06/13/14 – Yousaf Butt – The Scott Horton Show

What was the only interest group in DC pushing war with Syria last summer?
AIPAC and the Israel Lobby.
What's the only interest group in DC pushing to sabotage the nuclear deal with Iran right now?
AIPAC and the Israel Lobby.
Why doesn't the President force an end to the occupation of Palestine, a leading cause of terrorist attacks against the United States?
AIPAC and the Israel Lobby.
The Council for the National Interest is pushing back, putting America first and educating the people about what's really at stake in the Middle East.
Help support their important work at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
All right, you guys, welcome back to the show here.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
And I'm very pleased I got Josef Butt back on the line.
He's a nuclear physicist and a writer.
And, ah, geez, I can't keep up with your career anymore.
Which institute are you at nowadays?
Well, I'm consulting with the British American Security Information Council and also at the Cultural Intelligence Institute in DC.
Okay, great.
And formerly of the Monterey Institute and other famous… Federation of American Scientists.
Ah, yeah, right.
Okay, good deal.
Yeah, I'm sorry I don't have an up-to-date bio.
I should have asked you for one here.
No problem.
Anyway, the great Josef Butt, everybody.
One of my favorite writers on the Iran nuclear beat.
You know, there are really only, I don't know, five or ten people in North America who really have an interest in writing about this issue all the time.
And not all of them are all that good.
So, anyway, it's really good to have you on and good to talk to you again.
And good to have the opportunity to get your perspective on things.
And I guess we've got to start with the big news, which is that waylines are being drawn, at least in Iraq.
I guess we could put Syria to the side for a moment because that's still a confused issue.
But at least in Iraq, America is full-scale back on the side of Iran and its friends in the Dawah Party government in Baghdad there, like the old days back in the Bata Brigades against the Sunni-based insurgency.
And so I wonder whether you think that that's going to perhaps help the possibility of going ahead and getting this nuclear issue out of the way, or they're perhaps going to be so embarrassed by the fact that the U.S. Army is still fighting for Iran in Iraq that then they'll try to scotch the deal somehow so they don't get along too well, I don't know.
What do you think?
Well, it's hard to say.
One would hope the interests, as you say, are aligned in Iraq.
The U.S. and Iranian interests are on the same side.
So if there were a nuclear deal, it would help the situation because we could certainly use Iran's help there.
So the only problem is the administration.
There's also infighting between the administration and Congress.
So even within the U.S. government, people don't see eye to eye.
Right.
Well, I guess let me ask you this.
That's understanding anyway.
I don't mean to try to ask you to be in the mind of the war party necessarily or anything like that, but just from what they've said, from what they're about, what national interest of America's is really threatened by the Iranian regime?
If, after all, as we've agreed because it's a fact, America just fought an eight-year war in Iraq basically for their interests there, what really is outstanding other than this nuclear deal?
Well, not much.
I'm not really well versed in all the geopolitics of the region.
I prefer just to stick to the nuclear issues.
But as far as I see it, actually the interests actually are quite aligned between the U.S. and Iran in fighting the Sunni terrorism issue in general.
So cooperation on a nuclear deal makes a lot of sense for everyone.
Well, I should agree with that too.
I can't figure out, I mean, and I'm honestly trying.
I can't figure out what the problem is other than this issue.
And I think as we're finding out more and more, and as many of us already understood, there never really was much of an issue here in the first place.
It makes for a great political fight because it has the word nuclear in it.
And that's scary as hell to people, right?
But that doesn't mean that there's actually anything to be afraid of here or that there ever was.
So I've always been pretty hopeful that if the U.S. government and the Iranian government have the political will to try to come to an agreement, that surely they'll be able to since they really never wanted more than a nuclear capability anyway, right?
Yeah, that's pretty much exactly right.
I think if you go back into the history, the finding in 2005 that Iran violated its comprehensive safeguards agreement is actually a finding that's sort of a bureaucratic thing, that some nuclear material was not accounted for.
No one has ever said Iran was manufacturing nuclear weapons.
A decade ago, they didn't even have the nuclear material to do that.
Even if they wanted to, they couldn't have been doing it.
So it was a bureaucratic issue of mostly of this nuclear material accountancy error.
There were a couple of other issues where Iran was found in noncompliance, but nothing that serious.
