Former US Ambassador to Israel Dan Kurtzer Talks European Union Talks With Iran
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Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. Dan Kurtzer, now with Princeton University where he's professor of Middle East policy. He's former U.S. ambassador to Israel and has been in the room for talks like the ones we're describing today in Geneva. Mr. Ambassador, welcome back to Bloomberg TV and radio. It's great to have you. Do you share the optimism of the U.K. foreign minister when it comes to these talks today in Geneva?

Well, there's no basis to be optimistic unless they've heard something from the Iranians that they'll communicate to the president. What they need to hear and what the president would need to hear is that the Iranians are ready to come back to the talks and understand that they will have to give up enrichment on Iranian soil. If the Europeans can produce that kind of a commitment,

Then the president can talk to Netanyahu about holding up a little bit and giving diplomacy a chance. But otherwise, aspirations are nice, but we're really far down the road beyond simply hope.

well you hear the phrase unfettered access and it brings you back uh to the nuclear deal with Iran and two years long before that and even to Iraq you remember how this goes with weapons inspectors and it's typically uh not to meet expectations with Iran they've turned back on a number of promises before why would this time be any different

Well, the reality is that in 2015 with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, for three years the Iranians adhered to that agreement. And each time a small violation was uncovered, it was fixed right away. So there is at least a small track record of Iranian compliance, which of course ended when the United States pulled out of the JCPOA.

Now, I think that we would need a much stronger JCPOA 2.0. We'd have to have no end date. You remember the JCPOA was supposed to come to an end within 12 to 15 years.

So no end date, better assurances with regard to the reconstitution of the program. But, you know, a tougher agreement could lead to Iranian compliance and end of the war and therefore an end of the Iranian nuclear program. Is Iran more or less likely to agree to stop enriching uranium as it is being bombed by Israel? Is this maximum pressure campaign the type of thing that works in this scenario?

or moves Iran further away from an agreement like that? Well, it's a great question, and the answer is unknown. Before the Israeli bombing, Iran was stuck on the idea that it would not give up

the right to enrich uranium. So we don't know whether the debilitation of Iran's military capabilities, its missile program, and its nuclear program will now make a convincing argument otherwise. I think much of this is going to depend on what's happening within the opaque system in Tehran. The Ayatollah still is calling the shots, but there are quite a few different factions

playing in this, including more extreme elements in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the so-called Basij, who have argued for years that Iran should simply develop a nuclear weapon. So they will be pressing for that. Others might say, look, we invested a lot, we lost a lot, we have no allies in the region, and it's time to give it up.

It's been some interesting reporting on U.S. intelligence estimates when it comes to Iran's ability to and motivation to make a nuclear weapon.

We are frequently not on the same page as Israel when it comes to this ambassador. And I wonder your thoughts about the assessment we're reading about today that Iran has yet to decide whether to make a nuclear bomb, even though it does, in fact, have a large stockpile of enriched uranium. The idea is that it would be more likely to shift toward producing a bomb if the U.S. decides to get involved offensively with Israel. Do you believe that to be true?

Well, our intelligence community has been consistent since 2003 in saying that Iran is not trying to weaponize the capability of using a nuclear weapon. And that was something that Tulsi Gabbard back in, I guess it was March, April, testified to Congress. And it's something that the president simply said he didn't agree with, even though it's his intelligence people telling him that.

So you have to distinguish between the weaponization program, which appears not to be in place, as opposed to the preparatory steps that Iran has been taking and accelerating since 2018, since we pulled out of the JCPOA. And they started enriching at a much higher level, up to 60%. And there's some indication that

that at least at one point they went beyond 60%, which would bring them very, very close to being a threshold nuclear state with a breakout time that's essentially days, not even weeks.

So they're prepared, I think, to move expeditiously. Their capabilities are much less today as a result of Israeli bombing. The question is, how do you make sure that what Israel accomplished militarily is sustainable and that Iran cannot reconstitute its program? So, Ambassador, what do you expect to take place then in the next two weeks? And if the U.S. managed to strike a deal with Iran, would Israel trust it?

Well, what I expect to take place is a lot of back-channel conversations. We know that the president's envoy, Stephen Witkoff, has tried to reach out to the Iranians. We now have this European meeting

There's going to be a lot of chatter behind the scenes. And I think the president will factor that into the equation. Are the Iranians really ready as a result of having been bruised? Are they really ready to come to the table and give up enrichment, which would make a JCPOA 2.0 possible? Whether Netanyahu would be satisfied with that,

Look, as far as the Israelis are concerned, unless Fordow is taken out, the heavily fortified underground facility, they think their job won't be done. As Nick suggested, there may be other ways of doing it besides simply B-2 bombing. You knock out the electricity, the entrances, the air supply, and you keep at it for a while. So you're going to see, I think, in these two weeks,

back-channel contacts, sustained Israeli attacks, including against Fordow. And within that two-week period, whether the president can put this all together in a diplomatic package is literally anyone's guess at this point.

Wouldn't want to be a worker at Fordow right now. Ambassador, we just ran a headline across the terminal. The Iran-European nuclear talks in Geneva have come to an end. We are standing by for a statement as we wait for a readout. And in our final moment here together, Ambassador, where's Russia and China on this? Or are we learning right now that they have no influence on what's happening?

Well, they certainly have little influence. The Chinese are heavily dependent on Iran's oil and gas, and therefore they're concerned whether this war escalates and whether attacks against the energy infrastructure take place or whether Iran in response blocks the Straits of Hormuz. So the Chinese are nervous. The Russians are incapacitated because of their own war.

But nonetheless, it would behoove the president to think about including them in any multilateral diplomatic approach. After all, it was the Russians, Chinese, and the three Europeans who joined us in 2015 to make the JCPOA work at that time. So they're not going to be major players in this, but they'll be important players if Iran sees that

not just the Europeans and the Americans, but also their friends in Moscow and Beijing are telling them it's time to call it quits. Great to have you with us, sir. Dan Kurtzer, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, now at Princeton with us here on Balance of Power. This is Bloomberg.

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