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Interview of S.A. Ryabkov, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, to V. Orlov, Head Editor of Security Index Journal Sanctions against Iran: Depleted Resources 302-15-02-2012 Question: The situation around the Iranian nuclear programme has not been settled for several years by now. How do you evaluate the efforts of the international community to solving this problem? What measures should be taken to move off the dead centre? S.A. Ryabkov: Iran subject is indeed quite multidimensional; it is adjoined and interlinked with various items on the current international agenda. For a decade, or even longer, we have been facing a paradox situation when the attempts to find solutions to the problems related to the Iranian nuclear programme yielded no result even though they included both a pressure element and a dialogue element, namely, political involvement of the Iranian party into discussion of this problem. No matter how such combination of pressure and involvement has been designated over these years, the essence has remained the same: with the progress of the nuclear programme in Iran sticks were becoming longer and longer, and carrots were becoming sweeter and sweeter. The discussion of this subject in the international community, including within Europe Three-Plus-Three group, is mainly related not to the final objectives of this process, but the tactics which shall ensure attainment of these objectives. We believe that we have not done enough for all these years in terms of the real contribution, the real political investment to the dialogue and the efforts to involve Iran in quest for the appropriate compromises. We are told, Iran will not follow the requirements of the international community anyway, and the only way to influence the minds of the people making decisions in Teheran (I would like to notice in parentheses that the question, who makes such decisions and how they are made, is a great debating point) is to keep increasing the sanction pressure. Let us study out. Only for the past four years UN Security Council has adopted six resolutions (four of which are of sanction nature) which, by our estimate, have completely blocked all possible ways for the Iranians to receive the external support for the development of their nuclear programme. And not only the nuclear programme; the possibilities of the external support of the Iranian rocket programme have been also considerably blocked. Moreover, the USA, EU, Canada, Australia, the Republic of Korea, Japan, and a number of other countries have been adopting even tougher, more comprehensive, and stinging sanctions both in regard to the list of persons with restricted freedom of movement and travel, maintenance of accounts in foreign bank and in regard to nature of activity in various areas, from the banking sector to transport. I will not touch upon the issue how far we think the policy of unilateral sanctions, the sanction imposed avoiding UN Security Council, comply with the rules and practices of the international behavior, without mentioning the international law. How far does all this comply with the partnership approach in dealing with any country? For me another point is obvious: such sanctions have in general zero result. We are at the crossroad: what conclusion can be and should be made out of this situation giving rise to the political frustration in various capitals, creating internal problems for the purposes of a number of governments being under the increasing pressure of lobby groups, politicians, and parliaments? One of the answers is to continue extending sanctions, to continue increasing the pressure. You understand that this question does not relate to practical politics and practical diplomatics. It relates to beliefs and fortune-telling. Somebody believes in Buddha, another in Jesus Christ, somebody believes in sanctions,

another does not believe in them; we start talking at such a level. Seriously speaking, we can probably imagine such volume of sanctions which entail demolition of the current regime in Teheran. But in this case, especially in view of the experience which all of us gained in the last months, sorrowful and dark experience associated with the breach of the international law rules by the coalition which has conducted Joint Defender operation in Libya, Russia will definitely not join such sanction policy aimed at regime change in Teheran. Someone might view the current situation as a window of opportunity and cynically follow the path of regime change in Teheran in order to simultaneously solve a large variety of problems. But Russia will not join such a course of action and however share political and judicial responsibility for these steps. Question: Is there, to your mind, an adequate alternative to the sanction policy? S.A. Ryabkov: There is an alternative. The alternative involves a serious negotiation process with the Iranian party, serious in terms of serious determination of people conducting this dialogue towards the quest for compromises and proposal of such solution scheme which might attract the Iranian party. The Iranian diplomatics and the Iranian politics participating in the negotiations or dialogue with the international community about the problems relating to their nuclear programme, follow the pattern which has been used at Iranian market for decades. This means that bargaining of any object, especially an expensive one, a gorgeous carpet, the manufacture of which took years of work and required great talent of weavers, starts with the amounts which are not anyhow connected