All right, y'all, welcome back.
Santa War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our first guest on the show today is Flint Leverett.
He's a former top analyst at the CIA and was on the National Security Council as well.
He's currently a professor of international affairs at Penn State University.
And he and his wife, Hillary Mann Leverett, keep the blog Race for Iran at Race for Iran dot com.
Welcome back to the show, Flint.
How are you doing?
Thank you, Scott.
Good to be back with you.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here.
And I'm disappointed that the IAEA hasn't gone ahead and released their report.
I was hoping it would be out by now and I'd have had a chance to scan through it to see if the agency has continued to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran to any military or other special purpose as they have five billion times before or not, which, as Gordon Prather says, is the only part of any of these IAEA reports that is any of their beeswax whatsoever.
The rest of this is all based on illegitimate U.N. Security Council resolutions, not the powers of the IAEA under their safeguards agreement with Iran.
Is that your view of this?
More or less.
I mean, I think that the critical point in any IAEA report on a country's nuclear activities is the question of diversion of nuclear material.
And as you say, quite rightly, the IAEA in years of reporting on this has never found any diversion of nuclear material in Iran.
And if this other stuff, you know, it's not just really a question of, you know, what is the IAEA's competence?
What is it that they're legally entitled to report under the treaty or under the IAEA statute?
But it's, you know, they're basically taking intelligence information from other governments where they don't have access to the sources.
They can't really validate at the agency how, you know, credible or not this information is.
This is one reason why, for years, Mohamed ElBaradei, when he was director, refused to go public with this because he couldn't he couldn't vouch for it and he wasn't going to put his name on it or his agency's name on it.
Mr. Amano seems to have a very different attitude about this.
And, you know, if the United States or Israel or Britain tells him something, you know, he's he's going to believe it and kind of put the onus on the Iranians to somehow disprove that, you know, they put the onus on Iran to prove a negative.
And I think it's a, you know, I think it's a really very dangerous path that that down which he's taking the agency right now.
Right now, I'm I'm furiously scanning through the David Sanger piece from yesterday.
And I guess it must have been the Jobi Warwick piece in The Washington Post that said that he talked to Ali Heinonen, the very hawkish former IAEA something or other.
You know, the former mucky muck up there, who's now at Harvard, who says, well, you know, all this, you know, breaking news is about supposed work on implosion systems at this place called Parchin.
But he says, I inspected that place myself and it was all conventional explosives.
That's right.
Oh, yeah, it is.
It's in The Times piece.
Yeah, that's right.
There's this there's a military base at Parchin, not that far from Tehran, where the Iranians, you know, by their own account, do work on ballistic missiles and on high explosives.
High explosives are one of the things you need to be able to use in some very, very specific and challenging ways in order to build a nuclear weapon.
And so the concern on the agency's part was, well, they might be doing work on Parchin with high explosives that is actually related to a nuclear weapons program.
And so a few years ago, Heinonen and some of his colleagues on one of their trips to Iran were, you know, were allowed to go to Parchin and and look around.
And, you know, they determined there was no evidence of of nuclear work going going on there.
Now, you know, could, in theory, the Iranians have, you know, started to do that sort of sort of work at Parchin?
You know, I guess it you know, it is it is possible.
But, you know, that's there's no concrete evidence that the Iranians are doing this.
And even if they are, are they claiming that there's concrete evidence of this in the new IAEA report that unfortunately we still haven't seen yet?
Well, there you know, there there are intimations of that in, you know, from journalists who have seen the report and some of the quotes that journalists have seen the report have have attributed to the document, you know, would seem to indicate that the IAEA is trying to say that.
But there's no indication in anything that has come out in public so far.
And, you know, hopefully within the next few hours, we'll all see the report itself.
But there's no indication in any of the material that's been attributed to the IAEA in public so far that, you know, would lead me to think that they have any new information.
Well, you must not be referring to David Sanger there because he ceded his title of journalist long ago.
And this piece from yesterday, which surprisingly has a little bit of counterargument in it, that must have been his co-author.
U.S. hangs back as inspectors prepare report on Iran's nuclear program, it's called.
And the single biggest lie in here is a lie of omission, which claims that the last time the American intelligence community had a thing to say about the Iranian nuclear program was back in 2007.
And then that report was widely criticized when, in fact, the National Intelligence Council of all was at 16, 17, 18 U.S. intelligence agencies came together and put out a new NIE about Iran's nuclear program.
Yeah, this year stood by their previous judgment.
Yeah.
So David Sanger is a liar.
He's not a journalist.
He's a propagandist working for I don't know who, but that ought to be a good investigation for a real journalist to carry out.
And I agree.
His his work on on Iranian issues has been disappointingly sloppy, to say the least, for a long time.
And it really does raise questions about whether he's letting a kind of personal political agenda or some other sort of agenda, you know, drive drive the way he writes his stories.
