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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Hope everybody's liking it.
All right, our next guest on the show today is Gareth Porter.
Ooh, I better change the page of my notebook here.
Gareth, of course, is the author of Perils of Dominance about the Vietnam War, and he also is a journalist for Interpress Service.
That's ipsnews.net.
You can find a gigantic archive of almost everything he ever wrote there in the last many years, anyway, at antiwar.com slash porter.
Well, it'll forge you on there.
It's original.antiwar.com slash porter, actually.
And then he won the Gellhorn Prize for his work in truthout.org all about Petraeus and McChrystal's death squads in the surge in Afghanistan.
And now he's got his brand newest book out, Manufactured Crisis, The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.
And this will be, I believe, interview part five of this book.
We're basically just going through chapter by chapter here, covering as much as we can in this book because I'm just a lucky duck.
Somehow I convinced Gareth to go along with this ridiculous project of mine, but I think it's working out great anyway.
So welcome back to the show, Gareth.
Good to talk to you.
Hello again, Scott.
Great to be back.
Good deal.
All right.
So we've got to talk about the Bush years in regards to Iran's nuclear program and what all changed.
And I guess we should start, if it's all right with you, with just chronologically the Bush Jr. administration's position on Iran.
From the beginning, I guess, post-September 11th, things were all right.
This isn't in the book, but I happen to know that they had...
Well, maybe it's in the book, but I'm not at that part yet.
But anyway, they had a million-man candlelight vigil for the Americans on September 11th there in downtown Tehran.
And I know from talking with Flint Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett that the Iranians said, like, hey, you guys hate the Taliban.
We hate the Taliban.
You hate al-Qaeda.
We hate al-Qaeda.
Let's work together.
And that they had a productive relationship in the first few months there after September 11th.
Did I skip anything important, or do you want to go ahead and address that and then tell us what the hell happened?
What you're describing, of course, is precisely what the people in the State Department that were working on Iran were seeing and really believed that there was an opportunity there after 9-11 to develop cooperation with Iran, as well as Syria, on the problem of al-Qaeda because of their common interest.
Now, these were not people who were particularly soft on Iran, who regarded Iran as something other than an adversary historically, but they recognized that this was a new situation, and they did want to take advantage of it.
And as you suggested, Flint Leverett was working there in the State Department and was one of the groups that, as he told me, and I wrote in my article, Burnt Offering, the night of 9-11, Colin Powell convened a small group of people in the State Department to come up with a strategy to develop cooperation with Iran and other countries in the region, including Syria, on terrorism.
And they thought that they would be able to do that, but of course that didn't happen, and the reason is that the neoconservatives pushed back, and they wanted nothing to do with cooperation with Iran on al-Qaeda, the reason being that their objective was regime change in Iran, and they did not want anything to interfere with that, including basically being able to make progress through intelligence exchanges and other cooperation with Iran on terrorism, on al-Qaeda.
So I don't go into that story in my book, but clearly there was an opportunity, and the neoconservatives insisted on kicking it away, because it interfered with their interest in the longer term, but I shouldn't say longer term, but the eventual regime change in Iran, which they expected to be the crowning glory of their whole strategy of taking advantage of 9-11 to bring about regime change against all the regimes that were in countries that were not clients of the United States.
So that's the essence of the reality that we saw unfold after 9-11.
All right, now, in the four months after September 11th, I know they were making some progress working together on some of these issues, but then Bush gave the Axis of Evil speech, or did that whole thing in the State of the Union in January of 2002 there, just a few months later.
But then I also know, skipping ahead a little bit, and we've talked about this a million times ever since you wrote up the first big story about it, the burnt offering, the Golden Offer is what Gordon Prather called it of 2003, where the Iranians said, hey, let's negotiate everything and become friends, basically.
It was such a broad-based offer to negotiate on every issue under the sun.
And so I wonder how badly did relations really deteriorate after the Axis of Evil speech, but before the rejection of the Golden Offer?
Well, in fact, you know, what was happening was that there were meetings in Geneva in which the United States and Iranian officials, including Zarif, certainly at one point, the present foreign minister of Iran, were discussing how they could cooperate with regard to Afghanistan and potentially, you know, they were discussing the possibility, at least, of cooperation on al-Qaeda as well.
And that's where the Iranians were offering, in fact, to provide information about al-Qaeda, the detainees that they had from al-Qaeda after 9-11.