with the reality. But then, if they see that the buyer is not just walking along the market but really wants to buy the carpet, serious bargaining starts. But they will never give this carpet for northing, for free, especially if the buyer takes a stick or, even worse, a gun out of the pocket. Unfortunately, it is very complicated to explain. It is a strange situation, that our partners often give a good price for a real carpet at the market, while to solve the problem with the Iranian nuclear programme they initially want to receive unilateral concessions from the very same Iran. All these could be left in the plane of diplomatics history or as a subject for study by political analysts and professors, unless this problem was so serious and increasingly dangerous. The Iranian party is really making progress in its nuclear programme; the Iranian party has really limited its cooperation with IAEA only to the obligations under its safeguards agreement with IAEA. For Russia such situation is perhaps even more alerting than for various other countries. We are in the immediate vicinity of Iran, and an Iran with nuclear weapon is not an option for Russia. At the same time we have to note that the policy now pursued by Teheran provides no sound and unambiguous evidences that the Iranian nuclear programme has a military direction. The suspected researches also lead to nowhere; it is a dead end in a dead end. What is the difficulty in solving the problem with the suspected researches? In short, the Iranians do not want to answer; their official standing is that they do not want to plead, because they have seen no documents making the ground for such prosecution. And the original documents cannot be presented, because their authors are afraid to compromise the sources of their intelligence services. As the result, nobody can have a political will or a desire to make the first step. In general, everything associated with the Iranian nuclear programme in whole and its discussion with the international community is summarized in the question: who will make the first step, who will throw its head, who will lose face and who will not? To my mind, it is incorrect. If authorized politicians are really anxious about the situation and do not want to degenerate it to a new crisis, including a force one, they must straightly admit to themselves that making appropriate decisions requires courage and manliness. The representatives of the Russian Federation convey this logic and this procedure, practically in the same words and terms, both to our partners within Three-Plus-Three group and to the Iranian partners with whom we maintain a very close dialogue and will continue it in future.

There is no use to tell the details of this dialogue, and generally speaking it is not a main point. The gist is that with the progress of its nuclear programme, which is also a fact, Iran is gradually losing the motivation to discuss the settlement option under which Iran would obtain only some cosmetic improvements in its situation in exchange for certain steps on limitation and suspension of a variety of the nuclear programme components. So the price for the carpet to start a serious talk with is unfortunately increasing. But the buyer has money as yet. And we have tried to count this money in a strangers pocket having prepared the well-known Plan of Lavrov. This is a plan for settlement of the Iranian nuclear problem based on step by step and reciprocity approach. Question: What is the core of this plan? S.A. Ryabkov: While preparing the plan we considered the level of confidence between the parties the countries of the Six and Iran not even as zero, but below zero. To commence gradual restoration of the confidence and rely on this to move forward towards the mutually acceptable solution, something quite simple to start with is required. However everything is relative. What shall be treated as simple and what as complicated? In such system of reference, a simple step of the Iranian party might be, for instance, freezing the number of centrifuges at the current level, refrain from introduction of new centrifuges in cascades, refraining from the creation of new cascades, refraining from putting rotary centrifuges (without gas at the moment) into operation, etc. In return, the countries of the Six might enter into an engagement that after IAEA certification of the abovementioned actions of Iran, which is a very important point, the countries of the Six will refrain from introduction of new additional and unilateral sanctions. Unilateral to start with. Then, while moving from the simple to more complicated, towards the final solution, it might be possible to come to the situation when the international community assumes some measures to satisfy the needs of Iran in the safety area, including the confidence-building measures with regard to naval activity in adjacent waters. The respective steps are detailed in the four stages making the core of our plan. We believe that the scheme of such kind might be quite efficient. In November 2010, we started discussing this scheme with the partners within the Six. Unfortunately, the partners could not elaborate a common approach to our scheme and confined themselves to the declaration of assent to the very principles, namely, step by step and reciprocity approach. We are satisfied that this approach is reflected in the documents of the whole Six, including Catherine Ashton statement (dd. 21 September 2011, New-York) and Catherine Ashton letter (dd. 21 October 2011) to Dr. S. Djalili where the willingness to continue the dialogue is confirmed again. As for