Iran's enrichment to 60% was not a dash for the bomb but a reaction to Israeli sabotage and a bargaining chip meant to pressure the US back into the JCPOA.

(00:00:00) The following is a debate between Scott Horton and Mark Dubowitz on the topic of Iran and Israel. (00:00:07) Scott Horton is author and editorial director of Anti-War.com, host of the Scott Horton Show, and for the past three decades, a staunch critic of US foreign policy and military interventionism. (00:00:20) Mark Dubowitz is a chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, host of the Iran Breakdown Podcast, (00:00:28) And he has been a leading expert on Iran and its nuclear program for over 20 years. (00:00:37) And now a quick few second mention of a sponsor. (00:00:40) Check them out in the description or at lexfreeman.com slash sponsors. (00:00:45) It's the best way to support this podcast. (00:00:47) We got Hampton for a private, highly vetted community for founders and CEOs. (00:00:54) Notion for team collaboration and note-taking, Shopify for selling stuff online, Oracle for cloud computing, and Element for your health. 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(00:07:07) Get a free 8 count sample pack for free with any purchase. (00:07:12) Try it at drinkelement.com slash Lex. (00:07:17) This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. (00:07:19) To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description or at lexfriedman.com slash sponsors. (00:07:24) And consider subscribing, commenting, and sharing the podcast with folks who might find it interesting. (00:07:31) I promise to work extremely hard to always bring you nuanced, long-form conversations with a wide variety of interesting people from all walks of life. (00:07:41) And now, dear friends, here's Scott Horton and Mark Dubowitz. (00:08:03) Gentlemen, all right, it's great to have you here. (00:08:06) Let's try to have a nuanced discussion slash debate and maybe even steel man opposing perspectives as much as possible. (00:08:14) All right, as it stands now, there's a barely stable ceasefire between Iran and Israel. (00:08:20) Let's maybe rewind a little bit. (00:08:24) Can we first lay out the context for this Iran-Israel war and try to describe the key events that happened over the past two weeks, maybe even a bit of the deep roots of the conflict? (00:08:35) Sure. (00:08:36) First of all, thanks so much for having me on. (00:08:37) Great to be on with Scott. (00:08:38) I know he and I don't agree on a lot, but I certainly admire the passion and the dedication to (00:08:44) stopping wars. (00:08:45) So that's something we want to talk about. (00:08:48) So let's talk about how we got to this war. (00:08:50) So President Trump comes into office and immediately lays out that his Iran strategy is maximum pressure on the regime, and he will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. (00:09:01) And he makes that clear. (00:09:03) consistently, I think, made it very clear during his first term, made it clear throughout his career. (00:09:08) And thus beguns this process with the Iranians, which has kind of multiple tracks, but the one that Trump sees most interested in at the time is the diplomatic track. (00:09:19) And he makes it very clear from the beginning in a sort of Oval Office remark. (00:09:22) He says the Iranians can either blow up their nuclear program under US supervision or someone's going to blow it up for them. (00:09:30) And even though (00:09:32) At the time, we think Netanyahu is really trying to push the president into a military campaign. (00:09:37) Well, I'm sure we'll talk about that throughout the podcast. (00:09:40) The president authorizes his lead negotiator and close friend, Steve Witkoff, to begin outreach to the Iranians. (00:09:47) And that's begun the Oman round. (00:09:50) And it's Oman round because it's taking place in Oman with mediation efforts by the Omanis. (00:09:55) There are five rounds of negotiations with the Iranians. (00:09:59) And through the course of those negotiations, the US finally puts on the table an offer for Iran. (00:10:06) We'll talk about the details of that. (00:10:08) The Iranians reject that offer. (00:10:10) And we're now into the 6th round, which is supposed to take place on a Sunday. (00:10:16) On the Thursday before the Sunday, the Israelis strike. (00:10:20) And they go after, in a rather devastating campaign over a matter of now 12 days, (00:10:27) They go over and go after Iran's nuclear program, the key nuclear sites, going after weapons scientists who are responsible for building Iran's nuclear weapons program, and also go after top IRGCs, Islamic Revolutionary Guard commanders, as well as top military commanders. (00:10:46) And yet there's still this one site that is the most fortified site. (00:10:50) It's called Fordow. (00:10:52) It's an enrichment facility. (00:10:53) It's buried under a mountain, goes about 80 meters deep. (00:10:56) It's encased in concrete. (00:10:58) It has advanced centrifuges and highly enriched uranium. (00:11:02) The Israelis can do damage to it, but it's clear it's going to take the United States and our military power in order to severely degrade this facility. (00:11:12) And Trump orders (00:11:14) United States Air Force to fly B-2 bombers and drop 12 massive ordnance penetrators, which are these 30,000 pound bombs on Fordow in order to, as he said, obliterate it more realistically to severely degrade it. (00:11:30) So that happens. (00:11:32) And then he offers the Iranians, as he's been offering all the way through, you have an option. (00:11:36) You can go back to Oman. (00:11:37) I told you Oman, (00:11:39) and you decided to force me to go to Fordow. (00:11:41) But now we can go back for negotiations. (00:11:44) And he forces a ceasefire on the Iranians, gets the Israelis to agree. (00:11:49) And that's where we are today. (00:11:50) That's where at a, as you say, a tentative ceasefire that just came into effect. (00:11:55) And we'll see now if the Iranians decide to take President Trump on his repeated offers, join him in Amman for another round of negotiations. (00:12:04) Scott, is there some stuff you want to add to that? (00:12:06) Sure. (00:12:06) Well, he started with (00:12:08) January, right, Trump's second term here and the maximum pressure campaign. (00:12:13) Essentially, as should be clear to everyone now, all these negotiations were just a pretext for war. (00:12:19) Trump and his entire cabinet must have known that the Ayatollah is not going to give up all enrichment. (00:12:27) That is their latent nuclear deterrent. (00:12:30) Their posture has been heavily implied. (00:12:33) don't attack us and we won't make a nuke. (00:12:36) While America's position was, if you make a nuke, if you start to, we'll attack you. (00:12:41) So it's the perfect standoff. (00:12:43) But what happened was, and you might remember a few weeks ago, there was some talk about, well, maybe we could find a way to compromise on some enrichment. (00:12:50) Maybe they could do a consortium with the Saudis. (00:12:52) Maybe there's some way that we, and then nope, the pressure came down. (00:12:56) No enrichment, 0 enrichment. (00:12:58) But that's a red line. (00:12:59) Everyone knows that there's, and even now. (00:13:03) It's probably less likely than ever that they're going to give up enrichment. (00:13:06) Sure, they bombed Forto, but they didn't destroy every last centrifuge in that place. (00:13:10) And the Iranians are already announcing that they're already begun construction on another facility under a taller mountain, buried even deeper. (00:13:19) And, you know, they figured out how to enrich uranium hexafluoride gas, you know, what, 20 years ago now. (00:13:25) And (00:13:26) they will always be able to. (00:13:28) And this is the slippery slope that we're on with these wars is in fact, I saw a friend here on TV the other day as he almost pretty much just implied there saying, well, now Trump has to go in. (00:13:41) You know, we're told it's just Israel doing it. (00:13:43) Don't worry. (00:13:44) But then no, Trump has to (00:13:46) hit Fordo, or else now they'll break out toward a nuclear weapon. (00:13:52) So in for a penny, in for a pound, in for a ton, and now once we bomb Fordo again and Natanz again and the new facility again, then it'll be decided that, nope, as Benjamin Netanyahu said the other day, you know what would really solve this problem? (00:14:06) If we just kill the Ayatollah, then everything will be fine. (00:14:10) Then we'll have a regime change, and then what? (00:14:12) Then we'll have a civil war with Bin Ladenites again in the catbird seat, just like (00:14:16) George Bush put them in Iraq and Barack Obama put them in Libya and in Syria. (00:14:22) And we'll have Azeris and Baluchi suicide bombers and Shiite, you know, revolutionaries and whoever all vying for power in the new absolute chaos stand. (00:14:34) If you listen to the administration and Mr. (00:14:36) Dubas, they're essentially just implying that like, oh yeah, mission accomplished. (00:14:39) We did it. (00:14:39) Their nuclear programs destroyed. (00:14:40) Now we don't have to worry about that anymore. (00:14:42) But that's not true. (00:14:43) Now there's every reason to believe, and we don't know for sure, there's every reason to believe that at least is much more likely now (00:14:52) that the Ayatollah will change his mind about God changing his mind and will say that actually maybe we do need a nuclear deterrent. (00:14:59) That's really what it's been for this whole time is a bluff. (00:15:02) We have bullets in one pocket, revolver in another. (00:15:04) Let's not you and me fight and escalate this thing. (00:15:07) It's the same position, by the way, as Japan and Germany and Brazil. (00:15:11) Two of the three of those are under America's nuclear umbrella, I admit, but still, where they've proven they've mastered the fuel cycle and they can make nuclear weapons. (00:15:18) But hey, since nobody's directly threatening them now, why escalate things and go ahead and make atom bombs? (00:15:23) That has been their position the whole time, because after all, they could not break out and make a nuke without everyone in the world knowing about it. (00:15:30) And that's why, Lex, and I'm sure you could vouch for me on this, if you've been watching TV over the past few weeks, you'll hear Marco Rubio and all the government officials and all the war hawks say, oh yeah, 60%, 60%. (00:15:40) What do you (00:15:41) do think they need with that 