And the U.S. delegation, the U.S. delegates to those meetings were under strict orders that they were not able to accept that cooperation because the rule had been adopted that the U.S. had to demand that Iran turn over information on al-Qaeda without getting anything in return.
And, of course, what the Iranians wanted was U.S. cooperation in providing information, at least on the MEK figures, the Mujahedini calc figures, who they had captured.
Sorry, that was later, that was later, in 2003.
But, yeah, they wanted the United States' cooperation on MEK, and the United States was not able to do that.
Well, and listen, I mean, you couldn't possibly overstate how important that is when one of these guys that they had captured was Osama bin Laden's son, and not the one that later talked to Rolling Stone in a nightclub in Damascus, but apparently one who also buds with Zawahiri and into that whole movement.
And then also there was one of, I don't know, they call him a lieutenant or whatever, but he was a high-level associate of bin Laden and Zawahiri named Attef, I believe, who the Iranians held for years and years, who was part of this attempted negotiation.
They wanted to hand this guy over to us, and eventually al-Qaeda kidnapped an Iranian diplomat in Pakistan, and they traded this guy, Attef, for their ambassador back.
But that wasn't until, like, 2009 or 2008 or something like that.
And so, you know, this is the actual enemies of America, not the ones our government is drumming up for us.
They get to get away scot-free, including bin Laden's son, because they're not willing to give up their opportunity to use the Mujahideen-y cult, communist terrorist cult, to carry out assassinations and drum up bogus intelligence against Iran, our fake enemy.
And, you know, this policy of refusing to cooperate with Iran on al-Qaeda, which, as you suggest, could have paid off with some real valuable information, and indeed even getting some of the people for interrogation directly.
I mean, we could have had these high-level al-Qaeda people for interrogation, but we chose we, meaning the Bush administration's neoconservatives, blocked that.
They vetoed it.
And this was despite the fact that George W. Bush understood that the MEK was just as much a terrorist organization as al-Qaeda was.
Well, they even cited the MEK's presence inside Iraq, where they were being kept as pets of Saddam, as proof of his support for terrorism.
And one of the reasons they had to invade him.
It's right there at the archive, George W. Bush's website.
Right.
So it was a really tough sell on its face to be able to make that case.
But they somehow managed to dissuade the White House from going along with this.
And one of the ways that the neoconservatives, and I include here, you know, for the sake of this particular episode, for explaining this episode, Rumsfeld in that group, because he was clearly going along with all of their policy preferences in the Middle East.
What they did, which was really decisive, to basically disconnect or to prevent the United States and Iran from having further talks, was to drum up this phony idea that Iran was behind terrorist bombings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in May, early May of 2003.
And that was the thing that basically prevented any further diplomatic contacts between the United States and Iran at all after that.
Because Bush then went along with the neoconservative policy of not having any diplomatic contact with Iran.
That's what they really wanted.
Before that, there had been a sort of intermediate position, an intermediate situation where they were talking, but the United States wouldn't accept any of the Iranian proposals.
But after that, you know, the neocons succeeded in essentially disrupting any real diplomatic dialogue.
Alright, now unfortunately we're going to have to take this break because we've got to pay the bills here somehow.
It's going to be here in just a second.
But when we get back with Gareth Porter, author of Manufactured Crisis, the untold story of the Iran nuclear scare, we're going to be talking about, it really is kind of funny when you think about it, I was laughing out loud actually reading the book, reminded of what the neocons thought the war in Iraq was going to be like.
I can't even think of it right now without laughing.
And I mean it's sad, all the million dead people and everything, and the millions of refugees, but just how different everything turned out from what they thought was going to happen when they invaded Iraq, and all the pressure it was going to put on the neighbors, and the kind of government they thought they were going to get out of it in Iraq, and all of that.
And regime change of course in Iran next door too.
We'll be back with Gareth Porter on more from Manufactured Crisis in just a second.
Hey y'all, Scott here.
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Alright guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, this is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I'm talking with the great Gareth Porter, the great author of Manufactured Crisis, the untold story of the Iran nuclear scare.
And we're at this point in the discussion, we're at right around 2003.
Don't you know, Gareth, once America invades and occupies Iraq, then everything is going to work out great after that.
We're going to be in the catbird seat, and we're going to get regime change.
All we've got to do to regime change anybody after that will be just to look at them funny.
And then everything's going to be A-OK.
What's your problem with that?
My problem with that is, as a historian, that these people were batshit crazy.
