, which is not a small thing, but it grew into something that's a little bit like the US DARPA. That he created a research branch in the ministry of defense that did the research for advanced weapon systems, advanced technology, and in a sense, had grown quite a bit budgetary wise and in defense came and went, Fakhrizadeh was always there as a deputy defense

Danielle Pletka: David, first of all, thank you for being with us. I have a lot of things I want to ask you. But to contextualize how important Fakhrizadeh is to the Iranian nuclear program, I think it would be great for our listeners to get a sense of a politics free something that we almost never are able to get here in DC a politics free sense of where the Iranian nuclear weapons program actually is right now.

David Albright: Well, it's very hard to determine that. My own work, I conclude that Iran has not decided to build nuclear weapons. And I think there's a lot of governments who share that view. I think that there's a program there to be ready to build nuclear weapons. It's a program where if the order comes from up on high, they want to be able to produce the weapons grade uranium relatively quickly. They also want to be able to produce nuclear weapons relatively quickly. And that's no small feat. This isn't readiness like a latent proliferation, like Japan that has separated plutonium and has enrichment plants. This is a program that probably thought

David Albright: It may be that they only want to test one underground. I would say that if they made that decision today, they probably could test a underground in six to nine months. If they wanted to put it on a ballistic missile, it's probably going to take them significantly longer. One of the things that happened in Plan AMAD was while it was racing ahead, it didn't finish its work on creating a deliverable, reliable warhead for at that time, the Shahab-3 missile. So I think they need more time on that. Although we don't really know what they've

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7 been doing the last 20 years. They may have made considerable progress on that question without people like me knowing that. But the bottom line is, is that the program I think is very dangerous.

David Albright: These kinds of readiness programs are quite dangerous and they're not latent proliferation programs, but programs to be able to build the bomb within a relatively short period of time. And while they wouldn't classify, under some intelligence community's assessments of an active nuclear weapons program, in my definition, it would still be a nuclear weapons program that is very threatening to US interests.

Danielle Pletka: And so understanding that, how integral was Fakhrizadeh to the program's continued success?

David Albright: He was the manager. His specialty was nuclear calculations, nuclear measurements, radiation measurements, but what he brought to the table was his managerial skills. That he had been running these programs for decades before his death. He was viewed very highly in the Iranian defense establishment. And colleagues have been talking about him over the last several days on Iranian TV. And he just had a very good management style. He was a very good planner. He was deeply involved in developing the entire nuclear plan as they call it on TV. But in the 1990s, and that really what they're talking about is the plan to create , the AMAD Plan, everything Iran has been doing on nuclear. He was the brains behind that. And again, he didn't sit down and write it, but he organized it.

David Albright: And so his loss is, I think is pretty severe. In a lot of these developing world countries, in some ways, the difference between success and failure is the management of the program. I spent a lot of time studying the Iraqi nuclear weapons program that existed up to '91. And it was suffering because of management weaknesses. Fakhrizadeh, I think his gift was management. And I think he deserves much of the credit for the fact that Iran has been able to put together the centrifuge programs, a nuclear weapons program, missile programs. He was involved in many areas of defense research and development. And I think that as the Iranian government and officials are making clear, he was a revered scientist in Iran who'd made tremendous contributions to the Iranian defense establishment.

Marc Thiessen: So his assassination has been compared to the killing of Soleimani in the sense that Soleimani was the driving force between Iran's effort at regional hegemony through the IRGC. And Fakhrizadeh was the leading driving force behind Iran's nuclear weapons program. And the point has been made that their positions can be filled, but they can't be replaced. Is that a fair assessment? This is a real blow?

David Albright: I think it's not a bad assessment. The trouble I have, and I think others have with Fakhrizadeh and his organization, SPND, it's hard to know the people in the program. They surround themselves, or try to, with secrecy and finding out their names can be very challenging. And so I think I would equate the two. Fakhrizadeh was I guess, a Brigadier General in the Revolutionary Guard. He was a deputy defense minister. So, in a sense, he's at a comparable level to Soleimani and I think his presence will be missed. Now, the way I would think about it is

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

8 that there's quite a bit that is established by the Iranian nuclear weapons program, particularly based on what they did in Plan AMAD and then of what we know about after that.

