Why Iran’s nuclear ambitions put peace in doubt

0:02Sky News, the full story first.

0:11The war was supposed to end Iran's nuclear ambitions, but a peace deal currently on the table might do nothing of the sort. This is why. Everyone wants the Iran war to end as soon as possible, not least the US president. But do you remember why Donald Trump declared war in the first place? They will not have a nuclear weapon. You cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. and that supersedes everything else. They will not only not have, they will not purchase, develop in any way, shape or form a nuclear weapon. Yet it was pretty clear that Iran was never to have nukes, which came as something of a surprise to those who remembered the president's assessment of strikes on Iran the year before the war actually started.

0:53Tonight I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. Well, clearly Iran's nuclear program wasn't entirely obliterated. But there is a peace deal now under discussion. One Donald Trump says will bring peace and security to the whole region. So you'd have to assume stymieing Iran's nuclear ambitions would be central to it. Dominic Waghorn, Iskai's International Affairs Editor. Dom, look, plenty to talk about, not least whether or not this actually might turn out to be a good deal or a bad one.

1:36But what do we actually know about it specifically around Iran's capability or otherwise to develop nuclear weapons? Well, I think that's an open question, Neil. I mean, what we have at the moment is a memorandum of understanding that's been negotiated, brokered by the Pakistanis. And what they say is this is effectively extending the ceasefire for 60 days. And in that period, the Pakistanis say all the wars, so in Lebanon as well as in Iran and in the Gulf, come to an end. So a cessation of hostilities. The Israelis are not so sure about that from what they're saying publicly, but that's certainly what the mediators are saying.

2:11The Strait of Hormuz opened up crucially, so that threat to the global economy through a global energy crisis hopefully has been averted, though a lot of damage has been done. But the other big issues, particularly the nuclear issue, will now be discussed over those 60 days. And what I think is an open question really is, can you achieve anything in terms of wrangling with that very thorny issue of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program in 60 days, given that it took, well, five years of negotiating and 18 months of really intense negotiating to get to the 2015 nuclear deal that Barack Obama negotiated with his allies and with Iran?

2:48or is this now going to sort of kick that issue into the long grass? But it gives Donald Trump an off-ramp and it gives everyone grounds to breathe a massive sigh of relief. But the most thorny issues at the heart of this conflict are not resolved at all, really, by this MOU. So just to be absolutely clear, you and I are chatting Monday lunchtime. The thornier issues, particularly around nuclear, they are in essence unresolved. I mean, the wheels could still come off this thing or the rudder could come off the oil tanker. Yes, I think that's the concern. And I think the concern for Israel in particular and anyone who's felt threatened by Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program, you know, we have to stress the Iranians always have said they don't want a nuclear weapon.

3:28And the previous Ayatollah, who was killed by the Israelis on day one of this war, issued a fact where saying that Iran couldn't develop a nuclear weapon. But they've always sort of gone through the motions heading towards a nuclear weapon through enriching uranium. So Israel and other countries that feel threatened are very worried, I think. And I think they're most worried about the American president's commitment to seeing this through. Is Donald Trump just going to feel like the whole thing's over? It was a massive, bad mistake and miscalculation on his part. He probably thinks, and therefore it's over.

3:57And is there going to be any sort of impetus, any sort of pressure on the Iranians to negotiate over this tricky nuclear issue? All of that is sort of unresolved. The fact is, we couldn't have got this far had the nuclear issue been at the centre of these negotiations. because the Iranians have insisted all the way through that that is an issue to be discussed at a later date. Don, let us just assume, for the time being at least, that what is in the detail that we have had out is what is ultimately going to be agreed at the end of that kind of two-month negotiating process. Let's start with enrichment.

4:29Just to explain, what exactly is enrichment? We keep hearing about it in regards to Iran. Are we talking about, when we talk about enrichment, something similar to oil? You take crude and you develop it. You pass it through a process so that it becomes, I don't know, we can stick it in our cars or we can put it in our tractors or we could use it for different purposes. It's basically taking the kind of the raw product and improving it, making it better, making it even stronger. Yeah, basically, if you take crude oil out of the ground, it's not particularly explosive. You're not going to be able to fly planes with it, stick it in a car's engine and, you know, and end up with an internal combustion engine.

