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Evan Sankey: Good morning, and welcome to the Cato Institute. My name is Evan Sankey. I’m a policy analyst with our Defense and Foreign Policy Studies program. It is our honor to host you for a day of discussion and exchange about the present and future of US policies to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. In the spring of 1963, President Kennedy said he was haunted by the feeling that the number of nuclear powers might grow from four to 15, 20, or 25 by the end of the 1970s, and that this constituted the greatest possible danger and hazard to the United States.

60 years later, this fear has not materialized. The number of nuclear-armed countries has ticked up only slowly to nine, a number held in check by many factors, including expense, threat perceptions, but also by the use of American power by generations of US presidents and policymakers to cajole, threaten, and punish friends and foes alike to forgo the nuclear option. This mission became a consensus feature of US grand strategy, strongly influ- influencing our decisions about alliances, overseas military deployments, our nuclear posture, and whether to wage wars of choice. But growing resource strains on US grand strategy and the growth in both our major political parties of constituencies favoring military restraint compel us to ask whether policymakers should or will continue to regard the nonproliferation mission as an absolute imperative of US foreign policy. Today, we’re pleased to welcome nine distinguished experts to the Cato Institute to, to share their views and insights about these topics.

Our first morning panel will address the effectiveness of US efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to US adversaries. The second will look at the challenge of friendly nuclear proliferation. And after lunch, our third panel, panel will ask how US nonproliferation policies interact with our nuclear posture and employment strategy. And with that, I turn the floor over to, to our first panel. Justin Logan, the director of our Defense and Foreign Policy Studies program, will be the moderator.

Over to you, Justin.

Justin Logan: Thanks very much, Evan, for that kind introduction and useful setup. You stole one of my Kennedy quotes. I will forgive you for doing so. My name’s Justin Logan. I’m the director of Defense and Foreign Policy Studies here at Cato.

But I do have to acknowledge that this is very much an Evan Sankey, Ben Giltner production. They’ve put a lot of work, into pulling it together, and I’m grateful to them and in their debt for their having done it. So our task this morning to kick things off is this question of, US policy toward adversarial proliferation, prospective, notional, or otherwise. And it’s a shame there’s nothing in the news that should cause this to be of interest, to a general audience, but we’ll have to make do with what we have. We’re gonna have three panelists to discuss these, questions, this morning.

The third is imminently, I think, being mic’d up. So I’ll, I’ll just kick off by talking about, it was interesting Evan, mentioned this question of, Kennedy’s predictions. And the panelists here will be rolling their eyes at having dug these up once again. But in 1960, Kennedy, feared that there would be 10, then 15, then 20 nuclear weapon states by 1964, right? So it’s kind of a scary prospect.

But then by 1963, he had to update that to say, “Well, hang on, by 1970, unless we’re successful, there may be 10 instead of four, and by 1975, 15 or 20.” So there’s always been this sort of fear that we’re at some imminent, cascade or tipping point or point of no return, or dominoes fall- nuclear dominoes falling is another thing that’s come up. And yet, as Evan pointed out, we still remain at nine nuclear weapon states in the international system. Also, as Evan pointed out, what determined that? Well, it’s overdetermined, right? We have a series of rules and restrictions, laws, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the additional protocol, the US military in some cases, US diplomacy in other cases.

So as much as I, crack wise, and I may still, about the rules-based liberal international order, there are these institutions and, and pro- proliferation has been overpredicted, for decades. So we’re gonna talk about all those variables in the discussion kicking things off this morning. I’ll introduce the panelists, and then we’ll have a sort of structured conversation where I’ve already tipped my hand and let them know some of the questions that they’re gonna hear, but we’ll have a discussion of these questions. The first panelist is, James Acton, who holds the Jessica T. Matthews Chair and is co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he focuses on a range of nuclear policy issues, including the impact of emerging technologies on nu- nuclear strategy.

I’m truncating these bios severely. They’re much more prestigious than my vocal cords can churn out this morning. His PhD is in theoretical physics from Cambridge. Bob Peters, who I assume– I’ve always called you Bob. I hope you like to go by Bob.

Bob Peters: Yes.

Justin Logan: That’s what I’ve been calling you for a long time, is the acting director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for National Security at the Heritage Foundation. Previously, he served in a variety of national security positions, in and around the government, including at DTRA, at NDU, and at the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He is a graduate of Miami University and Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. And hopefully, presently, being mic’d up right now is, Richard Nephew, who’s a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, SIPA, as the kids call it. He’s a leading expert on sanctions, nonproliferation, and policy on Iran.

He previously served as deputy special envoy for Iran at the State Department, under the Biden administration, and also worked in the Obama administration on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and he holds both a BA and MA in security policy studies from GW. So Bob, I wanted to start off with you, put you on the hot seat here, right out of the gate. And it seems to me that, you know, even in recent months, but certainly in recent years, um- There’s been an evolution and, and perhaps, differing opinions in conservative circles on these questions of nucle- nuclear nonproliferation, right? I g- can remember back as far as the six-party talks, regarding North Korea’s nuclear program, to the attacks on, Syrian nuclear facilities and of course, Iran policy from 10, 12, 14, 16 years ago, to the present. And, you know, a lot of people would say, “Well, you know, the, the conservative position has been sort of like diplomatic maximalism backed up by the threat of force.” And that’s as reductionist as it sounds.

But I wanted to ask you, are conservatives still sort of primarily focused on that counterproliferation, if you like, that sort of approach to it, or, or maximalism in diplomatic negotiations? Or is there, do you see a shift on where conservatives are getting at these questions?

Bob Peters: Yeah, thanks, Justin, and, and first of all, thanks for, for having me. It’s great to be here at Cato and what a lovely building you all have here, so, so thanks again.

Justin Logan: Thank you.

Bob Peters: First of all, I don’t speak for all conservatives. I don’t think anyone can, given that the conservative movement is, is within, you know, has about three or four warring camps within it at any given time. But generally I, I, I think what you can say is that, you know, by and large there’s a common view that, that we’re pro-arms control, and I, I think that President Trump has made that clear. I mean, it’s well known that he’s had an allergy to things nuclear for about four decades. Perfectly understandable, but, that arms control must be multilateral.

I mean, I think this idea that, that we should have bilateral arms control that excludes China in particular is kind of a dead letter amongst most conservatives. Again, with the caveat this, that this is not all conservatives. But I think there’s this at the same time a recognition that that’s not gonna happen anytime soon. I think generally speaking, most conservatives like can say this is probably not gonna be a reality for the next 10 years, and so we’re gonna be existing outside of a framework that existed from about 1970 until the expiration of a new start. You know, can we still engage in maximalist pressure?

