07/26/13 – Muhammad Sahimi – The Scott Horton Show

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Introducing Mohamed Sahimi, our good friend, who is a professor of chemical engineering at USC, University of Southern California at Los Angeles there.
And he's got this great new piece in the Cairo Review of Global Affairs called Atoms for Peace.
Welcome back to the show, Mohamed.
How are you doing?
I'm fine.
It's good to be back in your program, Scott.
Well, good.
I'm very happy to have you here.
And I know the guys in the chat room are really excited because, well, everybody loves Mohamed Sahimi.
So what a great article you wrote here, Atoms for Peace.
It's really the history of Iran's nuclear program.
Everyone take note, I didn't say nuclear weapons program because there's no such thing as that, and we're going to get to that.
But the title is very intriguing, Atoms for Peace.
Why did you call it that?
Well, first of all, because I believe the nature of Iranian nuclear program is completely peaceful, as evidenced by every single report that the International Atomic Energy Agency submitted to its board of directors, as evidenced by National Intelligence Estimate of 2007 and confirmed at least two more times since then, as evidenced by the most intrusive and extensive inspection of any nuclear program of any member state, NPT state and IAEA state, done by the agency over the past 10 years.
And they have never been able to find a shred of evidence that Iran either has a secret parallel program for producing nuclear weapons or has diverted any of its nuclear material to non-peaceful purposes.
And by the fact that Iran has always said that we want to produce fuel for nuclear reactor in Bushehr and at least two other nuclear reactors that they are at various stages of design and construction.
So if you go back to all of these reports and review every one of them, there is no doubt in my mind that at least so far, to the extent that we know and to the extent that intelligence agencies know and the International Atomic Energy Agency knows, this program has been totally peaceful and it is intended for what Iran has been saying all along.
It is for production of nuclear fuel for nuclear reactors.
Okay, now, but the double entendre from the title there is that's also the American program for spreading nuclear technology to the four corners of the world.
Exactly.
The idea for Atom for Peace actually came to my mind when I was writing the article.
This actually occurred 10 years ago when I started writing about the program.
We know that President Dwight Eisenhower had this program whereby the United States will help countries around the world to use nuclear technology, atomic technology, for peaceful purposes so that, as you said, the nuclear technology will spread around the world.
And the name of the program was Atom for Peace.
So not only that description totally fits Iran's nuclear program, but as you said, credit should also be given to the original person who named it that way, namely President Eisenhower.
Yeah, well now, and it's interesting, right, that the, and most people I guess don't know this, but the Non-Proliferation Treaty where the non-nuclear weapon states of the world promise never to become nuclear weapon states of the world also has the nuclear weapon states of the world and I guess all the nuclear states of the world promise to help spread nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
At the same time, the weapon states promise that someday they will disarm their weapons.
But they're also actually, I don't know the language of it, help me out, but they're sort of, in a way, aren't they bound or supposedly bound to help spread nuclear technology for peaceful purposes?
Precisely.
I mean, the deal was those countries that don't have any nuclear weapon will not have any nuclear weapon, and in return they will have complete access to all aspects of nuclear technology, including production of fuel, enrichment, and so on.
And those that have it, first of all, will help countries like Iran, for example, to get access to nuclear technology, and as you said, over time they will also give up their nuclear arsenal.
Now, what has happened is that those countries that don't have nuclear weapons have basically delivered on their promise.
They haven't gone nuclear.
The three countries that have gone nuclear are actually not members of NPT, namely Israel, Pakistan, and India, but the other countries have delivered on their promise.
But the other side, namely mostly Western countries, France, Britain, and the United States, they haven't delivered on their part.
First of all, they have tried to restrict access of countries like Iran to peaceful nuclear technology, and secondly, they haven't taken any major step towards nuclear disarmament.
They constantly talk about how the spread of nuclear weapons is so dangerous, and yet they haven't delivered on their part of the bargain, namely gradually getting rid of their nuclear arsenal.
In fact, for example, in the United States, we know that the Obama administration wants to modernize its nuclear arsenal, maybe reduce the size, but also modernize it so that it would be just as lethal, if not more lethal, as before.
Britain has undertaken the same type of thing.
So while the agreement was binding on both sides, one side has delivered, the other side hasn't delivered.
And in fact, that is one of the core issues in the dispute between Iran and the United States and its allies.
