12/12/14 – Tyler Cullis – The Scott Horton Show

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Next up is Tyler Cullis.
He's at the National Iranian American Council over there with Trita and Reza doing work to promote peace between America and Iran.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Tyler?
I'm good.
I'm good.
Thanks for having me.
Good, good.
Very happy to have you here.
And very happy to be running your piece, A Cautionary Tale, as the spotlight article today on AntiWar.com.
I think it's a very important one, and that's why I made it the spotlight.
How the Mistaken Claims of One Hawkish Think Tank Put at Risk the Prospects for a Nuclear Deal.
So I guess let me just sum up real quick.
We're in the middle of still working on a final nuclear deal.
But we've been – the IAEA has reported a lot of really good progress on implementing the interim agreement reached a year ago, November.
And they had another extension, so they didn't succeed this November, but they're still working on it.
And you're saying here that there's this think tank in Washington, D.C., that's throwing a monkey wrench in the works.
So give us the lowdown.
Yeah, I mean, so, you know, on November 24th was the final date for the latest round of talks.
And, you know, John Kerry stepped up to the podium with the unfortunate news that a deal hadn't been struck, that there would be an extension, but he made clear that Iran had implemented its side of the agreement.
The day after, the IAEA released its monthly report on the matter, saying the same thing.
Iran has fully upheld its side of the interim deal.
But on November – right after that, what you saw is you saw Bret Stevens, the neocon of the Wall Street Journal, saying that Iran had cheated on its obligations.
AIPAC put out a statement calling for new sanctions, saying the same thing.
On December 8th, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ed Royce, said that two separate studies had shown that Iran had violated the terms of the interim deal.
And all of these claims stem from the work of one organization, the Institute for Science and International Security, which is David Albright's group.
And David Albright's claim stems from the IAEA's quarterly report on November 7th.
In that report, in the morass of technical details, there is one line that says Iran had intermittently fed uranium hexafluoride into an advanced IR-5 centrifuge, a single machine centrifuge.
And Albright quickly released his own analysis on the same day, November 7th, saying that this was a possible violation, an apparent violation.
He alternates between the two claims.
So, very quickly, I wanted to know the basis for the claim, because Albright had not hinted at any text within the interim deal suggesting that this was a violation.
The basis of Albright's claim is footnote one of the joint point of action, which he let me know on Twitter.
And footnote one of the joint point of action says Iran will not feed uranium hexafluoride into the centrifuges installed but not enriching uranium.
According to Albright, the IR-5 was installed but not enriching uranium, according to the IAEA's February report.
And therefore, this was a centrifuge that should not have been enriching uranium.
The problem with that is that footnote one refers to the Natanz fuel enrichment plant.
The IR-5 that was fed uranium hexafluoride, however, is located at the Natanz pilot fuel enrichment plant, which is an entirely separate nuclear facility.
So, what Albright had done is he had mistakenly read the joint point of action to transfer an obligation imposed on one of Iran's nuclear facilities to an entirely different one.
And the obligation imposed on Iran is on Iran's major centrifuge facility, where Iran has 19,500 centrifuges.
Around 10,000 of them are operating.
So, it would make sense for the footnote one to refer to that facility.
The Natanz pilot fuel enrichment plant is an entirely separate facility that engages in R&D work.
And Iran is very concerned about making sure that the P5-plus-1 does not limit its ability to conduct scientific research on advanced centrifuge models.
So, we wouldn't expect that obligation to be there.
And, in fact, that's exactly what we find in the joint point of action.
So, Albright had made a totally erroneous reading of the joint point of action to produce the claim that is now being used by Hawke and Washington to push for renewed sanctions and to put at risk a final deal.
Yeah, but you know, Tom, this is all very complicated.
And even David Albright, who's made many, many, many honest mistakes, is entitled to make an honest mistake.
And so, surely, he apologized and corrected himself once you informed him of the discrepancies in his footnotes and his accusations, right?
You know, that would have been a lot easier than what has taken place.
He changed the nature of his claim.
What he did, in fact, is he deleted his tweet stating that the basis for his concern is footnote 1 of the JPOA and started out on an entirely different claim, which is that Iran's feeding uranium hexafluoride into the advanced centrifuge violated the spirit of the agreement.
You know, I don't know if he is performing a seance on the joint point of action, but I'm not sure.
Well, in the way you outline it, it doesn't sound like they're in violation of the spirit of the agreement either.
It sounds like they had carved out this exception that, hey, when it comes to our research things, the ban on introducing nuclear material into a machine for the first time doesn't count because we got some experiments we want to do.
Kerry apparently said that's OK, at least for the interim deal, that that would be acceptable.
So I don't know.
I mean, I guess this is what you say in your article, too.
Where's the spirit?
Where is it implied that the spirit is in contradiction to the actual terms here?
It doesn't seem like it at all.
It seems like the narrative of the terms being written the way they were necessitates the conclusion that they were meant to be that way.