60%, implying that, oh yes, see they're racing toward a bomb. (00:15:45) But you see how they always just imply that? (00:15:48) They won't come right out and say that because it's a ridiculous lie. (00:15:51) They could have enriched up to 90 plus percent uranium-235 this whole time. (00:15:55) The reason they were enriching up to 60% was in reaction to Israeli sabotage, first of all, assassinating their nuclear scientists, and then they're sabotaging Natanz. (00:16:04) They start enriching up to 60%, just like they did in the Obama years, to have a bargaining chip to negotiate away. (00:16:10) Under the JCPOA, (00:16:11) they shipped out every bit of their enriched uranium to France to be turned into fuel rods and then shipped back into the country to be used in their reactors. (00:16:19) And so they're just trying to get us back in that deal. (00:16:22) It is an illusion. (00:16:23) It is, and I don't know exactly what's in this man's mind, but it's just not true that they're making nuclear weapons. (00:16:29) And it has been a lie of Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party regime, and for that matter, the Kadima regime of Ehud Olmert before him, that this is a threat that has to be preempted when (00:16:41) back, it never was anything more than a latent nuclear deterrent. (00:16:45) Maybe a good question to ask here is what is the goal for the United States and Iran in relation to the nuclear, Iran's nuclear program? (00:16:58) What is the red line here? (00:16:59) Does Iran have this need for a latent nuclear deterrent? (00:17:04) And what is the thing that's acceptable to the United States and to the rest of the world? (00:17:08) What should be acceptable? (00:17:10) Yeah, so there was a lot to unpack there. (00:17:12) So let's sort of just back up a little bit and just talk about, first of all, the regime itself. (00:17:16) Islamic Republic of Iran came into power in 1979. (00:17:20) It's been declared a leading state sponsor of terrorism by multiple administrations, dating back to the Clinton administration. (00:17:27) by Obama, by Biden, by Trump. (00:17:29) And it is a regime that has killed and maimed thousands of Americans, not to mention, obviously, hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners. (00:17:38) It is a regime that has lied about its nuclear program and never actually disclosed its nuclear sites. (00:17:45) All these sites were discovered by Iranian opposition groups, by Western intelligence agencies. (00:17:52) And the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the UN agency responsible for preventing proliferation, has come out again and again over many, many years in reports, very detailed reports, describing Iran's nuclear weapons program. (00:18:09) There have been multiple attempts at diplomacy with Iran. (00:18:13) I'm sure we're going to talk about it. (00:18:14) Scott mentioned the JCPOA, so we should certainly talk about the JCPOA, which was the 2015 deal that Barack Obama reached with Iran. (00:18:22) but multiple attempts to actually get the Iranians to negotiate away their nuclear weapons program. (00:18:27) I mean, it's worth mentioning that if Iran wanted to have civilian nuclear energy, there are 23 countries in the world that have it, but they don't have enrichment and they don't have reprocessing. (00:18:37) We sign these deals called the gold standard with the South Koreans, with the Emiratis, with others. (00:18:42) And we say, if you want civilian energy, you can have power plants. (00:18:47) You can buy your fuel rods from abroad, but there's no reason to have enrichment or plutonium reprocessing because those are the key capabilities you need to develop nuclear weapons. (00:18:58) Now, the five countries that have those capabilities and don't have nuclear weapons are Argentina, Brazil, Holland, Germany, and Japan. (00:19:08) And I think it's the view of many administrations over many years, including many European leaders, (00:19:14) that the Islamic Republic of Iran is very different from those aforementioned countries because it has been dedicated to terrorism. (00:19:21) It's been killing Americans and other Westerners and other Middle Easterners. (00:19:25) And it is a dangerous regime. (00:19:26) You don't want to have that dangerous regime retaining the key capabilities and needs to develop nuclear weapons. (00:19:33) But I want to kind of get back more to the present. (00:19:35) I mentioned this was around negotiations with Oman. (00:19:39) Scott's saying that President Trump had said, here's the offer, take it or leave it, zero enrichment, full dismantlement. (00:19:45) Well, in fact, that wasn't the offer that was presented to the Iranians at Oman. (00:19:49) The offer was a one-page offer. (00:19:51) And it said, you can temporarily enrich above ground. (00:19:54) You've got to render your below ground facilities, quote, non-operational. (00:20:00) And then at some time in the future, three, four years, as Scott said, there'll be a consortium that'll be built, (00:20:06) not an Iranian territory. It'll be a partnership with the Saudis and the Emiratis. It'll be under IAEA supervision. And that enrichment facility will create fuel rods for your nuclear reactors. So that was the offer presented to Iran. And that offer would come with significant sanctions relief, billions of dollars that would go to the regime. (00:20:26) Obviously, the economy there has been suffering. The regime has not had the resources that it's had in the past to fund its, what I call its axis of misery, its proxy terror armies around the world. And it was a good offer. And I was shocked that Khamenei rejected it. (00:20:44) He did reject it. And I think he rejected it because I think he believed that he could continue to do to President Trump what he had done to President Obama, which is just continue to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze the Americans at the table in order to ensure that he could keep all these nuclear facilities, all these nuclear capabilities, so that at a time of his choosing, when President Trump is gone, he can develop nuclear weapons. Now, it is a bit interesting to say that Iran has no intention to develop nuclear weapons. (00:21:13) Let's examine the nuclear program and ask, does this sound like a regime that's not interested in building nuclear weapons? So they built deeply buried underground enrichment facilities that they hid from the international community and they didn't disclose. They had an active nuclear warhead program called AMAD, which ended in 2003 formally when the United States invaded Iraq. (00:21:38) And we know that because not only has that been detailed by the IAEA, but actually Mossad, in a daring operation in Tehran, took out a nuclear archive and brought it back to the West. And then the IAEA, the United States, and the intelligence communities went after this detailed archive, went into it, and discovered that this supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, had an active program to build 5 atomic warheads. (00:22:06) and was a very detailed program with blueprints and designs, all of which was designed under Ahmad to build a nuclear weapons program. So again, it's interesting to say that he doesn't have the intention to build nuclear weapons when he actually had an active nuclear weapons program. And we can talk about what happened to that program after 2003, and there's a lot of interesting details. So when you combine the fact that he has an active nuclear weapons program, he has sites that are buried deep underground, (00:22:35) He is weapons scientists who have come out of the Ahmad program and continue to work on the initial metallurgy work and computer modeling designed to actually begin that process of building a warhead. And all of this has been hidden from the international community. He has spent estimates of a half a trillion dollars on his nuclear program in direct costs and in sanctions costs. And one has to ask, and I think it's an interesting question, (00:23:04) compare the UAE and Iran. The UAE signed the gold standard. They said we'll have no enrichment capability or reprocessing. They spent about $20 billion on that, and it supplies 25% of their electrical generation. Khamenei spent a half a trillion dollars, and that program supplies maybe 3% of their electrical needs. In fact, they have a reactor that they (00:23:32) they bought from the Russians called Boucher. And that reactor, it's exactly what you'd want in a proliferation-proof reactor. They buy fuel rods from the Russians, they use it, and they send the spent fuel back to Russia so it cannot be reprocessed into plutonium. So I just think it's important for your listeners to understand just some of the technical nuclear history here in order to unpack this question of did Khamenei want nuclear weapons? What was his goal here? And then we can talk about, was this the right operation? (00:24:02) in order for the United States to order the B-2 bombers to strike these facilities in what, again, was a limited operation, as President Trump has said, and in order to drive the Iranians back to the negotiating table and finally do the deal that President Trump has asked them to do since he came into office in January. Yeah, that is one of the fascinating questions, whether this Operation Midnight Hammer increased or decreased the chance that Iran will develop a nuclear weapon. Before you ask any more questions, I have to refute virtually everything. (00:24:32) thing he just said, which is completely false. I mean, really everything? There was not one thing I said that was true. Just one thing. I mean, Iran is a nation over there somewhere. You got that part right. All right. 