I'm happy to welcome Mohamed Sahimi back to the show.
He's a professor at the University of Southern California.
He writes for us at www.antiwar.com.
Welcome back to the show, Mohamed.
How are you doing?
I'm not too bad.
Thank you for having me on your program.
Well, I really appreciate you joining us.
Very important news.
I kind of went over it at the last interview.
We only have about 10 minutes here, but let's talk about the Brazil-Turkey-Iran nuclear deal and the Obama administration's reaction to it.
Basically, I guess I can say that the deal was struck sometime on Sunday, and the details came out yesterday, Monday morning.
What are the details?
What happened?
Well, according to the agreement, Iran has agreed to ship a little over half of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium to Turkey to be stored and safeguarded there by Turkey and the International Atomic Energy Agency, and then wait for about a year to receive nuclear fuel for Tehran Research Reactor, which is a medical reactor and provides medical isotope for about 850,000 Iranian patients.
Okay.
So, wait a minute.
The deal that the Obama administration came with was, you give us your 3.6% or give it to the Russians, they'll enrich it up to 20%, they'll give it to the French, they'll turn it into fuel rods, and then we'll give it back to you.
And the Iranians, at least before, had said, no, no, no.
You give us fuel rods, we'll give you our 3.6%, because we're not going to get stuck out here with you holding all our uranium, particularly the French, who might betray us and never give it back.
And now you're telling me that the Brazilians talked the Iranians into going ahead and giving up the uranium on the trust that they would get the uranium back, if not from the French, from the Turks.
Is that right?
That's true.
Remember that Turkey and Iran have very good relationships, particularly between Prime Minister Rajab Erdogan and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
And Turkey is a Muslim country, and at the same time, a member of NATO.
So Iran has basically backtracked from its reasonable demand, because Iran has a long history of distrust with the Western European countries, particularly France, and has agreed to ship its uranium to Turkey.
But Turkey has also guaranteed that if the West does not deliver on its promise of delivering fuel for Tehran's richest reactor, Turkey will return Iran's low-enriched uranium to Tehran.
So that was basically what made the deal possible.
So sounds good, right?
Everything's fine now?
Well, everything is fine, except that the European countries and the United States reacted negatively.
Now they are demanding more.
They are saying, well, this is only a small step.
We have to remember, last October, President Obama said this is a very important step.
But now Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said, well, this is good, but this is only a small step, and we still have a lot of problems with Iran and its nuclear program.
The same thing with the European countries.
Germany reacted negatively, France reacted negatively, and the British reacted negatively.
So it's not clear whether this agreement will actually go forward if the United States and its allies start demanding more.
For one thing, they may say that when the original deal was made in October, Iran had about 1,800 kilograms of low-enriched uranium.
But according to the latest IAEA report, Iran now has about 2,300 kilograms of low-enriched uranium.
So 1,200 kilograms that Iran was supposed to ship in October, and now has agreed to ship to Turkey, at that time represented 75 percent of Iran's stockpile.
But now it represents only a little over half of its stockpile, so that may not be enough.
So if they start making demands like that, that may break the deal.
Right.
Well, which is of course the purpose, because I think Antiwar.com is putting out a statement today about this, which includes a quote from Philip Giraldi saying that if there's some disagreement about the quantities of uranium to be included in the agreement, Washington should at least be willing to use the understanding already achieved as a basis for further discussion and elaboration.
This whole thing is, you accept our deal.
Accept our deal, we're ready to beat you over the head, we're going to put crippling, suffocating sanctions on you if you don't accept our deal.
Then they say, okay, we accept your deal.
And the Obama administration says, not good enough.
Robert Gibbs comes out at the press conference yesterday and tells the New York Times, leaks to the New York Times even before that, not good enough, because as you said, the quantities of uranium have changed.
Not, wow, we have a deal that's 95 percent done.
The ink is wet.
All we've got to do is maybe change some numbers around a little bit, shake hands and sign the bottom line and we're done.
And instead, the Obama administration is taking the opportunity to say, oh, well, there's a few more kilograms of uranium that have been enriched here, and so now forget about it.
Brazil and Turkey can break their backs bending over backwards trying to work a deal out here, and yet, no, we want our crippling, suffocating sanctions, and we won't let any successful diplomacy by BRIC countries get in the way.
Exactly.
And you see, this can be the basis for further negotiation.
The fact of the matter is, up to now, Iran has resisted shipping its low-enriched uranium to outside and wait for receiving fuel for nuclear reactors.
But now it has agreed.
In the past, Iran had also insisted on the swap being a multi-stage process rather than all at once.
But now Iran has also given up that demand.
So Iran has made its position flexible enough for the negotiation to go forward.
But now, as you pointed out, the United States is backtracking and says, well, this is not enough, precisely because of what you said, because they want to impose crippling sanctions on Iran, because the pressure in the United States on the Obama administration is just too much.
