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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, and our next guest is Yosef Butt.
And he's got a piece here at Foreign Policy called Building Blocks, the obsession that is preventing a nuclear deal with Iran.
And then also Pretty in Pink, the Parchin Preoccupation Paradox here at Arms Control Law.
Welcome back to the show.
Yosef, how are you doing?
Great.
Good to be back on.
Well, very happy to have you here.
And I'm probably saying your name wrong.
I'm sorry.
It's Yosef, right?
No, no, no.
That's fine.
Yosef.
That's good.
Okay.
All right.
So, hey, great story here.
The article, basically, your point is that Parchin, this Iranian military base, is a giant red herring that is helping to prevent or at least casting doubt on the possible success of the upcoming someday negotiations with the Iranians on their nuclear program.
And so I think I summed that up more or less, right?
I was hoping we could start off with you explaining about, you know, where is Parchin?
What's the big deal about it?
And then we can get into the politics from there.
Yeah, well, this is a military base about 20 miles, I believe, southeast of Tehran, not too far from Tehran.
And it's not a declared nuclear site.
So, I mean, it's just a regular military base.
And it's a large military base.
And the IAEA has visited it twice already in 2005 and found nothing.
They were—the entire site was available to them.
So they could have gone to the part that they're interested in now.
But they chose to go to some other parts before.
And now they're saying, oh, wait, now we want to go here.
So the deal is, you know, normally military sites are not something that, you know, that normally a nation is supposed to allow IAEA inspectors into.
They're only supposed to go to their declared nuclear sites and take care of nuclear material, basically inventory that, you know, this is the nuclear material they had, you know, three months ago.
And this is the amount that they have now.
None is missing.
Good enough.
That's their job.
Their job isn't, you know, a wild goose chase around military bases that they've visited before.
All right.
So now the thing of it is, though, is that actually it is kind of their job now, not because of the Nonproliferation Treaty or the Safeguards Agreement, but because of all the U.N. Security Council mandates that John Bolton succeeded in pushing through back in the Bush Jr. years, right?
They say they have to answer 100,000 questions.
And when they're done, they can answer another 100,000 until they've proven a negative beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Yeah, well, you know, this is this is part of the problem.
Let me just back up a little bit and just put some context into it.
So there's part of the problem is there's two sets of negotiations going on.
One is between Iran and the IAEA with all these questions.
Then the other is the more important one, in my view, which is between Iran and the what's called the P5 plus one.
This is the permanent five members of the Security Council plus Germany.
And that negotiation is the one that, you know, gets into, you know, curtailing Iran's enrichment to 20 percent.
You know, that's the real meat of the issue.
You know, that's where we can really cap Iran's program.
That's the one dialogue that needs to go on and needs to be preserved and is important.
Now, there's the UN Security Council can encourage Iran via the sanctions it's put on to cooperate with the IAEA to fulfill its legal obligations that which are actually the safeguards agreement.
What it cannot do, and you can ask lawyers, international lawyers such as Dan Joyner, who's written two books on the NPT and specifically on interpreting the NPT.
So, you know, yes, the UN Security Council can apply, you know, apply pressure onto Iran to get them to cooperate with the IAEA, but it cannot say, well, you know, you have to do all this other stuff that actually wasn't part of the agreement, the safeguards agreement that you signed with the IAEA.
But now we want you to do that also.
That part is extrajudicial, basically.
So, you know, and that's where I believe that's where a lot of, you know, the hangups in these negotiations are occurring, because the Iranians are saying, listen, we had an agreement with you.
You know, we showed you our declared nuclear facilities.
You're making, you know, every year the IAEA has confirmed that none of the material, the nuclear material has been diverted to any weapons uses.
And, you know, that's basically his job.
Now, well, now, do I understand it right that the different UN Security Council resolutions that go beyond the safeguards agreement are that they must freeze all uranium enrichment.
They must answer all the questions that the IAEA can come up with based on the alleged studies documents and whatever else the Israelis give them.