22 years of working on Iran, and I got that right. But do you know the population of Iran? 92 million. Okay. So first of all, they were trying to buy a light water reactor from the Europeans or the Chinese in the 1990s, and Bill Clinton wouldn't let them. (00:24:56) and put tremendous pressure on China to prevent them from selling them a light water reactor, a turnkey reactor that produces waste that's so polluted with impurities that you can't make nuclear weapons fuel out of it. By the way, they never have to this day had a reprocessing facility for reprocessing plutonium, even their current plutonium waste from their heavy water reactor at Bucher to make weapons fuel out of that. They have no plutonium route to the bomb under the JCPOA. I have that at Iraq, not Bucher. There's a difference between Iraq and Iraq is a. (00:25:26) Iraq is where they poured concrete into the reactor and shut it down. And the reason they poured concrete. Under the JCPOA. Not they, but the Obama administration, he's right, under the JCPOA, poured concrete into the calyndria in order to prevent them from using that reactor to reprocess plutonium. So there's a distinction between Iraq and Boucher. Scott's exactly right. Boucher is a reactor, a heavy water reactor provided by the Russians, as I described, for the generation of (00:25:54) electricity. It's proliferation proof. Iraq is the opposite. It's a heavy water reactor that was built for a plutonium pathway to nuclear weapons, which is exactly why under the JCPOA, they literally had to pour concrete into the middle of it to prevent it from reprocessing plutonium. I think we're going to need a scientist to come in here and split the difference, or maybe we need to go and look up some IAEA documents, because I don't believe that Iraq ever had a reprocessing facility for their plutonium waste. (00:26:24) And the deal under the JCPOA, the Russians would come and get all their plutonium waste, which the waste comes out all polluted and not useful. You need the reprocessing facility to get all of the impurities out. It could be that I'm wrong about that, but I don't believe that they ever had a reprocessing facility at Iraq that they could use to remove all those impurities and then have weapons-grade plutonium fuel as the North Koreans do. So the Obama administration was very clear under the JCPOA, we are going to pour (00:26:54) concrete into the Iraq facility, as Scott acknowledged, because we are concerned that Iraq can be used for reprocessing plutonium for a plutonium pathway to a nuclear weapon. It can be used, but we don't know if it was used. Oh, we know it never was. There never was any reprocessing of weapons fuel. But there was concrete. I'm happy to. There's no indication. For your viewers who are interested and not to plug my own podcast, Alex, so I apologize. It is a very good podcast. I just recently had David Albright on my podcast, who is (00:27:24) actually a physicist and a weapons inspector and goes into a lot of detail about the Iranian nuclear program. Please listen to the podcast. Iran Breakdown, by the way, is the name of the podcast. Yeah, and David's the president of the Institute for Science and International Security. By the way, he spent decades on this. And to his credit, he was one of the deep skeptics of the Bush administration's rush to war with Iraq. That's not true. He vouched for claims that there were chemical weapons in Iraq and later said he was sorry for it. Again, I mentioned the Bush administration's rush to war based on their claims. (00:27:54) claims that Saddam was building nuclear weapons. He did debunk the aluminum tubes, though. He debunked it and was a deep skeptic again of the rush to war in Iraq. You know, the argument today, which I think is the more interesting argument, because there are very few people (00:28:10) left today who don't believe that the Iranians were building the nuclear weapons capability that gave them the option to build nuclear weapons. I already said that. We can debate. We can debate whether they had decided to, and I'm interested to hear Scott's opinion on this, but the recent intelligence that has come out, (00:28:29) that the Iranian nuclear weapon scientists have begun preliminary work on building a warhead. Came out from where? This intelligence that came out. Who put that into Israeli claims? Not verified by the US in the Wall Street Journal anywhere, right? Let's talk about all of my list of refutations of all your false claims from 10 years ago. The Wall Street Journal did verify. Lawrence Norman actually wrote a piece. This was during the Biden administration. (00:28:58) because the Biden DNI had actually come out and for the first time in their annual threat assessment, had removed a line that said, Iran is not working, currently working on developing any capabilities that would put it in a position to actually deliver a nuclear warhead. And what became the Lawrence Norman piece in the Wall Street Journal (00:29:22) was that there actually was initial work done on metallurgy and on computer modeling. And so those actually were defined terms in section T of the 2015 JCPOA, which defined weaponization in that section. And metallurgy and computer modeling were some of the initial steps. So that the DNI was very concerned under Biden that these initial steps meant that either Khamenei had given the green lights (00:29:47) or nuclear weapons scientists in order to get ahead of the boss so they could be in a position if he decided to move forward on this, were in a position and their timelines were therefore expedited. So it's interesting. I mean, again, you've got the DNI under Biden. You've got the CIA director, John Ratcliffe. You've got Israeli intelligence. You've got the Wall Street Journal. (00:30:07) And you've got the IAEA asking questions of Iran on its past weaponization activities. Why are you denying us? Who's the dog that didn't bark there? The current Director of National Intelligence who issued her threat assessment, Trump's Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who issued her threat assessment in February that repeated the exact same language that from the National Intelligence estimate of 2007 and that the CIA and the NIE, the National Intelligence Council, have reaffirmed repeatedly ever since then, which is the Supreme Leader (00:30:37) has not decided to pursue nuclear weapons. He has not made the political decision to pursue nuclear weapons. She testified, in fact, under oath in front of the Senate in March. And then, according to CNN and the New York Times, there was a brand new assessment that was put together the week before the attack. (00:30:56) was launched, reaffirming the same thing. And at least in history, if you read it in Haaretz, Mossad agreed with the CIA. I'd like to just sort of quote CIA director John Ratcliffe, because Scott brought up the CIA and the intelligence committee. I think Ratcliffe had a good way of looking at this, and that he said is, (00:31:15) when you're in the 99-yard line as a football team, you have the intention to score a goal, quote, unquote. And what he was actually pointing to is, let's not talk about this debate about whether Khamenei had given the order or not given the order, because Khamenei knows that if he gives an order, the US and Israeli intelligence community will pick up on that order, and that will be the trigger for strikes. What Radcliffe is saying is that Khamenei had built the nuclear weapons capability. He's at the 99-yard line. (00:31:43) So the CIA and European leaders, the European Intelligence Committee has said for years that if Iran has that capability and they're on the 99 yard line, at that point, it's going to be too late to stop them once that decision is made to assemble the final warhead, which by the way, is the final piece of what you need for a deliverable nuclear weapon. That's not true at all, right? They have to resort to a crude analogy about football yard lines because they can't say the truth, which is that they had zero (00:32:11) weapons-grade uranium. They were not producing it. They were trying to get the United States back in the deal that they are still officially within the JCPOA with the rest of the UN Security Council, wherein they shipped all of their enriched uranium stockpile out of the country to France to be transferred to fuel rods. Their insistence was on their continued ability to enrich uranium. And so this goes to (00:32:36) one of the things that he at least sort of brought up that deserves addressing. When Trump came into power in 2017, he decided on this Israeli influence maximum pressure campaign. And he said the JCPOA was the worst deal in the history of any time any two men ever shook hands and all these kinds of things in his hyperbolic way, which of course made it very difficult for him to figure out a way to stay in the thing or to compromise along its lines. (00:33:06) But the fact of the matter is, if he had just played it straight and said, listen, Ayatollah, we don't have to be friends, but we do have a deal here, which my predecessor struck with you, but I don't like these sunset provisions. And I want to send my guys over there and see if we can figure out a way to convince you that we really wish you'd shut down calm altogether, or this or that or the other thing, and try to approach them in good faith. Talk about yard lines and things. We had a JCPOA. (00:33:35) Okay, so toward peace, we were past the 50 yard line. Donald Trump could have gone to Tehran and shook hands with the Ayatollah. As Dick Cheney complained that we had cold relations with Iran back in 1998 when he was the head of Halliburton. And so we can do business with these guys. Donald Trump could have gone right over there and done business. And instead he gave into Netanyahu's lies (00:33:59) in this ridiculous hoax that they had uncovered all these Iranian nuclear documents, which he pretends is legit, where all they did was recycle the fake Israeli-forged smoking laptop of 2005, which they lied and pretended was the laptop of an Iranian scientist that was smuggled out of Iran by his wife and had all this proof of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program on it. But every bit of that was refuted, including the thing about the warhead, he said, was refuted (00:34:29) by David Albright and his friend David Sanger in the New York Times, that all those sketches of the warhead for the missile were wrong because when Mossad forged the documents, they were making a good educated guess, but they didn't know that Iran had completely redesigned the nose cone of their mid-range missiles and had an entirely different nose cone that would require an entirely different warhead than that described in the documents. And why would they have been designing a warhead to fit in a nose cone that they were abandoning? And so that was refused (00:34:59) David Albright completely discredited your claims there, pal. And then they later admitted that it was a CIA laptop. There was no laptop. And they later admitted, Ali Heinen admitted, who was a very hawkish (00:35:13) one of the, not director, but a high-level executive at the International Atomic Energy Agency, admitted that intelligence was brought into the stream by the Mujahideen-e-Kulk, communist terrorist cult, that used to work for the Ayatollah during the revolution, then turned