In short
The episode analyzes the February U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran and the legal/political limits of presidential power, arguing the campaign failed to achieve strategic goals and produced economic blowback via Strait of Hormuz disruption. It also examines the resulting MOU’s contents (nuclear, missiles, proxies, Lebanon, and transit) and whether it triggers treaty/war-powers and congressional-approval requirements.
Guests
Alan Weiner, a Stanford Law colleague and constitutional/international law expert who previously worked in the State Department on Iran issues.
Key claims
The administration pursued objectives including preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon, degrading missiles, severing proxy support, and sometimes regime change; instead, factional dominance by the IRGC increased and “retrenchment” replaced regime change. The MOU is portrayed as a major win for Iran because it is vague, largely silent on missiles/navy/proxies, and effectively constrains Israel in Lebanon without restricting Iran’s proxy support. The Strait of Hormuz “free transit” is time-limited and may allow future charging, risking long-term economic harm. Legally, the MOU may be a treaty or political commitment; war powers timing/“permanent cessation” language may be used to avoid Congress.
Notable examples
JCPOA (2015) limits on enrichment (3.67%) and IAEA inspections; Trump withdrawal and re-escalation; alleged missile/navy degradation estimates; IRGC dominance after attacks; gas/fertilizer price impacts and farmers’ losses; NATO allies refusing demining support; war-powers 60-day clock and ceasefire “stop-the-clock” argument; Congress’s concurrent resolution demanding approval or withdrawal.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOContext of the Iran Attack
0:25 to 1:06
Understanding the background and reasons behind the U.S. and Israel's attack on Iran.
“This is Stanford Legal, where we look at the cases, questions, conflicts, and legal stories that affect us all every day.”
Objectives of U.S. Military Action
1:06 to 2:10
Exploration of the objectives stated by the Trump administration for the attack on Iran.
“This administration has not always been renowned for its laser focus and laser messaging as different messages kind of track whatever the president's impulses are.”
The Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA)
2:10 to 4:05
A detailed look at the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and its implications.
“in February, there was this concern about Iran's nuclear capacity.”
Consequences of U.S. Withdrawal from JCPOA
4:05 to 5:11
Discussion on the fallout after the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal and its effects on Iran.
“Some provisions were 10 years, other provisions were 15 years.”
Impact of the Attack on Iranian Politics
5:11 to 7:11
Analyzing how the attacks have altered the landscape of Iranian political factions.
“Again, as we got into 2026, the Trump administration began to develop these more ambitious goals.”
Global Economic Consequences of the Conflict
7:11 to 9:21
Examining the economic impact of the conflict, particularly on energy prices and agriculture.
“We killed the then head of the government.”
The Role of NATO Allies in the Conflict
9:21 to 12:22
Discussion on NATO's response to the conflict and the implications for U.S.-NATO relations.
“I mean, if you're here in California and you look at your local gas station and you see that our regular, you know, the medium level of gas is six and a half bucks now, right?”
Negotiating with Iran: Outcomes and Concerns
12:22 to 14:00
Exploration of the negotiations with Iran and the perceived benefits for Iran in the agreements.
“assistance, which has actually enhanced the tensions between the United States and NATO.”
Analyzing the Iran Agreement
14:00 to 18:10
Discusses the implications of the Iran agreement on regional power dynamics and Israel's role.
“But in the agreement itself, I was quite struck when I saw it.”
Legal Framework of the Agreement
18:10 to 22:15
Explores the legal status of the MOU and the necessity of congressional approval.
“shipping that it said had not coordinated with us.”
Show all 12 chapters
War Powers and Congressional Role
22:15 to 28:01
Examines the War Powers Resolution and the role of Congress in military operations, including historical context.
“If not, he's legally obligated to withdraw U.S.”
Predictions on Iran Deal Negotiations
28:01 to 28:26
The hosts discuss predictions on how the U.S. might present a new deal with Iran.