And those issues, in fact, were resolved in 2008.
The entire situation has been politicized and made scary, as you say, unnecessarily.
Everything could have been resolved in 2008, but you had these UN Security Council resolutions, which in fact, in my opinion, were very unorthodox legal application of these sanctions because they're only supposed to apply in a finding of a threat to the peace or where one nation is about to attack another nation or has attacked another nation, not about a material accountancy error in the safeguards agreement.
So it's been inflated up since the very beginning, and it hasn't been deflated when it should have been in 2008.
It's been spun up by the media, and I think you're one of the few folks who are still fighting the good fight out there.
Well, you know, it's funny.
I mean, I can totally see the perspective that if the media has been saying that this is a really problem for this long, and they never really correct it, well, then it must really be a problem for this long, or else people just assume that there's a check and balance in the media market somewhere, that there's some kind of accountability even if they screw up for a while, and it's just the consensus that everybody knows what a terrible problem this is because they never heard anyone say otherwise before, and that becomes the real problem is just the impression that everybody's under, which becomes all they need to know.
But it's funny because when you go back and look at the pieces, like you're saying about an accounting error here, you know, however many grams of missing material at one point based on paperwork, or like Gareth Porter writes about in his book about a balancing machine and some magnets that are some dual-use items that could be used, and what happens is it's just like with the run-up to the Iraq War, is you have basically these data points become talking points, and then each talking point becomes embellished and embellished, and by the time you have 10 talking points times 10, holy crap, it's a pretty fearful case for what a terrible danger we're all in.
But the truth of the matter and the actual science and the measurements and the reality got lost way behind the narrative.
And so here we are.
Hey, if it's 2014 and they don't have nukes yet, I'm pretty sure they never were making them, or else we'd all been blowed up a long time ago, right?
Yeah, you know, again, as I said, I think what the actual findings are and how it's spun up in the media are vastly different.
Part of the problem, of course, is many in the nonproliferation community, experts or so-called experts also play into this narrative, and, you know, some of them honestly, some of them for various other reasons.
I think a bunch of them honestly want to have a much stronger nonproliferation outlook.
And, you know, I call them the maximalists.
So, you know, which is fine, but that's just your opinion.
You know, it's just their opinion.
The international law as it's written, as it's codified, is actually very lenient.
And that's unfortunate, but that's the reality.
And, you know, can Iran cheat?
You know, any country can cheat, yeah.
So, you know, it's difficult to focus on just one nation for that reason.
Right.
All right, everybody, when we get back, we'll talk more about Iran's nuclear program and the possibility of a quote-unquote final deal here and what that might entail.
I'm trying to be optimistic about it.
It's Yosef, but we'll be right back.
This part of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by audible.com.
And right now, if you go to audibletrial.com slash Scott Horton Show, you can get your first audio book for free.
Of course, I'm recommending Michael Swanson's book, The War State, the Cold War Origins of the Military Industrial Complex and the Power Elite.
Maybe you've already bought The War State in paperback, but you just can't find the time to read it.
Well, now you can listen while you're out marching around.
Get the free audio book of The War State by Michael Swanson, produced by Listen and Think Audio at audibletrial.com slash Scott Horton Show.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Yosef Butt.
He's a nuclear physicist and a writer on the Iran nuclear issue, as you will see if you Google.
So we're talking about the Iran nuclear deal.
Right now, it's the in-between time.
We had the interim deal signed last November, and now they're still negotiating all the way through.
All reports about the implementation of the interim deal are that that implementation has gone swimmingly on the Iranian side, I believe.
Correct, Yosef?
Yeah, that's right.
What all does that entail, briefly, by the way?
I mean, not what all, but as much as you want to talk about it.
They stopped their 20% enrichment.
They've converted a bunch of the uranium hexafluoride gas that was enriched to 20% into an oxide form, which is a metal form.
So these centrifuges run on gas.
If you want to further enrich above 20%, you need it in a gaseous form.
Once you've converted it into a metal or a metal oxide form, it becomes kind of a pain.
You have to reconvert it into gas to try to carry forth the conversion.
So they've done various things to everything that was asked of them, basically, to add credence to the fact that they were acting in good faith.
So the IAEA has signed off on that.
And even the U.S. and the other nations that are negotiating with Iran have all said that the interim measures Iran is living up to, and even some of them exceeding.