on him, and he turned on them and kicked them out. Then they went to work for Saddam Hussein, where they helped crush the Shiite and Kurdish insurrection of 1991. And then they became America, Donald Rumsfeld's and Ariel Sharon's sock puppets, and later Ehud Ulmer. (00:35:43) sock puppets when the United States invaded Iraq and took possession of them. They're now under American protection in Albania. And these are the same kooks who just a few weeks ago, you might remember, said, look, new satellite pictures of a whole new nuclear facility in Iran. Isn't it funny how no one ever brought that up again? Didn't bomb it. was nothing. It was fake. Just like before when they said, hey, look, here's a picture of a vault door. (00:36:06) And behind that is where the secret nuclear weapons program is. Except it turned out that vault door was a stock photo from a vault company. It meant nothing. And they had repeatedly, you know, made claims that were totally refuted. (00:36:19) just like I'm about to refute his claim, that they ever were the ones who revealed, for example, Natanz. He was implying that Natanz and Kam were both buried and hidden until revealed, I think you said, by dissident groups, that is the MEK, sock puppets of the Israelis. But it was your friend David Albright, not the Israeli Mossad through the MEK who revealed Natanz facility. Ask him. He'll fist fight you over it. He claims credit. He was first and said, this is a facility. However, (00:36:50) They were not in violation of their safeguards agreement with the IAEA. They were still six months away from introducing any nuclear material to that facility. And so when it was revealed, they weren't in violation of anything. And (00:37:03) And then on Calm, we had a huge fight about this at the time. The party line came down from all the government officials and the media that they had just exposed the facility there. Calm is Fordo, same thing. When in fact, that wasn't true. The Iranians had announced to the IAEA that we had built a new facility here and we are going to introduce nuclear material into it within six months. So here's your official notification. And then a few days later, they just pretended to (00:37:33) when it was the Iranians themselves who had admitted to it in going along with their obligations under their safeguards agreement. So it's just completely wrong. Why do they bury them? They buried them for protection because clearly the Israelis have indicated since the 1990s that they consider any nuclear program in Iran to be the same thing as an advanced nuclear weapons program. You're hearing that today. For them to have a nuclear facility at all is equivalent to them going ahead and breaking out (00:38:03) and making a nuclear weapon. And so, of course, they know that they have to have it buried to protect it from Israel. That doesn't mean that they are trying to get nukes. It does mean, as I already said, that they wanted to prove to the world that they know how to enrich uranium (00:38:20) and that they have facilities buried deeply enough where if we attack them, that would incentivize them to making nukes, and then we might be unable to stop them without going all the way toward a regime change, which they're bluffing, basically betting that we won't go that far, considering how gigantic their country is and how mountainous and populous it is compared to Iraq next door. Now, here's some more things that he said that weren't true. So he said, Iran has been killing Americans all this time. Well, that's almost always a reference to Beirut, (00:38:50) 1983, which you can read in the book By Way of Deception by Victor Ostrovsky, the former Mossad officer, that the Israelis knew that they were building that truck bomb to bomb the Marines with and withheld that information from the United States and said that's what they get for sticking their big noses in. And that is in the book By Way of Deception by Victor Ostrovsky. And by the way, the Israelis were friends with them at with Iran at the time in all through the 1980s. And it was just a couple of years later when Ronald (00:39:20) Reagan sold Iran missiles and using the Israelis as cutouts to do so when he switched sides temporarily in the Iran-Iraq war. And so that's just, and that was in 1983. If Ronald Reagan can sell him missiles a year or two years after that, three years after that, then surely the United States and the Ayatollah can bury the hatchet from that. And no one's ever even, I don't believe, ever really proven that Tehran ordered that. It was a Shiite militia backed by Iran that sort of proto-Hezbollah that did that attack that killed those Marines. (00:39:51) And if there's some responsibility for it, then damn them. Like if there's direct responsibility for that, not just their support for the group, then damn them for that. But that's still no reason to (00:40:00) in the world to say that we can't get along with them now, when that was in the same year Return of the Jedi came out, okay? (00:40:06) And then the other one, and this is always referred to, you'll see this on TV news today. (00:40:11) Anyone watching this, turn on TV news and you'll hear them say, Iran killed 600 Americans in Iraq War II. (00:40:17) But that's a lie. (00:40:19) There was a gigantic propaganda campaign by Dick Cheney and his co-conspirators, David Petraeus and Michael Gordon of the New York Times, now at the Wall Street Journal. (00:40:29) where they lied and lied like the devil for about 5, six months in early 2007, that every time a Shiite set off a roadside bomb, these new improved copper cord enhanced, they're called EFPs, explosively formed penetrators, that anytime that happened, Iran did it. (00:40:50) which is what George Bush called shorthanding it. (00:40:52) Yeah, in other words, just implying the lie. (00:40:54) What they're saying is Iran backed Muqtada al-Sadr and America attacked Muqtada al-Sadr, who actually they were fighting the whole war for him. (00:41:02) He remains a powerful kingmaker in that country this day. (00:41:04) He's part of the United Iraqi Alliance. (00:41:06) And in fact, as long as we're taking a long form here, he was the least Iran tied of the three major factions in the United Iraqi Alliance in Iraq War Two. (00:41:16) The other two major factions were Dawa and the Supreme Islamic Council. (00:41:20) And they had (00:41:20) living in Iran for the last 20 years. (00:41:23) They're the ones who came and took over Baghdad. (00:41:25) Muqtad al-Sadr was a Shiite and close to Iran, but he's also an Iraqi nationalist. (00:41:30) And at times, he allied with the Sunnis and tried to limit American and Iranian influence in the country. (00:41:37) He was more of an Arab and an Iraqi nationalist. (00:41:40) And the Americans decided they hated him the most, not because he was the most Iran-tied, but because he was willing to tell us and them to get the hell out. (00:41:48) And America was betting that if we back the same (00:41:50) parties that Iran backed in Iraq War II, that they would eventually end up needing our money and guns more than they would need their Iranian friends and co-religionists and sponsors next door, which of course did not work out. (00:42:01) And America's had minimal influence in supermajority Shiite Iraq ever since the end of Iraq War II. (00:42:07) And we can get back later in the show to how Israel helped lie us into that horrific war as well. (00:42:12) But the fact of the matter is, it was not Iranians setting off those bombs, and it was not even Iranians making those bombs. (00:42:19) And I show in my book enough already, (00:42:21) I have a solid dozen sources. (00:42:24) Enough already. (00:42:26) Thank you. (00:42:26) I have a solid dozen sources, including Michael Gordon's own colleague, Alyssa Rubin at the New York Times and many others, where they found these bomb factories in Shiite Iraq. (00:42:39) They were being made by Shiite Arab Iraqis (00:42:42) And when David Petraeus was going to have a big press conference and they laid out all the components, all the reporters gathered around and they started noticing that the components said made in UAE, made in Haditha, that is Iraq. (00:42:54) In other words, there was no evidence whatsoever that these came from Iran. (00:42:59) And then they called off the press conference, and Stephen Hadley, George Bush's second national security advisor, admitted that, yeah, we didn't have the evidence that we needed to present that. (00:43:09) And I also quote one Marine and one high-level army intelligence officer in there who were deeply involved in Iraq war. (00:43:18) reconfirming that, there was never any evidence that these bombs were coming across from Iran, or especially that then even if they were, that was at the direction of the Quds Force or the Ayatollah. (00:43:31) This was all just a propaganda campaign because Dick Cheney and David Petraeus were trying to give George Bush a reason to hit IRGC bases and start the war in 2007. (00:43:40) And this sounds crazy, but there's like four major confirming sources for it. (00:43:45) Dick Cheney's national security advisor, David Wormser, who was the author of the Clean Break Strategy, which we're going to talk about today, David Wormser in 2007 was saying, we want to work with the Israelis to start the war with Iran to force George Bush, to do an end run around George Bush and force him into the war. (00:44:02) And that was reported originally by Stephen Clemens in the Washington Note, but it was later confirmed in the New York Times and by the Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman in his book Angler on Dick Cheney, that there was this (00:44:15) huge, this was the end that they were going for, was they were trying so hard to force a war in 2007. (00:44:22) And it was the commander of CENTCOM, Admiral Fallon, who said, over my dead body, we are not doing this. (00:44:27) And then a few months later, the National Intelligence Council put out their NIE saying that there is no nuclear weapons program at all. (00:44:34) And W. (00:44:35) Bush complained in his memoir, Lex, that in his story, it's the Saudi King, His Royal Highness Abdullah, rather than (00:44:43) Ehud Olmert, but he's saying, I'm sorry, your highness, Majesty, I can't attack Iran's nuclear program because my own intelligence agency says they don't have a military program. (00:44:55) So how am I supposed to start a war with them when my own intelligence agencies say that? (00:44:59) This is what Donald Trump just did, started anyway. (00:45:01) Had his