10/01/09 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

Alright y'all, welcome back to the show, it's Antiwar Radio on Chaos 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas.
We're streaming live worldwide on the internet at ChaosRadioAustin.org and at Antiwar.com slash radio and very happy to welcome back our regular guest, Dr. Gareth Porter, he's an independent historian and journalist.
He writes for IPSnews.org, that's interpress service and we feature, I believe, every single thing that he writes at Antiwar.com slash Porter.
It'll forward you right on to the new set up there.
Welcome back to the show, Gareth, how are you?
I'm great, thanks very much again, Scott, as always.
Well thanks very much for joining us.
It's extremely important that you're here on the show today, more important maybe than usual because what happened was Barack Obama told a giant, bald-faced lie to the planet Earth last week, and I don't know about the rest of the world, but the land apparently between Seattle and Miami completely bought it, hook, line, and sinker.
You are here, sir, to deconstruct the administration's lies about Iran's nuclear program.
Well, you know, first of all, I know that you did, in fact, feature my story on a previous show, so this is kind of a reprise of that, but I want to begin by telling you and your radio audience that there have been some new developments in this story since I wrote it, since it was published, which further underline the reality that what we've got here is an effort to portray the second enrichment facility near Qom in Iran as a threatening development when in fact all of the indicators that we have thus far are that this is within the – it should be, let me put it this way, it should be interpreted as further evidence that Iran is operating within the IAEA framework, that it has no intention of trying to have a secret enrichment program with high enriched uranium to build a bomb, that its whole plan at this point is to stay within an international framework, and I'll explain, you know, the new developments, I think perhaps, if it's okay with you, at the outset of this – Go ahead, go right ahead.
And that is that two things have happened since my story came out.
The head of the Iranian atomic energy organization, who is also vice president of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, said two days ago that the Iranian atomic energy organization, I almost said IAEA, but the Iranian atomic energy organization took over this site only last year, that previously it had been an ammunition dump owned by the Iranian military, and that the atomic energy organization only began work on the enrichment facility last year.
Now that's one information item, or one data point, if you will.
The second data point is that the think tank in Washington, D.C., ISIS, associated with David Albright, who's been on your show, which has always been highly critical of the Iranian nuclear program, very suspicious of it, generally speaking, supporting the viewpoint of Ali Heinemann, the safeguards department director of the IAEA, and somebody who has credited the so-called laptop documents, the alleged studies documents, as real, and is basically accusing the Iranian government of having a nuclear weapons program.
This think tank has now reappraised, looked at more satellite photos, taken a longer time to analyze them, and has concluded that as early as 2004, 2005, the site at Qom already had the tunnel facilities, which the senior administration official basically told the reporters last week was associated with the nuclear enrichment facility, and that they had been following for years.
Now what this means, of course, is that it now appears that this site was indeed an ammunition dump earlier on, and that the atomic energy organization simply took it over more recently to begin the construction.
Well, and you say in your article, all indications are, right, that U.S. intelligence was watching this site, obviously they have a million electronic eyes in the sky, they're looking at the thing, but they didn't have enough to conclude yet, certainly not, they didn't have the basis to accuse the Iranians of making any kind of secret nuclear or anything, they didn't bother to say anything until, what, four days after the Iranians notified the IAEA, hey by the way, we're building this new thing that one day is going to have centrifuges in it, then four days later Obama comes out and says, aha, we caught you and busted you with your secret whatever.
Exactly, and so I think what these new developments are telling us is that there's a completely different narrative that we have to reconstruct here, and the important point that I want to get to here is the sequence of events that we have to try to reconstruct here, and that is that if it turns out, and this is something that we will have more information on in the future, but I'm not sure how long it's going to take, whether it's days or weeks in the future, that we'll get the satellite photos from 2006, 2007, 2008, but if those satellite photos do in fact show that the Iranian vice president and head of the Atomic Energy Organization was indeed correct in his statement that the construction began only in 2008, then we have to place that next to the fact that Iran withdrew from its commitment under the so-called subsidiary agreement or modified Code 3.1 agreement under its safeguards agreement or associated with the safeguards agreement to inform the IAEA as soon as a decision had been made to build a nuclear facility and then went back to a previous version of that same subsidiary agreement, which only required them to inform the international agency as much as 180 days in advance of introducing nuclear materials into the facility, and they did that in a letter in February 2007.
