John Limbert - US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iran (2009- 2010) HARDtalk

Welcome to HARDtalk. For the second time in his presidency Barack Obama

is eyeing the 'reset button' in his diplomatic toolkit. With Russia it

misfired, so when it comes to Iran, what are the chances of overcoming

three decades of hostility? HARDtalk speaks to John Limbert, the state

department's point man on Iran in Obama's first term, and one of the

US diplomats held hostage in Tehran 34 years ago. Are the US and Iran

ready for the difficult decisions that would truly reset relations?

Ambassador John Limbert in Washington, DC, welcome to HARDtalk.

I think it is fair to say that few officials have the intimate

knowledge of Iran that you have. It is potentially very, very exciting.

This is the first time we see a crack in the deep freeze. A

relationship based described lack of Narnia. Always winter, never

Christmas. You say it hasn't happened in 34 years, there have

been moments of excitement before. Lots of people thought that would

introduce a thaw in relations and it didn't. So why should we be so much

more excited this time? Perhaps we shouldn't be. For exactly the reason

you said. There have been opportunities, there have been

Neither of us want to see Sunni openings, you mentioned

Neither of us want to see Sunni fundamentalists, jihadists, Al-Qaeda

group come to power. Neither of us want to see nuclear weapons used.

Let's not go there right now. Let's stick with the real substance of

this relationship. More than anything it is about Iran's nuclear

ambitions. If the nuclear issue is too difficult, let's put it to one

side. The problem is, when the Iranians talk about the nuclear

issue, we are talking about legal issues, technical issues, additional

protocols. The Iranians are talking about something different. They are

talking about national pride, their national rights, their status in the

world. This kind of asymmetric negotiation can only lead to

frustration. When you are talking to the Iranians over oil, 60 years ago,

it was the same thing. Its rights to control its own destiny. Their

acquisition of nuclear weapons. I just want to know whether you as a

diplomat with extraordinary power and knowledge of this country, a

long-time diplomat and servant of the State Department, I am yet to

encounter... That Hassan Rouhani... He doesn't believe it, do you? I

don't know and I don't know if anyone knows. What I do know is

this. What is the Iranians core interest in all of these exchanges?