I mean, they had no concept of reality whatsoever.
This was a unique sort of experiment, if you will, in policymaking, in which a small group of people sort of made policy on the basis of sort of their ideal version of what should happen, based on a kind of magical attitude towards the use of military force.
That's really the only way I know how to describe the worldview of the Douglas Fyfe, David Wormser group that was behind this whole policy of using, starting with Iraq, sort of occupying Iraq, and then using that set of military bases and military presence to then lord it over the rest of the Middle East and have Syria, in particular the Syrian regime, quaking in its boots and essentially easily then falling to the pressure from the United States and Israel, of course.
And that would then, in return, have the regime in Tehran quaking in its boots, and the people would then be encouraged to rise up.
And that's, in very rough terms, the picture that these people had in their heads.
It's the most remarkable thing that I know of, in terms of just how unrealistic a group of policymakers or advisors to policymakers could be in their thinking about foreign policy.
Well, and they're as confident as they are wrong about everything.
These neocons you talk about, and this is the other part where I was busting up laughing, where you're quoting Hilary Mann Leverett, talking about dealing with the people in the vice president's office, and they weren't making a big stink about Iran's nuclear program, because they actually liked the idea of Iran having nuclear weapons as long as it was after the regime change.
And they figured they were going to get the regime change.
They didn't necessarily need the nuclear program to be their big fake excuse for a regime change.
And so they decided they would go ahead and tone down the nuke rhetoric for just a minute on the chance, a pretty good chance, they thought, that they would soon have the Shah's son or somebody else as compliant as him, and then why not arm him up with H-bombs?
Yeah, that is clearly the most outrageous sort of piece of reasoning or thinking that I can think of in an entire book.
Did she say, by the way, was that John Hanna or Rody or Libby?
She didn't say who it was, but it could have been any one of those people.
There's really no point in trying to pin down who it was, because they all pretty much were capable of coming out with a statement like that.
And, you know, I mean, how seriously to take that is a question that I wouldn't be able to really answer.
Well, it just goes to show that they weren't really worried about an Iranian nuclear program.
It's either an issue to beat people over the head with or not.
I think it was primarily an issue to use against Iran, to make sure that Iran remained as illegitimate in the eyes of the rest of the world as possible.
I don't think that they were really seriously thinking through, you know, that there was no paper which attempted to calculate what would be the consequences of an Iran that somehow was allied with the United States having nuclear weapons would be.
I just don't think they ever got that far.
And so it's really a throwaway line, just to indicate the sort of ridiculousness of the thinking in the vice president's office.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And then another part of their ridiculousness, and has been all these years too, and they've said this over and over again on TV and wherever they can, Bill Kristol and his compadres, oh, everybody knows that if you just dropped a couple of well-placed smart bombs on the Iranian regime, the whole thing would fall right over.
The people of Iran are just dying for America to come and bomb their regime for them.
They'll rise up and install a pro-American something.
It really will be easy.
They still say that, right?
That's a bit of an exaggeration, but I think it's quite true that people like David Wormser, who I would say is probably the most important strategist of this group in terms of Syria and Iran.
And he was the one who was whispering in Bolton's ear as well as in Vice President Cheney's ear, oh, okay, here's how we're going to do this.
You know, we simply have to bring down the Syrian regime, and then the Iranian regime will be unstable, they'll be on the defensive, and people will know that the end is coming, and that's when we can encourage them to rise up.
The hope was that it wouldn't take boots on the ground.
We would just have to use air power and sort of hit the usual targets, and that that would be enough to end the regime in Iran.
I think that undoubtedly David Wormser believed that, and so did Douglas Feith.
These people are perfectly capable of sort of hallucinating in that way.
And then I think it's also very important to note here about the Iraq war, that they still had the attitude all the way until the end of 2005 that everything was going fine just how they wanted when, you know, it was January 2005 when Bill Mahn, the blogger, he's now a Twitterer.
I don't know if anybody ever found out who Bill Mahn was, but I remember in January 2005 he titled a blog post right after the election in January there.
Ayatollah, you so...
The joke was that what you just did was you just fought a war for Iran.
You just held an election, and Iran's sock puppets, the Supreme Islamic Council and the Dawa Party especially, have been hiding out in Iran since Jimmy Carter had Saddam invade them back in 1979 or 1980.
