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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, and our one and only guest today is Yosef Butt.
He is a research professor and scientist in residence at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute for International Studies.
Previously, he was a scientific consultant to the Federation of American Scientists and a physicist in the High Energy Astrophysics Division, Divisory, I don't know, at the Harvard, I think that's probably just a typo, at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and on and on like that.
Hey, welcome back to the show.
Yosef, how are you doing?
Good.
How are you?
Thank you.
I'm doing good.
Appreciate you joining us today.
So, first of all, let's talk about this one in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Iran's centrifuge magnet story, technically questionable.
And this is about that piece in the Washington Post, what, two weeks ago, about Iran's attempt to buy a bunch of very, very specialized magnets from the Chinese, which can only mean one thing, they're going to nuke us in our jammies in the middle of the night sometime real soon if we don't stop them.
Right.
Well, you know, the magnets under question are not specialized at all.
They've been used in loudspeakers.
They're these ring magnets, and they're made from ceramics, and, you know, it sounds scary sometimes to people, and, you know, it's like strontium and, you know, those kind of elements that are thrown in there, but that's standard practice, and it's been there for, you know, people have been using that for loudspeakers for 50 years.
So, you know, and the company that they were supposed to have sourced it from is also a very small company somewhere in India, and, you know, the inquiry went to China, but the actual company was located in India, and the Times of India went there, and they saw it's like this tiny shop in a dark alley somewhere, so, but, you know, the other problem with the story is there's really no magnets that we know of.
All we know of is actually just the inquiry, so the sourcing is pretty thin, and for something like the Washington Post to just put that out there, it's pretty irresponsible, so I've been in touch with their ombudsman, but I haven't heard back from them, so I'm just waiting to get a reply whether they'll be retracting that story or not.
Yeah, well, I guess good luck with that.
Well, so let's rewind to the beginning here, you know, exactly what all, I mean, the Washington Post story wasn't the beginning, the ISIS report was the beginning, and then the Washington Post kind of elaborated on that, correct?
So what are the claims here?
Yeah, so ISIS had some input from somewhere, some intelligence agency or their various contacts that they saw a web inquiry, so they have like a screen grab from somebody in Iran, apparently, we don't know if it's the government or not, we just know, you know, if you believe the story, it's somebody in Iran that's trying to order a hundred thousand ring magnets.
As I said, you know, that these aren't specifically for centrifuges, so the ISIS story basically jumps to the conclusion that they must be for centrifuges, and not only that, it goes on to say that specific people, the guy who was making the inquiry from Iran should be sanctioned and, you know, we've got to put sanctions on the Chinese company, and, you know, it's just, the main point is that they jumped to the conclusion that these magnets, which were just, there was just a web inquiry, there wasn't even a purchase order, there wasn't any talk of how much they will cost, what the delivery dates would be, it's just somebody type, you know, somebody, as if somebody went on Amazon and said, hey, you know, I want to buy, you know, a hundred thousand magnets, you know, are you interested?
That's the extent of it, and from that, it goes on to assume that they're for centrifuges, that this means that Iran is building 50,000, because there's supposed to be two of these magnets per centrifuge, so that, you know, this must mean that Iran is trying to build 50,000 centrifuges, and, you know, even the measurements are wrong, so, you know, they're almost right, but almost right is not good enough, like if you're ordering something for high-speed centrifuge applications, you order it the right size, you're not going to order something wrong and then build 50, you know, remachine 50,000 centrifuges.
Well, do they have an argument for why these would have to even be for new centrifuges rather than, hey, maybe they're replacement parts in case the thousands of centrifuges that we already know that they already have that are completely safeguarded in their, you know, open IAEA-protected facilities there at Fordow and Natanz?
Well, no, ISIS doesn't say they're for the new ones, actually, and so they would be for the, you know, assuming, if you believe the story, they would be for the older ones, but the problem is they don't even fit the older ones, so, you know, you'd have to redo, and that's actually in the ISIS report, even...