I mean, what David ignored is the fact that there is a section pertaining to Iran's R&D activity.
And that says that Iran will continue its safeguarded R&D practices, including its current enrichment R&D practices not designed for accumulation of enriched uranium.
Iran's feeding the uranium hexafluoride into the advanced IR5 centrifuge produced no enriched uranium.
To be frank, actually, there was an article yesterday by Jaffe Joseph, who used to be the director of nonproliferation on the National Security Council.
And under Jaffe's telling, Iran feeding uranium hexafluoride into a single machine tells Iran very little about whether the machine is workable.
It needs to connect the machine to an entire cascade to figure out whether the design is right and all kinds of technical details related to it.
So even, you know, the implication of Iran's feeding uranium hexafluoride into the advanced centrifuge is, I mean, there's really nothing to it.
David has since engaged in, you know, ad hominem attacks on me claiming that I lack the technical expertise as to this matter, which is an ironic claim because it is a legal matter on how we read the joint point of action.
And me being a lawyer and him not being one, it seems as if there is a disadvantage here.
It's David's disadvantage in reading the joint point of action.
You know, this has continued since the article has been published.
He continues to engage in ad hominem attacks rather than to retract this claim and correct the record, which would be a much easier approach.
All right.
Now, just how severe do you estimate is the threat to the negotiation based on this trumped up nonsense from ISIS?
You know, to some extent, it doesn't take much for many members of Congress to push for new sanctions, but this provides them an excuse.
It provides them a convenient way to say, you know, this was exactly in Chairman Royce's statement on December 8th.
Look, Iran is we have a study showing that Iran is in violation of the joint point of action.
How can we trust them to adhere to their obligations under any final comprehensive appeal?
Why are the negotiators, even in Vienna or now Geneva, talking to Iran?
It doesn't matter.
Iran's going to cheat.
They're a determined cheater.
So there's no point to this whole charade, you know, and that's a very dangerous mentality to take care of, especially when, you know, by according to the United States, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran is adhering.
We'll be right back.
We'll be right back in just a sec, Tyler.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Tyler Cullis from the National Iranian American Council.
The article is a cautionary tale, how the mistaken claims of one hawkish think tank put at risk the prospects for a nuclear deal.
You can find it as the spotlight article today at antiwar dot com.
And I'm sorry, Tyler, about the hard break there, man.
I thought you were going to be able to squeeze that sentence in there and it didn't quite work out.
But I'll let you finish now.
You were talking about just how powerful this talking point could amount to be in the hands of the incoming Republicans in Congress and those who would seek to thwart a deal with Iran.
And I don't mean to exclude any hawkish Democrats because there are plenty.
I mean, you know, people are looking for an excuse to kill this deal to support a renewed push for sanctions.
And claims like David's make it a lot easier for them to do so.
And this is troubling at a time in which, according to both the United States, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran is upholding its obligations pursuant to the Joint Plan of Action.
You know, that's where this is a troubling situation.
Yeah.
All right.
And to remind people and wrap up and for people just tuning in here, the complaint is that they have fed, according to the IAEA, who apparently didn't complain about it or think it was a problem for obvious reasons.
According to the IAEA report, they fed some uranium hexafluoride gas into this advanced generation, advanced model centrifuge.
And Albright tried to make a big deal about it as though under rules that apply to an entirely different place, an entirely different plant, an entirely different set of centrifuges, the ones that are already running, producing industrial grade enriched uranium there at the, you know, plain old Natanz facility, not this smaller research facility.
And the deal there was you will not, basically you will not add any machines to your cascades that you're running now.
You'll leave things as they are and not expand.
And then, so now we're at the point where the Republicans get to say, see what cheaters they are, those dastardly Twelfth Imam, believing fundamentalist, Islamist, terrorist, nuclear bombers.
How can we possibly deal with them?
The Democrats selling us out again, all that kind of thing.
And now they rule both houses of Congress, whereas at least Harry Reid was willing to go along with the president on this.
There's no reason to count on that for the upcoming Congress at all, really.
That's a big problem, but now everybody's caught up.
If I got that right, Tyler.
No, I mean, you can actually go back to the November 24th.
Every month, the IAEA puts out a status update on Iran's implementation of the Joint Plan of Action.
The same day that the diplomats left Vienna, November 24th, the IAEA confirmed, the language confirmed, that Iran has continued its safeguarded R&D practices, including its current enrichment R&D practices, now designed for accumulation of enriched uranium.
That language comes precisely from the Joint Plan of Action.
The IAEA confirms that Iran has continued its safeguarded R&D practices.
No violation was cited in that report.
Yeah, same old, same old.
And, you know, I like to mention, and you don't have to because I know people have different takes on this, but I'm a full Gareth Porterian on this issue, that it's an entirely manufactured crisis, that Iran never had a nuclear weapons program at all or any serious intention to develop nuclear weapons, banned, as the project was, by both ayatollahs that have ruled the place since 1979, and that all of the so-called evidence, everything David Albright has ever said to David Sanger at the New York Times or, what's his copycat over there at the Washington Post that he's got, is always hype.
