06/22/14 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

For Pacifica Radio, June 22nd, 2014.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
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Now, I know that, obviously, ISIS and intervention in Iraq and everything is the big story of the week.
But if you go to my website and just look at scotthorton.org slash interviews, you will see that just in the last week, I've spoken with Hillary Man Leverett, Sheldon Richman, Eric Margulies, Jason Ditz, Jonathan Landay, and Patrick Coburn about the situation on the ground in Iraq.
It's more than enough to get you caught up.
If you want to just head on over there to scotthorton.org slash interviews.
However, our friend Gareth Porter is just back from a trip to Iran and Israel and has been doing some great reporting for IPS News, for Truthout, and for The Nation on his trip.
So, today's guest is Gareth Porter, independent historian and journalist at Interpress Service, that's IPSNews.net, and author of the book, Manufactured Crisis, The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.
Welcome to the show, Gareth.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well after returning from my three-week trip in the Middle East.
Thank you.
Well, very happy to have you back here and very happy to read your reporting that you're getting done while you're gone.
And you've really got a huge exclusive here, an interview with Iran's foreign minister, Javad Zarif.
And the thing of it is, it's not just that you got an interview, it's what you got from him in this interview.
Go ahead and break the story here for the LA audience.
Well, this is indeed a major story because up to now, no one has really been aware of the Iranian proposal on the table in these nuclear talks with the P5-plus-1.
The only thing that has been known is that the Iranians want tens of thousands of centrifuges and the P5-plus-1 want them to have a fraction of what they presently have, which is, depending on whether you count the ones that are hooked up or not, either 10,000 or 19,000.
So now from the interview with Javad Zarif, foreign minister of Iran, we know that for the first time that Iran has put on the table a proposal that would actually ensure that Iran cannot accumulate a stockpile of even low-enriched uranium that could be used for higher weapons-grade enrichment.
So in effect, what the Iranians have proposed, and this is the headline, is that Iran would not be able to have any breakout for years to come.
So this is really big news.
And of course, there's no place elsewhere that you can read this.
The story was never picked up by anybody else except for interpress service.
And unfortunately, that means that there's still a complete deficit of understanding of what the talks are really all about at this point.
It's again, it's Gareth Porter from ipsnews.net, interpress service.
And we're at the interim stage of the nuclear deal between the UN Security Council, really, America and the rest of the UN going along.
And Iran on the other side, they got their interim deal last fall.
And now they're supposed to have a final nuclear deal by sometime this July.
And hopefully that deadline is kind of a fuzzy one.
But anyway, so they're working on it.
All reports have been that the Iranians are going along and implementing the interim deal, just as they're supposed to, no problems along those lines.
And yet, it really comes down to what you've just referred to there as this breakout capability.
Now, can you define, is there an exact definition of breakout?
Or at least, can you give us the most commonly accepted one?
Well, I don't know if there's an exact definition.
But the commonly accepted definition, Scott, is that is how long it would take Iran to enrich a sufficient amount of high-enriched uranium, meaning weapons-grade uranium, to actually build a bomb.
Now, that assumes, of course, that Iran is lusting after a nuclear weapon and that they're simply waiting for the right moment to lurch towards having this breakout capability, that is, to enrich as rapidly as possible the low-enriched uranium to high-enriched levels so that they can then have the capability to go for a nuclear weapon.
And now, what you're telling me is that the Iranian foreign minister told you that they're basically willing to completely sacrifice any kind of breakout capability because what they want to do is, once they enrich the uranium hexafluoride gas up to 3.6 percent U-235, the sweet stuff, then they want to go ahead and convert it to powder and to the fuel rods at that point, rather than storing the uranium hexafluoride gas, which they could, in theory, reintroduce to the centrifuge cascades and enrich up to weapons-grade above 94 percent.
Is that correct?
That is absolutely correct.
