07/08/16 – Barbara Slavin – The Scott Horton Show

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Introducing Barbara Slavin.
If memory serves, formerly with UPI and now at the Atlantic Council.
And then this article is for Voice of America.
Government propaganda, but I don't mind.
I love it anyway.
Welcome back to the show, Barbara.
How are you?
Thanks.
Actually, I was with USA Today for many years.
UPI was way in my distant past.
Oh, okay, USA.
I don't know why I was here.
USA Today.
Okay, anyway.
Alright, great.
Well, anyway, you're a great journalist on the Iran beat for a long, long time.
And I can vouch for you that you definitely know your stuff when it comes to their nuclear program and all the legalities around it and everything else going back many years here.
So, very happy to read you this one for VOANews.com.
One year in, the Iran nuclear deal is working.
And it's funny, isn't it, to think about all the hype and all the scaremongering of a year ago about how terrible this was going to be.
You don't really hear a peep out of them.
Certainly not.
I mean, sometimes some slogans about Obama giving Iran nuclear weapons or something.
But you sure don't hear anybody complaining about the details of what's happened with Iran's nuclear program since the implementation of the deal there, do you?
Well, you still do, frankly.
There are still some who are worried about Iran's missile program, worried about other aspects of Iranian policies.
But even the harshest critics of the deal do concede that Iran is sticking to its requirements on the nuclear issue in terms of reducing the output of enriched uranium, closing a controversial facility that could have produced plutonium, following all of the restrictions that it did indeed agree to a year ago.
And those are actually some pretty big ones, right?
Can you talk a little bit more about, for example, what you just mentioned there with the Fordow plant and the Boucher reactor, et cetera?
Yeah.
I mean, basically what the deal does is it makes it almost impossible that Iran could build a nuclear weapon without being detected.
It agreed to have only 300 kilograms of low-enriched uranium.
That's not enough even if they were to try to break out and enrich it to weapons grade.
That's not enough for a single nuclear weapon.
They agreed not to produce any enriched uranium in an underground site called Fordow, which would be very difficult to attack by the United States or Israel, say.
They ripped out the guts of a heavy water reactor.
And I don't think they've replaced it yet.
This reactor, if completed, could have yielded plutonium, which is another potential fuel for a bomb.
They've agreed to unprecedented surveillance of their programs.
They're inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency in the country 24-7, 365 days a year, inspecting 17 declared nuclear facilities.
So, you know, it would be really, really hard for them to produce a weapon.
Even if they tried to do something covertly, the United States, Israel, other countries still have technical means, as they call it, and other means of observing Iran and making sure that it's not cheating.
So, you know, for at least a decade and hopefully longer, we can be assured that Iran's not going to build a nuclear weapon.
And given the mess that that region is in, that's one less thing we have to worry about.
All right, now, so what of all the scaremongering about all the loopholes in the ability of Iran to take advantage of, for example, the inability of the IAEA to just barge right into any military facility, that they didn't have to give so much prior notice that the Iranians would be able to sneak their nuclear weapons program out the back door?
Have we had any of those kind of incidents going on?
Like people might remember in Iraq, Scott Ritter and them trying to chase Saddam's guys around.
We haven't.
It's widely recognized that Iran did do research into nuclear weapons, at least up through 2003 and in some respects up until I think 2009.
But that program was basically shut down after it was detected.
And as I mentioned, there are other means.
I mean, Iran is more porous than many think.
It's not as hard a target as, say, North Korea.
And every time they've tried to do something like this, they've always been caught either by an Iranian opposition group or by the Israelis or by the United States with satellite surveillance.
So as far as we know, no, they haven't tried to cheat.
And it would make no sense for them to do that now because, you know, they've yet to reach the full benefits in terms of the impact of sanctions relief.
And right now they're very concentrated on trying to get their economy back on track.
And by the way, I apologize because I know it's a foolish question because, of course, the context is if they were going to make a nuke, they would have tried to do it before signing this deal and restricting their program to the degree that they have now.
It's unthinkable that they would try to break out now.
It doesn't make any sense.
They would lose all the benefits with the deal forever and really pay a huge price in economic terms and political terms, I think, for the regime.
And by the way, let me follow you up there on the 09 part, nuclear research into nuclear weapons, if not a nuclear weapons program, but taking place all the way through 2009.
What are you referring to there?
I'm going to double check that, actually.
I wrote a piece about that, and I'm just checking it now through the Elmonitor website where I often write, and I'll give you the exact.
Yeah, there was a report that came out from the IAEA in December of last year which pretty clearly discussed what's known as the possible military dimensions of the Iranian nuclear program.
Yeah, and that's right.
They said quite definitively that Iran had a nuclear weapons program until 2003 and continued some research for six more years.
So that was the birth of the so-called IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which did an exhaustive study of Iran's research into nuclear weapons.
But did they ever clarify what they meant by that, the six more years?
You know, there have been details.
I mean, there have been details.
I'd have to go back and refer you to the IAEA report.
That's fair.
It included things like, for example, testing high explosives that had nuclear relations.
Oh, the bridge wires and all that.
At a place called Parchin, which is a military base, which the IAEA did get to visit but in a kind of cursory fashion.
The Iranians took some soil samples there, which they gave to the IAEA, and apparently there was some evidence of radioactivity in those samples.
But as far as we know, this work was shut down.
Yeah, there was the exploding bridge wires, right?
Yeah.
Honestly, I think Gareth Porter and Yosef Butt and others have really thrown a lot of cold water on even these things, the two uranium particles at Parchin.
I accept the IAEA's finding that Iran did have a program that was looking toward developing nuclear weapons.