man Rubio say, well, screw the intelligence. (00:45:03) I don't care what it says. (00:45:04) We can just do this if we want to. (00:45:06) So first, let me say on the cover of Enough Already, devastating Daniel Ellsberg, outstanding Daniel L. (00:45:11) Davis, essential Ron Paul. (00:45:13) You are respected by a very large number of people. (00:45:16) You have decades of experience in this. (00:45:17) Same thing with Mark, extremely respected by a very large number of people, experts. (00:45:23) There's a lot of disagreements here, and we're going to unfortunately leave a lot of the disagreements on the table for the (00:45:29) aforementioned nuclear scientist to deconstruct later. (00:45:33) So let's not like try to every single claim does not have to be perfectly refutable. (00:45:37) Let's just leave it on the table, the statements as they stand. (00:45:40) And let's try to also find things we kind of agree on and try, I know this might be difficult, but to steel man the other side. (00:45:48) That's the thing I would love to ask you. (00:45:52) Maybe give Mark a chance to speak a little bit, but (00:45:55) to try to, for both of you, to try to steal man the other side. (00:45:58) So people who are concerned about Iran developing a nuclear program, can you steal man that case? (00:46:03) And the same, the people who are concerned. (00:46:05) I think in my opening statement, quite frankly, I don't carry any brief for the Ayatollah. (00:46:10) I'm A Texan. (00:46:11) I don't give a damn about what some Shiite theocrat says about nothing, right? (00:46:15) My interest is the people of this country and its future and what's true. (00:46:20) And so I don't mind telling you, even though the Iranians never said, we're building a latent nuclear weapons capability. (00:46:26) That's clearly what they're doing, is showing that they can make a nuke, so don't make me make a nuke. (00:46:33) That has been their position. (00:46:34) Their position has not been, I'm making a nuke so I can wipe Israel off the map. (00:46:38) Their position has been, look, if you guys don't attack us, (00:46:41) We could just keep this civilian program the way it is. (00:46:45) And again, there's always the implication that they're just building up this uranium stockpile, but no, they're not. (00:46:50) That was in reaction to one, Donald Trump leaving the deal in 2018. (00:46:55) 2002, the assassination in December of 2020 of the Iranian nuclear scientist Farkhazada, or however you say that. (00:47:01) And then in April of 21, the sabotage at Natanz. (00:47:05) And there's a Reuters story that says, right after they sabotage Natanz, that's when the Ayatollah decided, let's enrich up to 60%. (00:47:13) Which, why stop 30% short of 90% to 35%? (00:47:18) It's because they're not even making a threat. (00:47:20) They're built, they're making like the most latent up threat, a bargaining chip to negotiate away. (00:47:26) They're trying to put pressure on the United States to come back to the table. (00:47:29) That's not the same as racing to the bomb. (00:47:32) That's why Marco Rubio says, nevermind the intelligence, because the intelligence says what I just said. (00:47:37) Yeah, point made. (00:47:38) Let's try, let's try if possible to keep it to like a minute and two of back and forth. (00:47:43) I said, you know, the problem is we're talking about nuclear stuff, which is all very complicated, and most people don't know (00:47:48) much about it, which is what the war party is relying on, that people just hear nuclear afraid and mushroom cloud and give the benefit of the doubt to the Hawks. (00:47:56) And so we got to get into the details of this stuff. (00:47:59) Details 100%, but I like the tension between (00:48:03) two people with different perspectives exploring those details. (00:48:06) And the more we can go back and forth, the better. (00:48:09) And there's a lot of disagreement on the table. (00:48:11) I personally enjoy learning from the disagreement. (00:48:13) I think that was a very long list of claims that he made, though, where I felt like I had to go down the list as much as I could, because that's a lot. (00:48:19) I think you addressed like maybe one or two claims and it took 15 minutes. (00:48:23) So that's what I'm just commenting on. (00:48:25) Let's do one at a time. (00:48:27) I like the tension of the debate of back and forth. (00:48:29) That's all. (00:48:30) Mark, do you want to do you want to comment on stuff a little bit here? (00:48:34) pick whichever topic you want to go with here. (00:48:36) Yeah, there's a lot there. (00:48:37) So just a couple of things I think that are worth your viewers knowing because Scott's right. (00:48:41) I mean, the nuclear physics is complicated and it's also important. (00:48:45) So the Iranians have (00:48:47) They assembled about, we say about 15 to 17 bombs worth of 60% enriched uranium. (00:48:53) And I think it's always important for your listeners to understand what does this all mean, enriched to 3.67%, to 20%, to 60%, and then to 90% weapons grade uranium. (00:49:03) Like what does this actual process mean? (00:49:06) First of all, obviously enriched uranium is a key capability to develop a nuclear weapon. (00:49:10) It can also be used for other purposes, civilian purposes and research purposes. (00:49:15) You can use it to power a nuclear submarine. (00:49:17) So let's just, if you don't mind, if I could just break it down. (00:49:20) That's fascinating. (00:49:21) Yes. (00:49:21) Yeah, just, I think it's again important just to understand the sort of basics before we jump into the allegations and claims and counterclaims. (00:49:29) So if you're going to enrich to 3.67% enriched uranium, that's for civilian nuclear power. (00:49:36) But when you do that, you basically need 70% of what you need to get to weapons grade. (00:49:41) So you've done all the steps, 70% of the steps in order to get to weapons grade uranium. (00:49:47) If you enrich to 20%, you are now at 90% of what you need to get to weapons grade uranium. (00:49:54) Now, why would you need 20%? (00:49:56) you may need it for something like a research reactor, right? (00:50:00) Medical isotopes. (00:50:01) Iran has, correct. (00:50:02) Iran has a Tehran research reactor for medical isotopes. (00:50:06) Now, you can, by the way, you can buy those isotopes from abroad, or you can produce them at home. (00:50:11) If you're going to enrich to 60%, (00:50:14) then you've done 99% of what you need to get to weapons-grade uranium. (00:50:18) And then 90% is, quote, weapons-grade uranium. (00:50:21) By the way, you can use 60% to actually deliver a crude nuclear device. (00:50:26) That has been done in the past, but you want to get to, quote, 90%. (00:50:31) That's weapons-grade uranium as Scott's defining it. (00:50:34) But just again, to clarify, these huge stockpiles of 60% that Iran has accumulated, (00:50:40) This 16, 17 bombs worth of 60% is 99% of what they need for weapons grade. (00:50:46) So I just wanted to explain that. (00:50:48) Yeah, but when you say, you're saying if you include the mining, the refining of the ore into yellow cake, the transformation of that into uranium hexafluoride gas, the driving of it in a truck over to the centrifuge and then spinning it, (00:51:03) This is where we get this 90% number from, right? (00:51:06) In place of 90% enriched uranium or 80% enriched uranium, it's 90% of the way on some chart that includes picking up a shovel and beginning to mine, right? (00:51:19) Again, just to clarify, I just think it's important to understand the definition of terms. (00:51:24) Once you have 60% enriched uranium, you've done 99% of all the steps, including some of the steps that Scott's talking about. (00:51:30) You've done 99% of what you need to have weapons-grade uranium. (00:51:33) That's just meaningless. (00:51:34) Why is that meaningless? (00:51:36) Well, as I've already established numerous times here, under the JCPOA, they shipped out every bit of their enriched uranium stockpile. (00:51:43) The French turned it into fuel rods and then shipped it back. (00:51:47) That's the deal they're trying to get the US back into, and we're obviously clearly willing to do. (00:51:52) And again, the only reason they're enriching (00:51:54) up to 60% was to put the pressure on the Americans to go ahead and get back into the deal. (00:51:59) And bad bet it gave him an excuse to bomb based on the idea that people are going to listen to him, pretend that somehow that's 99% of the way to the bomb when you're including, yeah, driving to the mine and mining it and converting it to yellowcake and all these other things. (00:52:13) I mean, you're going to have a deliverable nuclear weapon, so you need the weapons-grade uranium. (00:52:17) And just to repeat, they have multiple bombs worth of the 60% enriched uranium, which again is 99% of the (00:52:24) the steps you need to take for weapons grade. (00:52:26) So they're very close to weapons grade. (00:52:29) It's 1% more that they need to do to enrich to weapons grade. (00:52:33) The second aspect of a deliverable nuclear weapon is obviously the delivery vehicle, and those are the missiles. (00:52:38) And according to the DNI and other incredible sources, Iran has got the largest missile inventory in the Middle East. (00:52:48) 3,000 missiles before the war began, and at least the ballistic missile is 2,000 capable of reaching Israel. (00:52:56) So there's no doubt that Iran has the ability, once they have the weapons-grade uranium and the warhead, to affix that to a missile and deliver that, certainly to hit Israel, hit our Gulf neighbors, hit Southern Europe. (00:53:08) They also have a active intercontinental ballistic missile program, an ICBM program, (00:53:14) which ultimately is designed not to hit the Israelis or the Gulfies, but to hit deeper into Europe and ultimately to target the United States. (00:53:24) So let's just understand the missile program. (00:53:26) I think it's an important part of it. (00:53:27) The third leg of the stool, and Scott has already alluded to this, and we've had some debate on this, and I think we should talk about it, what it really means in detail, is you've got to develop a warhead. (00:53:37) or a crude nuclear device. (00:53:38) And according to estimates from both US government sources and nuclear experts, it would take about four to six months for Iran to develop a crude nuclear device. (00:53:50) This is something that you wouldn't use a missile to deliver, but you would use a plane or a ship. (00:53:55) And