08/21/15 – Tariq Rauf – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Our first guest on the show today is Tariq Ralph.
He is a director on the board of Atomic Reporters.
That's at atomicreporters.com.
He is the director of the Disarmament, Arms Control, and Non-Proliferation Program at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, that's SIPRI, S-I-P-R-I.org.
We've talked in the past couple of days about articles there by Robert Kelly, SIPRI.org, and former head of Verification and Security Policy Coordination Office, reporting to the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Wow.
All right, welcome to the show.
Tariq, how are you?
Very well, thank you.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Thank you for joining us on the show today.
My friend, Yosef Butt, the nuclear physicist, has been sending along your articles over the last few days here, writing about the Iran nuclear deal.
I'm trying to keep up, so obviously all the big news is about this report in the Associated Press by George John, saying that there's this unprecedented form of what they're calling a side deal with the IAEA.
Part of the implementation of the nuclear deal with Iran would be the inspection of this military site, Parchin.
According to the AP story, Iran is going to be allowed to inspect themselves.
If you could, please, sir, I guess to start, give us your best rundown of that article, the major assertions in it, and then the development since then, and then we can get into, I guess this will, if you could end the answer with the part where we get to how last night they released what they said was the document that the report was originally based on.
Yes.
So as you know, on the 14th of July in Vienna, the six major powers, including the US and Iran, signed this joint comprehensive plan of action on resolving the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program, under which Iran would reduce its uranium enrichment capability and so on.
But a side agreement to this is a roadmap that was agreed simultaneously between the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran to resolve two other issues.
So one is the issue about what is called possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program.
And these are allegations emanating from about 2005 onward that Iran had been engaged in activities related to developing a nuclear weapon.
And related to that is a military industrial facility in Iran called Parchin.
This is a very large site over some 50 square kilometers where they make all kinds of military equipment.
And the allegation is that there is a big steel chamber there, much like a big tanker truck, the tank part of the tanker truck.
And inside that metal chamber, Iran might have carried out experiments to test the trigger of a nuclear weapon.
So these are two areas that need to be clarified.
And the roadmap has two separate arrangements that have not yet been made public.
And so a lot of the discussion, particularly among the opponents of the Obama administration on this Vienna agreement, is to find out what is in these two arrangements.
And what George Yan of the Associated Press reported the other day is that somebody in Vienna showed him a copy of the separate arrangement regarding verification in Parchin.
And he was not given a copy to take away with him, so he had to sort of write the contents of that document, and which is what he published.
So one of my questions is, in this day and age, everyone, particularly every journalist has a cell phone.
So why didn't he not just take a picture of this instead of trying to copy it by hand?
Second, there are many problems in terms of the standard language that the IAEA uses, the technical items about verification and so on that all, you know, smell like a stinky rat in there, which is why I personally believe that this document that George Yan was given is not really an authentic document.
Alright, now, yeah, it's true, my best knowledge anyway, that they never did publish a picture of it.
They only published copied text, you know, typed out text as an AP story that they put out last night that was republished everywhere.
Nothing about a photograph there.
But then, you know, I was actually embarrassed that it took, I just had glanced over the thing so briefly last night, I didn't even notice, and I was embarrassed that I had to read your note for it to be pointed out to me that Iran is titled the Islamic State of Iran in this document.
I mean, that even sounds like the kind of error that, you know, is too stupid for Mossad.
I mean, where did this thing even come from?
Well, you know, if you're George Yan and you are under pressure to copy this document and you know, there is a lot of news about IS, Islamic State, so he may have made an innocent mistake.
I see what you mean.
Yeah.
No, that's a plausible explanation.
That's why I was wondering, you know, that it's strange that why George didn't take a picture of it on a cell phone.
And but this is usually what happens in these cloak and dagger affairs where somebody from some government or intelligence agency comes up to a journalist and says, well, here is a copy of some document, but, you know, I can't show you everything, the markings on it and so on, because it will reveal where I got it from.
So this is the usual subterfuge that is used in the IAEA.
And when I was there, we are well aware of this, of the forgeries that were given to the IAEA, particularly relating to Iraq.
And so the methodology for those forgeries and what purports to be this document that George Yan published, you can see many similarities in the methodology there.
And now, OK, so starting out, the thing about the Islamic State, I could see how that would just be, you know, a slip.
But you have, you know, quite a few more notes that you've taken on what's purported to be at least, you know, his his notes of the document he saw.
But it looks like, you know, a lot of this stuff couldn't be chalked up to John's errors or Jan, however you say, to the AP reporters errors.