5:05And the same with uranium. You get uranium ore out of the ground. It's not going to produce a nuclear weapon. There's a small amount of it, which is fissile. And fissile just means that if you put it through a certain process where you fire a neutron at its nucleus, the nucleus splits and then splits other nuclei and you end up with a chain reaction. But it's a small amount of the ore is fissile. So what you need to do, the same as you say when you refine oil, is you've got to increase the amount of fissile material within the uranium and then end up with something that can be used in a controlled way to either power nuclear power stations or produce a warhead.

5:41And that process is basically sticking the uranium ore in sort of a more liquid state into a centrifuge and spinning it. I'm not an expert on exactly how that ends up, but you're right. It's exactly the same process. You take crude oil, you refine it, it becomes useful because it's more explosive, exactly the same with uranium. I mean, I always believed that Donald Trump's position was that Iran should not be enriching uranium. So, I mean, on the basis of this MOU, this memorandum of understanding, and granting that we've got months of negotiation, weeks of negotiating to go before we see the final deal.

6:14I mean, as things stand, it is perfectly possible that Iran could be enriching uranium after this deal is done. Well, if you look at the negotiations that got us this far and they've sort of stopped and started, but what we know is there's been a bit of bartering over, not whether they can enrich, but how long the moratorium on enrichment lasts. So the Americans wanted that to be 20 years. So the Iranians could not enrich uranium or possibly could enrich at very small levels for 20 years. The Iranians said no, five years. And so there was some haggling over that. And the only sort of face to face talks we've had in Pakistan, I was there.

6:51There was clearly haggling going over that. And that was a sign of progress because they were getting down to the nitty gritty. But that's at the heart of it. So we would expect those kind of that kind of diplomacy to be picked up on now. and we might end up with a kind of moratorium. Now, the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that Barack Obama and all his allies negotiated with the Iranians, that had a 15-year moratorium, a little bit of enrichment allowed, but all the highly enriched uranium, 98 % of it, was exported out of Iran and taken to Russia. This, it's not a deal, it's just a kind of agreement to carry on talking and not to carry on attacking each other.

7:29This doesn't go that far, but it does, the Americans are insisting, the Iranians will have to come up with answers as to what they've done with this highly enriched uranium. They would like to see it exported, but that's still up for negotiation, clearly. There's a big problem. We don't know where it is. We've never known entirely how much they have, and we don't know how much they may well have enriched in the interim. I think the only honest answer is you have to sort of get to a point where both sides trust each other and that the Iranians say they'll do something and the other side believes they'll do it.

7:58And, of course, it has to be verified by the IAEA, the kind of nuclear watchdogs. But yes, I mean, we go back to 2015. The Iranians agree to hand over the highly enriched uranium that they have enriched to levels that are way beyond civilian applications. They agree to hand that over to the Russians, nearly all of it. Then the Americans pull out of the JCPOA. So they go back to enriching and they use that enriching as a kind of leverage to try and get things back from the international community. They end up with 60 % enriched uranium. That's not enough to build a bomb, but it is enough to then break out from that to the 90 % you need to build a bomb in fairly short order.

8:36That is thought to have been in the sort of depths of Fordow Mountain, this fortified mountain that the Iranians, because they knew attacks could be coming, buried their nuclear program as deep as they could under rock and mountains. And then that was blown up, that mountain, by massive ordnance penetrator bombs that the Americans unleashed, those bombs, back last year. And Donald Trump, after that, said the rising nuclear program had been obliterated. But, you know, that didn't answer what had happened to the highly enriched uranium. Now, he says it's dust. It's most likely to be in canisters because it's potentially dangerous.

