For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 95.9 in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
All right, so now on to our next guest.
It's Grant F. Smith, and I have a page here full of the many books he's written.
Spy Trade.
How Israel's Lobby Undermines America's Economy.
Foreign Agents.
The American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee.
From the 1963 Fulbright hearings to the 2005 espionage scandal.
America's Defense Line.
The Justice Department's battle to register the Israel lobby as agents of a foreign government.
Visa Denied.
How Anti-Arab Visa Policies Destroy U.S. Exports.
Deadly Dogma.
How Neoconservatives Broke the Law to Deceive America.
He is the director of IRMEP, which is the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy.
That's I-R-M-E-P dot org.
And you can find what he writes at original.antiwar.com slash smith dash grant.
Welcome back to the show.
Hey, Scott.
Thank you so much.
Just to really underscore the importance of anti-war.
You know, either me or some of my collaborators will spend years trying to get documents declassified to write some of these articles.
And anti-war actually publishes them.
And they get wide distribution.
And I'm just totally amazed at the work that's being done, particularly to debunk some of these recent disinformation campaigns.
You know, Phil Giraldi, Jason Dates.
I just find that to be absolutely incredible the way one single website can take down these various network distribution disinformation campaigns.
It's really, really amazing.
Well, thanks.
We try.
And we're always very happy to run your stuff.
And for that matter, you know, we always take a very Catholic view on this.
And we feature everybody from the left, right, libertarian.
And pretty much, you know, wherever you are, as long as you're with us on whichever particular issue you're writing about and more or less non-intervention in general, we try to feature everything by all the world's best writers along those lines.
And, you know, I was a huge fan of anti-war.com before I ever got lucky enough to start working there and doing this show for them and all that kind of thing.
So I totally agree with you from the perspective of a consumer of anti-war.com as well.
I appreciate it when you say that as a member of it, you know.
Great.
Great.
All right.
So listen, let's talk about your most recent article here.
I guess this ran yesterday or the day before.
Israel violates economic sanctions against Iran.
Israel's rich but nutty history.
So first of all, before we talk about Israel violating economic sanctions against Iran, which sounds like a lot of fun, maybe you can detail for us the new sanctions.
There are sanctions that have passed the House and the Senate.
There's State Department proposals and administration proposals for sanctions.
I don't know whether they've signed the one passed by the Congress or if those are just resolutions.
Exactly what?
I know Hillary Clinton's trying to push something through the United Nations Security Council.
They're having trouble with the Chinese.
So if you could just tell us all about the different kinds of sanctions in play and what looks likely to actually be implemented and give us as much detail as you can about how these sanctions are supposed to work here.
The most recent sanctions, and there have been unilateral sanctions just imposed by the United States.
They've been attempting to quietly put together multilateral sanctions and, of course, ultimately get the U.N. involved.
Basically, the most recent sanctions were really targeting, and here we're talking about specifically the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, targeting certain Revolutionary Guard members trying to diminish the financial flows of any Guard member who they thought was involved in the nuclear program, etc.
So highly targeted sanctions.
But you've got on this whole other level the Treasury Department's new, it's not spanking new, it was created back in 2004, Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, which for a long time has been targeting Iranian shippers and companies doing business with Iran quietly.
They'll go in with some threats against the bank saying, hey, we know that you're dealing with Iran.
If you have any branches in the United States or in New York, we're going to work with the local district attorney to file some charges in an attempt to expose you, shame you, and also fine you for violating unilateral U.S. sanctions.
Although the sanctions regime is heating up because we've had some action in the Congress to pass broad sanctions which border on an actual blockade of gasoline supplies, these have been a series, a creeping sanctions regime led by this secretive Treasury unit.
And I think it's really worthwhile to talk a little bit about that specific Treasury unit because all of the things that we saw before the Iraq war, if you were an anti-war listener and you knew a lot about the Office of Special Plans, you knew it was essentially a black box that had very little public disclosure into what it was doing around the world.
