MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
For decades, American presidents have been consistent. Both Republican and Democratic commanders-in-chief have drawn a red line. Iran must not be allowed to get a nuclear weapon.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You can't let the most violent, vicious country in the last 50 years have a nuclear weapon because the Middle East will be gone. Israel will go first, without question, and they'll certainly take a shot at us.
KELLY: President Trump speaking yesterday at a Kennedy Center board meeting. Blocking Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is one of the reasons he has given for going to war. But what if a war ostensibly intended to stop a country from building nukes results in the opposite outcome? That is a concern of The Elders, an organization of peace and human rights advocates created by Nelson Mandela back in 2007. Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein is a member of The Elders. He's also president of the International Peace Institute and former United Nations high commissioner for human rights. Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
ZEID RA'AD AL HUSSEIN: Thank you, Mary Louise. Thank you.
KELLY: Lay out in a few sentences why the war with Iran could result in a world with more nuclear weapons, not less.
AL HUSSEIN: Well, the concern was prompted by a remark made by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency that half of all the highly enriched uranium that Iran possesses - and that is believed to be deep underground, with the rest essentially unknown where it is. The Iranians are not stupid. They've had many, many years thinking about these sorts of inevitabilities. And just as a matter of conjecture, it's reasonable to believe that they would have thought the way to protect their fissile material. Any military operation by the U.S., if it's perceived to be absolutely needed, would have the gargantuan task of having to secure all of it. I mean, not one cylinder can go missing.
KELLY: One thing you're describing is that after last summer's airstrikes, which President Trump says crippled Iran's nuclear facilities - he says it buried hundreds of pounds of enriched uranium under the dirt. One concern is that nobody is securing that right now. So if the regime crumbles, there's a danger that that nuclear material could fall into God knows whose hands.
AL HUSSEIN: Yes. Either the material that's deep underground or the material that could be - and of course, this is just conjecture - that could be on the move. A sufficiently strong enough drone could move it across borders. Years ago, Mary Louise, we would be worried about a few grams of fissile material.
KELLY: And what we're talking about now is hundreds of pounds.
AL HUSSEIN: Yes. Yeah.
KELLY: Setting aside for a moment what the dangers may be with any existing enriched uranium, the knowledge hasn't been bombed out of Iran. Might Iran decide, we got nothing left to lose - the only way to stop Iran from being attacked again is to race for it, race for a bomb, have a nuclear deterrent?
AL HUSSEIN: I mean, that's true, but you don't have to create a fissile device or a nuclear device to destroy countries. I mean, our concern at the time when I was working on counter-nuclear terrorism is that, you know, terrorist groups would just have a few of these materials and they can create extensive damage in countries.
KELLY: As someone who's spent many years worrying about the risk - worrying, staying up at night, I'm sure - thinking about what the worst-case scenario could be, how urgent does this moment feel?
AL HUSSEIN: No, it feels very urgent because the task at hand, if you are high up in the U.S. military, is that - and you've set yourself now the huge challenge of trying to secure this material. And so it's almost like setting yourself an examination where you can't even get a quarter of a percentage point wrong. It's an enormous, enormous challenge and made even more complicated, of course, if Iran itself is in complete disarray.
KELLY: So understanding that you're not a military planner or a nuclear inspector, the basic question is, so what to do? I mean, what would you like to see world leaders who would like a world with fewer, not more nuclear weapons - what should they do?
AL HUSSEIN: Well, I think we just have to go back to the very basics of nonproliferation. The nuclear safeguards is a well-articulated mechanism. All of them need to be bound by it.
KELLY: Forgive me for jumping in. Do you see any sign that that is in fact happening?
AL HUSSEIN: Well, not now. Not now. The world, to a certain extent, has taken leave of its senses and is turning its back on what we over the centuries have seen as the only proven method to contain and control our worst impulses as humans. It's actually mind-boggling, the dangers that can transpire.
KELLY: Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein. He's a member of the human rights group The Elders and president of the International Peace Institute. Thank you very much.
AL HUSSEIN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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