The Iraqi traitors who worked for Iran, they were the ones that the Americans had just installed in power, and you could see it coming as clear as day from at least the beginning of 2004 when Sistani, the Ayatollah, made them scrap the caucus system of Bremer and promised to do one man, one vote, and they got to decide the form of the constitution that was ratified in the fall of 2004.
So anyone reading antiwar.com knew better than that, and you're telling me at the end of 2005, which was when Bush was announcing the new strategy for victory because of how bad everything was going, and three quarters of the troops wanted to pick up and leave now, mission unaccomplished, and they still thought they were winning until then?
Yeah, I was just talking with Kelly Vlahos today who recalled a meeting in January 2005 in which the neocons were out in full force.
This is a meeting here in Washington.
The neocons out in full force, including the minions of Petraeus, and the line at this conference in Washington was that there's no real insurgency in Iraq.
It's just a problem that they, as one of the prominent figures in the meeting said, they just need better night goggles to take care of the problem.
So that is a measure of just how completely the neoconservatives ruled over what was allowed to be fought in the Bush administration and just how far from reality they were as of January 2005.
It was only the end of 2005 and 2006 that it finally dawned on these idiots in the neoconservative group in the administration that they really did have a problem in Iraq.
It wasn't going the way they wanted.
Well, I never even mind just the whole we can beat them in battle kind of thing.
Basically, I remember I was in charge of angry letters written to antiwar.com.
My job was to respond to them and this kind of thing.
Basically, what I was telling the angry soldiers who were writing in and whatever is like, Hey, you got to ask yourself for a minute, put down the slogans about democracy and the Iraqi people for a minute and look at which factions are which and which side are you fighting on?
Are you surging for America?
Are you surging for Iraq?
Are you surging for the Supreme Islamic Council here?
What difference does it make?
Basically, what you're telling me is that level of debate was higher than what was going on inside the White House.
Come on, we got General Casey.
He's a real tough guy.
He's going to go out there and he's going to stop the bad guys for us.
They knew they were recruiting the Bata Brigade to lead some of the death squads and all that.
There was some recognition of who was who, right?
There was recognition that these are people who are ready to do our bidding.
Beyond that, I don't think they allowed themselves to think, frankly.
Look, inside the military, we know that there were serious people.
There were senior people who understood in Iraq that this was not working and they had to do something different.
Even by mid-2005, the top brass in the U.S. military mission there understood that they weren't going to win this war and that it was necessary to turn it over.
They were still being unrealistic, but at least they were saying, let's turn it over to the Iraqis and get out.
There's a reason that I'm going so far off on this tangent about the Iraq war.
It's because the ultimate part of the American role there, not that the war itself is over, but the end of America's part there was the surge to finalize the victory, at least in the taking of Baghdad, for these forces of the Dawa Party, the Supreme Islamic Council, and the Saudis, and the so-called United Iraqi Alliance, the people who had won that election of 2005.
In other words, America had fought a war for eight years for Iran, against their enemy Saddam, and for their hand-picked, chosen, sock-puppet parties and militias, and they did a sectarian cleansing of Baghdad to the point where it's now 85% Shiite city, firmly in control of the Dawa Party, in alliance with Iran.
And that whole time, they refused to acknowledge that that was the project that they had embarked on, that their allies, the Saudis, were funding the Sunni insurgency against them.
Final comment on this.
When David Vitreous went to Iraq in 2007, he was stuck with this situation, and he was going to make the best of it.
And of course, that meant pretending a lot.
I mean, it meant sort of acting as though what he was going to do there was something other than what you've just said.
And he was completely successful in selling that to the U.S. media, so he got away with it, and that's all that counted as far as he was concerned, and the people working for him.
Yeah, I mean, I don't mean to say that it would have been great if they had worked with the Iranians on that war the whole time or anything, but I'm just pointing out how ridiculous it was that they are literally fighting a war for their pretend greatest enemy, and they're completely refusing to even talk with them about the project at all, and deal with them in any way.
At the same time, they're drumming up this fake nuclear issue.
Yeah, I've had people suggest to me that they really believe that Vitreous and Soleimani, the Iranian sort of, I mean, I'll agree, behind the scenes on the Shia government side in Iraq, did talk and understood much better than was ever let on by Vitreous publicly what was really going on.
All right.
Now, I'm sorry, because we've got to get back, and we're already way over time, and the actual show is over.
This is the extra bonus overtime part of the show.
Don't let me keep you too long.
If you have to go, let me know.