So wait, they're for the older ones, but then somehow they prove that they're about to make 50,000 more?
I don't understand.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so that's exactly right, so that's what they're saying is that they're planning to make 50,000 more of the older ones...
Oh, I see, no older model, but they'd be brand-new machines, I understand.
Right, right, right, so they're building 50,000, they want to build 50,000, you know, that means that they want to probably build 50,000 of the older ones.
Now, you know, and that, the point there also is that, you know, that in itself is not illegal as long as, you know, if this is what they were intending to do, and if they went ahead with it, when the time came, they told the IAEA that we're building new ones, that's fine as long as when they install it, you know, they tell them their intention.
So in itself, it's not a problem, but the way that it's just reported and what it's based on, you know, just somebody going and emailing somebody that, you know, I want to buy, you know, 100,000 magnets, to go from there to centrifuges and just, you know, explain it in very alarmist terms is not responsible.
Yeah, I mean, it's really funny when, I think you were the one who sent me the link originally to the Moon of Alabama blog, where they said, hey, I know, let's just for a minute, see what other uses for these exact same kind of magnets somebody would have.
And they got this giant list.
And then I think they quote it and you quote it too.
Even the ISIS report says, yeah, these are almost the right size for the use I'm accusing them of being for.
What?
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, the thing is, if you're going to use it for centrifuges, and if you're the one who's, if you're the purchaser, why would you put an inquiry down for the wrong size?
What sense does that make?
So you know, Well, he even explains that away, right?
And says, well, they'll just re-engineer and redo all their centrifuges to fit the magnets.
That makes perfect sense, right?
Well, I mean, you know, that's sort of like ordering the wrong part for your car and then like going to the auto store and then redoing your car and trying to fit the wrong part that you order.
You just order the right part if you're the one who's doing the ordering, right?
Right.
Yeah.
Now there's a Johnny Cash song like that, but he's stuck in that situation because he's stealing one part for the car at a time.
So that's different.
Now, let me ask you this.
How many times has David Albright burned the Washington Post and don't they care?
Well, I mean, okay.
You know, to be fair, like back in, if you go back to the Iraq, before the Iraq war, there was a lot of alarmist reporting in general about Iraq, you know, everybody was implicated.
But the one thing that they did get right was the aluminum tubes might have other applications.
So it's just kind of disappointing that now instead of being skeptical, you know, they're coming out this way, but, you know, well, Albright says he's anti-war and he says his agenda is to try to prevent war by, I guess, increasing sort of Rand Paul style, increase every measure short of outright warfare, you know, to prevent war from ever breaking out.
Yeah, I guess telling whatever lie would justify those policies, too.
Yeah, well, you know, I have a philosophical difference with him there.
You know, I, you know, there was this Middle East report that they put out with a few other people about a month or a month and a half ago, you know, just basically, like you said, just calling for more sanctions and not only that, calling for, you know, make overt threats of military, like, I don't know what that would mean, like send three aircraft carriers in or something, you know, into the into the Straits of Hormuz or like, you know, just make it very clear that, you know, military strikes are going to happen.
But, you know, the problem with that is that empowers the hawks and the in the Iranian political system.
I mean, you know, it's not a it's not a monolithic system.
I mean, there's there's hawks and doves, you know, like there are in D.C.
So what it does when you say we're going to increase sanctions, we're going to increase threats.
Well, you know, if if you increase threats, the main use of nuclear weapons would is as a deterrent.
So it increases the hand of the people who would like to weaponize, because as far as we know right now, the best evidence is that they're not weaponizing at all.
And nobody's seen any evidence.
And there's actually evidence that whatever little research they were doing was stopped back in 2003.
So, you know, making these things, these overt threats, making draconian sanctions just increases the say of the of the of the hawks in the Iranian administration and increases their arguments to get a deterrent.
