for the tokyo 2020 games i'm heartened that. now europe's most active volcano has been putting on one of its most spectacular displays in recent memory mount etna on the italian island of sicily has been spewing lava and ash into the air for more than a week. vulcanologists say this level of activity is red but poses no serious threat to nearby populations. the headlines here on al-jazeera new research shows the johnson and johnson vaccine is highly effective in preventing severe cases of cope with 19 the single shot job could get emergency approval for use in the u.s. by the end of the week and ghana has become the 1st country to receive vaccines through the international kovacs scheme 600000 astra zeneca jobs arrived on wednesday the un backed scheme will see more than 2000001000 doses delivered to

developing countries and chile has now vaccinated more people than all the countries in africa combined it was the 1st country in south america to start its campaign and now has the 5th highest vaccination rate in the world more than 3000000 people were not connected in chile this month latin america at its alysia newman has more from santiago chile apparently was able to come up with these very almost airtight contracts with pharmaceutical companies 3 or 4 of them at least even before the vaccines were approved and they have been arriving by the millions and i've had my most of the people. and by the middle of the end of june if things keep going as they are now the whole country. to me and mars military appointed foreign ministers in thailand for talks following this month's it's part of regional efforts to resolve the crisis protestors in myanmar continue to demand the release of elected leader. the white house says president biden will speak with

saudi arabia's king solomon soon before a u.s. government report into the murder of the journalist is published it's widely believed to implicate the king's son crown prince mohammed bin salmond in the killing a court in germany has convicted a former syrian intelligence officer in a landmark case relating to the torture of protesters garrett was found guilty of helping facilitate crimes against humanity and jailed for 4 and a half years and security has been stepped up outside a military court in beirut with $32.00 anti-government activists are standing trial the accused face charges of terrorism and theft stemming from protests in tripoli in january the terrorism offense carries the death penalty it's the 1st time it's been leveled against demonstrators. so those are the headlines the news continues here on al-jazeera after the bottom life stage and thanks for watching.

hi i'm steve clements and i have a question are iran in the united states destined for collision or for a new deal regarding iran's nuclear program and national ambitions let's get to the bottom line. after donald trump told the court on the life support system of relations between washington and tehran president joe biden wants that cord plugged back in and there may be a few new signs of life in that complicated relationship 2 days after biden said he wanted to america to restart negotiations on iran's nuclear program iran extend its permission to do some checks on its nuclear facilities for 3 more months so far so good or is it biden also insisted iran go back to the uranium enrichment limits

outlined in the original deal from 6 years ago before the u.s. drops its sanctions and iran is also cutting video access to nuclear inspectors it's obvious that neither side trusts the other but who cares about trust what america in iran did was a transaction a nuclear program reduction with inspections in return for sanctions being lifted against iran plus the normalization of economic relations can they do it again today we're talking to dr roxanne farm on from my on who teaches middle east politics at the university of cambridge and is the author of blood in oil a prince's memoir of iran from the shock to the ayatollah and journalist eli lake opinion columnist for bloomberg covering national security and foreign policy and he's been covering this issue for a very long time and it's great to have you both with us i want to start out with mentioning that joe biden president biden has given a speech at the munich security conference and we're going to play a clip that's why he said we're prepared to reengage in negotiations with the p 5 plus one on a range nuclear program. we must also address arends destabilizing activities

across the middle east and we're going to work in close cooperation with our european and other partners as we proceed eli let me ask you is it necessary for the united states to have a deal with iran to make a deal with iran or is it better that we move on without such a deal what are your thoughts in reaction to the president's talk. well i think that what we've seen in recent years is that presumably the israelis and others are very good at sabotaging iran's progress. it's not a particularly pleasant way in which this is done including the assassination of their top nuclear scientist but these sorts of things i think can set back a program which shows that the initial argument from the obama administration and 2015 which is that there will either be a full on war or there will be a deal is not necessarily true it's not in my view a binary option in terms of steps that can set back the program short of diplomacy

and certainly short of a full on war and thus far despite many open threats from the iranian regime with regards to the killing of qassam saloon money into last year and other sorts of threats there have not there has not been the kind of escalations that we saw in the run up to the killing of qassam so money in terms of attacks on other countries in the persian gulf and. sort of the pace of attacks on u.s. positions in iraq and certainly the israelis have paid no real serious price for its longstanding campaign to go after iranian forces in syria when they believe that they're transferring in france weaponry so in my view. you know a deal would be nice but i don't know that it is as necessary as people believed 5 or 6 or 7 years ago so yeah i just want to double down this you know so you're what