But otherwise, I'd like to get into really the second half of this chapter is about the E3 negotiations with Iran.
We'll take another ten minutes for that.
That's fine.
Oh, okay, great.
Yeah, so let's talk about the E3.
That's France, Germany, and Britain negotiating with the Iranians sort of, kind of on America's behalf.
Is that correct?
Between the years 2003 to 2005.
In a way, you can't say they were negotiating on America's behalf, because the Bush administration never agreed to be represented in any way, shape, or form in those negotiations.
It stood back and said, okay, you can do it, but, you know, we never agreed to this ourselves, and so you don't speak for us.
And that, indeed, was the fundamental problem from the beginning, that the Iranians understood that the Bush administration was not really at the table, you know, indirectly at all.
And fundamentally, you know, there was no possibility that those negotiations could ever achieve anything, even if the three European governments were basically, you know, extremely intelligent, and knew precisely what they should negotiate and were, you know, had the best will imaginable, because they really couldn't deliver what the Iranians needed them to deliver in order to make a deal that would have any real sticking power, which was, you know, the United States had to make certain commitments to Iran in terms of the regional situation and in terms of Iranian security.
And since the Bush administration was, you know, made it very clear they weren't willing to make any commitment of any sort to Iran through the European three, the Iranians knew they couldn't get that from the EU, and the EU knew they couldn't deliver it, and so, in a way, the whole process was kind of artificial.
And both sides, in a way, were, you know, playing at negotiating, knowing that it wasn't going to work, is my real interpretation.
Yeah, well, you know, I sort of look at it like the Iranians were taking the opportunity to prove how reasonable they could be in the face of American total intransigence, right, by signing the additional protocol, even though they knew, they assumed, like you're saying, they probably could have bet that it wasn't going to go anywhere eventually, but they went ahead and didn't enrich for two years when they could have been enriching, and they went ahead and abided by the additional protocol which allowed for expanded inspections and all that.
If anything, it was just an exercise in them saying, see, we're really not guilty here.
Well, and, you know, they did accomplish something really quite significant from their point of view, which is, as I point out in my book, that the Europeans, particularly the Germans and French, assured them that they would stand up to the Bush administration in terms of what they were afraid at that point, from late 2003 to late 2004, at least, or early 2005, that, you know, was the Bush administration's intention to repeat history and make a case for war against Iran.
I mean, they really were very anxious about the intentions of the Bush administration about attacking Iran.
So those governments were prepared to negotiate with Iran in part because, I'm talking about, you know, late 2003 through late 2004 and early 2005, they were ready to negotiate with Iran mostly, I would say, because they believed that it was important to discourage, to stand in the way of, in effect, the United States being able to make a political case for war against Iran.
And they did, in fact, you know, succeed in doing that.
They took the wind out of the sails, to some extent, of the neoconservatives on that policy.
They made it much more difficult.
Yeah, was it that context that Rumsfeld was calling France and Germany old Europe and complaining they were screwing up his war plans?
Sure, yeah, yeah, that was part of the context, definitely, yeah.
They were not happy with the European role in sort of being willing to negotiate with Iran.
And, you know, they were constantly putting pressure on the Europeans to toughen up and to, you know, basically step away from the negotiating table.
Now, of course, the big turning point, oddly enough, was when John Bolton left the State Department and went to the United Nations, and Colin Powell was replaced by Catalina Rice, the Secretary of State, because Rice was much more effective in suborning the three European states and getting them to negotiate much more clearly in line with the Bush administration's policy, which was essentially saying, you know, not a single centrifuge should spin.
And, you know, indeed, the Europeans did take that line in their talks with the Iranians in 2005.
And now, by the way, when exactly was it that the UN passed the resolutions that said you may not enrich and you must open your non-nuclear facilities like your missile and centrifuge facilities open to inspection and answer all these laptop questions, etc.?
Well, those are, I mean, those are different questions.
They were handled different ways at different times.
I mean, you know, the question of opening your centrifuge facilities for inspection, of course, that's something that would go with the additional protocol.
And that actually, you know, the pressure for Iran to sign additional protocol from the Europeans as well as others came in 2003.
Basically, in the summer of 2003, they started to put very strong pressure diplomatically on the Iranians to agree to sign the additional protocol.
And, of course, in October of 2003, the Iranians basically made a deal with the European three, which involved a commitment to sign, to adopt the additional protocol.
And so that was when that happened.
