7 00 tomorrow. We will see you then. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2015] the president will argue today that it would be a historic mistake if congress blocks the Nuclear Accord with iran. He president will frame the decision before lawmakers as the equential foreignpolicy issue since the decision to go to war with iraq. He needs the backing of enough democrats to fight gop opposition. The white house says it has enough democratic support to a pulled a veto. Read more at the hill. Com. We will have live coverage of the president s speech today at American University starting at 11 20 a. M. Eastern. To post yourble thoughts on facebook and twitter. After the president s speech we will be taking your phone calls. Coverage on capitol hill over on cspan3 getting underway momentarily. The Senate Banking committee on the iran sanctions. That hearing is underway. Following on cspan3. Agreement with National Security experts also talking about the role of the International AtomicEnergy Agency and monitoring their actions and facilities and the ability of the countries who signed the agreement to confront iran. Welcome to the Atlantic Council. Well, we have done it again. We have timed a program to follow by one day a historic agreement with iran. I would like to say that i planned it this way, but it is just dumb luck. As we all know there is a lot to digest in this 159 page document that was announced yesterday. We are going to welcome your questions about any aspects of the agreement. Of theus today is on one most important issues if not the most important issue. That is verification. Iran cheats . If you run she what will we do . Who is tasked with doing the verification . Done . Ore might need to be these issues we have a very distinguished Panel Including the author of a new study on this subject, former iaea official tom shea. Funde thank the plowshares for supporting our program. Let me say how delighted i am osting this coh event with search for Common Ground. Iran the pioneer in u. S. People to people diplomacy. They took the wrestlers to iran in 1998. They have done many things over the years that have really helped bring us to this day. Other i introduce our speakers, im going to ask ambassador bill miller to say a few words. I have known him for as long as i have been focusing on iran which is about 20 years. At times i have questioned his perennial optimism about u. S. Iran relations. But once again he has proven that he is more farsighted than the rest of us. If youssador miller, would come up and say a few words. Thank you, barbara. Friend and alwart source of optimism. [inaudible] [laughter] i want to thank the Atlantic Council for having this event today and being our gracious host. Event, weheduled this did not know the joint comprehensive plan of action would be issued just yesterday. This is an historic agreement by any standard, even by standards of decades. That this is so welltimed. And the Atlantic Council has talentle to mobilize the that is going to speak today. Iran began as a Foreign Service officer well before the revolution. This was in 1959. As it happened, this was the beginning of the Iranian Nuclear program. Program owesuclear almost everything to the United States. Physicists and engineers were trained in the United States. And as a part of the atoms for eisenhower, wef lowenthal toid iran to work out an energy program. A comprehensive energy program. Water, hydro, gas, and oil. Nuclear. Forgotten that in 1959 lilienthal recommended that iran have 22 Nuclear Power reactors. And use its gas and oil for infrastructure. Legacy extends to this day. Has a program that stems from that. From that time when i served in iran, i have maintained my interest. And i want to quote from a letter that i carried with 6 1979. Lark on november a letter from jimmy carter to ayatollah khomeini. And i want to read one paragraph. Men to meet both with you and to hear from you your perspective on events in iran and problems that have arisen between our two countries. Statesple of the united desire to have relations with equality, mutual respect, and friendship. Years to carry that out. John bloomberg linbderg experienced part of those 36 years in prison. He is one of those optimists who believes that relations with iran make sense. Now i have the job as Senior Advisor for search for Common Grounds iran program. And searchs, iran have worked together to carry out the fragments, the fornnings, the baseline civilized relations between our countries. We have tried everything. Movies. Poetry. Art. Astronauts. Wrestlers. Soccer players. Basketball players. Scholars. Politicians. Most important, scientists. And people who understand the middle east. Want to describe the beginnings of the tom shea paper which is of direct relevance here today. Clear to many of us that any agreement with iran would depend on the ability of the terms of the agreement being verified. Monitored fully. Carefully. Effectively. And it was the suggestion of senior members from the senate who anticipated that an theement was pending that key issue before the congress would be whether the terms of an agreement with iran could be so that ifffectively there was any direction away it would bel uses, detected in time to take effective action. That was the baseline problem. Question then immediately iaea good enough to fulfill that task . We havethe past year, been engaged in efforts to make that determination. Ago, i asked tom and after meeting with him hearing high praise for his work century inter of a in iaea and as a scientist american institutions, to undertake a study of the iaea, how ithe works. Fact, undertake andtask of monitoring expected agreement. He has done this job. And he has done a very well. And he has done it very well. And i suggest that you pick up copies of the summary outside this room. Thank