08/24/15 – Yousaf Butt – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Next up is Dr. Yosef Butt, nuclear physicist and senior advisor to the British American Security Information Council and director at the Cultural Intelligence Institute.
Welcome back to the show.
Yosef, how are you doing?
Good, good, good to be back.
Good, good.
Happy to have you here.
Lots to talk about on the show today.
Of course, we're in that interim period here where the U.N. Security Council, including the U.S. executive branch, has signed this deal with the Iranians, the final deal.
But we're still waiting for Congress to try to kill it or not and see how successful they are with that.
And they still have time.
And so in the meantime, they're coming out with as much propaganda as they can to try to ruin the deal.
And obviously the latest was the big one.
Well, I don't know if it's the latest.
Maybe there's another one since then.
But the big one last week, anyway, centered around good old George John at the Associated Press with a story about a deal between the IAEA and the Iranians for the implementation of their inspection of the Parchin military facility that basically just gave the Iranians the store and let them go ahead and take all their own samples.
And, you know, basically, as I think a Republican congressman put it, this is like asking Olympic athletes to provide all their own urine samples without a great example, I guess, for the intrusiveness.
But anyway, so I'm getting to the point, Yosef, and that is that I interviewed this guy, Tariq Ralph, from Atomic Reporters, former official at the IAEA, apparently at a pretty high level there.
And he said that he thought that the document that these accusations were based on, which AP, after they were criticized, published the document or at least a representation of the document.
And he said it was so badly flawed that he thought you couldn't blame it on George John.
He's not that lousy of a reporter.
It must have been a bogus document in the first place.
And so let's start with that and what you think of Tariq Ralph's argument there.
I think that argument may be fine.
I think the document at hand could be a draft document, which I think Jan admits to.
So I think we shouldn't read too much into, you know, nitpick it too much.
Also, the administration has not actually contradicted anything in the main gist of what was contained in the document.
So my take on it is the gist of it is correct, that the Iranians will be leading the inspections at this Parchin site, which there's accusations from 10, 13 years ago that there might have been some nuclear weapons related research using conventional explosives.
But my take is also that this is not a big deal because it's common for, you know, inspections that usually what will happen is there's two inspectors.
You know, one's called Dirty and one's called Clean.
The dirty guy goes in and he's the one doing the actual sampling, you know, taking this ultra clean cloth and swiping it across surfaces.
And he hands it to the clean guy who's got the little baggie that they put it in.
And then they send off these samples to various laboratories around the world.
So it's common that the inspectors from the country will be the dirty inspector, will be the ones doing the actual sampling and they'll hand it over to the official IAEA person who's got the clean title and he's got the little baggie that they put it in.
So my take on it is this is like a tempest in the teapot.
It's not a big deal that Iranians are involved in sampling because there will be IAEA monitors there.
That's my understanding.
So, in other words, whether or not it's a forgery, we're talking about taking one line out of context and implying that since the line doesn't continue to go on and describe the process whereby, yes, there will be a white northern European guy standing there in a lab coat looking, then that must mean that there won't be and therefore they're letting the Iranians inspect themselves.
Well, I think the story just got mangled because there was various versions of it online and various deletions.
So I think what the brouhaha was about was it was initially being cast as there will be no IAEA inspectors with these people and the Iranians will just go in and swipe whatever and just bring out the samples.
That's not the case.
As far as I know, what the latest reports show is there will be Iranians doing the swiping and there will be IAEA monitors closely monitoring them, which is unremarkable.
That's just that's that's actually normal procedure.
Right.
So, yeah, ideally, you know, you'd like to have completely no Iranian involvement.
It's just purely IAEA inspectors.
But that already doesn't happen sometimes.
So it's just not a big deal at all, even if these reports are true.
Yeah, I think that was Ralph's point was, you know, the document saying that the Iranians are going to do it or maybe it could have been read to imply that there won't be an IAEA inspector there on site or something like that.
That was why he said it must be a forgery, because it is absolutely inconceivable that any country would ever get a deal, especially Iran in this case, but that any country would ever get a deal where, OK, you guys go in there and get us a swipe and bring it out and we'll be waiting out here for you in the parking lot or what.
That's just not how business is done.
Right.
Right.
And I think what what the issue is in this draft document, it just doesn't touch upon that.
It just, you know, it just tells you about the Iranian side and it doesn't tell you that there will be IAEA monitors, which doesn't mean that there won't.
It just means that it's not mentioned.
And that might be normal procedure in a draft, like when you're, you know, you're putting down a draft of something that's going to be finalized.