Iran says, according to NPT, we are entitled to this technology, and therefore we cannot give it up.
Whereas the United States claims that because Iran has supposedly violated its obligation, which Iran hasn't, at least in the view of people like me, they have forfeited at least temporarily their right to nuclear technology.
This is basically the argument that Robin Einhorn recently said in a piece that was published in Foreign Policy.
So you're precisely right.
They haven't delivered on their part, but they want to force the non-nuclear state to either give up or greatly restrict their access to nuclear technology.
And as I said, this has been one of the core issues in the dispute between Iran and the West.
All right.
Now, so I'm just some average guy, and most people are just average guys.
And when we hear the word nuclear, our eyes either glaze over or we get terribly afraid.
But one thing we don't do is start studying, because for crying out loud, what am I, a mathematician or something?
How am I going to learn about nuclear technology?
And I'm speaking for 300 million Americans there, as you well know.
So what do we do?
We defer to the experts.
And everybody seems to agree that Iran has got something nuclear going on over there, and that's pretty scary.
And geez, we can't let the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud and all that.
You willing to risk losing Los Angeles because you're so sure you're right?
How can you be so sure that you're right, that the Iranians are not making nuclear weapons?
Well, first of all, the Obama administration has emphasized over the past at least two years that they have very good ideas of where Iran nuclear program is.
And they have the capability to detect any possible deviation of Iran from its obligation for peaceful use of nuclear technology.
And of course, certify with 100% certainty that Iran doesn't have any secret nuclear program.
But at the same time, scientists like me cannot rely on speculation and trial and error approach.
As Mohammed Al-Baradei, the former director general of IAEA said, they can only deal with facts on the ground.
And facts on the ground indicate that, first of all, Iran's nuclear program has remained totally peaceful.
And secondly, there hasn't been any evidence that Iran actually has a parallel program.
Now, let's assume that Iran wants to break out, leave the NPT and manufacture a nuclear warhead.
First of all, if Iran does do that, if Iran does leave NPT, that would be already a great indication of its goal and purpose.
And that would provide the international community to negotiate with Iran to change Iran's mind if that was the decision by Iran to go nuclear.
Secondly, every nuclear facility in Iran that is known, and we know that at least so far there is no unknown, every nuclear facility in Iran, which totals 15, is under constant inspection of International Atomic Energy Agency.
Herman Nuckert, who is the deputy director general of U.K. Armano, said last week that every day, two to six IAEA inspectors in Iran inspect various facilities of Iran, nuclear facilities in Iran.
I have to repeat this.
Every day, every single day, two to six IAEA inspectors inspect, monitor, and report on Iran's 15 nuclear facilities.
So there is tight control on everything that Iran does.
Not only inspectors are there, there are cameras there, they measure everything to the last kilogram and so on, and every report that Iran makes about its activity in the nuclear area is checked and double and triple checked by IAEA.
And every report of IAEA has consistently reported, has said that everything that Iran has said checks out according to IAEA inspectors, and therefore, again, there is no evidence that Iran is going to do this.
Of course, making a nuclear weapon also needs a political decision by Iranian leadership.
They must decide that, yes, we want to go nuclear because national security of Iran and territorial integrity of Iran is in danger and we need a deterrent.
But again, that political decision has never been made, and Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said again and again that we have no intention of going nuclear and becoming a nuclear power.
The new Iranian president, who will take office in about a week, who was chief nuclear negotiator of Iran between 2003 and 2005, has said the same thing.
And in my view, this is a golden opportunity to reach an agreement with Iran which preserves Iran's fundamental rights for accessing to nuclear technology that is guaranteed by NPT, and at the same time, if the West has any legitimate concerns about Iran's nuclear program, they can be addressed through negotiations.
The new Iranian president is an expert on nuclear issue.
He's an expert on Iran's national security problems.
Ayatollah Khamenei has indicated over the past several months that he's not opposed to direct negotiation between Iran and the United States.
And most recently, just yesterday, Rouhani reiterated his intention of entering direct negotiations with the United States if the United States is willing to take yes as an answer.
But that remains to be seen.
Yeah.
Well, unfortunately, that's pretty doubtful looking at the history of the Obama administration so far.
I totally agree, Scott.
I mean, it is not clear to me that these people are actually willing to take yes as an answer.
Because I believe that the goal of the crippling sanctions that they have imposed on Iran is not to bring Iran back to negotiation table.