“It may be that he will try to basically find a way of saying we have a great deal and it's better than the Obama deal.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00If I were a senior government official in the Iranian Foreign Ministry, upon seeing the signature of the MOU that we've concluded, I would be high-fiving my colleagues in the ministry. Because I think it's quite clear that the MOU itself is a big win for Iran.
0:25Professor Pa:This is Stanford Legal, where we look at the cases, questions, conflicts, and legal stories that affect us all every day. I'm Pam Carlin. Please subscribe or follow this feed on your favorite podcast app. That way, you'll have access to all our new episodes as soon as they're available. And today we're going to talk at one of the conflicts that affects us all every day, especially if you have to buy any gasoline. The United States and Israel attacked Iran in February of this year, and we are still sort of at war in Iran. And I just maybe guess I want to start you off, Alan, by saying, why did we attack Iran?
1:05Professor Pa:What was the ostensible reason for the attack in the first place?
1:09Allen Weiner:Pam, it's good to be with you. This administration has not always been renowned for its laser focus and laser messaging as different messages kind of track whatever the president's impulses are. That said, the administration, I think, identified at least four objectives that it referred to consistently. The most important one was to ensure that Iran would never be able to acquire a nuclear weapon. There was also an effort to obliterate Iran's missile capability to annihilate its navy and to sever its support for its terrorist proxies in the region, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and to a lesser extent Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
1:57Allen Weiner:There was also sometimes talk about regime change. This ran hot and cold.
2:01Professor Pa:Yeah, I mean, it seems like a kind of moving target.
2:07Allen Weiner:It was a moving target.
2:09Professor Pa:So if we start off in February, there was this concern about Iran's nuclear capacity. And I wonder if you could take us back a couple of years before, because there had been an agreement.
2:23Allen Weiner:Right, absolutely. I mean, this is, of course, it has been a long-term strategic concern of the United States and Israel, and not only Israel, also Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the Kuwaitis, about the risk that Iran would develop a nuclear weapon. This was seen as deeply destabilizing. The Obama administration worked on this and concluded in 2015 something called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. I'll just say the JCPOA, it's the Iran deal, the nuclear deal, which was a compromise in which Iran basically agreed to give up some highly enriched uranium that it had developed was actually delivered to the Russians and also to agree on quite low levels of enrichment.
3:11Allen Weiner:You know, the way that uranium works is you take U-238 uranium and you run it through centrifuges and some of it, you create enriched uranium, U-235 uranium, and that's the fuel that you use for a nuclear bomb. And Iran agreed that if they were enriching uranium, which is also something that you use in civilian nuclear energy, right? This has always been the problem, that what we use for nuclear power and what we use for nuclear bombs is the same thing, except maybe at different degrees. And Iran agreed that they would limit their enrichment to like 3.67%, and they would accept international inspections from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
3:49Allen Weiner:So a lot of people thought like, yeah, this is like a decent deal. The main problem with the agreement, the JCPOA, was that it was not permanent. Iran agreed to these restrictions on its enrichment levels for a certain period of time. Some provisions were 10 years, other provisions were 15 years. And critics of the agreement said, well, that's great. In 15 years, we're going to be right back where we started. Okay, so the Trump administration, the first Trump administration declaring the JCPOA to be the worst deal ever, and this is going to come around on the guitar again, because actually the JCPOA does not look so bad compared to the agreement that the Trump administration has just concluded with Iran.
4:30Allen Weiner:Withdrew from the agreement, Iran began enriching uranium at higher levels and re-escalated the crisis.
4:37Professor Pa:So our first thing when we attacked Iran, in addition to the mistaken bombing of the girls' school, we knocked out the then leadership of Iran.
4:51Allen Weiner:Right. And we have to remember that the 2026 war comes less than a year after the first time that we attacked Iran's nuclear program. We did this in 2025. Right. This was a much shorter campaign, just a few days. And we really focused in 2025 on Iran's nuclear facilities. Again, as we got into 2026, the Trump administration began to develop these more ambitious goals. Right.