You knew that it was hardwired to the Israel lobby, and you knew it was also diverting the institution it was housed in away from its mandate, which at that time was trying to get the al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, trying to move it towards some predetermined objectives.
Well, the office that's housed in the Treasury Department was a creation which was lobbied for by AIPAC and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy to put together this office in the Treasury in 2004.
It vetted Stuart Levy, who Bush approved to lead it, and who Obama has kept on.
And although it claims to be safeguarding the financial system against money laundering and terrorism generators, it's rapidly proven itself to be mainly a sharp-edged tool for setting a lot of these tripwires.
It looks as though what they're trying to do is sort of surround and encompass Iran, and maybe, if they're really lucky, get them to leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty so that they can become an even easier target.
But one of the reasons I say that this unit and these sanctions are somewhat empty is really what the TFI unit at Treasury won't tackle.
Even the 9-11 report talked a lot about how U.S. support for Israel was one of the main reasons for the attacks.
And certainly within that entire domain, illegal settlements have been a big deal.
Yet this particular Treasury unit, even though something like $50 to $60 billion has been laundered for various parts of the world, including the U.S. and the Israeli settlements, they won't touch an issue like that.
So they're not really about any type of money laundering.
When it came to the Office of Special Plans, there was basically a population of people picked from the American Enterprise Institute, from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Do the men who run this organization at the Treasury Department, what's it called again?
Are they as hardwired to the neoconservative think tanks as the OSP was?
They're hardwired to APAC's think tank, which is the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
And one of the reasons you can tell that is almost all of their actual public events are actually at the Washington Institute.
Most of their outside consultants, just like the Office of Special Plans, would source consultants from the American Enterprise Institute to do a particular job.
These guys source their consultants from APAC's think tank.
So if you follow where the people came from, who was lobbying for it, etc., etc., you see it's just another Office of Special Plans, except it's not at the Pentagon, it's at the Treasury Department.
And I would say the biggest problem is there's no Karen Kwiatkowski in place to say, hey, look what's going on here.
It's even less transparent than the Office of Special Plans.
I know that from personal experience, because we sent them Freedom of Information Act requests saying, look, you've gone to Jerusalem five times.
During any of those visits, did you happen to confront this $50 to $60 billion in money laundering for illegal settlements?
Because that is a terrorism generator, folks.
And they say, no, we're not going to respond to FOIA.
So I would say this is an extremely dangerous development because they're completely intransparent and because of the way they operate.
All right.
Now, what can we expect from these sanctions against Iran when the rubber meets the road here, you think?
Well, that was the whole point of the article.
I mean, the free market, you can put on hobnail boots and try and kill it and stomp on it, but it's awfully difficult to actually put in place any sort of targeted sanctions, because the minute you do that, suddenly you create margins for, if you want to call them smugglers or if you just want to call them traitors, are going to rush into the market and attempt to supply and get the extra margin for whatever it is you're imposing sanctions on.
And the rich but nutty essay that Antiwar published makes that point.
I mean, among the first people to violate economic sanctions back when the hostage crisis was going on in the late 70s, early 80s, was Mark Rich.
And this is a person who set up an oil trading operation in Switzerland, a U.S. citizen, and made a deal with Ayatollah Khomeini to buy his oil and then resell it to other traders, breaking the U.S. oil embargo against Iran.
And that's how he became Fortune 500, 242nd richest American in 2006.
And the other thing that sanctions do is they punish honest traders and reward corrupt traders.
And we can see that corrupting influence, how it reached into the United States, because Mark Rich, as everybody knows, with the input of Eric Holder, was pardoned by Clinton and never faced any consequences for grabbing the margins that everyone else was denied.
The pistachio case is the other case that we made in the essay, because really it kind of shows how, even though the Israelis are ostensibly the beneficiaries of this huge effort to curb the Iranian drive for nuclear whatever it is, it doesn't look like weapons at this point, but nuclear capabilities, they're quite willing to purchase large amounts of Iranian pistachios, they're one of the biggest exporters, violating their own Trading with the Enemies Act, and actually damaging U.S. growers who are less productive because they actually combat aflatoxin, which is the carcinogenic fungus growth, and can't compete on price.
