All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
And I'm happy to welcome Gareth Porter back to the show.
Independent historian and journalist, writes for IPS News, Interpret Service, that's IPSNews.net.
And his latest piece is called Iran holds up access to Parchin for better IAEA deal.
Welcome back to the show, Gareth.
How are you doing?
Hi, Scott.
I'm fine, thanks.
Thanks for joining us.
Appreciate it.
So Parchin is familiar to regular listeners of the show anyway, or maybe, I don't know, to regular listeners or consumers of war propaganda, as well as the place mentioned in the latest IAEA report from a couple of months back, saying that they, looks like they possibly might have, could have been testing the implosion systems for nuclear warheads at this place called Parchin.
And now all the news this week, we went over the New York Times version of it on the show yesterday, was that the IAEA wanted to go there and those dastardly Iranians refused to allow them to inspect.
Yeah, that that is indeed the entirely predictable big media take on the failure of the IAEA mission to reach agreement with the Iranians, that is that the Iranians were preventing them from going to Parchin so that they wouldn't see some incriminating evidence of past and or past and present work on a nuclear weapon device.
The reality, however, I think is quite clearly different from that.
I mean, you know, if you understand the larger context of the IAEA visit to Tehran, the second of two over the past few weeks, what was really going on here was negotiations on what they call a framework for cooperation.
And in that context, clearly, you know, Iran understands that the IAEA wants to visit Parchin and that's negotiating chip or a bargaining card, if you will, that they they're not going to give it up until they get something reasonable in return.
So clearly, what's happening here is that the Iranians are bargaining hard as they always do, holding on to their bargaining chips to be played at a time and in circumstances that will get them something reasonable or significant in return.
And what we know about the IAEA position, at this point, as revealed by, I believe it was the independent, but I could I could already have forgotten which source now presiding for that information.
The the IAEA was continuing to demand from Iran, cooperation on two things that were have already been in the mill for years now, which are quite unacceptable to Iran.
One is, of course, they want to interview top ranking military scientists in Iran, people who will, of course, have a bullseye on their back, if and when they meet with the IAEA, any additional information that the IAEA picks up is going to be eventually make its way to Israel, and allow them to consider at least targeting them for assassination.
So that obviously is out.
The second thing the the IAEA wants is to is that Iran turns over sensitive military documents relating to the Shahab three missile.
And this, of course, has also been something they've demanded since September 2008.
And that, of course, is unacceptable for obvious military security reasons of the the IAEA is not supposed to get that kind of information from or not to request that kind of information from member states, as as Iran has pointed out in the past.
So very briefly on that point, just to bring it up, because it's important, but then we'll we'll move right on.
Iran's obligation under the non proliferation treaty and their safeguards agreement is to allow the IAEA to verify the non diversion of their declared nuclear material, and all of the rest of these questions and inspections and demands are not based on the NPT or the safeguards agreement, but on separate UN Security Council resolutions, mandating that the IAEA go asking all of these things, some questions based on forgeries, things like you're saying demands to inspect missile facilities have nothing to do with nuclear material, and which of course, are demands made to provoke them into balking and saying, No, we're not going to let you do that.
Although it sounds like you're saying they are going to go ahead and let them inspect this Parchin military complex, but only after what?
Yeah, I have no doubt that they are ready that they've told the IAEA quite clearly.
Yeah, you can go inspect Parchin as part of a larger deal, we just have to reach agreement on what it is that both sides are going to put on the table.
And as I say, I mean, the the IAEA has put on the table things that are unacceptable.
And, you know, it's not clear that the IAEA is even willing to give the, the Iranians, their seal of approval that is, you know, sort of stopping the accusations of work on a nuclear weapons, covert nuclear weapons program, in return for both Parchin, you know, and other things that the the, I think the Iranians are willing to do to clarify and to further explain why the these intelligence documents are fabrications and why it's clear that they've not been working on the covert nuclear weapons program.
But But let me also add just one more point that I think is important to understand.
And that is that, although it's true that Iran is not now obligated by its safeguards agreement to allow inspections at Parchin, they did, of course, voluntarily accept the terms of the additional protocol from 2003, or late 2003, through late 2005.
And during that period, they were indeed, you know, allowing such inspections, you know, that go well beyond the terms of the basic safeguards agreement.
So, you know, they, they terminated that voluntary observation or, or carrying out of the terms of the additional protocol in 2000, early 2006, as I recall, but they are certainly willing to go back to that in order to get the kind of agreement that would really help them politically, obviously, if the IAEA were willing to do it.
And that's why I think, you know, it's clear that they would be willing to allow them to go back to Parchin.
They, as I pointed out in my article today, they, of course, allowed the IAEA twice to carry out very stringent inspection missions to the Parchin testing facility on two occasions in 2005, once in January, and then again in November 2005.