Yes, we can, and I think we should, but I think there’s a recognition that that type of pressure is probably gonna, gonna be less effective as we go forward, and that’s by and large innate, a response to the fact that the world is increasingly going into two separate camps. So you’ve got the status quo camp, that’s largely the West and then the, the democracies in the Pacific led by the United States. And then there’s the revisionist camp that’s led by Beijing with their, with their, with their partners in, in Moscow and Pyongyang and, and Tehran. Our ability to put pressure on those regimes is not gonna be that effective, and so I think that there is probably an increasing recognition that if we really do wanna stop proliferation, it’s gonna have to come down to a kinetic action. So leave it there for now.

Justin Logan: Got it. No, that’s, that covers the waterfront and it’s, it was a very unfair question.

Bob Peters: You were fair to say it was unfair.

Justin Logan: And we’ll, no, no doubt this will continue to come up, in the discussion this morning. I wanted to move to James to talk about if I don’t wanna reduce. I’ve reduced all morning. I’ll keep reducing things, but if we will, the other side of the sort of general nonproliferation debate, has focused on and succeeded in some ways, with what I talked about in the opening, these sort of, lash- international restrictions, the NPT. We came up with the additional protocol, which was an amendment to the NPT that, sort of, imposed on the Iranian question.

And I wanted to ask you a similar question about sort of, again, not to say there are sides in a debate, but there kind of are sides in the debate. Where is the center of gravity, if you will, in what I would call the sort of, traditional NPT-focused nonproliferation nuclear policy right now? You, you’ve worked on technological change and how technology is changing some of these questions. Can you talk a little bit about how you see that landscape?

James Acton: Sure, and it, it’s great to be here. You know, Bob emphasized by saying that he didn’t speak on behalf of all conservatives. I wanna emphasize that I absolutely do speak on behalf of all liberals. And, and, and, and anybody who contradicts me from my side of the debate is wrong. No.

In- That was, that was a joke, right. No, I, I look, I would say, at least for me, there is, I’m increasingly concerned about proliferation going forward. I actually think the most likely, most potential proliferators are US allies. The most serious one, Iran, is a US adversary, and, you know, you, you’re gonna be discussing allies later in the day, and I’m not gonna get onto that now, but just suffice to say that, you know, I, I, I think the proliferation problem is, is as much about allies as it is about adversaries. But I, you know, I do subscribe to the idea that we have, or at least had, a rules-based nuclear order, that states were willing to do stuff such as impose sanctions that they wouldn’t have otherwise done because of the economics and bilateral costs because they viewed nonproliferation as a global good, as a common interest.

They also refrained from doing stuff like supplying sensitive technology that otherwise they would like to have supplied for economic and bilateral reasons out of the belief that, nonproliferation was this global good. This was partly normative. I think there is this kind of w- kind of hand-wavy, normative element to it. I also think there was a very hard-nosed interest calculation that went into this, and neither do I think this was purely diplomatic. I think the threat of force was an important component within this broader regime.

And I would see three changes, which I’m gonna outline very briefly, that I think really do threaten the nuclear order today. Now, as Justin said very fairly, there’s been doomist predictions about nonproliferation for a while, and, you know, maybe you can invite me back in 15 years- and we can, we can, we c- we can reassess whether, whether, whether I’m being overly too much of a doomer right now. But the first thing is, I think the attack on Iran was deeply problematic from the per- from the standpoint of the regime. Because it demonstrated that actually underground enrichment programs are really hard to destroy. And so the threat of force, which I do think was an important component of the nonproliferation regime, is now a less effective threat going forward.

It also demonstrated that we, the United States, are not willing to bear that large costs, because we’re very sensitive to oil prices. Secondly, I think there are very, I think, potential proliferators, who are adversaries, have very legitimate reasons to ask the question, “If we enter into a deal with the United States, will the United States uphold its side of the deal?” Regardless of whether you think the JCPOA was a good deal or a bad deal. Hint, it was an extremely good deal- as current events demonstrate. But even if you disagree with me on that, I think one has to concede that signing a deal and then walking away from it makes it harder to sign future deals that the other side is gonna believe we’re gonna abide by. I also think that bombing Iran twice while negotiating with them further underscored this dynamic.

And then thirdly, I think there is growing, on the part of the United States here, double standards. There’s, nonpro regime has always had double standard, and I wanna claim it was this kind of purer than pure thing historically and has now got all polluted. But I do think the problem of saying we’re gonna treat our allies and our adversaries differently is a growing problem. I think the India deal in 2003 under George W. Bush is a good example of this.

The AUKUS deal under Joe Biden is a good example of this. The South Korea deal for South Korea to get nuclear-powered submarines under President Trump is a good example. The perennial discussions we hear about some kind of deal with Saudi, to give Saudi enrichment technology. And I, you know, I think there’s, this creates various normative regime-type problems. If we’re going to supply our allies with sensitive technology, I think our adversaries are gonna supply their friends, who are often our, also our adversaries, with sensitive technology.

I think it becomes a lot harder to, you know, for example, if Australia’s gonna remove nuclear material from safeguards, and, you know, I’m not terribly worried about Australian proliferation at all, I think it becomes much harder to normalize a diplomatic coalition to do things like sanctions if Iran moves nuclear material from safeguards. So I think this double standard is not just a, kind of isn’t it unfair type whine. I think it does create real concrete problems for enforcing the nonproliferation regime in a robust way going forward. Now, I certainly don’t wanna claim that the United States in any way is the sole cause of problems in the nonpro regime. It’s clearly not.

But I focus on the United States because, you know, most of us here are Americans. That, that’s the government that to the extent we can influence anybody, is the government we primarily seek to influence, so that’s why I focus on the United States. But as I say, I do think there are good reasons today to really question whether the regime, that I think has worked fairly well, you know, has, is, is, i- is now under unprecedented strain and threat.

Justin Logan: Oh, that’s, that’s very good, and it, it d- set us up, for the question that I wanted to pose, to Richard, which was, you know, you teased this question, James, to a certain extent about, sanctions being a tool here. And i- i- the question whether the regime can endure. Richard, I wanted to ask you, your, sort of professional career public service has focused at this intersection of economic coercion and nonproliferation, I think it’s fair to say. And there are increasing debates about whether it’s, you know, a, a potential challenges to the dollar, all these sort of ripple effect questions about the use of US, if you will, economic coercion sanctions, to try to be, you know, part of the stick, if you like, on the other end of nonproliferation policy. Do you, do you share any of those worries, and if so, which?

Or do you think that the basic shape of US nonprolifer- nonproliferation policy as being backed by sanctions to that extent can endure for the policy relevant future?

Richard Nephew: No, thanks for the question, and thanks for your forbearance, as I clearly was dealing with scheduling issues.