So you've got, you know, the ostensible beneficiary is not likely to even help out on the sanctions.
It's likely to be tremendously corrupting, there are likely to be more Mark Riches popping up all over the place selling gasoline to the Iranians, and the whole thing is kind of a joke.
Well, now pistachio sounds kind of marginal though, I mean, how many billions of dollars can that be a year?
What about real trading between Israel and Iran?
Yeah, here's the dangerous thing, because we get into this whole environment that occurred right before the Iran-Contra debacle, where right now the United States is stockpiling massive amounts of weapons in Israel.
You've got above and beyond the $3 billion in military aid, you've got an enormous new stockpile of something like $800 million worth of weapons in Israel.
You've always got your Michael Ledeens and other people who are circulating around with the idea that there are elements within Iran that can be dealt with, that the U.S. should be maybe getting as close to them as possible, possibly through some influential deals.
So, I mean, the environment for people to be doing an Iran-Contra 3, I say Iran-Contra 3 because I think Laura Rosen did an excellent article on how they tried to do an Iran-Contra 2 not too many years ago.
I mean, there's a flashpoint where there's a lot of saber-rattling in the region, all of the conditions that precipitated the Iran-Contra affair are in place, including relative opacity, and I'm not going to say that there is a major pipeline of weapons to supposed groups in Iran who are going to take on the government and ask the Ayatollahs, but the conditions are certainly set for that, and I don't think it's in the American interest at this point to be entering our third phase of Iran-Contra.
It didn't do America any good.
Well, you know, Mohammad Sahimi pointed out on the show the other day that if you do put sanctions on the imports of gasoline by the Iranians, then all you do is benefit the IRGC in the first place, the so-called targets of the sanctions, never even mind going around in black markets and all the other things, but all you're doing is just driving up the price of the commodity that's in their hands.
They get paid more for doing less work right off the bat.
Well, that's true, but it also alienates most of our trading partners.
I mean, the United States does a tremendous amount of trade with the Gulf, with regional powers, and as soon as you start running around and trying to play whack-a-mole and saying, hey, you know, there's a motorboat departing from this port in UAE bound for Iran, I mean, that doesn't make people want to trade with you when you suddenly, again, try and stomp on and play whack-a-mole with the free market, because, I mean, trade has been going on in that region for longer than this country's been in existence.
Yeah, of course, ten times as long.
Right.
All right, so here's the thing.
We've got to deal with this nuclear issue here.
Have you been keeping, I guess I'll just ask you, have you been keeping close track of all the developments over the last couple of weeks with this, or do you want, I should rehearse what's been going on and let you comment on that?
Well, I mean, I think you've been providing most of the best content on that, so I would only point out, if I could just stand out of the soapbox and make one more observation before maybe you talk about the whole nuclear issue, I mean, it's somewhat ridiculous the way this whole thing is shaking out, because here we have Hillary Clinton in the region, in Doha, Qatar, and she's basically saying that this nemesis, Iran, is moving toward becoming a dictatorship.
And again, where is Clinton making this pronouncement?
She's at a Brookings Institution-sponsored event, hyping this.
And basically, the Brookings Institution's entire Middle East policy was taken over by Haim Saban, who bought it for $13 million and named the center after himself.
He's put basically the DNC on the bankroll back when Clinton won, was in place.
He helped Hillary by trying to buy a couple of people to throw their votes to her as a superdelegate.
And so, all of the Qataris and Saudis at this event are looking at this and saying, OK, you're here, you're talking about military dictatorship, you've got the Fifth Fleet behind you, and you're telling us that this government's been subverted.
And basically, the only reason you're here is because the interests of a foreign lobby have put you here.
Yeah, and wait, what's the name of the emir of Qatar again?
Oh, I don't know if I can pronounce it.
Yeah, well, none of us can.
I mean, that's the joke.
No, I guess it's this guy, al-Thani.
Khalifa al-Thani?