the Iranians, our proposals in writing were officially handed over to them on 17 August 2011 when Ali Akbar Salehi, the Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran, visited Moscow. The reaction of the Iranians is unindifferent. They make haste slowly; but we have received no signals that they reject the scheme proposed by us. We believe that there is a ground for further work and we will try to pursue the efforts to demonstrate the advantages of our proposal. Certainly, the Iranians also criticize a number of aspects of our proposal. But I would say that if both parties are equally unhappy and unsatisfied, this is an obvious sign that we are close to the target in terms of the scheme which might work. We hope that the negotiations will be resumed. We work with the Iranian party to receive it positive response to the abovementioned letter of the High Representative of the European Union. Question: You have discussed the Plan of Lavrov with the Iranian party. Based on such discussions: is Iran ready to abandon uranium enrichment subject to any conditions; are there any evidences of this? If Iran rejects everything and disagree with all initiatives of the negotiating parties, maybe it is really useful to use a

longer stick? S.A. Ryabkov: I have no evidences that Iran is willing to abandon its uranium enrichment programme at the moment. As a preliminary condition for the negotiations, the Iranians set forth the requirement to recognise the right to uranium enrichment to the Six of international ambassadors. We cannot agree with this. First of all, because preliminary conditions are inadmissible in any negotiations, especially in regard to such a serious subject. We are ready to acknowledge and accept the rights of Iran to the nuclear energy use under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to which Iran is a party. As for further extension of the stick, it is basically happening. Almost every day, additional and increasingly tough sanctions are introduced in different places. The difficulty is that at the very beginning of the process when preventive sanction no. 1696 of UN Security Council containing the requirements to perform certain actions otherwise sanctions would be introduced, was being developed, there was a firm agreement (and we follow it) that the sanctions were to have the only objective, namely, strengthening of the nuclear nonproliferation regime. And after subsequent introduction of the set of resolutions 1737, 1747, 1803, 1929 we depleted the resources of sanction measures aiming at this objective. So the resolutions of UN Security Council can do nothing more for strengthening of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. I do not assert by such statement that additional sanctions cannot be introduced because nothing can be specified in their plans. We can specify whatsoever, and there is a multitude of examples when sanctions refer to some legal entities which bear not the slightest relation neither to the nuclear programme, nor the rocket programme of Iran. There are ideas to prohibit space shots for Iran, whatever else impede modernization of its oil industry. But how does all this relate to the nuclear non-proliferation regime? Such measures are aimed at the correction of behaviour of another country government, creation of internal tension, and, ideally, at the change of such government. This is quite another article of the Criminal Code, forgive my expression. But I found nothing similar in the UN Charter, though I have been reading it upwards and backwards and upside-down. The UN Charter does not contain such an article, and the Criminal Code probably does. Question: Do you believe that even if the most idealistic intention of the Russian Federation is implemented, Iran will really abandon a military component of the nuclear programme? In fact, all actions of the western countries convince Iran, and not only Iran, that it is better to have weapon, than not to have it. S.A. Ryabkov: Based on the facts and the bureaucratic platform of the official discussion, I would repeat that we have no smoking barrels proving the existence of a military component of the Iranian nuclear programme. There are developments which were mainly conducted until 2003, as it has been written in a number of reports of IAEA Director General. And then such developments were scaled down due to some reasons obscure to the Director General. The researches in question are researches of high-velocity explosive, so called green salt, metallization of spherical components to make uranium warheads and some other aspects. The dead end is in the following: it is asserted that the above-mentioned can be proved by evidences. The documentary evidences cannot be handed over to the Iranians to avoid destruction of the human intelligence network. And without the documents the Iranians refuse to comment on this, except for 100 pages handed over to IAEA 2-2.5 years ago. This is one direction, and it leads to nowhere. Another direction relates to the latest report of IAEA Director General which contains no new data in regard to this subject. IAEA Director General has found nothing which can fundamentally complement to this view. We are told: why do the Iranians resume the talk about completion of the deuterium reactor construction? This is in conflict with any task in the area of nuclear energy use for power production. Deuterium reactors need plutonium, etc. All these are copybook maxims. The Iranians respond straight off that they need the deuterium reactor to produce target materials for medical purposes, etc. This is the second dead end.