So sort of counterproductive to what they're trying to do.
I mean, that's that's my view on it.
Yeah, well, and I think what Robert Pape and others have shown that sanctions fail to achieve their declared ends anyway.
Ninety seven percent of the time.
And I guess the South Africa example is the one counter example.
But even there, there's a lot of other factors at work.
But the rest of the time, Iraq is a much more apt example.
Sanctions are just a stepping stone to war.
Their box that you have to check and say, well, we tried sanctions and it didn't work.
So now there's only one path left to us.
Yeah, no, you know, I tend to agree with that.
And, you know, not only not only that, you can go back to Germany in the 30s.
You know, after the First World War, the allies had put all kinds of demands for reparations and, you know, they couldn't, you know, very strict conditions on what they could do with their military.
So and when people know that it's coming from abroad and, you know, the Iranians do, there was there was polls done by Gallup saying, you know, who do the Iranians blame for it?
And, you know, by a big margin, like five to one or something, the people knew that it's foreign pressure and not their own government that's doing it.
So anyhow, like back back in the 30s, similar thing.
And in Germany, you know, people start favoring the nationalistic candidates, you know, the people, you know, who are more extreme.
So and especially in a place like Iran, where, you know, it's quasi free elections, it's not really free.
So, you know, the Guardian Council kind of vets who can who can actually who can actually stand for election.
So, you know, it's possible that they'll only allow like hardliners and, you know, the new candidates might even make Mahmoud Ahmadinejad look good.
So, you know, they might, you know, all this foreign pressure might end up blowing up in our face if somebody even more hardline gets elected and things go even more down.
But, you know, apart from that, even the Green Party candidates that everybody seems to like and, you know, even the West favors, even they support the nuclear program.
So there's, you know, and the nuclear program, so far as we know, is a peaceful one.
Yeah, they're enriching, but they're also converting a lot of the stuff that they've enriched this uranium hexafluoride gas into metallic oxide powder for later use in the in their reactor.
So that kind of take that subtract from the problem.
You know, so the more that they convert to this metal form, the better it is.
Well, now talk about that a little bit more, because there's this new Reuters report, even it used to be we had to go to Gareth Porter and that was it.
But now even Reuters is saying that, well, you know, they're kind of if if breakout capability, the ability to take what they got and of low enriched uranium and enrich it up to weapons grade and all of that, if that's even what they're going for, it's counterproductive.
Their actions are counterproductive even to that end, because here they keep taking, as you're just saying, their uranium that they've enriched up to three point six percent and up to 20 percent, and they keep making use of it, you know, like they said they were going to instead of letting it sit there, pile up, equaling a one day could be nuclear weapon under hypothetical gone wild.
Right, exactly.
So, you know, they're they're not doing what you would expect somebody who's racing to the bomb would do because they're they're taking this, you know, you can only you can only enrich the stuff while it's a gaseous form.
So they're taking the gaseous form and turning it into metal part of it.
So, you know, they're not on some breakneck race to to to enrich to to weapons or even anything above 19.75 percent, to be exact.
Hey, you know, tell me about how now and I don't want to get too scientific here, but I do want to understand if you can tell me.
I know that they take I don't know the process, but somehow they get from yellow cake, refined uranium or and they somehow convert that into uranium hexafluoride gas, which they then introduce into the centrifuges and in order to separate out the two thirty eight from the two thirty five and all that.
But once they turn it into a metal, like you're saying, is it can they just send it right back to Istiofan and have it turned right back into gas if they want?
Or it's pretty much a done deal at that point.
Oh, it's complicated.
It's not an easy problem.
You know, they can.
It's just not fast and easy.
Let's put it that way.
So, you know, if you're if they've converted it to metal, they're not going to, you know, making breaking out is much more difficult.
You have to go through this whole process again of, you know, chemical reactions and re-extracting it, making it, you know, turn it back into gas.
