11/21/14 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

You hate government?
One of them libertarian types?
Or maybe you just can't stand the president, gun grabbers, or warmongers.
Me too.
That's why I invented libertystickers.com.
Well, Rick owns it now, and I didn't make up all of them, but still.
If you're driving around and want to tell everyone else how wrong their politics are, there's only one place to go.
Libertystickers.com has got your bumper covered.
Left, right, libertarian, empire, police, state, founders, quote, central banking.
Yes, bumper stickers about central banking.
Lots of them.
And, well, everything that matters.
Libertystickers.com.
Everyone else's stickers suck.
All right, you guys.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
All right, our first guest today is our good friend Gareth Porter, independent historian and journalist, writer for interpress service, IPSnews.net and truthout.org.
And he wrote the book on it, Manufactured Crisis, The Previously Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.
It's told now.
Welcome back to the show, Gareth.
How are you doing?
Hi, Scott.
Glad to be back again.
Thanks.
Very happy to have you here.
So kind of different than usual, instead of really interviewing you about actual journalism that you've done, stories you've broken, lies you've debunked lately, at least to start here, I want to ask you to speculate about the very short term future here.
Are we going to get a nuclear deal at these talks in Vienna?
I'm saying probably not and almost certainly probably not.
In other words, it looks to me like the die has already been cast here.
At best, they're going to agree to some kind of postponement of what I think is inevitably going to be a breakdown of these talks.
And the reason is that the United States has made a decision really to make demands on both the enrichment side and on the question of lifting sanctions, which are simply not going to be acceptable to Iran.
I think that much is clear that those two issues are not just not decided, but that the two sides are irrevocably on a collision course in regard to those issues.
OK, so if you were there, can you see a way around?
I mean, how to split the difference where both sides could actually be happy about it?
Well, I mean, particularly, let's start with the enrichment side of the equation.
There's no doubt in my mind that this is very clearly a case of the Obama administration adopting a diplomatic position that has nothing to do with the national security of the United States.
It has nothing to do with whether or not Iran is going to get a nuclear weapon.
It has everything to do with politics and specifically the politics of dealing with the Israeli lobby and its minions on Capitol Hill, because we know for a fact that John Kerry has just announced that the United States is demanding a position with regard to the level of centrifuges or enrichment capacity on the Iranian side that would give the United States the so-called breakout timeline of at least one year.
Now, that has to be understood in the context of the initial U.S. position announced by Kerry himself last April, and I've written about this several times, that the United States would demand a breakout timeline of between six and twelve months.
In other words, the United States has moved the goalpost very significantly from its initial position.
The Iranians have clearly already met the initial position that Kerry articulated by agreeing, as has been reported by the New York Times and elsewhere and myself, to essentially draw down its stockpile of low enriched uranium.
If that stockpile is drawn down to close to zero, that would bring the timeline for breakout, this theoretical measure which nobody believes makes any sense anyway, to somewhere between nine and eleven months, and let's say nine or ten months.
And so that already satisfies the initial position that had been articulated by Kerry.
But somewhere along the line in June or July, the Obama administration decided that it wanted more and would demand at least a year and perhaps more than a year.
And that's why they're still demanding, even though the Iranians have already agreed to draw down the stockpile, which would accomplish the same thing as a reduction to a very small number of centrifuges, they're now still demanding that Iran has to agree to a substantive reduction in the number of centrifuges.
So that's playing to a political constituency.
Again, it has nothing to do with the realities of the nuclear weapons issue.
And I think this simply underlines, once again, what we've talked about on your show so many times, which is that U.S. policy in national security has nothing to do with the actual facts of the situation on the ground or in the air or anything else.
It has to do with domestic politics.
So is this just sabotage?
This is Kerry making an offer that he knows they can't possibly accept?
Well, I don't know that it's Kerry personally, but yeah, I think it's certainly making an offer that they should know that Iran can't accept.
