Alright y'all welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio I'm Scott Horton and first up on the show today is Gareth Porter the intrepid Reporter with the name Porter in his name Porter reporter IPS news net interpress service IPS news net and of course anti-war.com/Porter for all those archives this one I really like it because I just love the history of this whole story.
It's such an intriguing story to me and A very important one up to the very present day us rejected 2005 Iranian offer ensuring No nuclear weapons by Gareth Porter anti-war.com/Porter.
Welcome back to the show Gareth.
How are you doing?
I'm good.
Thanks again That George Bush really was a lousy president money He was a terror he was a terror particularly on Iran and Iraq, of course Yeah, I mean this this story is bringing back to memory.
Of course a lot of other things as well, but I get mad mad about Barack Obama all the time.
But yeah way just reading this article brought me back to those days and I'm just so glad they're over not that this is much an improvement, but at least it's different You know what?
I mean?
It's like going from Truman to Eisenhower.
You're still screwed Well, I'd say you know The difference between Truman Eisenhower was was much greater than between Bush and Obama on Iran I have to I have to say that now.
Yeah, I did kill a lot less people Yeah, well, I mean the particularly on the diplomacy of Iran.
I mean the similarities between Obama's and and Bush's diplomacy now becomes daily greater and greater Well, both of them actually have a lot in common with Eisenhower there with the covert action and support for terrorists and stuff Of course, yeah.
All right.
So let's talk about nukes.
First of all, I Guess could you please maybe start by telling them about the disclosure of the Natanz facility and the the big scandal?
Basically at the start of the Bush era, which was oh my goodness They have this secret facility And so now everyone's supposed to believe they're making nuclear bombs and it's a big crisis and we're gonna get the Europeans to negotiate For us and you know kind of give us a little bit of the background So people have something to stand on while you fill in the rest of the details 30 seconds or so I'll be a little point about Natanz is that it was indeed the kickoff of this ten years of Conflict with Iran over its nuclear program and You're correct that you know, it was obviously the the claim of you know, sort of unveiling of revealing Natanz which was supposed to have been a secret facility and and the MEK of course made the claim in a press conference in in Washington that they had discovered this this secret facility.
They got it wrong They said that it was a conversion facility rather than in rate and a nuclear gives me an uranium enrichment Facility and and we now know from multiple sources as I've published before that the MEK Didn't know anything about it.
They oh, I don't know if they didn't know anything about it, but they got the information From the Israelis the Israelis had satellite photographs.
They they knew it was some kind of Nuclear facility they guessed it was a conversion facility and they were wrong but it was handed over to the MEK to launder this this information and The Bush administration, you know playing ball with with the Israelis very cleverly Decided to make this the springboard for a whole campaign that would then make the argument that Iran had been carrying out a covert Nuclear weapons program For 18 years That they had been keeping secret their their plans for Enriching uranium so that they could go on and make nuclear weapons Right, well, and of course, there's another much more plausible Explanation which was simply that the Americans would do everything that they could all through the George HW Bush and Bill Clinton years to keep Russia and China from selling them Even I think the Chinese want to sell them a turnkey light water reactor And we wouldn't even let them do that.
So they had no way to get any nuclear technology except from the black market, right?
I mean CIA's friend a Q con though the whole idea that there was a covert Iranian nuclear program, of course is absolutely false.
The the Iranians never made any secret of their their objective of mastering a fuel cycle of obtaining the technology to do so they they had perfectly above board Negotiations with the Chinese the Russians and several other countries to obtain that technology and the United States of course interfered Over and over again to try to prevent them and to a great extent successfully Prevent them from getting that technology and ultimately they did of course Go to the black market to get centrifuges But you know, they never they never concealed the idea that they were going to have both a conversion facility the conversion facility was Was certainly known to the IEA and and you know You don't have a conversion facility unless you're going to have an enrichment facility So the IAEA knew perfectly well, they were going to have an enrichment facility But they simply hadn't announced it yet and they weren't required to announce it under the terms of their safeguards agreement with the IAEA until six months before the Introduction of nuclear material and that was very far into the future at that point when the MEK made their announcement Right because even in 2005 they took the BBC on a tour of it with some IAEA inspectors and the damn thing was empty it was just Yeah, they hadn't they hadn't that wasn't 2005, right?
