The Daily - A Difficult Diplomatic Triangle

Episode Date: April 19, 2021

When a nuclear fuel enrichment site in Iran blew up this month, Tehran immediately said two things: The explosion was no accident, and the blame lay with Israel.Such an independent action by Israel would be a major departure from a decade ago, when the country worked in tandem with the United States to set back Iran’s nuclear ambitions.We look at what the blast says about relations between the United States, Iran and Israel.Guest: David E. Sanger, a White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times.  Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: After the blackout at the nuclear plant in Iran, Tehran threatened reprisals, while Washington denied any involvement in the apparent attack.Iran vowed to increase uranium enrichment in response to the explosion.Another round of talks in Vienna about reviving the 2015 nuclear accord has been positive, despite the feuding over the nuclear plant.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. A nuclear deal with Iran is essential to President Biden's foreign policy. So why did one of America's closest allies just try to blow it up? My colleague, White House reporter David Sanger, on the difficult diplomatic triangle of the U.S., Iran, and Israel. It's Monday, April 19th. It's Monday, April 19th.

David, describe what happened in Iran last Sunday. Well, Michael, it's still a little bit mysterious to us, but here's what we do know. There's a giant nuclear fuel enrichment site called Natanz in Iran, and that plant is basically like a military base. It's surrounded by barbed wire. There's anti-aircraft all over the place, right? There's a number of different buildings, but the central one looks almost like a warehouse. And deep underground, 25 feet underground, is something called the centrifuge hall. This is where these giant silvery machines stand in neat rows, spinning away at supersonic speeds, turning uranium gas into an enriched product. If you enrich it to just like 3% enrichment, you can use it for producing nuclear power. But if you keep going, you can use it to build a nuclear bomb.

And that's why this has always been a place that the U.S., Israel, the Europeans, everyone is focused on. There are probably more satellites looking at this building at any given time than any other spot on Earth. And a week ago Sunday, in the early morning hours, when there was no one around. An explosion at the Natanz nuclear facility destroyed an internal power system. It could take up to nine... Some kind of giant explosion ripped through the system and appeared to take out the power grid that keeps massive amounts of electricity flowing to these machines. It happened just hours after Iran launched a new set

of brand-new advanced centrifuges for faster uranium enrichment. We don't know if that explosion was caused by someone placing explosives down there. That's the most likely theory. The second theory is that there was some kind of a cyber attack that might have actually gotten to this power supply. In any case, the explosion was huge and it did take to this power supply. In any case, the explosion was huge. And it did take out the power supply. And when the power supply stops at a centrifuge facility, these spinning rotors inside these centrifuges

come to a crashing halt, taking out the centrifuges themselves. Now, one of the lawmakers has said that several thousand centrifuges have been destroyed. And by the Iranian account, 60 or 70 percent of the centrifuges down there were destroyed in seconds. So whatever happened in this closely watched, very important hall of centrifuges, it inflicted a tremendous amount of damage to this facility. That's right. And the Iranians came out and announced it right away.

And they had two things. They said, what happened in the Tans, this was no accident. And what we are hearing from different sources, it confirms that Israel was behind this incident. And this was the Israelis. The Israeli press is full of reports describing Israeli responsibility for it. So I don't think there's any doubt that it was the Israelis. But the fascinating part of this, Michael,

is that the Israelis decided to do this alone and just give sort of cursory warning to the Biden administration. They called basically moments before this was going to happen to say something big was going to happen to the Iranian program, but they didn't give Biden enough time to get in the way of it. enough time to get in the way of it. Well, tell us the story of how Israel gets to that point where coordination is no longer possible, it no longer happens, and the U.S. and Israel are no longer on the same page when it comes to Iran. Well, Michael, with President Obama, to Iran? Well, Michael, with President Obama, a huge philosophical gulf opened up between the Israelis and the Americans over how to best achieve their long-term goal, their shared goal

of keeping the Iranians from ever being able to have the capability to build a nuclear weapon. Obama's view was the only lasting way to go do this is to strike a diplomatic agreement, one in which Iran was lured back into the West, knew it could sell its oil, had economic prosperity going, and that there was a future. And his bet was that over time, And his bet was that over time, the Iranian leadership would pass away and there was a shot at getting a new, more liberal regime. The Israeli view was the complete opposite, that you could never trust any kind of diplomatic agreement that you reached with the Iranians, and that the only way to solve a problem like this is to periodically go back and do what the Israelis call mow the lawn. Which is what? It means you go in and you bomb or destroy a set of nuclear facilities, and when they grow back up, you pull out your lawnmower

and you go bomb it again. Wow. You keep doing this until they get the idea that whatever they build, you will destroy. That's a major philosophical difference. So how does that start to play out? The White House released this photo tonight showing President Obama on the phone with Irani and President Rouhani. It's the first time leaders of the two nations have had direct contact since the Carter administration. So Obama uses continued harmful sanctions on Iran to get the Iranians to sit down and negotiate a new nuclear deal. The key players are now in Geneva talking over Iran's nuclear program.