5:19Professor Pa:And there was going to be regime change.
5:20Allen Weiner:Well, again, it was always in the background. I mean, the administration wasn't going to do it. I mean, the thing that I love about this is Donald Trump at one point saying to the Iranian people, you know, since the Iranian revolution, there have been, I don't know whether it was seven presidents or eight presidents, and none of them, he said, have been willing to do what I'm doing, to attack the regime. So Iranian people, this is your chance.
5:46Professor Pa:And there had been a kind of upsurge of popular resistance to the regime inside Iran.
5:54Allen Weiner:You know, this has been recurring, right? We had the Women's Freedom Life uprising earlier in the 20s. We'd also had uprisings more recently in Iran. I mean, Iran, I mean, we should say for the record, for the avoidance of doubt, Pam, that the Iranian regime is a repressive regime that engages in horrible human rights violations. It's not representative of the will of the people. It's an authoritarian and oppressive regime. And so there's been a lot of, there've been, through the last 20 years, different moments of public unrest, which have been met with quite emphatic repression by the regime.
6:33Allen Weiner:But I think it's interesting that what the president said is like, when he said that we've had seven, eight presidents who haven't been willing to attack Iran. I think he thought what that reflects is his boldness and decisiveness. What those of us who have been kind of studying this issue for a long time probably thought is like, well, you know, there's maybe a reason why seven or eight presidents who have the same military capacity that the U.S. has now decided it would not be a good bargain to try to use force to achieve our strategic objectives and maybe to bring about regime change in Iran.
7:08Allen Weiner:And we see that that's been the outcome.
7:11Professor Pa:Right. So we attacked the regime. We bombed the headquarters. We killed the then head of the government. And it seems like a bad trade if you're trading like an 80-year-old tyrant for a 40-year-old tyrant. That's not a great...
7:28Allen Weiner:And the bigger problem is this, as I see it, Pingham. In the United States, when I worked in the State Department back before I came to the law school here, I worked on Iran issues. And we had a Manichaean view of Iranian politics. There were reformers and hardliners. I didn't know that much about Iranian politics, but I always had the impression, and I continue to have the impression, that Iranian politics are actually much more complicated than that. Lots of different factions, lots of different voices. And what has actually happened as a result of this attack, the previous Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, was sort of a broker who would kind of manage these different factions.
8:13Allen Weiner:And I think what's emerged from these attacks is it's now quite clear that one of these factions, the military faction, the so-called Revolutionary Guard, the IRGC, is now dominant. And so, in fact, what we've seen is rather than regime change, we've seen retrenchment. And I think that some of the most repressive elements have, in fact, had their authority consolidated. Yeah.
8:40Professor Pa:So we now have a regime after our initial attack that closed the Straits of Hormuz. And that had a set of immediate effects on the global economy.
8:55Allen Weiner:Absolutely. And you mentioned that this affects everybody who buys gas. It's everybody who uses any petroleum. Or any energy. I mean, farmers have been devastated by this. It's not only oil, also fertilizer. I mean, there are other key goods that transit through that gulf. It's been devastating for farmers in the United States. It's been more devastating for farmers in the developing world who are impacted by this even more. Energy costs have gone up. I mean, if you're here in California and you look at your local gas station and you see that our regular, you know, the medium level of gas is six and a half bucks now, right?
9:32Allen Weiner:And the Trump administration quickly began to feel this pressure. The Iranians ended up being very effective in deploying this tool that was at their disposal, which is the ability to strangle an important part of the global interdependent economy.
9:51Professor Pa:And it was completely foreseeable that they could do that, right?
9:54Allen Weiner:It was everybody who works on the Iranian portfolio in the U.S. government. If you wargame a conflict with Iran, everybody knows that on day one, the Iranians fire a bunch of missiles at Israel and Gulf states and U.S. facilities. And on day two, they choke the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, this is absolutely something that the professional experts know. It may be that the people who are running foreign policy for the administration did not know this or were not listening to the advice that they got. I think it's important, you know, Pam, to realize that the Trump administration had been emboldened by what it saw as its success with the Venezuela operation.