He didn't, you know, shorthand it so much that he's using all these terms that, as you say, the IAEA would not use in this context.
Yes, I know George Yan very well.
He's a good reporter.
I have a lot of respect for him and he's not a stupid person.
He wouldn't, you know, damage his credibility by transcribing sloppily.
So I believe he transcribed as faithfully as he could, given the time he was given to copy this document.
But this basically shows an amateurish effort to try and come up with this type of document.
Most of the language is not language that the IAEA uses in its official document.
IAEA uses very precise terminology and it has been doing this for 60 years and there has been no deviation.
And then more worrisome are the two key areas about the way in which inspections would be carried out at Parchin.
And I find it practically unbelievable that the IAEA would have accepted those two methodologies.
One is that Iran...
Actually, actually, hold it right there.
We're almost at this break and I'm going to get back to it and make sure you have plenty of time to talk about the methodologies that this document purports to describe when we get back.
But if you could, could you just give us one or two examples real quick of the language where it just doesn't seem right as we got to this break?
Well, they talk about a technical sort of a meeting and the IAEA doesn't do technical meetings.
It does expert meetings, topical meetings, and so on.
The name of the Iranian official who is signing it is practically unknown.
The IAEA never signs such documents with anyone other than the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
All right.
Well, we'll have to stop it right there.
When we get back, we'll talk more about that and the methodologies and the rest of the doubt.
And then we'll talk about, you know, what's probably going to really be the case when it comes to inspecting Parchin, too.
One second.
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All right, y'all, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
Welcome to the show, The Scott Horton Show.
Talking with Tariq Rauf, formerly with the International Atomic Energy Agency, writing at AtomicReporters.com, and we're talking about George John's big AP story, saying Iran gets to investigate themselves, basically.
They get to provide all their own samples.
After his article came under fire, the AP released what is purported to be a draft agreement, which they say they have administration officials confirming that it's not much different in practice or in the import of it than the final agreement.
That's what they claim.
But then Tariq has taken a look at this document and just says, well, geez, this has not credible written all over it.
Such major mistakes here, terminology that IAEA would not use in a document like this.
But then, much more importantly, as you were about to say there before the break, Tariq, it describes processes for the taking of samples and the investigation of this supposed suspected nuclear site, Parchin, that are just not believable to you.
And I think the other side of that is what the war party is saying, is that, oh, my God, look at this deal that the IAEA wouldn't cut with anyone else.
But apparently the Americans are willing to, you know, Kerry and Obama are willing to let the Iranians get away with bloody murder here.
Well, there are some technical problems with some paragraphs in this agreement, really paragraph three, four and five.
So in one of these paragraphs, it says that Iran will give to the IAEA environmental samples taken from one of the buildings at Parchin, where there is this big chamber where apparently explosive tests were carried out by Iran prior to 2003.
Normally, the IAEA does its environmental sampling itself.
By environmental sampling, we mean you take small pieces of swabs or a piece of cloth, so to speak, of about four inches by four inches, and you pick up dust samples from the walls, the equipment, the machinery, cracks in the floor.
And if nuclear material was used in that location, these swabs will pick up nanogram, microgram particles of uranium.
These swabs are then put inside a clear plastic bag, much like the one we see at airports when we go through security.
Each swipe sampling kit has six of these patches, and they then go to Vienna for analysis.
And in Vienna, much like how the International Olympic Committee, when they take samples of blood and urine from athletes, they anonymize them, and two samples are sent to independent laboratories for analysis, and then one sample is analyzed by the IAEA itself in Vienna.
And normally, samples from Iran are sent—one set of samples are sent to the United States, to the AFTAC laboratory outside of Washington, which is one of the world's most sophisticated laboratories to detect the presence of uranium and plutonium, which are the two nuclear materials useful for nuclear weapons.
So I find it quite unprecedented for the agency to agree that the Iranians themselves would take the samples out of sight of the IAEA.
And you're saying it's so unprecedented that it's implausible to you?
It is implausible the way it's written, but it could be as an unprecedented, but as a confession to Iran, if in the presence of the IAEA inspectors, where the IAEA inspectors could clearly see, and they could give the Iranians, the IAEA swipe sampling kit, and then tell them, swipe this part of the wall or this part of this machine, and then give the swipe back to me to put in the plastic bag, that is one thing, but this is not how it is written here, and so that makes it quite suspicious.
And for the IAEA, it does inspections in 156 countries, so if it makes a special deal for Iran, tomorrow some other country will say, well, I'd like a similar deal as well, please, thank you.
So for those reasons, and to maintain the integrity of the credibility of the IAEA's verification system, I personally would find it very difficult to believe that the IAEA would have agreed to such a methodology.