Iran has been at the negotiation table.
But to incite uprising, chaos, and possibly revolution by economic hardship, to bring people out on the street in order to overthrow the Iranian government, in other words, their goal is regime change.
But we will see.
Rouhani will take office in one week, and we will see.
And from what I know from Iran, he's going to appoint a very experienced, very realist diplomat, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who was Iran's ambassador to the United Nations several years ago and was repeatedly praised even by Western diplomats as being a very skilled diplomat.
He's going to appoint him as the foreign minister.
He's also going to appoint an expert as the Secretary General of Iran National Security Council.
There are several names that have been suggested, but if any one of them is appointed as the Secretary General of that council, that would be also very good because the negotiations are coordinated between Iran's foreign ministry and the Supreme National Security Council of Iran.
So every indication so far has been very positive about the intention of the incoming Rouhani administration, and at the same time, the signals that Khamenei has been sending.
We will see whether Obama will take yes or no.
Okay, now I want to rewind a little bit to some things that we were talking about before.
When I was sort of speaking from the position of just ignorance and nuclear equals scary and all that, the important point that I got out of what you said is that, oh man, I could go for miles and miles and years and years telling you everything we know about Iran's nuclear program.
This is not the dark side of the moon where everything is left to speculation and imagination like in the minds of regular innocent Americans.
The actual experts who know about this know everything about this, and your article here, Atoms for Peace, in the Cairo Review of Global Affairs demonstrates that here's an extremely thorough history dating back to the 1950s or something about Iran's nuclear program, every little piece of it, every bit of the negotiations surrounding it.
As you say, there are IAEA, International Atomic Energy Agency, inspectors standing around at their nuclear facilities.
They're monitoring every bit of their uranium enrichment and making sure it's not diverted to weapons, making sure it's not weapons-grade material, etc., etc., etc.
That, I think, is the most important point really out of all of this.
Just because some regular person like me doesn't really know what's going on over there, that doesn't mean that we should just let the government and the television fill in the gap in our imagination with a bunch of scaremongering.
In fact, there are Mohammed Sahimis and Yosef Butts and other experts out there who can put it to you quite straight about what we know and what we don't know about Iran's nuclear program, and what we know is virtually everything, and that it has nothing to do with making nuclear weapons.
That's a fact.
Then it just happens to be, Mohammed, that all of the American intelligence agencies that they admit exist agree with you and me on this.
I totally agree.
As I said, Mohammed al-Baradei, when he was Director General, he said that Iran's nuclear program has undergone the most intrusive and extensive inspection of any nuclear program in the entire history of IAEA.
One thing that all of this has shown us about Iran's nuclear program is that there isn't anything that we don't know.
Everything about Iran's nuclear program is known.
We know where the facilities are.
We know how much uranium, enriched uranium, Iran has.
We know how many centrifuges Iran has.
We know what Iran is doing.
We know, for example, there is a heavy water nuclear reactor under construction in Arab.
We know where Iran's uranium mines are.
We know where the facilities for processing the raw materials are.
Everything that Iran has been saying to the IAEA has been checked out completely.
This is not what people like me or Yusuf Batt claim.
This is what the IAEA reports themselves say.
Therefore, as you said, for a layman who doesn't know anything, he should be assured that there are people who know everything.
As I said, even the Obama administration has said repeatedly over the past two years that it has a very good idea of where Iran's nuclear program stands.
It has very good capability to detect any deviation from what is supposed to be, namely, a peaceful nuclear program.
It isn't that we don't know anything or we don't have all the information.
No, we know everything that we need to know.
We have all the information.
And I emphasize again that there is no evidence that Iran has any nuclear facility or site that hasn't been declared to the international community.
There have been all sorts of rumors and reports by war mongers, by Israel lobby, by Iranian exiled groups such as Mujahedin that Iran has this or that facility secret hidden here or there.
But none of them has panned out.
They have gone out, they have checked everything, and it hasn't panned out.
And at the same time, I must emphasize that during the entire time from 2003 up to this moment that you and I are talking, that IAEA inspectors have been monitoring and inspecting Iran's nuclear program, only six minor problems discovered by the IAEA back in 2006, 2007.
And when Iran was asked for explanation, Iran explained them, and the IAEA in February of 2008 declared that all the issues have been resolved to the satisfaction of the agency.
