All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our guest today is Peter Jenkins, former ambassador and permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency from the United Kingdom and to the UN in Vienna.
Let's see, according to his low blog piece, he's got a piece at the low blog.
It says here he's now a partner in ADRG ambassadors.
And here he is at the Geneva Center for Security Policy, GCSP.
CH.
And a great piece at the low blog, a little bit of optimism on the upcoming, I guess, starting tomorrow, nuclear talks between the P5 plus one.
That's the security council, basically a UN security council and the Iranians over their nuclear program.
And so I'm very happy to welcome you to the show.
Ambassador, how are you?
Good day.
Good day to you.
Good day to your listeners.
And thank you for inviting me to to appear on your show, as it were.
Great.
I appreciate you joining us today.
You picked up on the same thing that's been very important to me over the last couple of weeks, which is this piece.
Well, there's this one, for example, in The Washington Post by Joby Work.
Before that, there were a few by James Risen, three, I think, by James Risen, The New York Times, where it basically looks like the Obama administration, contrary to months and years past, is at the forefront of disseminating the actual truth, the CIA plot to tell us the truth, that the Iranians actually aren't making nuclear weapons.
And so there's no emergency, no need to have a war soon.
And that you say that this is an indication, you like to think anyway, that they're actually willing to deal and come with come to some sort of solution of dealing with the Iranian nuclear issue instead of having this perpetual crisis?
Well, well, yes, I mean, I was very struck by that piece on The Washington Post on Sunday, because it's only four months since the administration was either leading or at least allowing the American public to believe that the International Atomic Energy Agency had found evidence or proof that Iran was making nuclear weapons.
Of course, the IEA had found nothing of the kind.
But if you read newspapers or watch television in America, and even in Britain, in December and early January, you'd have thought that this was what Mr. Tennant, I think, once called a slam dunk.
Now, suddenly, well, yes, really, really suddenly, the administration has changed its tune completely.
And they are, as you say, telling us what the Director of National Intelligence has been saying ever since the end of 2007, which is that there's no reason to think that the Iranians have taken a decision to produce nuclear weapons, and that any such decision is not in any way inevitable.
And to answer the second part of your question, I do think that this is encouraging, I do think this is positive, because it implies that they are ready to accept that Iran can have enrichment plants and can enrich uranium, which is fully consistent with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The only reason why the West has been trying to stop Iran having enrichment plants for the last 10 years, is because we feared those enrichment plants would be used to produce highly enriched uranium, which is, as you know, what you need for nuclear weapons.
But if the Iranians aren't intent on making nuclear weapons, why on earth would they use their enrichment plants to produce highly enriched uranium?
Well, now, is that actually a real fear when you're meeting with other people at the IAEA, with the various intelligence agencies, they really think, does anybody really think that the Iranians are about to, you know, break out and turn the screws they need to turn to try to enrich all their uranium up to weapons grade and make bombs, or they all kind of know that this is a big bluff all along anyway?
Well, no, when the news first broke, it's been 10 years now since an Iranian terrorist group, the MEK, told the world that the Iranians were building a secret underground plant that could produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.
And that's what got that aroused everyone's concern.
Because it turned out to be true that yes, indeed, this plant was being was being built.
It then turned out that actually, the Iranians had every intention of declaring that plant.
The plant hadn't started operation far from it.
And once it was ready for operation, they declared it to the IAEA.
And the inspectors have been able to visit it ever since.
So that plant in itself wasn't wasn't the threat.
But unfortunately, for the Iranians, anyway, the IAEA subsequently discovered that the Iranians had been hiding things from them and from the rest of the world.
They'd imported some, some nuclear material from China in 1991.
And they hadn't declared it.
And then they'd used it for some initial research into into making centrifuges.
And they hadn't declared that.
And they'd also been doing some laser enrichment research, and they hadn't declared that.
So when when all of those things were added up, it did look rather worrying.
It did look as though these activities have been hidden, because they were the preliminaries to a nuclear weapons program.
But time has passed.
That was 10 years ago.
