11/07/13 – Roy Gutman – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, enough of that.
Next guest is Roy Gutman from McClatchy Newspapers.
Welcome back to the show.
Roy, how are you doing?
Good, Scott, and glad to be on the show.
Well, good.
I'm very happy to have you here.
You are in Geneva, Switzerland right now, correct?
Yes.
In fact, I'm here watching the Iran nuclear talks, which are halfway through the two-day period.
So I read this.
I believe this is your most recent piece.
US-Iran hope to reach deal by Friday on nuclear program.
And I didn't frown a single time in the whole thing.
It sounds like they're really going to do it.
You couldn't find anybody saying, oh, I don't know.
Well, I mean, in a sense, look, this has been a decade in the making.
There's been a lot of ups and downs, mostly downs.
The relationship has been extremely tense at times.
Iran has been building up its stockpiles of uranium that has been purified to a very high degree, much more than they really need and in quantities far beyond what they need.
And there's a lot of worry that they're fighting toward a nuclear weapon.
So I think the idea now is better stop it while you can before things get worse.
And it's going to require some real compromises, I think, on the part of the Western countries and Russia and China.
Yes, that's certainly one way of looking at it.
It seemed to me more like the Westerners have been completely impossible and have thus far refused, up until now, to recognize Iran's right to a civilian nuclear program, that their 20 percent uranium stockpile was mostly just for their American-built medical isotope reactor and the rest is just the bargaining chip for just this purpose, something to trade for a lifting of sanctions and something like a security guarantee from the Americans, right?
Well, you know, that's sort of the narrative that the Iranian government has and, you know, one can understand elements of it.
But as a matter of fact, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to have a huge quantity, something like six metric tons of low-enriched uranium that they say would be used for nuclear power reactors, when they only have one reactor and that's supplied by Russia and the fuel is supplied by Russia.
So they really didn't need it for that purpose.
And as for the high-enriched or middle-enriched uranium to 20 percent, they have a sizable quantity, something like 400 kilos, sorry, 400 pounds, I guess it is, 200 kilos.
And it's not really clear that this is the absolutely needed fuel for that reactor either.
In fact, I've talked to experts who say it really is not.
So there's a lot of question marks about why the Iranians have carried out this program.
And, you know, I've tried very hard this past week to get some explanations, and I don't think that any explanation is going to be complete.
But the point is that there are real questions about what Iran has been doing, why it's been doing it, what its goals have been, and how to make sure that Iran's future operations in the field of nuclear energy, or rather nuclear materials, are directed exclusively to civilian purposes.
Well, and that's the whole thing is, for a time there anyway, they were voluntarily abiding by the Additional Protocol back, what, 2003 through 2005.
And it seems like this time I talked with your colleague in profession, I know not for the same publications there, but Barbara Slavin was on the show, and she brought what was at least one version of the Iranian initial proposal.
And it seemed like a real substantive thing.
And it also seems like from watching the representatives on CNN International and so forth of the American side, that, you know, they're quite cautiously, I guess, but quite optimistic too, and seem to think that they're going to be able to work out a deal where Iran, you know, basically the outline of the deal that everybody has known all along, that they'll stop enriching up to 20%, that they'll, you know, limit some enrichment or the number of centrifuges here, that they'll sign the Additional Protocol, or at least abide by it again, or something like that, right?
And then everybody's happy.
And it seems like they're, they seem to be working it out, no?
I mean, you're the one who's there.
Well, I'm not sure that all that's going to happen tomorrow.
You know, Zarif, Javad Zarif, who's the foreign minister, was on television on a couple of different channels today, and he was talking about, you know, and everybody's really talking about a first step, a preliminary agreement, one that might take cover the next six months.
It'll have some confidence-building measures.
It might require, I don't, you know, the Iranians are insisting, and this is really the news here, they've insisted that they have the right under the development of peaceful nuclear uses, that they have the right to enrich, and they are not going to give away that right, and they're not going to really stop enriching.
That doesn't mean that they won't actually do it, but they're going to insist on having those rights.
And what is likely to happen in these talks is that that right is going to be implicitly recognized by the United States and the other five countries who are in, they call this the P5, you know, the permanent representatives to the UN Security Council, plus Germany, and the P5 plus one.
And so there's about to be a really major session made, at least implicitly, that Iran does have the right that it has claimed to enrich nuclear material, and that's that.
So, I mean, and the argument the Iranians make is that in all the time that the U.S. and other countries have demanded that Iran cease enriching and that it turn over all of the nuclear fuel it has to other countries, that Iran has ignored, and under ever-growing international sanctions.
As a matter of fact, Iran has only instead, because it's rejected that approach, it feels it's pressure, but instead Iran has increased the number of centrifuges, increased the stockpiles, and basically gone straight ahead with a program that quite honestly, Scott, does not make a huge amount of sense for its own sake, but it might make some sense in the game that has been played, you know, the humanitarian threat that's been played between the West, Russia and China, and Iran.
So, in a sense, what's going to happen is that the Iranian case, which is recognize what we do, accept what we do, we will actually try to adjust what we're doing to meet your concerns about what our goal is, and you'll see that things are going to get a lot better fast.
But we, the Iranians, need sanctions relief at the same time in order to convince the Iranian people that this is a good idea, and there's a lot of distrust from Iran to the West, and there's a lot of distrust obviously from the West to Iran.
So we're about to enter a period, it seems to me, of trying out this thesis, and I, you know, one can only be hopeful that this is going to work, but believe me, this is really new territory.
Yeah.