By that, I mean doing it quicker than they had asked Iran to do.
So that interim agreement now ends on July 20th.
So what we're seeing now is the negotiating that's required to have what's called a comprehensive deal after that date.
So the things that you're describing there basically revolves around the concept of the breakout, and I guess it's sort of like a shade of blue, right?
There's no exact definition of a breakout.
You can try to estimate a time on breakout, and that would be the time that they go from saying, aha, we're going to try to make nukes real fast now and kick the inspectors out to the time that they have a nuke made, I guess a single one, that they want to basically, the American or the Western goal here is to lengthen that time to whatever they think is an acceptable breakout period.
And the activities that you're describing here, where they're going ahead and converting their uranium hexafluoride gas into a metal and that kind of thing, this is basically along those lines, lengthening that breakout time and going along with the West's demand that it should be harder and harder and harder for them to possibly be able to make a nuclear weapon, I guess, to give Navy time to prepare airstrikes or whatever, if they were to ever begin to try to make one.
And it's actually even, let's say, it's the time required to get the material that would be needed to make, just the very raw material, not taking into account the time that all the designing and fusing and electronics.
Well, that makes it an even more meaningless term, doesn't it?
It just means 90% uranium in their hand?
Yeah, exactly, 80 to 90% enriched uranium and amass the amount of material that's needed for a single nuke.
But a single nuke is much more than just the material.
So, I mean, that's one part of it.
Of course, so that's the uranium pathway to make nuclear weapons.
There's also a plutonium pathway to make nuclear weapons, and that's the ARAK facility that also concerns the West and the nations negotiating with Iran.
And just today, Iran announced that it made another good faith move in saying that they would redesign that facility so that it makes much, much less plutonium.
So this redesign at ARAK is another positive move from Iran just announced today.
And that seems like a real reassuring move because that thing, isn't it designed to already produce, or I'm confusing it with Boucher.
Boucher is the light water reactor that produces the plutonium that's so polluted you can't really use it.
ARAK really would produce weapons-grade plutonium, but then they would still need a whole new facility to reprocess it and they would not be able to even harvest the plutonium out of the ARAK facility without everyone in the whole wide world knowing anyway, right?
Yeah, well, you know, you could make a covert facility, I suppose, but it's, you know, as you say, they would need an extra facility to do that even at ARAK.
So, you know, but again, if they're going to this trouble of redesigning it, it's really not, you know, it's showing you that they're going in the other direction.
They're not really going in that way.
So, you know, and again, people now even, it's interesting, even within the nonproliferation community, there's beginning to be disagreements because, you know, the U.S. negotiating position and several think tanks have advocated this idea of breakout being the holy grail, that we should lengthen the time.
But in a foreign policy article, Jeffrey Lewis of the Monterey Institute, where I was formerly, just heavily criticized, saying that it's a dead wrong move to obsess over breakout because, you know, in his mind, you know, if they really wanted to breakout, they could do it in a covert way.
So then, you know, this other group is saying, well, we need much more intrusive inspections and don't, you know, negotiate for that.
Don't negotiate for breakout.
So people don't know what they're doing, basically, because they're all acting outside of the law.
You know, I mean, I'm not, I don't mean illegally, but extrajudicially.
There's no legal framework to guide the nonproliferation community.
So they're just making things up as they can and trying to extract as many concessions from Iran.
Well, but wait a minute.
I mean, wasn't it always part of the understanding that they would probably, at least if they didn't outright sign the additional protocol again, that they would have an agreement along those lines with expanded inspection and verification?
That would be part of this anyway.
So I didn't understand what was his point there, other than just to make sure they don't forget to include that, as though that was ever a danger, that they were going to not include, and we want more inspections, too.
Yeah, well, you know, I think they want things even above the additional protocol.
Let's put it that way.
I think they expect to get concessions beyond the additional protocol, too.
Yeah, I wonder about that.
I mean, it seems like kind of a strange, it's almost a Donald Rumsfeldian standard that, you know, there always could be a boulder somewhere.
Sure.
That has a secret hatch to a secret uranium enrichment facility that nobody knows about.
So I guess, you know, we never can trust or verify what they're not up to.
Exactly, exactly.