David Albright: So I think if the question was produce a nuclear explosive device, I think many people in Iran could manage that program and they could detonate a bomb in the desert somewhere in six to nine months. Where I think Fakhrizadeh may be more missed, is the plan to create a reliable, deliverable, nuclear weapon mounted on a missile. There's a lot more engineering skill and an expertise that has to go in that. There's many more different parts of the Iranian defense establishment that have to be involved in making that work. And he demonstrated during Plan AMAD that he was able to do that. He headed the entire nuclear weapons program from kind of soup to nuts, if that expression still exists. But he was managing the whole thing. And in the reconstitution, the pieces kind of went off on their own.

David Albright: And so, someone has to pull those back together. And I think that's where he could be missed and they may have a challenge. And the other part of it is, is that here's a guy who's been 22 years basically doing the same thing. Programs up and down during that time. But his colleagues on TV are saying 22 years, and he's doing the same thing. He had tremendous influence and good relations with the Iranian military and defense bureaucracy and was viewed as someone at the very highest levels of that bureaucracy. So who can step into that and manage ... Scientists everywhere, engineers can be pretty feisty and pretty difficult to rope in, in a sense. So, I think that his loss is a real blow to the program.

Danielle Pletka: Well, that's good news. So I'm not as immersed in this issue as you are, where I first came across Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was when he was sighted Marc is

David Albright: Like John Kerry saying Genghis Khan.

Danielle Pletka: It is Genghis Khan, to be fair. But that's another issue. But where I first came across him was when he was sighted in North Korea as an observer at one of North Korea's nuclear tests. So apparently he also, in addition to being a great manager, apparently he was playing some sort of transnational role in, if I may over nuclear issues. Do you think that's still something that goes on? Tell us what you know.

David Albright: Actually, it's a big question. Fakhrizadeh traveled a lot. He got a lot of benefit for his program and other nuclear programs in Russia. In 2000, when they were just beginning to build the nuclear weapons infrastructure, they decided that some of the facilities would be underground facilities and they needed help. They appealed to the Quds force who set them up with some very important meetings in a foreign country. I don't know where that was. It wasn't North Korea. Probably a better guess would be Lebanon with Hezbollah. And it was recommended they use that country's companies to buy equipment for the Iranian effort to build their own underground nuclear weapons production sites.

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

9 Also, there was a very good reporting back in 2011 about cooperation between the nuclear weapons people and the North Koreans, where the North Koreans were going to provide help on computer codes, but more importantly on the kind of data that you've put into it that you need nuclear weapons related data. And North Koreans came and spent several months educating the Iranians in the program on the use of the codes as applied to using actual or more realistic nuclear weapons data.

David Albright: I think that Fakhrizadeh always had a philosophy to reach out and benefit from foreign cooperation. He certainly had to acquire a lot of equipment overseas and had to manage illicit procurement schemes. In a sense, one way to think about him too is he likes but he would have been a person who doesn't object to the sanctions. The sanctions allowed him to build up his organization as part of a resistance economy, and so I don't think he'd have any problems buddying up to North Korea. Certainly he's part of the IRGC, they had relations with the Quds Force, and I think other enemies of the United States could very well be his friends.

Marc Thiessen: One of the speculations as to why now is first, obviously it's been reported though not confirmed that Israel was behind the assassination. Speculation as to why they did it and why now, obviously one was to set back the nuclear program. But the other reason that has been speculated is to box in the Biden administration, which is coming back into power and has stated that they want to return to the Iran nuclear deal. Do you think that that was an objective of this, and you've written that from whatever you think of Trump, and you didn't like that he left the nuclear deal, he's generated an enormous amount of leverage on Iran is really the Obama team, will come in and try to pick up where they left off in 2016. Do you think that would be a mistake?

David Albright: Yeah. In fact, I was quoted in a recent story that I think it would be crazy if they rejoined the deal given the amount of leverage that's been generated. But in answer to your question, I think certainly whoever did this was thinking through consequences and had to be thinking that this will affect the Biden administration. But I think these kind of operations take a long time to plan. One of his colleagues, close colleagues, on Iranian TV said that it's really a set back... The assassination was 10 years to within one day of the assassination of another major Iranian nuclear scientist and he thinks that was deliberate. There aren't many anniversaries of the assassination of Iranian scientists and he thinks date that they want to do this within plus or minus one day.

