11/12/13 – Flynt Leverett – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, first interview today is Flint Leverett.
He is a professor of international affairs at Penn State and is co-author of Going to Tehran, Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic, a co-author that is with his wife, Hillary Mann Leverett.
And, of course, he's a former senior analyst at the CIA and also formerly served on the National Security Council and in the State Department policy planning staff.
So, the blog also is the same as the book, goingtotehran.com.
Welcome back to the show, Flint.
How are you doing?
Thanks, Scott.
Good to be with you again.
Good times.
Happy to have you here.
So, what do you make of the developments over the weekend?
Thought we had a deal.
Well, I was skeptical that they really were going to reach an agreement this past week in Geneva, and my wife and I both thought that the main point that would keep them from getting to an agreement would be an Iranian interest in having the P5-plus-1, especially the United States, acknowledge, even in a first-stage agreement, that Iran has a legal right to enrich uranium under international safeguards.
And I didn't think that the Obama administration would be willing to do that.
And so there were some other things going on with the French about this heavy water reactor that's under construction in Iran.
But I think the real sticking point, the most significant one, and the one that's going to be the hardest to finesse, is that, once again, the Obama administration has demonstrated its fundamental unwillingness to recognize Iran's legitimate rights.
Well, I'm a bit confused about the timeline, I guess, because it seemed like all issues had basically been ironed out.
They were ready for the signatures, and then the French guy showed up and objected based on the Iraq facility that might become operational in a couple of years, or something like that.
Well, I think it's also clear, I think it's becoming clearer in some of the journalism that's coming out, and from some of the conversations we've had with people who were involved in the talks.
I think it's becoming obvious that the French, I mean, this was one of their objections, and the one that got the most play in the media, that there's this heavy water reactor under construction.
And, you know, I mean, it's kind of a silly issue, because, you know, during the six months or so that this initial first-stage agreement would be in effect, I mean, the Iranians aren't going to finish that reactor, or be anywhere close to it.
Within six months, they're not going to be anywhere close to introducing any nuclear material into it, and so, you know, it's really kind of a red herring.
But the French raised this, but the French were also very hard over on the idea that a preamble to this initial agreement, you know, could not make any reference to Iran's right to safeguarded enrichment.
And Kerry, you know, also took that position.
And so, you know, what happened was the P5-plus-1 then put together a draft agreement that didn't have the recognition of Iran's right to safeguarded enrichment.
The draft also had these extra demands that they basically just stop doing anything at this reactor that's under construction.
And, you know, they put that to the Iranians, and that's not what the Iranians thought they had understandings.
Do you know at what point that language had been added?
Do you know at what point the language had been added?
Because, I guess, it sounds like you're saying that the Americans, if not Kerry, but maybe the lower-level people who were negotiating before him, that they had agreed to this language, and it wasn't a big deal until the French brought it up.
Is that what you're saying?
I think that for Adak, the working-level people had thought they had this worked out.
And, you know, there were French working-level people participating in these discussions.
This was something that was done at, you know, a much higher level within the French government and kind of last-minute.
Now, something like, you know, for the U.S. to recognize Iran's right to enrich, that's not something that working-level people could do.
But Zarif and other Iranian officials had made it clear all along that this is a red line for them.
They can't, in their view, surrender or compromise Iranian rights.
They can do all kinds of things on transparency.
They can do things on limiting, you know, the level of enrichment.
They can do things on expanding access for the IAEA.
And they've gone ahead and concluded a new agreement with the IAEA on that, even after the talks in Geneva failed.
They can do all kinds of things on all of these fronts, but they're not going to compromise what they think are Iran's fundamental nuclear rights.
And they had been pretty clear about that all along.
And I think they thought they had had maybe some private communications from the American side that, you know, the American side understood this.
And so then when the draft text gets presented to the Iranians with Zarif there, and it has no mention of this, and Kerry and others make it clear they're not prepared to include that in the text, you know, this is not something that Zarif could accept.
And, of course, they do have that right just because it's a sovereign state and nobody has the right to stop them in the first place.
And then secondly, they signed a treaty.
Yeah, and as in, you know, when you sign the NPT, what you agree to is that, you know, you will exercise that right in a way that doesn't get you a nuclear weapon, and you will exercise that right under international safeguards.
That's what you commit to in the treaty.
But, you know, you certainly don't abandon that right.
Anything but.
The treaty very explicitly recognizes that right.
And they have the right to withdraw from the treaty as long as they announce it six months beforehand, if they feel like it.
That's exactly right.
I mean, imagine that.
A state.
No, they're maybe not exceptional, but they're a state like the other 190-something states in the world, if not ours.
They are a state like any other state, and they're not going to accept the United States, you know, picking and choosing which of its rights, you know, it can exercise, and, you know, which of its rights under international law the United States is going to deign to respect or not.