From Iran's point of view, they would be trying to make sure that an IAEA inspector doesn't bring in a uranium or plutonium particle on their clothing, coming from some other country where they might have gone to a nuclear facility, and their clothing might have picked up these particles, and then accidentally transport them to Parchin.
So that's a genuine fear on the part of the Iranians, and that is why one could see, it may be plausible, that in the presence of the IAEA, using IAEA equipment, under IAEA direction, the Iranian technician could swipe the wall.
But then later on, it uses language which is very strange, because I've been involved in the drafting of a lot of IAEA technical documents.
It is non-standard language, and IAEA lawyers use a very precise way of referring to technical activities, and the wording here is not that.
And so some of these are pretty obvious mistakes that somebody trying to cook up a document who could do a little bit of research on Google might write a document like this.
All right, now, one small point here is that Yosef Butt, who I mentioned previously, the nuclear physicist, has an article at Huffington Post today, or came out last night, about what happened in Syria, where one of the swipes was put in the pocket of an IAEA inspector.
It was kind of a rogue swipe that they didn't have companion comparison swipes for all the other analysis, and that was the one that happened to show the uranium on it.
So he was showing that, a widely verified fact there, and was showing that as a reason, like you were just referring to, why the Iranians might want to do it.
But I want to get back to what you're saying here is, it is inconceivable to you that the IAEA would agree to a deal where the Iranians take the swipes, but that the IAEA aren't right there in the room, within the line of sight, holding the Ziploc bag, etc., etc., and that because this article claims that, this article claims basically what John claims it claims, that Iran gets to inspect themselves, that you're saying this document just couldn't be even a legitimate document, must be a forgery.
Yes.
The IAEA wouldn't agree whether the IAEA shows up and they say, okay, here are swipes, the line disappears into a room, comes back five minutes later and said, okay, here, I swapped the inside of the room.
So that is implausible.
But doing it in the presence, as you pointed out, within the direct line of sight, that one could, it's unprecedented, but one could accept in the current circumstances as a very unique situation.
Then there's also a very bizarre paragraph, which is paragraph five, that has the courtesy by Iran, the IAEA Director General and the Deputy Director General for verification would be given a public visit to Iran.
I mean, this type of paragraph doesn't belong in a technical agreement.
The IAEA Director General has been to Iran several times before, and he doesn't need this type of throwaway text.
And it doesn't say what this public visit is for.
So again, this is sort of a red herring that sticks out like a sore thumb to mixed metaphors.
And then it talks about a technical roundtable.
Normally, the IAEA language is a technical meeting, a topical meeting, a dialogue forum, an expert's meeting.
A technical roundtable is, again, not a standard IAEA language.
And then one of the people who is signing the, supposedly, this title is also mixed up.
It's not entirely incorrect, but it is also not fully correct.
So this is a mistake that somebody can easily make when they're trying to cook up a document that is not genuine.
Oh, very interesting.
So you're saying not just, as you mentioned previously, before we went out to the break there in the first segment about the Iranian signatory is wrong, but they even slightly fouled up the title of the IAEA signatory as well.
That's right.
Yes.
All right.
So this is a mistake that one could use in a newspaper because you want to save words.
But in a legal document, you use the correct title.
So when President Obama signs something, it will say the President of the United States of America.
I just wouldn't say Barack Obama, U.S. President.
So this is that type of a mistake.
Right.
Now, in your comment at the bottom, you compare this to the Niger letter.
And as you mentioned here, you used to work on the case of Iraq.
And I wonder when Mohamed ElBaradei testified to the United Nations that he and his staff debunked the Niger uranium forgeries in 30 minutes using Google, was he talking about you?
Were you the one who debunked the Niger uranium forgery?
No, it was one of my technical colleagues who came from a country, one of the nuclear weapon states.
He was a colleague from France who did that.
He was the person, not me.
All right.
But you were all right there working on the same project at the time, investigating Saddam's supposed nuclear program?
Yeah, we were all part of the same team.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
Very interesting.
And so then if we're talking, you know, the early part of 2003, then, you know, right before the war broke out, the entire consensus inside IAEA was that there was no nuclear nothing inside Iraq at that time?
That's correct.
And this is what Director General ElBaradei said.
On the floor of the Security Council after the presentation by Secretary Colin Powell, who talked about all this fudge, which we found out later, intelligence information and ElBaradei said that the IAEA had no evidence of the regeneration of a nuclear weapon program in Iraq.
He said he used pretty much those precise words.
The Bush administration dismissed that and we all know, you know, all the cooked up stuff that came out later.