And that's obviously very disappointing to see.
Well, and I'm sorry for being so cranky all over your interview, but I mean, there really are problems when the WikiLeaks came out.
He breathlessly passed on these Russian rumors that they didn't even claim were true, that the North Koreans had sold all these missiles to Iran, a story that completely fell apart in one day when anyone else even took a look at it.
I mean, that's just a couple examples.
And there are many, many.
But I think there I think there are really two issues that this IAEA report raises.
One of them, which is basically getting all of the attention right now, is, you know, how good is the information in it?
Should we believe it?
You know, to the extent that it's true, what does it tell us about, you know, how close Iran is to being able to to to build a nuclear weapon?
Questions like this.
I think there's another.
And those are obviously important questions that should be discussed and debated.
And I think there's enormous reason for skepticism about what is apparently in the report.
But there's another issue, which is.
Let's just assume for the minute for a minute that everything that is being claimed about Iran's nuclear activities in this report by journalists writing about it, let's assume that everything along those lines.
Is 100 percent true.
The Iranians do, in fact, you know, have been working on the kinds of high explosives that you would need for a nuclear device.
They have been working on how you fabricate the highly enriched uranium, which they don't have.
But, you know, how you would fabricate that into the kinds of shapes that you need for the core of a nuclear weapon.
You know, some of these other things they've been working on, you know, neutron initiator.
We're almost at the break.
So conclude this thought very quickly, please.
But I mean, even if that is true, none of that activity is prohibited by the NPT.
And the dirty little secret of the NPT regime is that a number of Western countries and which signed the treaty of non-weapon states have done research that would be, you know, far more provocative than anything that the Iranians are being accused of.
OK, and we'll have to leave it there for this break.
We'll be right back, everybody, with Flint Leverett.
He's a professor of international affairs at Penn State.
He keeps the blog race for Iran dot com.
We'll be right back after this.
All right, Shell, welcome back to the show and anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm on the line with Flint Leverett.
He is a professor of international affairs at Penn State University.
He was formerly senior director for Middle East Affairs at the National Security Council and Middle East expert on the Secretary of State's policy planning staff, as well as senior analyst at the CIA.
He and his wife, Hillary Mann, Leverett, keep the great blog race for Iran.
It's race for Iran dot com.
And when we went out to the break, Flint, you were saying that even if all the accusations are true, that Iran is testing high explosives in order to make these implosion systems, et cetera, like in the leaks of the accusations to the major media recently.
None of this is banned by the nonproliferation treaty.
That's right.
Right.
What the NPT prohibits non-weapon states from doing is is building weapons.
And there is absolutely no evidence, no claim, not even by the IAEA, not even by U.S. intelligence, that Iran is actually building or, you know, there's a facility which they're trying actually physically to fabricate nuclear weapons.
If you take everything in the report at face value, what it would seem the Iranians may be trying to do is to master various skills that they would need to understand, need to be able to do.
If at some point their leadership took a decision that they wanted to at some point become a nuclear weapon state, withdraw from the treaty and become a weapon state, which is also their legal right.
But that is not illegal.
That is not banned by the treaty, no less than the Nobel Prize winning laureate Mohammed al-Baradai, who headed the IAEA before Mr.
Romano.
Baradai himself said that for a state to do this is, that was his word, kosher under the NPT.
Well, and that's what he said, you have to amount to it six months in advance.
So right now, that is not illegal.
It is not a causeus belli.
Well, now, so then let me ask you about these UN Security Council resolutions, because they say that Iran must cease enriching uranium altogether and they must answer all these questions and allow all these extra inspections to non-nuclear facilities, etc.
Answer all the accusations in the alleged studies, forgeries and all of that.
But I wonder, because the UN Security Council permanent membership, the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China, all of them are members of the nonproliferation treaty as nuclear weapon states.
And are they not bound to respect Iran's right to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes?
And so even under the UN Charter, do those resolutions have any legitimate authority when they're all clearly in contradiction of their own signatures?
You know, I mean, in the end, it kind of depends on what theory of international law you want to subscribe to.
I mean, there is a theory of international law, which basically, you know, the Security Council has the power under, you know, under Chapter 7, when it's dealing with what it says are threats to international peace and security.
It can basically do whatever it wants.
And, you know, it can do things.
I don't subscribe to that.
Yeah, but, you know, there is an argument that the Security Council has the power to basically violate other countries' sovereign rights in order to deal with threats to international peace and security.
There's obviously a countervailing argument, which, among others, the Iranians make, which is that for the Security Council to act in this way to try and deprive Iran of one of its sovereign rights, namely the right to enrich uranium, you know, that that makes these resolutions illegal and illegitimate.
You know, I don't consider myself qualified to settle the debate about international law.