And then and they must allow access to these non-nuclear facilities, like the factory where they make the centrifuges or the Parchin military base, where no one has any evidence whatsoever that there's anything nuclear there at all.
And this is what it, you know, to watch it on TV, it seems like the poor IAEA can't get a thing done, even though, like you just said, when it comes to actually implementing the safeguards agreement, they have no problem verifying that all the uranium is still accounted for and that none of it is being diverted to weapons purposes.
But there's all this other stuff, which is really, if I if I explained it right, under the UN Security Council mandate.
Is that right?
Yeah, I mean, correct me.
Yeah, yeah, you're that's basically correct.
But, you know, if you ask international lawyers who are skilled in this field, they'll tell you that the, you know, the UN Security Council is not not supposed to be doing what it what it's doing, because I agree with that.
It basically sets up a never ending cycle where, you know, when when when you go outside the law and you just say, well, you have to satisfy these bunch of people's concerns.
Now, the concerns, you know, are very subjective.
Like one person can be concerned about certain things, and another person may not be concerned about that.
What you have to get down to is what what is Iran legally obliged to do?
And are they doing it?
And yes, they are, in fact.
And if you listen to our director of national intelligence, who gets input from 16 different spy agencies of the US and his consensus view, this is 16 different agencies are agreeing on something which is, you know, I don't think that happens in D.C. at all, let alone between spy agencies.
So the director of national intelligence has said he has a high level of confidence that at the moment Iran is not making any nuclear weapons.
And, you know, they may in the future.
I mean, any country might, you know, they can suddenly change track and and do it.
That's a concern.
And that's the flaw of the NPT.
You know, it doesn't foreclose the option in the future.
Anything can happen in the future.
But the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has said that he has a high level of confidence that nothing, you know, no nuclear weapons work is going on right now.
The al-Baradai, who is 12 year head of the IAEA, says basically the same thing.
He doesn't have a shred of evidence that he hasn't seen a shred of evidence that Iran is weaponizing.
And what a great quote, by the way, because I was familiar with him always saying he has no evidence and, in fact, no indication of any diversion.
But I hadn't seen the one where he said not a shred of evidence.
What a quotable quote of Mohammed al-Baradai there.
Yeah, that's that's actually in in in Seymour Hersh's piece from last year on the Iran nuclear program.
Oh, Iran and the bomb, yeah.
It's based on that offline.
Gotcha.
Yeah, I'd forgotten that quote then because that's a good piece.
I read it.
All right.
Now, so to to get the focus back on Parchin, the military base here, this whole thing has already been proven to be a big joke, right?
The chamber that they say must be a nuclear implosion systems testing chamber is no such thing.
The Soviet era nuclear weapons scientist is no such thing.
And they're saying that the reason that they're so suspicious is because they're washing the ground with hoses.
And that's supposed to wash away the dust of radioactive particles so that the IAEA could never find it.
That's what they're saying.
What kind of nonsense is this?
Does anyone in the world believe this?
It's almost like after they debunked the aluminum tubes in The Washington Post in September 2002, and then the Republicans kept invoking the aluminum tubes for another year and a half after that.
Remember?
A lot of this is being fed by the ISIS group, which is the Institute for Science and International Studies.
And, you know, they were part of the several outfits that were scaremongering over Iraq before.
And they seem to be doing a similar thing now.
What's interesting is they never come out and clearly say that Iran is doing something wrong.
They'll just say, well, there are indications of possible, perhaps, you know, these vague speculations.
So they'll put all these speculations out with sexy overhead satellite pictures that are poorly interpreted and create this fearmongering in the media.
Now, if you want the real scoop on this, there's a person called Robert Kelly, who has actually worked in the U.S. Department of Energy weapons complex at Los Alamos and Livermore for 35 years.
And he headed the IAEA inspections in Iraq twice.
And he has a report out at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute just from a couple of days ago, which overturns a lot of the nonsense that the ISIS group has been propagating in the media.
