Amos Yadlin
My name is
Amos Yadlin . I used to be a general in the Israeli Air Force and
Intelligence and am now running a think tank in Tel Aviv. Looking into the
future agreement with Iran we put behind me the initial agreement and what is
really important is the final agreement . Two questions. What are the parameters
that you see as a red line to insure that Iran would be moving backward from
the bomb as much as possible, and what is your plan B if an agreement cannot be
reached?
President Obama:
Well, with
respect to the end state, I want to be very clear - there’s nothing in this agreement or document that
grants Iran a right to enrich. We have
been very clear that given its past behavior and given existing UN resolutions
and previous violations by Iran of its international obligations that we do not
recognize such a right and, by the way, negotiations break down there will be
no additional international recognition that’s been obtained .This deal goes
away and we go back to where we were before the Geneva agreement. Iran will
continue to be subject to all the sanctions that we have been putting in place
in the past and we may seek additional ones. But, I think what we have said is we
can envision a comprehensive agreement that involves extraordinary constraints
and verification mechanisms and intrusive inspections but that permits Iran to
have a peaceful nuclear program.
Now, in terms of specifics we know that they
don’t need to have an underground fortified facility like Fordo in order to have
a peaceful nuclear program. They certainly don’t need a heavy water reactor at
Arak in order to have a peaceful nuclear program. They do not need some of the
advanced centrifuges that they currently possess in order to have a limited
peaceful nuclear program. And so the
question is ultimately is going to be are they prepared to role back some of
the advancements that they’ve made that could not be justified by simply wanting
some modest peaceful nuclear power, but frankly, hint at a desire to have breakout
capacity and go right to the edge of breakout capacity. If we can move that significantly back then
that is I think a net win.
Now you will
hear arguments including potentially from the Prime Minster that we can’t
accept any enrichment on Iranian soil. Period. Full stop. End of conversation. And this takes
me back to the point I made earlier. One
can envision an ideal world in which Iran said we’ll destroy every element and facility
, you name it - is all gone. I can envision a world in which Congress passed
every one of my bills that I’ve put forward. There are a lot things that I can
envision that would be wonderful but
precisely because we don’t trust the nature of the Iranian regime I think that
we have to be more realistic and ask ourselves what puts us in a strong
position to assure ourselves that Iran is not having a nuclear weapon and protect
us. What is required to accomplish that
and how does that compare to other options that we might take, and it is my
strong belief that we can envision an end state that gives us an assurance that
even if they have some modest enrichment capability it is so constrained and
the inspections are so intrusive that they as a practical matter do not have
breakout capacity. Theoretically they might still have some. But frankly,
theoretically they will always have some, because as I said, the technology
here is available to any good physics student and pretty much any university
around the world, and they have already gone through the cycle to t the point
where the knowledge we are not going to be able to eliminate, but what we can
do is eliminate the incentive for them to want to do this.
And with respect
to what happens if this breaks down I won’t go into details. I will say that if we cannot get the kind of
comprehensive end state that satisfies us and the world community and the P5+1,
then the pressure that we have been applying on and the options that I’ve made clear I can avail myself of, including
the military option, is one that we would consider and prepare for. And we’ve
always said that, so that does not change. But last point I’ll make on this.
When I hear people who criticize the Geneva deal, say it’s got to be all or
nothing, I would just remind them if it’s nothing if we did not even try for
next six months to do this. All the breakout capacity we are concerned about would
accelerate e during these six months. Arak would be further along, the advanced
centrifuges would have been put in place. They would be that much closer to
breakout capacity six months from now. And that is why it is important for us
to test out this proposition