Justin Logan: It’s a good thing we timed this the way we did with-

Richard Nephew: Perfectly done we were. I think part of the problem with the question is it to some extent looks backwards from the r- most recent deal we have and looks forwards to a world in which the US doesn’t have economic preponderance and makes an assumption you couldn’t do this thing again because you’ll never have such preponderance. And, and I think there are reasons to question both of those assumptions there. It’s absolutely true we had economic preponderance and we’re therefore able to apply it to address this one particular problem, that being Iranian proliferation. But it’s not, I don’t think, definitively true that, that’s the only way in which economic pressure could’ve been used as a way of putting pressure on the Iranians.

It’s not, I think, absolutely true that the United States is gonna lose the ability to have pressure on, future foreign nuclear programs or other proliferation programs for that matter. But it’s just that we will unlikely have this level of capability in the future to act as unilaterally as we did-

Justin Logan: Yeah to be able to shape what we wanted the outcome to be as much on our own.

Richard Nephew: Yeah. So we’re going to have to do things with a little less. And I think there are reasons to look at this in recent history and to, to make those kind of calculations because if you look back to the 1980s, for instance, when we were trying to persuade Pakistan, for instance, not to go down, the nuclear path, you know, the sanctions that we were putting in place, while they had some impact, they clearly were not sufficient to s- weigh Pakistani nuclear decision-making or Indian n- nuclear decision-making thereafter in 1998. Um- If you had fast-forward and put the US economic position in place in 1984, for instance, would it have necessarily been the same? If we’d had the same tools at the time, would it have been the same?

And I think the difference is that at a moment in time which we wanted to try and work the international economy to get to our national security objective, we just were supremely economically powerful in those 2000s and early 2010 period, where we could exert a lot of pressure. I think the problem that I look forward to is at this point, we have now indexed that not as being a high water mark in which we could have done an awful lot, but now as the standard.

Justin Logan: Baseline.

Richard Nephew: And I think this goes to the point about whether or not a better deal was gonna be possible when Trump exited the JCPOA. I think you can absolutely look at the North Korea case, where we’ve now said, “Well, we did it here, so therefore we ought to be able to do it again.” And I think the answer to all this is all these things are contingent on the moment in time. They’re contingent on the capabilities you have. And so as our relative economic position does start to recede, as we are not We may still be a top dog, but not necessarily the supreme top dog where no one is able to challenge us, we are going to still have national security priorities that we’re going to want to advance, and we’re still gonna have economic tools and, partnerships that we can work, but they will not be as effective. And the problem is, is that US foreign policy decision-making has not caught up to that reality.

And so that means to me not that we’re not gonna be able to do it, but that we’re potentially going to have to accept more compromise than we are usually willing to accept. And that’s gonna be our challenge.

Justin Logan: Right. I wanted to stick with you both to, follow up on that question and to ask another one. I mean, to me, you know, you’re quite right to point out the, the unique moment in time position of the United States in the global economy is one huge factor, but also adversarial workarounds are a huge factor-

Richard Nephew: Right with which you’re intimately familiar, of course.

Justin Logan: So it’s almost like an arms race, right, where we’re trying to apply a certain level of pressure, and they’re trying to get out from underneath that. So I wanted to press you to talk a little bit about how you see the landscape of sort of red teaming it, if you like, the ability to sort of slip out from under these things, not just because of the weight of the United States, if you like, is decreased, but because the adversary’s clever, and they figure out how to get, out from underneath the pain. So that’s the follow-up. And then I also wanted to ask a little bit, we, we got, like, I don’t know, 16 or 17 minutes in before the word Iran was uttered. Let’s just go there.

And I wanted to talk a little bit about the recent Iran conflict and the ongoing decades-long Iran conflict. And, i- in preparing for this, I was going back and rereading some of your work and, you know, you had a sort of, sort of pessimistic, I would say, view in J- January 2025. Y- by your reading, you know, Iran was, if not at the precipice, approaching the precipice, pretty close to the precipice, of getting the, the implements that it would need to produce a nuclear weapon, and that the Trump administration, should really put its shoulder into diplomacy, but if that failed, be prepared to back it up, with the prospect of military power. And then more recently, in the, in the sort of not yet the wake, but during the current conflict, you worried that to the extent, comprehensive sanctions relief or big sanctions relief was part of a settlement with Iran, that would potentially, breathe life into a regime that might be, perspectively tottering. I, I wanted to sort of give you first cut at, after you do the arms racing adversarial cleverness, bit, what you think has gone right, what you think has gone wrong, and net it out, in a short, very short- reductive answer.

Richard Nephew: Wow. I mean, so for the first one, I’ll just say, thanks very much. Everyone should buy my book- The Art of Sanction. N- no, I mean, I Look, I, I think you’re, you’re pointing to something that is just an intrinsic reality, not just of sanctions policy, but of all foreign policy dynamics, which is adversaries get a vote, and unless you’re in a position to completely, you know, achieve, you know, comprehensive victory on day one, you’re going to have to respond to the, the push and pull. And I think the, the, a problem with US foreign policy, but I would again argue that this is a broader foreign policy challenge, is that you can never really be sure, is our strategy not working because we’re not doing it well enough, or is our strategy not working because it was based on flawed assumptions, or is our strategy not working because the adversary is pushing back?

And I think i- in any of those scenarios, the, the correct answer is to be engaged in a continuous evaluation process, trying to decide whether or not something has a reasonable and plausible chance of succeeding if you change your tactics, or do you have to go back to your baseline strategy?

Justin Logan: Yeah.

Richard Nephew: And, you know, it’s, it’s without a doubt that the Iranians have adapted their approach to our sanctions policy over the years. I mean, they weren’t using front companies in the beginning. Now they are. They’ve even gone beyond that. You know, for a long time, the Iranians were doing, you know, transactions through the normal banking system.

They stopped doing that with our sanctions. They moved to more of a hawala system. I mean, this is the adaptation that you should expect, and, and I don’t think here it’s any different. On the, on the issue of, of stuff I’ve written, so look, I, I think one, one thing that I believe that all academic articles need to have, or think pa- think tank pieces need to have now, is a given that section, right? You know, do I think in January 2025 that it was reasonable to contemplate military action against Iran?

Yeah, absolutely. But that’s because we were at suboptimal plan 12.

Justin Logan: Yeah.

Richard Nephew: Right? You know, at, at that point, we had made so many bad decisions, starting with the decision to exit the JCPOA in the first place, that we’re now kind of stuck with, okay, given that we are here, what do we do now? And my, my sense at the time was that the Iranian breakout time had dwindled so low that at, if you did not achieve a diplomatic success and get to something akin to a JCPOA, you were gonna be, running a real risk of Iranian proliferation being not just theoretical, but, but, you know, actual. And, and I still think that that would have pretty catastrophic implications for both the region and beyond as part of the non-proliferation system. We could debate that and other points, but that is the reason why, to my mind, it made sense to contemplate that in the context of robust diplomatic effort, being willing to go back into a JCPOA structure, working with international partners, all those sorts of things.