And since then, there has never been a case, a dispute between Iran and IAEA regarding any possible deviation that Iran might have carried out regarding its program.
The only dispute now between Iran and IAEA are things that go back 10, 15 years ago.
The most important and the only dispute between Iran and IAEA is visit to the Parchin site.
Parchin is a conventional military site southeast of Tehran.
The IAEA has alleged that Iran might have experimented with high explosive materials, not over the past few years, but way in the past.
In fact, probably even before 2003, and has demanded to visit certain sites.
Now, here are the points.
First of all, Parchin site, because it's not a nuclear site, is not covered by Iran's obligation towards International Atomic Energy Agency.
The IAEA cannot demand a visit to Parchin site.
Now, if Iran were to carry out the provisions of additional protocol, then Iran would have been obligated to allow the visit.
In fact, Iran carried out the provisions of the additional protocol between 2003 and 2006 on a volunteer basis, during which it allowed the IAEA to go to Parchin twice, once in January of 2004, and second time November of 2004.
Each time they visited five buildings that they suspected something might have happened.
The second time that they visited, they also had a surprise visit to a sixth building that Iran allowed, and they reported that they have found nothing.
In fact, the Iranian press at that time reported that Ali Heinonen, who at that time was the Presidential Director General for Safeguard, and who had led IAEA delegation to Parchin, had told reporters that Parchin's case has joined history, meaning they can't find anything, there isn't anything.
But then November 2011 report by IAEA revived the issue, and since then there has been this dispute, Iran says, correctly in my view and correctly in the view of many people, that we have no obligation to allow you to visit Parchin, but we are willing to do so in the framework of an agreement between Iran and IAEA, which specifies what they want to do, where they want to go, and so on.
And once those visits take place, IAEA cannot revive and bring back this issue again, unless it can present Iran with hard evidence of any possible deviation of Iran from its nuclear obligation.
And that's the only dispute right now.
Otherwise, if you look at every report of IAEA, it reports that Iran is in compliance with its obligation, the nuclear program is proceeding as it is supposed to.
It produces low-enriched uranium, and it has produced enriched uranium at 19.75%, which Iran has been converting to nuclear fuel rods in order to be used in Iran's research reactor, which produces medical isotopes for close to a million Iranian patients every year.
Let me interrupt you here for just a second.
We're almost out of time here.
We've got two and a half minutes, three minutes something.
So let me ask you, could you just tell us briefly the outlines of the obvious deal that could be reached here if the Americans actually were negotiating in good faith?
Yes.
In my view, Iran should go back to carrying out the provision of additional protocol that, as I said, Iran did do so from 2003-2006, which allows the IAEA the intrusive inspections that it wants.
It can visit any site that it wants and inspect it.
In return, Iran's nuclear right, although they are enshrined in NPT, will also be recognized by the international community, by the U.S. and its allies.
Iran would agree, in my view, to put a ceiling on the amount of enriched uranium at 19.75%, limited to the amount that it needs for Tehran Research Reactor.
And if it produces more of that, it will convert it to fuel rod for export or ship it out outside the country to sell it or ship it out to be stored somewhere else, so that there would be no concern that the 19.75% enriched uranium can be transformed to higher enriched uranium for bomb making.
And in return, the U.S. and its allies must agree to lift sanctions, the crippling economic sanctions that have disrupted the lives of tens of millions of Iranian people.
This is the basic outline, and if there is political will, as I said at the end of that article, if there is political will, this deal can be reached very quickly, actually.
Yeah, I think so too.
I think if America is willing, like the Leveretts say, if the American government is willing to accept that, you know what, Iran is a sovereign independent country and I guess we just don't get to completely own their ass, oh well, let's peacefully coexist, then that'd be fine.
All they've got to do is get over their grudge from 1979 and get over their will to do what Netanyahu says.
Exactly.
I totally agree.
I think we should stop listening to warmongers, to the propaganda with Netanyahu, the Israel lobby and so on, and get down to business because the outline of an agreement is in place.
Right.
All right, thanks so much for your time.
It's great to talk to you again.
Thank you, Scott.
All right, everybody, that's Mohamed Sahimi.
He's a professor of chemical engineering at USC, and he's got this killer piece in the Cairo Review of Global Affairs called Atoms for Peace.
Mohamed Sahimi.
And we'll be right back with Nathan Fuller after this.
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