fourteen thousand people or sixty thousand killing. in a record setting trip by land air sea and others phase. olympic torch relay. on are. following welcome to crossfire where all things are considered on peter lavelle deal has been struck well at least some kind of deal there can be no doubt this first step agreement between iran and the great powers is of historic significance it could become the foundation for far reaching geopolitical ships in the region but have no illusions the naysayers are intent on scuttling the deal and the use of force we're told remains on the table.

to cross talk the un nucular you i'm joined by my guest richard white's in washington he's a senior fellow and director of the center for political military analysis at the hudson institute also in washington we have daniel mcadams he's the executive director of the ron paul institute and in bangkok we cross to pepe escobar he's an investigative journalist and author right gentlemen cross-talk rules and effective means you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it pepe if i can go to you first in bangkok what do you make of the deal is it a historic deal and will go anywhere of course it's historic i'm sure all reviewers remember real man the goal to tehran the neo kongs ten years ago before during and after the invasion of iraq bunch of losers real men do deals with their round so this is the number one i would say the only one so far. our victory for

the obama administration it could be the beginning of obama's nixon in china movement block it's a long long shot we have six months ahead of us we're going to have the saudi wahhabi israeli. while i could say link but it's not to link in fact it's an axis badly disguised axis trying to derail this by all means necessary we're going to have the neo cons trying to the real is going to have a lot of republicans trying to derail that we're going to have a lot of us congress speedway and israeli lobby trying to derail it but we have a political will on the part of the obama administration political will in europe which is also very important and political will in tehran rouhani if in of course the so-called reformers around them against the hardliners of basically revolutionary guards but it's going to be. don excuse me did you fact and fasten

your seatbelts ok richard this is you know nixon in china analogies being brought up in the media and i tend to agree with pepe this could be the only positive thing we've seen in the obama administration do foreign policy wise in a while but the odds are against him domestically at least at this point what are your thoughts i'm not sure the odds are against and domestically their congress has gone along with not connecting any new sanctions at least for a while they are now going through the motions of preparing a sanctions resolution but that would be use only if the six months do not result in a longer and it was just a this is just basically a negotiating tactics as a means of warning iran that if he didn't give talks do not succeed then even more sanctions might follow but i think that the president will get a grace period i mean i'm not sure of this in the store agreement or the nixon and china analogy holds but we just don't know and certainly it's a modest risk for potentially big gain so i think it's i think people are going to

give the president the benefit of doubt here for a while ok dan you what do you think about that because the relationship between the united states and iran has been deplorable for thirty three years is this a turning point is it possible i mean should we be afraid to succeed well i think what's happening is that the the media and certainly congress is overselling this what this is a very very early confidence building measure there aren't substantive changes iran is taking some minor symbolic steps the u.s. is releasing a minor amount of money seven billion over the over the next six months half of that is in assets that have been seized i think the media will try to overplay this and the real danger peter is that we're going to go back to i think it was zero six all over again where you had the beginning of some confidence building measures iran agreed to suspend to observe the additional protocols of the nonproliferation true. and in exchange you got no sanctions relief whatsoever so when they suspended

their voluntary observation of that additional protocol that was viewed in congress and in the us media as oh here they are going at it again so there is a big danger that that the media will sell this as some sort of a final agreement so if nothing happens in six months and they go back to the status quo then it will be an additional. room for additional sanctions on iran and pepe if i go back to you in in bangkok israeli prime minister netanyahu says this is a historic mistake but that tells a lot of people that if it's a historic mistake in his opinion it must be a good deal. look at the historical mistake is a p.v. himself you know he is the mad dog. sometimes least in the middle east everybody knows that then on a lying movement russia china the bulk of the developing world the only one who does know about this us public opinion most of it and all busily us corporate media

so he's going to be kicking and screaming like a need for the next six months on a daily basis but seriously the grown ups are paying attention russia and china and that this is something that we should develop in our discussion debate in the long run benefits for i did a whole of you ratio this is the big this is the beginning of the new great game in your asia involving russia china the us iran turkey the real big players israel is the detail and saudi arabia come on it's an acronym ism one hundred percent ok didn't get into that you want to jump in and go ahead and break in a little bit yeah i just wanted to point out something that pepe said earlier he talked about american public opinion what's interesting just in the last day or so there was a rest news and poll that showed that the majority of americans are backing this interim agreement so we might be seeing is a replay of what we saw in that toward the end of the summer with the syria situation where the vast majority of the american people are opposed to what attack