So it's not I mean, it's not impossible, but it's not something, you know, you do.
The point on that, however, you know, the important point on that is they're having trouble making the the fuel plates, you know, which is what this metal form is used for is the fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor.
So, you know, it's fairly well known that they've been having troubles and it's a complicated process.
And, you know, so one thing that is a way out and all this is if the IAEA helps them do that, you know, and that's one of their you know, that is technically one of their jobs is to help people with their civil nuclear application.
So and then, you know, it would be taking the bad gaseous stockpile and making it into the good metal stockpile.
So, you know, it would be doing Iran a favor for something that's in our interest.
So, you know, I'm not sure why that's not been proposed.
I mean, I proposed it, but nobody seems to or I haven't heard back from anybody at the IAEA if that's being considered.
But it should be, you know, that's good for them and that's good for us.
You know, they want to turn it into fuel.
They're having trouble.
They can't turn enough of it into fuel.
In other words, you basically identified an extra incentive for the old fuel swap deal because that's kind of what they wanted anyway, or that was the deal anyway, was we'll swap it, we'll enrich up to 20 percent and we'll make the fuel rods, the fuel plates, et cetera, for you and finish them and ship them back.
So you're saying, hey, look, the Iranians, they really could use a swap right now because they're having some trouble.
So maybe we really could use them, use this to get them to agree to a deal like that, which would include them enriching up to 20 percent anymore.
Well, well, yeah, I mean, there's several different things.
I mean, you can you can tell them, well, you know, you just enrich it up to 3.5 percent and give it to us and we'll enrich it to 20 percent and give you the metal fuel plates in return, like, you know, from abroad back in.
There were problems with the timing, you know, like when who was going to hand over what and get what back when with the last deal.
With the last deal.
But what I'm saying is you could also just do everything in-house in Iran, but help them to do that process because that's in your interest.
Oh, I see, internationalize their national program.
I mean, you would just get the IAEA to go there with some technical experts and like say, OK, well, this is how you really make the metal plate and this is how, you know, help them set up the facility.
I see.
For doing that conversion, because that conversion is in everybody's interest.
That's what they want to do with the fuel.
They've indicated they've done it.
They're having trouble doing it.
So help them out.
Right.
It's getting rid of their nasty, gaseous stockpile and turning it into the good metal one.
So, yeah, but, you know, that's only good for satisfying America's kind of pretended problem here when their real problem is the independence of the Iranian regime.
And the nuclear program is the best excuse that the Americans have for picking on them.
Right.
So they don't really want to solve it.
Well, I mean, yeah, my view on it is we don't seem to be doing.
You know, if we were really afraid of it, if you know, if you're really scared of a nuclear armed Iran, you know, make make whatever deal you need to like, you know, lift the sanctions that they're asking to get the concession that you want.
If this is really scary for you, if you're honest, if you're in good faith, negotiating in good faith that we think you're doing something really dangerous, we don't want you to race to the bomb.
And they've told you already, yeah, we'll stop the 20 percent enrichment, but you've got to lift the sanctions.
I mean, give us something, you know, we're not just going to stop doing this and don't get anything in return.
And then, you know, we're like, oh, OK, well, you know, we'll think about it.
Let's talk in six months.
That doesn't sound like we're scared.
And if we're not scared and, you know, what is this about?
And then, yeah, I mean, I would say you might be right.
Yeah, well, you know, I guess real quick now to wrap up back to the magnet story or the implications of the magnet story to me.
And, you know, you're the you're the scientist and the real expert here.
But it seems to me like this is just one of I don't know how many dozens and dozens of these kind of bogus stories that they basically provide this smoke where, you know, like people say where there's smoke, there's fire.
Well, it's David Albright with a little smoke machine over there, basically him and his buddies at The New York Times and the AP mostly putting this stuff out.
And it creates the atmosphere where to back up that main argument of the war party that they just can't be trusted or dealt with.