And then what were the other things that you mentioned?
Well, there was one that said you may not enrich whatsoever.
Then there was the expanding inspections, and then there was answering more questions based on forgeries that we haven't got to that part yet.
Well, the prohibition on enrichment came in the U.N.
Resolution 2006.
That was the first time that was done.
And, of course, that was a key turning point for sure.
That was Rice then that got that done, I guess.
Yes, indeed.
Indeed.
All right.
Well, before we get to Iran's offer of O5, which I think is really important for at the end of this term of kind of half negotiation, as you said, without the Americans participating and only the Europeans, it was never really going to go anywhere.
But it's interesting the way you describe their final offer before that all fell apart, when Medina Jad came to power and all of that.
But also I wanted to ask you if you wanted to, you could comment on the significance, I mean, because we're going to get back to the subject later on anyway, but the significance of the 2005 inspections at the Parchin facility and Bolton's accusations there that the Iranians were cheating.
Right.
So on the 2005 Iranian offer to the EU3, I mean, the importance of that is that this was March of 2005, and the Iranians were trying to save the negotiations somehow.
I mean, they were trying to prevent the complete breakdown of negotiations, which was going to happen if the EU3 stuck with their insistence on no uranium enrichment whatsoever.
That was the EU position.
And so the Iranians were trying to prevent the end of the negotiations, which would come if the EU3 did not accept this proposal.
And what the Iranians proposed was that they would limit their enrichment to only what could be used by a civilian power program that was required by a civilian power program, so that they would not, as I understand it, they would not accumulate, they would not be accumulating stockpiles of enriched uranium, which would be lying around waiting, or that could be used for a nuclear weapon.
Instead, what they said they would do was to have any enriched uranium, low-enriched uranium, be immediately transformed into a form that would not be available for further enrichment.
So it was a way of reassuring the Europeans of Iran's non-nuclear weapon intentions.
It sounds a lot like the deal we're about to get now, if we're lucky here.
Well, that's right.
Because what the Iranians have done in the deal that has been partially negotiated already, and is continually being negotiated, is that they have agreed to essentially bring down their 20% enriched uranium stockpile, and to transform what is not reduced to below 19-something percent enriched uranium, to turn that into this powder form that would then be available, would be used for the Tehran Research Reactor.
So they have, in fact, used a similar sort of technique to reassure the United States and the West about their intentions.
And I think that it has been effective to some extent in that regard.
It has paved the way for the possibility of this comprehensive agreement in that way.
And I quote Peter Jenkins, then the UK permanent representative to the IAEA, who was part of the EU3 delegation at the time of that meeting, who said, you know, everyone was very impressed by this.
They recognized that this was a very serious offer by the Iranians, that it meant that they were attempting to reassure the West about not having a stockpile be available for nuclear weapons use or nuclear weapons purposes.
But he said, you know, he knew that they couldn't do anything about it, because the fix was on.
I mean, they all knew that the United States would allow them to negotiate anything that would allow any centrifuges to spin.
All right, now, before we talk about Parchin real quick here, it seems like this is probably a good time to play this clip of John Bolton.
As you say, he had been the undersecretary of state for lying and getting us in trouble, or something, I forgot.
And then he had become the unconfirmed ambassador to the United Nations.
Well, here he is after that position was over, after he's a free man, I believe, in 2007.
He was recorded on this phone call with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee in describing, and the context is pretty obvious if you know this stuff, that he's talking about their endless accusations and demands, basically are meant to make the Iranians throw their hands up and quit and say we're tired of trying because we're tired of the endless accusations.
And so, you know, that's something that's sort of gone unsaid, although I'm sure people remember, is that the backdrop to all this is an endless list of accusations and endless propaganda in the media about their secret nuclear weapons program, that it was just taken as a given what liars and cheats they were, and that it was only a matter of time.
And the only question about bombing them was, do we know where all of their evil, hidden, secret nuclear weapons program is actually buried, because we just don't know what all they might have, and all of that propaganda was going on at the time.
And then, so here's that clip, and I'll let you comment after that.
The Iranian reaction to the sanctions resolution has been very telling in that respect, although they've passed a resolution in parliament to reevaluate their relationship with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
They have not rejected the sanctions resolution.
They have not done anything more dramatic, such as withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty or throwing out inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which I actually hope they would do, that that kind of reaction would produce a counter-reaction that actually would be more beneficial to us.
