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For Pacifica Radio, September 22nd, 2013.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
All right, y'all, welcome to the show.
It is Anti-War Radio here on Pacifica.
I'm your host, Scott Horton.
My website is ScottHorton.org.
You can find my full interview archive there, almost 3,000 of them now, going back to 2003.
And again, that's ScottHorton.org.
And you can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube at slashScottHortonShow.
Introducing the great Gareth Porter, the independent historian and journalist from InterPress Service and Truthout.org.
That's IPSnews.net and Truthout.org.
Welcome back to the show.
Gareth, how are you doing?
Fine.
Thanks, Scott.
Well, very happy to have you here.
And man, I got to tell you, I was extraordinarily pleased to see this headline.
I think we all were.
Rumors, and I think originating from the White House, that Obama may meet the new Iranian President Rouhani at the United Nations on Tuesday.
I wonder whether you think this could be a real step forward, a real breakthrough when it comes to the talks, especially, obviously, on the red herring of Iran's nuclear program, their so-called nuclear weapons program.
Sure.
It's always going to be a positive.
It's going to make a difference politically when the President of the United States meets with the President of Iran.
That's a big deal.
It changes the atmospherics.
It puts the opponents of a negotiated settlement in the United States on the defensive, obviously.
It gives momentum to those who are in support of such a deal by the United States.
And therefore, you know, it's really a critical development, it seems to me.
It makes a difference in the politics here at home more than anything else.
And that's really, in my view, where the real problem lies at this point, and in fact has laid for many years now.
Well, this guy's an Iranian president, which means he's crazy, and so therefore we can't deal with him.
What's the point of meeting with a guy like that?
Well, I think even the standard news media treatment of Iran has now really shifted to acknowledge that Hassan Rouhani simply cannot be treated as part of the Mad Mullah syndrome, which, you know, a few years ago, I remember the atmosphere surrounding the whole issue of Iran was such that you had to sort of start your article.
And in fact, one of the articles that I did write for the American Prospect, the first paragraph kind of said, you know, they're considered to be the Mad Mullahs, but in fact they're rational leaders.
And you know, it seems to me that is really no longer necessary in terms of treating the issue of Iranian policymaking towards nuclear weapons.
The atmospherics have changed sufficiently over the last few months, so that now it really is more difficult to put forward that Mad Mullah kind of business anymore.
I don't think it really flies.
It's kind of like just the same way the idea that you can't say anything critical of Israel anymore is no longer acceptable, that you can't accuse somebody of being anti-Semitic because, you know, you're critical of Israel's policy toward the Palestinians or their policy toward Iran or whatever.
I think that there's been a shift politically, which makes it at least conceivable that you could have a president of the United States who's now ready to defy the domestic political forces, but primarily the Israel lobby that has held back any positive response to the Iranian proposals, certainly since the beginning of the Obama administration, that's been the primary problem, it seems to me.
And you think that's because of the election of Rouhani, or is it because of the diminishing authority and influence of the Israel lobby in D.C., or both?
Well, I think it starts with the Rouhani appearance on the scene, becoming the president.
Rouhani clearly has changed the political dynamics, and the fact that Rouhani clearly has been able to maneuver internationally in a way that no previous president has been able to do is part of the atmospherics.
He's clearly sending signals that Iran is going to make a serious offer and saying all the right things about wishing happy Rosh Hashanah to Jews and liberating political prisoners.
All these things are clearly intended to foster a new sense of moderacy on the part of the Iranian government and to make it more difficult for people in Washington who want to stop this and who have been able to do it in the past to do so.
That doesn't guarantee anything, but we're not out of the woods.
I'm not suggesting that, but I think that there's a much better possibility at this point that the lobby will not be able to simply snap its fingers and say, okay, we want you to pass a new legislative or sort of legal statement saying that the Congress opposes any deal with Iran.
And you mentioned the weakening of the Israel lobby.
Obviously, the fact that the lobby came out in favor of the administration's proposal for going to war in Syria and was roundly defeated is a good sign.
I mean, this means that Congress cannot be counted on when it comes to issues that relate to the basic interests of the American people, and if Congress gets the feeling that there has been a shift, a sufficient shift in the political atmosphere in this country, it could affect the ability of the president to maneuver diplomatically.
That's certainly the hope at this point.
But at the same time, we have to acknowledge, look, the Congress still controls the whole question of economic sanctions.
They are central to any possible deal, and there's no doubt that they are responsive still to the lobby to a great extent.
So I think that there's still a very significant danger that the president could decide that he can't afford to spend his political capital on that deal.
I think that's the question at this point.
Right.
Well, I mean, yeah, that is true.
On average, grab a congressman at random.
They're worse on Iran than they are on Syria, for sure.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
No question about it.
