10/02/13 – Trita Parsi – The Scott Horton Show

Hey, Al Scott Horton here to talk to you about this great new book by Michael Swanson, The War State, The Cold War Origins of the Military-Industrial Complex and the Power Elite.
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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
NIACouncil.org is the website for the National Iranian American Council, led by its founder, Trita Parsi.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well, Scott.
How are you?
I love that sticker advertisement you had there.
Oh, you like that?
I think you missed the beginning, too.
All the fun stuff is at the beginning.
Get your son killed, Jeb Bush, 2016.
In fact, I get emails from time and time, people say, you know, I'm really not a bumper sticker guy, but I did just spend an hour at that website laughing my ass off.
So even if you don't like buying them, it's still fun, anyway.
And you know what?
You can get Liberty stickers on magnets, too.
All right.
Interesting.
Interesting.
It's my old company, actually.
I invented it, but then I sold it so I could be a radio guy.
Interesting.
I had no idea.
And then here, I would have never been able to keep it in business for 10 years like this, I promise you.
But good old Rick has kept it going this whole time.
It's a great little thing.
Anyway, let's talk about your awesome new article in Foreign Affairs.
It's at foreignaffairs.com.
And for whatever reason, it's not behind the paywall or whatever, they'll let us all read it.
It's called Pushing Peace.
How Israel can help the United States strike a deal with Iran and why it should.
Well, isn't that an interesting take?
And you start off by kind of cataloging the fears of the Israeli government, the Netanyahu government over what bad might happen to Israel or for Israel if America and Iran can, I think, even really begin down this road of, you know, possible reproachment, obviously starting with the nuclear program here.
So what is it that they're so terrified of, Trita?
From the Israeli perspective, or I would say the perspective in particular right now, the Netanyahu government.
The fear is that any deal that the U.S. would be able to strike with Iran is worse than the status quo.
Because any deal that is realistic would give Iran certain degrees and elements of the nuclear fuel cycle.
So there will, for instance, most likely be enrichment on Iranian soil under any deal.
It's just that that enrichment would be heavily inspected and it would be restricted, it would be full transparency.
But from the Israeli perspective, the current situation with massive escalating sanctions, threats of war, is a more preferable situation than to Iran even having a very limited nuclear program for two very simple reasons.
One, the fear, then, is that from the Israeli side that Iran would nevertheless be able to shift the balance of power in the region, because it will have a virtual nuclear capability, and that would reduce Israel's maneuverability.
And the second, which is perhaps more fascinating, is the fact that the Israelis realize or calculate or believe that the U.S. would essentially make up with Iran, at least to a certain extent, and it would move on to other issues, whereas Israel would still be faced with a hostile Israeli-Iranian relationship, and as a result would feel abandoned, because now it would have to face Iran alone.
What this calculation does not take into account, however, is that it is actually through U.S.-Iran talks and a diplomatic deal that we have the best chance of changing Iran's position vis-à-vis Israel, which actually then would help Israel.
And there are people in Israel who know and understand this, and there are those who don't believe that that will be good enough but realize it's not that bad, and there are those who, like Netanyahu, are so deep into this position of just trying to prevent a deal that they continue on that path even at the expense of the damage that it actually does right now to U.S.-Israeli relations.
Does Netanyahu even want a war or a regime change anymore?
It seems like everyone in the world agrees that you can't do a real war, you know, invade and sack Tehran like Baghdad or whatever, nobody contemplates that, but then it seems like also isn't it pretty much consensus that you're not going to be able to redo a 1953-style coup here either, you just cannot have regime change in Iran.
So the choices are either just deal with it and respect their independence and negotiate in good faith, or the status quo, just continue to insist until regime change comes somehow, someday, in just some vague way.
I mean, is that basically what the positions are here?
Well, I mean, remember that the status quo, part of the reason why the status quo is attractive from the perspective of someone like Netanyahu, is that it keeps the hope of war alive while at the same time keeping in place all of the sanctions.
What do the sanctions do?
They don't change Iran's behavior, they just are undermining Iran's power in the region.
And that's what, from Israel's perspective, they want.
They've seen that Iran has been rising in the region, that it has had momentum on its side, and they want to reverse this trend and they want to reestablish the old balance of power in the region.
Sanction for that reason is absolutely essential, has really not that much to do with the nuclear program as it has to do with the fact that, from Israel's perspective, it is very helpful that these sanctions are just undermining the very foundation of Iranian power in the region, because it's destroying the economy, etc., etc.
They would prefer that to be in place more or less permanently.