So if, as I say, this sequence of events proves to have been correct, as the Iranian vice president has indicated publicly, then we can safely say, without any fear of being incorrect, that Iran intended all along to remain within the framework of the IAEA.
It did not intend to have any covert enrichment program, which it would use to enrich uranium at a bomb-grade level.
There could be no sort of secret covert program to build a bomb, because there would be no sense in Iran making the move legally to withdraw from that one commitment and go back to a previous commitment if they had not intended to stay within the IAEA framework.
Well, and here's a little bit of a larger picture I'd like to paint, too.
It seems to me that the Bush administration, after September 11th and they decided to go after the Axis of Evil, they had a problem in that all the members of the Axis of Evil were members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and had safeguards agreement with the IAEA, and so how do you justify wars against countries like that?
So with Iraq, they just buffaloed us full speed.
With North Korea, they bullied them into withdrawing from the treaty and going ahead and making nukes.
Great job.
With Iran, they've tried to bully them, and the Iranian strategy, correct me if I'm wrong, add any nuance you want, whatever you like, but looks to me like the Iranian strategy has been to open their books up wide, to basically put their hands up and say, look, we're not doing anything.
I mean, people say that whether it was the MEK or, you know, arms control wonk dot whatever, that figured out finally that there was the Natanz facility, even then, in 2005, when Natanz, which is now their operational centrifuge facility, was so-called outed, it was an empty warehouse.
They took the BBC on a tour of it, and I saw all the pictures.
It's a giant, underground, empty Walmart with nothing in it.
And that, of course, is what the IAEA will find when they go, apparently next month, to the Qom site as well.
I mean, there's nothing, there's not again anything to see, because no centrifuges have been introduced yet.
Well, what about my characterization that the Iranians have said, okay, look, if we say, hey, hands up, we're not doing anything, there's our books, we'll sign an additional protocol, at least for a little while, while we're negotiating with you, whatever, whatever, that's their strategy to not get bombed, right?
To say to the whole world, look, we're not doing anything.
I think that is essentially correct.
You invited me to introduce my own nuance, and I'll do that.
The nuance is this, that although the Iranians clearly wish to stay within the legal framework of the IAEA and to have the IAEA provide monitoring and surveillance of their nuclear sites, that's clearly their intention.
On the other hand, I think it's clear that they did not want to be in the position of tipping off the United States and Israel to where they were putting their sites, you know, at a much earlier date, for reasons which clearly have to do with their desire to announce these sites on their own timeframe, when they thought it would be most appropriate, you know, most advantageous to them, as long as it was 180 days before they introduced nuclear materials.
I think that they were, you know, as a matter of perhaps excessive caution, they wanted not to give out as much information to the United States and Israel in particular, as I say, as those countries would have liked to have had.
Obviously, they always want to have the maximum intelligence on Iranian plans, and as early as possible.
And so I think there is that nuance, the difference between, you know, what the IAEA wanted them to do.
And I think to a great extent, at the behest of the United States and Israel, that that's why they created this new, you know, different Code 3.1 commitment to provide design information at the time of the decision to construct the facility.
Well, and I'd like to refer back to Gordon Prather's article from a couple of weeks ago, IAEA Legal Eagle something.
He talks about how earlier this year, the Obama administration was pushing the IAEA to declare that the Iranians were in violation of 3.1 over some other issue.
I don't, I don't recall.
It was on a it was on another design issue.
I think it was Darkoven or or perhaps Iraq, it could have been either one of those or both.
Well, and, and the deal was that the IAEA lawyer guy said, Hey, look, even if you want to interpret the new version of subs subsidiary agreement 3.1, which their Senate or their parliament never ratified in the first place, whichever way you like, it's not really a violation of their safeguards agreement, or a violation of the nonproliferation treaty, unless whatever technical violation they took part in, or, you know, actually did, unless that violation inhibits or makes the director general of the IAEA, thereby unable to continue to verify the non diversion of nuclear material.