10:41Allen Weiner:And I think they went in, they did this operation to snatch, to remove, to abduct Maduro from Venezuela. It was a kind of a technical tour de force. They lost no forces. They snatched him. And I think Donald
10:54Professor Pa:Trump - And then we made a bunch of deals with the people who were, yeah.
10:59Allen Weiner:Yeah. Stage two is not necessarily the one that is so deeply thought out. I think when we see the image of Maduro, whether it's AI generated or not, in his orange jumpsuit and goggles being put on the plane and brought to the United States, I think Donald Trump thought like, wow, this military option is awesome. And I think he was emboldened to think that there would be a similarly simple and swift and effective military outcome. Again, the professionals, the foreign policy professionals in both the State Department and the Defense Department would have been advising to the contrary, but I don't think people were listening.
11:36Professor Pa:So we've got the U.S. in there, and then there's, of course, the only other country that really kind of joined us in this, which was Israel.
11:43Allen Weiner:Right, in the actual bombing campaign. And there was then pressure as the Iranians closed the Strait of Hormuz, the president, the U.S. administration, began calling to our NATO allies and said, hey, you should actually support us. We're allies. You should support us with the demining operation. Please send your warships to the Gulf to try to help open the Strait of Hormuz. And I think the NATO allies thought like, you know, this is not our zoo. These are not our monkeys. We were not consulted on this. We had nothing to do with this. And so, you know, the NATO allies did not come to assistance, which has actually enhanced the tensions between the United States and NATO.
12:26Allen Weiner:So there's other collateral damage that comes from this conflict.
12:30Professor Pa:And so we then decide we're going to negotiate some sort of truce, some sort of deal with the Iranians. And what is that? What is that deal? It seems to be kind of hard for me to wrap my mind.
12:45Allen Weiner:Well, I will say this. I talked with my wife about these things. And she said, how do you think the Iranians feel about this? And I said, well, let me put it this way. If I were a senior government official in the Iranian foreign ministry, upon seeing the signature of the MOU that we've concluded, I would be high-fiving my colleagues in the ministry. because I think it's quite clear that the MOU itself is a big win for Iran. Now, the U.S. did achieve through its military operations, it did achieve some goals. It did not eliminate or destroy Iran's missile program, but it degraded it. There are estimates that a third, a half of the missile program was destroyed.
13:34Allen Weiner:We said we wanted to annihilate Iran's navy. All of its big ships have been sunk, right? Although it does still retain these small fast boats, which are able to go out in the Gulf and drop the mines.
13:44Professor Pa:Well, right. I was going to say, what were the big ships in the Iranian Navy?
13:50Allen Weiner:They were not the ones. They did not have a solution to the instruments that were being used to pose the threat that we face. But in the agreement itself, I was quite struck when I saw it. I thought this is actually a quite staggering achievement for Iran. When we think about our objectives, is there anything in this agreement about support for the regional proxies? Silence. Other than that, actually, the Iranians have been successful in saying not that it has to stop support for Hezbollah, but that ending the war in Lebanon, that is to say having the U.S. imposed constraints on Israel, is now one of the shared objectives that we have.
14:35Professor Pa:Yeah, I mean, that's really striking, right? Which is we went into this war, essentially saying to Israel, you go, you go and do what you want. And now we're in this position where in order to get any kind of agreement with the Iranians, we have to put pressure on the Israelis.
Read the full transcript
14:51Allen Weiner:And we were together to enter the war, but we've clearly jettisoned the Israelis on the way out of the war. There has not been close consultation with the Israelis on the terms of the MOU. And I'm looking at the language, it is quite astonishing where we say that the U.S. and Iran and their allies in the current war declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon. But of course, the Israelis didn't sign this thing. So we appear to have agreed that Israel, as our ally, is now precluded from conducting its military operations in Lebanon.
