11/05/14 – Yousaf Butt – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, Scott Horton Show.
I got Yosef Butt on the line.
He is the senior scientific advisor to the British American Security Information Council.
And he is a nuclear physicist and a regular writer on Iran issues, including at Reuters.
All right.
Very good to have you back on the show.
Listen, before we get into the possible military dimensions, I wanted to ask you something.
I got an email from Gordon Prather this morning.
I'm not sure if you're familiar, but he's a former nuclear physicist as well.
He's formerly the chief scientist of the army and knows how to make H-bombs and all the rest.
And so he emailed me and said, now, listen, there's a distinction nobody's making here, except he used to make it all the time.
And that's the difference between how much uranium the Iranians would need.
We're talking now, you know, in the terms of the breakout time and all that.
How much uranium they would need to make a very simple, most simple kind of nuke, a gun type nuke like the Hiroshima bomb.
That would be the kind of nuke they could probably make if they had the material, but they would need more of it.
And it would be huge and completely undeliverable.
But then if, say, you're the Israelis and you're trying to push some forged lie that they're making an implosion system for to fit a nuclear warhead onto a missile, then I guess it's possible to use uranium only.
And pretty much everybody always uses plutonium for that.
And plus, it would be a vast project for them to figure out the implosion system for something like that, even though they would need.
So making it almost impossibly difficult task for them, an inconceivable task for them to embark down that path.
And yet would hypothetically require much less uranium for a smaller implosion nuke.
And that the lobby and the war party, they are always referring to that much smaller amount of uranium that would be used for an implosion uranium nuke, rather than the bigger amount that would be required for Iran to make a simple gun type nuke, which would be the much more likely avenue for them to take if, in fact, they ever decided to make a nuke at all.
So what do you say about that, Yosef?
Yeah, you know, it's sort of splitting hairs to some extent.
The bottom line, in either of those pathways, they would get caught before they got very far.
There's IEA inspectors on the ground.
They're checking all that as they start refining uranium up to the concentrations that they need for either of those pathways.
Yes, it's true, the implosion device needs a little bit less, but not a huge amount less.
But the point being, either way you go, you'll get caught.
So there's not much sense in doing that.
And every indication is going the opposite way.
They had 20% enriched uranium, and they've blended it down.
So I think it's not really – there's not a huge distinction in terms of whether or not they would get caught.
So I think that's the bottom line on that.
Sure.
But I guess it just seems like when you draw the hypotheticals out, which are they supposed to do?
Make a gigantic bomb with a huge quantity of uranium that they'd be unable to deliver anywhere, or make a tiny little one with the ability that they won't have for 100 years, you know?
Right, right, right.
Yeah, exactly.
So, you know, there's different problems with both of them, and there's the same problem with both of them too.
So in one case you have less amount, but you have all the problems with miniaturized things.
It requires a lot of testing to get up to speed.
And the other, like you said, you need larger amounts to get caught there too.
But even in the one with the smaller amount, once you start refining this, you can't hide it from the audience.
So I think it's not a huge thing to spend a lot of time worrying about.
Okay, sure.
But now this is directly relevant to the argument over the so-called possible military dimensions, these documents and the accusation that the Iranians have been working on testing some kind of implosion system, right?
And so then that raises the question, and I don't know if you already agree with this or not, it seems like Gareth Porter's on to something there, that these are probably forged documents in the first place, and probably because they're aware of this contradiction, and the Israelis or whoever else is trying to come up with a narrative where the Iranians are trying to make a bomb small enough to fit on a missile, even though that would be such a complicated task for them to embark on, right?
Yeah, well, there's a lot of things that's included under what's called the possible military dimensions, the PMD.
So the stuff that you talk about is included, but then there's these graphs, there's various studies that are supposed to be in there showing that Iran tried to work on it, but whatever has leaked out so far that myself and other technical people have been able to look at doesn't really stand up to snuff.
For instance, I mentioned the graph that the Associated Press leaked out.
Those were really horrendous.
There were big mistakes in it.
Even if you took out the mistakes, there were other problems with the shape of the graph.
They were, for instance, too long for a nuclear explosion.
So they definitely appear to be forged or incompetent.
So either way, I think it's not a lot there to chew on.
Again, it's the IAEA right now that seems to be more interested in it.
There's two tracks.
There's the track with the IAEA discussing things with Iran, and the P5-plus-1 nations, the Security Council in Germany, discussing things with Iran.
So it's the discussions that the IAEA has with Iran that they want them to clear up these questions.
I keep saying that Iran hasn't answered them, but Iran has given an answer.
They just don't like it.
Iran has said that these are forged and they don't make sense and they don't know where they came from and it hasn't been shown the original documents of the country we speak to them.
So despite the fact that every news report says Iran is in discussion, it's just that they don't like the answer, which the Iranians have been giving, which is these are forgeries or we don't know where these came from.
Show us the originals so we can tell you.
And the IAEA doesn't want to show the originals.
I'm sorry, could you briefly tell us which all experts off the top of your head have cast doubt on these documents?
Well, I think the most prominent person who knows this stuff in the best detail is Robert Kelly, who was a 35-year veteran of Los Alamos and Livermore, the weapons labs in the U.S.
He was seconded to the IAEA as director of inspections in Iraq and served two rounds with the IAEA there, so he knows this stuff from the inside and he knows many of these documents that they're talking about in the PMB.
So he's the one who has cast the most doubt on it.
Myself and my colleague Frank at the Monterey Institute have looked at the associated press graphs and they don't, you know, we analyzed it in, like, within 15 minutes.
We could tell that this was just very crappy science or it's a forgery.
So, yeah, there's a number, you know, so at least three there.
And other people in private have told me that they don't want their names out in public verifying that.
Well, then Olly Heinonen, who's the very hawkish former IAEA member there, leader, he, and of course he's, you know, always leaking and talking to David Sanger, the hawk at the Times, and to David Albright, the hawk at ISIS, and he himself has said that he doesn't believe in these documents, right?
Yeah, I think he's certainly cast doubt in some of them, although I don't know the details of which particular ones, because there's a lot of different things in there that's considered under this possible military dimension.
I mean, even actually the title of it should give you pause.
I mean, it's called possible military dimensions, and it used to be called the alleged studies before then because these were just allegations.
What's interesting now, though, is, you know, it seems there was a meeting between Susan Rice and Amano a few days ago in D.C., and after that meeting, Amano, the leader of the IAEA, mentioned that he's not going to keep this as being an impediment to the resolution of the talks that's going on between the P5-plus-1 and Iran.
It seems like they're sort of backpedaling on this now, and they realize that they'll need to drop this issue if they want to get any kind of progress in the deal with Iran.
Right.
All right.
Well, thanks so much for your time.
Sorry we had the connection problems there, but I do appreciate the interview very much there, Yosef.
Absolutely.
You're welcome.
Bye-bye.
Okay, bye.
All right, y'all.
That is Yosef Butt.
He is the senior scientific advisor at the British American Security Information Council.
We'll be right back.
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