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War on the Rocks

VP's National Security Adviser on the Iran Deal: Colin Kahl Gives an Insider's View

War on the Rocks

War on the Rocks

News, Politics

4.61.1K Ratings

🗓️ 11 June 2015

⏱️ 60 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The deadline for a deal on the Iranian nuclear program is on June 30. Just weeks before the deadline, Colin Kahl, the National Security Adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, sat down with Ryan Evans to talk about the nuclear negotiations over drinks at the Jefferson Hotel's Quill Bar. Ryan lobbed every objection to the deal he could come up with at Colin. The result was one of the most candid conversations we've ever seen from a senior administration official on what might be a monumental event in the history of diplomacy. Have a listen!

Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm sitting here with Colin Call, Dr Colin, the National Security Advisor to Vice President

0:08.2

Biden and thanks for joining us.

0:10.0

We're going to talk about the Iran deal.

0:12.5

Colin, want you to tell us a bit about just short synopsis of your career

0:16.4

because Warren the Rock's readers in particular are interested in sort of scholar

0:21.0

practitioner model, and I think in many ways represent that.

0:25.0

Yeah, I mean I think of myself a little bit as an embedded nerd.

0:27.6

I'm a political science PhD.

0:31.0

I got my doctorate from Columbia University and Political Science, focused on

0:36.0

international relations, taught at the University of Minnesota.

0:39.9

I'm on leave as we speak from Georgetown University or I teach in a school of

0:44.6

Foreign Service. I've also worked in the think tank world for the Center for

0:50.4

a new American Security. But I've done a number of stints in government. In

0:56.8

2005 and 2006 I was a Council on Foreign Relations fellow at the Pentagon working on Stability Operations, did some work on Iraq in that time period too.

1:08.0

Then in the beginning of the Obama administration from February 2009 through the end of 2011, I served again at the Pentagon as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, where my portfolio basically included the 14 countries that span from Egypt up through Israel and the

1:25.6

Levant, Iraq, Iran, down the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula to Yemen.

1:30.6

So I used to joke, I didn't have to do Libya or Afghanistan. I just did the easy countries

1:34.9

sandwiched in between.

1:36.7

And as soon as you left it went the other way.

1:38.7

Yeah, well, you know, it's never a dull part of the world, that's for sure. So I re-entered the academic world in

1:46.4

in December of 2011, went back to Georgetown for a number of years and then had the

1:51.0

opportunity to come work for the vice president

...

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