They never developed any, but they were certainly investigating technologies that could have been used for nuclear weapons.
I accept that.
But according to the IAEA, that all stopped definitively in 2009.
Most of it stopped in 2003 when their program was detected.
Can you talk about the subsidiary arrangements and the additional protocols?
And for the audience, don't let your eyes glaze over, because this is really important, right?
They already had a safeguards agreement with the IAEA where they could inspect nuclear facilities wherever there was nuclear material, and yet now they have these additional and subsidiary arrangements and agreements, and I really like this part.
Well, it's called the additional protocol, and then there are some other arrangements.
It basically means that if the international community, read United States, Israel, have doubts about what Iran is up to, they can challenge the Iranians and insist on being able to inspect suspect sites.
The Iranians can protest.
There's a period of about 24 days when it can be adjudicated back and forth.
If the U.S. is not satisfied, the Iranians don't provide access, and it looks really suspicious, the U.S. can snap back sanctions all by itself and simply take us back to square one.
I mean, this is another reason why it's extremely unlikely that the Iranians are going to cheat on this deal, assuming that the United States and the other countries that are privy to this also fulfill their obligations.
Yeah, now that gets to the complicated part, right, is all the layers and layers of sanctions that have to be repealed.
You say in here that quite a bit of that has been accomplished.
Is there, I guess, the last I had read prior to this was that there was progress being made, but our side of the deal was lagging a little bit behind, no?
Well, I think the U.S. actually has, and as I wrote in the piece for Voice of America, actually has fulfilled its obligation.
The problem is that the deal was a little bit oversold, shall we say, in Iran, and a lot of the Iranians expected sort of instant relief.
In fact, I've just written a piece for our Monitor website, which should be up tomorrow with the poll of Iranians, and it shows that they really misunderstood the nature of the deal.
They thought that all the sanctions were going to cost, and in fact, only so-called secondary sanctions, these are sanctions that are meant to impede the activities of foreign companies, foreign countries, those were lifted.
But the ones that have to deal with U.S. investment and trade with Iran, most of them still remain in place, with a few exceptions, like Boeing can sell civilian airliners to Iran now, and U.S. companies can sell food and medicine and medical devices.
That's something they've been allowed to do for some time.
So I think there was a misunderstanding.
Also, the Iranians didn't anticipate how long it would take for banks to reconnect with the international financial system.
There are a lot of major European banks in particular that won't touch Iran yet because they're afraid of somehow still falling afoul of U.S. sanctions.
But the U.S. did its part.
It lifted the sanctions, and U.S. officials have gone around the world explaining that they had lifted the sanctions.
So there.
Now, Barbara, this is kind of a broader question of interpretation, but would you say that Obama has stood by his word, that he really meant it when he said that this was not the first step of a real rapprochement with Iran?
This was taking care of one issue, the nuclear issue, and otherwise the status quo wasn't really going to change.
It sounds like when you say, well, there's the Boeing exception, but otherwise they're not opening up.
American business is not allowed to go over there, that kind of thing.
Does that sound like pretty much that's right, or are there any other indications?
Yeah, it's pretty much right.
So there are some exceptions, and, you know, things American tourists can go, certain communications devices.
You can sell iPhones legally in Iran now.
So there are some exceptions.
Academic exchanges, there have been some, although it's complicated.
Sports exchanges, we've had a real uptick in those.
You know, there's still a lot of anti-Americanism within the Iranian government, and there is still a kind of level of discomfort, I think, in certain parts of the Iranian regime that, you know, they're afraid of too close an embrace with the United States.
We still have no diplomatic relations with Iran, no American diplomats there, and this is a big impediment, frankly, to a normalization of U.S.-Iran economic as well as diplomatic relations.
Yeah.
Well, I guess we're really still waiting for a Nixon-goes-to-China type moment where a Republican conservative enough to be criticism-proof on the issue can just go ahead and go over there and work this thing out.
After all, the hostage crisis was a long, long time ago, wasn't it?
Yeah.
I don't think there's so much looking for Nixon in China.
I think, you know, the impetus has to come from there too, and it's the Iranian government.
I mean, I think Obama would get on a plane tomorrow and go to Tehran, just like he went to Havana, if they would agree to it.
But they haven't.
And, you know, maybe when he's out of office.
Even then, though, I kind of doubt it.
So the problem really is on their side as well as ours.
And you mentioned hostages.
No, we don't have 52 Americans held hostage, but there's still two Iranian Americans being held hostage in effect and been in jail in Iran now for months and months, and an Iranian Brit and an Iranian Canadian, and I think an Iranian Frenchwoman also.
So, you know, we have to be clear.
There are still elements of the Iranian government, the Iranian system, that are very hostile toward the West and want to make sure that this nuclear deal is transactional, not transformational, that it doesn't lead to a major change in Iran's orientation.
So we still have a lot of work to do.
Well, we already saw the victory of the Iran nuclear deal and the quick release of the American sailors as kind of a byproduct there.
So all the more reason to negotiate, it seems like to me, especially if on the personal level, our Secretary of State and their foreign minister kind of pals can see eye to eye on some things a little bit.
That can really help.
And it seems like we have had that with Kerry and Zarif, right?
We have, and I think one of your key challenges is to institutionalize this so that this kind of relationship is maintained under the next administration.
All right.
Well, good deal, Barbara.
I sure appreciate your time on the show and great article here.
My pleasure.
Take care.
All right, y'all.
That's Barbara Slavin.
This one is one year in.
The Iran nuclear deal is working.
It's at the Voice of America.
All right, y'all.
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