You've correctly summarized the essence of the Iranian proposal, which is that instead of accumulating this stockpile of low-enriched 3.5 or less than 5 percent purity of uranium gas, they would instead immediately commit the low-enriched uranium to a stream that would end up immediately converted to oxide powder, which is a form that does not lend itself then, obviously, to further enrichment, and the oxide powder.
And this is really the more interesting and significant commitment that would be involved in the Iranian proposal.
The oxide powder would then be sent, at least for the next several years, to Russia, which has a contract with Iran to convert oxide powder into fuel plates for the Bushehr reactor.
And that contract between Russia and Iran lasts until 2021.
Now, in my story, I quote or I cite Javad Zarif, foreign minister, as saying that when that, by the time, he says, by the time that contract expires in 2021, Iran will certainly have the capability to carry out that conversion of the oxide powder into into the fuel rods or the fuel plates for the reactor themselves, so that they would begin to pick up that function of the conversion of the oxide powder to the fuel assemblies for Bushehr inside Iran.
But in the meantime, until they have that capability and until the, I mean, he was he was suggesting that until that contract runs out in 2021, they will abide by the contract and they will have Russia being doing that that conversion.
So that means that there's a nine-year hiatus here during which there will be no attempt to convert the oxide powder to the fuel plates inside Iran.
Now, if that is the case, then this is a deal that is far better than anything that has been suggested by John Kerry, Secretary of State John Kerry, in his public remarks about the kind of breakout timeline that the United States is demanding.
And now let me ask you this.
If they're willing to let the Russians have the powder and make the fuel rods for them for nine years, are they insisting on a swap kind of a basis where the Russians got to come off with some fuel rods at the same time they give up some of their uranium oxide powder?
This was one of the sticking points back in 2009 and 2010.
Well, there was nothing said to me along those lines.
And I think the implication is that, no, they're not demanding some immediate conversion or some immediate transfer to them of fuel plates.
As long as they're not swapping with the French, they're not worried about it.
In other words, they're dealing with the Russians here.
They can count on getting their fuel rods, they believe.
I mean, you know, one could imagine that they would like to have a sort of a rapid transition or rapid trade of fuel plates for the for the oxide powders.
But again, this this was not suggested to me.
I don't know in greater detail how you know what the schedule would be like.
He said, you know, I can't give you the details of this proposal because it's still under negotiation.
So, you know, possibly that kind of detail is something that they're holding back on.
Maybe they're saying to the P5 plus one, you know, we're willing to make concessions with regard to the timeline for the transfer of of the oxide powder to Russia and getting back the fuel plates.
If you accept our offer, then we'll be very we'll let go of the demand that we had in 2009 for immediate trade off of the uranium being sent to the French and getting back the the plates.
But, you know, at this point, I think that that's a detail that really is much less important than the the overall picture here.
And again, I would emphasize that it's difficult to understand why the United States and the P5 plus one would not jump on this and say, that sounds great.
Let's negotiate on the basis of that proposal, because it does seem to me to be a better deal by far.
Well, you know, maybe it's just too early.
Maybe they read it and kind of quietly congratulated themselves.
I mean, the way you describe it, Garrett, it sounds like the Iranians are willing to give up everything except their last shred of dignity here.
They're certainly taking their nuclear capability down a couple of notches.
They seem perfectly willing to be.
Hold on.
I think I think we have to understand the trade off here is that in return for this commitment to no stockpile of low enriched uranium that then could be rich to weapon enriched to weapons grade level, they're demanding that they have the right to continue to increase the number of centrifuges as the need arises.
They're not demanding that they they go from the present level to 30000 or something like that within the next couple of years or the next four or five years.
They're saying that as more as as new indigenous or otherwise nuclear reactors come online or as they are approaching coming online, then they would be entitled to increase the number of centrifuges to support those new reactors.
And that's what the United States continues to say.
No, they can't do that.
They have to not just avoid any future increase in the number of centrifuges.