There's always they're always up to no good and some secret thing.
And didn't you hear the latest one about the magnets and that kind of it just makes them seem guilty and seem like there's no point in negotiating with them because they're so dishonest anyway.
Why make a shake hands with a liar kind of a thing?
Right.
And so it's just help sabotage the whole effort.
Yeah, no, I think that's more or less correct.
The you know, it's important to note, like in Iraq, this exact issue came up with the ring magnets.
And I have a quote in the in the bulletin piece about what Albert I said, you know, right about when he starts talking about the magnets basically said there's other applications and in field telephones.
That's what they were making.
And Bob Kelly was the guy on the ground there.
And he's the one who investigated it, you know, walking around Iraq.
And they found out finally that they were ordering these or they were making these ring magnets for field telephones, not not for not for centrifuges.
So this exact thing came up for Iraq.
And and right before that part of the speech was the part of the aluminum tubes where Albert I saying, well, there's other applications for aluminum tubes.
You don't think it's for centrifuges.
But, you know, we went to war anyway over that.
So, yeah, I mean, I think the problem is, well, there was this other thing a few months ago with the graphs, right, which, you know, we we also first published in the bulletin.
Then ISIS had a response.
And then we had, you know, we told them what was wrong with their response.
So, you know, that turned out to be a fake or wrong story.
Also, the problem is, you know, yeah, these these fake alarmist stories, especially in high profile places like The Washington Post and New York Times and AP, which get distributed worldwide.
You know, you just keep hearing Iran next to nuclear weapons, Iran bomb Iran, you know, 50,000 centrifuges.
And, you know, the public is not going you know, they trust these sources.
So they just they just see the name Iran next to a bomb, you know, so many times per year.
And of course, you know, they're going to get misled.
So that's what's happening now.
Yeah, it's really amazing, too, after the experience of the Iraq war that people let that work on them.
But, you know, John Glaser has a piece of the antiwar blog where he talks about this recent Gallup poll.
And it was a pretty, you know, pregnant poll.
You know what I mean?
They kind of had the answer built in the question.
You're supposed to be afraid.
Tell us you're afraid.
Kind of a push poll, I guess what I mean to say.
But he also said, you know, why does this work?
Well, it's because Americans don't know anything about foreign policy.
I mean, if you're talking, you know, Jay Leno, man on the street kind of thing, he can't even name the three branches of government in the USA.
He doesn't even know what the First Amendment says.
How in the hell is he supposed to know anything about the nuclear program of some foreign state on the other side of the planet at that point, especially when once you say the word nuclear?
I mean, hell, even to me, that means mathematics I can't do.
So that means I need Gordon Prather and I need you.
You have to tell me the truth about this stuff.
And so people just defer to wherever the story is coming from.
They must know where they're what they're talking about, or they certainly know what they're talking about more than I do because they're even talking about it.
That's what people are left to deal with, you know?
Yeah.
And when it's something like New York Times or Washington Post or AP, then, you know, people just yeah, of course, they're going to defer to them.
That's that's their source.
I mean, despite the fact that those sources were wrong with Iraq, too.
But, you know, they'll they seem to believe it again.
And what else are they going to believe?
But the problem is, you know, the reporters and really the editors at these places have got to, you know, crack down and say, well, you know, listen, you know, that our DNI has said there's no weapons work going on in Iran.
And the secretary of defense outgoing Panetta said, you know, Iran is not building nuclear weapons.
Al-Baghdadi, you know, for 12 years with the IAEA looking at everything nuclear in Iran, and he said he hasn't seen a shred of evidence over that time that Iraq was making nuclear weapons.
So, you know, once you have that expert sources, you better have your reporters come up with some really solid evidence.
If you know, if you're if you're saying that Iran is weaponized, not some like, you know, these crappy graphs or whatever else they presented as evidence.
So even I guess one year ago, when it was this, this was really coming up between the Israelis and the Americans, and there was kind of a lot of back and forth about it.
