What happened to the Iran nuclear deal?

Make Me Smart

Marketplace

News, Business

4.6 • 5.4K Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The United States’ entanglement in Iran and Israel’s current conflict has a long, complicated history. Today we’re looking back at how it led up to the U.S. strikes on Iran over the weekend. Two major factors: Iran’s nuclear capabilities and economic sanctions, which the U.S. used to deter Iran’s nuclear program and to incentivize Iran to sign on to the 2015 nuclear deal. Rose Kelanic, director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities, explains some of the history behind tensions between the U.S. and Iran, the role sanctions played in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and how the deal broke down.

Later, one listener’s take on the Trump administration’s threats to the Pell Grant program. And, a gardening blogger was wrong about DIY plant food hacks.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

"Strike Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by Only a Few Months, U.S. Report Says" from The New York Times
"Trump tries to maintain fragile ceasefire hours after he announced it" from Politico
"Iran’s Nuclear Dreams May Survive Even a Devastating American Blow" from The New York Times
"History of US-Iran relations: From the 1953 regime change to Trump strikes" from Al Jazeera
"Why Israel will resist any US-Iran nuclear deal" from Atlantic Council
"Satellites show damage to Iran's nuclear program, but experts say it's not destroyed" from NPR

Got a question for the hosts? Email [email protected] or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, if you're listening to this, I will assume you're at least interested in money,
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0:41.9	Music dot com slash million. Hello, everyone.
0:43.0	I'm Kimberly Adams.
0:43.9	Welcome back to Make Me Smart,
0:45.3	where none of us is as smart as all of us.
0:48.2	Hey, everyone.
0:48.8	I'm Rie McGrace.
0:49.7	It is Tuesday, June 24th.
0:52.0	Today we're talking about what's been going on between Iran, Israel, and the U.S.
0:56.9	The United States' entanglement in this conflict has a long history, and a lot of it hinges on Iran's
1:02.4	nuclear capabilities. So we're going to be talking about that today.
1:06.1	Yeah, we wanted to have a look back, a little bit of history here, about what led up to the United States launching strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend.
1:16.8	Because if many of you will recall, there was a nuclear deal with Iran at one point.
1:23.0	It fell apart. There have been economic sanctions that have been at play through the whole thing.
	...

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