11/25/13 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

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Glad to have y'all here, and glad to introduce our next guest on the show today.
It's Gareth Porter the Great, independent historian and journalist, mostly writes for Interpress Service at IPSnews.net.
That's IPSnews.net, Interpress Service.
They got a great bunch of writers there, by the way, journalists I mean to say.
Also he writes for Truthout.org.
He does award-winning work for Truthout.org, including on Afghanistan, which I hope to ask about later in the show.
But first of all, welcome back.
How are you doing, Gareth?
I'm doing fine, thanks, Scott.
How are you?
Good, good.
Happy to have you back on the show as always.
So here's the thing.
Before you break my heart, let me tell you how in love I am with this whole theory that now the whole thing with Iran is basically okay.
And by that I mean it seems that a fatal blow may have been delivered to the slogan, because that's all it ever was, that Iran is a nuclear weapons threat to Israel and or America and or a fly.
So now, instead of having safeguarded facilities where every atom of their uranium is accounted for and verified to not have ever been diverted to any military or other special purpose, now it will be extra super duper verified and no one will be able to pretend that they think that this has anything to do with a nuclear weapons threat again.
They're going to convert their 20 percent uranium stocks to uses that make it unavailable for future possible use in nuclear weapons.
They're going to scale back all of their centrifuges.
They're going to not even bother apparently turning on the Iraq reactor that could one day produce weapons grade plutonium, which then could step, step, step, step, step, conceivably be nuclear bomb fuel.
None of that's going to happen.
And so then the only hard propaganda lines that can be used against Iran after that are just that the Ayatollah is a real jerk and that he funds Hezbollah and Hezbollah is bad and everybody knows Hezbollah is bad and that kind of thing.
But the the mushroom cloud as a neutralized threat means this is has to mean that there's at least a huge possibility for this to be the beginning of the end of the American-Iranian Cold War and beginning of the normalization of relations between our two countries.
And then everything would be great.
So now tell me why I'm damn fool and I should know better than that.
Well I don't think anything you've said is at all wrong except for possibly that possibly I think the final conclusion that this brings us somehow closer to normalization of relations.
I think that's a big, a big long leap from everything else that you said.
But certainly it's true that the negotiation of this deal in Geneva over the weekend is a blow, a serious blow to the entire media and official narrative that we have been subjected to for the last decade and more, that Iran is a threat to get nuclear weapons, wants to get nuclear weapons and so forth.
And I think you've outlined very briefly the main reasons, that is to say the agreement includes a whole raft of provisions that even the White House or the administration is saying to journalists has made it more, has made it virtually impossible for Iran to find a path to a nuclear weapon.
I see that the Washington Post yesterday had a story that quoted unnamed administration senior source saying precisely that.
So in fact, I mean, you're absolutely right that this should really close the door on that whole media narrative and, you know, usher in an entirely new era of U.S. relations.
But, and there's a huge but here, the administration is keeping open its options in terms of what happens now.
And this is where the story that I'm working on right now, and I think maybe for the first time since you started interviewing me, I'm going to tell you, I'm going to give you a preview of what this story is going to say, even though it's not finished.
It's about 80 percent finished, I would say at this point.
And what I'm writing about is the fact that in background briefing, a background briefing for the press, early, late, very late Saturday night, Washington, D.C. time, early morning Geneva time, the senior officials unnamed who gave these briefings repeatedly referred to the negotiations for the final solution, the comprehensive solution that is outlined in the text of the deal, as not as to how we're going to achieve technically this objective of showing that Iran is not able to or is not intending to have nuclear weapons, but whether.
Now, you know, at first glance, that may not seem like a big deal, but what surprised and alarmed me, I must say, is that five different times during the relatively brief briefing for the press, at least two, I think it was just two senior officials, although it was never made clear how many there were, repeatedly essentially gave the same formulation, saying that it's not a question of whether, not a question of how, but whether we will be able to achieve a comprehensive solution to this in which the Iranians can prove to us that their intentions are peaceful.
Now, that's not an accident.
That's clearly the result of a policy decision by the Obama administration's team.
Well, wait a minute, Gareth, that's not just them trying to make the hawks hush.