Well, I don't remember if it was 2005, but certainly they didn't actually begin I remember the picture of it on the BBC website where it's just a giant kind of underground Walmart sized Building down there or something, but there was nothing no centrifuges spinning Well, I mean they did I think they certainly had some centrifuges there At some point in 2005 if it was early enough in 2005, it's possible that they did Well, maybe I'll Google around a little bit for clarity on that point during the break Yeah, which we're almost there by the way, of course right around 2003 After the Natanz disclosure, but not long after it Really actually according to the CIA I guess according to Seymour Hersh's sources right after America did Iran's dirty work for them and got rid of Saddam Hussein Like their agent Ahmed Chalabi had helped give us an excuse to do that was when According to her that was when they gave up even any idea never mind the smoking laptop but any idea of even Pursuing nuclear weapons in 2003.
It wasn't because they were so scared that we were now occupying Iraq next door It's that they no longer had Saddam Hussein to worry about and they never entertained the idea that they would embark in a nuclear program You know in a way that was Antagonistic to us or Israel that would just get them nuked We already have them way outnumbered like that the only reason they were even Contemplating an atom bomb was to protect them from Saddam and and maybe the possibility that he would reinvade them at perhaps at our request and so Again, I have a slightly different take on that Scott.
I I'm not convinced that there was a bomb program to to defend against Saddam At any time I think you know the evidence Seems to me to go in the other direction that it was proposed by the high-ranking you know Revolutionary Guard Officials that they embark on a nuclear weapons program during the last phase of the war against Iraq, but the evidence is pretty clear that Khomeini Ayatollah Khomeini said no, you know, we we are not going to do that.
That's just That's that's far out Imagination at work and and instead of course They the ayatollah agreed to a very unpalatable peace agreement with with Iraq instead And and I simply don't see the evidence that there's any There's anything indicating a a nuclear weapons program with with the possible exception of some very low level You know on the back of the envelope things having to do with basic Basic physics on a nuclear weapon much later much later All right.
Well, we got a hold of here because it's break time I'm gonna Google up that BBC story and We'll get back and we'll get to the point with Gareth Porter u.s.
Rejected 2005 Iranian offer ensuring no nuclear weapons All right, y'all welcome back, I'm Scott Horton, it's anti-war radio I'm talking with Gareth Porter from interpress service that's IPS news net antiwar.com/Porter and just for footnote purposes Well, the picture isn't of the giant empty thing.
Like I remember the picture is just of Katami pointing but according to the BBC on March the 31st 2005 more than 30 local and foreign journalists were brought by President Mohammed Katami down Underground at Natanz.
They were taken deep inside a building to a vast empty hall designed to house 50,000 enrichment centrifuges Reuters reports.
Oh, there's there's my footnote Right.
No that that would be that would be accurate Of course, that's describing the the largest part of it where they're gonna be 50,000.
I think there was a separate a separate place where they had the the research reactors a smaller smaller not reactors research a Centrifuges where there was a smaller set of oh, I see.
They already did have some so well Anyway, it was all safeguarded by the IAEA.
None of it was in violation As you said they have the rules say if you're going to introduce nuclear material You have to give us warning six months before that's the deal with the IAEA There's no there's no controversy about that.
Nobody's writing the opposite It's beyond controversy.
So it's really one of the most astonishing facets of this whole history that that the Bush administration was able to get away with that and make it into a media Sort of a template that was used over and over again in stories after that But but let me very quickly just just point out something in regard to the The whole question of of whether the Iranians were afraid of being attacked and and that that's what caused them to Declare that they would not have any nuclear weapons that that That it would be the policy of the country to to ban nuclear weapons Musavian of the the High-ranking Diplomat of the Iranian government and and also very in tight with the former president Hashmi, Rafsanjani who wrote the memoirs that I cite as the basis for my story Right tells us something from some insight give some insight into this question He says that there was not really that they were not really afraid That the United States was going to attack Iran at that point.
That was not the primary Problem that they saw that was really The people who were pushing the idea of cooperating with the IAEA were not people who were afraid of an attack there were people who believed that unless they could convince the West of That that Iran was not intending to have nuclear weapons that they would have just an endless problem Politically diplomatically and otherwise with the rest of the world and so that was the basis for that policy all right, so 2005 basically the Bush Administration Colin Powell Connolly's a rice position was we don't talk to terrorists.
