07/18/14 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

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Hey, I'm Scott.
This is my show, and as often happens on this show, I'm going to interview Gareth Porter now.
He's my favorite independent historian and journalist, writes for IPSnews.net, IPSnews.net.
And we republish all of it at antiwar.com, of course.
Zarif and Kerry signal momentum on nuclear pact.
All right.
Welcome back to the show, Gareth.
How are you doing?
I'm fine, Scott.
Glad to be back.
Thanks.
Very happy to have you here.
And so, listen, I was telling the people earlier about how I sure wanted to be optimistic about this Iran nuclear thing, and then you talked me out of it.
But now you seem to think that, yeah, hey, maybe so, huh?
You saw that same thing by David Sedgwick in the New York Times that I saw.
What a weird conversation we're having already here.
Yeah, I changed my analysis just over the last few days, actually.
I was much more pessimistic until I saw the interview that Zarif gave, as well as the remarks by John Kerry, Secretary of State John Kerry, after their meeting.
And that turned me around.
I now believe that it really is quite feasible that they could reach agreement in the not too distant future.
Great.
All right.
Well, so what was the hang up and what they saw?
Well, I think your listeners all know that the two big issues that have been the primary points of contention in these negotiations were how many centrifuges Iran could maintain under the agreement and how long the agreement would last.
And, of course, those two things are very closely linked for obvious reasons.
And, you know, the situation as it appeared in recent weeks, and even as recently as the day that John Kerry was to arrive in Vienna for his meetings with Zarif, because there was a briefing given by the usual unnamed senior U.S. official who was certainly Wendy Sherman.
She does all those briefings, so there's hardly any mystery about that.
But in that briefing on July 12th, you got at least one glimmer of possibly greater flexibility.
But basically, the line was still that essentially Iran is refusing to move away from what she called unrealistic and unworkable positions.
So I think that's really the main clue that, as of that moment, the U.S. expectations, U.S. policy was still that we're a long way from an agreement.
But once Zarif and Kerry sat down for those two meetings on Sunday and Monday, the entire tone and content of the U.S. approach to description of the negotiations really dramatically changed.
And so that's why, in fact, Kerry's press conference is really the most important document in this recent turn of events.
And so this is where I think the U.S. news media is showing its utter failure to pay close attention, because they've been hearing and reading for so long the general U.S.-Obama administration line that the Iranians are completely unrealistic, they've got to make dramatic changes, and they're refusing to do that, that they paid no attention to the signals in Kerry's press conference, in which he was basically saying, look, things have changed now.
And so I think, you know, the more I read about the press coverage, went back and looked at the press coverage, the more I realized that this is just an absolutely crystal clear example of just how horrible the press coverage of this whole issue is.
I mean, you know, the news media are absolutely without the slightest interest in working hard at following what's going on.
Right.
Well, I have a different problem of what little media I am.
I'm afraid to discuss this great breakthrough because I don't know how to just say the facts without sounding like I'm rubbing Iran's face in it.
I mean, these guys are breaking their spine, bending over backwards to appease the United States right now.
The U.S. has to make this deal now.
Well, I would describe it a little bit differently, Scott.
I think that this is not a situation where only one side is really making the moves.
I think that Zarif showed Kerry very carefully what the Iranians had been proposing all along.
And, you know, I've talked about this on your show.
I've described the proposal that Zarif put on the table earlier in the talk.
It's been several weeks now.
It's been since May that he made the proposal and it was put into the negotiating draft in June.
And what he was proposing was, of course, just to very briefly summarize it, was that that Iran would ensure that there would be no buildup of a stockpile of low enriched uranium that could then be used for a high level, for weapons grade enrichment, for potential nuclear weapon, for breakout, as they called it.
And they would do that by immediately converting each batch of UF6 or low enriched uranium as it came out of the centrifuges would be then immediately converted into the oxide powder form.
And Sanger, by the way, added a new detail to the picture, which I had not gotten previously.