it's very possible the americans are tired of this confrontational attitude toward iran and syria and then we may be demanding something different and in that case there may actually be a danger of a backlash and further resentment toward israel if israel continues to do what it's doing which is sending an army of lobbyists through the halls of capitol hill telling all sorts of horror stories and of you know getting american congressmen and senators to oppose this deal by any means necessary so there may be a danger of a backlash americans are behind this deal with iran they're cautiously optimistic. richard it's clearly quite interesting if you look at this interim agreement and neither side gave away very much it seems to me that it's more it's more about trust in it's baby steps of taking trust and it's the best way of diplomacy you take a small step the other one takes a small step and you think this is what this six months is really all about because i mean it looks like there's some backsliding on capitol hill and he and in the

white house wondering if it's really truly possible to get an agreement because we've been told for decades you can't deal with you can't negotiate with a rainy and suddenly that's different isn't it. well i think that the way you phrased it is why we're having this try you know try before you buy six months that there are people who are you can't cross the reigning government and therefore you need to take a smaller internment dream and see how that goes before you create a larger package and i agree that's probably the right tactic. i'm not sure though if we can so easily dismiss the terms i suspect that a lot of what we've seen in the interim agreement would find its way into any comprehensive agreement in terms of increased fare for cation and transparency that what the iranian nuclear activities are in terms of limits on the stand and intensity of iranian enrichment sanctions relief and so on and so i think that a lot of that what we're seeing now would probably be find its way into an interim

agreement and of course they can always roll over the interim agreement for another six months if they have to and so on and then you know again if i go back to you in washington it's all of it's all about enrichment because we have some countries in the world that say iran has the right to enrichment and other countries say they do and so it's there's a small number of countries in the world there's a rand doesn't have the right to enrichment which is it is really nonsensical because they are members of the nonproliferation treaty but you still have people in washington obviously in israel saying the same thing and i want to talk to pepe later about saudi arabia but it's about enrichment daniel well in fact there are very few countries in the world that don't believe you iran has the right to enrich uranium in fact when the us was negotiating the nonproliferation treaty back in the late sixty's the us insisted that article four explicitly provided for the enrichment of uranium and if you read article four and you have any sort of brain you realize that the word production of nuclear fuel for the use of nuclear energy

production means enrichment it's not about some ferries coming down and giving it to you so it's it's impossible to read the article for it not see that it provides . richmond richard go ahead jump in go ahead rick i think the thank you i think the argument is not so much that there rand didn't have that right it's that iran has taken activities which now call that right into question because you're not supposed to engage in nuclear activities that could lead to a weapon if you're not if you didn't already have a nuclear weapon the time to sign it is because it was signed it's not true and there's argument there rain in activity in the past some indication they were testing designs for a nuclear warhead for example and that would call into question whether they not put that right of enrichment under suspension at least until more information about their past activities comes to light and safeguards against future activities like that. what do you see it going on in iran i mean how much how much stonewalling can

the revolutionary guards for example you know put put a stop on this because we're focusing all in washington right now. yeah for them oh this is this is the most important part the internal situation in iraq i've been to run many times i'm in contact with a lot of people in different areas from foreign ministry to hardliners in fact even political prisoners and at the moment pick on census is rouhani one supreme leader ayatollah khamenei gave them a green light and he delivered so this means for the next six months there's going to be a normal internal opposition but this depends on both sides following what he has proposed in the interim agreement the u.s. respecting their side and the n.d.o. and the europeans of course respecting their side of the bargain and what's going to happen during dinner go see a shift doing this next six months until may two thousand and fourteen if the

iranians see that this is going nowhere in terms of respecting their rights to enrich me i was sorry i have to jump in here if you know that you were going to go with the word train and then after that short break we'll continue our discussion on iran's state with our team. meeting with. if you're thinking about an alcoholic drink associated with russia it's probably not going to be one that springs into your head but they've been making it here on the black sea coast for more than two thousand kids and there's an industry which

really can compete with the best the rest of the world has to offer i've come to meet some of the people going the greats and to see if i can find out the secret to the public. but. i. think it's. war is probably the most complex. to. the phenomenon of friendly fire probably extends back to the invention of gunpowder

. but if your bunch of people don't know what their families are already us people. reading. this summer shoots my brother in the leg not intentional because of it because it was nine times four in the morning even the best given the mesh shoulders. are going to make mistakes does this whole idea of brotherhood and author. and camaraderie in this sense it was in this context it has absolutely no place.