And they found nothing after the overthrow of Saddam.
Right.
Now, sorry for that diversion, but I couldn't help with the experience that you have there.
But to ask that.
But I want to ask you one more thing about Parchin, if it's OK.
And I'm sorry, because I'm actually already keeping you over time.
Is it all right if I ask you one more thing?
Yes, certainly.
What do you make of Robert Kelly's analysis of the accusations about Parchin?
If I read him right, he doesn't seem to think that there even ever was an explosives chamber there.
And Gareth Porter has reported that Danilenko, the former Soviet nuclear physicist, was not even a nuclear physicist and his expertise was nanodiamonds, not fission at all.
And I just wonder what's your opinion of all that?
Well, first of all, Robert Kelly is a very qualified person.
He has worked at the Los Alamos Laboratory in the US, also at the Livermore Laboratory in California.
He worked on nuclear intelligence for the Los Alamos Laboratory.
He worked for the remote sensing department of the US Department of Energy.
And so he's a person who knows what he's talking about, who has actually seen and touched nuclear material, going into nuclear weapons and knows what nuclear weapons are compared to many others who can talk about nuclear weapons, but they have never seen or worked with nuclear weapons.
And so I have a lot of confidence in Bob Kelly's interpretations and assessment.
And so Bob has claimed that, first of all, the chamber, he questions the existence of the chamber the way it has been described.
And second, he says that even if it was there, the way it's been set up, it couldn't have been used for the types of tests for developing triggers for nuclear weapons as the accusations have it.
So normally, when they test for triggers, you do that in the open, and the people are in the bunker.
And then you put this protective wall so that the explosive debris, you know, is collected within a certain area, whereas for nanodiamonds, that's what you need, you need the explosion inside the chamber, because you want to collect the diamonds, whereas if you get the explosion in the open air, the so called diamonds would be scattered all over the place, and you'd have to go pick them off the ground.
Whereas when they're in the chamber, they're all inside.
So that gives more credibility, as Bob Kelly points out to the theory that this chamber, if it exists, is really for nanodiamonds, and which was the expertise of this Russian scientist, Danilenko, who's already published a book on this, and it's sort of well published on that matter.
Yeah, that's what Gordon Prather, who's the former chief scientist of the Army and former formerly at Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Laboratories, former maker of H-bombs himself.
That was what he said, too, is you test these things outside in the open.
That raises one more question, which is Marovan and the accusations that they were doing explosives testing like this out in the open, out there at Marovan, which I think is in Western Iran.
And I believe my understanding is that the Iranians had invited the IAEA to come on out then, but the IAEA had declined their invitation.
Can you shed any light on that?
Yes.
So when the Director General issued his report in November 2011, which has an annex which describes these roughly 12 areas of so-called possible military dimensions, there was an entry in there that in addition to Parchin, another location where Iran was accused to carry out nuclear weapon related development activities, there's a place called Marovan.
And when the Iranians have offered the IAEA twice to visit Marovan and the IAEA has said that they prefer to visit Parchin, Parchin is the priority place that they would like to go, and they have dismissed Iranian invitations to go to Marovan, and the IAEA has not provided a technical explanation as to why Marovan is no longer a site of interest to them.
It is possible that they have figured out that the information on Marovan was not authentic and therefore they have dropped it, but they don't want to publicly admit that.
But that's my speculation.
Right.
And I know it's just speculation, but the counterfactual there, if they really thought that there was something going on out there to find, would it be a priority necessarily?
Or they really just have to take these things in order and Parchin first because David Albright's always harping about it or something?
Well, no, there is no logical sequence.
So if Marovan became available to them, the IAEA should go to Marovan, collect whatever information they need there.
And also, as you mentioned the counterfactual, if the Iranians are inviting the IAEA to Marovan, they are pretty confident that there is nothing there that would incriminate them.
Yeah, seemingly.
Just as when the IAEA did visit Parchin twice before, the IAEA did not find any signs of nuclear material, which is what the IAEA is looking for.
The IAEA's authority is to look for nuclear material.
It's not concerned with exploding bridge wire or conventional explosives or ballistic missiles.
That is not the mandate of the IAEA.
Right.
All right.
I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your time on the show and thank you for your great reporting on this issue, Tariq.
You're welcome.
All right.
So that is Tariq Ralph, and he is director on the board of Atomic Reporters.
That's AtomicReporters.com.
And he is the director of the Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Program at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
That's SIPRI.org.
And he is the former head of Verification and Security Policy Coordination Office, reporting to the director general of the IAEA.
We'll be right back after this.
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