15:30Allen Weiner:So we see no restriction on the Iran support for the regional proxies. There's silence on the missile program, which Iran is already reconstructing. There's silence on the Navy. The nuclear issue, right, is the heart of the deal. And really there, what we ended up with essentially is not very much.
15:55Professor Pa:We ended up basically back where we were in 2015, didn't we?
15:59Allen Weiner:Maybe less. But certainly not more. Certainly not more. Iran reaffirmed that it would not procure or develop nuclear weapons. That's actually been stated official Iranian policy for decades. The previous Supreme Leader issued a religious decree, a fatwa, saying that Iran would not develop nuclear weapons. We have no details in this instrument. It's reflective. I mean, if you look at the Board of Peace proposal for Gaza, there's now been a separate trilateral MOU that's been negotiated with Israel, Lebanon, and the United States. This administration is attracted to these. We saw the negotiations with Russia and Ukraine.
16:39They're attracted to these documents that have a list of points, 15 points,
16:46Allen Weiner:14 points, 20 points. They're framed at a very high level of generality. If you pull up the JCPOA, you need to make sure that you've got toner in your printer because it's a document of more than 100 pages long that really, really addresses detailed micro issues. And that's not true for this. Now, again, this is understood to be an interim arrangement that a final agreement is supposed to be concluded within 60 days. I'm very hard pressed to imagine that we're going to see a final agreement concluded within 60 days. But again, Iran has agreed that it will not pursue a nuclear weapon. We were already there.
17:25Allen Weiner:The Trump administration in the past had said that Iran would not be allowed to have a nuclear fuel cycle at all. No enrichment, no civilian nuclear energy. Instead, we now see that there's going to be a discussion about how Iran's nuclear needs will be met.
17:42Professor Pa:And what about the Straits of Hormuz? I mean, it used to be your boat just traveled through the Straits of Hormuz for free.
17:51Allen Weiner:Yeah. And, you know, this is another issue. In the MOU, there's been a commitment on the part of Iran that for 60 days, the strait is open. We're open for business again. There's some mines lying around. There's still some mines and the Iranians are saying you have to coordinate with us, which is why we saw a resurrection or a return to strikes in just the last few days, because the Iranians launched drone strikes against commercial shipping that it said had not coordinated with us. So again, the details of what exactly free transit means. But the thing that's even maybe more alarming is there's a reference in the MOU to the possibility that Iran will be able to start charging vessels for transit through the Strait of Hormuz.
18:39Allen Weiner:There's a commitment that there will be no charge, but that's for 60 days only.
18:43Professor Pa:Right. 60 days only. This week only.
18:46Allen Weiner:Free transit through the Gulf. And now it appears that the Iranians and the Omanis, who also have control over the other side of the strait, are talking about a regime in which they're going to start charging vessels for transit through the Gulf, which, of course, is incompatible with long standing traditions of freedom of movement, innocent transit through territorial waters that connect international waterways.
19:10Professor Pa:So far, we've been talking about our relationship to Iran and our relationship to Israel. But there's also this question of, you know, at some point, doesn't the president have to get congressional approval to continue this, A, to continue this war and B, on these agreements? Or is this all just going to be done through an executive agreement and this kind of weird starting and stopping of the clock so we don't have to go to Congress?
19:39Allen Weiner:So two separate questions there. Let me talk about the second one, the international law one. So the first question is, is this instrument a treaty? Is it legally binding? If it's a legally binding instrument, there might be a question about whether or not congressional approval is required. And in fact, even if it is an executive agreement that falls within the scope of the president's inherent constitutional powers, when the JCPOA was negotiated, there was so much hostility on the part of the right towards the agreement that legislation was enacted that said, if you do an international agreement, it requires congressional approval.
20:20Allen Weiner:So the JCPOA was to circumvent that because the Obama administration knew that they would not have been able to secure approval in the Senate, at least for the deal, did the JCPOA in the form of a non-binding arrangement. So lots of what is done in international law is not legally binding. And so the JCPOA is what we call a political commitment or a non-binding arrangement. I read the current MOU that's been negotiated also as a political commitment. The co-author of my casebook, Duncan Hollis, who actually writes the treaty law chapter in our book, says he thinks it's a treaty. So there's ambiguity about that.
