Understanding the Iran negotiations

Jeffrey Engel, an award-winning American history scholar and director of the Center for Presidential History at SMU, was interviewed by KLIF radio on Thursday morning about the Iran negotiations, prior to the announcement of an agreement being reached.

He said, in part, ". . . if a deal comes out . . . that involves a detailed level of inspections, we should all celebrate. That’s a good thing. And the reason being that either the Iranians will let people in and keep the inspection regime and make sure that we know exactly what they’re doing or they’ll do what Iraq did, which is to violate their inspections.” 

Asked earlier about comparing Iran with Iraq because they are in the same part of the world and have similar names, he said, "This is a crutial point that your listeners should understand. The first is that Iran has been relatively good as these things go, about letting international inspectors in. The Iraqis were famous for giving us the run around, famous for essentially thumbing their nose at the world. The Iranians to date have not done that. They actually  have kept up pretty well with inspections.”

Listen to the entire KLIF interview. 

More about SMU expertise on the Iran nuclear arms negotiations.