i'm hearing from you is saying that sort of hybrid covert war sabotage the status quo is working and so why mess with it am i getting that right well it's a pendulum what you mean by working and certainly true that the iranians have. kind of increased the ante in terms of uranium enrichment and other sorts of things having to do with the original j c p o a but. remember if the iranians were only interested in a deal that restores that agreement then a lot of its key provisions would be expiring by 2026 and beyond anyway and they would still be allowed to test long range missiles they would still be allowed to purchase advanced conventional weapons and it does obviously that deal doesn't says nothing about its various campaigns in the middle east which are a threat to many of us allies not just israel so in that respect. sure there are issues that they can do and what i'm saying is that i think that there

are ways to set back the program short of diplomacy and short of an open war professor i love to get get your take on this but i want to set the stage for just a moment there are a lot of people even in the trumpet ministration that felt that iran was living up to what it agreed to and that p. 5 plus one iran nuclear deal the way and that it was the united states even from the point where president trump began encouraging companies to disinvest or not invest that that that treaty that the well that wasn't really a treaty but that arrangement began to come apart and i guess my question to you is you know iran is saying the united states abrogated the treaty treaty it did not and thus to get the treaty back in alignment president biden is out of line saying that iran needs to move forces 1st so i'd love to get your take because i know you've been critical of the way president biden has set up the terms of this so far . well i i feel as though what often gets lost is the fact that this is

a deal about can to construe containing and constraining a nuclear deal. a nuclear program and often i think we tend to get an awful lot of other political elements in there and i think none of us sleep as well knowing that this nuclear program is beginning to ratchet up ever since the u.s. withdrew from that that deal so i think aloof little bit in producing a different viewpoint than your other guest i think that it's absolutely critical to get this deal back it's low hanging fruit it's all been negotiated it's everybody in fact that's on the biden team has been involved in the past and they have a good idea of how specifically this was was negotiated and that the iranians agreed to it and i think that one of the things also that gets lost is this is not a deal based on trust this is

a deal that was based entirely on the other negotiating countries distrusting iran and so when the u.s. withdrew there were no elements. in the deal to. punish another state the only day aspects that are in the deal for punishment are on iran so once the west's withdrew the only option that iran had to express its sense of discomfort at this was to abrogate the deal that's all there it is. the terms of that deal so i do feel as though it's quite easy to go back but it has to be from the u.s. side because they are the ones that withdrew and therefore the iranians can't make them go back and till they're back into some kind of negotiations with that let me ask you both this i mean i like eli has been a friend of mine for a long time. i remember during the bush administration when there was discussion it

was turned away of a potential grand bargain with iran at that time the republican strategic class was very much opposed to that approach that would have dealt with terrorism it would have dealt with the m.e. kay would have dealt with the nuclear issue but that was the wrong proposal at the wrong time when the obama administration came and said well we're not going to do a grand bargain we're going to focus on the clear and present danger of a railroad course of a collision course to you know iran having a nuclear bomb and trying to sort of deal with that precisely and specifically and then a lot of the g.o.p. criticism of obama was why aren't you doing a grand bargain eli where am i wrong in that because i think part of the criticism of today is iran's ballistic missile research and work and tests its support of transnational terrorism you know its behavior regionally and even even globally and so that these are all parts aren't there but i'm just wondering if it's just a whack a mole problem that that many g.o.p.

leaders are opposed to any deal so they want to grand bargain they don't want to grand bargain you know to let me start with you and then go to roxanne well. i think i have 2 criticisms of the way you framed that 1st of all the ballistic missile program is a big part of any nuclear weapons perp. that's probably the way that but it's my most countries would deliver a nuclear weapon so nuclear deal that doesn't address development of ballistic missiles and also the you know various limits on uranium enrichment expire over time as you research for the advanced centrifuges which would make their program more efficient so just on the nuclear terms i don't think it's a very good deal more importantly in the last 5 or 6 years what we've seen is a maturation of america's allies in the middle east that are most affected by iranian aggression so i think perhaps it was possible in 2013 in 2012 when some of the initial diplomacy on the iran deal came forward that you could have such a deal without having the israelis or the iranians of the saudis of the table but

at this point i'm not entirely sure that that is feasible it's possible that you know the p 5 plus one and iran would come to terms and get back into the 2015 deal but if the israelis and the saudis and the amorality is continue to feel threatened there are plenty of things they can do on the economic side on the kind of shadow military side that would make the deal not a not valuable in any way for the iranians and would show that some ways they need to kind of feel that the terms of the nuclear arrangement itself met their security needs and so i in my view i think the failure to address those needs the 1st time around in 2015 is an important lesson that the negotiators this time should keep in mind that if they go back to the original deal there's no there's no guarantee in fact i would i would bet against the idea that the israelis the saudis the i'm roddy's would adhere to that roxanne your thoughts on that what i what i see i mean