And as time has passed, it's obviously become apparent to the to your intelligence community that actually, we overestimated the significance of what had taken place.
Or maybe quite possibly, the Iranians changed their mind in 2003.
When all of this came to light, maybe they suddenly realized that it was much too risky.
And it would be much too costly for them to make nuclear weapons.
They'd have the whole world descending on them like a ton of bricks, as we say in Britain.
I don't know if you have that expression in America.
So anyway, they didn't want the world descending on them like a ton of bricks.
So maybe they changed their mind and decided they'd simply settle for having enrichment plants, so that if ever in future, they are threatened, then they could leave, they could withdraw from the NPT.
That's allowed under the NPT if you're threatened.
And they could use those enrichment plants then to make weapons to defend themselves.
All right.
Now, you talked about how they seem to be saying that they would recognize the right of, this was David Ignatius wrote in his piece in the Washington Post as well, that Obama had passed word through the Turkish Prime Minister to the Iranians that we would accept, or the administration would accept, uranium enrichment.
Sort of implying, I don't think they ever say it in this many words in the media.
They seem to be basically saying under the additional protocol to the safeguards agreement conditions.
In other words, very intrusive inspections, even though the IAEA continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material, they want to, I guess, extra super verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material, something like that.
But it seems like that's the same deal that they were actually trying to accomplish back in 2009 when there was a possibility of a fuel swap and you give up your 20% and we'll give you some fuel rods for your medical isotope reactor and all that kind of thing.
But now the conditions seem to be much more harsh and the administration, at least according to David Sanger at the New York Times, who's not always very reliable, the conditions are they have to completely give up their Fordo facility and they have to give up all of their 20% uranium and that's a pretty, you know, much more stark operating position.
Even if it does implicitly recognize the right to enrich up to 3.6%, it seems like both of those are absolutely, you know, completely off the table from the Iranian point of view as being negotiable.
So I wonder if that's sabotage or you think that's just so they kind of look tough at first but they're really willing to budge on those issues?
Well, let me just say first that back in 2009, that fuel swap deal, that was only going to be a preliminary to a real negotiation about the future of the uranium program and whether Iran should or should not be allowed to enrich and if it was going to be allowed to enrich, what kind of IEA supervision and monitoring should apply to the program.
So it wasn't that the conditions were much softer in 2009, it was simply that the aim at that point was to agree an initial confidence-building measure with a view to building trust to then making the negotiation easier, but that didn't work.
So I think we're still in a comparable position to 2009, but this time instead of trying to go for an initial confidence-building proposal, it looks as though instead your administration is probably going to move, if it can, into a proper negotiation without any preliminaries and obviously this negotiation won't just take place in Istanbul on Saturday.
I imagine that Istanbul will simply be used to set up some kind of negotiating process.
If that process is set up, then it does indeed seem as though the American opening position is going to be pretty tough, pretty stiff.
I don't see a hope in hell that the Iranians will agree to close their second enrichment plant at Fordow and still less their first enrichment plant at Natanz.
They'll want to hang on to both of those, but you know there are ways around that.
If I were there and if I were asked my opinion, I would say well hold on, oh Americans, why don't you settle for a permanent on-site presence by the IAEA inspectors at the Fordow plant?
Perhaps that's something the Iranians can accept and wouldn't it give you Americans and your Israeli allies the reassurances you're looking for that this Fordow plant, which the Israelis don't like because it can't be attacked from the air, won't it give you the assurances that the plant is not being used to make highly enriched uranium?
So what I'm trying to say is you always have to distinguish between opening positions which are often unrealistic and what parties to a negotiation are prepared to settle for once they get down to serious business.
Right, well you know I was talking with the journalist Gareth Porter about this yesterday and he was saying that the Europeans, he thinks they didn't really mean to, but back in 2005 and maybe this was you, I'm not sure, made such demands that the Iranians said okay we're no longer buying that you're operating in good faith.
So that was when they stopped abiding by the additional protocol and that you know part of the negotiations with the E3 there broke down and that the Europeans weren't really trying to do that.