The third direction of the discussion relates to general political issues. Under the conditions of turbulence in the region and instable foundation of the international system in general, as we know it for years and decades of UN existence, some capitals are more and more tempted to have mass destruction weapons to possess a kind of eternal insurance against any external attacks. In order to have weapon you need not only to develop it, but also to test it and provide delivery vehicles which differ from the type a la lets load a bomb on a barge and then blow it up exploited by film writers and detective writers. To have all this done, you should have a test base, you would leave traces. And where is all this? Especially taken into consideration that extraordinary and unprecedented attention to Iran from both politicians and intelligence agencies of the whole world. Speculating in this manner I run the risk to show negligence to real threats, and you will reproach me that I contradict to myself claiming that Russia is anxious about the prospects of Iran having nuclear weapon. I would like to be understood correctly, we are anxious that the distance separating Iran from theoretical possession of technologies of nuclear weapon creation is decreasing. That is why we think that the agreement is required. We need bold creative approaches to this problem which would eliminate the grounds for such anxiety. But I cannot say that we are anxious that Iran has already reached such stage, that only a policy decision is required to be made and in some short time the first warhead, the first explosive device would be created. This does not comply with our assessment of the situation. The fourth direction of the speculation is the following. Iran approaching nuclear weapon is the strongest incentive for its neighbours, especially the neighbours lead by the Sunni, to follow the same way and eventually commence the works, which would make them the holders of nuclear weapon. I think we must reject this as an argument, because those European countries and the USA which treat such perspective as real must apply best efforts and use their enormous influence to stop such movement. Otherwise we conclude that regime change in Teheran is much more important for them than strengthening of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. Question: We see the growth of anxiety in the world due to the Iranian nuclear programme. Is it possible to say, taking into consideration the experience of settlement of problem situations in various regions, that the Iranian colleagues should feel that they play with fire by pursuing their policy? S.A. Ryabkov: One of the difficulties in the dialogue with the Iranians is that it is not very clear who is responsible and for what; what, to who, how and to what extent is reported and what decision making mechanisms are used in a particular aspect. If you consider everything what you see, including the level of impressions received in the city and somewhere in the countryside, the view is ambiguous. The economic situation has worsened; it became worse in terms of assortment of goods in shops, in terms of surge of inflation, in terms of difficulties in solving the issues of repair, for instance, repair of some facilities taking into account import restrictions for Iran in regard to technologies, equipment, etc. But, for instance, the way how the government in Iran monetized some social privileges is, in my opinion, quite impressive experience in the most challenging international situation. The social and political situation in the country does not seem to be strained, at least at the moment. And personally I have not had the feeling of the coming outbreak for the past year or half a year. It is difficult to say how the situation in the North Africa and in the Middle East in whole influences the sentiments of the country management. The frontage of the political argumentation is in general that the West has made considerable and fundamental mistake hoping that the change of power in whole in a range of countries would inevitably lead to pro-Western orientation of such countries, even in the midterm. And there are generally a lot of speculations that Iran also stood for the change of the authoritarian leader of Libya, and at the moment it stands for transformations in quite a number of other countries, because Iran is a democratic country. It is a democratic, but Islamic country. If you provide the social movements of these

countries with freedom of action, you will see that Islamic fundamentalists take power by democratic means. So the Iranian argument is that the social engineering used by some EU countries and the USA, various transplantation, are acceptable to some extent, but a pear sprig grafted in an apple-tree would not produce pears for the generations of such apple-trees, as in case of Michurin trees. The apple-tree will remain an apple-tree. But only time will show whether they take desired for real or they can make better conclusions about the state of mind in the neighbouring countries based on their millenary experience than those who came there for the first time. Question: If we manage to break the problematic Iranian ties, it will be desirable to see the perspective. The region is moving towards nuclear power development. Do you see the creation of the regional centre based on the existing centre in Iran as one of the potential solutions? We understand full well that in the context of assassination attempt against the Saudi Arabian ambassador it is difficult to imagine the Arabs and Iran working together. That is why the question relates not to the present and even not to the nearest future, but to the perspectives. Or is such turn of events as creation of a regional centre in Iran under the international control basically unreal? S.A. Ryabkov: I think this is one of the most productive ideas which, I believe, appeared in PIR Centre. I would generally like to express great compliments to your work, including its reflection in Russia Confidential bulletin which we call PIR Yellow Papers in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It really stimulates the intellectual search and it often outruns, goes several steps ahead of what the diplomacy can afford. Whether over time Iran can position itself as an attractive location for such facility or facilities will largely depend on the policy pursued by Teheran authorities. I think that in case of favourable development of the situation in the region it is quite possible, even, let us say, by the middle of the next decade, provided there are no new fundamental distresses. 15 February 2012

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