Well, I mean, what kind of counter-reaction?
Because, of course, if they completely withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, then that would leave what options open to John Bolton?
Well, I mean, this is a very telling quote, telling excerpt from Bolton, because that was precisely the essence of his strategy, his political strategy for dealing with the Iran nuclear issue.
What he wanted to do was, A, prevent any agreement between either the Europeans or the IAEA with Iran that would detract from the propaganda theme that Iran was clearly hiding a covert nuclear weapons program.
And, two, he was hoping to provoke Iran to do something, to do things, but particularly one thing, that would make it easier to accuse Iran of hiding the covert nuclear weapons work.
And the big thing that he did in 2004, which I talk about in my book, was to come up with a set of satellite photos.
Now, nobody knows exactly where the satellite photos came from, but he came up with those photos after having met with the chief of Mossad in June of 2003.
And clearly he was working very closely with Mossad from then on on the specifics of a political strategy on this.
So he had this set of satellite photos showing sites in Parchin where there were facilities, or what could be facilities, for conventional explosive testing.
And he turned these satellite photos over to the IAEA, asserting that these could be used to test nuclear weapons, hydrodynamic testing of nuclear weapons.
And, of course, what he really wanted here was for the IAEA to demand to inspect those sites at Parchin, and if Iran refused, then to write it up and make it part of a bill of particulars against Iran.
And when Mohamed ElBaradei, the Director General, refused to do that, first in June and then in September of 2004 in the IAEA reports, then what Bolton did was to leak the photos to David Albright of ISIS, and Albright immediately put them on his website.
And guess what?
Bolton then, the same day, issues a statement, not in his own name, but an unnamed senior State Department official says that this is alarming evidence of Iran's nuclear intent.
So this was part of the propaganda assault that he planned.
And then, you know, he denounced ElBaradei for having failed to refer to this, suppressing this important evidence in his IAEA report.
He had hoped, of course, that what would result was an Iranian move to refuse the IAEA permission to go to Parchin.
Instead, it ended up in February 2005, the Iranians agreed to have the IAEA visit Parchin and allowed them to go to any five sites of their own choice within one of the four quadrants.
And so that's what they did.
They visited five sites in February 2005, took a bunch of environmental samples, came back and found nothing, and then in late 2005, in November 2005, the IAEA visit again was allowed by Iran to do the same thing, visit five sites of their choice in any of the four quadrants.
So in other words, they visited ten sites that they wanted to visit, took environmental samples, found nothing, and the point of all this, I think, is extremely important because, you know, the Iranians would have never allowed them to do that had they had anything to hide at Parchin.
If there was anything going on that could conceivably have something to do with nuclear weapons or nuclear anything at Parchin, they would have never allowed the IAEA to pick ten sites to go to and take environmental samples.
So it's pretty strong, convincing evidence that there was never anything at Parchin that the Iranians were concerned about.
Yeah, well, that's the most I ever read about how that inspection happened.
I guess I had sort of missed it in 2005, Gareth, when they made a big deal about it again in 2011.
Well, there was Robert Kelly from the IAEA and even Ali Heinonen, who I only knew as a very hawkish kind of member of the IAEA board or exactly what his position was there, chief of whatever the hell.
Whenever he talked to the media, he's always very hawkish on Iran issues.
And there he was even telling David Sanger, the very hawkish reporter for the New York Times, that, no, we went to Parchin and we're satisfied that there's no nuclear testing, anything like that going on there.
And I believe Robert Kelly told the Christian Science Monitor the same thing, another high-level official at the IAEA.
Isn't that right?
Well, actually it was Heinonen himself who talked to the Monitor.
It was his interview with Scott Peterson of the Monitor, which was the first clear indication of exactly how that IAEA inspection trip went down.
And in my book I point out that, you know, at the time, in 2005, sorry, I guess it was March 2005, the then head of the Safeguards Department of the IAEA, Goldschmidt, actually made it sound like they were limited.
You know, they didn't get to visit the places they wanted to visit and made it sound like it wasn't a very satisfactory visit to Parchin.
That was not the truth.
And, you know, Goldschmidt still swears that he didn't know anything about this, what Heinonen says about what was negotiated with the IAEA, with the Iranians.
But clearly, you know, that's exactly what did happen.
And so the news media was misled by what was said at the Board of Governors meeting about this inspection visit.
But then the issue was pretty much put to bed, wasn't it, or should have been anyway, back in 2011 when the issue came back up.