We don't negotiate with evil people like this So we'll have the e3 the British the French and the Germans the European three They will be our front men and they will have their specific instructions from us on How to negotiate with the Iranians, which is apparently how they butted up against this perfectly reasonable offer They turned down in 2005 that I want to hear all about well You know just just to set the the stage for this I mean don't forget that in 2004 what the Bush administration really wanted and you know The neocons were in full command at this point John Bolton and all the rest What they really wanted was to take Iran to the Security Council immediately.
I mean they really wanted to do that in 2003 but but the Iranians then entered into negotiations with the eu3 and they they held they basically reached in 2000 in November 2004 a Kind of framework agreement that was supposed to be the basis for then more Fundamental I should say more detailed agreement on arrangements under which Iran would provide objective Guarantees to the eu3 that it was not intending to have nuclear weapons and On the other side the eu3 would provide firm Guarantees that Iran would that they would have cooperation with Iran across the board on political security and Economic affairs so so that was the basis on which they began these negotiations in 2005 on the Iranian nuclear program and during that period of The talks the Iranians agreed to as as a voluntary confidence-building measure to Suspect suspend their enrichment activities, and they went beyond the enrichment actually and suspended even The conversion activities that they had at Isfahan And in fact Isfahan had not gone into operation yet But they agreed not to go ahead with any the conversion activity so so that was the situation when the Iranians then proposed in March of 2005 this very interesting proposal that That they would the same time as the BBC story where there was barely any you said maybe one little room off to the side Where there were a couple of centrifuges spinning and the giant room was still empty Yeah, it was the giant room is still empty, but they were but they had done some work In preparing the way for for enrichment through these research research centrifuges So basically there was in suspension at that point and the the Iranians were offering to Convert any enriched uranium in the future low enriched uranium that they would achieve in the future immediately into fuel rods for their Power system for for Iran now this would of course imply Because they did not have the capability to manufacture or fabricate fuel rods at that point that they were prepared to send the low enriched uranium out of the country to either Russia or France where the capability was in existence to Convert the low enriched uranium into fuel rods That it was not explicit in the document itself in the declaration But but that was clearly what was implied and later on we know that the Iranians did make a proposal That is Musabian himself talks about a proposal that he made to the Germans the French and the British in which They would in fact send out of the country the low enriched uranium to be converted to fuel rods and So, you know, that's pretty clear.
That's what they intended and and I quote the British Representative to the IAEA at that point Peter Jenkins who was part of the British delegation who said, you know We were quite impressed by this Proposal and and they called a halt and in the discussion and said they needed time To discuss it and and then they came back later and they said well We're not ready to give an answer to this.
We we can't we can't do that And of course, we now know that they never intended to to negotiate on this because The fix was on I mean it was it was well understood really by the heads of these delegations that The United States would never stand for any proposal that allowed Iran to have even a single centrifuge in operation and So the British were the enforcers on that within the EU three the British said absolutely no to anything that would allow The the Iranians to have centrifuges and and so the the French and the Germans the Germans were clearly Intrigued by this and interested in it.
The French were on the fence according to Musavian They were willing to talk about it perhaps but they weren't willing to take the initiative and it was up to the British and the British were of course Enforcing the US policy in this regard.
Mm-hmm.
Well and so, you know, John Bolton.
He's a real tough guy I guess and yet what did he accomplish?
I mean how many what's the estimated weight and the amount of enriched uranium at at?
4% and at 20% that they have at this point in 2012 after not exporting any of it to anywhere because they couldn't ever get a deal made right It's a few tons, but basically a few tons a ton is 2,000 pounds, right?
So if you really they had the opportunity here to lock Iran into a situation where they would be Turning over their low-enriched uranium to a country that would be agreed to by the EU three Presumably based on the later the later proposal And they wouldn't have anything to do with it because the u.s.
Was insisting on zero Enrichment as as the goal and and that of course it was it's it's a great example of the the perfect Becoming the enemy of the good Yeah, well, and yeah, certainly at this point Unless they're gonna get into a massive regional war or something like that They're going to have to accept uranium probably even up to 20% for the long haul.
Anyway, well I I think that there's still a deal to be made on that.
That's again That's a bargaining chip for the Iranians and they're holding on to that until they get something in return They haven't offered anything in return yet, right and they won't Well, that's probably right Everybody that's the great Gareth Porter antiwar.com/Porter.
Thanks very much.
Appreciate it.
Thanks Scott
