All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
And our next guest is Barbara Slavin.
She is an expert on U.S. foreign policy and author of a 2007 book on Iran entitled Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies, Iran and the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation.
She's a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council specializing on Iran.
Her website is barbaraslavin.net.
And she's got this very interesting new piece that's published in a few different places here.
Subtle Signs Obama Diplomacy May Work on Iran.
That's at almonitor.com.
And where's the other one here?
Oh, is that ACUS?
That's the Atlantic Council.
The Atlantic Council of the United States there.org.
Hi, welcome back to the show, Barbara.
How are you?
I'm fine.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
I really appreciate you joining us on such short notice here.
Sure, it's my pleasure.
Okay, so a very important new piece.
It looks like real talks are actually on between the Obama administration and the Ayatollah's government in Iran.
Well, let's not get too carried away here.
I mean, it's, you know, we can't be 100% sure that these things are going to are going to take place and are going to work.
But as I wrote, I think there are some really interesting signals that are being sent back and forth between the two sides that suggest that, you know, these things might actually work.
Now, you have the P5 plus one, that's the the group of, I don't know, putting the Europeans in between us and Iran is how it's basically been in the past, correct?
It's the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, so Russia and China are in there, along with Britain and France.
Well, it seemed like Obama said, you know, he talked a good game in 2009, about trying to have talks with the Iranians, but then he botched his own offer.
No, no, no, no, I just, I would disagree.
I don't think he botched his own offer.
This is what happened.
He made an offer in 2009 to give Iran fuel for a reactor that makes medical isotopes to treat cancer patients.
But in return, he asked the Iranians to send out most of their stockpiles of partially enriched uranium.
And at first, the Iranians said yes.
And then the deal fell apart because of opposition within Iran.
The supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, backed away from this offer.
So I would say that the fault was really on Iran's side back in 2009.
Now, after that, well, I thought the difference was that they said, we'll swap our uranium, but we want to finish fuel rods at the same time we give up our uranium.
That way, we don't get ripped off by the French the same way we did in the 1970s.
No, no, I think that's overstating it.
The problem was that the deal that had been tentatively reached, they felt that they couldn't defend it.
There was a lot of opposition at that time.
The leaders of the Iranian reform movement weren't under house arrest.
They were still issuing statements.
And they criticized this deal because they wanted to get back at the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had just, quote unquote, won elections in the summer of 2009.
There was a lot of fraud in those elections.
And so I think that that particular deal fell apart because of Iranian problems.
Now, one can argue that Obama didn't try hard enough.
There was an effort by the Brazilians and the Turks to try to revive this deal about six months later.
And the U.S. did not jump on that particular possibility because the idea then was to increase pressure on Iran through sanction.
And of course, that's what happened.
And I think that's why the Iranians are eager to come back to the table now, because they're really feeling the heat.
Right.
Well, and, you know, in politics, bygones can be bygones and no time at all.
And so, yeah, forget 2009.
If we can have brand new negotiations starting up, what indications do you have?
I guess you have some sources here tell you that there's at least some backchannel talks already taking place.
Yeah, well, I did an interview with Chuck Hagel, the former senator from Nebraska, who is, as you know, the head of the Atlantic Council.
And he said he thought there were some backchannel discussions.
And actually, President Obama, at his press conference and the other day with the prime minister of England, said that we have ways of, you know, sending our message to the Iranians.
So I think there are intermediaries.
I don't know if there are any direct talks between the U.S. and Iran, but clearly there are ways of sending messages.
And it's just my sense that this next round of talks is going to be better prepared than the ones we've seen in the past, and that there is an interest on both sides that at least trying to start some sort of, you know, sustained process of talk.
So it's not a one-shot deal where they they meet and then go away and they don't talk to each other for another year.
Right.
Well, and now, do you think, if I have it right, that Obama's original offer implicitly recognized Iran's right to enrich uranium?
Just we would really prefer you don't ever go above 3.6 percent.
If you need up to 20 percent for your medicalized tope reactor, we'll go ahead and do that part for you, just as a confidence kind of face-saving sort of an out.
Is that pretty much still the standard for the negotiation, you think?
Yeah, I think it is.
I think it's all about getting Iran to stop enriching beyond 5 percent U-235, and certainly not to make any more of this 20 percent U-235, because physicists tell me that that's most of the way toward bomb grade.
It doesn't take very long to turn it into 90 percent U-235, which is weapons-grade uranium.
So it's all about the 20 percent.
And I think what we're looking for is, again, to quote Senator Hagel, is to manage the problem, to reduce the tensions, to cap the program in such a way that nobody gets trigger-happy, and we can reduce, certainly, the chances for some sort of military conflict.
Well, and also, very importantly, I think you mentioned in here the announcement that the Treasury Department is looking into a former governor, Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, on charges that he took money from the MEK.
And for that kind of thing to be happening, that's a political decision, not just a legal decision.
At that level, correct?
Yeah, I think the last time we spoke, it was about the MEK.
And, you know, some interesting things have happened.
Finally, some of these people from Camp Ashraf, right, are starting to move.
The U.S. worked really hard with the United Nations to get some of these people out of that camp.
And my understanding is that 800 of them have now been moved to Camp Liberty, as it's called, outside Baghdad.
But this Treasury Department investigation, and it's not just Rendell, they're looking into others as well.
I had heard as early as last August that the Treasury Department was considering doing this.
And so now we have confirmation that they are indeed subpoenaing records.
And, you know, there's a whole list of former officials from Bill Richardson to Ed Rendell and Louis Freeh and Anthony Zinni.
I mean, really prominent people from both parties and independents who have taken money to promote getting this group off the terrorist list.
Well, now, so does that mean that the White House decided?
I mean, it seems like a pretty heavy handed way of saying stop helping the MEK to go after people this powerful like this.
Well, you know, it's they're taking money from a terrorist group, at least indirectly, and that's against U.S. law.
Yeah, but laws don't apply to people like that, Barbara.
You know, to do this now, though, is a very big signal to the Iranians, because the Iranian government hates this group.
So I think it's another way of signaling that, you know, if you guys play ball, we're not going to try to overthrow your government, we're not going to give free reign to this group, which has, you know, assassinated Iranian scientists and has a very bloody history with Iran.
All right.
I'm sorry, we're over time.
We got to go.
Thank you so much for doing the show on short notice today.
It's my pleasure.
Really appreciate it.
Everybody, that is Barbara Slavin from the Atlantic Council.
She's a senior fellow there and writes for Al Monitor.
That's A-C-U-S and Al-Monitor.com.
Her own website is barbara slavin.net.
And we'll be right back after this.