It seems to me it is the survival of the regime. The main threat to their

survival are not foreign armies or ships or planes but the internal

rebellion, internal disturbance, what they call the sedition inside

Iran. What does a nuclear weapon do to ensure the continuation of the

regime? I don't want to tell you things you already know because you

know this better than anyone. The nuclear programme has been woven in

to their regime strategy for so long that it seems to me that it has

become an integral part of who they are and what they are. Has served

the regime in many different senior capacities ever since. H e is a man

far from being a liberal or a moderate in that cliched language,

again, woven into the senior decision-making that has let us to

this place. I think on this case, we are in violent agreement. I am and

what others have said, if you want to get to the nuclear issue, which

is a central issue, what you have to do is at least build some confidence

between the two sides. To go directly to the issue is not going

to build that confidence. You need to broaden the discussion to areas

like Afghanistan, perhaps Syria, and where these two sides discover that

if they say yes to something, but the sky doesn't fall and that in

fact the other side might not always be out to cheat them, having

established that, you can go back to the nuclear issue. Pause and

consider, if you would, how what you just said might be received in

Israel? I do not speak for the Israeli government. What I do know

is during my visits to Israel and in conversation with Israeli friends,

the opinion - this is not just on the left - but much of the opinion

is strongly divided on this issue. There is a vigorous debate within

Israel as there are on many subjects on the question of Iran. And the

kind of rhetoric we hear here on Israel represents just a segment of

opinion. Unfortunately, here in the US, we do not hear all sides of the

story. To quote an Israeli newspaper, they said AIPAC - the

lobbying group in the US - is not Israel. I did not know whether you

can call the government one voice. Netanyahu is the most important

voice. The government have dismissed everything that Hassan Rouhani has

said. The minister of intelligence said the nuclear project is

galloping forward, if they continue to advance they could have nuclear

weapon capabilities within six months. Right now, Benjamin

Netanyahu is pleading with Barack Obama pleading that they do not take

at face value what the Iranians are saying. The problem is the extremist

party within Israel had the gift that kept on giving. Khomeini. Now

he is gone. His absence, after 34 years, has created a serious

problem. I am sorry to interrupt but this is not about language, it is

not even about personality, it is about the fact that according to the

IAEA, there are at least 17 different nuclear facilities inside

Iran. There is a sophisticated enrichment programme. The IAEA says

it cannot confirm it is for peaceful purposes. These are realities which

Israelis see and which leads them to conclude that unless things change

very quickly, something will have to be done, albeit perhaps by them if

nobody else will do it. Again, it is interesting you mention the word

quickly, because that was exactly what we heard some of the Iranian

representatives in New York, I believe including Hassan Rouhani and

his delegation, say about the nuclear negotiations, saying we need

to reach some agreement quickly. What the Iranians have been saying

and, whether you believe that or not is another issue, if you do not

believe them, then there is no answer. It is difficult to make any

kind of progress. Someone said at some point in the negotiations -

someone has to trust someone. But what the Iranians say is that they

do not... They are not seeking a nuclear weapon for various reasons -

ideological and political and so forth - but they do not want to be

told what to do, bullied, intimidated, as they call it, by

some outside power. Or politically could they be seen to knuckle under

threat. As another former State department colleague of yours,

Nicholas Burns, wrote not so long ago, oftentimes diplomacy requires

the threat of force. You seem to be advocating a move towards relaxation

of sanctions, sending warmer signals to Tehran before they have done

anything. Surely the sanctions are the reason why Hassan Rouhani is

talking openly about making concessions. You keep the sanctions

until they pack their words with specific actions? I have great

respect for ambassador Burns. Smart diplomacy without some backing of

force is a little bit like a smile without any teeth - it does not

carry much weight. But to say that sanctions, for example, had this

effect, made the Iranians become more reasonable, made the Iranians

change their policy, may be true but I have not seen the evidence for it.

People have made the statements. I have seen statements that Hassan

Rouhani owes his election to the sanctions. Again, that may be true

but where is the evidence? The same people who are making these claims,

excuse me, are the same people who were the strongest advocates of

sanctions in the first place. Isn't that self-evident that an economy

which has seen, they say, around $1 billion squeeze out of it because of

the strict sanctions, including the loss of output in oil of roughly a

million barrels per day, is it not self-evident that that is the sort

of terrible damage being done to the Iranian economy that is going to

force the regime to start to think very carefully about whether it

wants to push ahead with its nuclear programme? Iran's economy is in

terrible shape - there is no doubt about that. With its oil resources,

with its well educated population, it should be a paradise. It is not.

That question, the open question that remains - and I have never had

a satisfactory answer to this - is, how much do these problems come from

the sanctions, how much from chronic mismanagement? A problem that has

gone back a long way and a problem and issue that was raised during

Hassan Rouhani's presidential campaign. You are a diplomat and you

can learn lessons from recent diplomatic negotiation - I'm

thinking of North Korea. The West and the US decided to reach out to

North Korea. An agreement was done in which Pyongyang promised to

abandon its nuclear programme. What happened less than two years later?

North Korea launched its first nuclear device. The Israelis point

to North Korea and state if you back off the pressure on Tehran now, that

is precisely what you will see in Iran. Within a year or two they will

be releasing their first bomb. I wish I had the power of prediction

that the source you quote has. I will say this about my predictions

about Iran - my predictions have almost always been wrong in the

past. I will say that but also, if you look at other people's

predictions, I say they are equally wrong. You ask yourself, statements

like "a bomb in six months" - how long has that timeline been out

there? I heard someone mention it going back to 1997. I think we have

to be very sceptical and very suspicious about predictions like

that that say that because North Korea did X therefore in Iran we

must do Y. I appreciate your frankness and your personal history

with Iran. It is fascinating to think of you 34 years ago tripped up

in the American embassy, taken hostage by the regime, the fledgling

regime of the republic. I wonder if it is fair to say that from then

until now, despite your personal experience, you have consistently

underestimated the durability of the hostility felt in Iran toward the

West and the US in particular. Perhaps I have. As I said to you,

Stephen, I have been wrong a lot but I cannot help seeing the irony of

all this. I mean, 34 years ago, almost to the day, the foreign

ministers of the two countries met in New York on the margins of the

General Assembly and in those days it was the Secretary of State Cyrus

Vance and the Foreign Minister Ibrahim Yazdi meeting in October

1979 and the meeting was a disaster. All the Iranians could do was to

recite their list of grievances. They had nothing constructive to

bring. Unfortunately, that has been the case for the past 34 years - 95%

of Iranian diplomacy has been exactly that - reciting their list

of grievances. No, I would not have thought that we would have been

estranged for so long. We have been estranged longer than the US from

China or from Bolshevik Russia after the revolution. It is unprecedented

in our diplomatic history. If you think about it. And I will make one

prediction, Stephen, and that is if we do start talking, if this

particular opening does go somewhere and contacts are established and

officials are able to talk to each other, not necessarily as friends

but as States with things to talk about. Both sides are going to ask

themselves this question - what was all the fuss about? Why did we waste

so much time bashing each other? With that question hanging in the

air, I thank you very much Ambassador Limbert for being on

HARDtalk. Thank you, Stephen.