Well, okay, now fast-forward a year. Given that we’ve had two rounds of strikes-

Justin Logan: Right the IRGC now is as firmly in charge as they are

Richard Nephew: , look, now we’re in a position of w- what do we think the possibility is of Iranian proliferation, and what do we think the possibility of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons? To me, I think they’ve gone up, and I think they’ve gone up as a result of all the strategic, uh- missteps that we have made and the choices that the Iranians themselves have made, too. And this is where I get to the point about, you know, giving the IRGC-led system now a lifeline. My, my in- very significant worry is the MOU, let, let’s all call it the Versailles MOU, please. The Versailles MOU has, you know, given the, the Iranians an awful lot of, of income stream that they should probably be able to expect to have in perpetuity.

That will help them manage the crises that they’re under without changing the underlying strategic realities. Which I think then gives us a lot of pause, I would hope, in terms of how we think both about our overall strategy issues and, and how we are developing our objectives and how we try and achieve them, and our willingness to adapt based on what we have done in the past. And, and I think, you know, my big risk that I see now is not just that other actors are going to see from this a lack of sticktuitiveness, as, as James is speaking to, but I think more, more importantly, they’re going to see that, proliferation in the first instance was the right answer-

Justin Logan: Right that the, the correct decision was all the way back in 2003 to press forward, not to stop.

Richard Nephew: Right. You can’t trust these people. That’s the, yeah, yeah, right, the implication there.

Richard Nephew: On their side, that is.

Justin Logan: Right. I’m, I’m trying to channel.

Justin Logan: James, I wanted to start working our way back, in this direction, eh, with a g- general similar question. A- and there are obviously lots of non-nuclear issues in the US-Iran- strategy policy space. You’re a nukes guy. So I, I wanted to ask you to talk to the extent you want, and feel free not to bracket away non-nuclear issues. You’re welcome to jump on those as well.

But, but on the nuclear case, you know, Richard just laid out something. I saw you nodding your head at various times. What, what do you think has gone right and gone wrong? And, and I think there is probably so- some consensus on withdrawing from the JCPOA might have been, had some ripple effects that were unpleasant for us. But what do you think the implications are for nuclear nonproliferation from wherever you see this going at present?

Right? We have, as, as was pointed out, strikes last June, strikes starting February 28th of this year, all these questions of trust that are- Yeah sort of structural to a Neanderthal realist like me, right? It’s, it’s very hard to trust a country like the United States ’cause it’s so powerful and it can just renege on its word. W- w- to the extent you can see the ripples starting to form and emanate out, w- how would you identify them?

James Acton: Sure. Let me highlight three ripple effects. The first one is the link between attempted regime change and proliferation. However you feel individually about what happened to Saddam, what happened to Gaddafi, what happened to Khomeini senior, I think it’s, there’s a pretty clear message that if you don’t have nukes and you lose a war to the United States, or even in the case of Iran if you win a war against the United States, you can end up dead. So, you know, I, I, I, I think policies of regime change or leader change fuel proliferation.

Secondly, I am deeply concerned. I- my argument again- my primary argument against military force in Iran has always been that it would never work, and I think that’s been borne out by what has just happened in Iran. Now, I wanna emphasize, if I was President Acton, which is constitutionally not gonna happen- I would not take the threat of military action off the table. I do think it is a useful threat to have, and I do think it worried the Iranians a lot. But the problem is, if you have a dispersed, deeply hardened underground program, we have now demonstrated that it can survive US airstrikes.

Richard Nephew: Mm-hmm.

James Acton: Not unscathed, but Iran has been left with large quantities of highly enriched uranium. They are not buried under rubble. They are in tunnels that survived, that were sealed by Iran because covering tunnels in sand is a really effective way of preventing bombing from collapsing the tunnel entrances, ’cause literally it’s like pounding sand. So, you know, the idea that Iran lacks the, the country that dug the tunnels lacks the technology to dig out the tunnels that they buried when we’ve already seen them do it last fall is, like, head-spinning to me. There are now no inspections in Iran other than, you know, the reactors that are not of particular proliferation concern.

I see no evidence that the large quantities of centrifuges that Iran were being monitored under the JCPOA and now lo- no longer being monitored, they almost certainly survived. Iran has large quantities of expertise. And perhaps most worryingly, Iran now knows, as does every other proliferator, how dig- how deep they have to dig to avoid the most penetrating US non-nuclear weapons. There is a reason we didn’t actually bomb the tunnels at Isfahan, because they were too deep. We bombed the tunnel entrances, but the tunnels remained uncollapsed.

We didn’t even try, to the best of my knowledge, to destroy the facility at Pickax Mountain. So now every country out there knows exactly how to defeat a US air campaign. All of this, I think, makes the threat of military force less effective going forward. And finally, this war has demonstrated this was not You know, I, I’ve said this a few times publicly now. War is not a video game.

You don’t win a war by accumulating points. You know, you destroyed the ayatollah, 10,000 points. You destroyed this facility, 1,000 points, right? We scored 400 million points, and the Iranians scored merely a million, right? That, that’s not how wars are decided.

This war was about the infliction of pain. We inflicted pain on Iran. They inflicted even more pain on us economically by closing the Strait of Hormuz. That was why we ended up with a bad deal at the end of the day, not primarily because the administration’s not very good at negotiating, but because, as President Trump himself said repeatedly, he wasn’t gonna go back to war because the cost of that war was so painful that our threat to go back to war if we, if there was no deal, was a lot less credible than the Iranian threat to go back to war if there was no deal. That’s why, you know, this narrative that we won the war and lost the peace is wrong.

We lost the war and we lost the peace, and generally when you lose wars, you lose peace. And again, I think this demonstrates to other potential proliferators going forward that if they’re engaged in a military conflict with us and they find some way of raising oil prices, and a number of potential proliferators are not all that far from the Middle East, then, you know, they can, they can ensure that this war just becomes too costly for us to fight. So the good news here is, as I’ve said already, almost all pot- potential proliferators going forward are US allies. I think we’re in a terrible situation with Iran n- right now. I totally agree with Richard’s analysis that the likelihood of Iran getting nukes is now significantly higher than it was two years ago.

But what I would say is a number of potential proliferators, I think, are not necessarily long-term lasting friends, and that part of the reason we should care about proliferation to allies is that allies can change into adversaries. And, you know, the Islamic Republic of Iran being the absolute classic example of that.