Is that the same guy from the Terror Sheik, the article about Rudy Giuliani and his buddy over there?
Al-Thani, yeah.
So these guys, yeah, she's there to talk about dictatorship from her perch in Qatar there.
Right, on Qatar, where we base the Fifth Fleet.
So she's worried about the militarization of Iran and doing it from a very interesting perch.
But again, you know, just the whole trajectory of how she even got there, and how she puts a tin ear on when the students and the press at this event say, you know what, Hillary?
We're really interested in a nuclear-free Middle East.
But guess what?
That doesn't start with Iran.
It starts with your ally that's the only current nuclear power in the Middle East with deployed weapons.
And she, of course, because of who she is, how she came into power, can't deal with that issue.
And it makes just a mockery of the entire unfolding policy in this region.
Yeah.
Well, and you know, you talk about the Office of Special Plans and the run-up to the Iraq War.
For people who maybe, you know, are kind of new at this and don't know much about that, I'd like to recommend to you the spies who push for war in The Guardian and The Life Factory and Mother Jones and Pentagon Home Office to Neocon Network by Jim Loeb and a bunch of other great articles about that.
But it sort of seems to me, and I guess, you know, it's been like this for years now, where it really is just like the run-up to the Iraq War, only in even slower motion than that.
Hey, everybody, they're making nuclear weapons and we've got to bomb them.
And yet for anybody who bothers to, you know, read the old Knight Ridder guys over at McClatchy now or, you know, pay attention to actual details, you can tell that, no, actually they're not making nuclear bombs.
And any of the concrete and detailed accusations against them are not that they're making nuclear bombs.
The idea that they're making nuclear bombs only comes out in the most vague terms because there's really just no truth to it.
And when it comes to, you know, heightening their enrichment up to 20 percent, we push them to do that.
They were trying, they were doing everything they could to say, look, we don't even want to reconfigure our centrifuges because you know you'll shoot us.
So just let us enrich to 3.5 percent and we'll let you do the rest.
And we still wouldn't take them up on that.
Right.
Well, you've done a lot in debunking just how a lot of these offers were, you know, offers that could not be accepted, like the uranium swaps, you know.
Anyone who looks at kind of the mainstream corporate spin on this and then looks at the anti-war in your work, they know, you know, there's a lot of double talk going on and a lot of offers that must be refused going on.
But, you know, what people should be asking above and beyond, you know, why so much back and forth on a non-issue, and I do agree there doesn't seem to be any evidence whatsoever the Iranians are pursuing weapons, although we seem to be giving them every reason to do so, is why this charade?
Why is this going on now?
And one of the things that everything to do with Iranian nuclear weapons is the fact that it sucks all of the air out of every other important issue, in particular the Middle East peace initiatives.
So you ask why this constant conflation, this constant focus, this constant hype, all of these, you know, supposed documents being leaked, and one of the things it does do is it takes the focus off every real issue.
So I think, you know, you've got this incredibly weakened president now, who couldn't even get a settlement freeze to relaunch the Middle East peace initiatives, and what this entire focus on Iranian nuclear weapons does is it is sucking the energy away from revitalizing trade, job creation, but most particular, anything having to do with the Israeli-Palestine issue, which is the key issue that everyone in the region continues to agree is job one.
Yeah, well you know what, pardon me for my overwhelmingly sunny disposition and rose-colored glasses on this, but it seems to me like we could have perfectly friendly relations with Iran, even short of resolving Palestine, you know, it would be better resolved than not, I'm not saying that, but it seems like the entire, well I guess I just have to agree with Dick Cheney from 1996 or whatever it was, when he was over in Australia complaining, the worst treason, right, to go overseas somewhere and complain about your own government, and that's what he did to complain about Bill Clinton and the sanctions against Iran, and said, look, you know, I'm the head of an oil services company, I would like to do business with the Iranians, why are you keeping me from doing business, we can do business with these people, they're fine, let's work it out, the revolution was a long time ago, our grudge was a long time ago, and so, you know, if they were willing to offer us the grand bargain in 2003, how come we can't offer them one right now?