And that is that that Iran pledged that it would not obtain the facility that would be necessary to actually reverse the oxide powder back into the UF6 form.
And I mean, I'm not technically capable of judging the technical merits of that of that point.
But that is something that Sanger did report.
But basically, the oxide powder that would be fed off to Russia to be turned into the fuel plates for the Bushehr reactor.
So you infer the same thing as me there.
It sounded like what he was saying was that, you know, they would have to build a new facility, an entire new facility, and they promised not to if they were to ever try to take, I guess, they couldn't use the Isfahan, is that how you say it, where they convert the yellow cake to uranium hexafluoride gas, they wouldn't be able to do it there.
They would need a whole new plant in order to deoxidize the uranium.
That is absolutely the implication.
Again, I mean, I have not looked into that specifically just to fact check on it.
But I presume that, you know, he must be correct that there has to be a separate facility to do that.
In any case, you know, that was a further detail that was added to the concept that that Zarif presented to me as the essence of the Iranian proposal.
And then he said it was, again, similar to based on the idea that was proposed by Iran in 2005, in their negotiations with the EU3.
Which of course, as I reported earlier, was in turn, a reflection of some of the suggestions that had been made by the Princeton group, a group of nuclear scientists, and some others who were at Princeton University back in 2005.
So that was a key element in what I think Zarif said to Kerry.
I suspect that Kerry did not have a full grasp of what had actually been put on the table by the Iranians.
I think as it passed up through the State Department through various ranks, he simply didn't get the full effect, the full flavor of what the Iranians were saying they would do.
So I think that had a big impact on him.
And then I think, you know, he was also told by Zarif, as indicated by Kerry's press conference, about what actually Khamenei meant to say in his very widely recorded, widely reported speech.
All right, now stop right there.
That's a great point to pick up on the other side of this break.
It's the great Gareth Porter, everybody.
IPSnews.net.
Manufactured Crisis is the book.
And email me, scott at scotthorton.org, for more information.
See you there.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, and this is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Talking with our friend Gareth Porter, author of Manufactured Crisis, the true story behind the Iran nuclear scare.
And we're talking about the negotiations and very, very good likelihood now of a deal by the end of the month here, it sounds like.
And now the last time we spoke, and this goes to where we were interrupted by the break there, Gareth.
Last time we spoke, it was about primarily Khamenei's statement that, yeah, you know, eventually we'll have 190,000 centrifuges spinning.
Oh no.
And it sounded like, okay, he's staking out a pretty, one, it's a big number for negotiation purposes, but also he's talking about ultimately.
And as you write here, Kerry decided to interpret it in the most gentle way possible.
When we all know John Kerry could have said 190,000, you see what nuclear terrorists these guys are?
But instead he goes, oh no, nah, that's basically just blowing smoke.
And he's talking about, you know, one day and this kind of thing.
And now I think you were saying when the music was interrupting you there that Zarif had explained what he really meant by that.
Can you clarify there?
Yeah, well, I think the inference can be reasonably made on the basis of Kerry's remarks that he got a view of what Khamenei was actually intending to say that either changed his mind completely or confirmed what he might have been told by some of his own experts before he took off.
But in any case, what's so really interesting here is that Khamenei's statement of previous Monday was widely reported as though he were staking out a position in the negotiations that was demanding that the United States agree to that level of enrichment for Iran.
And in fact, it was never clear that that was the case.
And in fact, the wording that Khamenei used in his speech where he said, we will need this ultimately, we may not need it next year or two years from now or five years from now, he didn't say how many years it would be, he simply sort of left it unclear.
And that, of course, implicitly opened up space for negotiation, because as I said, to begin with, you know, really the toughest issue of all is going to be the duration of the agreement.
And that is because everybody knows that once the agreement ends, the United States government has made this clear, Iran is going to be free to do whatever it wants.
There'll be no requirement for Iran to remain within a particular limit, it will be able to have as much enrichment capability as it wants, once the agreement expires.