Whatever the legal status is, I think those resolutions are, you know, extremely, you know, ill-conceived and are not going to help get to a diplomatic resolution of this problem.
The Iranians are not going to suspend.
They are not going to surrender their enrichment program.
And, you know, the issue should be to deal with them in a way that they feel accommodates their core interests so that their enrichment and other nuclear activities are monitored in a way that the proliferation risks associated with them and, you know, their proliferation risks associated with these kinds of activities anywhere they're carried out.
But so that those proliferation risks are controlled and Iran's interests are respected.
I don't think the Security Council resolutions help get us there.
All right.
Now, so as far as all the recent hype about Israel and or America going ahead and doing this bombing, it's starting to feel like 2007 again over here.
And I wonder how seriously you take this.
The Israelis have been bluffing for a long, long time about war with Iran.
Yeah, I think the biggest constraint on the Israelis, frankly, it's not really so much concern about the U.S. reaction or domestic political risks, although Netanyahu and others undoubtedly factor those kinds of things into their thinking.
I think the real constraint on Israel is Israel can't do a very good job at striking targets inside Iran.
You know, the number of planes they could get over targets in Iran operating at the absolute maximum of their range, you know, taxing Israel's aerial refueling capabilities to the to the max.
You know, they might be able to go after a couple of targets inside Iran and they'd only be able to do it once.
And I think that there's you know, there's no way a prudent strategic planner in Israel could think that Israel would accomplish, you know, very much by doing that.
And then, you know, you do run all of these enormous downside risks.
Well, I mean, implicit would be right that if they attack that America will be drawn into it, we'll finish the fight for them.
Well, I think that would be a huge, a huge gamble for the Israelis to take.
I mean, so far, the Obama administration, largely under pressure from from the uniform military here in the United States, has told the Israelis that, you know, we don't want to attack Iran and, you know, we really don't want them to do it, to do it either.
You know, the idea that by going after a couple of targets in Iran, Israel could have a high confidence that it would suck the United States into, as you put it, finish the job.
I think that that would be a really, really high risk play by Netanyahu.
Now, you know, it might still happen.
I can't categorically tell you it wouldn't happen.
I just think it would be an extraordinarily risky, you know, and I would say reckless move on Israel's part to do this on the assumption that, you know, you'll get the United States then to do several, several days of bombing of, you know, a couple of dozen, if not more targets all over Iran.
I think that would be I think that would be a mistake.
Well, am I correct that Natanz is buried under 85 feet of granite?
The enrichment facility?
Yes.
Parts of parts of key parts of the facility are underground.
And is it assumed in the military?
Do you think that it would take nuclear weapons to destroy it or not?
Um, I, you know, my understanding is that there there are weapons in the American inventory, which, you know, you you could do it without nuclear weapons.
I'm not the best of my knowledge.
Israel has not taken delivery of those systems from from the United States.
And so, you know, for the Israelis to do it, they might well have to contemplate using nuclear weapons in order to to take out Natanz.
Now, think about that.
Using nuclear weapons, you know, preventively using them first preventively in order to, you know, take out what you think might at some point pose a nuclear threat.
I mean, think about that.
Um, but but, you know, beyond that, I have been told that the Israeli Air Force has been they have been practicing maneuvers where they could take existing or ordinance that they already have.
And with really complicated maneuvers where you basically have to have bombs landing almost simultaneously on multiple bombs landing almost simultaneously on an airport on an aim point.
They think they might be able to take out something that is this far down and as hard as as Natanz is.
But that just underscores for me how, you know, how limited Israel is in its options to to do this on its own.
Well, if we have something going for us, I guess it's that Obama and Sarkozy.
I don't know about the British, but Obama and Sarkozy were picked up on an open microphone.
And at least the part that was revealed, it was made clear that neither of them can stand Benjamin Netanyahu, which I think is the best news I've heard in a long, long time.
Yeah, I think that I think a lot of foreign leaders and leaders who want to see themselves as friends of Israel have that kind of reaction to anybody who's a friend of Israel has got to detest Netanyahu.
Am I right?
Well, I mean, I obviously Israelis decide what's in their interest.
But yeah, from my perspective, I don't think Netanyahu, you know, has any kind of positive long term strategy for for Israel.
And under his stewardship, Israel's strategic position is just getting more and more challenged.
All right.
Well, listen, I got to tell you, I really appreciate your time on the show as always today.
And I might bug you to come back on the show later in the week after the report comes out to follow up.
That would be that would be good.
I'm happy to do that.
We'll actually, you know, at that point, we'll have the report in front and in front of us.
OK, great.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you very much, Scott.
Bye bye.
Everybody, that's Flint Leverett.
He is a professor of international affairs at Penn State University.
Take his class if you live near there.
And also former NSC CIA State Department.
And he and his wife, Hillary Mann Leverett, write the indispensable blog Race for Iran.
At Race for Iran dot com.