And what is so interesting about those, those two IAEA inspections was that, I mean, this is absolutely unprecedented opportunity for IAEA to carry out inspections, because the Iranians said you can pick any five locations, any five buildings in this Parchin base, testing base, and carry out inspections at your own leisure within the buildings and on the ground surrounding them, any five of them to pick whatever you want, and you can go and visit them and carry out whatever inspections and, you know, do environmental swipes and whatever you want.
And then they did it again a second time.
And of course, in both cases, the IAEA found nothing.
Right.
Well, and this was the source of the reporting, if you can call it that, I guess so, in the New York Times by David Sanger, who is the most hawkish reporter on this, maybe equal to George John at the AP.
But anyway, very hawkish so called reporter at the New York Times, David Sanger, quoting Ollie Heinenen, who is a very hawkish former IAEA official saying, No, I sent my guys there.
And there's nothing like nuclear weapons testing going on there.
That's right in the Times, you know, they found nothing, they had no information suggesting anything going on at Parchin in 2005, that had anything to do with nuclear weapons.
And this is this idea that they've now discovered, you know, this, you know, they have this information about the construction of a tank to test hydrodynamic testing for a nuclear weapons design.
It's all fake, obviously.
It is all fake.
And we've discussed that on the show before people can look that up.
And also they can hang tight through this break.
And we'll talk a little bit more about nanodiamonds and what it says about the IAEA's accusations at this point after this break.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I got Gareth Porter on the line from interpress service, IPS news.net and antiwar.com original.antiwar.com/Porter.
I just don't seem right to me.
But anyway, you can get there from here.
In fact, if you just hit antiwar.com/Porter, I'm 99% certain it will forward you on to the most recent stuff.
All right.
Anyway, so we are talking about the recent so called big deal this week about the IAEA in Iran.
And I didn't get a chance to watch Brian Williams NBC News version, but I'm sure it was horrible.
And the narrative, of course, is, you know, those stubborn Iranians refuse to be reasoned with, etc, etc.
In this case, specifically, denying the IAEA access to a building, which as you mentioned, Gareth, the IAEA has inspected before and never found any evidence of any nuclear weapons testing of any kind anyway.
And I guess I'll just add real quick here, because I think it's important.
I don't know if you have, you know, your own firsthand source for this kind of thing.
But Gordon Prather, the nuclear scientist who used to write for antiwar.com explained to me that in order to build an implosion device, you have to test it, whatever 1000 times or something many, many, many times with something like depleted uranium, pretty much that's your only material that you can use.
And then you need super high speed x ray film.
And you do it over and over because you have to time the implosion charges to the micro second or the thing will fizzle, it won't work.
And usually, if someone's making an implosion bomb, I think 99% of the time, that would be made out plutonium, usually a uranium bomb would only be used, you know, in a gun type Hiroshima nuke would be what you do like the most rudimentary kind of nuke you'd make out of uranium, which I don't think is to say it's impossible to make a implosion uranium bomb, but surely it's something where they would have to have real specialization in order to do it.
And there's just no evidence of any of that.
And of course, all the uranium is still sitting there.
But when we're talking about these tests at parchment, I don't know all the different evidence about it.
And I'll ask you all about it, because IEA made some pretty bold accusations last time.
But there's no evidence of the high speed x ray film and these 1000s of tests that would have had to take place or whatever.
Well, I think that the real point here is that there's on the record itself, on the face of it, the the IEA report is not just implausible, but virtually impossible.
I mean, the information they provide here, suggesting that they got the dimensions of this putative, I call it the putative, you know, bomb chamber, bomb test chamber, you know, a chamber in which they claim their purpose was to carry out these hydrodynamic tests on a nuclear weapon design.
That's what you're talking about, basically, is the test that would not use fissile material, but something as a replacement for it.
And they're claiming that they got the dimensions of this putative bomb chamber from Danilenko.
That is the the what they call the former Soviet nuclear weapons scientist who was in fact, a Ukrainian who actually worked at Chelyabinsk in the former Soviet Union, but did not work on nuclear weapons, but on nanodiamonds.
And, and, you know, had a patented cylinder for the production of nanodiamonds through an explosives process, which the IAEA claimed was the basis for getting the dimensions for this chamber for doing hydrodynamic testing.
Now, that's simply impossible, as Robert Kelly, the former IAEA weapons inspector, a genuine specialist on nuclear weapons, who who studied this report very carefully said, you know, this is nonsense, you can't have the kind of testing that's required for a nuclear weapon in a chamber that would hold only 70 kilograms of explosives, which is what the IAEA claims was they learned were the dimensions or part of the specifications for this putative bomb chamber.
He says, you'd have to have multiple of that in order to carry out hydrodynamic testing for nuclear weapon.