Well, this is a real sticky sticking point, because, I mean, I think the Americans have been willing to implicitly recognize Iran's right to enrich, you know, and stop barking about 3.6% or something like that.
But they're not going to, I think, as you're saying here, they're not going to put it in writing in just the same way that the Iranians are not going to accept anything less than that.
So, what are we going to do in nine days?
I think this is going to be hard to finesse.
I mean, I think the U.S. position is wrong.
I think it's wrong in terms of the law.
I think it's wrong diplomatically.
I think it's wrong strategically.
I think it's bad policy as well as bad law.
But I don't think Obama's going to be willing to, you know, spend the political capital he'd need to spend in order to make this a change in his own policy.
And what's really kind of sad about it is that Kerry knows better.
When he was still chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after Obama had become president, Kerry said publicly in 2009 that, you know, Iran had a right to do this and that the idea that we were going to demand that they just completely stop it was, and this was Kerry's word, ridiculous.
He said that this position was ridiculous.
But now he's become Obama's Secretary of State and he's defending it.
Well, and it hadn't worked this whole time.
I mean, all it did was drive them underground and make them go to AQ Khan to buy their equipment instead of buying a turnkey which they were going to buy originally a light water reactor from the Chinese that Bill Clinton wouldn't let them buy, right?
Which wouldn't have even produced weapons-grade material anyway.
That's right.
That's right.
The Iranians have been saying for a long time if there's some part of our nuclear program that you don't like or that you're suspicious about the best, the smartest thing for you to do would actually be to come and work with us.
Right.
So rewind ten years, right?
You're a scientist.
You're technicians.
People understand this stuff actually on site.
But isn't that what they proposed ten years ago?
Let's internationalize our entire nuclear program?
Yeah, they were prepared to do that.
They said they wanted all aspects of the fuel cycle to be conducted on Iranian territory.
They weren't going to farm out enrichment to someone else and then have them denied access to it.
They said all aspects of the fuel cycle need to happen in Iran but we're prepared to do it on an international basis and have Russian technicians, European technicians whoever will have them here at the facilities working with us watching us on top of the IAEA.
Yeah, I think they are prepared to work cooperatively in that way but they are not prepared to surrender their legal rights.
Alright, now getting a little bit into the weeds here I was wondering if you could tell us about this new agreement that the Iranians have signed at a lower level than these diplomats with the IAEA.
Yeah, this is a sort of ad hoc cooperation agreement between Iran and the IAEA that is on top of Iran's already existing safeguards agreement with the IAEA.
What this will do is give the IAEA more access to Iranian facilities that are not covered by the safeguards agreement.
For example, this heavy water reactor that's under construction at Arak under the safeguards agreement Iran doesn't have to let the IAEA into this facility until six months before they introduce nuclear material into it.
Under this agreement it seems this new agreement the IAEA would be able to begin visiting Arak, inspecting Arak pretty close to immediately.
Same thing with a uranium mine that Iran has.
Iran is not obliged under its safeguards agreement to let the IAEA visit this mine, but apparently under this new agreement the IAEA will be allowed access to this.
One thing that's not clear yet from the reports on the agreement it seems as if the agreement also covers this military site Parchin, where the IAEA has already visited this facility twice and found that there was no nuclear related work going on there, but they want to visit it again.
It's not required under the comprehensive safeguards agreement because it's not a nuclear facility but the Iranians have been reluctant to let the IAEA visit again because they say how many times do we have to go through this?
If we're going to let you visit it again when you find that there's nothing there, can we close this file so that every time the United States or Israel comes up with some claim and says you guys need to go visit Parchin we're not having to let you into our military facilities every other month or something so the IAEA and Iran have been at an impasse on that.
It seems like this new agreement may well provide some formula for the IAEA to get access to Parchin, but that is not yet clear from the reports we've seen on that new agreement.
Well I guess I shouldn't put too much faith in the power of journalism or anything but I had sort of been under the impression over here that the Parchin accusations had already been debunked and that even the most hawkish journalists and hawkish former IAEA personnel that can be found on the face of the planet agree that there's nothing going on there that even the accusations aren't correct I agree with you that there's no basis for the IAEA to go back into Parchin except Israel and the United States telling the IAEA you need to go back to Parchin.
There's no So the fact that everybody else knows it ain't true doesn't matter.
That's right.
That's right.
Truth and reality are not necessarily all that important here.
It's become a political issue that the IAEA under a motto wants access to this facility even though Iran has voluntarily given them access to it two times previously and Iran is I think appropriately saying if we're going to let you in again we want to be able to resolve this.
We don't want this to keep coming up.
I'm so disappointed in this thing.
I guess I'm going to not get my hopes up anymore.
I had thought that it was pretty clear they really wanted to work out a deal this time as opposed to how obvious it was that they really weren't trying very hard say this time 2009.
I thought man they really want to do it and then they let a sentence basically that doesn't really affect the actual situation at all but just whether we recognize this or that became a sticking point they ruined.