David Albright: He had an interesting view of this. There'd been an assassination attempt against him. He'd survived, a guy named Dr. Abbasi-Davani, and he knew Fakhrizadeh for, I don't know, 30 years or more. And he said that one of the impacts of this that isn't well recognized and recognized well in the West, is that it really demoralizes the people in the effort. It's kind of obvious, but in fact, the demoralization, I think, is directly proportional to how much the Iranian leadership says, "This will never interfere. We will march forward steadily into the future. This will have no impact."

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10 David Albright: I think inside, it's the opposite and they work very hard to try to overcome that, and that this idea that they can kill these people on anniversaries of previous which brings it all back, the memory of that assassination, they can pick religious holidays, is very upsetting to the inside of the Iranian defense establishment. And in that sense, I think this thing, this was planned quite a while ago and Trump could have been the victor. I think they probably would have done this regardless of the election, and did, I think, do it regardless of the election. And certainly whoever did it has to worry about the impact on what the Biden people will do. They also have to worry about the impact of what Iran's going to do.

Marc Thiessen: Do you think, even if they planned it regardless of the election, that the timing might've been fortuitous because you're now on the cusp of this transition to a much more Tehran-friendly group of people who will be leading our foreign policy, who really want to return to diplomacy? And so, Iran is in a vice because on one hand they want to retaliate, but if they do retaliate, then depending on how they do it, it could prevent the Biden team from doing what they want and what the Iranians want, which is to return to the deal and lift sanctions and achieve a lot of objectives. In a way, timing this now could mean that whoever did this is getting away with it without the repercussions that might've happened under other circumstances. Is that fair?

David Albright: Yeah, no, I think that's fair. I think the Iranians also know too that they don't know when the next one's happening. I'm writing a book on the Iranian nuclear weapons program with my co-author, Andrea Stricker. There's documents in the nuclear archive where they're planning how to continue the program after the halting of the AMAD Plan. And they're going through and trying to figure out how well they've done, in a sense taking stock. What are the holes they'll need to fill in the future?

David Albright: And there were five central characters in that meeting. Three of them are now dead from assassination, a fourth was almost assassinated, and the fifth is now heading one of the Iranian universities. I think they have to worry a great deal about the next, in a sense, shot or explosion, and they know that if they start negotiations, probably that country will not do those kinds of explosions for assassinations. That's another side to this is that these actions can act to encourage the Iranians to accept negotiations in lieu of retaliation.

Danielle Pletka: Marc mentioned the operation, and again, there've been a number of stories about them. For anybody who's watched the Apple TV series, Tehran, this Israeli series, all of the stories are very reminiscent of this set of TV episodes about a operation directed against the Iranian nuclear program that goes wrong and how the Mossad team operates on the ground. But I stopped and I had a look. Without reading out all their names, we've got a killing in January of 2007, January of 2010, November 2010, November 2010, July 2011, January 2012, and now Fakhrizadeh in 2020. That's an amazing record that whoever, probably the Israelis, maybe with American help, have in Iran. It's quite incredible and it has to have set back their programs pretty seriously in each instance.

David Albright: Well, and it's also in the commentary on TV recently, there were more assassination attempts that didn't happen. There was an attempt on Fakhrizadeh

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11 according to this case and Abbasi-Davani in 2008. He says there was an attempt on him around 2006. And so I think this has been going on for a long time and I think whoever's doing it is getting better.

Danielle Pletka: I have to say, if ever I wanted to know state secrets, this would be a moment in which I did. Let's just circle back to the JCPOA for a second. You told Marc that you think it would be crazy to rejoin as is. If you had to encapsulate what it is that you think that an incoming, eager to rejoin an improved JCPOA Biden administration would do, what are the key elements that they need to address?

David Albright: I certainly had to look at this pretty intensely and supported the Trump administration's effort to fix the deal. And they didn't accept everything that I and colleagues had recommended, but one critical thing that was more or less accepted was we have to know, is this a nuclear program that's peaceful or does it have a hidden nuclear weapons side to it? And so, the International Atomic Energy Agency really has to first, before there's any deal, come forth and say, "Look, we've certified this program is peaceful," and they've never done that. They've actually said the opposite over and over again and they're currently locked in a conflict with Iran over activities involving undeclared nuclear materials at former AMAD Plan sites. And if it's undeclared uranium, even if it's 20 years ago, it's still undeclared uranium. Where is it? Why did they have it? Are they still using it? And so, the IAEA's in a conflict now and that needs to be resolved.