They just staked out such a tough opening position for this certain round of talks that it went too far.
So we have you know those kinds of you know accidental sort of diplomatic things maybe you can address that but then also Ray McGovern, the former CIA analyst pointed out on the show.
Let me just address the Gareth point because it's difficult for me to address more than one point at a time.
Yeah I'm sorry about that.
I know Gareth and respect him and he's right essentially.
The only thing I'd say to slightly correct what you said is that it wasn't the European opening position, it was if you like the position to which we stuck right through the negotiating process.
In other words instead of modifying our objectives and saying okay it's clear to us that you Iranian guys are just not prepared to give up your enrichment program entirely so we'll settle for a compromise.
We just kept on saying no no you must give up enrichment entirely and that's when they finally lost patience and decided they were wasting their time and as Gareth said at that point they walked away from the negotiation and ceased applying the additional protocol.
All right well so I guess we let's try to hope that...
So the lesson there for the Americans is don't insist on the closure of Fordow come what may because if you do then then the negotiation will end in failure.
Right and then okay I'm sorry because the second thing was going to be sort of along those lines about you know even if the Americans are trying to go in here and their Western allies trying to go in here really with an eye toward making a deal that they can make a mistake like the one we just talked about or you have these third factors and unforeseen things like what happened back in 2009 when Jandala started doing a bunch of suicide attacks and killing Iranian military commanders and that you know messed up all the politics inside Iran and made it much harder for them to you know meet on some kind of halfway point on the fuel rod swap deal and all that and that was part of what made it fall apart as Ray McGovern the former CIA analyst was saying on the show last week.
Ah that's actually new to me and that's very interesting.
Yeah I have the BBC here actually Iranian commanders assassinated from October 18th 2009 and in fact this had somehow did not register with me either I had thought about you know the the sort of sabotage where Obama accused him of hiding the comm facility four days after they had declared it which was a big sham which he got away with but I had completely missed that Jandala was blowing things up in Iran that October.
That's fascinating isn't it because that that must have played into the the domestic infighting and disagreements about whether or not to accept the fuel swap proposal.
I wonder who put Jandala up to that?
Was Jandala supposed to be supported by is it Israel?
That's what they said latest good reporting on this out of foreign policy dot-com Perry I believe is the author's name is that yes the Israelis posing as CIA recruited Jandala to do this stuff back then.
Right right so there you have illustrated the greatest threat to the process that may get underway in Istanbul and I'm sorry to say it's called Israel.
The Israelis really do not want to see this issue go away they don't want to see peace between the US and Iran it suits they've been trying ever since 1992 to convince you Americans that Iran is a terrifying threat to your interest in the Middle East because then you will value your Israeli friends as allies.
But now so from from your position I guess I'll take a minute to reintroduce you to the audience for people just tuning in it's Peter Jenkins he's the former British ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency and he's got this great piece at the low blog Iran nuclear talks offer opportunity if the US wants it and to get to the point again here basically what you're saying is there's every reason to think excluding you know Israel using Jandala to do some suicide bombs or some kind of wild card or excluding the the diplomats making a miscalculation or whatever that there's every reason to think that America the European countries maybe Israel notwithstanding could make a deal with the Iranians that we could just put this issue to rest we'll have very intrusive inspections in in swap for a security guarantee that we won't attack yet everybody shake hands and we're done right it's it's not unimaginable that this could be worked out within a week well I think I know I think it would take a lot longer than a week the British experience of negotiating with the Iranians after they nationalized our oil company in those days it was called the Anglo-Iranian oil company now it's called BP but went up after they'd nationalized it and then we'd helped the CIA to overthrow their Prime Minister Mossadegh that that after that we were able to get into a negotiation with the Iranians about compensation for our oil company and those negotiations lasted a good six months so you know negotiating with Iranians is never easy and I don't say that disrespectfully on the contrary I think it's a sign of just how intelligent and tenacious they can be having said that you know I wouldn't find it difficult to sit down with some of my fellow experts put politics to one side and come up with a negotiated outcome very quickly so so the you know the complexities and the technicalities can be used to spin things out but otherwise what you say is is right