Ensure the deal is being enforced from the Heritage Foundation, this is an hour and a half. Good afternoon. Welcome to the Heritage Foundation and our douglas and sarah allen auditorium. We welcome those who join us on our heritage. Org on this occasion. For those in house, we ask the courtesy check that mobile devices have been silenced or turned off as we prepare to begin and for those watching online, youre welcome to send questions or comments simply emailing heritagespeaker. Org. Leading our discussion, phillips the fellow for middle Eastern Affairs and douglas sand sarah allen for foreign studies and written widely on the middle east and issues of International Terrorism since coming to the hr taj fo Heritage Foundation in 1979. Dozee authored dozens of articles on other middle east security issues. Please join me in welcoming jim phillips. [ applause ] thank you, john. The Iran Nuclear Agreement has been enforced now for more than a year but yet, it faces a very uncertain future. As president ial candidate donald trump indicated that he would overturn the deal or also indicated that he may enforce it so tightly that the iranians may walk away from it. But as president , hes been in no hurry to rip up the deal and it appears the administration is still reviewing options. Critics charge that the nuclear deal only slowed irans uranium enrichment program. It did not halt it. And the administrations promises that the deal would help to moderate irans behavior have not come to pass. Iran still does very provocative missile tests, still supports terrorism, still expanding a military intervention in syria and harass International Navy ships in the persian gulf. Supporters of the deal indicate that almost all of those things were not included in the deal and that the deal did reduce irans stockpiles of uranium enrichment for a few years in order to bide time for possibly diffusing this crisis. How does it work . The joint comprehensive program of action or jcpoa. So how well is the jcpo worked . What are its strengths and weaknesses . What position should the Trump Administration take on the deal Going Forward . To answer these and other questions, we have a very knowledgeable panel of experts and ill be introducing them as they speak. First speaker is fred flights. Senior at center for security policy. Fred served in the National Security positions for 25 years at the cia, dia, department of state and the House Intelligence Committee staff. During the administration of president george w. Bush, he was chief of staff to john bolton and then the undersecretary of state for arms control and interNational Security. During his tenure, he was a staff expert on the iranian and north Korean Nuclear programs and briefed key National Intelligence on the issues to committee members. After he left government in 2011, he founded and served as director of the Langley Intelligence Group network. The news max medias Global Intelligence and forecasting services. He has published numerous articles in various journals and newspapers and last year, published the eye opening book, obama bomb, a dangerous and growing National Security fraud. So let me turn it over to fred. Thanks, jim. Its a pleasure to be back at heritage to discuss this urgent National Security issue and very humbling to be on the panel with some of americas leading experts on this issue. Jim, youve written extensively on this issue. A former iae official for a number of years and really knows exactly whats going on with Irans Nuclear program and David Albright with his center has produced information that i couldnt, i dont think i know which end was up without the report to his organizations producing. I might add reports he has been producing despite pressure from the Foreign Policy establishment to pull his punches. Maybe hes not going to talk about that but i really respect him for the hard hitting reports his organization has put out and for not pulling his punches. Donald trump said repeatedly during the campaign that the nuclear deal with iran was one of the worst deals the United States has ever negotiated. He has implied that he would tear up the deal, renegotiate the deal and some other options being discussed right now. Mr. Trump is right. This really is a terrible agreement that is in danger to u. S. And interNational Security, but the question is what will mr. Trump do about it . Im going to discuss three options that are on the table for mr. Trump to deal with the deal. But first, i want to talk about why this is a bad deal and theres two principled reasons for this. First of all, the the j krrks normalizes Nuclear Program and allows Nuclear Activities while the agreement in place. Why is that a problem . Iran built its Nuclear Infrastructure in defiance of its treaty obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation treaty. It cheated. Its a state sponsor of terror and had been the position until early in the Obama Administration that there are certain technologies although they have peaceful applications, iran should not be allowed to pursue because theyre too easy to use to make weapons. However, the Obama Administration