Then on top of that, what you find out if you you do the research, as I did, is that Danilenko's design for a chamber for nanodiamond production, which was patented, and published in 1992, actually calls for 10 kilograms of explosives to be contained in So you've got a complete mismatch here between the claims of the IAEA report, on one hand, the realities of actually conducting the kind of hydrodynamic testing they're talking about, on one hand, and the actual chamber that was or the cylinder that was designed by Danilenko and patented and published on the other just doesn't match.
All right, now, it is the case that, and I forget if we've discussed this on the show with you, we've certainly covered it here and there.
But the Israelis finally came out, I know we discussed this with Flint Leverett on the show, the Israeli Mossad came out, and they use the CIA's language, the National Intelligence Council's language from the National Intelligence Estimate, the National Intelligence Director's language when he testifies before the Imperial Senate, and they said, the Iranians, we judge that the Iranians have not yet made a decision about whether they're going, or have not made the decision to pursue nuclear weapons.
In fact, I don't think I've asked you about this.
What do you think that signifies?
Because that's certainly, at least as far as I know, the first time Mossad ever made a statement like that to the media.
I think it's a huge piece of news.
And it is just enormously significant in terms of demonstrating that, in fact, Israeli intelligence is in line with the United States on its fundamental understanding of the situation regarding Iranian nuclear policy, that the Iranians have not made a decision there.
And furthermore, you know, if you, and if I can just introduce this ellipses here, because it is perfectly relevant.
Ehud Barak, last November, in an interview with CNN, went a step further, based on this Mossad intelligence estimate, if you will, and said that the Iranians have not kicked out the IAEA.
Why have they not done that?
Because if they did, they knew, they would know that it would be a signal to the world that they have, they're going for nuclear weapons, and there would be a lot of trouble.
And so, you know, we haven't seen the Iranians do that.
He's accepting, in effect, the point that Obama himself was making a year and a half or so ago, when he was saying that, you know, we will have a signal that the Iranians have decided to go for nuclear weapons if they kick the IAEA out, and they're not doing it.
And that's, and that's going to be, you know, he was, I think he was signaling, that that's going to be the basis on which we make our decision, our policy decision about Iranian intentions.
As long as they haven't kicked out the IAEA, they're not going for a weapon.
Well, and, you know, Seymour Hersh is reporting on this.
I think there's reason to think, Scott, that this has been the Mossad position for quite a while.
I think...
Right, well, that's what, yeah, that was one of the things that Hersh has reported in the New Yorker, and I asked him about it when his two most recent pieces, one article in the New Yorker, the other just a blog at their website about this, Iran and the bomb and Iran and the IAEA from last year.
That was, you know, one of the things that they said, but he also reported that what the CIA guys that he talked to, and I think this went for the Mossad guys, too, was that the reason for 2003 being the date, it wasn't that, you know, boy, they saw George Bush as really threatening, and they were so scared.
And so they stopped making nuclear weapons, because that's what he wanted in that sense.
It was more that they didn't need nukes anymore, because the only reason they were even looking into nukes at all was because of Saddam Hussein.
And since America did their dirty work for them and got rid of Saddam Hussein, and gave them the entire country from Baghdad to Basra, at least, and in alliance with the Kurds in the north, too, then they never even entertained the fantasy that they would arm up nuclear weapons wise in order to match Israel or the United States.
That's an absolute impossibility starting, you know, that's a Beetle Volkswagen racing a Lamborghini that's already down the track, they can't possibly match it.
So their solution was, their policy was, we'll just go with the hands up approach and just say, look, don't shoot, we got inspectors here, don't shoot.
That's why John Bolton told AIPAC in that famous conference call everyone can find at youtube.com where he says we were trying to get them to kick the inspectors out withdraw from the tree like just like that Bill Hicks skit, pick up the gun, and trying to get the guy to pick up the gun.
So then he can shoot him before he can stand up with it.
Very good.
Yes.
No, I agree with I agree with that analysis as far as it goes.
I think however, that there were more than one factors, there was more than one factor, I should say that induced the Supreme Leader of Iran to to decide to really make a very clear statement in 2003.
And to continue 2004 with that statement that that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.
I mean, there was a new emphasis, new certainty, new clarity in the policy in 2003, which I think was was partly indeed, because of the fact that the United States had taken care of Saddam Hussein.
But in addition to that, I think that there were interests within Iran, who saw this as an opportunity to, to reach an agreement with the West, that would reduce tension, and up and provide additional benefits to Iran.
And after all, I think one of the objectives of the national security lead of Iran over the last 20 years has been to find a way to make a deal with the United States that would end the the extraordinary hostility shown officially in US policy toward Iran, and of course, get rid of those really nasty economic sanctions against Iran as well.