Obama sends a team out to negotiate with the Iranians. They meet in Vienna, they meet in Geneva, they meet all over Europe. And by early 2015... The Iranian foreign minister claimed the Iranians aren't close to reaching a nuclear deal with the United States. It's becoming pretty clear they're getting near a deal. We are very close. Very close. reaching a nuclear deal with the United States. It's becoming pretty clear they're getting near a deal.

We are very close, very close. Netanyahu is again speaking out against any potential nuclear deal. And the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is beside himself. Netanyahu says Rouhani is, quote, a wolf in sheep's clothing. And decides that the only way that he can assure Israel's own security is to stop this deal from happening. So he was furiously lobbying behind the scenes, enraging Obama. And then he actually came to Washington. Thank you, America. Thank you for everything you've done for Israel. And at the invitation of the Republican leadership, addressed a joint session of Congress. The deal now being negotiated, that deal will not prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

It would all but guarantee that Iran gets those weapons, lots of them. To denounce the president of the United States' leading piece of diplomacy around the world. Let me explain why. Netanyahu had a few arguments. The first was... Iran has proven time and again that it cannot be trusted. You're being deeply naive. that it cannot be trusted. You're being deeply naive. Iran was also caught, caught twice, not once, twice,

operating secret nuclear facilities in the Tanzan Qom, facilities that inspectors didn't even know existed. Right now, Iran could be hiding nuclear facilities that we don't know about. That the Iranians hid a bomb project in the early 2000s that the United States and others uncovered and that that project has never really gone away. Secondly, he was saying... Iran's goons in Gaza, its lackeys in Lebanon,

its revolutionary guards on the Golan Heights are clutching Israel with three tentacles of terror. You don't live in the neighborhood. We do. Iran doesn't have missiles that can reach New York and Chicago, but they sure have missiles that can reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. And his third argument was... Virtually all the restrictions on Iran's nuclear program will automatically expire in about a decade. At the end of the day, you'll never know if your agreement will be too short-lived to give you a permanent guarantee that the Iranians could not build a weapon.

Iran would then be free to build a huge nuclear capacity that could produce many, many nuclear bombs. And, you know, he had a point here because the main parts of the agreement as they were emerging in this negotiations allowed the Iranians to do more and more work by 2025. And by 2030, there would be no limits at all on the amount of nuclear fuel that Iran could produce. This is a bad deal. It's a very bad deal. We're better off without it. It was completely strange to have a foreign leader come and basically denounce a U.S. diplomatic effort in front of the Congress with applauding Republicans and some applauding Democrats and one man missing.

that day because he would not be seen sitting behind the prime minister of Israel politely clapping as the Israeli prime minister tried to dismantle the administration's main diplomatic achievement. But of course, the deal did ultimately get agreed to. Right. And for the last year of Obama's presidency, it was going into effect with constant criticism from the Israelis. But then Donald Trump gets elected, and suddenly things look very different. Right, because, of course, he rescinds the nuclear deal, which I'm sure makes Israel quite happy.

Yes, by the spring of 2018, he pulls out of the deal. He reimposes sanctions. The Iranians start producing nuclear material again a year later because they're going to put pressure on Trump just as he's putting pressure on them. And then, of course, Trump loses. And suddenly back in office is a man who had supported the deal, Joe Biden. He had offered to the Iranians back in February to start up talks and get back into the deal, both sides going into compliance.

There was sort of silence from Tehran for about six weeks, but then about a week and a half ago, they began to meet in Europe, back in Vienna. And so they were beginning to make some diplomatic progress. And then the explosion hits. So what Israel did back these nuclear talks, to blow up these delicate negotiations? That was the first thought of everybody in Washington. Here, Netanyahu has approved an operation that threatens the first big act of international diplomacy that Biden is attempting. And the big question that was hanging over this was, would the Israeli strategy succeed?

Would the Iranians simply walk away from these talks that have been so carefully and laboriously put together by Biden's team. We'll be right back. David, how should we think about Iran's reaction to this Israeli attack and how it will affect their willingness to re-engage nuclear talks with the United States? Well, the main thing to remember, Michael, is that there's no single Iranian view of these talks, just as there's no single American view. of these talks, just as there's no single American view. The talks were opposed in Iran from the beginning as well by hardliners, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the core of the military, because they were afraid that the agreement put too many constraints on their nuclear program and that Iran, like any other country, should have the right to enrich uranium. So to the hardliners in Iran, this was just another humiliation.

Remember, they're not looking at this explosion in isolation. They're remembering that in January of 2020, Donald Trump killed their most revered leader, General Soleimani, in a drone strike. Right. And then there's a faction in Iran that basically wants to say, hey, we reached an agreement with the United States in 2015, and then you elected Donald Trump and he blew it up. And now we're going to reach another agreement with Joe Biden, and anybody want to tell me what happens in four years, especially if a Trump-like figure emerges as the next president and they dismantle the whole thing again?