was so desperate for an agreement, it made concession after concession to give away these dangerous technologies because they want to get a legacy Nuclear Agreement for president obama. Now, the Main Technology that is of grave concern is uranium enrichment until 2010 or 2011 and stuck with the prior u. S. Position that iran cannot be allowed to rich uranium. Iran can operate 5,000 Uranium Centers, slightly over 5,000 Uranium Center refufuges. Iran should not be allowed to enrich uranium. It should be our position too as well as the israeli government. Proponents of the deal have praised the fact under the agreement, iran filled this reactor with cement and it will be rebuilt so does not produce weapons grade plutonium. It will be rebuilt by the chinese according to the association, it will be the source of a quarter of a weapons worth of plutonium per year but even if its not usable as weapons which some experts have said, this agreement will allow iran to require expertise and the construction and operation of a heavy water reactor. This was an outrageous concession by the United States and something i think is going to make us considerably less safe down the road when this reactor is completed and in addition, this reactor has been exempted from an oversight process to safeguard the technology being provided for the construction of this reactor is not being diverted for weapons purposes. So i mean, this is a real problem. For verification under the agreement is very weak. Supposedly, this has the strongest verification measures of any Nuclear Agreement in history and in fact, the verification mostly applies ottato the supply chain and sites. There is a procedure to get access to nondeclared sites but has to be a vote of treaty parties to get that inspection and if iran refused in theory sanctions would be snapped back, that had been suspended under the agreement. If the Trump Administration attempts to get authorization from the various parties to get an inspection like this, the answer is almost certain to be no because the europeans wouldnt agree to vote with him and threat to withdraw from him and more snapback sanctions so i dont think thats an option. In addition, iran is refusing to allow inspections of military facilities. If there are weaponsrelated activities going on, its happening at weapons facilities. Iran will not allow inspections of the facilities. That alone i think the agreement is a big problem and then issues that were left out of the and these concerned promises by the Obama Administration that not only will this reduce but bring iran into the community of nations and make iran, improve irans relations with the United States. I think we know the last two conditions have not happened. Fired at least a dozen missiles since the Nuclear Agreement announced. The missiles have been fired by the iranian proxy into the red sea at saudi ships and continued to support terrorism probably financed by the enormous amount of money it received in sanctions relief under the agreement. But missiles is something worth talking about at a little bit of length. We were told earlier in the Nuclear Talks that missiles would be included in the agreement but the iranians refused to include it so theres a provision with missiles test in the Security Council resolution that endorsed the agreement but wasnt known at the time that this language barring Iranian Missile test for i think 8 years weakened previous Security Council resolutions and only applies to missile tests designed to carry Nuclear Warheads. Now, lets be real here. They are not built to fire monkeys into space or pay loads full of dynamite. Theyre Nuclear WeaponsDelivery System to carry Nuclear Bombs against israel, the United States and europe. Thats the purpose. Iran is the only nation in history to have a missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers or more without having a Nuclear Weapons system so lets not pretend this is not part of the Nuclear Weapons program. It was another irresponsible concession by the Obama Administration to get this deal that allowed the agreement to go go without this as part of it. This is why every time iran tests the mistsile. Not in compliance with the muk leer nuclear and the irani Prime Minister actually worked on this language so is they could get it part of the program. I think it gets iran closer to a Nuclear Weapon and i think iran will, is able to cheat on the agreement and not be taugcaught. What should President Trump do . Tear up the agreement, renegotiate the agreement or pursue a policy of strictly enforcing the agreement. In my view, tearing up the agreement is the best option. This is a fraud. It was so fraudulent to the American People, there are numerous not disclosed to congress when voted in december of 2015. It was negotiated not only over the objections of israel, one of our closest allies but behind its back and behind the backs of allies min the middle east. I think when we conduct negotiations with north korea, we included regional states and this agreement was initiated with no input from regional states. They were surprised. J. Solomon writes about what