Justin Logan: Fair enough. I wanted to work, continue working back in this direction. But I assume, hope you have a somewhat different take, on the Iran policy. But to, sort of to set it up, it’s, it’s fair to say, I think, and, and, and objectively true, that there’s been a lot of volatility in Trump’s Iran policy, right? It built up to February 28th, with the strikes last June.

And, eff- efforts, I will say, at diplomacy led by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. But now, Trump has sort of, moved from initially talking about regime change, urging the Iranian people to rise up, it’s the greatest chance in generation for them to do so, by saying that the new crop of leaders in Iran are actually the bros. We love those guys. They’re good guys. And, and sort of, you know, talking about we, we can do business with them, they’re responsible people, and pushing this MOU and the prospect of a broader deal covering a whole host of issues between our countries and other parties in the region, in a really short period of time.

And so, y- you know, the, the Trump administration has, you know, engaged in a pretty big, pretty costly war. It’s now taking a lot of heat for its efforts at diplomacy. What is your take on the prospects for a kind of enduring peace? Maybe if not even some grand denouement, but just a sort of stable equilibrium coming out of this that looks all right.

Bob Peters: Yeah. So, I mean, you, you picked up that I may have some disagreements with- with, with Richard and James, and I’ll touch on that a bit. But, I mean, I’m not even sure that having, whether or not we have an enduring peace with Iran, I’m not concerned w- with that. And I’m not even sure that that’s in American interest that we have an enduring peace with Iran. I would say what’s in the interest of the United States is ensuring that the Islamic Republic, does not pose a threat to the United States or our regional partners.

And I don’t even know how long the Islamic Republic will continue to exist. I think it’s gonna be measured in months to years, not years to decades. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s what I would guess. And I disagree with some of what James and, and Richard said as the sta- the status of the nuclear program. I’m happy to talk about that.

But from, from my vantage point, I think we set the program back roughly 20 years. I think it’s gonna take them roughly 20 years to get back to where they were pre-2025. Their economy is in ruins. We’ve killed a number of scientists. We’ve killed significant aspects of the program itself.

Can they rebuild some of those? Yeah, if they’ve got the resources. Can they dig out some of those facilities? Yeah, they can. But if that means that we need to go back and continue to kill Iranian leaders and IRGC commanders and scientists and destroy sites of concern, we can keep doing that all the live long day.

I prefer to do that with gravity bombs, not long-range precision fires or deep penetrating strike capabilities, ’cause I wanna maintain those to deter, if necessary, defeat Chinese aggression. But, you know, I look at this as a place in which we can continue to inflict pain and cost on Iran so long as we need to. And, and James, you said a couple times that we lost the war. I take your point that war is not a video game. I’m not sure anyone has made that argument that it is.

But when you look at how much we have affected the Iranian regime, and this idea that, well, now the IRGC is in charge and the hardliners are in charge. Well, hardliners have been in charge since 1979. I’m, I’m not sure that we’re gonna see any meaningful change in behavior. What we are gonna see is a change in capabilities. When you talk about we suffered more economic cost than the Iranian regime, I don’t see that as being possible.

I mean, I filled up my gas tank last night. It was only about 30 cents more a gallon than it was before the war began. That’s about 9% more. The Iranian economy before Epic Fury was not in a great place to begin with. I don’t see it as being in a stronger place now, given the amount of rebuilding they’re gonna have to do.

Now, the MOU, which is not the final agreement, it’s an MOU. Supposedly, a final agreement will come out 60 days from now or whenever. We don’t know what that’s gonna look like. Maybe it’ll give more money to the Iranians, maybe it won’t If I’ve learned anything from watching Trump ’47, it’s don’t bank on what he says now to still be viable 60 days down the line. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.

But Richard, what I would say to you when you said that the, the lesson is if you, you know, if you want to keep your regime, go for nuclear weapons, what I would say is, I think if you see Epic Fury as a counter-proliferation effort, you’re engaging in a category error in that I think if the October 7th attacks had not happened, we would not have seen Midnight Hammer or, or Epic Fury. I think if the protests that erupted in December through January, that killed between 20 to 40,000 Iranians, however m- many people you wanna count it, if that hadn’t happened, you would not have seen Epic Fury. Everything that I’ve heard is that the nature of the regime is what triggered Epic Fury, and the attacks in particular of October 7th deeply affected the president. And I’ve talked to multiple people, and they’ve said if those attacks had not happened, if the killing of the protesters had not happened, we would never have gotten Epic Fury. You’d have seen this president continue to try to engage in negotiations, much like we saw in 2018 with North Korea.

Maybe they very well have failed like they did with North Korea, but we would not have gotten to the slope of kinetic action.

Justin Logan: So.

Bob Peters: I have 50 thoughts of my own, and I’m gonna do what I never do, which is not share them with anybody.

Justin Logan: Did– I don’t know whether, Yeah, James, you have a two-finger there.

James Acton: Yeah, I Look, I, I think this is so important, this issue of analyzing the effects of the war, and I wanna disagree with Bob on three points. Actually, I wanna start by agreeing with him. I think Bob is absolutely right that it could take the Iranians 20 years to build back a program of the size it was previously. The problem is they don’t need a program of that size to build the bomb.

Bob Peters: Right. The program they had previously was massively oversized for proliferation.

James Acton: It- It– Don’t get me wrong, it was partly geared towards proliferation, but it was a se- It was also scaled for fuel production. You know, if with the amount of HEU they have, a very small underground centrifuge facility is now entirely adequate for building the bomb. Secondly, Bob argues we can keep going back. I think that’s wrong, because I think it’s now clear that deep, hardened underground facilities, we can’t touch. You know, there was a reason we destroyed a whole bunch of stuff in last June’s war.

And in this year’s war, there were very few strikes against nuclear facilities. Not none, but very few, and that’s largely because what we hadn’t destroyed last June, we now can’t destroy ’cause it’s too deep. And at the end of the day, if you’re dealing with underground facilities, once you get below, you know, whatever it is, 100 meters, give or take, non-nuclear weapons simply cannot destroy those facilities. My implication here, I wanna be very clear, is not that I think we’re going to use nuclear weapons. It’s that we’re not gonna destroy those facilities.

And then thirdly, I’m not arguing the United States incurred more economic costs than Iran. I’m arguing that we incurred more economic costs than we were willing to bear.

Bob Peters: Right. And, you know, when it comes to gas prices, look, Bob and I both earn good money. It’s not a problem for me that I pay more at the pump. But, you know, we all know that inflation brought down, or was a major reason that brought down the Biden administration, and many Americans who are on much lower incomes are really hurt by rising gas prices. And, you know, there was, you know, based on every piece of media reporting we’ve had, you had a Republican party that was begging the president to stop this war because they believed it would be disastrous to their, hopes in the midterms.