David Albright: The other thing is I've come to the position that I think if you can't fully resolve the IAEA issue, you've got to end enrichment. It's got to be zero enrichment. You can't have this partial enrichment and the JCPOA has shown this. Very easy to replace the LEU stocks, the enriched uranium stocks. They've got enough now for two bombs, if it was further enriched to weapon grade. They didn't even do very much and they have enough for two bombs, and their breakout times have come down to about three to four months to get enough weapon grade uranium for a bomb. The JCPOA is just too unstable.

Danielle Pletka: But just really quickly, that's a non-starter. I'm not a big fan of the folks who negotiated the JCPOA and I believe that they actually could have gotten a much better deal out of the Iranians, even within the context in which it was negotiated. But setting that aside, I don't think even the world's greatest negotiators, without a genuine sword of Damocles hanging over Tehran bombed or you do this that Iran is going to agree to ending enrichment. Isn't that right?

David Albright: Well, that's been their position since 2006. That's true, but their position also is not to allow any inspectors into military sites and they haven't fully stuck to that. Again, I agree with you. Maybe what you can do is have the sunsets on the nuclear limitations last much longer. But I think you still then, if you're going to do that, have to get to the bottom. Is this a military or a peaceful nuclear program? That can was not even really kicked, it was just pushed aside.

Marc Thiessen: David, exit question for me. We've had the killing of Soleimani, the killing of the head of the Iranian nuclear program, you just had an assassination of a senior Al Qaeda leader in Tehran. We've had the maximum pressure campaign on Iran that has really crippled their economy. And, just in a broader sense, we're about

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

12 to have a transition from the Trump administration to the Biden administration. How do you assess the Trump Iran policy overall and its success, or lack thereof, in setting back the Iranian threat to the region? Are there things from the Trump era, I know everyone rejects anything that Donald Trump does, but are there things that Trump was doing that merit continuation under the new administration?

David Albright: Certainly one of the things the Trump administration did was kind of get the US financial and other types of sanctions out of kind of this cabinet that they'd been put in by the JCPOA, so they could be applied on missiles, terrorism, regional aggression. I think those sanctions should continue and be increased if Iran continues down the paths that it's been on. Not to, in any way, lock them all up again and under some kind of nuclear rubric. I think sanctions need to continue and the nuclear issue is important, but it's not the only one there. I think the Trump administration created a policy that did a much better job at, at confronting Iran malign I hate to use their word, but let me do it malign behavior in the entire region and across its entire scope.

David Albright: I think that they should be commended for it. I think where they had problems was they really didn't have a plan once they left the deal to get a new deal. I think that's created a whole set of problems, but I think the end point is they've created a lot of leverage on Iran, and also things have been happening these kind of below the surface of a military conflict of explosions of nuclear sites and assassinations that have ramped up the leverage, in a sense, even more. It also shows that if the people in the region are not included in a deal, they may do things on their own that may not be in the interest of the Biden administration, but may very well be in their interests.

Danielle Pletka: That was actually my exit question for you. I was speaking to a group yesterday and I said, "When America steps back, when America advantages Iran, our allies in the region often do things that are not good for our interests and sometimes not good for their own interests." I hope that's not what we have to look forward to, but you've been wonderful, super generous with your time and just fascinating. I hope we will be able to talk about this again, as the Biden administration settles in, and we understand the fallout from this assassination and see where all these things are going.

David Albright: Okay. No happy to do it. Thank you for the invitation.

Marc Thiessen: Thank you for joining us. It was great.

Marc Thiessen: Dany, you brought David Albright to us and he didn't disappoint. He is just a really insightful guy. Let's talk about where we ended off with him about the assessment of the Trump administration's Iran policy and particularly with regard to this. I mean, if you think about what's been accomplished in the last four years, first of all, just the imposition of crippling sanctions, the elimination of Qassem Soleimani, who literally, probably next to Osama Bin Laden, was the most malign terrorist in the modern Middle East. The assassination of the head of the nuclear program, which is going to set back their efforts significantly, the assassination of a top Al Qaeda operative just recently in Tehran as well, the taking out of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, real blows against both Sunni and Shia extremism.