So that's definitely worth a read.
Now about the tank.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it could be, it's not the best way to do these tests, but sure, we don't know.
You know, there could be a tank there.
They could have done something.
But, you know, even if the worst case, it's conventional explosives that were tested in a setting that may have been relevant for nuclear weapons research.
It wasn't a bomb factory, even if we believe all the worst case scenarios.
And a decade ago, too.
And it's from way long ago.
So yeah, from 10 years ago.
So, you know, buying into this and making a huge mountain out of a molehill, just, you know, it just poisons the well negotiations in general.
But, you know, and makes it look like Iran is not cooperating and hurts the chances of, the important negotiations that need to take place on stopping Iran 20% enrichment, because that really is, you know, I'm not saying that they're using that, that they have an intention to use that 20% uranium for bomb fuel, but it can, you know, in the future, if there's a sanction people get pissed off, there's a new regime.
And if that's more hard line, who knows what they might do.
And if they have their 20% enriched stockpile, you know, it's potential bomb fuel.
So we need to urgently stop Iran from doing that.
And we need to put everything on the table to get them to that sanctions relief.
And, you know, what puzzles me is, on the one hand, we say, we're very worried about Iran doing this.
And on the other hand, we offer them aircraft parts as compensation for them stopping this.
You know, if you're really serious about something, to put something on the table, you know, you get them to stop it, whatever the cost.
And we're not doing that.
We're not serious.
We're negotiating in bad faith.
Well, now, you know, I was talking with Mohammed Sahimi about this yesterday.
And you know how, I think it was the latest IAEA report.
It could have been the one before that, where they talked about how the Iranians are now taking their 20% U-235, enriched U-235, and they're manufacturing fuel plates out of it.
And they're actually using it as fuel or they're, you know, fixing to use it as fuel in their medical isotope reactor, just like they said all along.
And it seems like, and the way I interpreted that was it was a little bit of a signal that like, hey, you know, that breakout capability that you guys are so afraid of, here we are getting rid of it.
You know, this whole, the breakout we've built up so far, we're going to go ahead and make fuel plates out of these, out of this 20% rather than sit around waiting to possibly continue to enrich it up to 90%.
That seemed to me like it was kind of a preemptive, good faith measure on their part.
No?
Yeah, absolutely.
I agree.
You know, they're not converting all of it, but, you know, as much as they need.
I believe they have some problems, you know, technical problems in doing that conversion.
But yeah, basically you take the gaseous uranium hexafluoride and you make metallic plates out of it.
And in that process, it becomes much more difficult than trying to reconvert it back into gas and re-enrich it.
So yeah, that definitely is an indication that they're doing what they said they would.
Now, if you look at, you know, the red line, you know, ever since, you know, the 1980s, there's been reports that Iran is on the verge of nuclear weapons.
You know, West German intelligence said in 1984, in their final stages of weaponizing, Netanyahu in 1992 said Iran is three to five years from a nuclear bomb.
So, you know, this kind of scaremongering has been going on all along.
But the important thing is our best intelligence, our 16 spy agencies have a consensus view that there is no nuclear weapons program in Iran right now.
Right.
And they've been saying that nonstop since 2007, including under oath before the Senate and all that, as you already mentioned, the Director of National Intelligence.
The problem is an outfit called ISIS in Washington, D.C., which has an agenda to, I'm not sure what the agenda is, but it certainly isn't to resolve this issue quickly.
And they seem to be ignoring everything that the actual professional intelligence agencies are saying.
And they put on these satellite pictures and have wrong interpretations of them, which Robert Kelly has corrected in his recent CPRI report.
And, you know, that report is the one that the media should take into consideration now.
Right.
Well, and it's interesting, too, and Mohammed and I talked about this yesterday also, that this actual set of accusations about Parchin have been debunked by David Albright's number one source in the whole world that everybody knows is his source, the very hawkish, you know, the bad cop to Mohammed ElBaradei's good cop at the IAEA back over the past years.