I think they got the analysis spot, the political, economic analysis there spot on. There’s a famous quote in nuclear, context about suffering that mentions, “If we have to eat grass, we will, we will see this through.” And so I think it’s a question of, how much suffering either side is willing to

Justin Logan: Richard, did you have a two-finger on this also?

Richard Nephew: Yeah, and I, and I don’t wanna pile on, but I mean, I, I, I will say two things. One, if, if we believe that the IRI only has weeks or months, this MOU is making sure it’s more months to years. The, the simple reality is that the Iranians are going to get disproportionate economic benefits over what they got in the JPOA, which is the appropriate equivalent to the MOU, to the tune of something between $4 and $6 billion a month in oil sales as long as the MOU’s in place. And while it might be plausible that the United States could undertake additional military action at the end of 60 days, I actually think the president is signaling all over the place a disinclination to do so. And, and here I’m not talking about the words he’s actually using in his Tru- Su- Truth, Truth Social posts.

Here I’m talking about when he makes those posts, what does he do? And what he has done persistently since April is said something very extravagant and then said a couple hours later, “Great news, everybody. The Iranians conceded. Now I get what I want, and so I don’t have to do this.” And I think that is marking out a disinclination to act. That will directly impact his decision at that end of 60 days with regard to the MOU and whether or not it’s extended.

And if it is extended ad infinitum at $4 to $6 billion a pop, you can absolutely count on the Iranians having more than enough money to rebuild what parts of the program they haven’t. And the last thing I’ll just say on the, the category error part about what happened with Epic Fury and whether or not we’d have had it without January, that may or may not be true. If it were true, it’s inconsistent with the president’s rhetoric, which is absolutely focused on the CP elements, whether we’re talking about the nuclear program or the missile program. And point of fact, the people who killed all of those protesters in January are absolutely unequivocally the only power center in Iran right now. So if he cared about what happened in January, he has a very funny way of showing it to those much less radical people who are now in charge.

Justin Logan: We have seated the field. Everyone is, on the edge of their seats, no doubt, which is a good time to turn to the question and answer period. The online people can pose questions on Facebook, YouTube, and X using the hashtag CatoFP. So go ahead and do that. We’re gonna take some of the questions from in-person, some of them from online.

If you’re in person, it says here, “Please speak clearly and directly into the microphone,” which I would’ve thought would be self-evident, but it must not be, so everybody in the room and online can hear the question. And please announce your name and any affiliation. Ask smart questions. There’s tons of them out there. You’re smart people.

The gentleman right down here in the front row, or not the front row, almost the front row.

Peter Humphrey: Hi, I’m Peter Humphrey. I’m an intelligence analyst and a former diplomat. My great fear is that with a working, Chinese design in hand, Iran will not have to test. Their test may be on Tel Aviv, and I don’t know how to keep an eye on that and, and watch that very carefully. Right.

S- my question is, can you name some proliferation targets? R- Iraq’s come to mind, of course, and maybe Saudi Arabia, but I can’t think of any others. Thank you.

Justin Logan: I don’t know if I qui- the, the, the question of whether Iran would need to test, I suspect they would. Does anybody, have a Let’s go to, I think I saw, we’ll take another one. Is that Sahar? I can’t see. Yes, it is Sahar.

Right there.

Sahar Khan: Hi, thank you. Hi. I’m Sahar Khan. I’m a non-resident fellow, at the Institute of Global Affairs and former Cato person. So I had a question about, conventional weapons.

Of course, we sort of have ideas of what this means. You know, there are very few states who want nuclear weapons, but I wanted to ask all three of you what your thoughts are on what the Iran war indicates about conventional weapons and modernization. And when we think about proliferation, of course it means nuclear, but, I’m just curious because more and more states are developing, really dangerous conventional weapons that could potentially do a lot of damage, as we’ve seen. Thank you.

Justin Logan: Thoughts on the conventional deterrence, I guess.

James Acton: I mean, I’m happy to jump in. A, a couple thoughts. I mean, so first just on the, whether or not Iran would need to test, again, I, I’m not sure whether or not they would ever need to test depending on what they’re attempting to test. I think the question is whether or not they would wish to test and, and I think this goes to a question of how they are approaching the underlying strategic logic of hedging versus now being more of a declaratory state. So I, I’m, I guess, I think it’s an important question, but I’m less motivated by it ’cause my inbuilt assumption is that the Iranians would prefer to have that test in order to, to stabilize deterrence, but that may be, wrong.

On the conventional weapons piece, to me, I think what the conflict shows is, is, very similar to what the Ukraine, and Russia war shows, which is drones and the importance of drone warfare going forward, the adaptability of drone warfare, the integration of drone warfare and, and strategic intelligence to be able to target. I think to me that, and the, the, the, cheap nature of drone production with the high consequence of getting a successful strike, that’s what adds up to me to be, fairly anxiety-producing as opposed to more kind of traditional conventional arms, but that’s just me.

Bob Peters: Yeah. For, so from my Look, I, I’m not a conventional weapons guy, but there are three things, kind of looking at this from my vantage point, that I noticed about conventional weapons in the war. The first one is the effectiveness of point missile defenses. You know, full credit, if you’re defending small areas, point missile defenses are really impressive these days. No bones about it.

Secondly, this war illustrated both the, and t- taken together with the last one as well, the abilities and limitations of conventional bunker busters. Going back to last June’s war, the Pentagon briefing that explained how the attack on, Fordow was done, the underground enrichment plant, I mean, it was Battle of Yavin from Star Wars stuff, right? I mean, it was dropping the photon torpedoes down the ch- I mean, like, like almost literally. So on the one hand, it was an as- like, I thought this war was a terrible idea, but, like, you watch it and you’re like, “This is amazing.” but you know, the fact on the one hand, the destruction of Fordow, genuinely impressive, but as I’ve already said, the limitations of that technology is demonstrated by the deep underground facilities we didn’t destroy. And thirdly, I think there’s fascinating lessons about the ability to, and limitations of hunting mobile missiles.

You know, US and Israeli operations proved very effective at hunting down Iranian mobile missiles after they had left their garrisons.

Richard Nephew: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bob Peters: Iran proved very good at keeping those missiles inside underground facilities alive, at constantly reopening those underground facilities and getting them through and sustaining after, you know, the Iranian fire rate dropped pretty dramatically after the first few days, but then it remained pretty much constant. So, you know, I, I think those are three aspects of the conventional warfare that I think are, were noticeable from my perspective. I, I, I broadly agree with both, with both James and, and Richard. I, I think that when you, when we think about, I mean, for me, when I think about deterrence, I actually think far more about conventional capabilities than nuclear capabilities, which is why I advocate for we need more Virginia submarines, we need more destroyers, we need more, bombers, we need more, long-range precision fires that are air-launched and sea-launched and so forth. I, I think the only way to do that without bak- without- breaking the bank is to do this high-low mix with, with drones and autonomous systems, whether you’re talking about CCAs or what we’ve seen on the ground in, in Ukraine, mixed with things like LRASMs and TLAMs and so forth.