9:12It's encased in canisters. It's 400 kilos. So to give you an idea, you could fit it all into the back of one pickup truck. So if the Iranians have been able to get into the bottom of Fordow Mountain, and there's certainly been signs of them excavating there, we've no idea quite how buried it was. They've been able to get it out. Then it's needled in a haystack territory. When I've been to Iran, you know, it's a huge country. It's one pickup truck worth of Hali-Marche uranium. So that could effectively be anywhere. So ultimately, you have to get to the point where you say to the Iranians, honestly, where is it?

9:42Hand it over. They're only going to do that if it's in their interest to do so. And currently, of course, it's a massive bargaining chip as part of these negotiations that are now going to unfold. Dom, it sounds awfully like you are suggesting that if a country has nuclear ambitions, you can't simply bomb them away. Well, I suppose if a country started from scratch and it doesn't have much nuclear, you know how you can control it getting it and you can sort of bomb universities where nuclear science is being studied, you can bomb any fledgling facilities. But Iran's very advanced. So if they have that now and the technology, it's very hard to stop that.

10:19The other problem with Iran is it is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That gives it certain commitments, but also gives it certain rights to be able to enrich uranium for civilian purposes. And that's something that they have absolutely insisted on. And it's a matter of pride and respect. And they're not going to give that up easily because they believe that that's their right as a modern nation that's able to do whatever it wants to do on the world stage. So that's another problem as well. So I think, yes, you could probably restrict it in less advanced nations, but Iran is well beyond that.

10:48So you do need a level of commitment and will on the size of the Iranians not to go back to building the bomb. They've always said they don't want to build a nuclear weapon. That has allowed Donald Trump and his cabinet to say, great, this deal has a commitment from the Iranians. They're not going to build a nuclear weapon. But everyone else is saying, yeah, but they've always said that. And we haven't believed them. And what you need is binding commitments and restrictions that are verifiable to make sure they don't go back on their word. And so far, it's hard to see how we're going to get that.

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12:00What was Donald Trump's stated purpose when it came to the Iran war? Was it that Iran should not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon? Was it that Iran shouldn't be allowed to enrich uranium? Was it that their entire nuclear ambitions should be wiped off the face of the planet? I mean, what was it? It could be summed up in, you know, Trumpian language, they're lunatics, they're madmen, they cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. And that's one reason he fought the war, but I think Aaron David Miller, the American Alice, said on a podcast we did together that Trump has been all over the parking lot on this.

12:32You know, he's talked about it being about saving the Iranian people, saying help is on its way. He's talked about it ending their ballistics programme. He's talked about it, you know, defending Israel. Israel, he's talked about it, reducing their ability to export terror around the region through its propcies. He's talked about the nuclear issue, of course, as well. But yeah, when it comes to that ambition of his to make it impossible for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, he will be judged on that. And it's hard to see how he won't end up falling short of that. And I think also other people will say, well, it's not just that.

13:03You said the original deal in 2015 was a horrible deal, one of the worst deals ever made by any president. You pulled us out of that. As a result, the Iranians went back to enriching uranium, putting things into a more dangerous situation. Then you started a war where the Iranians found they had an ability to control the Strait of Hormuz that was up to that point theoretical, is now very much practical, which has given them control of 20 % of the world's oil, quite apart from everything else. The Iranians are strategically more powerful. They have more highly enriched uranium, and they're in less of a mood to commit to never building a nuclear weapon.

13:39So I think defenders of the Obama deal will be in a pretty good position to say what we've ended up with from Donald Trump pulling out of that deal and then going to war has actually put America and Israel and arguably the world in a much more difficult and dangerous place. Sure, but the Obama deal wasn't exactly perfect, was it? I mean, one thing the White House does love to bang on about is that it did involve the transfer of large sums of money towards the Islamic Republic of Iran. Yeah, and it's very hard to see how this memorandum of understanding doesn't do exactly the same. It's going to be dressed up in different ways, but the Iranians, obviously, they want sanctions lifted.