They have to cut down on the number of centrifuges that they already have by 75 or 80 percent is the way it appears that they're they're presenting this demand.
Well, now, so what if we split that difference?
I mean, this is a negotiation.
So they say we want even more centrifuges and the Americans say we want you to have way fewer.
So how about they stick to, I don't know, 15000, something like that.
Is that going to be a deal breaker for both sides?
Well, I think it all depends.
I mean, I think that they're willing to say we'll settle for 15000, you know, up to a certain point in the future, but to commit themselves in perpetuity to have no more than that.
I mean, that that would be, you know, simply an irrational, you know, demand or an irrational thing to agree to, because the whole point of this is that Iran is saying we do, in fact, want to have a civilian nuclear power program.
And that means, you know, I mean, the United States government has been criticizing Iran because they're saying, well, you know, they don't have enough.
They don't have enough centrifuges to support a civilian nuclear program.
You know, they're they're very far, far short of that.
And the Iranians have been saying, well, you know, we want to have that, but you're not allowing us to.
Well, but aren't they also saying that they have more than enough 3.6 percent uranium 235 right now to power Boucher and any other nuclear reactor they could expect to have online for the next while or so?
No, not really.
I mean, I think that they recognize that they need to have more more centrifuges in order to support the Boucher reactor.
I mean, this present level, at least the present level that is actually been in use with at least the primitive, relatively primitive centrifuges that they're using, the P1 centrifuges would not be enough really to to power the the Boucher reactor.
So that's why I think that they're saying that they want to have the right to go to a higher level.
So so I think that there's a misunderstanding here about and this this has been even reflected in the some of the headlines for my own story, that they are agreeing or compromising on the level of centrifuges or the level of capability to enrich, which is not the point.
The point is that they're committing themselves to a proposal that would allow them to have a higher level of enrichment capability, but would still avoid the breakout.
And so that's that's the the genius, if you will, of what Zarif has put together.
And by the way, I mean, the story that I have published makes the point that this is, in fact, based on the 2005 proposal that Zarif personally put together.
And it was based on the advice that was given to him by a group of American scientists.
I think, you know, basically, you know, based on meetings that took place in Princeton University in early 2005 or late 2004, early 2005, which which essentially included this principle that there would be no stockpile of low enriched uranium.
So this gives further credibility to the proposal because it was, in effect, largely developed by by people who were American scientists who had no you know, they weren't doing this on behalf of Iran.
They were doing it as independent analysts.
And Zarif was saying, OK, we'll take your advice on this now.
You know, the American scientists wanted also to limit the number of of centrifuges to like 500.
And that was unacceptable to the Iranian government at that point.
They went to a proposal for 3000 at that point.
So I was going to ask you, they were back then willing in 2005 to put a ceiling on the number of centrifuges.
I just didn't know the number.
You say five thousand.
Now they're at nineteen thousand.
Well, that that's true.
I mean, I think that they were they were prepared to agree in the short run to to three thousand.
But if you examine the proposal carefully, this was not in perpetuity.
They never they were saying, you know, we want to be able later on to go beyond that once there is trust established.
So so it was not a complete commitment.
It was not a final commitment to three thousand.
All right.
Now, Jeffrey Lewis, the arms control wonk, wrote a piece for foreign policies saying, oh, who cares about breakout?
You're, you know, missing what's most important here anyway, arguing about limiting breakout capability.
What's important is preventing Iran's ability to ever have a sneak out capability, the ability to secretly create another facility with centrifuges enriching up to weapons grade that the inspectors would never even know about.
And so what's really most important here is a complete and total expansion, widening and deepening of the inspection regime in order to prevent the Iranians from ever secretly making a nuclear bomb, all while the IAEA is standing there at Natanz and Fordow and none the wiser.
Well, I have to unpack that notion, first of all, because, you know, certainly it's legitimate to question the idea of breakout as it has been presented, as it's been understood in the news media so far, which means that that the Iranians are going to kick out the inspectors and in front of the entire world essentially commit themselves to a dash for a nuclear weapon by quickly trying to convert and then enrich to weapons grade level.