I sure would like to see this resolved in the next meeting.
It would be nice but I think actually it is a lot like 2009.
I think the Obama administration is approaching this in much the same way that it approached its first round of engagement with Iran over the nuclear issue in 2009.
I think two things are going on that are very similar.
One is I think at some level Obama would like to get a deal.
He just doesn't want to have to spend any political capital or do any hard work in political terms to get a deal.
He essentially wants to outline the deal that he thinks would cause him the least political discomfort with Israel, with Congress, with other constituencies.
If he can get that deal which he can't that would be fine but if he's going to have to acknowledge hard truth like Iran has legitimate nuclear rights, if he's actually going to have to have an unpleasant conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu, if people on the Hill, including Democrats, are going to criticize him, then that's too hard.
He doesn't want to do it.
I think that's very much the approach in 2009.
They weren't prepared to recognize Iran's nuclear rights then.
So they went for a more limited deal and it didn't work.
I think it's also like 2009 in that I think there is a kind of an element of duplicity in the administration's approach.
After a certain point when the administration was working on this more limited fuel swap kind of deal in 2009, essentially the administration offered the Iranians a deal which it fully expected the Iranians to say no to.
Then when the Iranians said yes, we will agree to this more limited fuel swap and told Brazil and Turkey we'll agree to these terms that the Obama administration Obama himself has laid out in letters to you.
Then the administration says hell no, we're not going to take we're not going to take our own deal we want to put more sanctions on Iran.
I think there's an element of duplicity going on here.
I think the Iranians think they've gotten some signals from Kerry or from others on the American side that the administration yeah, we understand about enrichment, but when push comes to shove when the Iranians actually want the United States to say yes, we recognize you have this right Kerry becomes effectively a neocon.
I think the administration is trying once again to set it up so that if it can't get a deal with Iran that presents no domestic challenge, no challenge with Israel if it can't get that deal then it wants to set it up so they can blame the Iranians for the failure.
It's just ridiculous.
All they have to do is try a little bit hard and then they can declare a great victory.
The president who brought peace Obama the great.
Yeah.
This one is not rocket science it's not nuclear science it's pretty straightforward.
But I'm very very skeptical the administration is going to do it.
Alright now, so Julian Borger reported in the Guardian that Obama called Netanyahu on Friday and said hey man, do me a favor and for this weekend stay out of it okay?
I really want to get this done.
And then Netanyahu then turned right around and called everybody else and said please don't do it, please don't do it and got a receptive ear from the French who then sent their guy to sabotage the damn thing.
What do you make of that?
It sounded plausible enough to me.
I think there is an element to that.
I think it's quite plausible that Obama asked Netanyahu to give him a little bit of breathing space to see what he could accomplish in Geneva.
I think it was pretty naive to think that Netanyahu was going to exceed that request.
But I think it's plausible that Obama asked and I mean we know that Netanyahu has been calling the French, he's been calling the Germans, he's been calling the Brits.
He's been doing a lot of lobbying with the Europeans to try and drum up opposition wherever he could to make it more difficult for the United States to move forward in the P5 plus 1 context.
The Israelis are certainly working overtime on the Hill to try and make sure that the Hill may hold off for a little bit on new sanctions but they won't hold off for long and they really want to make sure that the Hill is not going to agree to any relaxation, significant relaxation of the sanctions to facilitate a nuclear deal.
So the Israelis are going to be doing this sort of thing on multiple fronts.
Netanyahu, Israeli diplomats, the Israel lobby here, they're all going to be working overtime on this stuff.
Well maybe Obama just called them to say, hey take the weekend, go to the beach because I'm going to blow it myself.
I don't need your help even.
Yeah, I mean, I think it was a mistake for Netanyahu, for him to call Netanyahu.
Netanyahu had already come out publicly and dumped all over this agreement which hadn't even been finalized yet.
And, you know, pretty clear Netanyahu's not going to be a helpful player on this.
And, you know, if he's not going to be helpful, why give him the time of day?
Yeah, exactly.
It's just another exercise in Obama's weakness.
Yeah.
As Bill Clinton once famously, I think after his first meeting with Netanyahu, Bill Clinton famously said, you know, who does this guy think he is?
Who's the superpower here?
Right.
Well, he knows it's him.
Yeah.
As Benjamin Netanyahu himself said, yeah, it's absurd.
American support for what I want?
It's crazy.
I don't know how they let me get away with it.
Yeah.
And, you know, Netanyahu is not counting on the administration really to do his bidding on this.
He's going to work on all other channels, too.
Well, thanks very much for coming back on the show.
I sure appreciate it.
My pleasure.
Thank you for having me, Scott.
What a bummer, huh?
Alright.
That's our friend Flint Leverett from goingtotehran.com teaches at Penn State.
And if you'd like to learn and order more, send them a message at commoditydiscs.com or check them out at scotthorton.org.
Thanks for watching.
We'll see you next time.
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