it would take somewhere in the neighborhood of about a year and a half (00:53:59) to deliver or to develop a warhead, and that's to affix to the missile. (00:54:03) So it's sort of the three legs of the nuclear stool, right? (00:54:06) The weapons-grade uranium, the missiles to deliver it, and the warhead. (00:54:14) So I just want to sort of define terms so that when we're having this big debate, (00:54:18) If I can jump in here on this point too, and I'll turn it back over to you, but I actually have a bit of a correction to make for anyone who's seen me on Pierce Morgan or Sager and Crystal. (00:54:28) I actually oversimplified and made a mistake. (00:54:31) I've been off of the Iran nuclear beat for a little while doing other things. (00:54:34) And so I'd like to take this opportunity to clarify, and I'm going to try to clarify with them on their shows too, was (00:54:42) I have an old friend of mine used to make nuclear bombs, Gordon Prather, and I only just found out that he died two years ago, unfortunately. (00:54:50) He used to write for us at anti-war.com. (00:54:51) He's a brilliant nuclear physicist and H-bomb developer. (00:54:55) And he had really taught me all about this stuff. (00:54:58) And so I'm not correcting anything you said. (00:55:02) What he said essentially is right, maybe add a little more detail. (00:55:05) The easiest kind of nuke to make out of uranium is a simple gun type nuke, like they dropped on Hiroshima. (00:55:10) It was a little boy. (00:55:11) It's essentially a shotgun firing a uranium slug into a uranium target. (00:55:17) And that's enough. (00:55:18) They didn't even test it. (00:55:18) They knew it would work. (00:55:20) It was so easy to do, to do the Hiroshima bomb. (00:55:22) The Nagasaki bomb was a plutonium implosion bomb. (00:55:26) It's virtually always plutonium that's used in implosion bombs. (00:55:31) And (00:55:32) and in miniaturized nuclear warheads that can be married to missiles, right? (00:55:38) As opposed to a bomb you can drop out of the belly of a plane. (00:55:40) That's what he was saying, right? (00:55:41) So gun type nuke, you can't put that on a missile. (00:55:44) That is by far the easiest kind of nuclear weapon for Iran to make if they broke out and made one, right? (00:55:50) But it'd essentially be useless to them, right? (00:55:52) What are they going to do? (00:55:52) Drive it to Israel in a flatbed truck, right? (00:55:55) They got no way to deliver that. (00:55:56) So they could drop it as a bomb. (00:55:58) Yeah, they could test it in the desert and beat their chest, but essentially that's all they could do. (00:56:01) Or you could drop it from a plane like we did, as Scott said with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (00:56:08) Very slim chance of Iranian heavy bombers getting through Israeli airspace. (00:56:12) But anyway, but to make an implosion bomb, they would have to do years worth of experiments, unless the Chinese or the Russians just gave them the software or gave them the finished blueprints or something, which is no indication of that whatsoever. (00:56:25) The only people who gave them blueprints for a nuclear bomb was the CIA. (00:56:28) Remember Operation Merlin, where they just changed one little thing and gave them nuclear bomb blueprints, but the Iranians didn't take the bait? (00:56:35) The blueprints were given, just to clarify, it's just interesting. (00:56:38) just in the terms of the history of proliferation. (00:56:41) So Iran's initial nuclear program, which is built on centrifuges, as Scott and I have been talking about, that was actually given to the designs that were given to them by Aku Khan, who was really the father of the Pakistani nuclear program. (00:56:56) And he actually stole those designs from the Dutch and handed it to the Iranians. (00:57:02) He also handed it to the North Koreans and the Libyans and others. (00:57:05) So they were able to illicitly (00:57:07) acquire this technology and release the blueprints for this technology from the father of the Pakistani bomb. (00:57:12) So I think that's an interesting point. (00:57:14) But if you don't mind, because as I said earlier, because Bill Clinton clamped down on the Chinese and wouldn't let them sell, or anyone else, wouldn't let them sell them light water reactors. (00:57:23) So then they went to AQ Khan and bought the stuff on the black market. (00:57:26) Yeah, and they obviously bought heavy water reactors from the Russians, which they've been using for (00:57:30) electricity. (00:57:31) I want to just get to the second thing I think it's just important for listeners to know, and then I want to get to JCPOA. (00:57:37) I was in the middle of saying, though, when you're trying to make a uranium implosion bomb or a plutonium implosion bomb, it's a much more difficult task than putting together a gun-type nuke. (00:57:46) It takes an extraordinary amount of testing, and that's why he repeated, probably unknowingly, some false propaganda about Iran having this advanced testing facility. (00:57:56) I think he was implying, correct me if I'm wrong, he was, I'm pretty sure you're implying at Parchin that they were (00:58:00) testing these implosion systems. (00:58:02) But that's completely debunked. (00:58:03) It's completely false. (00:58:04) What they were testing, what they were doing at Parchin with that implosion chamber was making nano diamonds. (00:58:10) And the scientist in charge of it was a Ukrainian who had studied in the Soviet Union at this military university where they said, oh, see, they study nuclear stuff there. (00:58:19) But that wasn't his speciality. (00:58:20) His name was Dan Elenko. (00:58:21) And he was a specialist in making nano diamonds. (00:58:24) And that facility was vouched by Robert Kelly in the Christian Science Monitor, told (00:58:30) Scott Peterson of the Christian Science Monitor, that stuff was nonsense. (00:58:34) That facility, that implosion chamber could not be used for testing an implosion system for nuclear weapons. (00:58:41) And I know from Dr. (00:58:42) Prather telling me that when the Americans were doing this, and the Russians too, that they tested all their implosion systems outside. (00:58:49) And you have to do it over and over and over again with lead instead of uranium in the core. (00:58:54) And then you take all this high-speed X-ray film of the thing, and it's this huge and drawn out and incredibly complicated engine (00:59:00) engineering process. (00:59:01) And this is probably why the week before the war, the CIA said, not only do we think that they're a year away from having enough nuclear material to make one bomb, we think they're three years away from having a finished warhead. (00:59:13) That must have been assuming that they would try to make an implosion system that you could put on, in other words, miniaturize and put on a missile as opposed, in other words, skipping a gun-type nuke that would be useless to them. (00:59:26) So it's very important to understand then that if (00:59:30) if they have a uranium route to the bomb, if they withdraw from the treaty and kick out the IAEA inspectors and announce that now we're making nuclear bombs, they can either, one, race to a gun-type nuke that's essentially useless to them, or they can take their ponderous ass time trying to figure out how to make an implosion system work. (00:59:50) First of all, I'm glad Scott knows about what's going on at Parchin because the IAEA doesn't, and they've been asking the Iranians. (00:59:56) That's not true. (00:59:56) The Iranians told the IAEA, you can inspect any five out of 10 (00:59:59) 10 facilities here, carte blanche, go ahead, and they did and found nothing. (01:00:04) Then they made-up the lies about the implosion chamber later and the IAEA, again, Robert Kelly is the American IAEA guy, debunked that in the Christian Science Monitor. (01:00:12) All right, so (01:00:14) I want to just, again, just put it out there for your listeners. (01:00:16) They should just Google Amad, A-M-A-D program, and they should learn about the Amad program because it's detailed in U.S. (01:00:25) government documents, experts in Iran's nuclear program, including David Albright, who actually saw the archive, went in there, wrote a whole book on it. (01:00:33) And there's a lot of detail about how Iran had an active nuclear weapons program called Amad to build 5 nuclear weapons. (01:00:40) But I want to (01:00:42) get to the JCPOA, because I actually think that's an interesting discussion for Scott and I to have, because I think there's things that we agree on there and things that we disagree on. (01:00:50) So this is a 2015 nuclear deal that Obama reaches. (01:00:54) It's negotiated painstakingly over two years between 2013 and 2015. (01:00:59) And it follows the interim agreement that the United States negotiated with Iran. (01:01:03) And it's in that interim agreement in 2013 where the United States for the first time actually gives Iran the right to enrich uranium. (01:01:12) There were five UN Security Council resolutions passed with the support of Russia and China that said Iran should have no enrichment capability and no plutonium reprocessing capability because of the fears that Iran would turn that into a nuclear weapons program. (01:01:25) But in 2013, they give that up. (01:01:27) 2015, we reached the JCPOA. (01:01:29) And under the JCPOA, Iran is allowed to retain enrichment capability and reprocessing capability, but over time. (01:01:36) So Scott mentioned these sunsets, and just want your listeners to understand what these sunsets are. (01:01:41) Essentially, the restrictions that are placed on Iran's nuclear program, and there's some really serious restrictions placed on it, especially in the short term. (01:01:48) And Scott's right, the enriched material has to be shipped out, not to the French, but to the Russians. (01:01:54) And there's restrictions on Iran's ability to operate these facilities at Atanz and Fordow. (01:02:01) They're not closed. (01:02:02) They still remain open, but there are restrictions on what they can do with it. (01:02:05) There's also restrictions on Iran's ability to test and install advanced centrifuges. (01:02:12) Now, the reason you'd want an advanced centrifuge rather than the first generation centrifuge that Aku Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, gave to the Iranians is (01:02:21) You need a smaller number of these centrifuges to produce weapons-grade uranium. (01:02:25) If it's smaller, Lex, it's easier to hide, right? (01:02:28) You