I- I think the missile defense aspect y- yet again has proved just how good it is when it comes to point defense- but even beyond point defense. I mean, what, what, what we’ve seen THAAD can do is pretty darn im- impressive- and often goes beyond even just point defense.

Justin Logan: Good but expensive and in short supply.

Bob Peters: Um- correct. Yes.

Justin Logan: Let’s see. Other questions. There was somebody right there. So-

Audience Member: Right there. So, so, well, on your, on your part, my understanding is that’s the next panel, right, is talking about, additional countries that potentially are gonna proliferate, including on the allies-

Justin Logan: Friendly proliferation and the menace of- friendly proliferation.

Audience Member: Yeah. For adversary proliferation?

Justin Logan: That’s, this is the adversary proliferation.

Audience Member: Right. Okay. Thanks.

Justin Logan: Right there, there’s a lady in the back area with her hand up, conveniently.

Abby: Thank you. Thank you. My name is Abby. I’m a sophomore studying political science with a focus on international relations, and I had a question about how the develop- the potential development of independent nuclear weapons by Europe could possibly affect the war in Ukraine. Would it hasten it?

Would it hasten the end of it, or would it exacerbate it?

Justin Logan: That’s, that’s an excellent question for the next panel- which is on the prospect of proliferation to y- current US allies, not adversaries. So if you will, sorry for being the jerk who says it, but will you ask that exact same question- in an hour and 20 minutes?

Abby: Mm-hmm. Awesome. Thank you very much.

Justin Logan: Gentleman right here.

Andrew Yeo: Hi. Andrew Yeo, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and professor of politics at Catholic University. James, I wanna go back to your comment about mixing regime change and proliferation or non-proliferation because I’m really struck by the fact that, not, you know, I’m a North K- I’ve been following North Korea for a while, but both in North Korea and Iran, y- you have this underlying, intent or perhaps ambition in the US, to promote regime change at various points in time, but at the same time you’re trying to negotiate with an adversary, to ask them to give up nuclear weapons, and so it gets back to this fundamental question of trust. Seeing now that Iran has, been struck once last year, Midnight Hammer, and then again Epic Fury, where do you see negotiations happening? Why would the Iranians trust the US at all?

And given that fact, you know, how do we move towards, denuclearization now? Thanks.

James Acton: I don’t think they will trust us. I mean, like, you know, part, part of the reason why I’m worried about whether, you know, about whether there will Like, firstly, I think it’s, unfortunately unlikely there will ever be a final deal with Iran, and secondly, if there is, I worry that it would be one that is, concedes an awful lot to the Iranians. But I think, you know, the basic point you make, I think, is just spot on, that, you know, even after the war and signing an agreement respecting Iran’s, I forget the exact wording of article on- or paragraph one of the m- of the Versailles Memorandum, but, you know, respecting Iran’s territorial integrity and not, pledging not to interfere in internal affairs, you know, President Trump is making threats against Iran again. And, you know, if I’m Iranian, I’m sitting there and being like, “We cannot, any kind of an agreement that we reach, we cannot trust that it will be durable.” And, you know, to my mind, I mean, I’ve written about what I think in a final agreement with Iran should look like. Like, I think we’ve got the memorandum now.

I think we should try and build on it. I think we should negotiate with them in good faith. You know, I would prefer a detailed memorandum that’s, a, a detailed final agreement with good verification that’s more permissive to Iran, that gives Iran more benefits. But that doesn’t actually solve the fundamental problem that you point to, which is that, you know, any Iranian leaders looking at this agreement have to ask themselves very seriously whether the United States will abide by that agreement. And, you know, this is why I think the US, you know, this is a broader conversation than just, Iran, but there is a number of agreements in which our counterparty was complying with that agreement that we chose to exit.

We have the right to do so, for example, in the case of the ABM Treaty. In the JCPOA, there was no exit clause because we didn’t want the Iranians to be able to exit the agreement, and then we chose to exit the agreement, which I view as deeply problematic, when the IC was assessing that Iran was complying with that agreement. But I think, you know, I think that at the end of the day, I don’t have a good answer to this problem. I think it’s, it’s very hard not just for Iran, but for any adversary right now to have any confidence that the United States will abide by an agreement that we sign, and I think that is, it’s a huge problem for non-proliferation. I think it’s a new, a huge problem for our foreign policy writ large, frankly.

I mean, it wouldn’t be a good nuke panel if somebody didn’t quote Schelling. Nobody has so far- so I will. You know, the, the, in, in threats there should be implicit an assurance, right?

Richard Nephew: Right. So Schelling uses the, the, the, the, the threat, “Stop or I’ll shoot,” which logically implies, “If you do stop, I won’t shoot,” right? And if you think about it in that sense, to what extent can we credibly assure any prospective party if they do stop, we won’t shoot?

James Acton: I mean, I think that’s the There’s national-

Richard Nephew: Can, can I, can I just follow-

Justin Logan: Please.

Richard Nephew: Well, especially, I got another question. Just finally, I, I do wanna say though, I think that there is, there is a distinction there between regime change and not fulfilling the terms of your agreements, right? I Fundamentally, the Iranians never believed that we had a new- Great relationship with them in 2015. There was an intrinsic amount of distrust that was still put- felt by both sides to one another, and the entire reason why we had to write 150-odd pages in the JCPOA was because of fundamental amounts of distrust that existed between the two sides. And, I think the Iranians were prepared to look past whether or not we’re, you know, enemies forever, in order to get to a constructive, pragmatic deal the same way that we were prepared to do so as well.

And I think you can still find a way to get to people’s pragmatism, which is I think is what’s being demonstrated in the MOU. I think the problem that we had in ’21, we were trying to get back into the JCPOA, and what I think the Trump administration’s gonna find now is that it’s not It’s taken as given that we are adversaries. Now it’s taken as given that we won’t even abide by things that we agreed to five minutes ago, and I actually think that right now the reinterpretation of the MOU is a massive problem. When the Vice President of the United States goes out and says the MOU says things that it does not say, it signals to the Iranians that this doesn’t matter. None of this matters.

And if you’re the Iranians, you sit back and say, “Okay. Well, we’re just gonna exploit this to maximum advantage until the Americans once again cheat on us again, and when they’ve done that, we at least will have prepared ourselves.” That to me is the more dangerous implication of JCPOA exit in this entire saga. It’s not the regime change piece, although I take on, on faith the fact that that has an impact. I think it’s even more on the specifics we’re not able or willing to comply, and we are developing a reputation as someone that is incredibly capricious in that. And that I think is more dangerous to us than whether or not we’re permanent adversaries.

