03/01/13 – Barbara Slavin – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, and this is my show.
My website is ScottHorton.org.
And our next guest is Barbara Slavin.
She is Washington correspondent for Al Monitor and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
Welcome back to the show, Barbara.
How are you doing?
I'm doing fine.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
I appreciate you joining us today.
No problem.
All right, good deal.
So this week we had the big talks in Kazakhstan, or however Joe Biden wants to pronounce it.
Can you tell us, it seems like the headlines out of there had everybody pretty positive about the meeting.
Well, you know, positive.
I mean, I think that, yes, certainly there was no breakdown of talks, but there also was no breakthrough.
What was new was that the United States and its negotiating partners put some new proposals down in front of the Iranians.
That came a little bit of the way toward what the Iranians had been demanding.
And I think, you know, that was important because the Iranians had made clear that they were not going to accept the previous proposals that had been put down.
But there was no breakthrough.
What they did was they agreed to meet again later, you know.
So, I mean, let's not get too carried away here.
Well, I guess, well, it's been pointed out that they didn't hang banners, the Iranians didn't hang banners of the assassinated scientists.
And the Americans really came in instead of saying you have to tear down the Fordow facility, they said, well, you have to turn it off and that kind of thing.
So that's some pretty good movement, really.
I mean, that's further than the Americans have been willing to go by quite a ways, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
But we have to remember that while all of this is going on, the Iranians are still enriching uranium, they're still producing both lower-grade enriched uranium and medium-grade enriched uranium.
So they haven't stopped, you know, their nuclear program as, of course, they're supposed to do.
At least suspended under, you know, six UN Security Council resolutions right now.
So I think, you know, the atmospherics were definitely better.
And it appears that the Iranians were pleased by what they heard.
But we're going to have to wait and see whether there is some agreement that still can be reached.
And now, so part of the offer was the possibility that they could lift sanctions on the gold trade and some other things.
And how significant is that, do you think?
Well, these are minor changes, but they're important to the Iranians because of the sanctions that have been imposed.
It's very hard for Iran to get paid for the oil that it exports.
And one way they've been doing it is they've been getting paid in local currency by, say, the Turks.
And then taking that money and using it to buy gold.
And that gold they take back to Iran and then they use it for other purposes.
So this was one of the sanctions that just got put on.
And, you know, first on, first off, something like that.
Or last on, first off, I guess, would be the principle here.
So that's important.
There are also some hints that other sanctions could come off if they're willing to continue to negotiate.
But the first step, you know, is always the hardest.
And what the United States wants to see is Iran stop producing uranium at 20% of the isotope U-235 because that's too close to weapons grade for comfort.
Well, you know, Yosef Butt was on the show earlier this week and was saying that the Iranians actually have been having a little bit of trouble manufacturing the fuel plates out of the 20% uranium that they need for their reactors, which they've been doing.
But he was saying maybe this is something that we could offer is, hey, we'll help you convert this 20% uranium to other uses so that it can't be further enriched or at least not without much more trouble, you know, further turned back into a gas, etc.
Right.
This is something that's been on the table for a long time.
I mean, back in 2009, the U.S., France, and Russia had a proposal to provide the fuel for this reactor that makes medical isotopes.
Now the Iranians have come part of the way.
They've made this uranium oxide powder.
But it still has to be turned into fuel rods that can be used in the reactor.
And it's not clear.
Your previous guest was absolutely right.
It's not clear if the Iranians had the expertise to do that.
Well, just another avenue for possible negotiation, I guess.
Now, you mentioned the six U.N. Security Council resolutions.
And I wonder, can you tell us about the Iranian policy?
Do they have an official policy that they do not recognize the legitimacy of any U.N. resolutions that mandate action by them beyond what they're required under the NPT and their safeguards agreement?
Or is that, you know, like, for example, they kind of sort of went along with the additional protocol without ratifying it.
You know what I mean?
It's sort of an unofficial policy.
I wonder if that's the same thing here.
Or is it just absolutely they will not answer any more questions, suspend enrichment at Natanz, open up all their missile facilities and whatever else is in the U.N. demands there?
Well, look, they have their negotiating positions, which obviously can change over time.
They have certainly talked about not producing 20 percent uranium.
They've put that on the table a couple of times.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president, has mentioned it, I think, going back to 2009 before they even started producing this stuff.
Their attitude to the U.N. Security Council, I mean, they're very active at the U.N.
And some things the U.N. does they like and some things the U.N. does they don't like.
So, of course, they insist that these resolutions are not fair and so on.