And it finally made its way into Haaretz, which I believe, and I've been watching this one really closely for a long time.
Hirsch has told me that Israeli intelligence has confirmed to him this off the record, but he wouldn't name anyone kind of thing.
But this was the first time a year ago where they came out in Haaretz and said, we, Mossad, agree with the CIA that they're not making nukes in Iran.
Right, right, right.
And that was a pretty big deal, I thought, because they had never really, I guess, even answered the question outright.
Or I don't know if anyone had ever asked him.
Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's pretty public knowledge that the high levels of the intelligence don't want to go to war because they're not well, first of all, they know that Iran is not making nuclear weapons and that it would be a disaster if that happened for Israel itself, you know.
So, yeah, I think the senior intelligence people who really know that actually disagree with the politicians who might, I think the politicians might be bluffing, too.
But, you know, who knows there.
But let me say one thing, you know, this other thing comes up about capability.
You know, we want to stop Iran from having the capability to build a bomb.
Well, you know, that's kind of a problem because the NPT encourages, you know, the world powers that have the knowledge, that have the nuclear knowledge to spread it around the world.
They say, you know, you have to, you know, in developing nations, you have to, you know, if they want it, you have to help them out with nuclear power.
So nuclear power is inherently dual use.
So it comes with a capability.
You know, if you get good enough at the nuclear fuel cycle and power plants and all that, you know, your scientists are going to know how to build a bomb.
And it's not that, you know, the knowledge is not secret anymore.
So, you know, to say that we're going to stop you from having a capability to build a bomb is basically saying we're not going to allow you to have your NPT rights.
So then you might as well kick them out of the NPT if you want that.
Right.
And then they're free to do whatever they want.
But, you know, it's kind of a logical bind.
You're telling them they're not allowed to have a capability, but the treaty that you've signed with them encourages that capability.
Well, the whole thing has just been a disaster since at least, you know, the axis of evil speech, you know, to Gordon Prather used to joke about, OK, you want regime change in these three countries.
Problem.
American people won't let you do it unless you have a nuclear weapons threat.
That's the only excuse good enough.
Problem.
All three countries are members in good standing of the Nonproliferation Treaty and the International Atomic Energy Agency, all of whom have safeguard agreements and regular inspections and all of whom are verified to not have nuclear weapons programs.
So from there, they just had to work on trying to force the axis of evil countries out of the NPT so they could go ahead and bomb them.
You know, and in Iraq, they just pretended the inspections were irrelevant because they were in such a hurry.
In the case of North Korea, they actually succeeded in beating them over the head with enough nonsense and threats and sanctions that they finally withdrew and went ahead and made some nukes.
It was a great plan.
In fact, they are citing Libya and saying, see what happens when you give up your nukes.
Right.
And it seems to me, I'm not saying it's a good thing, but if you're not here, you know, if you're in power in North Korea and the regime, your gamble just paid off to withdraw from the NPT and make nuclear weapons.
Everybody's very nice to them now.
Nobody's putting military options on the table to North Korea, but they are to Iran, you know, and Iran's not even weaponizing.
So, I mean, what's the lesson learned there?
You know, Samuel Huntington and his book, The Flash of Civilization, basically came out and said, you know, the nonproliferation regime is essentially a way for, you know, I'm paraphrasing, for the West to, you know, sort of deny technological advancement in developing nations by, you know, withholding this nuclear knowledge from them.
And if you, John Mueller's book called Atomic Obsession is another really good book about how the fear of, you know, nuclear weapons is almost being used, you know, as an excuse for war.
So, you know, the nonproliferation, you know, which is ostensibly to stop wars and stop dangerous things from happening is actually causing, the way it's being implemented is causing wars, you know, because of the wild alarmist threats associated with it.
Right.
No matter how good a job the nonproliferation regime does of verifying the lack of nuclear weapons or even a program toward nuclear weapons in Iran, it doesn't matter.