War mongers, war party, Israel lobby, a lot of other people are pressuring for these crippling sanctions, and nothing is good enough for this crowd other than crippling sanctions, which may lead eventually to war, which will be a disaster for the entire Middle East.
Well, and the Obama administration here has been very contradictory from the beginning.
On one hand, they insist on these quite illegal and illegitimate UN Security Council resolutions that say that Iran may not enrich uranium at all, period.
And then on the other hand, they say, well, you know, what if we kind of did this deal where we export your uranium and we have the Russians and the French get it into fuel rods for you at 20 percent and this and that?
Which is it?
How can they, on one hand, implicitly accept enrichment at least up to 3.6 percent industrial grade and say, but, you know, but we'll handle the up to 20 percent for you, while on the other hand, insisting that, no, you may not run your Natanz facility, you may not open your com facility, you may not enrich uranium, you may not have a nuclear program.
The UN Security Council says so.
Which is it?
Well, exactly.
The latter.
Of course, and you see, part of the implication of this deal is that if the United States and its allies go along with this deal, that means that they have accepted the legitimacy of Iran's uranium enrichment program.
It is not that Iran actually needs that legitimacy, because Iran gets the legitimacy for its program from nuclear nonproliferation treaty that is signed in 1967, but it actually recognizes the legitimacy in the eyes of the people in the West, and they don't want that.
On Friday, last Friday, Hillary Clinton called the foreign ministers of both Turkey and Brazil and asked them not to go ahead with the mediation in Tehran that started on Saturday, because they did not want these negotiations to succeed.
They are also not happy for the fact that Brazil is the most powerful Latin American country and has mediated in this, and that Turkey, which is a U.S. ally and a member of NATO alliance, has also stepped in to mediate this conflict, and therefore sidestepped the U.S. and its allies.
So this is another aspect of the problem that people should look at.
They're not happy about this.
They're not happy for the fact that Brazil and Turkey are doing good diplomatic work in order to break the deadlock.
Right.
And Brazil is an ally of ours.
That's the joke here, right?
Is we're talking about our friends, Turkey and Brazil, saying, hey, you know what?
Let us work this out for you.
Exactly.
And we're telling them, no, no, stop.
Don't you dare.
Yes, exactly.
As I said, Hillary Clinton called them on Friday and said, don't do this.
It will not succeed, she said.
And then she publicly declared to the reporters that, oh, they are going to have too many hurdles to overcome, and this will fail, because the world knows that at every step of these negotiations, Iran has not lived up to its obligations.
Right.
Now, listen, we're really short on time here, but there's a couple of things I'd like you to address.
First of all, seems like from all the Iranians I've met in L.A., virtually all of you guys are people who fled when the Shah fell and the Ayatollahs came to power.
So is that correct to say that your politics is on the side of the reformers and against the Ayatollahs?
I am a reformist, a backer of the Green Movement, and against Ahmadinejad and his hardliner allies.
I have been for many, many long time, for a long time, and I have been writing extensively against him and the election fraud and everything else.
Right.
I know that for a fact.
I just want to make sure that people understand, you're not here with a brief for the Ayatollah Khamenei.
You're here with a brief for the people of Persia, trying to keep them from being bombed based on a bunch of lies, which is perfectly admirable.
Exactly.
I mean, my position is an anti-war position.
We are doing the work that we are doing because we want to prevent a war, an unjust war, illegal war against Iran.
It has nothing to do with Ahmadinejad or the Ayatollahs.
I'm not their supporter, and I reject almost all of their policies.
But this is Iran's national right, and this is an anti-war position that people like me take.
Absolutely.
All right.
Now, one more thing, which is that the last time I interviewed you and posted the archive up there on anti-war radio, someone in the comments section made a couple of points that were at least somewhat valid, in that I hadn't asked you to address at all, and these things do exist and people have various ideas about them, but I didn't ask you at all to address the heavy water reactor at Arak, A-R-A-K.
And also, he said something about when the Bushehr reactor is up and going, running on the uranium enriched to industrial grade 3.6% there at Natanz, that it will produce weapons grade plutonium, 239.
And so therefore, that's obviously part of an Iranian drive for a nuclear weapons program as well.
Or a nuclear weapon as well.
Okay.
Let me address this question.
First of all, regarding Bushehr reactor, Iran and Russia have signed an agreement whereby Iran will return the nuclear waste from Bushehr reactor to Russia.
So there is no way for Iran to use that plutonium for making nuclear bombs.
Regarding the Arak heavy water facility, heavy water plant is actually not considered as part of any nuclear weapon program unless you have a heavy water reactor to use the heavy water that is produced in the plant.
In fact, heavy water plant is not even considered part of the safeguard agreement that Iran has with the IAEA.
It only makes sense if there is a heavy water reactor.