14:13They want to see an ability to impose some kind of toll on the Strait of Hormuz. It's going to be dressed up in different ways, but they are almost certainly going to benefit from this deal financially to the tune of billions of dollars. And I think we're going to inevitably see the Americans and possibly Gulf states as well giving a substantial amount of money to the Iranians as a result of this deal. exactly how Barack Obama is accused by him of doing so back in 2015. The one country we've not really mentioned a lot during our conversation today, Dom, is the country that is most fearful of a nuclear strike by a nuclear-capable Iran, and that is Israel.

14:52I mean, where has Benjamin Netanyahu in all this? I think he's in an unhappy place. And from what we know from reports, well, I think well-sourced reports from good White House reporters, He has had at least two pretty combustible conversations with the US president who's said he's mad in a number of more colourful ways because Benjamin Netanyahu is doing what you'd expect him to do, which is try and, certainly on the face of it, sabotage diplomatic progress by attacking Beirut. Now, obviously, the Israelis will say that was in self-defence. And the Iranians are certainly guilty here of allowing or encouraging Hezbollah, their allies in Lebanon, to attack Israel first in that latest round.

15:32That's Iran sort of pushing its luck there, testing the new balance of deterrence between Iran, Hezbollah and Israel. You'd expect Israel to hit back. It is Benjamin Netanyahu's nightmare, really, to see us ending up in a situation where the nuclear issue is kicked into the long grass. You know, we could go for 60 days and see no meaningful progress on the nuclear issue. As I said, it took five years to reach the deal back in that ended up in a deal in 2015. I think the way we're looking at Donald Trump, he's going to want to pretend this war never happened. He's going to probably allow a lot of diplomats and experts to negotiate with the Iranians and end up with some kind of compromise over the nuclear issue.

16:12But if you look at it from the Iranians' point of view, their fundamental imperative here is making sure this never happens again. To do that, they will obviously try and keep some kind of control, even theoretically, of the Strait of Hormuz, but also they're going to want to keep those nuclear bargaining chips as much as they can and give away as few of them as possible. I think that is for the Israelis a nightmare. So from what they're saying at the moment, Israel Katz, the Israeli defence minister, is saying that if they get attacked, they're going to hit back. Ben Gavir, the national security minister in Jerusalem, has said this deal doesn't apply to Israel.

16:43but ultimately what Donald Trump says will have to go for Benjamin Netanyahu and that I think leaves the north of Israel exposed still to the threat of his Bola attacks and it leaves his country still exposed to the existential risk potentially of Iran eventually acquiring a nuclear weapon. But even if you and I agree that Donald Trump is very clearly looking for an off-ramp do you have any confidence at the end of the 60 days we're going to have anything? Anything at all? Well I'm reminded of the scene in The Apprentice, the feature film about Donald Trump's youth not the series that he presented, but in The Apprentice is a very telling scene when he basically reiterates the principles that his sort of mentor, the New York lawyer Roy Cohn, taught him.

17:24And one of them is never admit defeat, always declare victory. The truth is what you claim it to be and always attack, attack, attack. Now, that last principle, attack, attack, attack, has not worked with the Iranians. It's got him into a deeper and deeper hole. And therefore, he falls back on that principle, never admit defeat. I mean, I think any analyst will tell you that the Americans have been defeated strategically, so far at least. That's straight and foremost is a card the Iranians can't play forever. Eventually, the Gulf states and other states will find ways to bypass it. But for now, the Iranians have got the upper hand, they're using the upper hand in negotiations, and they have the Americans where they want them.

18:03And so yeah, we have to treat whatever Trump says with a huge bucket of salt. And he will get what he can out to this but what he wants most of all is for this to be over because he knows the clock is ticking towards the midterms he knows the whole thing has been a strategic miscalculation and a massive error that parts of his administration warned him against he will dress it up i think as a win but i don't think he's going to fool many more people than those within his sort of base and the big question is can he do enough to kind of get beyond this in time for the midterms because of the impact on the cost of living.

18:36And I think the humiliation this seems to have imposed on his government. Dom, as always, thanks very much. And that's your lot for today. But if you're looking for something else to listen to, why not give my colleague Ed Conway's new podcast, Stuff Matters, a bit of a try. The details are in the show's notes. This is why it's back tomorrow.

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