And he even debunked it in the New York Times in a David Sanger piece, who is, you know, as bad as David Albright on most everything and quotes him all the time.
And so, you know, it's basically Albright's mentor is the one who debunked this, it looks like, or his handler, however you put it.
Well, you know, I think in this case, yeah, Ali is correct.
You know, the problem is now, you know, expect a fight.
You don't tell the people, I'm interested in this building, and please let me in, you know, a year from now.
Because then even if you go there and you find nothing, you know, you can say, well, you know, well, you had a year and you probably cleaned it.
So, you know, there's no logical way out of it.
You know, they're not going to have something a honking bright in there that's their guilt.
And they're not, you know, and if you found nothing instead, you know, you're still not off the hook because you said you hadn't cleaned.
So the way you do it is, you know, as they did in 2005, the Iranian said, here's all of Parchin.
Okay, we're going to divide it into four bits.
Choose any one you want.
You can choose it on the day that you drive up to it.
And within that sector, because there's a huge base, you can choose up to five random buildings.
So it was completely randomized.
The Iranians didn't know where the IAEA is going to go until Ali drove up that day and chose the sector and the buildings and went and inspected it.
So they had opened up the entire site.
If there were really something seriously suspicious there, they probably would not have done that.
So, you know, you have to look into the methodology that the IAEA is using now.
They're already semaphore-rich building that they're interested in.
And now, even if they find nothing there, they can say, well, you know, oh, you knew all along we were interested in this one and you probably cleaned it.
So, you know, there's this doubt.
It's a logical bind.
Right.
You know, it's interesting too that if I remember the story right, this is David Albright's only real claim to fame is that he went to a, quote, unquote, cleaned site in South Africa and found traces of nuclear activity where it had been denied in the past.
And because you can't wash away radioactive dust with a garden hose and they had tried.
Right, right.
I mean, this stuff is very persistent.
You know, you'd want to do it is go in the buildings and look and where, you know, basically like where the accumulates in your in the corners at the bottom of the, you know, where the walls meet the floor and, you know, and in those areas and you just take a swipe and because it's so sensitive, the method of detecting is so sensitive.
You can you can pick up tiny traces years later.
So, yeah, you know, all this stuff about the water outside and landscaping is ridiculous.
I mean, you don't take soil from outside to do this kind of stuff.
Even if they use the water, that water would have accumulated.
That would have.
If they were using the water to hide the uranium, the water would, you know, basically concentrate all the uranium and where it eventually up.
So, you know, that's not a smart way if you're trying to actually hide this thing.
So, you know, I said, you know, David Albright is not a scientist.
He doesn't have a PhD.
He's never worked in science.
With me, you know, I don't know what his came to play but it isn't certainly based on any technical skills.
Yeah, he likes to pretend he's a physicist or he doesn't correct the post when they call him one.
And he likes to call himself a former IAEA inspector when, in fact, he was allowed to tag along once or something.
Yeah, he was basically a tourist on one of the trips that the actual person who knows what he's talking about, Robert Kelly, headed.
Right.
All right.
And now so let me ask you this about, as you said, there are two different tracks here.
They're negotiating with the IAEA over Parchin.
But this is the big red herring that seems like it very well could screw up the P5 plus one negotiations, which when are they supposed to kick back in again?
Or have they set a date for the next set of talks?
Yeah, yeah, they were supposed to happen in, you know, a week or a couple of weeks.
And actually, indications are from this morning that Iran has proposed Egypt, Cairo as the site.
And now the ball's in the P5 plus one court.
If they like the weather in Cairo these days.
And now has the administration ever really said that they would accept enrichment at three point six percent?
I mean, there's a lot of focus on the 20 percent enriched uranium.
And it seemed like when they proposed the deal originally in 2009, they sort of were implying that they would accept three point six percent.
But they never have really said that, have they, that they would accept any enrichment at all inside Iran?