Justin Logan: Thanks. Either I, I think I’ve screwed up the online questions, so I apologize to the online people because, I’m not making it work, so blame me, please. There w- let’s take two Well, we Holy moly, now you’ve all, everyone cropped up. Escalation. Let’s take Yeah, the escalation, that’s right.

A cascade fell. Let’s start with the lady in the back and then work our way up at least to three, ’cause we’re getting to the end. We’re gonna have to be extremely concise here, gentlemen.

Kendra: Thank you so much. My name is Kendra. I recently graduated from American with my MPP, and I did research last summer about intelligence services and corruption at the University of Cambridge. I wanted to ask a question thinking about our adversaries. They have a lot of internal corruption within their system, so I was curious about the role, of the- when we consider our adversaries’ internal corruptions when we’re thinking about the US grand sta- strategy on nuclear pr- proliferation.

So how are we considering that factor when thinking about our strategy? Thank you.

Justin Logan: Would you pass it right up to the lady right in front of you who had We’ll take three all, all in a row here. Thank you. Please.

Chloe Irwin: Yes. Hi, my name is Chloe Irwin. I am a recent graduate of Liberty University and a current intelligence analyst, intern. And my question for you is, given the ongoing, war and events with Iran, we obviously know that they are a state sponsor of terror, have, multiple proxies around the MENA region, around the world, and so given our discussion on proliferation, I guess my question is, is there a nexus between counterproliferation strategy and counterterrorism strategy? And what would that look like moving forward with US foreign and defense policy?

Thank you.

Justin Logan: And would you pass it up to the gentleman right Sorry. Thank you.

Eric Bordenkircher: Eric Bordenkircher, UCLA research fellow. Kinda speaking along the lines of nexus, and also kind of gra- grand strategy here, this question, I think falls between panels but at the same time I think is relevant. I’m coming at this f- more from a Middle East perspective than a nuclear perspective, but do these negotiations with Iran, have an impact or are I should s- maybe say it differently. Is the administration thinking about negotiations with Saudi Arabia while it’s negotiating with Iran? Does y- you know, it, ’cause with this nuclear cooperation agreement that’s been brought up in Congress and, you know, concerns about that, and inevitably this situation in Iran has to have some repercussions there.

Yeah. So is that taken into consideration when we’re negotiating?

Justin Logan: Great. Those are all good. Iranian corruption vis-à-vis a deal, Iranian support for terrorism vis-à-vis a deal, and r- ripple effects, interaction effects inside the region vis-à-vis a deal. Anybody? Please.

James Acton: Let me, let me deal with the corruption and terrorism questions together and try and answer that, just that very briefly. I think we as the United States have to have a clear sense of priority and decide what we care about most. I say that because with the JCPOA, there was a criticism that the JCPOA didn’t deal with terrorism, didn’t deal with regional proxies, didn’t do much on the ballistic missile program, and therefore, you know, and it gave Iran sanctions relief that Iran could put towards nefarious purposes. And at some level that was true, but it’s also the case that, you know, to my mind, the nuclear threat from Iran was where the United States’ most fundamental interests was, were engaged. And I think it was a good idea to stabilize the nuclear issue in return for sanctions relief even if we don’t like what Iran may do with some of that sanctions relief.

And this administration has reached exactly the same conclusion, right? The president who criticized the JCPOA ’cause it didn’t deal with ballistic missiles, ’cause it didn’t deal with terrorism is, didn’t deal with regional proxies, is now saying Iran has the right to a ballistic missile program. And I think the same thing is true with corruption as well. Like, I don’t like the fact there’s corruption in Iran, but, like, we as the United States, I think that is not our core national interest here. So the bottom line is, I think we should identify our core national interest here as non-pro, and we should act accordingly even if it means that other interests are- deprioritized, put by the wayside-

Justin Logan: Yeah to put this very bluntly.

Bob Peters: Please. For the counterproliferation, counterterrorism nexus, I mean, that’s something that, you know, people have been thinking about for 25 years. What I’d say is that within the region today, the terror problem is l- is significantly less than it’s been for quite a while. I mean, we, the Houthis have been relatively quiet since 2025. Hamas, there’s still some of those guys that need to be killed.

Hezbollah is a problem, and they’re so deeply entrenched in Lebanon, I don’t know how we get them unentrenched. I, I, I think Iranian support’s probably gonna go down, but, you know, w- we’re gonna probably keep doing what we’ve been doing for the last quarter century, is basically mowing the grass. I know that’s a term that’s not popular, but I think that’s the reality of what we have done, and so I’m gonna guess something that we’re gonna continue to do. When it comes to negotiations with Saudis, look, I mean, I referenced the warring camps within the conservative movement earlier. I think on this issue, there’s kind of two camps.

One is we need to think about working with partners within the region and really try to support them, potentially with nuclear energy as well as conventional arms and so forth. And then there are those who say, “I’m done with the Middle East. I do not wanna be involved. We have no actual partners or allies there outside of Israel. Just walk away from it all.” So, and that fight is not yet over.

Justin Logan: Richard, concluding thoughts on these?

Richard Nephew: Yeah, just real quick. I, I’ll part ways a little bit with James here on the corruption issue, ’cause I think one of the problems that we’ve got within the internal Iranian system is the, the degree to which there’s corruption, you also have the risk of that fueling proliferation if actors inside the IRGC system, for instance, decide to make a bunch of money off of the, sale of materials or something similar. So I think one of the problems with corruption, even in adversary states, is it potentially can contribute to additional bad outcomes that you wouldn’t necessarily want. Doesn’t mean you don’t prioritize-

<Justin Logan: Right but it’s an element there.

Richard Nephew: And the last thing I’ll say with regard to the CT CP nexus, you know, look, I think one of the things that, that does extend throughout all of this is the use of sanctions and other tools to try and address some of those concerns. Even within the context of the MoU and the license that was granted, there are still pieces there that say you can’t do business with Hezbollah and similar. I think the problem that you have with less comprehensive sanctions regimes, as the MoU is gonna create, it’s just harder to do. And it’s harder to try and execute them while you’ve got, some areas of, of trade that are allowed, some levels of banking activity are allowed, and some that aren’t. And so it is going to increase the difficulty factor of doing some of our CT work if some of our CP work is no longer prioritized in, in the sanctions enforcement realm.

Justin Logan: It’s a very good point. We are going to take a break of about 15 minutes before the potential, allied proliferation or friendly proliferation panel, which will be moderated by Evan Sanki. There’s gonna be, I think, coffee or something outside, but for now, please join me in thanking the panelists for what was a rollicking discussion.