Kerry labels long standing demand that Iran stop enriching uranium as ”ridiculous”

Transcript: John Kerry interview

By Daniel Dombey in Washington

Published: June 10 2009 23:33 | Last updated: June 10 2009 23:33

In an interview with the Financial Times, John Kerry, the top Democrat on foreign policy in the US Senate, labels the long standing demand that Iran stop enriching uranium as ”ridiculous”.

A series of UN Security Council resolutions has demanded that Tehran halt enrichment, which can produce both nuclear fuel and weapons grade material. But Mr Kerry, a former Democratic presidential nominee who gave Barack Obama one of his first big political breaks, argues that the world’s big powers should frame more enforceable demands based on treaty obligations Iran has not met.

<...>

What follows is a partial transcript of the June 9 interview, containing Mr Kerry’s main comments about Iran. (Other parts of the interview dealt with other topics.)

Financial Times: Can I ask you about Iran? In both your Brookings and your Aipac speeches, you talked about how the Bush administration had set a series of red lines to see them ignored, to see that the policy had failed. The last red line that the US, that the Bush administration set and saw ignored was the call for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment. You’ve called for an effort to decide a red line and to defend it. What should that red line be?

John Kerry: Well, I want to be very careful there, because I know the administration. I wrote a memo to the president regarding this, in which I outlined my thoughts about the nature of that line.

Suffice it to say it needs to be a line that realistically protects the region and Israel, I emphasise the region, from a perception of completed proliferation. And there are several different ways to define that, I think we should leave that to that definition….

Certainly (the line should be for Iran) not to be a quote nuclear weapon state. Now some people can argue about when you are a nuclear weapons state. Capability versus, different definitions of that, just leave that there for a minute.

The key here is that, first of all the Bush administration (argument of) no enrichment was ridiculous, on its face, because Iran is a signatory to the (nuclear) Non-Proliferation Treaty and whether they are inside or outside their obligations, to ask them to give up something that was within their rights within the treaty assuming they were up to their obligations is a non-starter. It was bombastic diplomacy. It was wasted energy. It sort of hardened the lines, if you will (inaudible).

Because it seemed so unreasonable to people. They have a right to peaceful nuclear power and to enrichment in that purpose. But they don’t have a right, obviously, to be outside of the other restraints of the IAEA and of the non-proliferation agreement. And so the key here was to really open a different kind of dialogue with them about where you draw the line.

more

The key here is that, first of all the Bush administration (argument of) no enrichment was ridiculous, on its face, because Iran is a signatory to the (nuclear) Non-Proliferation Treaty and whether they are inside or outside their obligations, to ask them to give up something that was within their rights within the treaty assuming they were up to their obligations is a non-starter. It was bombastic diplomacy. It was wasted energy. It sort of hardened the lines, if you will (inaudible).