It's still actually the excuse for, look, they're in defiance of the IAEA, because the IAEA has been mandated by the Security Council to prove a thousand negatives unrelated to the safeguards agreement.
Oh, and they can't prove that, those negatives in 50 other countries.
Right.
You know, there's 50 other countries for which they don't have that statement that it's purely for peaceful uses.
I mean, that's impossible to prove.
I mean, to prove that it's, you know, somebody's, anything is for purely peaceful uses, you have to occupy every, like, you know, square yard of the country.
You know, how do you prove that?
But there's no, that's not part of the IAEA's job.
That's something that somebody started, you know, and sort of propagated into the report.
Well, you know, what's interesting about that, it's funny to me, Joseph, that actually the way the legal language of the IAEA and the way they talk, in a sense, they do prove the negative, or at least the way they state it.
They say, well, we have verified the non-diversion of nuclear materials.
So unless there's a secret mine and a secret gas facility and a secret centrifuge facility, none of which has ever been found by anyone, all the uranium is still sitting right there, just as much as we're expecting to be there.
And none of it's been diverted.
And so the negative has been proven.
Unless the Chinese ship them a ready-made warhead, they don't have nukes.
They're not making them.
Yeah, and that's illegal.
You know, if you have to check a legal box to, you know, qualify for the safeguards agreement, then it's not just me saying this.
The Russian foreign minister, in a recent statement, said basically the same thing, that Iran is doing everything by the book now, according to their safeguards agreement.
And, you know, you can argue as much as you want what happened before, but now everything is by the book, even with the new centrifuges.
And he made it very clear.
He said Iran is doing things legally correctly, but we do have a political request that they stop enrichment while we negotiate with them.
So, you know, that political request being the United Nations Security Council resolution.
So there's a distinction.
You know, Iran is doing things legally correctly, but, you know, the Security Council does have a political problem with them.
And, you know, at least the Russians are being honest about that now.
But, yeah, coming back to that, you know, basically the safeguards agreement, like you said, all the declared material has to be accounted for.
Whatever went in, the IAEA has to know before they write their next report that it's been accounted for.
And that's all their job is, really, to say that, you know, we can't prove exclusively peaceful nature of the program, you know, anywhere in Iran.
But, I mean, it's fine for them to say that.
It's a true statement, but it's irrelevant.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, listen, I've already kept you away over time.
Thanks so much for your time.
We'll let it go there.
OK.
I really appreciate it.
Yeah, thank you.
All right, everybody.
That is Yosef Butt.
He is a research professor and scientist in residence at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute for International Studies.
You can find this piece at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Iran's centrifuge magnet story, technically questionable.
And there's a lot more he's been writing for Reuters and others.
So go look him up.
Hey, everybody.
Scott Horton here, inviting you to check out the Future Freedom Foundation at FFF.org.
They've got a brand new website with new and improved access to more than 20 years worth of essays promoting the cause of liberty.
And FFF's writers, including Jacob Hornberger, Jim Bovard, Sheldon Richman, Anthony Gregory, Wendy McElroy and more, aren't just good.
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That's the Future Freedom Foundation's new and improved site at FFF.org.
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Mike thinks his positions are going to go up because of all the money the Federal Reserve is printing to finance the deficit.
See what happens at wallstreetwindow.com.
And Mike's got a great new book coming out.
So also keep your eye on writermichaelswanson.com for more details.
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At libertystickers.com, they've got great state hate, like Pearl Harbor was an inside job.
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Everyone else's stickers suck.
The Emergency Committee for Israel.
Brookings.
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PNAC.
CNAS.
The AEI.
FPI.
CFR.
And CSP.
It sure does seem sometimes like the War Party's got the foreign policy debate in DC all locked up.
But not quite.
Check out the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
They put America first, opposing our government's world empire and especially their Middle Eastern madness.
That's the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