i think the lies race very good points on the other side of this but but i do recall reporting on this myself where various points of deal making with iran we've been out of sync but you know what is your take on where we are now and whether other pieces of this puzzle can be added to the way to make it more palatable to some of the critics. well i think one of the things that certainly came along with the original deal was that it had flanking the diplomacy as part of that had the deal gone forward and had there been a certain degree of trust and investigation then the next steps were to start negotiating about missiles and about regional security. and i thought one of the things that's got lost in that is that was part of the original deal and i think the idea that we look at iran after a year in which it has certainly ratcheted up nuclear production but done so under

the understanding and in the hope that there are would be a change in administration in the united states and therefore in many ways has constrained itself has not retaliated it has just been an exchange when it had 2 major assassination. assassinations take place on its grounds that it has not retaliated in a number of other ways against israeli provocations that were quite extreme over the summer i don't think should be looked at as there are by i we can go around iran i think at last one of the issues is it's always being asked it should increase its behavior it should become a better behaved state i think it's shown that it can over this year and then to take it the step further and say well therefore we can go around it and we don't have to have it yet it is a return to the deal i think is taking all the wrong messaging from its its approach this year thank you i want to one of the dimples in this story is that

this week we had essentially the i.a.e.a. director work out a deal where i.a.e.a. specters can remain in the country and give a life long to the j c p o in negotiations but with some limits that are not completely known what those limits are but we know that iran should lead. a slate of branch of government has sort of you know required that the spot checking and that the video surveillance of certain nuclear sites in iran be suspended and give odds are if the foreign minister has come out and said you know we have politics too we may not agree with it but are are we have a political situation where they're they're producing i mean it reminds me in some ways of america in that but i'd love to get your take on this issue because i hadn't really thought about it before that when you negotiate a deal with iran you negotiate a deal with the government sort of feel like you're kind of doing the deal with the supreme leader. but when you hear about the fragmentation of perspective inside

iran what's your take on that. well i guess i'm at the center of a kind of conventional wisdom that there is such a thing or a meaningful sense of politics within iran it's true there are members of the iranian modulus that. give aggressive speeches and then there's divide zarif who claims that his hands are tied but we also know that if you look at the longer history of iranian politics going back to the late 1990 s. that there has been a concerted effort by the unelected and illegitimate branch of the iranian government to sideline imprison and kill and exile anyone who's ever asked for opening up that society and going to to sort of be reform and i think that it's foolish for those of us in the west to still think that there is a kind of iranian moderate or reform element within the very very narrow band that's left that's running the country what's you know common is running the country the iranian revolutionary guard corps is running the country if they

understand that it is in their interest that it's a nexus central question in terms of economic sanctions that they have to make a deal than they will and that was sort of shown in 2013 and then 2015 but the bottom line in my view is that the politics question internal to iran is a bit of a smokescreen in my view you know there's a lot of leverage right now that the biden ministration has because the sanctions and for the most part secondary sanctions remain in place one of the things that happened that was sort of shown and proven under the terms of ministration is that those secondary sanctions can have an enormous bite even without the buy in from the other p. 5 plus one members that the new u.s. economy is powerful enough on its own to impose a terrible cost on the iranian economy unilaterally so given that and i think the iranians understand that then why not use this moment to ask for the very kinds of things that least in the nuclear file that even top biden ministration officials understand should be in

a final under deals you know they eliminate. sunsets development of missiles all of this was sort of put out by anthony blinken the new secretary of state this has been written in papers when he was out of government by takes a look when these are all goals that most experts believe. a real iranian nuclear deal should have i would add even though you know i'm not going to come from and there should be some basic sort of human rights the release of of foreign hostages release of political prisoners why not and if i think that if the regime understands that you know there's no way out from under this enormous these enormous secondary sanctions unless they do this sort of thing and they have to really believe that then i think that a lot more can be accomplished professor i'd love to get your take on the politics that are that are picking up but also there is an election coming up this summer in iran you know how much should that be a factor and how the biden ministration proceeds with regard to the j c p o a yes there certainly is an election coming up it's in june and it's for

a new president and certainly the fact that the u.s. withdrew from the nuclear deal has really tarnished the reputation of the sitting president who is a moderate and so it's very unlikely that the moderates will get back in and. like they did have a hard liner that will we'll win this of one stripe or another but i think there's 2 other elements here one is this was a new when brokered formal international legal deal and the united states withdrew from that and i think from the u.s. perspective from the western perspective it has a reputation that has been damaged by having withdrawn from a deal it signed when no other party particularly ron was breaking that deal at the time was that it was fully in compliance and remained in compliance for another year. so on the one hand i think from the u.s.