Well, I got a good feeling about it, and I think that regardless of what any one of us thinks about whether it makes sense for them to continue enriching up to 3.6% or not, that kind of thing, it clearly is something that they're very determined to hang on to is their right to do so, and probably even their right to actually continue to do so, not just to sort of metaphysically have that right, but they want to continue exercising that right.
And it seems to me like trading that for even more inspections, when in fact all their nuclear material is safeguarded, and you know, back under the old additional protocol between 03 and 05, they had determined, the IAEA had determined, there's no other nuclear material in the country other than what is safeguarded.
So as long as we have the safeguards agreement and plus the additional protocol on the one side, then it seems like 3.6%, I'm trying to be objective here, Roy, 3.6% trade-off on the other side, you guys go ahead and continue that, I guess, sort of a thing, that seems like a pretty reasonable deal for both sides to accept and sell to their own hawks back home.
Well, yes, you're right in theory, there's no question, Scott, this is a departure from the past.
Because essentially the Iranians are being told, okay, you're making an argument that you can be trusted, and that you're going to observe all of the safeguards, and you're going to allow the inspectors to do everything they want to do, and you're going to build up, you know, we'll try it for a spin, we'll see if it works.
And at this point in the standoff between the other countries and Iran, it probably doesn't make sense to try it, but I have a feeling, quite honestly, of a gamble, you know, of doing something that hadn't been tried before, and nobody knows if it's going to work.
Now, one of the reasons why, in fact, might be very reasonable in having, you know, in being optimistic here, is that Iran's government has changed in a major way.
The election of Rouhani in June, and I actually covered that election, by the way, is, you know, it's a really major change in Iran's political leadership.
And while a lot of people here, you know, reasonably have been skeptical that Rouhani actually can change the direction of Iran's policies, he's shown himself to be a very adept man who has the understanding and the support of the supreme leader, although he obviously has a lot of enemies in the very complex Iranian political scene as well.
But, you know, you have, and this is what Zarif, the foreign minister, said in an interview tonight on Christiane Amanpour's program on CNN, that, you know, you have a chance here.
You have a new government.
The people of Iran want a government that really wants to come to terms with the American community, wants to end the sanctions, wants to reach an understanding on the nuclear program.
Now, have this chance.
Don't throw it away.
And I think that that actually is one of the most important reasons that the Western countries and the other participants are willing to take what I think is a calculated gamble.
Yeah, you know, that's just what I was going to ask you, because it seems to me like, even if the terms of the deal are sort of sketchy and it's a gamble, the way you say and all that, it's sort of like just, you know, having the big handshake, making any deal at all is a step toward making many more deals and getting terms much more refined to everybody's liking and that kind of thing.
But it seems like, you know, one small step for a State Department weenie, one huge step for American-Iranian relations after 35 years of Cold War.
You know, when you think about it, the relationship between the United States and Iran, other than North Korea, is really the most strained in the world.
And it is really, or maybe Syria right now as well, it is absolutely at loggerheads.
You know, the tensions are completely beyond belief.
I mean, there is no U.S. embassy in Tehran after 35 years.
There's no people-to-people exchanges, you know, scholarships, journalistic exchanges, everything is sort of reduced to the absolute minimum.
And Iran is really an important country.
It's not just because it's an oil producer, but it is an anchor in the Gulf.
It has very important neighbors.
You know, one of its neighbors is Afghanistan, and another is Saudi Arabia.
And the Gulf itself is a place that if the war were to come for any reason, and the tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran have at times led people to think that war is a real possibility, you know, the disaster for the world is just hard to describe.
It's not just oil prices going up.
It's everything becoming chaotic.
So trying to resolve this, you know, this fundamental difference between the U.S. and Iran, and Iran and the rest of the world, especially over its nuclear program, but really there are many, many other issues, is really a top priority.
I think the Obama administration, you know, we all have thoughts that they're pretty ineffective in a lot of places, and we have a hands-off policy in places where they might be hands-on, like Syria.
But they do, however, have the priority in addressing Iran as, in a way, sort of the supreme issue of the day.
And that if they could solve this out, in short, they might be able to solve other problems as well.
So that's why, you know, a lot more hands on this tentative preliminary agreement than just simply Iran's nuclear policy.
Right.
Well, you know, four years ago they were doing this, October 09, it all fell apart.
It didn't go anywhere.
And then the deadline was up and more sanctions kicked in and all of this.
And just from the center of Texas here, Roy, without being able to really tell beyond the headlines, it sure does seem to me like Washington, D.C. really wants this this time, or at least the Obama administration has certainly decided that they mean it and they want to see this through.
In 09, it seemed more like they wanted to stall for time until they could get more sanctions in place.
But this time it seems different, no?
Scott, I wrote about, I did some research on what happened in 09.
Oh, and I'm sorry, we're almost out of time, too.
So go real fast, Roy, sorry.
Sure.
There was a chance then.
I think it was a huge surprise when Brazil and Turkey actually reached what looked like an agreement with Iran.
And the administration instead decided to go for sanctions the next day at the U.N.
Why they did it, who knows?
I think it was a mistake, but maybe they tried to make it make up for it right now.
Yeah, sure seems like it.
Hey, listen, thank you so much for your reporting.
I sure appreciate it, Roy.
OK, Scott, nice to talk to you.
Take care.
All right, everybody, that is Roy Gutman.
He writes for McClatchy Newspapers.
He's in Geneva, Switzerland right now covering the Iran talks.
U.S.-Iran hope to reach deal by Friday.
McClatchyDC.com.
We'll be right back.
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