can put it in clandestine facilities without this large enrichment centrifuge footprint. (01:02:34) So there's restrictions on these advanced centrifuge R&D. (01:02:38) And Iran gets significant sanctions relief as part of this. (01:02:42) But the whole assumption here, (01:02:44) from both an Iranian and American perspective is these restrictions are going to sunset. (01:02:47) They're going to disappear over time. (01:02:49) In fact, 2025 is the year where some of the significant restrictions on Iran's capabilities begin to sunset, and all of them are effectively gone by 2031. (01:03:00) So in 2031, Iran can emerge with an industrial size enrichment capability. (01:03:05) They can emerge with advanced centrifuges that they can install in as many enrichment facilities as they want to build. (01:03:14) And Iran can enrich to higher and higher levels. (01:03:17) So they can go from 3.67 to 20%. (01:03:19) They can go to 60%. (01:03:21) There's nothing in the JCPOA that actually prohibits them from going to 90% enrichment. (01:03:26) And I think at the time, the Obama administration's theory of the case was, yeah, sure, in 15 years' time, but in 15 years' time, we'll be gone. (01:03:36) Hopefully it'll be a different government in Iran, and maybe we can renegotiate a different agreement with that government that will extend the sunsets. (01:03:44) So that's the JCPOA. (01:03:46) The reason that critics of the JCPOA, and I was one of them, we objected to the deal is not because it didn't have some short-term temporary restrictions that were useful, but that if you got it wrong and there was the shame regime in power in 15 years, that regime could emerge with this (01:04:04) huge nuclear program with the capabilities to develop nuclear weapons in these multiple hardened sites. (01:04:11) Iran, we estimated, would have a trillion dollars in sanctions relief over that 15-year period. (01:04:16) And if you got it wrong that it was the same regime in power as it had been in power in 2015, then you had some difficulties. (01:04:23) Okay, I just wanted to lay out the case against the JCPO. (01:04:27) Now, the steel man, (01:04:28) Scott's argument, I think there's a legitimate argument because I actually didn't support the withdrawal from the agreement. (01:04:35) President Trump withdrew in 2018. (01:04:37) I did a similar version of what Scott was suggesting was I thought that the United States should negotiate with the Europeans. (01:04:44) the French, the Germans, and the UK, who are part of the original deal, extend the sunsets as an agreement between the United States and Europe, and then collectively go to the Iranians and say, let's renegotiate this agreement to extend the sunsets. (01:04:58) If you don't want a nuclear weapons program, then you should agree that you don't need these capabilities, and let's extend the sunsets for another 15, 20, 30 years. (01:05:08) President Trump. (01:05:08) Somebody give me a screenshot of this. (01:05:10) Give me a pound, dude. (01:05:11) There you go. (01:05:13) Agreement. (01:05:13) There we go. (01:05:14) That makes my heart feel so good. (01:05:15) And I think the Ayatollah would have gone for it too. (01:05:17) Well, so I'm not sure if he would have, but let's just a little bit of history. (01:05:21) I think it's just useful for the viewers to know, again, the context, especially when Scott and I agree. (01:05:27) So a process was begun. (01:05:28) I'm loving this. (01:05:29) By the Trump administration. (01:05:31) Trump appointed Brian Hook, or Secretary Pompeo actually appointed Brian Hook, who was the lead Iran envoy, and he began a process of talking to the Europeans. (01:05:39) Now the Europeans actually rejected this idea. (01:05:42) And so at some point, Trump said, look, if the Europeans aren't prepared to get on side, then I'm out of the deal. (01:05:47) I'm out of the deal. (01:05:48) And if you're interested, I can talk about why I thought we should have stayed in the deal, because I thought you gave us some important restrictions in the short term, certain leverage. (01:05:56) But Trump decides to withdraw from that agreement because he recognizes that the fatal flaw of the agreement, the fatal flaws of the agreement are, one, giving them any enrichment capability, especially at an industrial size within 15 years. (01:06:10) And 2, are the sunsets as (01:06:12) Scott said, which under which these restrictions are going to go away and Iran's going to end up with a massive nuclear program. (01:06:19) I think that's just important. (01:06:21) We can talk about the JCPOA, the process and everything else if you're interested. (01:06:24) I'd like to go ahead and quickly accuse the FBI and the CIA of framing Trump for treason with Russia and pushing the Russiagate hoax. (01:06:32) I'm trying to agree with my friend here because what it is, that completely ruined Donald Trump's ability to engage in real diplomacy with Russia for his entire first term. (01:06:42) certainly for the first three years of it. (01:06:44) He was completely handcuffed. (01:06:46) It was terrible, as I'm sure you're well aware, for the future, now our past and current history of Ukraine, as well as for this deal too. (01:06:56) Why couldn't Trump pick up the phone? (01:06:58) I don't know the details here, but I'll take his word for it, that the British and the French and the Germans (01:07:03) weren't being nice to Trump. (01:07:04) They didn't like him. (01:07:05) They didn't want to do it. (01:07:06) Why couldn't he pick up the phone and say, hey, Putin, I need you to call the Ayatollah for me and tell him, hey, you'd like to see him lift these sunsets too and this and that. (01:07:15) Why? (01:07:15) Because they framed him for treason. (01:07:17) So he was completely unable to engage in real diplomacy with Russia. (01:07:21) And I bet that he'd agree with me on that one too. (01:07:24) So next, actually, could I just say one thing interesting? (01:07:26) And again, I think it's going to be a later topic. (01:07:28) And so it's going to be a provocative statement, but. (01:07:32) I think let's put it on the table. (01:07:33) I absolutely agree with Scott. (01:07:35) I mean, I think it was a travesty that of the accusations against Donald Trump as a Russian agent. (01:07:45) I mean, completely debunked, but it did. (01:07:48) I think it paralyzed his presidency for two, 2 1/2 years. (01:07:52) I agree with Scott. (01:07:53) The idea that you would accuse the president of the United States of being a foreign agent for Vladimir Putin, I think is (01:08:02) unfounded. (01:08:03) And I thought at the time disgraceful and I thought it was really important. (01:08:06) I think Scott did really good work in debunking that. (01:08:09) I would say that just a couple of days ago, I was watching a podcast, Scott was on and he accused Trump of being an agent for Netanyahu and the Israeli government. (01:08:18) So I think again, the accusations that the president of the United States is a foreign agent for some foreign government, (01:08:24) I think we should just put all of that aside in any discussion and just say President Trump makes his own decisions, whether we agree with him or agree with him, but he's not working for the FSB and he's not working for Mossad. (01:08:36) President Trump makes his own decisions based on American national security. (01:08:39) Now, I was making a point. (01:08:40) That's hyperbole making a point, but he did. (01:08:42) In fact, could you Google this for me? (01:08:43) Because I always forget exactly how many hundreds of millions of dollars that he took from Sheldon Adelson and Miriam Adelson. (01:08:50) Who are Americans, by the way. (01:08:51) Who are Americans, who Sheldon Adelson said his only regret in life is that he served in the American army instead of the IDF and said America should nuke Iran in order to get them to give up their nuclear weapons. (01:09:01) He said, I have one issue, one, Israel. (01:09:04) And they gave Trump (01:09:06) hundreds of millions of dollars over 3 campaigns. (01:09:09) That's not just a jeez. (01:09:10) I really hope you'll think of me in the future. (01:09:12) Scott, first of all, a couple of things. (01:09:14) So one, there's a lot of people that are friends with Trump and try to gain influence. (01:09:19) I believe that Trump is an American, is making his own decisions. (01:09:22) Let's, for the purpose of this conversation, just focus on that and see what are the right decisions and what are the wrong decisions. (01:09:29) And (01:09:30) I wonder what decisions I could get you to make if I gave you hundreds of millions of dollars. (01:09:34) Well, me personally, you couldn't give me, it doesn't matter. (01:09:37) I couldn't even get you, I couldn't get you to drop in on a ramp or nothing for 100 million bucks. (01:09:41) Nothing. (01:09:41) You cannot control my decisions with money. (01:09:44) It's the American system, Lex. (01:09:46) That's how it works. (01:09:46) It's money, right? (01:09:48) We can go down that route. (01:09:49) It's the same if we were talking about Archer Daniels Midland Company throwing hundreds of millions of dollars around. (01:09:54) They get policies based on their hundreds of millions of dollars. (01:09:57) The squeaky wheel gets the grease, right? (01:09:59) All that. (01:10:00) So, Lex, I think you're right. (01:10:00) I mean, I think Elon Musk spent, what, $400 million helping Trump get elected? (01:10:04) And obviously, there are a number of philanthropists, I think (01:10:08) his son, Don Junior, has had a lot of influence in who gets selected in these positions in the Pentagon, NSC. (01:10:12) I think Tucker Colson has had a lot of influence. (01:10:15) So I think, as you say, he surrounds himself with people who have certain ideas, ideologies, policies. (01:10:21) The president makes his own decisions. (01:10:22) I just want to touch on just one thing, because I don't want to leave this alone, just out of respect for the victims of Iran-backed terrorism and hostage-taking and assassinations since 1979. (01:10:36) this is the regime that took our, took hostages in 79, took our diplomats hostage. (01:10:43) Scott says, you know, 83 was really the only thing that happened and throws out a lot of information. (01:10:49) Certainly some pretty breathtaking accusations that somehow the Israelis knew about this and didn't tell the Americans. (01:10:55) It's an Assad officer's accusation. (01:10:58) Yeah. (01:10:58) Victor Ostrovsky is his name. (01:11:00) Yeah, I know exactly who he is, and he has