welcome back to cross talk we're all things we're considered on peter lavelle to mind you we're discussing the nucular deal with the red. ok richard going to go back to you in washington i think it's kind of tantalizing to think what if the united states in iran and its allies and we'll have russian the international community actually get a deal a real deal with iran not an interim thing but going beyond it it changes the geo political space. in that region i mean we've seen the united states and its allies demonized and marginalized when for decades now this agreement could normalize around quote unquote in the international community and that's something significant way beyond any kind of nuclear deal yes the logical relationship between iran and the west is that of alignment. strategically the iranians would wander off shore balancer to help them against close and threats economically the

natural part of iran are the west they would export their natural resources oil and etc and receive advanced technology in the west but because of the story and other developments that's the alignment it's been broken so the dominant foreign actors in the russian and then rain economy example are russia and china and so you would logically expect iran to realign with the west in this at a deal could bring that help bring that process that bow but the legacy of history isn't very difficult to overcome. speak to that because we alignment because the the the two major countries that are against this is israel and saudi arabia they don't want this realignment at all when this is really what it's all about they want to keep iran isolated and israel probably with saudi arabia would like the united states somebody else to attack iran but it's the likelihood of that

happening is getting smaller at least for the time being. yeah and this is not going to happen this is really and these are minor players i would like to focus on the major players once again this is the new great game in your asia it has been brewing for the past fifteen years now there's a major realignment in sight number one will do obama administration they have until two thousand and sixteen that's very important finally recognize iran as a sovereign independent can through we had their own independent foreign policy we still don't know if that is the case we're going to have a definitive deal next year and then we're going to have russia china and iran three independent eurasian independent foreign policy from the west that's a major development if it happens all right turkey very important i wrote about this last week very key wants to position itself as the crossroads of energy

transit energy from east to west for that they need iranian guess with no end to sanctions iran will sell even more gas to turkey through turkey to europe this is what the europeans say if you talk to europeans in brussels i've been doing this for fifteen years they always say we need iranian gas but we cannot get it because of american sanctions on russia they have already a strategic partnership with iran china they already have an energy and commercial partnership with commercials going to be even more increased if you run normalize let's put it this way so the whole arc from southwest asia to east asia is going to change completely and this is what the grownups in the room and outside the rooms are waiting daniel this is what pepe sucking about as a major realignment here i mean i'm looking at all of our faces here i can see you and you know what we're more or less the same age that kind of alignment is something that's never been thought of you know look being aligned with the rand or

at least not be. having iran as the great enemy and this is something that's very new and you know gentlemen ever since the end of the cold war a lot of things have happened the none of us ever expected so daniel detente with iran. yeah but it's by no means certain and i think what's important to remember is the structure of u.s. sanctions against iran some of these sanctions were imposed by executive order therefore president obama can lift them himself some of them are passed as legislation with some limited waivers that obama has some wiggle room but quite a bit of the sanctions are written into u.s. law and the president cannot change those that would require congress to change those and i can see a scenario there's a huge danger of the president going over to geneva or wherever and signing a permanent deal coming back home and having congress reject the deal and that would make the u.s. first of all the laughingstock of the world and second of all at that point i think

these view would come into place anyway which is that the international sanctions regime would break down at that point it barely holds together now the u.s. is barely able to hold it together now for all of the reasons that pepe outlined of the world is waiting to have an economic relationship with iran the world needs it it's good for the world so if the deal fails the sanctions regime will break down if the deal succeeds hopefully the sanctions will completely break down as well ok richard let's talk about the role of congress here in the in the israeli lobby i mean how much of a headache is this really going to be for obama because you know there are people who say that they're all powerful other people say they're not as powerful as you think but this issue is very important to the israeli lobby in the united states are they going to throw everything at it. i think we've already seen that's not going to be the case i think you've seen a lot of the members of congress have said that they i mean there where israel's

concerns and then stay share these concerns independent of any lobbying what have you there's a lot of people who are very wary about dealing with iran in this and the implications of that but as i said it's a modest agreement it's not if he fails it's not a major change from where we are now and certain so i think the congress as far as i can tell it's going to let the president try try as approach see no sanctions for six months see what happens and now if we face a comprehensive agreement then maybe they'll be a different scenario made with a much more name and opposition but i don't see that yet ok pepe you want to jump in go ahead pepe in and in thailand go ahead you know i want to i want to jump in a yet. compliment our other guests who are seeing fact i would say that the obama administration and rouhani they have a window of opportunity over three years in fact two thousand and fourteen fifteen sixteen until the next presidential elections in two thousand and sixteen if they