Anything short of that is not really a violation.
Scott Ritter told me on this show two days ago, that there are 1000s of technical violations of subsidiary agreements and additional protocols around the world all day every day.
And, you know, basically, they do their best to mop that up.
But that doesn't mean everybody in the world's making hydrogen bombs.
Absolutely correct.
And I would add one more, again, perhaps a nuance to that, but I think it's an important one.
And that is that the Vienna Law of Treaties, which is what this IAEA legal opinion is based on clearly, the Vienna Treaty on the Law of Treaties, actually makes it clear that you have the legal right to withdraw from a commitment in a treaty unilaterally, as long as the withdrawal does not affect materially the performance of the treaty in general.
And clearly, that is the reason that the IAEA was willing to say on the record, and has done so more than once, by the way, that that Iran's refusal to carry out the modified Code 3.1 commitment and to go back to the previous version of it, that is 180 days before 180 days before the introduction of nuclear materials cannot be or he said it was difficult to consider this to be a violation of the safeguards agreement, simply because, you know, this is a technical detail, does not affect the fundamental willingness of Iran to notify the IAEA in a way that allows the IAEA to perform its function of verifying that there's been no diversion.
Well, you know, interesting article in the Guardian today has Mohammed ElBaradei saying there is no evidence of a nuclear weapons program, but then he says that they were in violation of 3.1, I guess is what he's referring to.
Yeah, of course.
I mean, he's still taking the position publicly, as I think he must, that, you know, the IAEA expects governments to stay with the advanced Code 3.1 commitment.
They don't want anybody to back off that.
But, you know, there's a distinction here.
I mean, yes, that's a violation of the subsidiary agreement.
That's true.
But it is not a violation of the safeguards agreement.
And the question of the adherence to the NPT has to do with whether you are in violation of the safeguards agreement.
Well, why is he, why is it in ElBaradei's interest to conflate those issues together and pretend like Iran is bound by the additional protocol that they are, in fact, not bound by?
Or the subsidiary agreements.
I know that's a little bit different.
ElBaradei is a political animal, and he's reflecting the push and tug of political pressures on him at this point.
And I just think that, you know, I mean...
How much longer is he going to be there?
Another month.
Man.
He's replaced by somebody who is likely to be, you know, pretty much the same.
I think, you know, we should anticipate that, sort of like a president of the United States who is subject to the permanent government, as we've talked about many times, I think ElBaradei is subject to his own bureaucracy.
Sure.
Well, if the next guy is as good as him, I think we'll be really lucky, because he's the kind of guy who will say, nah, look, man, 3.6% is not weapons grade, I don't care what you say.
And see, this is the whole thing.
Pardon me for editorializing a little bit here.
But everyone in every Western government and every Western media channel is certainly on TV and all the major papers are all liars.
Broad and Sanger at the New York Times are liars.
Barack Obama is a liar.
Gordon Brown is a liar.
And all of these people know that when they use broad terms like, well, we're sure they restarted or have had a nuclear weapons program, that that doesn't mean anything.
That's what's heroic about ElBaradei, is he actually is specific and says, well, they have this, but they don't have that.
This is safeguarded, we know this, whatever.
He has details.
Gordon Prather has details.
You, Gareth Porter, have details.
What do these people have except a big blanket accusation?
A nuclear weapons program sounds pretty scary to me.
Well, and let's not forget that this is not just a nuance.
This is fundamental for people to keep in mind.
But the US government has basically only hinted at or implied and never stated that Iran has a nuclear weapons, an active nuclear weapons program.
What they're saying is, if you read the print, all they're saying is that Iran is positioning, positioning itself to have a nuclear weapons capability.
And in other words, it is positioning itself to the nuclear from the Guardian, from the Guardian here today, Gareth.
However, ElBaradei rejected British intelligence claims that Iran had reactivated its weapons program at least four years ago.
British, British intelligence and German.
Well, I don't know about German intelligence.
Yeah, no, that's been roundly debunked, been debunked.
But British intelligence, at least allegedly, we don't know the truth at this point.
We have no idea what they're actually saying.
But but, you know, certainly there must be buying yellow tape from Niger.