Well, we just, the American people and, you know, Putin, I mean, our Putin, Obama ought to thank Vladimir Putin for intervening on his behalf.
But I think the American people pretty much still set the precedent anyway that we actually can unite and agree that we don't want a war and we can stop a war before one starts.
And how are they going to take that back?
Right.
I mean, you know, when it comes to the question of going to war, there's no doubt that the Israel lobby simply does not have the wherewithal to alter the balance in Congress.
But then when you shift the ground to Iran, you know, it does become a much more difficult proposition and Congress, you know, the Republicans in Congress who made the defeat of the administration's proposal for Syria inevitable.
And could they be counted on to do something rational on Iran?
I don't know yet.
I'm not so sure.
No, of course not.
Not even with a Democrat in the White House.
Especially with a Democrat in the White House.
I think that, you know, they're going to be even more willing to oppose a presidential proposal that involves ending or really radically diminishing sanctions.
No question about that.
Yeah.
Where we're in, we're still have a serious problem.
All right.
As far as the Iranian side in this, you know, obviously no one can trust the mad mullahs or anything like that.
But they came out with a huge trial balloon the other day in Der Spiegel.
And I talked with our friend Mohammad Sahimi, Iran policy critic and professor at USC there about it.
And he was saying that in the Iranian media, they were saying the same thing.
It wasn't just Der Spiegel.
There was a real, at least, you know, Iranian based trial balloon.
This was not something made up by the West anyway, although I guess the government of Iran is disavowing it now.
I'm going to go ahead and take their word for it that they kind of meant at least the possibility they're willing to negotiate the entire existence, I guess, of the Fordo facility, the comm facility, which is all important to those who cry all day about Iran's nuclear program for whatever reason.
Well, I think that's right.
I mean, it makes sense from their point of view to make a deal that involves closing the Fordo facility if, in fact, it involves either complete or very, very substantial reduction in or elimination of the sanctions.
I mean, I think they're, you know, they're going to bargain very hard.
I think they're going to demand complete removal of sanctions as part of that deal.
They may not be able to get that.
But I think that if they were to be able to roll back the sanctions very, very substantially in a way that would alter, obviously, the implications for the Iranian economy, that that would be very much worth, you know, making a deal for closing Fordo.
And that, you know, let's face it, I mean, the Iranians have always viewed Fordo in large part as a bargaining chip.
It has been explicitly a bargaining chip in the sense that when they were saying that they were going to begin to enrich uranium at 20 percent themselves, and then when they were going to actually, you know, start turning the 20 percent enriched uranium into the fuel rods for their facility, the Tehran Research Facility, I mean, they were clearly offering the United States and the West a deal whereby if the United States were to turn over the 20 percent enriched uranium that they needed or the fuel that they needed for the Tehran Research Reactor, they wouldn't continue to enrich to 20 percent themselves.
They would accept that deal.
The United States simply refused that deal when it was first offered in 2010.
So that has been really a part of the deal for the Iranian policy for the last two or three years.
They have actually been quite explicit about the fact that there was a deal to be made that involved what they were doing at Fordo.
Now they didn't say, we'll close Fordo, but that was, you know, a large part of the reason for continuing the Fordo facility.
Well, and Saheemi pointed out that it's a lot easier for them to talk about giving it up now because they've got the 20 percent enriched uranium that they needed for the purposes that they said they needed it for all along, and they're already, this was the other big headline of the week, they're already diverting even more of this 20 percent enriched uranium and turning it into fuel for the reactor.
In other words, making it, I guess, not impossible, but much more difficult to convert it back to gaseous form to enrich to even higher, up to 90 percent purity for weapons grade if they were to ever choose to do so.
Well, that's absolutely right.
I mean, they are really, they're in a position now to supply the fuel rods for the Tehran research reactor for some time to come.
And they didn't really need to continue it, and they were trying to come up with some rationalization for continuing 20 percent enrichment, which in some cases sounded a little bit far-fetched, such as, you know, submarines and so forth, you know, even higher than 20 percent they were talking about.
But, you know, I think that that's absolutely true, that, you know, they were simply enhancing their bargaining position, and the bargaining position now is such that if they were to be able to get a deal involving a significant reduction of sanctions, and I mean, you know, a large part of the sanctions, then there's absolutely no reason for them not to go ahead with that deal.
So I think that this is far more than simply propaganda or, you know, an idea that somebody had.
I think it is very probably the intention of the government to make that kind of a deal.
And again, I mean, I think the problem is going to be on the American side, not on the Iranian side.
Well, do you think it's fair to say that at this point, the Americans would probably settle for the ceasing of any enrichment up to 20 percent, say, for example, at least the freezing of Fordow, if not, it's a complete dismantlement, it's the Israelis that will settle for nothing here?
Yeah, the Americans want a deal, have wanted a deal to end 20 percent enrichment.