iran was allowed to keep under an agreement to reduce the threat from its Nuclear Program. It was a betrayal and i think this is the best reason why this program has to be stopped. Also, this agreement undermines important nonproliferation efforts that the United States was pursuing to stop uranium enrichment and fuel reprocessing. This is something the Bush Administration worked hard on and negotiated an agreement to share Peaceful Nuclear technology with the United Arab Emirates called the Gold Standard which provided the nation was sharing to agree not to enrich and not process for plutonium. The Obama Administration backed away from that standard. I think this was a serious mistake because more allowed to enrich and reprocess fuel means more have covert Nuclear Programs. This was a mistake. We have to return to the Gold Standard. We have to return to a process of not permitting the proliferation of reprocessing and uranium enrichment. I think that of the options that the president is looking at, renegotiation is more confident that a trump team ultimately will either push for a deal that actually addresses the threats from Irans Nuclear program, brings in other crucial issues such as Ballistic Missiles and sponsorship of terrorism, or iran will back out of the agreement. But theres two objections we hear about. First of all, it is a multilateral agreement the u. S. Cant renegotiate on its own and what general matz said, the tis have to keep our commitments, just cant tear up, back out of this agreement. These are both false arguments. This is not really a multilateral agreement. Between the United States and iran. Mostly in secret, mostly before the multilateral attacks began. Read jay sullivans books. Western states had their arms twisted to go along, all the concessions john kerry worked out with the iranians. These other nations are just along for the ride. That cant be the reason. Concerning why the u. S. Should keep its commitments, the u. S. Does not have to keep its commitment to an agreement that is a fraud. This is a fraud. This agreement was fraudulently pushed forward. It dangers National Security. The American People have learned about one unfair concession after another. Can you imagine what congress would have done when it voted on this in september of 2015 if they knew there was a secret deal to pay ransom to get american hostages out of iran . I know the Obama Administration said the release of the american prisoners was not related to the nuclear deal. Give me a break. Of course it was related. Of course there was an agreement with the iranians that they would not release those prisoners until they got sanctions relief. It is no accident that our prisoners were released on the same day that iran got its sanctions relief and the same day that we flew a plane load of cash secretly to iran. This was not disclosed by the administration while they were doing celebrations in january of 2015 about the success of the deal. January 2016, about the success of the deal. It was revealed in the wall street journal a few months later. There were many other secret concessions like this. Which is why i say this agreement is a fraud. The u. S. Does not have to stand behind a fraud. Strictly enforcing. That seems to be the objective of the day right now. The reason people are pushing this is because the argument is well, its a multilateral agreement. Our european allies will be upset with us if we back out. Lets force iran to back out. Well, theres several problems with this. First of all, this approach legitimizes a fraudulent agreement. We know this is a fraudulent agreement and working within this process is a mistake, but second of all and this is a very important point. Iran can advance its Nuclear Program. Its Nuclear Weapons program and be in full compliance with the agreement because it is learning how to enrich uranium, build advanced centrifuges. It will gain access on building heavy water reactors. It doesnt make sense to use the strictly enforced approach. I think this is a serious mistake. Now, there seems to be a hybrid approach im hearing right now. This was mentioned in the recent discussions in europe. Well push for dropping the sunset provisions where important aspects of the agreement are suspended in 10 to 15 years. Well ask for better reporting, the iaea and tighten the procurement channels. These are things being talked about. Well sort of strictly enforce, renegotiate. Im sorry, but if we stick with an agreement that lets iran to enrich, we are endangering National Security, we are perpetuating a fraud. Thats not good enough. It has to be an approach that stops iran from enriching, stops them from having access to technology to produce plutonium and makes them answer questions about its past Nuclear Weapons record. I think in the end, the best approach would be to try to renegotiate. I dont expect the iranian will cooperate and may back out of the deal. Next, we put tough sanctions on iran to stop transfers of all nuclear and Missile Technology as well as any interaction with Financial Institutions that would aid these technologies. In addition, there should be san