You don't you're putting down the minimum amount, but that doesn't mean other things won't be added in later.
So the crucial thing being there will be IAEA monitors closely monitoring whatever happens.
And it doesn't matter who the guy is who's actually doing the swiping.
As long as you're looking over his shoulder, you're recording his movements and everything's on video, or at least there's a close monitoring of them live by IAEA official inspectors.
All right.
Now, so at this point, it's sort of a side issue, but maybe not.
What do you think of all those errors in that draft of the draft of the draft that the AP put out?
Yeah, I mean, I'm not an expert in it.
I defer to Ralph on that.
He has far more experience in that.
But like I said, for me, it's not even a big deal, even if that document is true, because it's not it's not raising a red flag in any way.
Like I said, as long as as long as there's IAEA monitors in there, that's not a problem.
And it's inconceivable that there won't be so.
And I think that's the latest release from the administration also mentions that there will be IAEA inspectors.
And yes, the Iranians might be involved in the process.
But yeah, so and, you know, I had a piece out last week about why this might be related to the errors that happened in Syria.
So that that that may be why the Iranians had a case for for for doing it this way.
Yeah.
Go ahead and tell that story real quick, if you could.
Yeah.
So there was reports mentioned by Peter Jennings, who's Jenkins is a former UK ambassador to the IAEA.
His contacts informed him that there was improper process during the Syria investigation at Al-Kibar, where one of the lead invest inspectors took a swipe and then put, you know, at an improper place and then put it in his pocket instead of putting it in this clean baggie.
So and that was the only swipe apparently that came back with signatures of manmade uranium.
There was also three other swipes taken and they did not register this manmade uranium.
So the only uranium containing sample was the one that was improperly handled.
All right.
Hold it right there.
We'll be right back, everybody, with Dr. Yosef Butt, nuclear physicist on the Iran talks and deal and all that propaganda.
Hey, all.
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All right, welcome back.
I am talking with Dr. Yosef Butt, nuclear physicist from the British American Security Information Council.
And director at the Cultural Intelligence Institute.
And we're talking about the propaganda war against the Iran deal.
Pretty sure they're going to never run out of these stories about, you know, just all you got to do, take a sentence out of context, say it means another thing, dominate the news cycle for a week with breathless accusations.
And then ultimately, the truth doesn't matter at all.
The narrative carries the day.
That's basically the uphill battle we're trying to resist here.
And, you know, the funny thing about it is it has us on the same side as the president.
So it's not exactly, you know, destined to be a losing battle, even though the other party controls the Congress.
It seems like he probably has the votes to get this deal done.
But now, you know, the narrative is working on people.
I mean, it really people think that this is a deal to give them nuclear.
Why would I know that Obama's a lousy president?
I can't believe he's just given the Iranians nuclear weapons like this.
People, you know, they don't know.
They just try to regurgitate as best they can what they thought they heard.
And so I was wondering if we could talk a little bit about, you know, what the deal actually says about the centrifuges and the reactors.
And I guess really I'm most interested in the two reactors, Arak, that's A-R-A-K, Arak and Bushehr, and what you know about them, how they work and what the deal says about how they will be made to work in the future and what that means for possible production of weapons grade plutonium as waste at those reactors.
Could you explain that part of it to us?
Sure.
The Arak one, A-R-A-K, is the one of interest for plutonium production.
And what the deal says, and currently it could yield a lot of plutonium if it's separated out, if there's a reprocessing plant to separate out the plutonium.
The deal would modify the core of that reactor to make it so that it produces a lot less plutonium.
So we definitely want something like that.
If you're interested in Iran not having even the possibility of weaponizing in the future, you should back the deal because it cuts off that path enormously.
Not that Iran seems to be jumping at any opportunity to make a bomb, because even our U.S. Director of National Intelligence weighed in earlier and said he has a high level of confidence that Iran is not currently weaponizing.
Whatever research and experiments that we're doing were shut down in 2003.
But coming back to your point, Scott, about the new cycle, etc.
It's funny, David Sanger had a couple of pieces out just over the weekend, and there's serious flaws in them.
For instance, the one on Parchin, he mentions categorically that the IAEA went there once.
But in fact, they went there twice already in 2005, in January and November.
So I had written in and they have still not corrected it.
I'm not sure why they're persisting with this, but it's these kind of small errors that keep adding up and add to suspicion over Iran's intentions.
And especially the New York Times, the newspaper of record.
Of course, regular listeners of this show know for years we've covered David Sanger and his heirs.
For four or five or more years straight in a row, he consistently referred just offhand without ever proving it.