It's just that they were unwilling to really give up anything of significance to get it.
I mean, you know, they offered really no substantive reduction in sanctions in the round of negotiations in the past year, the last two years.
Yeah, they were talking about, we'll give you some spare airplane parts.
Yeah.
I mean, we've been denying you.
The Iranians quite correctly regarded that as an insult and just didn't take it seriously.
And it was not a serious negotiating position.
It was the Israeli negotiating position, in effect.
And of course, we know, and I've written about this myself, that the Obama administration has indeed followed a practice of essentially giving the Israelis a veto over their negotiating position before they go into each round of talks with the Iranians on this question of 20 percent enrichment or, you know, 20 percent enrichment on one side and the sanctions on the other.
And so there's a problem here that the administration still hasn't settled.
And again, I have the hope that maybe that might change.
But I think that it's a pretty big stone being rolled up a hill there.
And now the election of Rouhani in Iran has done nothing to change the calculus, as the politicians like to call their thinking, in Tel Aviv, right?
Benjamin Netanyahu seems to consider Rouhani no different than Ahmadinejad and Iran no less of a threat.
And their civilian nuclear program, no less of a threat than back, what, a few months ago?
Well, in a way, of course, Rouhani represents a greater threat to Israel's interests than Ahmadinejad did for an obvious reason.
Ahmadinejad was a very lucrative political target for the Israeli propagandists.
And that's why they loved Ahmadinejad in power, especially compared with Khatami, his predecessor.
And, you know, that's why they're very upset about Rouhani being in power, because he's such a difficult problem for them politically.
And as I tweeted, was it last night or the night before, last night, I guess, the Israeli cries of pain and anguish over the present situation with regard to potential negotiations has nothing to do with the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons.
It has to do with the threat of a possible deal between the United States and Iran.
What has always motivated the Likud party's policy toward Iran for the last 10 or 15 years has been the desire to avoid any rapprochement between the United States and Iran for a whole host of reasons.
It takes away the kind of leverage that Israel has had over U.S. policy in the region and diminishes in a way that the Israelis find extremely threatening the special relationship between the United States and Israel.
So that's the real problem that the Israelis are having with potential negotiation of an agreement with Iran.
So the American establishment, you think, for the most part, for their American reasons, their grudge for the Iranians declaring independence back in 79, they're pretty much over it.
They are more or less, or at least seemingly, they're much more willing to compromise now than they've ever been.
But still the Israelis haven't budged, and that's the big monkey wrench in the world.
Well, I mean, it is the biggest monkey wrench.
It's not the only one.
I would also point to the fact that there's a Saudi factor as well.
There's a Saudi and other Gulf shakedown factor, and it's both a political diplomatic factor.
In addition to that, it's a factor that involves very, very lucrative contracts for the Pentagon's allies in the private sector for arms sales.
I estimate that over the next decade, this Saudi shakedown factor is worth $200 billion to the people who are in close cooperation with and support of the Pentagon and vice-versa.
As long as nobody makes peace and they keep their Persian Gulf Cold War going.
This requires, of course, a state of high tension between the United States and the rest of the West and the Iranians to justify the continued arming of the Saudis, particularly with regard to air power.
I mean, the United States is selling a whole new host of aircraft to the Saudis, which could be used in a war with Iran.
The same thing for UAE, for the United Arab Emirates.
Of course, this also involves very lucrative contracts for missile defense systems with the Saudis and other Sunni Arab regimes.
These are very important sources of profits for the military-industrial complex.
I mean, it's one of the sectors which is continuing to be profitable, particularly in a period when there's a threat of sort of decline in profits on the part of Lockheed Martin and others like them.
This is a very important factor.
And I'm going to suggest in my book on the politics of the Iranian nuclear scare, which I'm calling manufactured crisis, that there has been a factor here of the Pentagon not really wanting to change U.S. policy toward Iran, not being willing to come out and say, we think it's time for the United States to have a rapprochement with Iran, in large part because they don't want to lose that opportunity for continued selling of major contracts for both anti-missile systems and for aircraft to the Saudis and other Gulf ships.
Oh man, well, we just need to get a good accountant to crunch the numbers for the Lockheed guys and show them how much more money they could be making if they were arming Iran, too.
After all, the Iranian Air Force is made of American F-14s anyway from left over back when we owned their fascist dictatorship.
So it seems like spare airplane parts all around, guys.
Come on.
You're right in a sense that that's a very lucrative but potential source of contracts for the United States in a distant future.
Well, we need to get the oil companies on our side, too.
You know, Dick Cheney back in 98, he gave a speech in Australia condemning Bill Clinton for his anti-Iran sanctions and his dual containment policy, saying, hey, the Iranians are people, too.
We can do business with them.