Because I don't know if I really explained this well, but from my point of view anyway, it was if the very hawkish Heinonen is saying to the very hawkish Sanger in the New York Times that this is overblown and don't worry about it, then that's the end of that.
Because if there was anything to worry about, these two would be on it for us.
See, the IAEA never said anything except that they didn't find any evidence of a nuclear activity at Parchin.
But the news media way of handling this was to say, yeah, but they didn't really get to visit the places that they wanted to visit.
So that's the way Sanger has handled it ever since.
And he's continued in 2007, 2008, 2009.
Every time he refers to Parchin, he makes that point, and it's all bogus completely.
All right, now I'll go ahead and let you go with this then.
The end of this chapter basically is back to Iran's final offer, and Condoleezza Rice and the rest of the Bush Jr. administration refusing to take them up on it there in 2004 and the beginning of 2005.
And then that was when they really started enriching.
At the end of that E3 deal, that was when Natanz became more than an experiment.
And then shortly thereafter that, and I don't know if this was on purpose or not, I don't know if you want to comment on this or not, but it seems important to me that George Bush went on TV and did, you know, almost like Obama's message to the people of Iran, only Bush's message was, you better not vote for the right-wing nationalists in this upcoming election, which is exactly what they all turned out in record numbers and did, and elected Ahmadinejad in July of 2005.
Now, I don't know if the entire Bush government is as stupid as he is, or what was the plan there.
I did not remember that.
That was the era of, see, how could it possibly be our intransigence that we're dealing with here when it's loudmouth over there representing the other side?
Yeah, I did not remember that Bush statement, but I can tell you that when I was in Iran in December of 2008, one of the things that I heard from more than one Iranian political figure who I interviewed, in fact, both a conservative supporter of Ahmadinejad and a reformist, you know, who was an opponent of Ahmadinejad, said the same thing, that in the most recent parliamentary election, that there had been a huge reaction, a nationalist reaction, to statements by the Bush administration at that point, which, you know, seemed to do what you just attributed to George Bush, that is to say, you know, sort of a threatening attitude towards the government and saying that, you know, that they should be voting for reformists or people who were not supporting the government.
And, in fact, it was exactly the opposite.
Ahmadinejad was able to take advantage of those kinds of statements, and he had a big victory in the parliamentary election.
And so they said exactly the same thing that you said, that it backfired, and that this was exactly the opposite of what the United States should do in dealing with Iran.
Never make statements like that that seem to be pressure on Iran's voters or Iran's people.
Yeah, of course, that kind of thing always backfires.
Every pro-democracy activist there is accused of being CIA, same as anywhere in the world where we intervene like that, of course.
And I guess, as you're saying there, turn the nuclear issue, which used to be this small thing to the Iranian government, it was a small project that the Americans and the Israelis, through their persecution, basically keep growing and growing, and now it's become a major point of national pride amongst virtually all Iranians.
Well, that's absolutely right.
Of course, the Green revolutionaries and everyone, all of them, are first to rush to the front of the parade that says, we're damn proud to have an independent, sovereign nuclear program of our own, and the major powers can go to hell if they don't like it.
We're keeping it.
Absolutely.
This is perhaps the most important point of all about the Iranian nuclear program, that it was transformed.
Its significance was completely altered by the policy of the United States in particular.
There's no way that it would have taken on the significance that it has, had there not been pressure from the United States, and in the form that it has taken, particularly, basically provoking a patriotic, nationalist, prideful reaction on the part of most Iranians.
All right.
And we'll stop there, and then we'll pick up, I hope, again, tomorrow afternoon, Gareth, for part six of this.
I'm having so much fun.
Thanks so much, Scott.
I enjoyed it.
Thanks very much.
I sure appreciate it, and especially because I kept you way over time.
Okay.
We'll talk again.
That's the great Gareth Porter, everybody.
Manufactured Crisis, the untold story of the Iran nuclear scare.
And we're just going through this thing piece by piece.
I love it, and I want it on the audio record, too, out there for you.
Maybe they should just do an audio book and go back to covering Ukraine.
No.
More with Gareth Porter, part six of our interview series here tomorrow.
Hey, I'm Scott Horton here for WallStreetWindow.com.
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On March 7th at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., the Council for the National Interest is co-hosting the first ever national summit to reassess the U.S.-Israel special relationship.
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That's the national summit to reassess the U.S.-Israel special relationship.
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