The Americans are unreliable negotiating partners because they can't guarantee that any agreement that they reach with one American president will carry through four years later to the next. So that's one side in Iran. The other side is the group of people around President Rouhani, the foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who negotiated the original 2015 deal, who believe that unless you get the deal back in place, you are never going to get the American-led sanctions lifted and thus never get oil revenue flowing

and never get prosperity back to the Iranian people or at least the Iranian elites. So just to summarize, David, Iran, in the aftermath of this latest attack from Israel, sees the world in the following way. It has a potentially not very reliable partner in these negotiations in the United States, because we pick new presidents every four years who may or may not like this deal. Iran has its own domestic political and economic divide about whether or not it's a good idea to participate in these talks.

And looming over all of this is the fact that Israel is just going to keep finding ways to attack Iran and its nuclear program, regardless of what's going on with the U.S. That's exactly right. So, David, what does Iran ultimately decide to do? U.S. officials tell The New York Times they don't know if Iran will show up tomorrow in Vienna. So talks were supposed to begin last week in Vienna. The big question tonight is, will Iran make a distinction between the United States and Israel? And the Americans flew out and the Europeans all appeared.

And, in fact, so did the Iranians. Hmm. Today, Iran and the United States resume indirect talks in Vienna to revive that agreement days after that. It wasn't like they ignored what happened on Sunday. direct talks in Vienna to revive that agreement days after that. It wasn't like they ignored what happened on Sunday. I assure you that Natanz will definitely, in the near future, progress with more advanced centrifuges.

They're making brave statements that when they go build back, they will build back better with new, improved centrifuges that run much more efficiently. Iran warned it will begin enriching uranium to 60% purity, the highest level yet, but still short of weapons grade. They announced that they were going to begin to purify uranium at a much higher level, 60% of enrichment, which essentially means one step short of what you need for a bomb.

So they're trying to create their own form of pressure on the United States, but they just moved forward. All eyes are on Vienna, with many sides hoping that despite the incident at Natanz, there can still be a breakthrough. So if these talks between the U.S. and Iran continue, as it looks like they probably will, did Israel accomplish what it set out to do here? So, Michael, I think that the Israelis would regard this as a partial success. They don't seem to have managed to have derailed the talks. But they prove that they can get inside Iran's most secret nuclear facilities

and do great damage. If the Israelis think that they can conduct these bold operations deep inside Iranian territory, that may be all they want. But it feels like this partial success comes with a pretty significant cost. And the cost is real damage to the relationship between Israel and the United States. And that's a pretty sacred relationship to both countries. It is. And what they're counting on, what the Israelis are counting on, is that the relationship is so deep that the ties between the U.S. and Israel are so strong that it can tolerate some independent action here. That the Israelis can simply say, including to their constituency in the United States, we're here to defend our interests. That's the essence of what the Israeli state is all about. It's about creating a Jewish state in the Middle East that will survive.

And that at the end of the day, the United States will forgive any action that Israel regards as fundamental to its survival. Well, that's interesting, David, but that's a pretty significant wager on the part of Israel. And I have to imagine that this could get complicated quickly because at the end of the day, how sustainable is it for the United States and Israel to be seeking the same goal, which is to keep Iran from developing a nuclear weapon,

but doing it in ways that directly undermine the other? How long can that possibly last? You know, it's a fascinating question, Michael, because I don't think it's sustainable. You could argue that this week, both strategies are working. The Israelis set back the program and the negotiations went on. And I have no doubt that the U.S.-Israeli relationship is going to survive.

It's been through a lot before and it'll be through a lot in the future. But eventually, they're going to have to settle on a common strategy. And that means eventually one side is going to have to back away in favor of the other. Thank you, David. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The suspected gunman accused of killing eight people at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis on Thursday night

had legally purchased two semi-automatic rifles used in the attack just a few months after the police had seized a shotgun from him. Police had seized the rifle last year after his mother raised concerns about his mental state.

But for reasons that are still unclear, the 19-year-old man was not subject to Indiana's red flag law, which bars people from possessing firearms if they are found to be a dangerous risk. And the health of Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned Russian opposition leader who survived an attempted poisoning last year, appears to be rapidly deteriorating, prompting his daughter to publicly demand that he be allowed to see his doctor. Navalny has been on a hunger strike for weeks, contributing to his poor health. weeks, contributing to his poor health. But the government of Vladimir Putin, the subject

of Navalny's criticism, has refused to let his doctor visit him in prison, raising fears that Navalny could soon die. Today's episode was produced by Austin Mitchell, Rochelle Bonja,

and Robert Jimison. It was edited by Dave Shaw and Lisa Chow and engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.