A nuclear deal would mean that sanctions would get lifted, would mean that Iran would be able to live up to its full potential in the region, and Iran that lives up to its full potential in the region is going to be far more powerful than Israel, even if it's not hostile against Israel.
That's not a scenario that Israel would like to see.
Yeah, you know, I was reminded when I was reading your piece here, again it's that foreign affairs pushing peace, I was reminded of the interview that Netanyahu and Barack gave to Jeffrey Goldberg back in, I guess it would have been 2009 then, yeah, because they were threatening war next year, it would have been 2010 at the time, I think.
It was 2010.
Oh, was it 2010?
Okay, there you go.
And so they specify in there that the existential threat is, one, is the brain drain, that maybe talented Israelis would go to America for grad school and then stay if they were afraid of an Iranian nuclear bomb, but then the other, you know, so-called definition of the existential threat to Israel there is what you talk about, just their freedom of action being limited.
They want to be able to invade southern Lebanon from time to time without ever having to worry about whether Iran is going to do anything about it or not.
Not even whether they could really do anything about it, they just don't want to have to consider that, basically.
They want to be the unquestioned hegemon.
And that's the existential threat.
Yeah, what they define as an existential threat is the fact that they can't, you know, take military action at free will.
And as you mentioned, whether it is to go into Lebanon over and over again, but also to make sure that they have the U.S.'s backing for all of these different things.
If you do have a deal between Iran and the United States on a nuclear issue, I don't foresee the U.S. and Iran becoming best friends or close partners.
But there's going to be a lot of areas of common interest between these two countries that can be explored, that can be very beneficial for both and for the region as a whole.
And that also means that suddenly the U.S. is not going to knee-jerk, always take Israel's side on issues.
And that's something the Israelis are very worried about.
But if you go to the core of what would be good for Israel, it would be really good for Israel if the position of Iran vis-a-vis Israel were to become much softer, if there wasn't this degree of hostility, if there wasn't an effort by the Iranians, at least during the Ahmadinejad years, to question Israel's right to exist.
So Israel actually would be in a safer position, but in a less dominant position.
And from the perspective of people like Netanyahu, it seems like he prefers unsafety plus domination than safety without domination.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, that's the whole thing.
This whole Shiite axis.
I mean, first of all, Netanyahu helped push us into the war against Iraq, which really empowered Iran more than anything that's ever happened to them since the Ayatollah took over in 79.
And of course, whenever they talk about, oh, the dangerous Shiite crescent, they always leave out Iraq, because everybody knows it's their fault.
So they don't want to draw attention to that.
So who cares if there's a Shiite arc, if the leading power in the Shiite arc is a friend of ours, the Iranians, or at least if the hostility is diminished so badly.
As you point out in your piece here, Rouhani and his men, these are the guys who were behind the golden offer of 2003, the one where they not only put the entire nuclear program on the table for negotiation, but even said, hey, we'll switch sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or at least we'll put pressure on them to disarm and simply become political parties, Hamas and Hezbollah, that kind of thing.
I mean, it just doesn't make much sense to me why to continue to resist such a great opportunity, even from the Israeli point of view, you know?
Exactly.
And I think there are people in Israel who realize this.
And unfortunately, they're stuck with a leader right now who essentially is the worst-placed person to make this shift, in the sense that Netanyahu has come to personify the argument that Iran is the reincarnation of Germany, that it's 1938, and Ahmadinejad is Hitler, et cetera, et cetera.
Other leaders in Israel, who may not at all be, you know, less belligerent or less hawkish, but people like Ehud Barak have consistently said that Iran is not an existential threat, because that's an insult to Israeli power to say that Iran could be an existential threat.
So he can make this shift without paying a high political price.
But if you have based your career, almost, on the idea that Iran is an existential threat, how are you going to shift and favor diplomacy suddenly that's going to go against everything you've said for the last 20 years?
Israel needs a leader that has the nimbleness right now to make this shift, to react appropriately to very, very stark geopolitical changes in the region right now.
And if Iran and the U.S. were to come on better terms, that would be the biggest development in the region since 1979.
Well, and as you point out here, they still got along after the revolution in the 1980s.
Ronald Reagan sold the Ayatollah missiles by way of Israel.
So...
That's post-revolution era.
So...
Absolutely, exactly.
And in fact, the way you bring that up in the article is in talking about Iran's regular hawkish statements about Palestine, and how that's really how they shore up their credibility with the Arab world and the Sunni world, is to take the side of the Palestinians all the time and bash Israel all the time.
And yet, as evidenced by the history of the policy here, yeah, they can put those concerns on the back burner and they can work with Israel if they want to buy some TOW missiles from Ronald Reagan, for example, something like that.