For years they referred to Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program as though it was just a thing that existed somewhere in time and space, though no one ever asked them to describe what the hell they were talking about because it just wasn't true.
And so I like to drive home the point to my audience that this is a great opportunity to put a huge fake issue to bed.
It's an outstanding issue that prevents the end of the American-Iranian Cold War, which is to the detriment of the Iranian people especially, but to the Americans and world peace in general as well, and it's nonsense.
So to think that somehow we're going to let one more small little piece of hype from David Albright, who has never been right, he's basically Bill Kristol over there but on the Iran nuclear issue only, as far as his batting average and all that kind of thing, that we're going to let some false factoid disrupt this most important negotiation when the solutions, in fact I guess I'll figure out a way to end this in the form of a question about what's even outstanding at this point.
It ought to be easy enough to put this thing to bed and move forward and have, I don't want to be allies with Iran, but we can have a peaceful relationship with Iran just like any other state on earth.
And so, yeah, that's my sermon on the thing.
I don't know if you want to talk about the politics of it at all.
But I guess if you're desperate for me to ask you a question at the end of that rant, it would be what's outstanding between, never mind Albright, but between Kerry and Larajani here and these guys to be worked out.
Yeah, I mean there's two major issues.
One is the size and scope of Iran's enrichment program and the second one is the size and scope of Iran's sanctions relief.
And these two things need to be traded against each other and both parties have so far been more interested or more concerned about maintaining leverage over the term of a final deal rather than making the compromises necessary to get to a deal in the first place.
I mean, to be honest, I think pushing back against claims like David's is so important because the negotiators left Vienna being very optimistic about their ability to reach a final deal.
I think that Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Zarif have built a real rapport over the past 12 months.
I think they genuinely like each other.
I think they have come to an understanding with each other even if they have political disagreements that remain.
But I'm optimistic about their opportunities to get a deal within the next seven months and I think it's going to be a lot sooner than that and I think the negotiators are optimistic as well.
I think those two outstanding issues can be resolved provided that a little more time is spent and a little more compromises made by both sides.
Well, and now, so what more compromising do the Iranians have left to do?
Because the sanctions seems like America owes them the relief from my point of view for what they've already been willing to give up and as far as the numbers of centrifuges and that kind of thing.
I guess it's not only because of my bias that I'm not worried about them ever even trying to break out because I don't think that's what they want to do anyway.
But it seems like Kerry's got to kind of understand that too, that really they're trying to maintain their program for their energy needs partially because of how isolated we've made them in the first place requires this energy program.
And for a political statement internally for their own politics about their independence from the will of the Americans who have pushed them around for so long and all that kind of thing.
It seems like both of those things you just named are both places for Kerry to give rather than them.
But what more do you think they could do?
I mean, I think it's a matter of political expediency for both sides.
I mean, to be honest, I think if people if neither one of the parties had a domestic audience at home, that there would have been there would have been an agreement by now.
I think what we're really doing is they're negotiating with each other and negotiating with the hardliners that they face back home.
I think from the US's perspective, there needs to be long enough of a breakout time, no matter how arbitrary that timeline is, to make sure Iran to make sure that it takes Iran at least 12 months before we can develop enough weapons grade uranium for one bomb.
And from the Iranian perspective, there needs to be actual sanctions relief.
And the US has been unwilling thus far to provide the significant sanctions relief that will in turn, ensure that Iran provides, you know, compromises on elements of its nuclear program as well.
You know, both sides need a political win in order to be able to sell this at home.
And to that extent, I'm sympathetic to both positions.
But I think there's areas for compromise here.
I think there's ways for each side to get what it wants under a final deal and for each side to be able to sell that deal at home.
Well said.
Well, I sure appreciate your optimism.
And I'm trying very hard to share it, Tyler.
I sure would like to see this issue put to bed.
And I do agree with you.
It does seem clear that John Kerry really wants to do this thing.
I don't know whether he's going to finally actually do it or not.
But, you know, it's not just, you know, another kind of pretension like the negotiations of 03 through 05, that kind of thing.
I mean, this is a real effort.
It would be a real shame for it to fall apart.
So I agree with you.
That's why I got you on.
That's why I'm running your article as a spotlight today on Antiwar.com.
It's because I agree that there has to be pushback on every bit of this false narrative seeking to undermine this thing.
It's of such great importance.
Thank you very much for your work here and, of course, the article and your time on the show today.
I appreciate it.
No, thanks.
Thanks for sharing it and thanks for having me.
All right, Shaul.
That's Tyler Cullis.
He's at the National Iranian American Council.
That's NIACouncil.org.
NIACouncil.org.
And we'll be right back with Jeffrey Kaye right after this.
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