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13 Marc Thiessen: Now, of course, the elimination of the caliphate. Where do you assess where we are? I know the Biden administration, there's this reflexive thing on the left that anything Trump did must be bad, and therefore we have to reverse it. That's not necessarily true when it comes to Iran. He's actually handed, and not to go beyond the nuclear program, three Arab-Israeli peace accords, first peace accords in the region, which directly repudiated the Obama approach, which was that all peace will require detente with Iran and go through Ramallah. They've really inherited a situation in the Middle East that they can take advantage of if they don't go about reversing everything. Is that fair?

Danielle Pletka: I do think it's fair. I think the challenge is this. What the Democrats are going to keep saying is, and keep saying to me in particular is, "You know Tony Blinken. Tony is a great guy." I do know Tony Blinken and Tony Blinken is a great guy. The

was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He's not a crazed nut at is true. The problem for us really going forward is where the Democratic Party is because the Democratic Party has gone from being a pro- Israel party to a pro-Iran party.

Danielle Pletka: Yes, that's obviously an unbelievably vast overgeneralization. There are many, many people inside the Democratic Party who remain pro-Israel, but its leading lights and its loudest voices have in fact on foreign policy become these other people. That's what I worry about. I worry about this desire to satisfy them and this deranged anti-Trump-ism. If Trump did it, it must be bad. Of course, the answer is, for Biden, he's kind of in the catbird seat. He's got a lot of opportunities. He's got a lot of leverage on Iran and he should use it.

Danielle Pletka: I worry that beyo going to be people who I do know and don't like, and don't trust who are naive in the extreme about what Iranian ambitions are in the region, who are naive in the extreme about the balance of power in the region and who are so deranged on the topic of Saudi Arabia because of the Khashoggi killing, that they cannot see straight and believe that Iran is actually a better ally for the United States in the region than Saudi Arabia.

Marc Thiessen: Well, this is a larger problem with the Biden presidency in general, and we'll be spending lots of time assessing it in the coming year as it unfolds, is that you've got this which is that he doesn't represent the Democratic Party as it exists today. He arrived in Washington in 1972 and he was a Scoop Jackson Democrat. He was tough on the Soviets. He and Jesse Helms, when the Ford administration wouldn't allow Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to come to Washington, they invited him and held events with him.

Marc Thiessen: He's not a crazy left wing democratic socialist, economically, or on foreign policy. The party that he leads, described it as a, it's like a nice walnut veneer on the fiberboard of democratic socialism. That is the foundation of the modern Democratic Party today. It's going to be very hard for him to push back on all of that because that's not where his constituency is, whether it's domestically or whether it's on foreign policy and certainly when it comes to Iran.

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14 Danielle Pletka: No, I agree with you. If we can see some effort on the part of Republicans on Capitol Hill to try to continue to encourage the Biden administration to actually use that leverage productively, you could see the building of a real bipartisan alliance on national security policy. That would be awesome. I don't know whether the Nancy Pelosi's and Chuck Schumer's, let alone the Bernie's or the AOCs and the Elizabeth Warrens, allow that to happen. I think the Iranians are going to be watching very, very closely. I'm less concerned about their ability to retaliate in a serious way against the Israelis, and much more concerned about what it is that this new administration is going to do in order to try to get back into the deal.

Danielle Pletka: Again, this isn't going to be just us. It's going to be us and the Europeans. Hopefully, the French will remain the stalwarts that they actually were in the past on this and will keep the Biden administration on the straight and narrow that they were unable to keep the Obama administration on. That we see them use this opportunity in a way that is productive rather than destructive. We are going to see, but meanwhile, let me just say the world is not mourning Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

Marc Thiessen: Bye to all of our listeners. Thank you so much for listening. Again, please, if you're listening to this on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you are, please subscribe. Please rate us. Please tell your friends. If you're new to the podcast, we'd love to have you as a permanent listener. If you're an old listener, tell everyone because we've got great guests like David Albright and others coming up.

Danielle Pletka: Exactly. Take care, everyone.

Marc Thiessen: Bye.

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org