been widely discredited. (01:11:05) and having an axe to grind with Mossad. (01:11:07) But anyway, not only 83, but all through the 90s, the 2000s, 2010s, 2020s, there have been hundreds of attacks, of assassinations, of hostage taking. (01:11:22) There are thousands of Americans who have been killed and maimed by the regime. (01:11:26) Can you be specific what you're talking about? (01:11:28) Yeah, I mean, I can give you a whole list. (01:11:30) Sure. (01:11:30) Literally, I'm happy to pull it up. (01:11:33) Lex, I shared it with you. (01:11:34) It's a long list of attacks all through the 80s and 90s. (01:11:37) I mean, everything from the Khobar Towers. (01:11:42) The Khobar Towers was Al-Qaeda. (01:11:44) That was Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. (01:11:46) Let him lay it out. (01:11:47) All right, let's hear him. (01:11:49) I got my pen in my hand. (01:11:50) Go ahead. (01:11:51) And again, according to U.S. (01:11:52) intelligence fightings, it was actually Hezbollah that worked with Al-Qaeda, trained Al-Qaeda in that attack in the Khobar Towers. (01:12:00) They were kidnapping our diplomats in Beirut. (01:12:04) They were, they launched attacks against our soldiers while in Iraq. (01:12:11) The notion that somehow- Or you debunked that. (01:12:12) No, I don't think, well, you say you debunked it, you just made your claim. (01:12:17) But those were Iran-backed militias, backed by (01:12:23) by Qasem Soleimani, who Scott referred to, who was the commander of the RGC Quds Force, who supplied them with those IEDs or those EFPs, actually, those explosives. (01:12:33) Well, again, this has been all confirmed by... (01:12:37) Why don't you search Alyssa Rubin, New York Times, EFP Factory? (01:12:41) Or you can look in the Christian Science Monitor, Operation Eagle Claw, where they found these things. (01:12:47) It's easy to find in my book. (01:12:49) You can flip right to soda straws and EFPs, and you see where I have all my citations for the solid dozen American newspaper reporters who were embedded with American soldiers who found these factories in Iraqi Shiistan, okay, with Iraqi Arabs working the machines, not Iran. (01:13:09) So I'd like your viewers to Google not just a couple of sources, but actually Google the US government reports that did a whole after-action report on the Iraq war. (01:13:19) All the mistakes were made in the Iraq war, and there were a legion of mistakes made. (01:13:23) But it was very clear that Iran had actually provided the technology, the training, the funding for these Iran-backed militias to kill Americans. (01:13:32) I mean, I could see Scott... (01:13:34) I mean, still method from Lebanese Hezbollah that got it from the IRA. (01:13:37) They didn't even get the technique (01:13:39) from the Iranians at all. (01:13:40) So Lebanese Hezbollah, as I'm sure all your listeners know, has been trained, financed. (01:13:45) It's true, but they got it supported by Iran for many years. (01:13:48) And that design did not come from Persia. (01:13:50) Yeah. (01:13:51) So again, I think we all admit, Scott admits as well, that Hezbollah was trained, financed, (01:13:56) and supported by Iran. (01:13:58) Hezbollah's been responsible for many of these terrorist attacks. (01:14:00) Where does Hezbollah come from? (01:14:01) It's a reaction to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, where they went after the PLO and horribly mistreated the poor local Iraqi Shiites until they rose up and created these militias to fight in self-defense. (01:14:11) That's where Hezbollah comes from. (01:14:12) Hezbollah was actually created by the RAGC before the Israeli invasion. (01:14:15) Why this was the CIA's Bin Laden unit, Michael Shoyer says it was Osama bin Laden. (01:14:20) and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that did the Khobar Towers attack. (01:14:23) And who did they kill? (01:14:24) They killed 19 American airmen who were stationed there to bomb Iraq from bases of Saudi Arabia under the Israeli insisted upon dual containment policy. (01:14:34) That's amazing. (01:14:34) That came from Yitzhak Shamir, who had sent his man Martin Indyk to work for Bill Clinton and push the dual containment policy is where that comes from in the 1st place. (01:14:45) The main reason al-Qaeda turned against the United States and the Khobar Towers attack was bin Laden and he bragged (01:14:50) about it himself to Abdel Bari Atwan, the reporter from Al-Quds al-Arabi in London, and spent days with him and bragged all about it and blessed the martyrs and the rest of that, and is widely discredited the claim that it was Iranian-backed Shiite Hezbollah that did the Khobar Towers attack. (01:15:10) That was what the Saudi government told the US. (01:15:14) In fact, there's a great documentary about John O'Neill, who was the head of FBI counter-terrorism, who told Louis Free (01:15:20) Boss, the Saudis are blowing smoke up your ass about this Hezbollah thing. (01:15:25) It was Al-Qaeda that did it. (01:15:26) And then Louis Free got all upset because he used the A word. (01:15:30) He's a very conservative Catholic guy, Louis Free, and then refused to listen to another word from John O'Neill about it. (01:15:36) So what we know now from Scott, because he's given certainly a lot of context to how he actually sees things, is here's who lies to you and here's who doesn't. (01:15:46) US government lies to you. (01:15:48) Israeli government (01:15:49) lies to you. (01:15:51) The Israelis clearly lie to you. (01:15:53) Mendacious bunch. (01:15:54) Saudis lie to you. (01:15:56) But you know who doesn't lie to you, actually? (01:15:58) Hezbollah doesn't lie to you. (01:16:00) Al Qaeda doesn't lie to you. (01:16:01) I didn't cite Al Qaeda or the Osama himself. (01:16:04) And the Aytollah Bahron. (01:16:05) I cited Michael Shawyer, the chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit, didn't I? (01:16:08) So make it clear here. (01:16:11) Hezbollah. (01:16:12) The Iranian. (01:16:13) You get that? (01:16:13) Scott, straight up, I hear you, but you're interrupting. (01:16:16) And like, please, just honestly, it's not about the content, but like, honestly. (01:16:19) How come you're not saying him? (01:16:20) Isn't that weird that you just said he trusts Hezbollah, even though he didn't say anything about trusting Hezbollah? (01:16:25) I'm not calling out the content. (01:16:26) I'm calling out the interruptions. (01:16:27) He hasn't interrupted you. (01:16:28) It's great. (01:16:29) I'm loving the back and forth. (01:16:31) It's great, but just a little less talking over each other. (01:16:34) That's all. (01:16:34) Yeah. (01:16:35) So, I mean, again, the sort of view of the regime in Iran, and I think Scott wisely said at the beginning of this discussion, like, what did you say? (01:16:42) I don't have any love for the Ayatollah. (01:16:45) I'm A Texan. (01:16:46) I don't have any love for the Ayatollah in Iran. (01:16:48) And yet, despite the fact Scott doesn't have love for the Ayatollah, and I agree with him, and I think he's being sincere, in every discussion that we've had on every topic, it's always about everyone's lying except the Ayatollah in Iran. (01:17:02) He's not lying about having a nuclear weapons program. (01:17:05) He didn't actually support all of these terrorist organizations that he founded, financed, and supported to kill Americans. (01:17:11) It wasn't the Ayatollah in Iran. (01:17:14) He's not lying about his deception campaign against the United States. (01:17:21) He's not lying about negotiations with the Americans. (01:17:25) It's the Americans' fault all the time. (01:17:27) So he's presented (01:17:29) all the time in Scott's conception here as a sincere actor who doesn't want to develop nuclear weapons, who doesn't actually want to kill Americans. (01:17:38) He's just always a victim of American and Israeli aggression. (01:17:41) I think it's an interesting conception. (01:17:43) I think let's talk about it. (01:17:44) And I mean, I'm fascinated by the conception because it's very contrary to mine, obviously. (01:17:50) It's very contrary to, I think, decades of overwhelming evidence that the Islamic Republic has been war with the United States since 1979. (01:17:58) And I don't take too much stock in what people say. (01:18:03) I take stock in what they do. (01:18:04) So, death to America, death to Israel could just be a slogan. (01:18:08) It could be just propaganda. (01:18:09) But when it's actually operationalized, then you start to ask, well, maybe it's not just propaganda. (01:18:16) Maybe it's intention operationalized into capabilities. (01:18:20) what we're forgetting here, and again, it's this causal relationship. (01:18:23) It's we aggress against Iran, and the Israelis aggress against Iran, and Iran is always reacting. (01:18:29) I mean, let's give the Iranians their due, because Khomeini made it very clear when he established the Islamic Republic that there will be a revolutionary and expansionist (01:18:39) regime, and they will expand their power through the Middle East. (01:18:42) And so he built, and to his credit, was very successful until October 7th, this axis of resistance, as he calls it, which are these terror proxy armies, Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Iraqi Shiite militias, the Houthis in Yemen, and certainly supporting the Assad regime in Syria. (01:19:00) He built a very, very (01:19:03) impressive and deadly axis that he turned against the United States and against Israel, which saw its culmination on October 7th. (01:19:10) I think after October 7th, that was a huge miscalculation for Khamenei, and we've seen the results of what's happened to his axis of resistance. (01:19:18) through quite devastating Israeli military capabilities over the past number of months. (01:19:23) But he has an ideology. (01:19:25) And I think where I agree with Scott is I'm not sure if Khamenei would actually use a nuclear weapon against Israel, the United States, because I don't think Khamenei is suicidal. (01:19:35) But I think what Khamenei wants is he wants a nuclear weapon, (01:19:39) as a backstop for his conventional power. (01:19:42) It's very much the Kim Jong-un model of North Korea, right? (01:19:46) I'm going to have nuclear weapons with ICBMs to threaten America, but what I'm actually going to do is threaten South Korea with having massive conventional capabilities on the DMZ that I could take South Korea in a week. (01:19:56) I could destroy in a week. (01:19:57) So you, the United States and South Korea, have no