What the Iranians have said is that if their rights under the NPT are respected, then they are happy to fulfill their obligations under the NPT.
And they say it is their right to enrich uranium.
Now, there's nothing in the NPT that says they have a right to enrich uranium.
It says that they have a right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy, provided they are in good standing with the International Atomic Energy Agency and so on.
Iran is not in good standing with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
You mentioned various military facilities and things that the IAEA would like to inspect.
There are questions about what Iran did, particularly back before 2003, when, at least according to our intelligence agencies, Iran did have a formal, structured program to produce or to try to develop nuclear weapons.
Now, our intelligence says that we think they shut that particular program down in 2003.
But there are some sites that the IAEA would like to look at and there are some individuals that the IAEA would like to interview, just to clear up what exactly went on in the late 90s and the early part of the last decade.
Until Iran gets a clean bill of health on these issues, it's going to be very hard for them to see sanctions lifted and to really reach a deal that will resolve all these problems.
Now, all these things where the IAEA isn't satisfied, is it correct that all of those things are extracurricular activities of the IAEA, under these separate UN resolutions, as opposed to their mandate under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the safeguards agreement with the Iranians?
No, I wouldn't call them that.
I mean, the IAEA has a responsibility.
It's supposed to go and check the nuclear programs of countries that have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to make sure that these various places, that there's no diversion and so on.
And if there are questions about whether a country has a military nuclear program, then the IAEA is the organization that's supposed to get to the bottom of it.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to state it in such a pejorative way, really.
I guess I'm just trying to understand legally, you know, in every report that they put out, they say, well, we've been able to verify continually the non-diversion of nuclear material.
All the uranium is where it's supposed to be and none of it's missing and apparently diverted to any military purpose, etc.
So it always sort of seems like they take their mandate under the safeguards agreement and their mandate under all these separate UN resolutions and they mix it all in one big report.
And so they have that.
Well, no, look, what happens is that member states of the IAEA have a right to raise questions, as has been done, about whether a country is abiding by its obligations or not.
And there are questions, there is information that the IAEA has that they want to be able to check out.
And if Iran has nothing to hide, it should cooperate and get out from under at least that part of the problem that's affected its relations with the IAEA.
Now, the Iranians don't want, of course, to have fishing expeditions and they want to understand why they're being asked to do this, but this is a request that goes back to 2008 or before, so it's nothing new for Iran.
And now, but it does sort of seem like a fishing expedition, right, when Ali Heinonen says in the New York Times that, well, we've been to Parchin and Robert Kelly.
That was back in 2008 before the IAEA knew what exact building it was looking, it needed to look at.
Parchin is huge.
It's a huge military base.
So you have to know, I mean, if they were shown X and the problem is in Y, then having visited it once is not good enough.
Also, the IAEA has a right to follow-up visits at various places if there are concerns.
You know, Iran has hidden huge aspects of its nuclear program.
It hid Natanz until that was leaked back in 2002.
It hid Fordo until President Obama announced that in the fall of 2009.
So, you know, it's not like the, how should we say, the benefit of the doubt rests with Iran, unfortunately because of its history.
The benefit of the doubt does not rest with Iran, and so it does have to take certain actions to kind of prove the negative, to prove that it hasn't done anything wrong.
Yeah, but, well, pardon me for being so argumentative, but in neither of those cases were they, they weren't in violation of their safeguards agreement in either case.
They're required to notify the IAEA within six months before the introduction of nuclear material, which in the case of Natanz and Fordo, they were fine.
And, in fact, didn't they declare Fordo four days before Obama pretended to out them?
Yeah, well, that was because they knew they were about to be outed.
How did they know?
Did they have a spy on his speech writing staff?
Iran is in a particular position having, I mean, at that point it was already under UN sanction.
So, you know, if Iran wants the trust of the international community, Iran is saying to the international community, you can trust us to enrich uranium, you can trust us to have a civilian nuclear program, we're not going to develop weapons, we're not going to cross the line.
Well, Iran's behavior is such that you can't have confidence that they're not going to build weapons.
You know, I'm really sorry to disagree with you on this, but I think Iran does have a certain burden that, say, Japan does not have to show that it can be entrusted with certain kinds of technology and that the international community should support Iran's peaceful nuclear program.
Iran has not developed that confidence, and so the question is, can they do that?
All right.
Well, I sure appreciate your point of view.
Thanks very much for your time.
You're quite welcome.
Good to talk to you again.
All right.
Take care.
Everybody, that's Barbara Slaven from Al-Monitor and the Atlantic Council.
You can follow her on Twitter at BarbaraSlaven1, the number one there.
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