00:00Now, Iran is holding talks with Britain, France and Germany on its nuclear program this Tuesday.
00:06The delegation is meeting in Geneva amid the European nation's threat to trigger a snapback mechanism
00:12that would reintroduce UN sanctions that were lifted under the Iran nuclear deal.
00:18This, unless Tehran agrees to restore cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency's inspectors.
00:25Ahead of the talks, the Iranian and Russian presidents have discussed Iran's nuclear program,
00:31although the two did not elaborate the content of their call.
00:35Iranian officials later thanked Vladimir Putin for supporting Tehran's right to enrichment.
00:41Joining me now from Washington, D.C. is Mark Fitzpatrick from the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
00:48Mark, thank you for your time.
00:50Europe is about to reimpose sanctions.
00:53Do you think this pressure is actually going to lead to real progress at today's meeting?
01:02Depends on how you define progress.
01:04If sanctions are reimposed, it won't make Iran any more cooperative.
01:11I don't know if it'll have much economic impact either.
01:13It'll deteriorate the situation.
01:15But the question is whether the threat of sanctions would induce Iran to be more cooperative with the IEA and to resume negotiations with the United States.
01:28I think part of that might happen, but most likely outcome really is that the can will be kicked down the road.
01:36The deadline for imposing these snapback sanctions, I think, may be extended.
01:42Given what you've just been saying, is it the case that by Tehran agreeing to take part, is all they're doing is simply trying to stop sanctions from being enforced?
01:52Well, yes, absolutely.
01:56That certainly is Iran's goal, is to stop the reimposition of the UN sanctions, which the three European parties have been talking about that for a couple of years now,
02:09because of Iran's failure to adequately answer the IEA's questions about nuclear activity that was discovered that Iran had never reported,
02:21and that points to potential weapons work.
02:25So this snapback idea has been in the works for a couple of years, and then it all got much worse in June when Iran's nuclear facilities were attacked by Israel and the United States,
02:36and then Iran stopped all cooperation with the IEAEA.
02:42And as you say, since that conflict with Israel, where does this leave the Iranian government as such when it comes to this issue?
02:51Are they wanting to make any compromises at all?
02:56Well, yeah, I think that there's a real compromise that both sides could agree to,
03:03and that would be to invite the IEAEA back into Iran, back into the destroyed facilities so the IEA could see for themselves at Natanz and Fordow and Esfahan.
03:18There's no political, big political reason not to do that.
03:22Iran has made accusations that the IEA might have been complicit in the bombing by providing information.
03:31That's really not true at all.
03:35Yeah, Iran has also accused the IEA of not criticizing the bombing.
03:40Well, that's a political issue.
03:41I think if Iran can invite the IEA back to doing what it was doing before the bombing, that might be enough.
03:48And Iran probably still, I don't think they will ever answer the IEA's questions about that unreported nuclear activity years ago.
03:59But getting at least back to where we were before the bombing would be progress, and then they can talk more.
04:06Are there disagreements within the Iranian government about how to deal with this issue?
04:13Oh, I'm sure that there are disagreements.
04:16You know, Iran is not a monolithic state where the supreme leader's word is authoritarian command and everybody salutes.
04:26No, there's a lot of policy discussions in Iran, and they tend to have to come together in a consensus before they move forward.
04:35And that's, you know, it delays decision-making in Iran.
04:39I haven't heard explicitly which groups are advocating what, but generally pragmatists are more eager to cooperate with international organizations, more eager to engage in diplomatic solutions.
04:56Hardliners, of which there are more and their position has been strengthened after the bombing, don't want to make compromises.
05:04Is there a sense, after Israel's bombing, of the status, of the state of Iran's nuclear program?
05:13I mean, just how bad it was hit?
05:15There are big questions about that, and that's one reason I, for one, would really like to see the IEA go back in and would get a better picture of it.
05:26The biggest question is, what happened with the 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium that we know Iran produced before the bombing, but because it was in an IEA report?
05:43And that highly enriched uranium was in various tanks, and we know probably that those tanks are intact because there was no release of the uranium hexafluoride gas.
05:59Nothing was reported on that.
06:02So these tanks, did Iran remove them from enrichment facilities before they were bombed, or were they in the facilities and then they were bombed, and then Iran would have to dig into the rubble to acquire them?
06:19That's one big question.
06:21And another question is, how badly were the enrichment cascades at Fordow and Natanz damaged?
06:30The bombs did not completely obliterate these facilities, contrary to President Trump's claims.
06:37They certainly shook them up a lot, and I'm sure there's quite a bit of damage.
06:40But some of those cascades certainly were not destroyed, and it would be interesting to know how many of them survived.
06:51And then that would tell us how much time it would take Iran to further enrich the uranium to produce weapons.
06:57As you say there, Mark, many more questions than answers.
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