Iran has been building a heavy water reactor and has let the IAEA know that once the reactor is coming close to come online, which will be in 2014, then the IAEA can go in, monitor it, inspect it, and safeguard it according to the standard of IAEA.
Right.
And now, I want to add something here that's, you know, my best understanding.
I'm just a skater kid layman here, but I'm trying.
And I know Doc Prather.
And Doc Prather knows.
And what Doc Prather tells me is that once the Iranian, I forget exactly if it's, I guess it's the Bushehr reactor.
Once that thing was up and going and producing plutonium as a byproduct, that in order to get that plutonium, the Iranians would have to shut down the reactor and wait like a year for the stuff to cool off.
And then they have to go through this incredibly burdensome process of harvesting that plutonium out of the reactor.
Basically what this all means is that it is impossible to even, it's ridiculous to even imagine that the Iranians could get away with doing any of this in secret.
That would be, as you just said, safeguarded by the IAEA, Israel, America, and everybody in the whole world would know if they were harvesting weapons grade plutonium.
That is completely correct.
And in fact, as you said, even if Iranians were to try to do that, it would be a long, torturous process.
But more important than that, these are the type of claims that Israel and the United States used to make in the 1990s.
But they have given up on that precisely because of, first of all, the technical difficulty.
And second of all, because of the agreement that I mentioned between Iran and Russia, whereby Iran is obligated to return the nuclear waste from the Bushehr reactor to Russia.
And everything in that reactor is also safeguarded by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
And therefore there is no possibility whatsoever that Iranians could use that, even if they had the technical expertise to make a nuclear bomb with plutonium.
Right.
Well, and that's another point worth mentioning, is that setting off a plutonium bomb is much more difficult than a simple gun type uranium bomb.
That is usually what they're trying to scare us with, because everybody knows that the Iranians do not have the technical capability and have not developed the technical capability to set off an immensely complicated implosion bomb like, well, we all know from World War II, they didn't even bother testing the Hiroshima bomb because the math was there.
They just knew it would work.
You slam a couple of pieces of weapons grade uranium into each other at the right velocity and you're going to get a bang.
The Nagasaki bomb, they had to test in the desert in New Mexico to make sure that it would work.
But even that was after testing the implosion system over and over and over and over and over again with non-fissile material to get the timing on the separate high explosive charges in there to work correctly.
Right.
These are all completely correct, Scott.
First of all, Iran doesn't even have, there is no evidence that Iran has that level of technical expertise to make the bomb and to put it on a warhead.
And secondly, even if it was somehow getting its hands on such a difficult problem, every indication is that even if they could do it, it would be a long way away.
And there is no evidence that they actually want to make a nuclear bomb.
They have said repeatedly that they are not interested in a nuclear bomb.
But of course, the war party in this country doesn't buy it because they are only interested in sanctions and possibly military attacks on Iran.
Right.
Well, and I'm sorry, we're all out of time, but I guess I'll just go ahead and say this part because it shouldn't go unsaid, that any reasonable person putting themselves in the Iranian government's shoes could see why they might want nuclear weapons since they're threatened by nuclear weapons states, the United States and Israel on a virtually daily basis.
And we've kind of proven with the North Korea, Iraq examples that if you are armed with nukes, it makes us a lot less likely to attack you.
And so I wouldn't blame them if they were making nukes.
And if they did have nukes, it would still be the furthest thing from a causus belly and a reason to attack them, even if they had 50 hydrogen bombs.
And yet still, we have to confront the lies for what they are without necessarily accepting the premise of whether it's an excuse for war or not.
And let me add to this, Iran is surrounded by U.S. forces on three sides in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in the Persian Gulf.
To the west of Iran, in the short distance, about a thousand kilometers, is Israel with 400 nuclear warheads.
To the south, southeastern part of Iran, there is Pakistan with 60 nuclear warheads and a very unstable country with a sort of a radical intelligence services that supported Taliban.
And then when Taliban were in power in Afghanistan, they killed eight Iranian diplomats, and Iranian Taliban went to war, almost went to war in 1998.
So if we...
Well, they got the Russians just to hop, skip and a jump to the north, too, Mohamed.
Exactly.
And the northern part of Iran is, of course, Russia and former Soviet Republic, and Russia always has had its eyes towards Iran and the Persian Gulf and so on.
So as you said, if we just close our eyes and imagine our country, the United States, be surrounded by all these enemies on all these sides, would we blame the government to try to develop a strong deterrent so that the country will not be attacked?
We wouldn't.
So this is the same thing for Iran.
Even if they were going to go after nuclear bomb, and there is no evidence that they are.
Thank you, Mohamed.
You do great work.
Thank you very much.
Everybody, that's Mohamed Sahimi.
He's a professor at USC, and he writes for us at antiwar.com.
You can find him original.antiwar.com slash Sahimi.
And we'll be right back with the great Jim Bovard right after this.