He would just refer to Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program and just assert its existence.
And the rest of every other town newspaper basically follows the lead of the New York Times on issues like that.
And he's made himself very clear in his various interviews with Charlie Rose and that kind of thing where he stands on all this.
Oh, I think they probably have a secret parallel program somewhere in this kind of thing.
So in other words, he's a complete kook fit for the basement of AEI or the Center for Security Policy or something.
Yeah, but it's not even just errors in reporting.
It's the choice of what you choose to report on and what the editors let pass for publishing.
For instance, his latest piece is something completely well known that, you know, yes, there's a sunset clause in the deal that, you know, 10, 15 years from now, the restrictions begin to be cut off and Iran goes back into a normal monitoring like an NPT state with the additional protocol, which is fine.
I mean, that's that's better than where we are right now.
So he has this big fear mongering article out saying, oh, well, there's all these concerns that in, you know, 10, 15 years from now that Iran will be able to weaponize.
Well, I mean, that's not news.
Anybody who's following the Iran deal knows exactly what it is.
And then that, you know, these restrictions come off in 10 or 15 years.
I don't even know why the New York Times published that.
It's just, you know, rehashing old news that's been known for months and just trying just to come at this critical time and just, you know, highlight these fears for no reason.
Yeah.
Well, and of course, nowhere in there does it say, yeah, you know, truth be told, they mastered the fuel cycle 10 years ago and they could have made nukes this whole time.
They could have been bluffing when they were enriching up to 20 percent and then gone ahead and raced for 90 percent and try to make a Hiroshima bomb gun type nuke out of it real quick.
But then, no, they didn't.
You don't have to explain that.
Sure.
And if you're afraid that Iran might do that in 10 or 15 years, certainly you should be afraid that they might do that right away, which which is what you know, which is a possibility.
Right.
If the if the deal is not done.
You scientists in your logical games trying to trick me.
So, yeah.
So we have our Judy Miller's at the New York Times these days, too.
Yeah.
No, I mean, he's been consistently horrible.
It's actually a fun game.
If you go back and look through his archives, wherever it's broad and Sanger, it's always worse.
But if they ever team him up with Mazzetti, then he'll be forced to admit that, well, they are under the NPT.
And I don't know whether I'm whether there's really a causation of that correlation.
That's just the way it seems to me like, well, they are an NPT member.
But you're right.
I mean, the way they categorize like once the deal is over, then they'll be free to make a nuke.
Well, they're not free to make a nuke now.
And I mean, in the sense that they could withdraw from the treaty.
But as long as they're within the treaty, they're not free to.
And they'll be monitoring and, you know, additional protocol.
And if you're afraid they're going to do it in 10 or 15 years, you should certainly be afraid they'll do it tomorrow.
You know, which is right.
Which is, as you say, the additional protocol is indefinite.
And that's really something.
Right.
It sounds like some boring old international legal term.
But what all is the additional protocol mean?
Yeah, I mean, basically, it includes more facilities where if the IAEA suspect that they can have easier access, you know, they don't they don't have to they don't have to be subject to any stalling by the Iranians.
They can just be they can gain easier access to any additional facilities or mines or whatnot.
That's that has anything to do with nuclear fuel cycle.
So it just gives them basically more intrusive.
It gives the IAEA more intrusive inspection rights in a given country.
All right.
Now, how.
Last question here.
Real quick.
Music's playing.
How hilarious is it going to be when they find no trace of any explosives testing chamber at Parchin anyway?
Well, the interesting thing is there's a lot of discussion over that.
And, you know, Cheryl Roper had an article out that saying, well, if they don't find it, either there was never anything there or that they managed to to hide it.
Well, if that's the case, why bother going?
You know, it's like damned if they do and damned if they don't.
So it's kind of pointless.
The best excuses for war are never falsifiable.
You got to make sure that you have your escape.
Robert Kelly has a good piece in Loblog saying, you know, it's not so much the sampling.
It's the the addition, you know, the structure of the building and what's inside it that the inspectors might find, which which might be of interest.
So, you know, I'd definitely go and listen to what Kelly is saying, given his background experience.
Yeah, absolutely.
And anybody can find that stuff at SIPRI dot org and at Loblog dot com as well.
All right.
Well, listen, thanks very much for coming back on the show.
Keep writing about this.
We need you out there.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
That's Dr. Yosef.
But everybody, he is at the Huffington Post with this one.
Why the IAEA would yield to Iran on inspecting the Parchin weapons site.
And also he's known for his angry letters to the editor of The New York Times.
And we'll be right back in just a sec.
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