20:58Allen Weiner:And we don't know what the subsequent final deal, what form that would take. But because of that legislation that was enacted at the time of the Obama administration, at least provisions in which we would lift sanctions against Iran would require, where if not congressional approval of the instrument would require congressional approval of the sanctions relief. So there's going to be a role for Congress in dealing with the final deal. They capitalized deal in the MOU, by the way, which kind of makes me crazy, but it's a little pet peeve.
21:31Professor Pa:But it's a Donald Trump production. Well, you said it on me. He capitalizes. I mean, he's like it's translated from the original German. They're just random capitalized.
21:42Allen Weiner:So the separate question is, okay, the war powers question, the domestic law question. We had commenced under the war powers resolution, adapted after the end of the Vietnam War when Congress realized we were not supervising the executive branch enough. The basic idea is that if the president introduces U.S. forces into situations, into combat situations or which combat is likely, he has to obtain congressional approval within 60 days. If not, he's legally obligated to withdraw U.S. forces. He gets a 30-day extension if he wants. And it's interesting that we were running up to the 60-day deadline with the operation that began at the end of February.
22:32Allen Weiner:And around the time in April, a ceasefire was announced. And the Trump administration declared that because there's a ceasefire, there's been a permanent, they use the word permanent, there's been a permanent cessation of hostilities. So the war power obligation is not triggered.
22:51Professor Pa:It's starting to look like the last two minutes of a football game.
22:54Allen Weiner:Well, yeah, exactly.
22:56Professor Pa:We're going to take a little time out for a commercial and then we'll stop the clock with throwing the ball out of bounds.
23:02Allen Weiner:The other thing that, you know, just I find interesting is when we look at our international law justification for attacking Iran, there's a quite different theory. The State Department legal advisor has said, like, actually, we've been involved in a continuing armed conflict with Iran, maybe since 1979, back to the days of the hostage taking. So on the one hand, we don't need a new justification for attacking Iran because we're simply in the middle. It's like December. It's like December 20th, 1941. Like we don't need a new justification for attacking Japan. We're in the middle of the war. So with the international law claim, the argument is there's an ongoing war.
23:48Allen Weiner:With respect to the War of Powers Resolution, the claim is like, no, the war is over permanently, even though, of course, since that ceasefire, there has been the resumption of shooting between the U.S. and Iran. Now, Congress recently passed a concurrent resolution demanding that the president either get congressional explicitly with respect to this operation, that either that the president get congressional approval for his operations, military operations in the Gulf, or that he withdraw U.S. forces. You're the constitutional law expert, not me, in terms of understanding exactly what the effect of a concurrent resolution that does not contemplate presidential signature is.
24:32Allen Weiner:Yeah.
24:32Professor Pa:I mean, this has always been the problem with the War Powers Act is it's not clear how you enforce it.
24:39Allen Weiner:Right.
24:39Professor Pa:Congress isn't willing to enforce it by either, you know, and Congress's ways of enforcing it are so draconian or so politically unpalatable in some ways that they're really hard to use. Right.
24:52Allen Weiner:I don't get that. I mean, I don't get that. Why don't they just cut off funding?
24:55Professor Pa:Well, because, I mean, they could cut off the funding.
24:59Allen Weiner:Right.
24:59Professor Pa:The problem being, it's not clear exactly how they cut off the funding. But if they cut off the funding, the politics of saying, what are we doing about our brave boys? We're cutting off their funds is difficult. You know, impeachment is out of the question.
25:16Allen Weiner:Right.
25:16Professor Pa:We've done it at least twice. I assume we're going to see mission accomplished fairly soon on this. he's going to declare victory and try to go home.