So the fact that he was being imprecise, to say the least, on that point was clearly significant.
And, you know, despite that fact, it's, it seems to me very interesting that you had immediately unnamed diplomats or diplomats from unnamed countries.
And obviously, in this case, it was, it was France, if not Israel, who was making these statements.
We're saying that, oh, you know, Khamenei's remarks have made an agreement now on the level of centrifuges virtually impossible.
Now we can break this off.
And there was even a leak of a, an intelligence report, so called, by another, or again, an unnamed state that said the same thing, that essentially, Khamenei's using 190,000, he was actually saying, separative work units, SWUs, not centrifuges.
So you could have had fewer centrifuges, but with the same capability for enrichment.
And the, this so called intelligence report was saying that, in effect, this, this makes it virtually impossible to have an agreement.
Well, you know, what, what we now hear from Kerry is that this, this remark, the set of remarks by Khamenei was not intended to place the, the Iranian demand within the duration of the agreement.
This is something outside the agreement, we don't have to worry about it.
Right.
And now, is the, the question of, of sort of a stand in for an additional protocol or some kind of expanded inspections, is that issue being resolved here?
Has it already been resolved?
Well, it's interesting, you know, in all of the rhetoric from the Obama administration, and even from, you know, the, the other P5 plus one states, including French, you don't hear anything about the additional protocol or intrusive inspections.
You don't, you don't hear all of the Iranians are being truculent and refusing to agree to our terms on that.
That simply has not been a major point of contention in these negotiations.
Huh.
That's interesting about that.
I mean, not that I have a problem, because of course, all their nuclear materials been verified to have not been diverted anywhere.
And nobody knows where they might get some other uranium from other than what's already safeguarded every last bit.
So I guess we would know if that process broke down.
So I guess, wow, is it really the case in the Americans have just, I mean, always was a propaganda point.
So is that easy to drop?
And they really just dropped it, huh?
It's amazing.
The propaganda point is what, what, what, which one?
Well, you know, that there's an endless list of questions that must be answered and an endless list of negatives that must be proved and all that.
Oh, I'm sorry, you're talking, now you're talking about the possible military dimensions.
I thought you were talking about the additional protocol and sort of, well, you know, expanded inspection.
I mean, it's, there's a, there's a handful of UN resolutions based on these US demands, right?
Which included inspecting the facility where they make the centrifuges, including where they make their missiles and all this.
There's no, there's no question that, that the Iranians have agreed to the idea that the IAEA will be able to inspect centrifuge shops, the places where they are being manufactured.
That's an additional thing, because that's not nuclear material being introduced.
It goes, it goes well beyond that.
And, and the Iranians have, have agreed that that, that that can be part of the, part of the agreement.
Now, you know, missiles is another, another question entirely.
They're not going to agree to intrusive inspections that would allow the IAEA to go wherever they want, where there's a missile base and say, we want to inspect missiles or, or get information about them.
That's, that's a red line that the Iranians have made clear.
They're not going to.
But you're telling me that Kerry's not even trying it though.
No, I don't think so.
I don't think that's really an issue.
That's good.
So I guess it's sort of irrelevant, but are they going to end up repealing the UN resolutions that are making all these completely ridiculous demands?
Oh, absolutely.
That was never a very serious negotiating point.
I think that was always a rhetorical device to, to, you know, isolate Iran as much as possible in this process, which is always part of the Obama administration's strategy.
So you don't even think they're going to need an extension?
We're going to have this done by the 20th?
No, I'm not saying that.
I think that it's probably going to take longer to, to nail down all the details.
But, but as I quoted Zarif saying, I think the basic, you know, the most important issues that have to be resolved, it requires, it could be done with a single decision in Washington to go ahead with this.
And at that point, then it would be a lot of, of detailed drafting to be completed.
And so I think it's going to go beyond the 20th, but I don't know if it has to go that long beyond.
All right.
Great news.
Thanks, Gareth.
Thanks very much, Scott.
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