perspective as a returning to the unite to the huge united nations as a leader of the world. that's up to can consider it because it's damaged its reputation and on the other the iranians do not just have the united states has an option to consider and it's economic it's financial and it's oil dealing it is very much involved with china there's a 25 year deal that is being hammered out right now and it's close to russia and they've been able to strengthen that arrangement and alliance over. or it may not be a straight story but nonetheless from their perspective it's solidified a number of exchanges and so i see that if the united states does not take the advantage that it has to negotiate and go back in and take the j. c.p.o. a further there the direction iran is going to go is east and it will have in many

ways a sense of greater trust with those powers then it will with the united states of thank you but one of the elements when you sort of talk about going east but whenever dimension that i would love to get out in our in our last few minutes is that saudi arabia and israel are both key parts of this equation as well and they've been you know seen as partners of the united states largely addressing iran but right now president biden isn't speaking with the crown prince of saudi arabia who is apparently the power center in that country and barely speaking to prime minister netanyahu that we finally did in israel is that opportunity for the iran deal or obstacle is iran reading that is weakness of the key parties and the strength that would actually get it there are your thoughts. well i mean it's too soon to say whether you know the revolutionary guard corps or the kids force planned the escalation that we saw last week in their bill in northern iraq or for

that matter the you know the attack on the saudi airport from who the rebels are for that matter even the. killing of prominent has been larger analysts in lebanon but all of these things happened are likely because of iranian sponsored groups in the region so i think that they are testing right now and any kind of signal that the united states is distancing itself from the principal victims of iranian aggression in the region i think is really dangerous message and a dangerous kind of provocative provocation but again at a certain point this is not an abstraction for the saudis the amorality is or the israelis it's a very real problem that they are facing a kind of broad spectrum of threats from the iranians the nuclear being one of them but it's also through their proxies and other kinds of things that the the notion

that they are not going to defend their interests especially since they've proven priest excess will i'm thinking of the israeli intelligence operations going back to the assad rate of that warehouse is foolish so it's in biden's interest to cry to at least coordinate a response and try to meet the israeli and saudi concerns at this point and because he has i think far more leverage than he's acknowledging i don't understand why he would this. appreciate it tell me just give you this last question both about about israel and saudi arabia whether we need to patch things up with them in some way to make our iran case stronger and better but just in our last minute give you the last word on china and russia too because i've just always wondered you know and you i mentioned at that summit this may be a moment when you could make global sanctions work i've always sort of seen that is a complicated question that to certain degree. the unanimity in sanctions is not quite as strong as people think whether this is a strategic opportunity with iran with china and russia that we have

a blindspot about so just in our last minute i'm going to be unfair to you if you could share your thoughts on that front. cover of the world and it well i have to say that i think that one of the the real. homeless the objectives of the 5 not going to stray sion is to bring down the temperature in the gulf and i think we have seen that the saudis feel the same way and the fact that they've had stuff relations with their immediate neighbors in the g.c.c. the gulf cooperation council and that qatar is a negotiator in some sense. we. are it's and saudi and iran i think possibly shows that that is in a sense working and i on a set of different levers then the old mechanism of everybody on the one side of the gulf against iran so i would say that there's different ways to interpret that and as far as china and russia well certainly from the chinese perspective the

the sanctions are they are ratcheting up oil imports from iran partially through other countries i think there's been a certain degree of pressure that's going on to raise the financial access of iran to its reserves and so i think that that's been one of the problems we've always seen with sanctions that's one of the reasons obama went into this deal is that a venture lease sanctions regime zeroed and that's what we're beginning to see now well dr roxanne from my farm on from my on of cambridge university and eli lake of bloomberg opinion really appreciate having a civil discussion on this very tough subject thank you both for joining us today thank you thank you so what's the bottom line if you ask the average american if they want better relations with iran the answer would probably be somewhere between heck no and who cares but for the national security community iran is up there next to china and russia as

a defining challenge of our time the west has to decide whether it wants to live with a nuclear iran or stop iran from getting the bomb black and white scenarios no shades of grey and if iran is allowed to grow and prosper in return for sidelining its nukes does that mean it will easily take over as the dominant powerhouse of the middle east in short order that's what washington and its friends are most afraid of so is there a middle ground it's going to be hard to find it but it's worth trying and that's the bottom line.

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