ploughshares. En particular, jos are i cirincioni, the president of commitments and his to bringing about a resolution to one of the Great Questions of arms control. Owe much to his support over the years. I want to thank in particular friend slaven, a dear who brings the best of journalism and scholarship to her job. And she continues to lead the way on the best approaches to iran. Friend ands a close we have struggled together in the task of bringing sense and rationality to our national leadership. Project. Ran bert is a dear friend. Im sorry we werent able to extract you forthwith. But we have made up for it. Thank you barbara. And thank you tom for your good work. Inc. You, bill. Thank you, bill. I neglected to tell you about bill miller. Was in iran as a Foreign Service officer but he was also the u. S. Ambassador to ukraine where he helped eliminate ukraines Nuclear Weapons arsenal. He also served for 14 years on capitol hill. He was staff director for three senate committees. This is a man who knows of what he speaks. I am now going to introduce tom shea. For 24 years in the iaea department of safeguards. He helped design the safeguards implementation arrangement for enrichment plants and research isotope reduction reactions. He supervised inspections and facilities in japan, china, india, and other countries. After he retired, he served as sector head Defense Nuclear nonproliferation programs. He received his phd in nuclear and engineering and was awarded the institute of Nuclear Materials management distinguished service award. Tom shea comeave up and talk about his new paper which is available in its entirety online. And then i will introduce our other speakers. Dr. Shea. Thank you very much. Is there anybody here who is not read the new agreement . If so, i would start off with shame on you and get to it. So having just produced a document, was it only yesterday . The article i have been working on for search for Common Ground is in a state of trying to cope with a reality of the specific agreement. So it will take a few days before the final issue is ready. Starting off, 25 years ago the iaea system was overhauled after it was discovered that there were clandestine im Nuclear Weapon programs in iraq and north korea. Those set a strong precedent for today, they compelled the International Community to overhaul that system and make it relevant to the threats of today. Place,efforts that took the technologies that have been applied, the authorities that have been given, the size of the organization and its reach, all of those things have essentially been reinvented since 1990. With the joint comprehensive plan of action, the steps are relatively straightforward. My sense of having been in this business for 45 years, a remarkable departure from the laissezfaire kind of attitude which more often than not prevailed when there was no possibility for consensus, especially among the p5. So a new agreement which is extraordinarily detailed and indepth will need to be studied. And what the conditions are will need to be analyzed in terms of obligations and commitments, resources. That sort. So the iaea and its application of verification measures will have five challenges it will now have to confront. First is to discover any additional hidden facilities which may not have come to light. Whether there are any or not. I certainly dont know. Or whether there is any new construction from now on. The next is to verify that the known facilities are not misused as part of an Ongoing Nuclear or resurgence Nuclear Weapons program. The third is to verify that the declared Nuclear Materials in the country remain accounted for and used exclusively for peaceful purposes. The fourth is to track imports into the country, which may d materials, dual use materials, equipment, and make certain that those things that are permitted under the provisions of the joint comprehensive plan of action are used for the purposes indicated. And that other activities do not take lace. Take place. To seek to verify the limitations that are included in the joint plan of action and verify that those are not exceeded during the time that this goes on. Today given the time constraints i am going to concentrate on this question of the hidden facilities, which you may prefer the term clandestine line or or undeclared. They are synonymous. I would like you to remember to note that iran is more than twice the size of texas. We are dealing with a very large landmass filled with mountainous terrain and complicating arrangements. Verification this of objective in relation to these clandestine facilities, the iaea would first need to identify a suspicious location. It would then need to seek corroborative information before it makes any forward advances. Then define a location and specification in specific detail to request access. This is sort of like getting a warrant for someones arrest. It would then define how an inspection visit would attempt to clarify the characteristics whetherparticular site, there is reason for suspicion or for determining that it is innocent. Then they would define their Inspection Team and secure the resources that the team would require. For the Analytical Services that would be necessary depending on the findings that may go forward. Committed to implement an Additional Protocol, which is an extension to a comprehensive safeguards agreement that grew kt of the situation in dpr and in iraq in the early 90s. This instrument requires ratification. 