it's perfectly feasible to conceive of a way of solving this issue peacefully that will allow the world to have confidence that Iran is not making nuclear weapons all right now to rewind a couple of topics and get back to these demands for just a second and this question is pretty far inside baseball but I was wondering if you know you have any insight to the background to how the Americans came up with their position that they're going to insist on the closing of Fordo and and the giving up of all 20% enriched uranium-235 which was after all a position staked out by the Israelis a few days before I think so well I'm glad you mentioned that because I don't want your business to think that I have it in for the Israelis but that was going to be how I was going to answer your question by saying that those conditions first appeared as far as I'm aware in a statement made by either Prime Minister Netanyahu or maybe Defense Minister Barack so it seems to me that those are really the Israeli conditions and and they are almost certainly designed to to sabotage the process and ensure that there isn't an outcome I mean as I said to you earlier if the Americans stick to those opening demands then this this this opportunity will be lost but my hope is that whilst the Americans have adopted those Israeli demands as their opening bid they will actually be ready in the fullness of time and as part of a negotiation to to settle for something that is a little less onerous on the Iranians but still provides the rest of us with adequate guarantees yeah I guess I just wondered whether you had any you know additional insight other than just seeing in the media that that was the position staked out by a who Barack for example no I'm you know I don't I don't work in government anymore so I'm afraid I'm sorry I can't offer you more but I can't all right well that's all right just a double check and now can I ask you a little bit of history here about the alleged studies documents it's a another group of documents that came from the MEK terrorist cult there or whatever you call them by way of the Israelis obviously and Gareth Porter the journalist we talked about before he says that there's all kinds of different indications that the alleged studies documents the so-called smoking laptop is nothing but a collection of Israeli forgeries and is not to be taken seriously at all and yet as far as I'm aware the alleged studies are the only cause that any intelligence agency has ever had to say that the Iranians really had a nuclear what could be called a nuclear weapons program at all before 2003 and I just wonder whether you know over at the IAEA do people really believe in these alleged studies documents or do you know where they came from well the people at the IAEA may or may not believe in the alleged studies documents I I I don't know what they think about them but what they tell me is that they have had from other sources other information that leads them in the same direction as the laptop information in other words they claim to have independent grounds to think that Iran did conduct some kinds of research into weaponization prior to 2003 before your listeners start getting alarmed about that let me emphasize that this is sort of basic research it's it's how would you design a warhead if you wanted to design a warhead how would you handle the detonation to make sure that all your charges go off at precisely the same nanosecond how would you configure the core of the warhead and if you wanted to fit it into the nose of a missile how would you do that it's all those sort of things that you can do on on computers and drawing boards and so on it's a it's a long long way from the actual putting together of a nuclear device so sorry about that aside but I wanted to make that clear what I'm really trying to say is that I have a lot of respect for the people who work for the IAEA I know them well I consider them to be honest people people of integrity and so if they tell me that they have grounds to take seriously some some if not all of these allegations then that that that makes me think that it's not entirely smoke and mirrors that there really must there really probably is something to it and if you think about it it's not implausible that the Iranian military would have wanted to carry out that kind of research work probably probably when the Iranian political leaders decided to re-embark on the nuclear program having an issue having closed it down when they took over from the shah in 79 80 initially they were deadly opposed to a nuclear program because it was something they associated with the shah and whatever was good for the shah was bad for them but they they changed their minds during the war with Saddam Hussein during that war in the 80s and and and so it would have made sense for them to entrust the program initially to the military and if you ask a military to conduct a nuclear program well they're obviously going to start thinking in terms of how can they use nuclear technology to make nuclear weapons so I think there probably was prior to 2003 some research conducted by the Iranian military into them into the building of bombs now I'm about a year ago Seymour Hirsch wrote article for the New Yorker called Iran and the bomb where he said that the American intelligence communities estimation of that stoppage I guess back in 2003 a high-confidence judgment as they call it that was based on the theory that the American invasion of