But I think that it's determined by some predisposition to have a result which can be presented clearly as a defeat of Iran, somehow a victory for the United States over Iran, because it's felt that that's necessary for the Obama administration's street cred with the right wing.
So, you know, I don't know whether you want to call it sabotage, but in any case, it's a position being taken in the knowledge that Iran would have a great deal of difficulty, if not an impossibility, to accept that position.
Yeah.
Well, it's unfortunate.
Although, you know, I don't know, man, it seems like if they're going to get an extension on the deal, well, we're only headed toward worse times with the Republicans coming into power, but it's still better than just giving up.
I don't know.
Well, the problem with the extension at this point is the logic of this situation is that the extension is not going to make any difference.
And I don't know how the Iranians are going to respond.
They may agree to an extension.
I don't know.
But I think that they have to be aware that there are dangers lurking in agreeing to an extension for the Hassan Rouhani government itself.
I mean, they're under an under fire for going along with an Obama administration set of negotiations that looks to many in domestic politics in Iran as though it's simply not going to be in the interest of Iran.
So, you know, they are going to pay a political price for going along with this, you know, if they understand certainly that the chances of the United States agreeing to a reasonable settlement here on both the enrichment issue and on the sanctions removal issue is close to nothing.
So I have some doubt that the Iranians are going to be willing to do this.
And if they do agree, I don't think that it's going to go beyond January.
So this is not something that is extendable beyond that period.
I'm fairly confident.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Again, the sanctions issue being very important there.
The president can only do so much.
He really needs Congress to go along.
And that means John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
So forget it.
There are two different issues here, two very distinct issues.
Real quick, too.
So on the part of it that has to do with U.S. unilateral sanctions, you're right that Congress is a big problem.
And the only way around that is a commitment by the administration that it would, you know, it would insist that this is in the national interest, that it will use all available means to ensure that the sanctions cannot be applied as long as Iran keeps its word.
And I don't know if that's enough, but that would be part of it.
And the second part of this problem, more important part, I think, at this moment, perhaps, is that the United States is now saying that even the oil and banking sanctions could not be removed permanently.
They would have to be only suspended.
In other words, the structure of the sanctions would remain in place.
And this is not going to be acceptable to Iran, because as an Iranian expert, economics expert, just pointed out in the last few days, if the sanctions are not actually lifted on the central bank of Iran, nobody is going to do business with Iran, because they're going to be afraid that they will be regarded by the U.S. Treasury Department as somehow violating sanctions, and therefore they will shy away from it.
And so they are very clear on this, that the banks, the banking sanctions and the oil sanctions have to be lifted, not simply suspended.
So that is a deal breaker right there.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I know you got to go, so we'll go ahead and stop there.
But I appreciate it.
Thanks so much, Scott.
Talk to you soon.
Bye-bye.
That's the great Gareth Porter, everybody.
Breaking the bad news.
Hey, Al Scott Horton here.
It's always safe to say that one should keep at least some of your savings and precious metals as a hedge against inflation.
And if this economy ever does heat back up and the banks start expanding credit, rising prices could make metals a very profitable bet.
Since 1977, Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc. has been helping people buy and sell gold, silver, platinum and palladium.
And they do it well.
They're fast, reliable and trusted for more than 35 years.
And they take Bitcoin.
Call Roberts and Roberts at 1-800-874-9760 or stop by rrbi.co.
Hey, Al Scott Horton here for the Future of Freedom, the monthly journal of the Future Freedom Foundation at fff.org slash subscribe.
Since 1989, FFF has been pushing an uncompromising moral and economic case for peace, individual liberty and free markets.
Sign up now for the Future of Freedom featuring founder and president Jacob Hornberger, as well as Sheldon Richmond, James Bovard, Anthony Gregory, Wendy McElroy and many more.
It's just $25 a year for the print edition, 15 per year to read it online.
That's fff.org slash subscribe and tell them Scott sent you.