can evolve towards a comprehensive deal and their response little will on bull sides they will be strengthened to fight u.s. congress new york some republicans parts of the israeli lobby the wahhabi petrodollar lobby you name it in the u.s. and inside iran of course people who are allied with the hardcore factions of the revolutionary guards which add them at the moment they're being called thing by the supreme leader himself but imagine the possibility of the supreme leader dying which is not absurd within the next three years we could probably have a much more lenient leader given even more leeway for rouhani to clinch the deal and if. a company stays in this position for the next three years he gave them a green light. this is for a city own last it's he already said that two days ago in fact if our

sovereign rights are not infringed we are open to all sorts of the negotiations so you know how many you know he is derided the in d.c. as a as a fanatic his not is an extremely rational player he saw that what the job government did for eight years was completely absurd it was not working so you know and don't forget your opinion diplomats they are first class diplomats i had some interactions with them they are among the most sophisticated diplomats in the world and i'm sure john kerry would be able to a past that when he will be talking about his interactions with saudi richard if i go to you in washington what are the biggest stumbling blocks over the next six months for you because when there's going to be more inspections this is iran's is going to open up more lowered in richmond and other issues that iran can easily do and be watched ok what's what who could throw in the monkey wrench what are issues that could derail him during this interim period in your mind. i don't see the

interim period being much of a problem i think more of what's going to be the problem is converting it to longer term and that could feed back and negatively affect the interim agreement because it's not clear to me at has a ran for ever gone the desire the operation of try and richmond to twenty percent are they only going to accept five percent forever are they cannot continue to keep their centrifuges detached even though they've built them and rather than put them into the cycle are they going to adopt the additional protocol can the u.s. remove all the sanctions as daniel pointed out i mean some of them are executive order that's easy but a lot of them. require an act of congress street people i mean all those things they'd have to do and to reach a final agreement and it could be if that looks like they're not going to do that then it will feedback negatively interim but as i said i think the interim by

itself it's a modest effort and therefore i'm not anticipating major problems of execution danny what do you think about that next six months what do we get what do you expect and i think richard makes a good point you know the the danger really is as i said earlier is that the media sells it says this is the permanent deal here in iran as richard points out can never go back to enriching to a higher percentage for example for medical isotopes or for other for other means you know the n.p.t. it does not say to what level you're rhenium can be enriched they can rich enrich it is as much as they like they simply cannot divert that enriched uranium for the use in nuclear weapon when a lot of pepys you know that you know when you get a lot word here just want to give pepe the last word here pepe all the while all the while we even media is reputed to be this is a good question for ok you know all while you everyone's looking at a rant but it looks like saudi arabia is just going to buy a weapon from pakistan but that doesn't make headlines does it. look the house will

solve this on the road to absolute irrelevance it's going to take maybe what one year two three five they're going to have their arab spring over there in the eastern province much or it's a shiite they're going to have their arab spring but returning some of these students that go back to jeddah and riyadh studying in the west they say this is completely absurd let's really modernize this country so their base are numbered absolutely and that's why they're so desperate and very very important even bummed out of bush our friend bummed out bush who saw that he would control everything in syria launch a war in syria you know what's provoking boots into abandoned syrian born to run you name it he's got nothing and now he's even more desperate and now there's going to be geneva two. about syria and january and bombards goals are not going to be there so how's off south by by looking at the amount point thank you very much

gentlemen many thanks to my guests in washington and in bangkok and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r.t. see you next time and remember cross talk rules. we will. leave it was recently revealed that jamie diamond rented out locking him palace and other to entertain his close friend tony blair the dinner took place only days before jamie diamond had agreed to give the us department of justice a very small. mortgage fraud gains and oh how the penniless peasants outside buckingham palace gates rejoiced at the impossibly large number of thirteen billion

dollars jamie. all hail jamie don't you think. this is the place that has been consecrated to god for almost a thousand of years people came here twenty some years ago to reestablish the last a life on the silence. and people feel the love of christ all working. people say you can catch. something happens on this island that makes them return to it again and again they say the below saves them. join me james brown on a journey for the soul. only see. lucky brightness to play a first strike. and i think the church.

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. protests against the hold of talks rage on in ukraine while russia's president calls on brussels to tone down its criticism of moscow saying it's about business not politics. police in cairo in force a new law that restricts protests amid fears the country sliding back to an authoritarian regime. and a ticket to ride n.s.a. whistleblower edward snowden appears on posters on washington bosses as campaigners urge americans to follow his lead and reject government surveillance.