The Key Points of Trump’s Iran Peace Deal, Israel’s Nightmare Scenario and What to Expect Next

**Tucker Carlson** (0:04)
Thanks for doing this.

**Trita Parsi** (0:05)
Thank you for having me.

**Tucker Carlson** (0:07)
Is this deal real?

**Trita Parsi** (0:08)
I think so. I think this is a significant achievement, but nothing is fully real until they manage to get to the final agreement. And we already have a precedent in which we also see that when there was a final agreement, which there was in 2015 that Obama struck, it didn't mean that it necessarily would last because Trump walked out of that deal. So if this is something we want, we have to work at it, we have to work to keep it. These things are not part of the background that you can keep without putting any effort into it. And right now, we're not even halfway to the distance, but this is an important development.

**Tucker Carlson** (0:41)
So what are the key deal points as they're emerging? To the extent we know now.

**Trita Parsi** (0:45)
First of all, we don't know enough because at the end of the day, there's been just so many different versions that have been floating around. And some of them frankly do seem to be sabotage efforts. There's some of the hardline media in Iran that has been sending out these versions of the deal that I think deliberately were trying to raise people's expectations in order to make the final deal look bad. And they're doing it because they're trying to sabotage the paydari faction in Iran. Super hardliners are dead set against it. In fact, there were protests that they organized, not huge ones in any way, shape or form, particularly for a city of 10 million or plus in Tehran. But they were protesting outside of the Iranian foreign ministry and calling for the death of the foreign minister and the speaker of the parliament who had been negotiating this deal. So we should not for a second forget that there's a faction in Iran that is really against this.
But based on what it seems likely to have included, there's going to be an opening of the straits. It's going to take some time. You know, they have to do some demining, et cetera, to be able to fully make it safe. The US is going to lift its blockade of the blockade, which I think ultimately complicated this matter much more so than helped the US.
I think there will be some release of funds, but it will be done in a manner in which Trump can say that he never released the funds and Iranians can say they got some of their money back. And it's going to be something that some of the GCC countries do in the middle to make sure that there's some money going to the Iranians while they're waiting for the actual Iranian money to be released. And it's very important to keep this in mind. This is Iran's own money. They had about $120 to $150 billion in various banks around the world. That's how you do international trade. You have the money there. And if you buy food or whatever from there, you use that money. These were frozen by US sanctions. So the Iranians could not access it.

**Tucker Carlson** (2:31)
For how long have they been frozen?

**Trita Parsi** (2:33)
Well, they were frozen first under the Obama era until they struck a deal and then it was unfrozen. And then once Trump walked out of the deal in 2018, it was refrozen. So since 2018, almost 10 years, a lot of Iran's money has been in these banks and they've not been able to access it.
Out of that 120, 250, the Iranian demand has been that for the MOU, they should get 12, roughly 8 to 10% released at the outset and another 12 released by the time that the MOU is concluded.

**Tucker Carlson** (3:04)
And this is their money just to-

**Trita Parsi** (3:05)
This is their money. So this is different. You know the story about how Obama released 1.7 billion dollars when he signed the JCPOA.

**Tucker Carlson** (3:15)
Yeah, he sent the pallets of cash.

**Trita Parsi** (3:16)
Pallets of cash. That is true. But that was very different. That was not frozen money. That was because there was a lawsuit between the United States and Iran since the beginning of the revolution. Because during the time of the Shah, we're talking about 1977, the Shah had ordered American weaponry. I don't remember if it was airplanes or tanks or whatever, but he was the biggest purchaser of American weaponry back in the 1970s. But between him paying for it and they're supposed to be delivered, the Iranians had a revolution. They took 52 American diplomats hostage. So the US clearly and understandably never delivered the weapons, but also never returned the money. So the Iranians took the US to court in the Hague International Court of Arbitration, and the US was about to lose that fight. So the Obama administration chose to settle it as part of the JCPOA. It was only supposed to be 400 million, but because of interest, it added up to 1.7. Here was the problem.