It’s launch time for the Iran nuclear deal, but will there be any action?

Read the Full Transcript

• HARI SREENIVASAN:

  Iran's agreement with the United States and five other world powers to roll back its nuclear weapons program has officially taken effect today.

  In Tehran, the head of Iran's nuclear program said they would begin dismantling uranium enrichment centrifuges. But Iran said that step is contingent on receiving formal notification from the U.S. that longstanding economic sanctions are being lifted.

  For some insight, I'm joined from Washington by David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security.

  Give us an example of all the logistics that are necessary to do something like this.

  DAVID ALBRIGHT, President, Institute for Science and International Security: Iran has created a very large nuclear program.

  And it has a — particularly a large uranium enrichment program that has 18,000, 19,000 centrifuges. And it has to dismantle over 10,000 of those centrifuges and put them in monitored storage. And those centrifuges that are dismantled would be inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

  And so it's a large job. Now, how quickly could Iran do it, no one knows. I mean, they could bring in a bulldozer into halls that hold the centrifuges and just bulldoze them into scrap. But if they want to take them out carefully, one by one, and store them, so they could then reuse them at a later date if they reneged on the deal, for example, then it could take them several months.

• HARI SREENIVASAN:

  There seem to be different incentives for the sides on how fast this all could happen.

• DAVID ALBRIGHT:

  Well, I think the U.S. has an incentive to have it go on as long as possible.

  I mean, they want the job done thoroughly. They want to make sure that Iran hasn't sort of done any subterfuge. There's a lot of — a lot of things that have to be done. And so I think, from the U.S. point of view, slowness is good.

  From the Iran point of view, they obviously want to go as fast as possible. They want to get this done this fall. They want to get the sanctions, the major part of the sanctions off on implementation day, and hopefully have that done before they have their next election, which could be as early as February, from what I understand.

• HARI SREENIVASAN:

  And there's also been tensions, at least on the West, about the who inspects what question. Iran has said that certain sites will be inspected by their own people, which has caused a lot of alarm bells to go off elsewhere in the world.

• DAVID ALBRIGHT:

  One of the big unresolved issues in this whole process is, how good are the IAEA inspections going to be?

  They're not — Iran has refused to allow the IAEA access to military sites, except under extraordinary circumstances, one of which happened recently, but it was — the IAEA wasn't allowed to do its normal process of taking what are called environmental samples.

  The Iranians did it under IAEA supervision. That's not the normal way to do it. There's concerns it's weaker than what is normal. For example, what Japan accepts in terms of access, intrusiveness of inspections, Iran is resisting.

  And it's unclear how that is going to come out. But, where it really doesn't matter much in Japan, I mean, where we — where we trust Japan, it sure matters in Iran. And how this plays out over the next several months is going to be very important to see whether this deal is actually verifiable in the long run.

• HARI SREENIVASAN:

  And none of this happens in a vacuum.

  There is Iran's support of Hezbollah, their involvement in the Syrian war. I mean, all of these things are still playing on the minds of everyone else in the world watching while this specific inspections process works.

• DAVID ALBRIGHT:

  Well, that's right. And the Middle East is a very tough place, but the nuclear deal was designed to work in that tough environment.

  Now, where — one issue that it touches upon the deal, which is a little more problematic, is the whole question of missiles. And Iran's recent launch of a missile is very corrosive on this deal, because, in the end, if Iran does renege on this deal or just outlasts the deal — it doesn't last that long, based on the timelines of the Middle East — and it builds nuclear weapons, those weapons will only have meaning if they are put on ballistic missiles.

  And those ballistic missiles are going to have to be accurate and fast. And Iran is working on those now. And so I think the United States has to find a way to start limiting Iran's ability to work on ballistic missiles, again, in parallel to the nuclear deal.

• HARI SREENIVASAN:

  All right, David Albright, joining us from Washington, thanks so much.

• DAVID ALBRIGHT:

  Thank you.