I mean, that's an absurd scenario.
Even a former advisor to the Obama administration, to the Obama White House, Gary Seymour, who's certainly no dove on this issue, as I think many of your listeners know very well, has said very clearly that that whole idea of breakout is silly.
It's just not a plausible scenario at all.
So that much I agree with.
But then when you start talking about the alternative scenario, which is the sneak out, the secret facility kind of breakout that Seymour and others, including, I must say, David Albright, you know, that's that's always been his favorite scenario is the secret, the secret facility scenario.
And then, you know, then you get to other problems that are equally or even more implausible.
And that that is that that you could somehow sneak out enough low enriched uranium from the system into a secret facility to to be able to get away with this.
Yeah, that's where we get back to the first point here is that so far up to and including this moment, all the uranium is accounted for.
So how are they going to divert it when especially now they don't even want to keep it in a form that can be enriched up to a higher percentage to 35?
They want to go ahead and turn it straight into oxidized powder and fuel plates right away.
Yeah, I mean, so so there are two points here.
Let's be clear about this.
The first point is that even if the Iranians were not making this proposal, this idea of the sneak out makes no sense whatsoever, because, you know, as you've just said, there's no way to sneak out the low enriched uranium in order to get the secret facility to be able to secretly enrich it to higher level.
Yeah, it's already safeguarded.
They would have to have a whole new secret mine and everything else.
Yeah, exactly.
So so that idea makes no sense whatsoever.
And those people who are trying to push that, I'm sorry to say, are just somehow trying to hold on to some basis for opposing the kind of deal that that we can get.
And then, you know, the second point that still remains is that, you know, the Iranians are now committing themselves to a deal that, you know, even if there were a secret sneak out deal to be had, you know, they're they're making that even less likely or less plausible than it was.
Right.
So, you know, I'm afraid these people, first of all, they obviously don't understand the Iranian proposal.
And I would love to know how they would explain, you know, why the United States would not want to latch on to that proposal and and negotiate a deal on that basis.
All right.
Now, I'm Scott Horton.
This is antiwar radio.
I'm talking with the heroic Gareth Porter.
He's doing all this original reporting about the Iran nuclear program.
The book is manufactured crisis.
He's got two new ones at IPS News dot net.
He's got another truth out, another at the nation, all on the Iran nuclear program.
And I know this sounds all bureaucratic and weedy and technical, but this is such an important issue.
This is the huge fake, but still huge, outstanding issue between the United States and Iran standing in the way of any possible rapprochement and end to the Cold War that has lasted since nineteen seventy nine.
And that's not to say I believe that everything would be great if we could only get this nuclear deal.
But, God, we got to get this nuclear deal in order to, you know, hopefully have room to move forward.
And so I guess I wonder whether you think, am I just howling at the moon here?
Is this whole thing just another screw job like 2003 through 2005, where they sit there and negotiate till the cows come home, but they don't ever get anywhere like making peace in Palestine or something, then just move on and do this again in three years?
Well, I mean, you know, I don't know the answer.
I cannot penetrate the thinking and the calculus at this moment of the Obama administration.
It is a mystery to me.
I'll tell you the truth.
Even, you know, as as those who have read accounts of the latest round of negotiations in Vienna are aware, the the Obama administration is still saying that Iran must, you know, heal, come to heel and and accept the U.S. demand that they dismantle or somehow get rid of most of their the vast majority of their centrifuges, and that the idea that they would be allowed at any time in the future, this is the way it's been presented, to increase the number of centrifuges is as absolute anathema.
It's totally unacceptable.
And the Iranians must make these concessions now in order to have an agreement.
Now, they are going out of their way to emphasize these demands and to say that there's no basis for an accommodation with Iran other than the U.S. demands.