Yeah, he just happened to be in the business of selling lucrative contracts involving Iran at that point in his life, didn't he?
Yeah, exactly.
We also get the pipeline construction salesmen in competition with the airplane salesmen and see if we can.
That'll be the closest thing we've got to democracy in America.
But, you know, at a deeper level, I would make the point that really needs to be absorbed by the political political lead and political discussion in this country about Iran.
And that is that they are, in essence, far more oriented in their policies, in their interests.
They're more aligned with U.S. interests fundamentally than any other Middle Eastern country.
I mean, you know, in many ways, particularly this present government in Iran, which headed by Hassan Rouhani, is a group of people aligned with former President Hashemi Rakhshanjani who, from the beginning, from the time Rakhshanjani came into office as president in the 1980s, the late 1980s, 1989, 1990, his idea was that he wanted to open up the Iranian economy to be integrated completely into the world economy.
And that meant finding a way of reaching a rapprochement with the United States.
And so Rouhani, who was always very close to Rakhshanjani, has over and over again signaled his desire to do precisely that.
And this is a guy who clearly, over the years, has tried to guide Iranian policy in a direction that would keep the option open for some kind of modus vivendi with the United States.
And I mean, the evidence is so clear on the record that it seems to me it has been just almost deliberate political blindness on the part of a series of administrations and the news media that has prevented this point from sinking in.
And now, so are you talking about a reversion of the policy back to a more Reagan-era offshore balancing thing and making them fight each other versus the contain-everybody-fight-everybody policy that we have now?
Well, I mean, if you're asking me what my policy is, you know, my policy is one of really stopping the whole orientation toward taking one side in the Sunni-Shia divide in the Middle East, that is to say, the Saudi side against Iran, and certainly taking a position that fosters understanding and reduces tensions between Sunnis and Shia as a major policy goal for the United States.
This is something the U.S. has refused systematically to do for years and years, essentially because of its close relationship with Saudi Arabia.
And I think this is one of the most fundamental mistakes in U.S. policy which never gets discussed or hardly ever gets discussed, but it's time to really end that.
And I think that would have so many positive results in terms of stability in the region, not overnight, not immediately, but over a period of years, I think we would see very positive results from that.
Well, but I mean, is that even possible, Garrett, from the point of view of the Pentagon and those who operate the Pax Americana, that we would have a role in the Middle East that wasn't taking somebody's side against somebody, just America, the peacemaker over there, something like that?
It's inconceivable.
No, I'm not suggesting.
I'm not suggesting that this is a candidate policy that has any chance of being adopted.
I mean, you got my vote, Mr. President.
No, I mean, this is just my own personal view of, you know, this is one of many ways in which I think U.S. national security policy is so completely haywire, so completely opposite the real interest of the United States.
But yeah, I mean, the interests of the national security bureaucracy will out until that system is brought down by a popular movement that has enough force behind it to change the political reality.
Yeah.
Well, you know what?
I guess it takes things getting worse and worse all the time for things to get better and better, too.
And we are seeing some of that political realignment.
We talked earlier about the people rising up in opposition to the attack on Syria.
And of course, in the Congress, they almost came together, the left-right factions, the good left and the good right factions, in order to roll back some of this NSA stuff the last time.
And there are a lot more congressmen swore to go along the next time that the bill comes up.
And so, you know, there's a lot of fertile ground to build new political alliances on when it comes to simply demanding peace and the Bill of Rights.
You know, it can be done.
Well, I think we are definitely in an historical period which represents an opportunity to really bring to an end the extreme militarism of the past 20 years or so.
Perhaps not completely, but to bring it down to a level that would have been, you know, seemed impossible just a few years ago.
I think that the era of boots on the ground, as well as the era of conventional bombing, may well be over, that we can draw the line and say, no more of this, and actually have laws on the books that will enforce that.
That certainly is an objective worth working for.
And you know, I think that the issue in the next few years ought to be, and could be, one of making the system that we now see, the war system that we now see, so with such power, diminished very dramatically.
I think that's something that, again, would have seemed totally unreachable just two or three years ago, but now may actually be realistic.
Hey, it's a steep hill, but I think we can climb it too.
Okay, thanks very much for your time, Gareth.
Good to talk to you again.
My pleasure.
Thanks so much, Scott.
All right, y'all.
That's the great Gareth Porter from Interpress Service.
That's ipsnews.net and truthout.org.
At truthout.org.
That's it for Anti-War Radio for this week.
Thanks everybody very much for listening.
I'm Scott Horton.
My website is scotthorton.org.
You can find my full interview archive there.
Almost 3,000 of them now, going back to 2003.
You can also follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube at slashscotthortonshow.
Thanks for listening.
See you next week.
Hey, y'all.
Scott here.
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Ever think maybe your group should hire me to give a speech?
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