I mean, here's the thing, Obama, when he gave his speech Saturday night, he sounded like George W. Bush in the damn thing, announcing a peace deal, but making it sound almost like he's declaring war or something, because he's just trying to get Chuck Schumer and the worse than that to pipe down a bit while he gets this thing done.
But meanwhile, I'm reading the 2,000 word, 3,000 word report in Reuters about how they've been secretly working on this thing for months, and they're so damn serious about it, and that's why it went so well, and that this is the top priority.
So, aren't they just trying to shut up the Republicans?
No, I don't think they're just trying to shut up the Republicans.
I mean, obviously it's useful to portray the administration's policy as, you know, not committed to a final solution.
I mean, I think that it does have propaganda value for them, I agree with that, but the fact that they are, you know, basically taking the position that, you know, this is not a question of how we're going to do this, but whether we're going to do it is definitely potentially significant, at least potentially significant, in terms of giving the United States the freedom of action in the end to say, well, we're not satisfied with what the Iranians are proposing, and so we're just going to hold on to the very commanding position that we have in bargaining terms with Iran, and until they're prepared to go all the way to satisfy U.S. demands, which could take the form of essentially saying no enrichment, that, you know, we're just going to maintain the status quo.
And I think that this could reflect, and I think it does reflect, in fact, the administration officials, senior officials, basically their assessment that Iran is in a desperate position and has to get an agreement, and that the United States can therefore call the shots.
So you're right that it's useful for propaganda purposes, but the fact that it is useful for propaganda purposes does not, it's not inconsistent, it's not mutually inconsistent with the fact or the real possibility that the administration is going to use this perception of a commanding bargaining leverage advantage over Iran to essentially maintain a longer-term position of dominance over Iran.
Bear in mind, and I think this brings us back to one of the fundamental issues that continues to recur every time we discuss U.S. policy toward Iran, that there are really two kinds of interests that come into play in terms of the history of U.S. policy toward Iran.
One is the kind of bureaucratic, institutional, parochial interest that I've suggested have been a strong component, a strong reason for the United States to maintain the enmity relationship with Iran for more than, well, almost three decades now, but particularly over the last couple of decades.
But then there's a second issue, a second reason for the continued hostility toward Iran, which I think has to do with the psychological factor of, in U.S. policy, the fact that the top level of officials, Secretary of State, National Security Advisor in particular, gain a certain psychological lift from being able to dominate a country like Iran, being able to portray themselves in the United States as being in a dominant position over Iran.
I think this opportunity that they now see is one that really represents almost an irresistible temptation, if you will, for the United States to continue the same kind of dominant behavior that it has essentially exhibited for the last three decades with regard to Iran.
Right.
Yeah.
In other words, we might as well just have Chuck Schubert and Hillary Clinton up there in charge of this thing.
Well, yeah, I think that there is a lot of commonality between the neocon position and the Obama administration position with regard to the desire to keep U.S. hegemony, if you will, in the Middle East and specifically over Iran.
And, you know, we know that it used to be that the military option was the key to sort of coercive diplomacy with regard to Iran.
But maybe they could just, you know, actually drop the nuclear weapons threat as their bogus threat and come up with other reasons to still not normalize relations, you know?
Well, let me finish.
Let me finish my point, because what I was going to say is that, you know, the military threat was always regarded as the key to being able to coerce Iran.
Now that's no longer a credible threat.
I mean, everybody understands that in the Middle East.
And I think U.S. officials generally, you know, privately would admit that, yeah, that that no longer makes any sense.
We can't really use that effectively.
The Iranians don't believe it, nor do the Israelis.
And so we've now discovered the new equivalent of the military threat, which is the fact that we have this stranglehold over the Iranian economy.
And so that has a kind of value that transcends the specific problem of the Iranian nuclear threat.
And I just think they're going to hold on to that as long as they can.
If the Iranians are ready to capitulate completely in a symbolic way, then I think they would be happy to accept that.
But I think that they want to hold on to it short of that kind of capitulation.
Well, OK, so for example, in the interim deal on the right to enrich, they got these weasel words that amount to will allow you to enrich.
Just don't call it a right.
Something like that.
Yeah, right.
It bears it bears notice here that in the days following the failed round of negotiations, U.S. officials from carry on down made a very big deal out of the fact that, no, we're not going to acknowledge the right to enrich.