Well, I don't know.
You know, a huge problem is no one knows what the negotiating position of of the P5 plus one is insofar as what will it take to remove sanctions?
No one knows.
You know, Iran has been pretty clear.
They even went into the deal brokered by Turkey and Brazil.
And, you know, it was a whole crystalline what they were going to do.
You know, the deal had been set up.
But then it fell through because after Iran had agreed to it, you know, P5 plus one basically couldn't take yes for an answer.
And they found some flaw with it.
It would be lucky to get that deal because Iran is in a stronger position, has accumulated more.
Everything is getting harder as we delay.
So, yeah, we don't know what the administration would be satisfied with.
If you read the legislative text of the sanctions, there's a lot of things in there way beyond anything having to do with the nuclear program.
So basically, if you read what Congress requires to lift sanctions on Iran, you know, Iran would have to let go of all its political prisoners.
It would have to stop terrorism.
It would have to do all, you know, which are good.
You know, these are laudable goals.
You know, it's not a great, you know, it's not a good regime.
But, you know, putting these conditions into nuclear negotiation complicates things because you're basically messaging to the Iranians that, hey, no matter what you do with your nuclear program, we're still going to have the sanctions on because you haven't released the political prisoners.
So, you know, that the Iranians are going to say, well, you know, what are we doing here?
Why are we talking?
What are we talking about?
Right.
So this is the same thing that happened in the 90s with Saddam Hussein.
They said starting in 1997 that no matter what he does, no matter what he verifies, no matter what access to what inspectors, to his palaces or anything else, we will never lift the sanctions as long as Saddam Hussein is in power.
So he said, then get the hell out with your inspectors, because why am I even going along with you at all?
Well, that's oversimplifying.
He basically quit cooperating at that point.
Exactly.
And it's a legislative text.
It's not something I'm picking bone.
And you can, well, you can go to my most recent foreign policy article, and I have the link to the Congress where the Congress has published the details of the sanctions and all their conditions which are frankly ridiculous.
Right.
As you said now, in fact, could you go through that list real quick for us?
I'm paging through the article.
Let me see if I don't know.
You mentioned one of them was, oh, they have to release all their political prisoners.
Well, I'm sure they'll go along right with that over there.
No, and, you know, the other part is some of them are impossible to verify it.
You know, one of them is Iran has, I'm paraphrasing, has given up its support of terrorism.
Like, how is the president going to certify to Congress that Iran has given up, even if it does so, has given up its support of terrorism?
You know, it's just one of those things that are, that are, you know, impossible to certify.
Now, I should say that the president can waive those requirements on the basis of national security and say, hey, on the basis of national security, we're not going to make Iran do all these things.
But problem is, then he will come off as seeming soft on Iran and he'll run a great political risk.
And, you know, you have all of Congress pointing at him saying he's been soft on Iran.
So, you know, that's part of the issue that it's unlikely that he's ever going to use that waiver.
And now, it's funny, I was just talking with Max Blumenthal about Obama's position on the West Bank.
He never heard of it and he's going to try to do his best to ignore it for the rest of his term.
Is that, do you think he's just going to try to stick with the status quo here?
Or do you think he possibly would want to actually make a deal and say, we'll lift some sanctions if you promise to stick with the additional protocol forever or that kind of thing?
It's hard to say.
I mean, you know, he has a little bit more flexibility now because, you know, that's his last term.
He won't be able to run again and he can take some greater political risk.
And the new cabinet, if Hegel and Kerry are actually approved, you know, is a hopeful sign.
So I think there is some cause for hope.
But it's impossible for me to judge, you know, the detailed politics of that.
OK, well, everybody, that is Yosef Butt.
He's a nuclear physicist, a professor and scientist in residence at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
And this piece is called Building Blocks at foreignpolicy.com and also at armscontrollaw.com.
Check out Pretty in Pink, the Parchin preoccupation paradox.
Thank you very much for your time, Yosef.
Thank you, Scott.
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