We got some of their allegations.
Of course, the British intelligence is saying that we don't really know what the truth is.
We know the British government is saying it.
We know the French government is saying it.
We know that the German government is not saying it.
But and pardon me, but let me nail you down on this and make sure that this is exactly right.
What they're doing is they're being overly vague to the point that it's a lie.
Right.
What they're saying is they're not asserting that they know anything secret that they haven't told us about yet.
They're just lying.
Let's put it this way, Scott.
U.S. senior U.S. government officials are not averse to allowing the American people to get the impression that what's going on here is that Iran is in the process of having a secret nuclear weapons program.
Yeah.
But they're not saying it.
They're simply letting people who are not really following it very closely, who don't have the time and energy to do that, you know, pick up that implication.
Yeah.
Well, and I know it's working, too.
And I got to admit my my I'm not really plugged into the holes.
I guys to popular culture type whatever.
But I'm getting the impression that people are saying, oh, my God, Iran is the biggest threat.
Oh, my God.
Iran did a missile test.
A friend told me his nephew called and said they're going to nuke us.
I heard they're going to nuke us.
What are we going to do?
There's no question about it, that this has been building now for months and even years.
It's it's a process that is constantly on a one layer on top of another.
Each time something like this happens, you get more and more people who are convinced that that it's true that, you know, Iran is threatening us with nuclear weapons.
And and therefore you get, you know, a strategy that plays into the hands of the neocons and the extreme right, Fox News and all the rest who are going to be pressing for war against Iran.
I mean, that is the reality that we face.
Well, yeah, I mean, this on its face is the basis for the new blockade, which is I looked it up in the Heritage Dictionary online and you can Google it right up is the first part of the definition is an act of war.
And then it goes on to describe what it means in practice.
I believe that we are, in fact, facing a prolonged I don't know how long, but but, you know, months of increased tensions with Iran, which will be building at the same time that you have action in Congress on this cockamamie idea to cut off supplies of refined petroleum products to Iran.
And that that, you know, the net result of all this is going to be that we are going to have a dangerous increase in tensions, a certainly an atmosphere of growing crisis, and that it's going to become more and more difficult for poor Barack Obama to avoid being pushed into, you know, sort of a military confrontation with with Iran.
I mean, I think that is the real the gravest danger that the world has faced for many, many years.
Well, now talk to me about the generals.
I know your overarching thesis kind of in the broadest sense is that basically the Pentagon itself is the empire.
It's a giant dirty snowball rolling downhill.
And yet, if we can go back in our antiwar radio time machine a couple of years, we'll find that it was Dick Cheney and all the soft handed draft dodging neocons who represent the interests of a foreign power who were pushing for the war.
And it was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, apparently, and the commander of CENTCOM, Admiral Fallon, who said, oh, no, you don't.
Because, of course, that's the way our republic was founded.
Right.
So that the standing army could be a check on the wild ambitions of our vice presidents.
Yeah, yeah.
No, you're right.
Of course, that that in 2007, it was the Pentagon and the military who were who were standing in the way of primarily of the White House, and particularly Dick Cheney pushing the idea of war against Iran.
And then the following year, as you'll recall, you had a crisis over Israel's intention, or at least the fear that Israel intended to carry out an attack against Iranian nuclear facilities.
And it was later that same spring, right when David Wimser was going around talking about how Cheney was trying to arrange with the Israelis to start the war and talk about that.
You're right.
But then, but then a year later, a little more than a year later, during the summer of 2008, that got to the point of serious crisis, where, you know, Mullen had to go over Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, had to go over to Israel, and and warn the Israelis that no, they were not going to be allowed to do that.
And and you know, this, this brings me to a point which I will tell you and your listening audience about which I haven't published yet.
But I have a source who tells me that it is and this is somebody who's in a position to know that it is a settled policy of the United States, going back to the Gulf War of 1991, that if Israeli jets enter US controlled airspace without authorization from the US government, they will be shot down.
You don't say?
I do say.
Well, and can you tell us?
Can you tell what can you tell us about your source of this information?
Well, I can't tell you anything more, except that it's somebody who's in a position to know that.