No big deal.
Yep.
Yep.
So geopolitics, as they call it, I hate that term, but that takes precedence over any ideological or religious affinity or even political affinity for the Palestinians, if that's the weight of the politics, if those incentives are lined up correctly.
Exactly, exactly.
Very important point there.
And now, I wanted to point out, too, about, or ask you what you think about when you talk about diminishing the sanctions, diminishing Iranian power.
It seems to me like America and Israel, and I don't know if they're really smart enough to be doing this on purpose or anything, maybe, it seems like they're using al-Qaeda in Syria to hurt Iran, basically using the tried and true al-Qaeda method of luring their enemy in and bleeding them to death, the same way that they did to us in Afghanistan and in Iraq they're now doing to the Iranians, and they're completely destroying Hezbollah and the Iranian government's popularity in the Arab world by pitting them against the Sunni majority in Syria.
What do you think about that?
I think that may be a correct assessment if you were talking about the policy of the Saudis, in the sense that I think from the Saudi perspective, there's a desire to keep the situation in Syria going on the way that it is right now, because it drains the Iranians, it helps the Saudis get rid of their own radicals that just send them to Syria, either they get killed or they kill someone from Assad's side, and either way, the House of Saud wins.
I don't think this is the calculation from the American side.
I think our calculations are more confusing, but also more complex.
From the Saudi side, I don't think they're too, I mean, I'm sure they would like to win in Syria, but at the same time, the current status quo is not too problematic for them.
I think the urgency to reach a deal is greater on the American side, on the Iranian side, even on Assad's side, than it is on the Saudi side.
Just keeping the whole thing going, I wonder, do you think they're even trying to win now?
It seems like Obama, at least, for the Americans' point of view, they basically, with the Russia deal, they've given up on regime change and Assad must go.
That's all, from my point of view, thankfully, now just words.
And the policy now is, there's no marker to draw the red line with anymore, and so Assad can stay.
Am I right about that?
I don't think the U.S. will ever go out and say that Assad can stay.
But I think the position that existed before was that Assad is going to go anyway, so the U.S. might as well put that forward as a condition.
But now I think it's quite clear that Assad is not easily going to go, and in fact, in many ways, he is winning this, and as a result, there's going to have to be some acrobatics on seeing how the U.S. deals with this situation.
I think, personally, that the chances of diplomacy succeeding and actually getting off the ground would have been much, much greater if we had not made such pronunciations of this person has to go, that person has to go.
I mean, I personally hope for a Syria in the future that is completely peaceful and that does not entail those who have so much blood on their hands, which definitely includes Assad.
But that's for the Syrian people to decide, not for anyone from the outside necessarily to put as a precondition for a diplomatic process.
When you put preconditions like that, you essentially give belligerents no incentive to stop being belligerents, because the political process, the diplomatic process is about getting rid of them.
Why would they engage in that diplomatic process?
Right.
Yeah, Brendan O'Neill at Spiked Online over there in the UK did a great piece cataloging how the various statements by the Brits and the Americans about Assad's so-called legitimacy from their point of view helped destroy any real progress that was being made.
And there was some real progress being made as far as reforms and their elections and compromises and rewriting the constitution and, you know, nothing like you or I would have done if we had magic power to make it the way we want it.
But there was actual progress being made in America undermined at all with all of their pronouncements about Assad's legitimacy back in, you know, two years ago.
I think there's some truth in that.
Of course, a lot of things have undermined it.
I wouldn't say that that was necessarily the final straw of things.
But if we take a look at the diplomacy that the U.S. successfully had, for instance, in putting an end to the civil war in former Yugoslavia, of course, there was a military component to it as well.
But, you know, we brought all of the key leaders to Dayton, Ohio, including Milosevic.
We never said, even though we thought of Milosevic as a butcher, we never said that Milosevic exit from political life would be a precondition for being able to participate in the process.
And by doing that in Syria, we've really undermined our prospects for diplomacy.
All right.
Now, I know you got to go.
We got just a couple of seconds here before the break, but I want to ask you real quick whether you think the basic feeling about Netanyahu's speech yesterday was that it fell flat.
And we're going to go ahead and go with Obama's push for talks here, and we'll get back to Netanyahu later if we have to kind of thing.
Is that about right, you think?
I think he actually, he was perhaps a bit softer than he had hoped for.
But I do believe that he's not at all taking the position that he needs to take for the interest of Israel itself.
OK.
Thanks very much.
I sure appreciate it.
Thank you so much.
Bye.
That's Trita Parsi, everybody, from the National Iranian American Council.
We'll be right back.
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