The Iranians clearly were very concerned about that.
And this was obviously the primary issue on which things were hung up for the last 24 hours and more in Geneva.
And in the final text, there is language that certainly comes closer to the Iranian position than it does to the American position, that there's nothing in there that acknowledges anything like a right to enrich.
And it's very complicated language.
I'm not even going to try to read it.
But I can tell you that it does come closer to the Iranian position than to the American position.
But the Americans clearly were very eager to avoid that, if at all possible.
And by the way, it's very significant that no official text has been issued by the U.S. government.
I've been asking today.
I went to the State Department and to the White House.
Neither of them had any text.
They admitted that no text had been issued.
Couldn't explain why.
And for me, I mean, the explanation is that they would rather be able to use background briefings and speeches to tell the American people what the agreement says, rather than have the American people read it.
Yeah.
Well, so the Guardian, they got their version from the Iranians.
In other words, that's all we have.
Well, exactly.
That's what we have so far.
And I don't think the U.S. government has any intention to issue an official text.
Right.
Because then they might have to, when they're talking with just the little State Department pool of reporters, they might have to go down the list and really discuss what's in there in a way that they'd rather, you know, be able to simply tell the reporters, here's what it says.
Tell the American people, here's what it says.
And avoid the reality.
Now, the empire wants to be the empire, and they don't want to give an inch on anything.
And that goes to every last man in the damn thing, implementing it, too, and all of that.
But when you say that that means that the status quo is more likely to prevail, are you talking the old status quo or the new one?
Because it seems like if they don't have a deal in six months and the Americans try to drag this out, then the Iranians are going to say they're at least going to go back to where they were, you know, last Thursday, right?
So that's going to be a real problem.
You're absolutely right.
And that's where the rubber is going to hit the road.
And, you know, they will test whether they have the kind of commanding bargaining leverage that it seems from the hints of, you know, I would say even more than hints, but certainly indications from this background briefing that the administration calculates that they're in a very strong bargaining position.
But I think they definitely want to try that out.
They want to test, you know, whether they can force, coerce the Iranians, basically, to either accept a deal that the Iranians would have found unacceptable unless they're desperate, or, you know, essentially take a chance that they can, you know, live with a kind of partial deal.
I mean, in other words, I think what they would like to do, but let me be clear about this, I think what the administration is hoping to do is essentially to get the Iranians to agree that they will basically stop the 20% enrichment and draw down their 20% enriched uranium stockpile and have the, you know, enhanced, you know, day-to-day visits to the enrichment facilities, checking on the coverage by the video cameras in return for a partial, but not complete, withdrawal of the sanctions.
That's my guess.
You know, I mean, that's just the logic of... that's based on a logical deduction from what we're getting from these senior officials.
You're saying that's best-case scenario, that they would compromise at that?
That's what...
That's what I think the administration feels that they might be able to obtain.
In other words, they would be happy if the Iranians continue to enrich at 5%, but they have all these limitations of, you know, of really very good coverage, day-to-day coverage, and they know exactly what's going on, and they can assume that the Iranians can't get away with any hanky-panky.
As long as they're not enriching the 20%, they're pretty relaxed about it.
I think that's the situation that we're looking at.
So I think that they're going to test whether they could get away with that kind of a deal.
Yeah, well, so what are the Americans going to use as their excuse to kill the deal, then?
Well, I mean, they'll say, well, we're just not convinced that the Iranians really have no intention of, you know, having a nuclear weapon.
They haven't gone far enough.
It will be that kind of very generalized complaint.
It won't be on the basis of any specific technical issue.
I mean, that would be my assumption.
Yeah.
Well, and then also the Israelis.
Netanyahu seems absolutely shameless in this.
He doesn't care.
Who knows if he's the one who pays Jandala to blow up what, right, at this point?
He'll do anything to stop this, won't he?
Well, I mean, what can you say about the Israelis that is bad enough to really cover the subject?
I don't know.
I mean, the degree of dishonesty that has been displayed for so long by Israel on so many things is just, it's appalling.
I mean, you know, I can't think of any historical case that I know of where a government has lied so often and, you know, so consistently as the Israelis have.
And Netanyahu absolutely is the worst of all.
