After Trump leaves, US and Israeli aggression against Iran remains

Pushback with Aaron Mate

Pushback with Aaron Maté

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4.7 • 594 Ratings

🗓️ 4 December 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Israel's assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist is the latest act of aggression in the Trump-Netanyahu campaign to undermine the Iran nuclear deal. Although President-elect Joe Biden has voiced support for returning to the JCPOA, longstanding US-Israel hostility to Iranian sovereignty will continue under his watch. Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter debunks the myths about Iran's nuclear program and discusses the next phase of the US and Israeli campaign against Iran under Biden. Guest: Scott Ritter, former UN Weapons Inspector, former Marine Corps Intelligence Officer, and author of Dealbreaker: Donald Trump and the Unmaking of the Iran Nuclear Deal. Support Pushback at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/aaronmate

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Pushback. I'm Aaron Mate. In the aftermath of Israel's assassination of an Iranian nuclear
0:12.0	scientist, Iran has announced that it will resume uranium enrichment to 20%, the same level it was before the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
0:22.6	Iran has also issued a deadline of February for sanctions to be lifted or have nuclear inspectors
0:30.6	banned from the country. Well, joining me is Scott Ritter. He is a former UN weapons inspector,
0:36.6	a former Marine Corps intelligence officer, and author
0:40.8	of Dealbreaker, Donald Trump, and the unmaking of the Iran nuclear deal.
0:45.9	Scott, welcome to pushback.
0:48.0	Thanks very much for having me.
0:49.6	What should people know about Iran's decision today to resume enrichment to 20 percent?
0:56.0	Some are calling this a new crisis.
0:59.0	Well, the first thing we need to realize is that it's nothing new in terms of the Iranian program.
1:05.0	Prior to the 2015 coming into force of the JCPOA, Iran was enriching uranium to 20% for use in a research
1:18.6	reactor in Tehran that produced the medical isotopes.
1:21.6	They also need to understand that when we say Iran is enriching to 20%, that doesn't mean that every
1:26.6	centrifuge is enriching to 20%. that doesn't mean that every centrifuge is enriching to 20%.
1:28.3	It means that a selected cascade is doing a limited amount of enrichment to produce uranium necessary to convert to fuel that can be used in this reactor.
1:38.3	Other, the vast majority of the centerfuges are enriching to the 3.5% necessary to produce fuel for the nuclear reactors.
1:48.4	The other thing that people need to understand is that this action by Iran is in conformity
1:54.5	with the JCPOA. Not that the JCPOA permits this, but Articles 26 and 36 of the JCPOA permit Iran to walk back from its commitments under the JCPOA so long as other members to the agreement are not in compliance.
2:13.3	The United States not only withdrew from it, but threatened secondary sanctions against Europe,
2:19.6	the French, the Germans, the European Union, if they did business with Iran and European
2:24.9	economic interaction with Iran is a part of the JCPOA. Europe has not lived up to its obligations.
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