So I mean, this was, I think, seen as a route to to achieve something that they had wanted to do for quite a long time.
And of course, that was not popular with everybody in the political leadership circles of Iran, there were those people, the hardliners who were opposed to accommodation with the West.
And that's part of the reason why they attacked the position of being taken of negotiating with the IAEA and with the Europeans over this issue.
All right, well, now, so is there any hope that, well, you know, I talked with David Bromwich, I've talked with you about this, too, the, the kind of half leadership the wrong way is has a slouching toward war, we got tripwires laid everywhere, we have a president who seemingly doesn't want it.
But then again, you know, Hilary Mann-Levert was on the show the other day and said, Hey, you know, all these trips over there aren't necessarily to tell them not to do it.
Maybe some of these trips over there are just coordination for when the war is actually going to get going.
I don't believe that.
I think that it's clear that the, that the military, the US military doesn't want it, doesn't want it is absolutely opposed to it.
And that they have clearly indicated that to Obama, Obama understands that they understand the peril that this puts the US military in.
I mean, they're sitting ducks.
We talked about this before.
There's more and more information that has come out about the degree to which the US military is concerned about the fact that it that in any war with Iran, they would suffer some serious losses.
I mean, that the US ships, more than one ship could be hit on troops in Afghanistan.
Well, yeah, but I mean, but but I think that that's, that's less, you know, that's less spectacular, or less serious a threat.
You know, I mean, the United States is getting out of Afghanistan.
Anyway, it's the well, the thing is, our Navy can kill you from way over the horizon, they don't have to get anywhere near the range, they can beat the range of the Iranians on any given weapon system, right?
Well, they can, they can, you know, certainly inflict great destruction on the Iranian military, and of course, on other targets as well.
But from their point of view, I mean, what are they getting out of it?
I mean, it's, it's really, it's an unnecessary war.
And, you know, it's, it's one of those wars that is not in line with the interests of the US military at this point.
I'm quite convinced of that.
And, you know, sources who I trust are telling me that, indeed, you know, it was true that General Dempsey told the, the Israelis, when he was there that they shouldn't expect the United States to save their bacon if they, you know, go off the reservation and attack, and attack Iran without US approval.
Yeah, but then Panetta kind of overruled that, didn't he?
When he told David Ignatius at the Washington Post that, well, of course, if Iran ever fought back against a war that Israel started, we'd have to jump in.
Of course, as I, as I said, in my own article on that, on that story, I mean, I think that that represented a move backwards from the message that had been conveyed, not just through the Dempsey trip, but also through a couple of other public statements that Panetta himself had made.
And I think that it represents this fundamental contradiction in the Obama administration's policy between wanting to prevent a war, wanting to deter a war by Israeli, by Israel against Iran on one side, and then at the same time, not wanting to come out publicly and be identified with that position completely in public.
I mean, I think that's a fundamental problem.
And it does mean that, that Obama is still vulnerable to going along with an Israeli attack under circumstances where, you know, he's convinced by his retainers, his political advisors, that it would not, it would not be popular, it would expose him to Republican, you know, the usual Republican rap that he's not pro-Israel enough.
And so, you know, I agree with you that there is a serious question about, you know, how far this administration is going to go and whether it's really willing to stand up and do the right thing.
Well, I think one of his goons leaked to the Washington Post that, well, at least we'd prefer it if it was in October, September, October, instead of this spring, you know, for political reasons.
I had not seen that.
And I'm not sure what the reasoning is.
Why did they say it's preferable to have it in October?
Oh, well, I guess the implication was, you know, so that it can't have gone that badly yet, by the time the election, it'll still, they'll have a war boost, instead of like, if it happened, if it started soon, it might be a real catastrophe by November, you know, like a Jimmy Carter kind of thing.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't know.
I mean, that's pretty, that's pretty strange reasoning, in my view.
But it's the October surprise, man.
It works every time.
Are you kidding?
Yeah, well...
Remember when Osama bin Laden did his reelect George Bush ad in 2004?
Yeah, maybe so.
You know, I mean, maybe that's the case, that it's believed that if there's a war in which a U.S. warship is hit in the Gulf, that everybody rallies around the president and stays safe and sound.
Well, or I think the way they would like to look at it would be more like they would have footage of some laser guided missiles going down chimneys to put on TV and pretend that no innocents are dying and that kind of thing.
And look at our great victory and get everybody chanting, we're number one and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, I mean, you know, this is this is not out of the question at all.
I mean, We are number one, after all.
We're number one in a lot of things.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
It's just the wrong categories.
That's all.
All right.
I'm sorry.
I've kept you way over time here.
Thanks very much for your time, Gareth.
Thank you, Scott.
See you around.
Everybody, that's the great Gareth Porter, IPSnews.net, antiwar.com/port.