Well, now this is this is clearly reminiscent of the news story last week.
Well, it made it to the blog at ABC News, that Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Henry Kissinger of the Democratic Party, Jimmy Carter's former national security advisor and all around hawk said that Barack Obama should give that explicit warning to Benjamin Netanyahu that if they try to attack Iran, we will shoot them down.
I think that's got to make people wonder, you know, if you know, those of us regular civilian citizens out here, we're not really plugged in.
But geez, if Zbigniew Brzezinski is that concerned that he's openly in the press advising the President of the United States that he ought to directly out loud make that statement to the Prime Minister of Israel, geez, maybe we really are in danger of having a serious break out of World War Three.
It certainly does indicate that Brzezinski, you know, does believe that Israel is quite serious, the Netanyahu government in Israel is quite serious about attacking Iran.
That it is not simply talk, that they these are people who are crazy enough and warmongering enough to do that.
And he believes that the United States must step up and stop it, put a stop to it.
Now, you know, the question then arises, if I am correct, that my source is correct about this settled policy, does Brzezinski know about it?
This happened after Brzezinski, of course, was at the NSC, it was under the, this happened under the first Bush administration, the elder Bush, George Bush, and therefore Brzezinski probably does not know about it.
I mean, I'm, you know, I am convinced that the victim Brzezinski is not aware of this policy, assuming that it is in fact the case.
But but it is, I mean, certainly a good indicator of the seriousness with which somebody who's pretty well informed, takes the threat of an Israeli attack.
Well, somebody who who believes that it's not clear what the Obama administration will do about it.
All right, well, you know, I'm sure I oversimplified this kind of thing, but it sort of seems like you kind of have the old kind of Chase Bank, Standard Oil, Rockefeller establishment types, and then you have the neocons are sort of the new establishment, like Jacob Hilburn says, you know, they wanted to create their own little establishment, and they did with all their think tanks and everything foundations.
And so it seems like James Baker, and even Jimmy Carter, Brent Scowcroft, who's I presume speaking for George Bush, Sr. and Zbigniew Brzezinski, they're reduced to things like making YouTubes about why we ought to have peace in the Middle East, Gareth.
And I wonder, whose interest is it in this country to have a war with Iran other than the Israel lobby and and their frontman, the neoconservatives?
Is there any?
Is it Lockheed?
Is it the general?
Is there a group of generals somewhere?
Who is it in this country that wants to have a war?
The answer is Israel, and its lobby, and certain elements of the Air Force.
And that's it?
I do believe that there are generals, obviously, General Air Force General Chuck Wald, Charles Wald, being one of them, he's publicly stated in recent months, that yes, there's a military solution to this, the Air Force can do it, let us go at them.
And that certainly represents a current of thought within the US Air Force, no doubt about it.
But I think those are the only ones in this country who really have an interest in war with Iran.
I think otherwise, it's, I'm not going to say well-meaning, because I don't think they're well-meaning.
It's people who believe, A, that the United States must remain the dominant military power in the Middle East, and B, who regard Iran as an obstacle to that, and who prefer, you know, to believe that, that the United States can somehow use its superior power over Iran, you know, must be able to use its superior power over Iran to coerce Iran to do our bidding on this issue, cannot somehow get it through their heads, if that's not possible.
That that's what is propelling the US within the executive branch, primarily, toward confrontation with Iran.
It's not, it's not a desire for war, but it is a desire for dominance, and the kind of miscalculations that, you know, historically have gone with that, with that kind of power, and which I'm afraid will continue to distort thinking about relations with Iran in the future.
All empires fall, but not this one, though, because I'm pretty sure ours is going to last forever and ever and ever.
This one little slice of North America is going to rule all of the old world forever and ever.
It's going to be great.
That's what it seems like, doesn't it?
Yes.
Yeah, you got it all figured out.
I'm so glad I have you here to advise me.
Everybody, that is Dr. Gareth Porter, independent historian and journalist, ipsnews.org, antiwar.com slash Porter.
Thank you so much for your invaluable insight into the war party and their propaganda, Gareth.
Thanks so much, Scott.
Appreciate it.
We'll be right back.
Antiwar Radio, Chaos in Austin.