25:26Allen Weiner:I mean, I'll just say two things. We have done the suspension of funding twice. We did it after Vietnam. Right. And we also did it in Somalia after the Black Hawk down operation. And if you're targeted enough about like, you know, the boys get their money for all of the funds. It's just not for this. I've often been surprised by Congress's...
25:51Professor Pa:It can be done. It's not that it can't be done. But do you see anything other than a sort of unilateral announcement we got from the president saying, I've triumphed here, let's turn back to the reflecting pool?
26:06Allen Weiner:Yeah, I mean, I think there will be ongoing negotiation. Look, I think there is a possibility. It's not going to happen within 60 days. I think there is a possibility of an agreement on the nuclear program. My guess is it won't be so different from what was in the JCPOA. The Iranians will agree to limits on enrichment. They might even agree. I've seen some press talking about what's going on inside of Iran. There might be some willingness to say like, hey, no enrichment at all for five years. Right. But limits on enrichment, either for a period of time or the level of enrichment, they'll open up their facilities to IAEA inspectors again, which they had done.
26:52Allen Weiner:And, you know, the evidence before the U.S. withdrew from the JCPOA during the first Trump administration was that Iran was actually largely complying with its obligations under the JCPOA. They did have this residual clandestine. I mean, we know that the Iranians have been trying to figure out, like, if we want to develop a nuclear bomb, you know, how do we do that? There clearly has been a covert program, but they had stayed on the line of like, we're just going to get up to the so-called breakout point, but not cross that threshold. And they were complying with that. So I think the chance that we get a JCPOA type of deal is plausible.
27:33Allen Weiner:And I think it's already interesting that the president was among the most virulent critics of the time limits in the JCPOA that we talked about. And I've already seen him tweeting that with respect to Iran's undertaking that it won't develop a nuclear weapon, as opposed to the interim steps that you would want to take to monitor or control that, the president has already said Iran's agreed to this to infinity. So I think you're right. It may be that he will try to basically find a way of saying we have a great deal and it's better than the Obama deal. I think he needs to find some way of describing it as better than the Obama deal, even if that might not be true.
28:20Professor Pa:Well, that strikes me as a pretty great prediction of exactly where we're going to be. And when he does that, Alan, I'm going to ask you to come back and tell us about what's happened then. I want to thank our guest today, my colleague Alan Weiner. This is Stanford Legal. If you're enjoying the show, please tell a friend and leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. Your feedback improves the show and it helps new listeners to discover us. I'm Pam Carlin. See you next time.
From the publisher
Stanford’s Allen Weiner examines how the U.S. war with Iran raises questions about the president’s power to wage war and negotiate peace.
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The American war with Iran began with ambitious goals, including preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and potentially bringing about regime change. But the conflict may well be leading to a very different outcome, according to Stanford Law School's Allen Weiner, a scholar of international and human rights law and former State Department lawyer. Just prior to the recent collapse of the tenuous cease fire, Weiner joined podcast host Professor Pam Karlan to discuss how the conflict is arguably strengthening Iran’s most repressive factions while putting economic and diplomatic pressure on the United States.
Weiner traces how the conflict grew out of the collapse of the 2015 nuclear deal, asks whether the new agreement with Iran amounts to a weaker version of that accord, and considers how ceasefires and shifting legal rationales have allowed the administration to sidestep Congress and keep the War Powers clock from running out.
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Chapters
00:00:00 Introduction
00:02:09 Back to the JCPOA—The 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal
00:04:23 From "worst deal ever" to a weaker one
00:04:51 Two rounds of strikes
00:07:11 Regime change that wasn't
00:08:40 The Strait of Hormuz and the global economy
00:09:49 Emboldened by Venezuela
00:11:33 Israel in, NATO out
00:12:27 The new MOU
00:14:31 Israel left off the page
00:17:38 Free transit, for now
00:19:06 Treaty or political commitment?
00:21:36 The War Powers loophole
00:24:26 Can Congress actually enforce the War Powers Act?
00:28:12 Conclusion
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