126s currently in force in countries. The effort to gain acceptance has been long and arduous. I would say none of these countries are really hot button problem countries. It is mostly the case of building this common base of foundation for application. Iran will be different. Iran has agreed to provisionally its Additional Protocol and eight years later to seek its ratification in the parliament. The information that will be be ble to the iaea will thank you. 1990s with iraq and north korea, the information includeshe iaea now the following. Anything that comes from safeguards and its practice. Information that is gathered through inspections in the field through verification of design information for declared facilities. Any activities that it takes in acquiring samples or knowledge that come to its attention. It has a program of going through open source data mining. This is a practice which has come about in the 90s already and continues to be refined. Nationallike the Security Agency looking through email or anything of that sort. It scans through all publication , scholarly publications for related subjects and the information is sometimes revealing. It looks that export information on unknown activities. Are connections to several suppliers, particularly as grew out of the situation in iraq. Where companies that made such things as vacuum pumps that are essential for an enrichment where some people went to prison because of selling equipment for purposes that were clearly not consistent with the laws of the nations involved. So some of those companies now have direct links to the iaea and inform them when they have suspicious requests for 200 vacuum pumps for a hospital or something that would be equally crazy. We should also remember that earlier in a run, one of the sources of information were medical dissidents which broke the news political dissidents which broke the news about the enrichment plant. Union of iran is not 100 . Iran weree a risk if to take a step in that direction that its own people might once again decide to reveal that. Within the developing of both of those countries, iraq and north korea, the provision of intelligence information to the commongan became a practice which was carried out with some degree of uniformity. There is a stipulation in the iaea statute if anybody is interested it is article 8. A. Hasays if a state information which it believes would be helpful to the iaea in carrying out its activities, it should make that information available. So now according to the director generals reports to the board, more than 10 countries have provided information on iran that is a part of the safeguards fabric at this point. So the statutory permission would hopefully be interpreted more as an encouragement. Eventually maybe it even becomes something more than expectation and maybe even there is latent culpability for states that fail to provide information. I will mention is environmental samples. A science which grew out of the cold war, during which time were monitoring fallout samples from china and the soviet union to track the developing of their Nuclear Weapons as they advanced in stages with various more modern features being incorporated. Usedechnology has been now by the iaea. Initially it was a technology which was made available to them by, in particular, american laboratories but also others. It is a capability that the iaea has established its own laboratory paid for in part by the United States. Both german and canadian equipment and various other countries participated. This sounds like something that is very science fictiony or more like a crime scene investigation. Something swipe of and you can then put whatever comes off onto a piece of plastic and put it into a nuclear reactor. Individual particles which weigh one million millionth of a gram will show fission damage. Pick these particles out and tell what the chemical composition is and their isotopic composition and the morphology of the particle. So you get a tremendous amount of information. You have to know where to look and you have to be careful that you do not cross contaminate. And you have to be very cautious about leaping to conclusions. Carefulant very attention to the collection and analysis. But this is one of the mainstays. The other is access to satellite imagery. Which in the time of north korea in particular, u. S. Intelligence sources provided satellite imagery on north korea which was very revealing during a board of governors discussion on what was going on. Today we have commercial companies which provide capabilities better than the intelligence capabilities back then. Has its own contracts and it has an intelligence satellite imagery Analysis Group that buys these images and looks at them, etc. Sometimes they have their own justification for wanting to know what is going on. Sometimes they may receive information from a country that may suggest at a particular location there something they want to Pay Attention to. The first investigation cost relatively little. It is not interested. It gives you an information that may be very help all, maybe completely revealing. If you have a suspicion, one of the things you would want to do is to continue to look at this site as you go forward with further inquiries to determine whether or not anything would happen. With the additional they are accessed and is complementary to inspections. They still require where a process where a request is made, and then the request is reviewed by the government of iran and hopefully they cant access and so on and a long chain of events i told you about, rations really get into place and inspectors go up and do their work. The agency has standards and if they do a report it becomes part of the database about all things known about iran and verification. If the findings are inconclusive , additional measures maybe necessary. Maybe want to expand the scope, arrange for additional visits. It mayere is suggestions be connected to something else. There is a lot of information analyzed on an ongoing basis to determine how best to steer the process. Finding are suspicious, you start to ramp up political inquiries leading to perhaps the and a her general conversation with a resident representative