Yeah.
It reminds me of my dad telling me about during Vietnam, when they would actually have reporters, it would be on a delay or whatever, but they would actually have reporters going, yep, here are the piles of the bodies of the Americans who died today.
And most of the bad guys seem to have gotten away and then cut straight to the briefing where, oh, we wiped them all out and we only had very light casualties.
And that it was like that day after day after day.
And they never could coordinate the lie to make it make any sense whatsoever.
And that's how this seems to me.
Like my friend Philip would say, it's the three stooges plumber's school of foreign policy here.
The reason that the water's not coming through is because this pipe's all full of wires.
Well, I think you're right to liken the, to draw a parallel there between what the Israelis, how the Israelis operate in terms of their propaganda on, on Iran and associated issues.
And, and the U.S. five o'clock follies, as they were called in, in Vietnam.
I mean, both are equally deserving of, of, of, you know, a lot of making fun and, and really just complete disrespect.
That's for sure.
Yeah.
I think maybe, I don't know why this became the best way to phrase it, but it's the Fonzie jump in the shark thing where your TV show is old hat now and we don't like it anymore.
And it's time to cancel it kind of thing.
And I think that Netanyahu is getting to that point where I see very mainstream-y kind of websites see him as nothing but a butt of a joke, you know, at this point.
He's a fool.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that's becoming much more prevalent, although not, certainly not unanimous, that there, there is a growing awareness on the part of sober-minded Israelis, Zionists, if you will, that Netanyahu has in fact made a joke of the, the entire issue and, and that, that he doesn't have much credibility outside, you know, very, very limited media circles anymore.
You know, even, even though, you know, one has to say that there's still the coverage of, of this issue until just right up until this agreement still reflected far too much the Israeli point of view.
You know, just, just simply reflecting, well, Mr. Secretary, what do you say to the Israeli complaint that, you know, is the standard question to be asked to a, to any U.S. official?
And, and that is still far too prevalent.
Nevertheless, I mean, Netanyahu's extreme behavior, I mean, the fact that he, he's making statements that are simply so demonstrably, demonstrably false and, you know, can be so easily shown to be false, I think is, is not, he's not doing anything for his credibility.
And, and that is, that's a positive part of the situation for sure.
I mean, that's one of the things that has continued to change over time.
Well, now still, there's a big difference between say anything and do anything.
What are the limits you think on what he would do or how far, I guess the better way to put it, how far do you think he might really go?
Well, I mean, one of the things that has started to be reported more frequently is, is the fact that the Israeli military of the IDF has no stomach for an attack on Iran.
I think I just, I saw a report, I'm not as good as you are in remembering from day to day where I read things.
And so at this moment, I can't remember where, where this is reported in the last 24 to 48 hours.
But, but there was a report saying, you know, citing Israeli military sources as saying, you know, we, we don't really have, we, I'm not even sure we have the capability to do this.
We're not even sure the Americans have the capability to do this to, to attack Iranian sites successfully.
Oh, I hadn't seen that one.
Yeah.
I mean, this is, I think this is going to be a trend in the future.
And because it is so clear, and I talk about this in my book at some length, that the Israeli military never believed that they had the realistic capability to do anything about the Iranian nuclear program that it made the slightest bit of sense to threaten to, I mean, it made no sense to, to seriously contemplate it, even though it's true that most of the Israeli military and intelligence elite were willing to remain silent while Netanyahu made those threats on the assumption that he wasn't serious about it.
And that it was really intended simply as a device to get the United States and the rest of the six powers essentially to, to take a much more, a much harsher posture toward Iran, particularly on the sanctions.
But obviously they were, they would be happy if the United States would, in fact, be willing to have a military confrontation with Iran.
I mean, that, that part of it, you know, the, the IDF people, for the most part, you know, were more open to, but, but certainly not an Israeli attack on Iran.
That's something that I think, I think is simply, has been a ruse from the beginning.
It's just a lie.
Well, there is a good roundup of statements along those lines by the Israeli military today at the 972 MAG, if you want to check that out.
Oh, good.
We got to go.
We're out of time.
Thank you so much, Gareth, as always.
I appreciate it.
My pleasure.
Thanks, Scott.
IPSnews.net for Gareth Porter, y'all.
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