So, you know, there has to be reasonable limits, and those reasonable limits have been codified in the additional protocol for the community, and that's what, in my opinion, people should be aiming for.
In my view, you know, I think a point that's lost in the media coverage on this is we don't even know the term, how long the duration of this comprehensive deal.
Iran wants it to last about three years.
The numbers Washington insiders are throwing around are from five to 20 years.
So, you know, I don't think Iran will ever agree to it because these things go way beyond the normal intrusiveness of inspections.
Everything that's being negotiated now goes way beyond.
So it's never going to last forever.
And it also would mean it would take that long for our side to lift the sanctions, right?
I'm not sure about that.
I think if they, yeah, that's something I'm not sure.
I think they could start to lift the sanctions if they see Iran agreeing to all those terms.
But my point was I think a smarter thing all around would have been, or still could be if people start paying attention, would be to agree to a permanent deal, but to agree to a permanent deal that centers around existing nonproliferation laws.
So you could just say, well, you know, we'll force Iran or we'll get Iran to voluntarily comply with the additional protocol forever instead of saying, well, we're going to reduce their, you know, centrifuges to 500 in number, and we're going to make them do all these things, but for five years.
That's like, okay, then we have the same problem.
We're going to have the same negotiating problem in five or ten years, you know.
So what's the point?
It makes much more sense to go towards something that already exists, but to make it permanent.
Right.
Thank you so much for your time.
There's the music.
Sorry, we're out of it.
But great to talk to you again.
Thank you for coming back on the show.
Okay, y'all, that's Yosef Butt, formerly with the Federation for American Scientists and the Monterey Institute, and now I forgot what, but anyway, he's a nuclear physicist and writes about Iran nuclear issues, and you'll enjoy reading him.
So go look him up.
We'll be right back.
You hate government?
One of them libertarian types?
Maybe you just can't stand the president, gun grabbers, or warmongers.
Me too.
That's why I invented libertystickers.com.
Well, Rick owns it now, and I didn't make up all of them, but still, if you're driving around and want to tell everyone else how wrong their politics are, there's only one place to go.
Libertystickers.com has got your bumper covered.
Left, right, libertarian, empire, police, state, founders, quote, central banking.
Yes, bumper stickers about central banking.
Lots of them.
And, well, everything that matters.
Libertystickers.com.
Everyone else's stickers suck.
Hey, y'all, Scott here.
Like I told you before, the Future Freedom Foundation at FFF.org represents the best of the libertarian movement.
Led by the fearless Jacob Hornberger, FFF writers James Bovard, Sheldon Richman, Wendy McElroy, Anthony Gregory, and many more.
Write the op-eds and the books, host the events, and give the speeches that are changing our world for the better.
Help support the Future Freedom Foundation.
Subscribe to their magazine, The Future of Freedom, or to contribute, just look for the big red donate button at the top of FFF.org.
Peace and freedom.
Thank you.
Hey, y'all, Scott Horton here, and I'm so excited about Commodity Discs from CommodityDiscs.com.
They're one-ounce silver pieces with a QR code engraved on the back side.
Scan the code with your phone and get the instant spot price.
Commodity Discs are paving the way forward for the alternative currency community in America and around the world.
The QR code, Commodity Disc.
Technology has now finally made a real free-market silver currency viable.
And anyone who donates $100 or more to The Scott Horton Show at ScottHorton.org slash donate gets one free.
That's CommodityDiscs.com.
The military industrial complex.
The disastrous rise of misplaced power.
Hey, y'all, Scott Horton here.
I'd like for you to read this book, The War State, by Michael Swanson.
America's always gone to war a lot, though in older times it would disarm for a bit between each one.
But in World War II, the U.S. built a military and intelligence apparatus so large it ended up reducing the former constitutional government to an almost ceremonial role and converting our economy into an engine of destruction.
In The War State, Michael Swanson does a great job telling the sordid history of the rise of this national security state, relying on important first-hand source material, but writing for you and me.
Find out how Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy all alternately empowered and fought to control this imperial beast and how the USA has gotten to where it is today.
Corrupt, bankrupt, soaked in blood, despised by the world.
The War State, by Michael Swanson.
Available at Amazon.com and at Audible.com.
Or just click the logo in the right-hand margin at ScottHorton.org.
We should take nothing for granted.
The War State, by Michael Swanson.