Did Iran Come Out on Top in the Peace Deal?

**Natalie Kitroeff** (0:02)
From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitroeff. This is The Daily.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:06)
On Sunday, we reached an agreement with Iran that achieves everything we set out to accomplish, everything and much more.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (0:13)
After the US and Iran signed a deal to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz this week, the Trump administration touted it as a huge victory.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:23)
We and the broader region win. Iran has weakened, their nuclear program destroyed, their economy in desperate straits.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (0:31)
But when the actual terms of the agreement became public, This will go down as a tremendous foreign policy blunder. it prompted a wave of criticism from lawmakers in both parties about what exactly the Trump administration had given up.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:47)
It's not even comparable to the Obama deal.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (0:50)
It's worse by a lot.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:51)
Iran ends up stronger.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:53)
Our allies in the region are weaker.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:55)
There's no specific commitment to the verifiable dismantling of their nuclear weapons program. History demonstrates that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is an exceptionally bad idea.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:09)
I think it's a deep mistake.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (1:12)
Today, my colleague David Sanger explains what the US gets out of the deal and just how much Iran stands to gain. It's Friday, June 19th.
David, hello again. At this point, it feels like you are on The Daily almost every other day, so thank you so much for giving us so much of your time.

**David E. Sanger** (1:36)
Great to be with you, Natalie, as always.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (1:38)
We talked to you earlier in the week when we learned that we had a deal to end this war, which at that point no one had actually seen. And then on Wednesday, the Trump administration came out with the details of what was actually in it.
And I think it's fair to say that those details elicited a very big reaction in lots of interesting ways, which we want to get into. But first, what is in this deal? Start with what the US got.

**David E. Sanger** (2:06)
Well, the main thing that the US got, Natalie, was a 60-day ceasefire in the war. And sort of a return to the status quo, at least for a little while, that existed before the US and Israel attacked Iran.
But the key thing to know is that it didn't really address any of the issues that led the president and prime minister Netanyahu to attack Iran. It just sort of resets the clock. And it has one paragraph on what was the underlying cause of this war, which is Iran's nuclear program.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (2:46)
And what does it say about the program?

**David E. Sanger** (2:48)
Well, this is the only paragraph that actually puts an affirmative obligation on Iran. And let me read part of it to you, Natalie, because I think you'll get a sense of it. The first sentence says, The Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons.
Now, the president's been making a big deal of this, the Iranians have promised not to do this. The only problem with that is they made the same promise in 1970 when they ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. They made the same promise in 2015 when they signed the Obama era deal. It's on the first page.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (3:27)
The key word there seems to be reaffirms.

**David E. Sanger** (3:30)
Reaffirms. Then it's got a second part of this, saying that they agree to sit down and talk about what they're going to do about all of Iran's nuclear program. It's stockpiles of uranium, it's nuclear facilities, it's programs to continue enriching uranium.
They set a minimum level here. The minimum level is that Iran agrees that they're going to take their 11 tons of material, although they don't specify the number here, and they're going to down blend it.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (4:08)
What does that mean exactly? What is down blending?

**David E. Sanger** (4:12)
Down blending means diluting it essentially. And their concern is that we know the Iranians have about 970 pounds that's enriched to 60 percent, very close to what you could use in a bomb. But then they've got literally tons of other material enriched at different levels.
So what the US is saying here is you are agreeing that as a minimum, you're going to down blend that basically to a reactor level.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (4:44)
So, if I understand this correctly, diluting it sets back the program. Does it destroy the material? Is it effectively the same as destroying the material, which the president has said again and again is the goal here?