And, you know what I mean, it's like, they don't want to resolve this, they just want a better excuse for war, even, well, although, then again, let me, since I'm just going off here, let me try to end it with a question, do you think there's a faction fight going on here?
Because of course, Admiral Mullen was saying there could be severe unintended consequences from any war with Iran, No, I think absolutely the Pentagon split about this, I don't think they've ever been, you know, the smart people at the Pentagon have never been interested in any sort of confrontation, and again, you know, the so-called grand bargain, the problem with it is, it was shot down and diverted and subverted so quickly, turned against the Iranians for even proposing it as carefully as they did, so it really is, you know, the whole Cheney thing is just a reiteration of, wherever you stand really depends on where you sit, and if you'd been sitting at an oil services company or a trading company for these past 10 years, of course you'd still be saying the same thing, because basically, the US and Iran are extremely compatible economic partners, and a lot of the trouble that's being stirred up right now keeps the two natural trading partners from ever doing anything productive, we continue to create the conditions that actually help precipitate the Iranian resolution, the corruption, the, you know, illicit activities that cause the downfall of the Shah, you know, we're acting, we're behaving as badly in terms of the saber-rattling right now, and there is absolutely no way there's going to be any sort of rapprochement as far as, you know, just looking at the relations between the two countries, but I agree that, you know, this market, Iran is a market that we don't have to fight with, that we can stand on the sidelines and let them figure out how they want to be governed, which is what should happen, as opposed to attempting to engineer a coup or, you know, follow Michael Ledeen into another set of high-profile but fatal, you know, efforts with any sort of moderate elements in their military, I mean, all of those things have been tried, they've failed, if they're tried again, they'll fail again, I mean, I think we need to back off and begin opening as many relations as we possibly can with as many different segments of society as we possibly can.
The other approaches have all been tried and they've all failed.
Well, you know, George Bush and Dick Cheney apparently were perfectly happy to fight with other people's lives, of course, but it took years and years to install the Iranians, guys in power in Iraq, seems like if they're willing to swallow their pride and do that, what's the problem, you know?
Well, the one thing that I think people don't give them any credit for, because it's so hard to give them any credit after invading Iraq, but George Bush did not let the neoconservatives manipulate him into attacking Iran, he did leave two members of one of the principal organizations, although there are many others, that were trying to maneuver that into place through what looks like espionage, he did leave them in court toward an impending trial date, so I think he quickly came to regret, and someday may even talk about it, I think he did come to regret the way he was manipulated into making the biggest possible blunder in the region that's ever been made by a U.S. president.
Yeah, which of course has its own irony packed in it too, because all he cares about is that, on this show we always just blame Cheney, but out in the world he's the one whose name is mud throughout the rest of history, that most horrible person, people compare him even to Woodrow Wilson, among the worst presidents ever, one of the worst political leaders in the history of mankind, and he's the one who's going to get the rap, so that's all he cares about, is his own personal problem, he still doesn't care about the million people who died in his stupid war.
Well, I hope someday he comes to care about that, because again, it's just the utter failure of U.S. policy, and one of the reasons that we spend so much time looking at the influence of AIPAC and other organizations is, there seems to be now a well-established infrastructure in this country that just will not let any sort of productive policy advance, and it's subverted trade, it's subverted rule of law in this country, it's creating a two-tier legal system, I mean, I know that you and Scott Horton were talking about the crazies out there, the billers, the people who believe in the Bill of Rights, but I mean, there's so many examples now that we've uncovered through declassification, of U.S. law just being roughshod by AIPAC and all these organizations who push these stupidities, I mean, it really is a pity, because in an age when people are really struggling economically, to see these organizations pushing such nonsense and such waste is just becoming quickly intolerable.
All right, everybody, that's Grant F. Smith from the Institute for Research, Middle Eastern Policy.
The website is IRMEP.org, I-R-M-E-P.org, and you can find what he writes at original.antiwar.com slash smith-grant.
Thanks very much for your time on the show today.
Thanks, Scott.
Take care.
