“Iran gets out of jail free. I mean, they’re out of the penalty box at this point," says Senior Fellow Suzanne Maloney in this podcast on Iran in a post-nuclear deal world. "The rest of the world will do business as usual with Iran. Iran will be welcomed to international fora. The ... stench of pariah-hood that had attached itself to Iran during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—both because of the nuclear escalation and because of Ahmadinejad’s proclivity for really provocative statements and reprehensible rhetoric on the Holocaust and other issues—that problem is now gone.” Maloney, the interim deputy director of Foreign Policy at Brookings, and a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy, examines the impact of the nuclear deal on U.S.-Iran relations and on the Iranian people, discusses Iran’s place in the international community, and talks about her optimism for the future of Iran. “It’s a young, dynamic, incredibly well-positioned society for the future,” she says. “I think if I were to place a bet on the long-term democratic opportunities in the region, Iran is it. By a long shot.”

Also in this episode, Senior Fellow David Wessel, director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal & Monetary Policy, delivers his regular "Wessel's Economic Update, this time on the distribution of student loan debt.

Show Notes:

• Follow Suzanne Maloney on Twitter @MaloneySuzanne
• The Brookings Essay: Iran Surprises Itself and the World: A new president may take his country in a new direction
• Debating the Iran Deal Series
• Iran, Syria, And The Secretarian Challenge
• Letters to the Ayatollah: Why Obama's Latest Outreach to Iran's Supreme Leader Was A Mistake
• Maloney's new book: Iran's Political Economy since the Revolution
• Brookings's Markaz blog on Middle East Politics and Policy
• Debating the Iran Nuclear Deal by Robert Einhorn

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