Now, if the administration has any plan for flexibility, this is certainly not the way to do it.
And so I have to say that my initial skepticism about the the way forward, that there is a deal at this point in the making on the part of the Obama administration, has been deepened by the latest developments in this story.
So, well, you know, he's basically the Ayatollah Obama, and they have the exact same position, which is the Ayatollah in Iran, his mirror image, have the exact same position, which is if their guys can work this out, then they can benefit.
If it doesn't work out, then, hey, they always said this was no better than a 50-50 shot.
And what are they going to do, give in to the enemy and et cetera like that?
Obama's only criticism that matters, unfortunately, is from people worse than him on everything, attacking him from the right.
And so, you know, mostly what people like you and I think doesn't even count as far as that goes.
So I can see why, you know, maybe he doesn't have an actual plan as much as a, well, let's see how things work out.
I guess if we can get one, we can get one.
But if not, it's no problem to just, you know, throw this whole process in the garbage.
Well, that has been the modus operandi up to now that there is no real plan.
You sort of work it out as you go along.
But I have to say that there are a couple of other points here, at least one other point that we haven't mentioned.
I think that the sense of being under political pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby in Congress has to be considered to be a key factor politically in the calculus of the Obama administration on these negotiations.
But there's one other factor that we haven't talked about, and that is the factor that I think is in play here in their thinking of overconfidence about the effectiveness of the sanctions in forcing Iran to the table.
There's a lot of tidbits of evidence that point in the same direction here, indicating that the policymakers in the Obama administration really do believe that they have the whip hand here, that the Iranians have no choice, ultimately, but to come back to the table.
If they refuse this deal, that they're going to have to come back because their economy is in such bad shape and they are under such political pressure at home that they cannot avoid having to make a deal on U.S. terms.
And that's what gives them the feeling that they can get away with turning down a deal that would be really good for them.
But as I think you've suggested in your remarks, politically, you know, they would be afraid, well, since it's a deal that the Iranians proposed, then they can't really accept it.
What they want is really a deal that we propose that we force the Iranians to accept.
In other words, it's all about the optics.
It's not about the reality.
And of course, as you report in your article from your interview with Foreign Minister Zarif, all his political pressure is to not go along.
The entire spin in Iran is that the Americans are trying to make us bow down to their completely unreasonable demands.
And so if he does it and his group and the president over there, if they do this, they're going to have a real political fight on their hands to justify this being a good enough deal in the first place.
So in other words, it would be that easy to botch.
Well, obviously, you know, he's putting his own spin on this.
And I think he's simplifying cross pressures in the political arena in Iran.
I mean, there obviously is a degree of pressure to get a deal that will ease sanctions.
There's no doubt about that.
But on the other hand, there's a cross pressure which I think is even stronger not to give up Iran's right to enrich.
And this is really what is at stake in the U.S. demand that Iran give up the ability then to support their own, even Bushehr, even a lone reactor, to give up the ability with its own enrichment capabilities to support that reactor.
And so I think that is a reality politically.
The indications are that the vast majority of Iranians do support the right to enrich and would feel that acceptance of this demand by the Obama administration would indeed be a violation of that right.
All right.
That's Gareth Porter.
He's the author of Manufactured Crisis, the untold story of the Iran nuclear scare.
And he's got a whole bunch of new articles out at IPS News dot net at Truthout dot org at the Nation dot com.
He's got a great interview in Haaretz.
Was the Iranian threat fabricated by Israel and the U.S. about his great book Manufactured Crisis?
And please go and put his name in Google News and see what you can come up with.
You'll learn a hell of a lot.
Thank you so much for your time again, Gareth.
Thanks so much for having me, Scott.
Enjoy it.
All right, John, that's antiwar radio for this morning.
I'm Scott Horton here every Sunday from 830 to 9 on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A.
Find my full interview archive at Scott Horton dot org and you can follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show.
Thanks for listening.
See you next week.