Iraq basically not that it scared them from you know wanting to cross us so much as it got rid of their number one enemy Saddam Hussein and that when they were ever looking at an atom bomb they were looking at being able to deter Saddam Hussein from invading them again with or without American support this time I guess and and so once America got rid of their worst enemy for them thanks to Ahmed Chalabi whose headquarters was in Tehran coincidentally then they said well we don't need an atom bomb anymore because it's not like we're gonna be able to build up so many atom bombs that we could challenge Israel or America who have hundreds and thousands respectively so now instead we'll take the position that hey our hands are up don't shoot let your inspectors in you can continue to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material from here till the cows come home because we're not diverting it is that basically your understanding the situation would you say that yeah yeah I think they give you a very short answer I think that's a very plausible explanation that made maybe there one shouldn't entirely discount the fact that they realized that the eyes of the world were upon them and therefore if they continued to do research into into a nuclear weapon there was a strong possibility that this would come to light and and that the consequences would be pretty painful and pretty costly for them so I think there were probably two reasons as you say they no longer had any kind of pressing need for a weapon and and equally they they realized that the chances of detection were higher than perhaps they'd originally imagined they would be and now you mentioned at the beginning of the interview that the recent IAEA report was hyped up as accusing them of having the secret nuclear weapons program all these things when the report actually didn't say that on the other hand the report itself seemed to be pretty overblown depending on who you talk to there was a guy named I believe Robert Kelly from the IAEA was talking to the Christian Science Monitor about how the whole IAEA report itself was hyperbole before the newspapers and TV channels even got to the thing and so I was wondering I guess basically if you could comment on that and maybe as part of your answer could you address the directorship of Yukiya Amano who's replaced Mohammed ElBaradei and you know he's mentioned in the Wikileaks is saying that hey I'm pretty much loyal to you guys agenda whatever it is before putting out this report and I wonder if you could maybe compare and contrast the professionalism of the last IAEA director in the current one?
Right I'm tempted to plead one of your amendments but no all right I'll try and I'll try and answer that I think Mohammed ElBaradei's overriding objective was to try and avoid this issue generating another war in the Middle East he was really deeply distressed by the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the last thing he wanted to do as director-general of the IAEA was provide grounds for an attack on Iran I'm not sure that director-general Amano has such strong feelings on that score if you like I think he's probably more more neutral in that sense that he doesn't regard it as his business to try and avert a conflict and if the conflict occurs well so be it I suspect it's kind of his his attitude but having said that I don't think he deliberately set out to produce a report that exaggerated the Iranian nuclear threat I don't think so as I was saying just a few minutes ago his inspectors do believe that they have independent grounds for saying that there was research into weaponization but prior to 2003 and and and that's essentially what what the report is saying that there was this research prior to 2003 and that there might may have been isolated instances of research since 2003 note the word may it's not there have been but there may have been and so the IEA is not saying they're certain of that they're just saying it's a it's a possibility right so I think I think the wording of that report was pretty careful but a lot of that carefulness got got omitted once the the media were let loose on it right well and you know but then again some of the criticism of it was very harsh and specific such as this scientist Danny Lenko was simply a nano diamonds specialist and really did not have expertise in setting off nuclear weapons they just went with what David Albright told them I guess or something what whoever told him that and turned out that that kind of thing just didn't hold up that was one of the things that Robert Kelly who I guess you must know him was challenging in the Christian science model yeah I mean that's pretty good deal that that's very that's very possible I can't remember myself exactly what the report said about Danny Lenko but if if they did claim that he was a nuclear weapons expert it certainly seems to me that that was a mistake but what I suppose I'm saying is that we're not entitled to jump to the conclusion that it was a deliberate mistake right after all we all make mistakes from time to time sure fair enough yep all right well listen I've already kept you over time I thank you so much for your time on the show today Peter it's been great great thanks for inviting me I really good luck all right everybody that is Peter Jenkins from the Geneva Center for Security Policy and he's got this excellent piece at the low blog Iran nuclear talks offer opportunity if the US wants it
